Perry Trounces Hutchison in Texas Republican Primary

Kay Bailey Hutchison's bizarre campaign to beat incumbent Texas Governor Rick Perry in the Republican primary has ended in embarrassing defeat. Gov. Rick Perry won a decisive victory over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Texas GOP primary for governor Tuesday night, bringing a bruising fight between two of the state's most popular Republicans to an anticlimactic conclusion. Perry said his win ...

Crist Leaving Republicans, Running as Independent or Democrat?

Responding to rumors that Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who's getting crushed by Marco Rubio in the primary polling, will leave the Republican Party and run as an independent, Ezra Klein sees "a huge coup for Democrats." The best possible storyline for them going into the 2010 election is that the Republican Party's apparatus has been captured by extremists and ideologues. If ...

Democrats Will Lose the House: Charlie Cook

Veteran political prognosticator Charlie Cook argues that it's not only likely that Republicans will take back the House of Representatives in November but that it's hard to come up with a scenario under which they won't. I've spent the last couple of days talking to some of the brightest Democrats in the party that are not in the White House. And ...

Democrats’ Indiana Senate Prospects Worsen

Yesterday's surprise announcement that Indiana Senator Evan Bayh was dropping his re-election bid on the eve of the filing deadline continues to play out in surprising ways.   Josh Marshall notes that longshot Tamyra d'Ippolito claims to have collected enough signatures to get her on the ballot, which "would leave her as the only name on the ballot in the Democratic ...

Evan Bayh Retiring

Indiana's Evan Bayh, a much-touted aspirant for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, is announcing that he will not seek another term in the Senate. Mary Beth Schneider for the Indianapolis Star: Sen. Evan Bayh will not run for re-election, a decision that will shock Democrats and Republicans alike in Indiana. In prepared remarks, Bayh, 54, cited excessive partisanship that makes progress on ...

Ron Paul vs. the Tea Party?

The Dallas Morning News reports that Ron Paul is facing three Republican primary challengers, all of whom align themselves with the Tea Party movement.Paul, the Gulf Coast congressman whose 2008 presidential run excited libertarians nationwide, even though he didn't get much traction overall, is considered by many to be the "father of the Tea Parties." But he has three opponents ...

2010 as 1994

There's been an increasing amount of talk about 2010 being a repeat of 1994, when Republicans took back both the House and Senate in a stunning rebuke to a Democratic president who tried to radically reform America's health care and otherwise enact social changes the country wasn't ready for. President Obama allegedly scoffed at the suggestion, bragging, "Well, the big difference ...

Marion Berry Retires

Alas, not Marian Barry, the corrupt DC politician, but Marion Berry, the Arkansas Democrat who holds Blanche Lincoln's old House seat. WaPo's Chris Cilliza, who broke the news, observes Barry is "the sixth Democrat in a competitive seat to leave in the last two months but the first to announce his retirement since the party's special election loss in Massachusetts last ...

Hayworth Challenging McCain

Former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth, who lost his seat in 2006 -- a tough year for Republicans -- is challenging John McCain for his Senate seat in 2010, a tough year for Democrats. I read the news -- which has been rumored for weeks -- yesterday afternoon but The Arizona Republic's Dan Nowicki gives some context: Former U.S. Rep. J.D. ...

What Democrats Should Learn from Massachussetts

[caption id="attachment_46365" align="alignright" width="440" caption="U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA)  greets Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate Martha Coakley after she conceded defeat to Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown in the special election to fill the Senate seat of the late Edward Kennedy in Boston, Massachusetts January 19, 2010. (REUTERS)"][/caption] Neil Newhouse, who served served as the pollster for the Brown for Senate ...

Scott Brown Win a Nihilist Moment?

The special election to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by the passing of Teddy Kennedy is ongoing, with most expecting a win by Republican Scott Brown.  Andrew Sullivan sees this as the death knell of American politics. I can see no alternative scenario but a huge - staggeringly huge - victory for the FNC/RNC machine tomorrow. They crafted a strategy ...

Scott Brown’s a Liberal. Why are Conservatives So Enthusiastic?

538's Andrew Gelman points me to University of Chicago political scientist Boris Shor's analysis of the Massachussets Senate race between Martha Coakley and Scott Brown to fill out the remainder of the late Ted Kennedy's term.  Specifically, he poses an interesting question: Brown is attracting very positive national and state Republican and conservative attention. On the other hand, State Assemblywoman Dede ...

Why Martha Coakley is Unfit for the U.S. Senate

Dorothy Rabinowitz' article in the Wall Street Journal. Read the whole thing.

Scott Brown Takes The Lead in Massachusetts

Via E.D. Kain I learn that Scott Brown has taken the lead in the Massachusetts special election in a recent poll:The poll shows Brown, a state senator from Wrentham, besting Coakley, the state’s attorney general, by 50 percent to 46 percent, the first major survey to show Brown in the lead. Unenrolled long-shot Joseph L. Kennedy, an information technology executive ...

Harry Reid Racist Obama Comments, Sagging Polls

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in trouble. Among the juicy revelations in the highly touted 2008 tell-all by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin is that Reid made some borderline racist comments about then-candidate and Senate colleague Barack Obama. He was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such ...