Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
Republicans have rammed their union-busting bill through the Wisconsin state Assembly. They still lack a quorum in the Senate. AP (“Wisconsin Assembly passes bill taking away union rights“): Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly took the first significant action on their plan to strip collective bargaining rights from most public workers, abruptly passing the measure early [...]
In the wake of Blanche Lincoln’s win on Tuesday over union-backed Bill Halter in the Arkansas runoff, there have been signs of tension between the White House and the labor unions that backed Halter’s run from the left. It started, with a comment that Ben Smith shared late Tuesday night on his blog: A senior [...]
The newest Gallup Generic Congressional Ballot poll shows a dramatic turn in favor of the GOP: PRINCETON, NJ — Gallup tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences shows Republicans moving back ahead of Democrats, 49% to 43%, by two points their largest lead of the campaign to date. Registered voters’ preferences had been closely divided for [...]
According to The Politico, President Obama plans to counter the rising Republican tide by campaigning against a man who hasn’t held elective office for nearly a year and a half: President Barack Obama is trying to ride the wave of anti-incumbency by taking on an unpopular politician steeped in the partisan ways of Washington. It [...]
Yesterday, Connecticut Attorney General, and Senate candidate, Richard Blumenthal addressed the allegations raised by the New York Times that he had misrepresented his Vietnam-era military service, and used it as an opportunity to attack the messenger: HARTFORD — Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a Democrat running for the United States Senate, said on Tuesday [...]
There is no doubt that the results of yesterday’s primaries (Specter’s loss, Paul’s win, and Lincoln’s run-off) are all dramatic outcomes that fit the basic narrative about this year’s elections: that we are in an anti-Washington, anti-incumbent mode as a country at the moment. This, of course, is not surprising given the state of the [...]
Via the NYT: Specter Defeat Signals a Wave Against Incumbents: Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who left the Republican Party a year ago in hopes of salvaging a 30-year career, was rejected on Tuesday by Democratic primary voters, with Representative Joe Sestak winning the party’s nomination on an anti-incumbent wave that is defining the midterm [...]
In yesterday’s much ballyhooed Super Duper Tuesday Primaries, we got the results most of us were expecting based on an analysis of the polls and the trendlines. Arlen Specter’s bid to save his career, which was going to end in the Republican primaries, by switching parties ended instead in the Democratic primaries, losing 47 to [...]
Archie Bunker informed us decades ago that “England is a fag country.” Andrew Sullivan — an Englishman and proud homosexual — verifies this for us: The Conservative Party in Britain now has eleven openly gay members of parliament and nine more in a glass closet. Compare that with zero for the Republicans and three for [...]
Despite a 39-seat margin and rules that ordinarily allow the majority party to pass bills with impunity, the Democrats are finding themselves hamstrung with brazen parliamentary maneuvers: House Democrats had to scrap their only substantive bill of the week Thursday after Republicans won a procedural vote that substantively altered the legislation with an anti-porn clause. [...]
Continuing a trend that stretches back nearly two years, the monthly federal budget deficit hit another record in April: The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the federal deficit for April soared to $82.7 billion, the largest imbalance for that month on record. That was significantly higher than last year’s April deficit of $20 billion and [...]
Has clout become the kiss of death? Politico‘s Jonathan Allen and Manu Raju think so. The back-to-back primary defeats of two powerful appropriators have sent an unmistakable message to lawmakers: The trappings of power can be a trap. On Wednesday night, West Virginia Democrats eighty-sixed Rep. Alan Mollohan, making him the first House appropriator to [...]
The anti-incumbent fever that we’ve seen mostly in the Republican Party of late is also manifesting itself in the Democratic Party, as evidenced by last night’s stunning primary loss by 14 term incumbent Congressman Alan Mollohan: Rep. Alan Mollohan, a 14-term incumbent, has been defeated by state Sen. Mike Oliverio in West Virginia’s Democratic primary, [...]
With only a week to go until Pennsylvania Democrats head to polls to pick their Senate nominee, things are very suddenly not looking good for Arlen Specter. First, there’s a new Rasmussen poll that shows Specter falling behind Sestak for the first time since the race began: Congressman Joe Sestak has moved ahead of incumbent [...]
Patrick Ruffini goes all in with this one: I might be setting myself for a healthy serving of crow on November 3rd, but I get a distinct feeling that the GOP may be headed toward to a seat gain in the House of epic proportions — somewhere over 50 seats and well above the historical [...]
I’ve noted repeatedly over the past few weeks my sense that Mitt Romney is the Republican frontrunner for 2012. Apparently, the Democratic National Committee agrees. Politico’s Mike Allen: DNC TARGETS ROMNEY with a video titled, “Wall Street’s Best Friend.” A Dem. official: “We’re not waiting until this fall to make a campaign issue out of [...]
Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz projects the Republicans will project 37 House seats in November, or three short of the number needed to retake the majority they lost in 2006. The model uses four independent variables to predict Republican seat change in congressional elections: the president’s net approval rating in the Gallup Poll, the results [...]
The latest Fox News survey [PDF] asked whether Vice President Joe Biden’s whispered comment that the health care bill was a “big expletive deal” was offensive. Not surprisingly, a majority thought not. Also not shocking: A majority of Republicans though it was. Greg Sargent is amused, titling his post “Fox News Polls Biden’s ‘F-Bomb,” Gets [...]
According to two new surveys, the Tea Party movement is supported by 28% of Americans, half of its members are non-Republicans, and, aside from skewing slightly white and male, remarkably similar to the country as a whole demographically. A poll of registered voters by the Winston Group, The Hill reports, finds that the “national breakdown [...]
Prompted by the RNC expensing trips to bondage clubs, the folks at the Daily Beast took a look at all “58 scandals over the past 20 years involving all politicians or major candidates for city mayor and above” using a “a methodology that accounted for whether a crime was committed, versus inappropriate behavior; whether the [...]
For some reason, I didn’t get the TrackBack and thus missed Dan Riehl‘s reply to my “Congress Receiving Death Threats” post. Given that 18 hours have passed, I’ve decided to write a new post rather than bury my response as an update. He’s right that I mistakenly attribute a post with Doug Powers’ byline [...]
For a really bright fellow who spends a lot of time talking to cabbies and world leaders, Tom Friedman has a remarkably naive view of how the world works. His latest brainstorm is a “Tea Party of the radical center.” My definition of broken is simple. It is a system in which Republicans will be [...]
Most Americans think the fight over health care reform was primarily motivated by politics rather than policy, a new CBS News poll shows. Americans believe that both Republicans and Democrats were fighting about health care reform because of politics, not policy, a new CBS News poll finds. Asked why Democrats worked to pass a health [...]
While not at all pleased by the outcome of the year-long sausage making extravaganza that gave us a health care reform bill that virtually no one likes, I’m much closer in agreement Steven Taylor than with Megan McArdle over what it all means for the system. Do we, as Megan suggested at the apex of [...]
Political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein argues that, contrary to Republican claims, the reconciliation process is neither illegitimate nor rare. Reconciliation was intended to be a narrow procedure to bring revenues and spending into conformity with the levels set in the annual budget resolution. But it quickly became much more. The 22 reconciliation bills [...]
Charlie Rangel is apparently on his way out as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a story that’s got the blogosphere buzzing but only merits A22 treatment in the New York Times, his hometown paper. Caught in a swirl of ethics inquiries, Representative Charles B. Rangel, the dean of the New York Congressional [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
While John Cole agrees with the substance of my mild criticism of our food stamp policies, he thinks “we can’t do anything about it.” I’m sure the House could pass a bill containing a small stipend for Americorps volunteers- in fact, I bet it would get a good bit of support. Likewise, I bet almost [...]
WaPo’s Jon Cohen thinks the “bipartisanship” tack that President Obama is taking to fight back against recent Republican gains could work. Nearly six in 10 in the new poll say the Republicans aren’t doing enough to forge compromise with President Obama on important issues; more than four in 10 see Obama as doing too little [...]
A new WaPo-ABC poll shows that Americans are increasingly dissatisfied and has Republicans tied with President Obama in approval. The survey paints a portrait of a restless and dissatisfied electorate at the beginning of a critical election year. More than seven in 10 Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, and as many say [...]
The 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats’ (88%) and Republicans’ (23%) average job approval ratings for Barack Obama is easily the largest for any president in his first year in office, greatly exceeding the prior high of 52 points for Bill Clinton. So begins Jeffrey Jones‘ introduction of a new Gallup poll. Here’s the graphic illustration: [...]
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 [...]
A recent Gallup poll shows that the American public agrees with the Supreme Court that campaign contributions are free speech but that most nonetheless want to limit said speech. Fifty-seven percent of Americans consider campaign donations to be a protected form of free speech, and 55% say corporate and union donations should be treated the [...]
Public Policy Polling‘s latest 2012 presidential poll (I know, I know) has Mike Huckabee leading President Obama and Mitt Romney within the margin of error. Mike Huckabee has a 45-44 advantage over Obama, aided largely by a 44-38 lead with independents. There continues to be no evidence of any negative fallout for Huckabee after murders [...]
National Journal‘s Ron Brownstein sees the recent bout of gridlock in the United States as a sign of a more fundamental shift in how our government operates. Obama’s first year demonstrated once again that in this deeply polarized political era, big legislative crusades aimed at big national problems produce only big political headaches. President George [...]
It appears that the last remaining chance to pass healthcare reform without Republican votes is dead, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi admitting she couldn’t get the bill passed by the Senate if she wanted to. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the Senate will have to amend its version of a health-care reform bill [...]
Neil Newhouse, who served served as the pollster for the Brown for Senate campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (and was indirectly my source* last night) has written a public memo to National Democratic Leaders with the subject line WHAT MASSACHUSETTS MEANS FOR YOU. While it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek, he makes some salient points. Among [...]
There was talk over the last few days, from Nancy Pelosi and others, that the Democrats might use parliamentary tricks and outright chicanery to ram a healthcare bill through even if Scott Brown won in Massachusetts and take the party coalition down to 59. Thankfully, cooler heads seem to have prevailed and that looks quite [...]
In a surprising development, North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan has announced that he will not seek a fourth term. I have been serving as an elected official in our state for many years. Beginning at age 26, I served ten years as State Tax Commissioner followed by thirty years in the U.S. Congress by the [...]
It seems that some liberal bloggers who used to complain about the Bush administration are being intellectually honest and also complaining when the Obama administration does the same thing. BooMan, for one, doesn’t like it. What brought people together into progressive blogging communities and networks was related to policy (the invasion of Iraq, torture, illegal [...]
One of the most-linked posts on Memeorandum this morning is Cornell lawprof William Jacobson‘s post explaining why he hates the health care reform bill that we’re one step closer to enacting into law. Yes, it is that bad. The Democrats are about to put in place the legislative, regulatory and bureaucratic infrastructure for a complete [...]
Yesterday, I wrote that there were signs that progressives were rebelling against the health care compromise reached in the Senate. Since then, things have really heated up. Bernie Sanders, the Socialist senator from Vermont, showed up on Fox News to announce that, “As of this point, I’m not voting for the bill. … I’m going [...]
I agree with Josh Marshall that the parallels between 1994, when the Republicans shocked the world by taking over both Houses of Congress two years into the presidency of a charismatic Democrat, and next year are “significantly overstated.” He’s right, I think, that “The main cause of the Dems 1994 rout was structural.” He argues, [...]
“National Democrats are considering changing the presidential nominating process, by establishing a new primary calendar and deemphasizing the influence lawmakers and political insiders have on choosing the party nominee,” CNN reports. The battle for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination was marred by controversy as the Democratic National Committee argued with some state parties over when [...]
Along with serious discussions about President Obama’s newest new Afghanistan strategy, a minor brouhaha has errupted over Chris Matthews’ labeling West Point “the enemy camp” last night. Jeff Porter has the scoop at Newsbusters: “It seems like in this case, there isn’t a lot of excitement,” Matthews said. “I watched the cadets, they were young [...]
Via Taegan Goddard, I see that the latest Daily Kos/Research 2000 tracking poll show that Republicans are markedly more excited about the 2010 election than Democrats. QUESTION: In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote? [...] Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + [...]
Josh Marshall argues that bad picks by Democratic governors in filling vacant seats make it harder than necessary to retain those seats. I was just looking at this run-down of recent polls by Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling. The upshot is that while it seems extremely unlikely Republicans could regain control of the senate [...]