Outside the Beltway

Are America’s political parties become irrelevant?

President Obama says he’ll fight for the 99 percent.

The partisan crowds like President Obama’s populist rhetoric but it seems ill-suited for his re-election strategy.

Is Herman Cain for real, or is this rise int he polls just another boomlet destined to fade away?

Is money the only thing that matters in post-Citizens United American politics?

Republicans have a plan to wrest half of the Keystone State’s electors from Obama.

College towns and lily white enclaves top the list of best educated cities.

The President’s jobs push isn’t doing much to help his job approval numbers so far.

51.5 percent of Americans disapprove of President Obama’s job performance. It’s still his race to lose.

Now that the storm has passed, the media is being accused of over-hyping Hurricane Irene.

Ensuring the integrity of the voting process is a worthy goal, not evidence of discrimination.

President Obama’s job approval numbers are even worse when you just look at the economy.

State-level job approval numbers seem to suggest that the President could have Electoral College worries in 2012.

The job approval numbers for Congress are at historic lows, but will that matter in 2012?

Looking at the state-by-state map way too early.

The electoral map should be making the Obama 2012 camp just a little bit nervous.

A majority of Americans want to ban smoking in public; a fifth want to ban it even in private.

The result in the Casey Anthony case is leading, inevitably, to a host of new proposed laws.

Dennis Kucinich and nine other Members of Congress are suing the President. They won’t get very far.

The Anthony Weiner reveals once again the odd American obsession with the intersection of sex and politics.

By now, everyone knows that John Edwards was indicted on campaign finance law violations stemming from the cover-up of the Rielle Hunter love child scandal. Most, too, recall the brouhaha over Edwards’ $400 haircuts. As it turns out, they’re at least tangentially related.

Should we worry about the deficit when funding “disaster relief”? Should we be funding “disaster relief” at all?

Thanks to an appearance on Hardball we’ve got another story about a 47 year old law.

So, some bright people are surprised at new polling showing that a significant minority of Southerners have not enthusiastically embraced their ancestors’ loss in the Civil War.

More on that freeloader problem (today with less snark).

Everywhere you turn, people are asking for money.

Michele Bachmann raised more money in the First Quarter of 2011 than any other Republican. Which means that she’ll have to be taken seriously if she decides to run for President.

A new set of polls from Gallup show that President Obama is still looking good for re-election.

Oddly, the Democratic Party seems to be responding to the 2010 midterms by moving further left.

Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech was, like a political stump speech, crafted and polished over months and years of delivery.

150 years ago, President-Elect Abraham Lincoln was presented with a chance to avert Civil War. He passed it up, and we should be glad that he did.

The Republicans are increasingly the party of white America. That’s short term good but long term bad for the GOP.