This is either a weather balloon or a decoy: Romney Tops McCain's VP List Regardless of what McCain says, you aboslutely pick a running mate based on what he can bring to the campaign. No sense focusing on how he...
It's been said that a candidate steers hard left or right (depending on their political affiliation) in the primaries to woo the base of his party and then quickly tacks back to the center in the general election. Well, somebody...
I hate to think this, but John McCain may be losing his mind. How else am I to take this: SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: I think maybe legislation working with the Congress, which would define more narrowly the habeas corpus rights...
Nestled in the heart of the speech in which he claimed the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama made a promise to the American people that laid out the tone and tenor of his campaign against John McCain: It is a debate...
I hate to think that our race for the Presidency boils down to style and perceived personality. Heaven knows the "have a beer with" test has doomed us to 8 years of George W. Bush, but a politician's ability to...
In what must be one of the most pathetic smear attempts in years, some right wingers are actually trying to paint Barack Obama as—get this—a Marxist. On right-winger Mike Gallagher's radio show today, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX)...
These folks are... One hundred percent awesome....
Andrew Sullivan has a growing list of awards he likes to give out. There's the Malkin Award, the Yglesias Award, and now...The Hewitt Award. As Sullivan describes it, "The Hewitt Award, named after the absurd partisan fanatic, Hugh Hewitt, is...
Obama Nets Over A Dozen Super-Delegates So Far Today • Former President Jimmy Carter, who had dropped hints for quite a while that he was for Obama, and officially confirmed the news with the Associated Press. • South Carolina Congressman...
Mega busy right now but this is too important not to post: AP tally: Obama clinches Democratic nomination WASHINGTON - Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday after a grueling marathon, based on an Associated Press tally of...
Going after John McCain on his supposed strength Barack Obama put this whole dust-up over talking to your enemies in blunt terms: What are you afraid of? Responding to McCain's recent attacks that Obama is naïve in thinking Iran is...
This is a message to Superdel holdouts: game over On the eve of a sure blowout in Kentucky, Barack Obama addresses 75,000 supporters in Oregon, a staggering turnout that will dominate the news coverage for the next few days. Sorry...
This is exactly what I want to hear Obama say in response to the "appeasement" flap: Obama also slammed the notion that he'd ever supported any sort of negotiations with terrorists. "They're trying to fool you, trying to scare you,...
We come to expect this from a political huckster like George W. Bush. The fact that he recently compared Democratic plans to deal with terrorism to that of "Nazi appeasers" no longer shocks the sensibilities as something so clearly over...
An AP story today by Jim Kuhnhenn describes the perilous economic position in which Hillary Clinton now finds herself. By the end of this month her campaign will be $20 million in the hole, that includes the $11.4 million she...
A recent Gallup poll puts some interesting associations the candidates share into perspective. After weeks of heat for comments made by his pastor, Barack Obama still blew out Hillary Clinton in the North Carolina primary and nearly stole Indiana in...
We may not be exactly sure who will win the Indiana and North Carolina primaries tonight (and thus, likely win the nomination), but John McCain seems to have picked a favorite: Barack Obama. The Arizona Republican mentions Barack Obama more...
By the looks of today's news, Hillary Clinton's claim of a turning tide in the Democratic primary could be true. Poll: Hillary Gaining Ground in NC Poll: Hillary Holds Onto Indiana Lead AP Poll: Clinton leads McCain, doing better than...
His claim that the September 11 attacks mean "America's chickens are coming home to roost"? Wright defended it: "Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect...
Andrew Sullivan (my favorite conservative next to my dad) puts some perspective on this whole thing: I've been struck by how calm Obama seems in the face of all this Clinton drama. It helps to recall that he never expected...
With the Pennsylvania primary all wrapped up and a win for Clinton in the bag, there are countless analysts and talkingheads dissecting how she did it (she led by 25 pts at one time, so this wasn't an upset) and...
Saying he just wants to get people thinking, Jonesville, S.C. pastor Roger Byrd put a new message on the outdoor sign at his church. It reads: "Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?" Byrd says the message wasn't meant to by...
A round-up of the latest polls as we head into the Pennsylvania primary: Rasmussen: Clinton 49 Obama 44 Strategic Vision: Clinton 48 Obama 41 PPP: Obama 49 Clinton 46 ARG: Clinton 52 Obama 41 With spreads anywhere from 3 to...
A poster on the bulletin boards at GLONO asks the readers if Clinton should drop out if she loses the Pennsylvania primary. We added a poll. Wigh in with your vote....
With all of the hullabaloo around Obama's ties to the Rev. Wright you'd think that the candidates running for president would be a bit sensitive to comments from religious leaders that...um...seem insensitive. Imagine for a moment Obama seeking and then...
Folks are making a lot of hay about the quality of questions posed during this week's Democratic debate in Pennsylvania. The fact that 45+ minutes passed before the first policy question was asked has a lot of people wondering if...
You wanted Obama to get tough? You got it, buddy. "I will tell you it does not get more fun than these debates. They are inspiring debates. I think last night we set a new record because it took us...
Mitt Romney appears to be a souless political machine. He has no known heartbeat and is rumored to be powered by lima beans alone. But he has some funny writers. At Wednesday night's Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington,...
The fact that we're even having a debate on the use of torture in this country is not only embarrassing to me as an American, it puts the lives and well being of American soldiers in danger. If we—the greatest...
If you follow Democratic national politics then you know that Mark Penn is one hated MOFO. The Chief Strategist for the Clinton campaign has a special talent for raising the dander of his opponents (and even supporters on occasion) that...
In a pretty lame attempt to paint Barack Obama as an exaggerator, the Clinton camp has circulated several talking point sheets trying to debunk his claim of being a law professor at the University of Chicago. Sen. Obama consistently and...
Bill Maher nails it: When Barack Obama didn't hear Reverend Wright say those awful things about America, he still should have rushed the stage, smite Reverend Wright with the cross, and left the church. If there's anything the right wing...
Gotta love YouTube mash-ups. If you're following the whole "Hillary in Tuzla" hub bub, this is for you. Hillary in Tuzla: The Movie...
Seven years after the GOP threw everything they could think of as an argument to tilt the contested Florida vote in Bush's favor, their nominee is getting a taste of that medicine. Two lawsuits filed this week challenge John McCain,...
Barack Obama directly addressed the role of race in his campaign, and in the country overall, in a highly anticipated speech yesterday. By now you've likely heard it or heard some reaction to it. Here's a round-up of what we've...
Obama's Speech on Race, Politics, and Religion This is the whole speech. Watch and then let's discuss. I'll have a round-up of what the pols say tomorrow....
Hillary Clinton has been teasing audiences of late with the idea of a "Dream Ticket" featuring her in the lead position and Obama supporting her as a VP nominee. It's bullshit and Obama cuts to the quick: With all due...
We all know the commercial by now: "It's 3 a.m. and your children are safely asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?" Hillary Clinton's hardball ad implies that a sane person would want someone with experience and personal relationships...
Tom Daschle, telling it like it is on Meet the Press: I know what a good First Lady she was, but it would be hard for me to draw some degree of connection between being a First Lady and having...
Samantha Power, an unpaid foreign policy adviser and Harvard professor, resigned from Barack Obama's campaign today, a week after an off-the-record remark got her in hot water. Power was quoted in a Scotish newspaper saying, "She is a monster, too...
Hollow victories indeed. Sure, Hillary Clinton won the Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island primaries, but according to the Obama camp, she only received a net gain of four delegates out of more than 370 available from those states. Their math...
Living in Chicago, I probably see a disproportionate number of parents (who, truth be told, skew older) who have an annoying habit of letting their children run roughshod over every situation they encounter. These hapless parents, disheveled and distracted, call...
The psychology of addiction is fascinating and perplexing. Why are people driven to engage in activities that are ultimately harmful to their health and devastating to their families? Nobody really knows, but this Democratic primary season is providing more...
Hold up! Just when we were ready to count Hillary Clinton out, she bounces back with an infusion of cash. An AP report says the Clinton campaign will report a $35 million take in February, nearly double what she raised...
I love interviews with Georgia Republican Jack Kingston. He's a buffoon and completely unaware of his own ignorance, which makes watching his interviews like watching an exercise in social retardation. Last night on MSNBC's Live with Dan Abrams, Kingston laid...
On the same day that the Clinton camp is asking Super Delegates not to pledge their support too early (presumably to Obama), they've lost a key endorsement in the African American community. Rep. John Lewis has formally switched his support...
Astonishing. Seriously, take a minute and watch this homemade campaign ad for Hillary Clinton. Who says user submitted material isn't as good as the pros' stuff? I guarantee this will get more mileage than that awful "Hillary Just Quit the...
A handy tool from MSNBC. Tech savvy junkies can now track the delegate count from their homepage, google desktop, phone, whatever... Hover over the bars and getb the number of delegates won from each state. Nice use of gadget technology...
Barack Obama delivered two more stinging defeats to Hillary Clinton last night. She responded with an absolutely ungracious attack on his ability to inspire Democrats and other Americans in a speech in Ohio. So the Obama campaign decided to start...
Ari Emanuel is the real life Hollywood agent who inspired the Ari Gold character on HBO's Entourage. He's also my Representative Rahm Emanuel's brother. He wrote an essay for the Huffington Post titled My Brother the Superdelegate and Why I...
With a sweep of the Potomac Primary, Barack Obama makes it eight straight wins over Hillary Clinton and for the first time holds a lead in delegates in ALL categories, including the mysterious super delegate column. And these weren't squeakers....
From a New York Times article on the March 4th primaries in Texas and Ohio: "She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she's out," said one Democratic superdelegate who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and who spoke on...
Contrast will.i.am's Yes We Can video - with almost 3 million views for this copy alone: To this parody version that focuses on McCain: It will be a crushing defeat. I can't see it going any other way. Can you?...
Strengthening Huck's hand to negotiate a prominent position in a McCain administration is this endorsement from James Dobson, the Focus on the Family founder who still holds a lot of sway over a gang of evangelical voters. Dobson recently said...
While the talkingheads can debate who won the Super Tuesday Democratic standoff it seems the people have spoken with their pocketbooks and are firmly behind Barack Obama. Everyone loves a winner and people are less apt to throw good money...
He's winning their votes, but not their hearts. John McCain, fresh from a respectable victory on Super Tuesday, is now forced to beg his own party to rally behind him. He's mostly asking right-wing talkingheads to stop bashing him now...
The first contest of Super Tuesday is in the books and it goes not to McCain nor does it go to Romney. Old Mike Huckabee wraps up West Virgina's delegates: all 18 of 'em. According to the AP: Huckabee bested...
Focus on the Family leader James Dobson is standing firm against John McCain and flatly states that he would "never support McCain under any circumstance." Since it's looking less and less likely that Mitt can pull off an upset, this...
Now here's an interesting tactic: a conservative blog engages in the dreaded liberal practice of "class warfare" to bash John Cougar Mellencamp, who recently asked John McCain to refrain from using Mellencamp's song "This is Our Country" at campaign events....
Andrew Sullivan gets an earful from a Boomer reader who takes exception to Sullivan's recent article in the Atlantic that casts Barack Obama as the cure for the Baby Boomer gangrene that has dominated American politics since at least 1968....
While the Democratic primary race is the most exciting in a generation, the Republican contest may be the final nail in the coffin of neo-conservatism. We've got Rush Limbaugh leading the talkinghead set against McCain in a breathless diatribe against...
Well, Super Tuesday is here and I am just in from voting. Things were brisk in Chicago's 47th Ward but there wasn't the snaking line of rowdy teenagers that I expected. Just the same, EVERYONE in my polling office was...
The battle for the news cycle on the eve of Super Tuesday is so far in Obama's hands. The biggest stories all focus on his elimination of Hillary Clinton's double-digit lead in California. Other big stories include: The Dead...
This could be - and I emphasize could be - huge: The MoveOn.org membership has voted to back Obama as the Democratic nominee: Obama's long-standing opposition to the war helped him pick up the backing of MoveOn.org, a liberal network...
This is a significant milestone: The first time I watched a clip of Ann Coulter commenting on an issue without my head exploding. Which isn't to say I agreed with her, but it was certainly entertaining without any bile rising...
The biggest rat to jump the sinking ship of the Republican party is none other than blowhard pillhead Rush Limbaugh. It seems Rushbot is none-too-pleased with McCain pulling ahead in the GOP primaries and blames him and an uninspiring cast...
This ad is hitting the airwaves in Los Angeles, San Francisco, NYC, Philadelphia, and Boston: There's also speculation that Oprah might join Obama on the campaign trail in California before the 5th. If we could throw Gore and Richardson endorsements...
The AP is reporting that John Edwards is dropping out of the presidential race today. It comes as little surprise as he hasn't won a single primary or caucus and was having a tough time distinguishing himself from the higher...
NBC News is reporting that Rudy Giuliani is dropping out of the race and will endorse John McCain on Wednesday. It seems that Rudy's plan to put all his eggs in Florida was as big a stinker as most people...
Major Obama fundraiser, Tony Rezko was busted in Chicago by federal agents Monday after his $2 million bail was revoked. A hearing with a US District Court judge was closed to reporters but Rezko is charged in a 24-count indictment...
Well, he promised to remain relevant and his hacks swore he'd remain "bold" in his vision as he limps out of his last year of the worst Presidency in modern history but George W. Bush delivered a flat, uninspired, and...
The endorsements keep rolling in for both Obama and Hillary as we edge up to Super Tuesday. Hot on the heels of the Kennedy nods (nothing personal, Hill) comes a hat tip from Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who also gave...
Nice video mash-up of that creepy Tom Cruise Scientology video and Hillary Clinton's "breakdown" a few weeks back. I don't know what it means but they both kinda give me the willies. Again, VIA Andrew Sullivan...
Rod Dreher, a conservative editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, gets Obama fever and declares that our man from Illinois is the Democrats' Reagan. Now, that's not more of the Clintons' lame attempt to paint Obama as some sort...
WAPO has a story about the mounting whisper campaign to put John Edwards in the running for Attorney General in whatever Democratic administration (God willing) is sworn in next January. Given his track record in the primaries, I thin k...
After the disappointment of the New York Times editorial board's endorsement of Hillary Clinton, it was good to read Caroline Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama for president. Even better was reading about Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Obama, expected tomorrow. Many...
Yesterday, Barack Obama handed a stinging defeat to Hillary Clinton in South Carolina. Not that anyone expected Obama to lose, of course, but the margins were huge. More what I expected to see in New Hampshire and didn't. Obama beat...
You had to see this coming. I just didn't think it was going to happen this soon. Hillary Clinton is demanding that the Michigan and Florida delegates be reinstated. The Clinton campaign just keeps digging themselves in deeper. As Klein...
The primary season is almost built to tear down the parties. We spend months and months taking apart the candidates and debating who is the biggest sell out of ideals most of us don't even support anyway. But it's particularly...
Hillary hate gets its most base expression with this Republican 527: Citizens United Not Timid. Brainchild of Republican operative Roger Stone, they're selling t-shirts for $25 a pop. This is sure to backfire, spectacularly. It has a viral nature, so...
After his explosion at a reporter right before the Nevada caucus, someone noted that the former president seems to go nuts at a reporter's question about his race baiting, or other smearing of Senator Obama, right before the latest primary...
I've been discussing the presidential election with a number of my friends, and I'm consistently surprised by their perception that Republicans and Democrats are exactly alike, only interested in serving the needs of their corporate masters. The Ralph Nader world...
A video of Barack Obama speaking at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s church this past Sunday is making the rounds on YouTube. With 318,000 + views, it's one of the most popular videos on YouTube right now. John Nichols at the...
Someone finally woke Fred Thompson up long enough for him to quit the race. The man who was just this summer seen as a possible savior of conservative values for the Republican party maintained a spotty campaign schedule, raised little...
I don't know that there's much you can draw from the primaries and caucuses held so far, in terms of how the Democratic nomination is going to play out nationally in the end. But there's at least one thing you...
NBC and others are calling Nevada for Clinton. With 59% of precincts reporting, Clinton has 50% to Obama's 45%. Not good news for the Obama campaign. He has to win South Carolina. He will need that momentum to get on...
A while back, in a discussion about Obama, POLJUNK reader Andrew said: Obama seriously undermined his claim to be a progressive or liberal by voting in favor of the bankruptcy reform bill (maybe he had a drink with Joe Lieberman...
Edwards and Clinton are really slamming Obama for his Reagan comments during an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal. But they're absolutely distorting the Senator's comments, and they know it. If they at least took the time to watch the brief...
Good news for Obama and culinary union workers in Nevada: The lawsuit filed by the Nevada State Education Association that challenged "at-large" caucuses has been dismissed. According to the Judge, James Mahan: State Democrats have a First Amendment right to...
You'll have to bear with me. I'm feeling a little queasy. This story came out a few days ago, but I haven't taken that close a look at it until today. I kind of figured it was too outlandish. Doesn't...
One of the most common charges levied against Barack Obama and, sometimes, Hillary Clinton as they seek the Democratic nomination for the presidency is that they lack experience. On the one hand, it is perfectly fair to demand to know...
And he won the Michigan primary. That's all I'm saying. Onward! To South Carolina, Nevada, and Florida! To victory!...
Most conservatives adhere to a "strict constructionist" theory of interpreting the Constitution of the United States, in that they believe there is no room for modern influence over that interpretation. What was written as law by the Founders is applicable...
This is just getting weird, isn't it? To me, it really seems like the Clinton camp is embracing racially charged language in its attacks on Obama. Why is that? It seems to contradict what Clinton stands for (except maybe when...
Bill Richardson - one of the most experienced candidates in the Democratic primary - has announced he's dropping out of the race. No indication if or who he will endorse for the nomination. Edwards said nice things about him, probably...
From a ThinkProgress collection of McCain quotes where he's - gasp! - swearing like a sailor. Or as close as a Senator gets: At a GOP meeting in fall 1999, McCain "erupted" at Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and shouted, "Only...
