The tone of national politics of late has even me a bit weary and looking for breaks, but I am antsy to get a hold of Obama campaign manager David Plouffe's new book, The Audacity to Win. The strategizing and...
Harper?s Index: A retrospective of the Bush era (Harper's Magazine) Percentage of U.S. veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have filed for disability with the VA: 35 Chance that an Iraq war veteran who has served two...
Kathleen Parker writes a piece for the National Review called Them Oogedy-Boogedy Blues, and claims that "it isn't so much God causing the GOP problems; it's his fan club." As long as the religious right is seen as controlling the...
In an interview with Newsmax, Jeb Bush pretty much recommends treason: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tells Newsmax that the GOP must broaden its appeal to avoid becoming "the old white-guy party," and recommends that Republicans create a "shadow government"...
In one more pathetic attempt to derail the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, two individuals, in separate cases, are asking the Supreme Court of the United States to declare Obama ineligible for the Presidency because he is not...
Another awesome photo gallery with images from the Obama campaign. Check out The Next President of the United States...
Um... New Commercial Thanks Sarah Palin Courtesy of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC. I really can't tell if this is a joke or not....
One of Andrew Sullivan's readers sums up the Republicans' Moderate Problem: I can't tell whether the lack of serious attention given to the continued hysteria about our President-Elect still emerging from various corners of the Right is a good thing...
President-elect barack Obama has split Nebraska's electoral votes, the first time the state has ever split it's vote, according to the AP. Obama now has 365 electoral votes to McCain's 162....
Want more proof of the GOP's plan for Sarah Palin post-2008? The McCain-Palin website is featuring Palin12 items for sale with the tagline, "Conservatism Lives." The 12 is a refernce to 2012, the year of the next US Presidential...
Andrew Sullivan on why he won't "drop it already" on his Palin coverage: Let's be real in a way the national media seems incapable of: this person should never have been placed on a national ticket in a mature democracy....
Image is everything in politics. John F. Kennedy proved that in his 1960 presidential debate against Richard Nixon. To those watching it on TV, versus those who listened on the radio, Kennedy was the clear winner. And why? Because...
Quote of the day: "I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a...
Unions in America have had a tough couple of decades. Declining membership, restrictions on their organizing activities, financial woes, and in-fighting that has led to more fragmentation has meant a lot of bad PR. But politicians who are ready to...
On Election Day, before the first results came in, I took a look around the tubes of the Internets to see what some voices on the Right were saying. At the time, Right-wingers voiced everything from paranoia to optimistic exuberance...
The New York Times has a great interactive analysis here describing the shifts in Republican / Democratic preferences by county nationwide. The analysis includes demographic data. Image added--ed. The map indicates which counties trended more Republican or more Democratic in...
Alaskan political observers at Mudflats noted some odd returns from Tuesday's election. Specifically, most polls had shown Barack Obama roughly three percent behind John McCain in Alaska in the days leading up to the election, but throughout election night, the...
George is a good friend from college who has lived in several different South American and European countries the last several years. Raised in Ohio, George watched from afar the election the whole world was waiting for and battled European...
Electoral-vote.com has interesting analysis of the exit polls (emphasis added): The NY Times has the exit poll data. Obama barely won among men (49% to 48%), but strongly among women (56% to 43%), overwhelmingly among blacks (95% to 5%), and...
Sarah palin is responding to the flood of funny and soemtimes disturbing reports from Mccain staffers on her knowledge and ability as thier VP pick. She specifically dismissed reports that she didn't know Africa was a continent. PALIN: That's kind...
Just one day later and McCain staffers are lining up to pin the blame of their loss squarely on Sarah Palin's expensively dressed chest. Two reports today hint at the torrent of criticism to come. First, that Palin was instructed...
It's done. John McCain has conceded and Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States....
Barack Obama is President of the United States. Regardless of you politics, you can be proud of your country....
CNN calls Virginia Senate for Warner (D). Indiana is 49-50, McCain with less than 1% reporting. This will be the one to watch in the midwest. Correction: 2% in and McCain leads in Virginia 55%-44% 6:25pm CST Indiana: 12% in:...
Conservative Arizona activist Paul "I have never been wrong about an election call even when I was called crazy." Marston is predicting a McCain landslide (McCain – 310 / Obama - 228). Ross Douthat, writing at The Atlantic, lamented, "...as...
Obama tells a story about the early days of the campaign and how one voice fired him, and a room of supporters, up. Obama: Fired Up and Ready to Go Are you fired up? Are you ready to go????...
We posted some reports last week about the amount of coordination and professionalism the Obama campaign is bringing to this election as it relates to the ground game. Andrew Sullivan has more. From New Hampshire: This morning I awoke to...
Pointing to John McCain's home state as justification for the expensive, and sometimes derided 50-state strategy he implemented four years ago, DNC Chairman Howard Dean says Arizona is within reach. "The polls showed us down two here in Arizona. That's...
Posting a nifty widget here that will track results live throughout the night. We'll also have commentary all night long....
Karl Rove has already called the election and predicts a landslide for Obama: Karl Rove, the man widely credited with engineering President Bush's two successful White House bids, is predicting the Illinois senator will take the White House in an...
We'll be live blogging from POLJUNK HQ tonight and we have men on the ground at the Obama rally in Grant Park. Check in throughout the day for real-time reporting on tonight's historical event! Don't forget to follow us on...
Ronnie "Woo Woo" Wickers is tired of losing. The unofficial mascot of our Chicago Cubs is feeling like a winner today. Here he is in front of Obama HQ on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. POLJUNK asked him how he felt....
Dixville Notch, a village in New Hampshire's northeast corner, is the first in the country to vote. Every year since 1960, the tiny town has been casting their votes at midnight on election day and reports the results as soon...
Josh Marshall sees holes in the idea that post-election will be Sarah Palin's time to shine. A lot of people are floating the idea that she will be the new face of the Republican party, which I can only hope...
Nate Silver, the guy who runs my favorite poll aggregator/electoral projector, Five Thirty Eight, has written an hour-by-hour guide to election night for Newsweek. 6 PM EST. Polls close in portions of Indiana and Kentucky: If for some reason [Indiana]...
Tomorrow is America's day of reckoning. After eight long years of Bush failures and congressional GOP assistance, now is the time to make a correction and to make a statement. What will you tell your grandkids you did this year?...
It looks as if Caribou Barbie's candidacy for the Republican nomination in 2012 is more than mere conjecture. As CNN recently reported, Caribou Barbie has already begun to openly talk about a 2012 presidential run. CNN reported that when ABC's...
Salon.com offered up this Postcard From Pennsylvania today. McCain/Caribou Barbie supporters tell us how they really feel bout Barack Obama. Watch it:...
Swing State Project: Poll Closing Times & Key Races. Keep this handy on election night, so you don't get drunk too early......
House minority leader John Boehner called Barack Obama a "chickenshit" while campaigning in Ohio this week: "Now, listen, I've voted 'present' two or three times in my entire 25-year political career, where there might have been a conflict of interest...
John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, says he is "jazzed up" for next Tuesday and predicts a major upset. "We are witnessing, I believe, probably one of the greatest comebacks that you've seen since John McCain won the primary," said...
Former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein mocks McCain's rushed interview process with Sarah Palin. According to reports, the two only met once and she was anything but his first pick. McCain subsequently caved to advisors who pushed a candidate...
A low-information McCain supporter exercises his freedom of speech outside an Obama rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. Oddly, while exercising his right to free speech, he won't actually speak to people and explain the details of his poster depicting Obama...
I am not going to call Sarah Palin and idiot mainly becuase I don't think she is one and to underestimate her political talent and understanding of how to sway votes would be a mistake. Next Tuesday will not be...
Now, please do not get overconfident when you read this, because who knows how accurate polling information is, but check this out. One of the sites I've been compulsively refreshing dozens of times a day, FiveThirtyEight, has a breakdown of...
With just a few days to go, Barack Obama maintains his lead over John McCain in national polls. New NYT/CBS Poll: Obama 52% McCain 41% Gallup: Obama 51% McCain 44%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday. Rasmussen:...
(Note to McCain camp – this is how NOT to win the youth vote...) The Iowa State Daily reported on Tuesday that a number of people were escorted out of a McCain rally at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI)...
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo nails John McCain for the latest smear campaign: The McCain campaign has been throwing around so much mud and smears in recent weeks that it's easy to miss just how ugly and shameful their...
Campaigning today Sarah Palin said that she and McCain would fix the economy by imposing a spending freeze. She also declared that a McCain administration would balance the budget by the end of their first term. Only problem is that...
John McCain addressed a crown in Defiance, Ohio today and after promising an appearance by Ohio's newest resident celebrity, Joe the Plumber (whose real name is Sam and he isn't really a plumber, but never mind that...), McCain called out...
Last night, Barack Obama aired a 30 minute ad that basically makes his closing argument with the American people. Part mini-documentary, part sales pitch, the video was beautifully produced infomercial entitled "American Stories, American Solutions" Wednesday evening simultaneously on CBS,...
The latest McCain Campaign tactic has been to paint Barack Obama as a socialist because he wants to repeal Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and re-target them to the middle class, but who's the real pinko here? Today, ExxonMobil...
Obama campaign volunteers loaded while phone banking? Maybe. Who cares if it's real or not, this is funny. Drunk Dialing for Change...
Quote of the day: "By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in Kindergarten." --Barack Obama in Raleigh, NC today Any wonder why he's kicking so much ass...
Obama is closing out with another sharp and beautifully executed ad this time zinging both McCain and his lack of economic understanding and the choice he made for VP, somone who was supposed to help make up for that understanding....
The city of Chicago is bracing for the election night rally Barack Obama is planning in Grant Park with Mayor Daley expecting a million or more people at the lakeshore event. "It's gonna be surprising. There's gonna be a lot...
My wife is from a cozy little beach community about 45 minutes north of Detroit and I grew up in Grand Rapids on the state's ultra-conservative west side. She and I had separate trips to our home state of Michigan...
I've done some phone banking for Barack Obama here in Chicago and can tell you that the coordination and level of professionalism from campaign staffers and volunteers well be what puts him over the top should he win next Tuesday....
The Associated Press reported today that Caribou Barbie, speaking to supporters at a rally in Florida, voiced her displeasure with the campaign of the very uppity Barack Obama for acting as if Obama has already won the election. "You kinda...
I recently reported on an incident at a McCain campaign rally in Maryland at which a number of McCain supporters, including some who identified themselves as Muslims and some who identified themselves as Christians, came together to do the right...
(Via ThnkProgress) In a recent interview with Brian Williams of NBC, Caribou Barbie (with John McCain watching over her) told Willliams that Bill Ayers is unquestionably a terrorist because he tried to destroy the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. Williams...
"These liberals want complete control of government in a time of crisis, all branches of government," warns a Republican ad playing in North Carolina. "No check and balances, no debate, no independence. That's the truth behind Kay Hagan. If she...
Adventuring Party Politics: The Campaign is Getting Ugly GM: OK, the bugbear attacks you. What do you do? OBAMA: I send one of my 672 henchmen after it. MCCAIN: OK, seriously. Why does he have so many henchmen? I'm a...
In a scintillating interview with People Magazine, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Caribou Barbie (also known as Sarah Palin) proudly described herself as an intellectual: People – Do you think you're intellectual? Caribou Barbie – Yessss. "You have to be up...
A new AP poll says it's tighter than you might think: The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain...
Given a softball by John Murtha's recent remarks that western PA is full of racists, John McCain even misses that. It's sad, just sad......
Most of us enjoy a little political diversity in our families. There are liberals who argue with conservatives who argue with libertarians who argue with socialists...and we all ignore the anarchists sulking in the basement. Most families disagree respectfully and...
McCain says his campaign is focused on the economy and it's Barack Obama and his liberal friends who have turned this election season ugly. Google says otherwise....
CNN: McCain camp looking for way to win without Colorado Iowa and New Mexico always have been viewed as difficult races, but the similar assessment of Colorado reflects a dramatic shift for a campaign that had long counted on the...
What happens when a rabidly anti-Obama McCain supporter tries to use Islam to defame Barack Obama at a McCain rally attended by conservative American Muslims, tolerant Christians, and other tolerant conservatives? Watch and find out (it's good): As bad as...
John McCain gets called to the carpet over his campaign's use of robocalls in a surprisingly tough line of questioning from Fox News' Chris Wallace. Watch McCain seethe as he's confronted with his own words that he "has never and...
Update: The article is online now: Block the Vote. It's Already Stolen According to an investigative report out today in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, after a year-long investigation, reveal a systematic program of "GOP...
Speaking on NBC's Meet The Press this morning, Former Secretary of State General Colin Powell publicly endorsed Barack Obama for President. Among his reasons: The Republican Party has drifted too far to the Right, John McCain has exhibited a lack...
Earlier this week, The Chicago Tribune endorsed Barack Obama for President. While it is hardly unusual for newspapers across America to endorse Presidential candidates, the Tribune's endorsement of Obama is unique in that it marks a moment in history. "This...
Minnesota Republican 6th District Representative Michelle Bachmann on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews today suggested that Barack Obama isn't sufficiently "American" and is not worthy of being elected to the White House. Her reasons for suggesting that Obama doesn't belong...
A few weeks ago John McCain bailed on a David Letterman appearance to "get back to Washington" and broker a deal for the recent economic bailout. Lettermen got wise to the thing and sure enough ran a live feed of...
McCain says he doesn't care about a "washed up old terrorist," but this robocall says otherwise: Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill...
While McCain and Obama were figuratively beating each other up in the last presidential debate last night, some war veterans protesting outside were literally beaten up and arrested by Hofstra cops. Will the parties denounce this sort of abuse of...
Some long faces and subdued voices are in evidence at FOX tonight as some in their "undecided" focus group appear to have decided in favor of Obama....
The Pol Junk compound (aka Derek Phillips' basement) was alive with chatter during round three of the prez debates. Phillips Twittered it live, Johnny Loftus live-blogged some thoughts when he wasn't taking swigs of High Lifes and making lame asides...
In what is I think both a humble move and a politically savvy one, Obama addresses the "bitter" comment head-on and explains his admittedly "boneheaded" comment: "How it was interpreted in the press was Obama talking to a bunch of...
Just as Michigan, so goes Wisconsin and Maine. The AP reports"The Republican National Committee is halting presidential ads in Wisconsin and Maine, turning much of its attention to usually Republican states where GOP nominee John McCain shows signs of faltering."...
If you love smart, funny, cutting, and utterly unmerciful poltical writing, then you're probably already a fan of Matt Taibbi. He fills the void left by Hunter S. Thompson and then tops it off with whip smarts. A classic example...
Dig this funny slide show explaining in very...simple...terms this whole ACORN hullabaloo. Money quote: Well, no. They were registrations for people who don't exist. So they're probably not gonna show up on election day. Unless my applications were magical and...
Today we've reached 100 followers on Twitter and just in time to follow our live Tweet of tonight's final debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Johnny Mac has all but promised to bring up Willie Ayers tonight since Obama...
Perhaps the last great hope of the McCain/Caribou Barbie Campaign is that their charges of guilt-by-association directed at Barack Obama for his flimsy ties to former Left-wing radical and terrorist Bill Ayers will generate enough doubt about Obama's love of...
The Times-Tribune reports another death threat against Obama from hysterical McCain-Palin supporters in Scranton, PA: Chris Hackett addressed the increasingly feisty crowd as they await the arrival of Gov. Palin. Each time the Republican candidate for the seat in the...
The Post is such a rag (can anyone tell me why "Dixie" was playing as a music bed on that site???) but this is troubling (emphasis added): The Post reported last week on the Cleveland-area probe and the subpoenas, which...
A new set of polls from Quinnipiac gives Barack Obama very strong leads in four key swing states: Colorado: Obama 52% McCain 43% Michigan: Obama 54% McCain 38% Minnesota: Obama 51% McCain 40% Wisconsin: Obama 54% McCain 37% VIA Talking...
The McCain/Caribou Barbie campaign has made much hay lately of the tenuous (at best) associations that Barack Obama once shared with former Weather Underground member Bill (or Willie) Ayers. In the early 1970's, Ayers participated in bombings of the New...
As one analysis after another shows Barack Obama slowly gaining ground and a lead over John McCain, some "conservatives" can see the writing on the wall, and they don't like the message they're reading one bit. In fact, the low-information...
Buried in a recent Fox News Poll is this: There has been some discussion of Barack Obama's relationship with the former radical activist William Ayers. Because Ayers is linked to plots to bomb the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol in...
UPI rounds up a couple of recents polls that suggest that young religious kids are cooler than their parents when it comes to Obama, gay rights, and other issues. Some encouraging trends: • "71 percent of young first-time religious voters...
Sullivan nails it: What Rove never realized is that many of us fought hard for intellectual and moral respect for conservatism in college and grad school, only to have our efforts turned into a joke by the crassness of the...
Trying to head off potentially damaging information from a state ethics report on her misuse of office, Sarah Palin released a report clearing her of all wrong doing. The author of the report? The McCain-Palin Campaign. Palin is the subject...
Obama hits McCain-Palin for stoking fears and rage at their rallies. I like this: It's easy to rile up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States. The times...
Charlie Gibson asks McCain why he hasn't asked Obama about Bill Ayers when they've met face-to-face. McCain stumbles a bit trying to explain why and then falls back on his reputation as a blow hard. McCain Responds to "Say It...
Bill Ayers walks with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and their son Zayd Dohrn, 4, Barack Obama outside Federal Court in New York in this May 17, 1982, photo. Courtesy of Donaldson...
Political rallies sometimes bring out the worst in people. Especially as tight races head into the final stretch, emotions run high and you tend to rally around your candidate of choice; both because you actually support their views and ideals...
