I certainly agree with pollster Andrew Kohut’s overall assessment of the Republican Party’s image and positioning problems in his March 24 Washington Post piece. I, too, have written about the GOP’s problems. But in the piece, Kohut compares the GOP’s current position to the Democrats’ “in the late 1960s and early 1970s,” when the Democratic […]
Not every retirement is a game-changer. Democrats were going to have a difficult time defending the South Dakota Senate seat with or without Sen. Tim Johnson (D). But now that the senator has made his decision not to seek re-election, the playing field to replace him can start to solidify. For a rare open seat […]
Hoping to hang on to retiring Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s open seat, Democratic strategists are passing the word that attorney and energy company executive Nick Preservati is looking closely at the 2014 Senate contest in West Virginia. National Journal’s Hotline on Call describes the possible Democratic candidate as “a wealthy, pro-coal, pro-business Democrat in the style […]
“I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat,” humorist Will Rogers said many years ago. But if Rogers were alive today, he’d undoubtedly see his party as a model of organization and unity when compared to the GOP. The Republican Party continues to fracture more seriously than I expected […]
Timing is everything in politics, and for Richard Carmona, 2014 isn’t the right time. The Arizona Democrat narrowly lost a bid for the U.S. Senate in a very competitive race last fall and was being encouraged by Democrats in Washington, D.C. and the Grand Canyon State to run for governor in 2014. But Carmona announced […]
A recent National Journal item caught my attention. Entitled “Expanding the Map,” it began: “When Republicans gloat about the seven Democratic-held, red-state Senate seats up in 2014, Democrats can note that only six of their incumbents have lost since the 1990s.” The statement is true … but potentially misleading. Yes, over the past seven elections, […]
The Mark Sanford redemption tour goes on– and his unlikely political comeback may have even gotten slightly easier after Tuesday’s GOP primary. The biggest surprise wasn’t that the former governor topped the 16 candidate field, as was widely expected. Instead, in what ended up being a much higher-turnout affair than many had anticipated, it was […]