It’s no secret that Steve Bannon wants to oversee the demise of the mainstream media, but President Donald Trump’s senior adviser probably wouldn’t mind incapacitating the Republican Party in order to remake it into his own image as well. Bannon (and Trump, for that matter) referred to the media, as “the opposition party.” That’s a […]
Americans who liked Donald Trump’s swagger during the campaign are pleased with his first two weeks in office. Really pleased. A veteran Republican campaign strategist told me he just saw a poll of GOP primary voters in a Southern state that found the president’s image as 93 percent favorable/3 percent unfavorable. Yes, you read that […]
Donald Trump’s critics believe the new president is clueless (or worse), but he might be on track to avoid repeating former President Barack Obama’s biggest political mistake. Trump’s pre-inaugural press conference was widely panned, but his comments on the future of health care legislation were instructive. “The easiest thing would be to let it implode […]
The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s assault on Democratic senators up for re-election in 2018 has already begun. That committee has sent out more than half a dozen press releases since the beginning of the year attacking Democratic senators facing re-election from states carried by Donald Trump in November or generally viewed as electorally competitive. In […]
As the electorate evolves with each election cycle because of changing demographics, there is one constant: white evangelicals. Once again, they made up one-quarter of the electorate and voted heavily for the Republican presidential nominee. White voters, as a share of the electorate, have been on a steady descent from 88 percent in 1980 to […]
With the end of the Obama Administration approaching, I recently looked back at the notes from my two meetings with Barack Obama during his run for the United States Senate. Obama was not well known then, and he was regarded as nothing more than a long-shot for the Democratic nomination. I first met then-state Sen. […]
If you look only at Donald Trump’s recent “favorable” ratings, you might well think him politically weak. After all, substantially more Americans continue to have an unfavorable opinion of him than a favorable one in post-election polls, and he lost the popular vote by almost 2.9 million votes. But Trump has some key assets, […]
Nancy Pelosi survived her leadership election and will continue to lead House Democrats in the next Congress. But the fact that she received a credible challenge, who was supported by one-third of her members, is yet another sign that the times have changed for the Democratic Party. For the last eight years, Democrats have enjoyed […]