Three and a half months ago, I wrote about the state of the fight between the Republican establishment’s pragmatic conservative candidates and tea party/libertarian/anti-establishment conservatives. I concluded the results were mixed and it was too early to call a winner, though I also noted, “it’s already clear that the pragmatist conservatives have stopped the anti-establishment’s […]
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Democratic opponent, state Sen. Brad Hutto, wants you to know two things: He has a path to victory against the two-term Republican, and it doesn’t require him to run from traditional Democratic positions. “I’m not a Blue Dog,” Hutto said proudly during a recent interview with me and my colleague Nathan […]
The media’s narrative about Congress is clear: It is unproductive, members care only about getting re-elected and they have failed to do their jobs. So it should come as no surprise that Americans believe Congress has been unproductive, that members don’t care about doing the right thing, but only about re-election and Congress is a […]
President Barack Obama’s slumping job approval rating isn’t doing Democrats any favors in the party’s quest to hold a majority in the Senate. But without a handful of Democratic retirements, the Senate likely wouldn’t be in play at all. Republicans need a net gain of six Senate seats to get to 51 and control the […]
The Senate race in Montana continues to slip away from the Democrats. Burdened by plagiarism allegations, appointed-Sen. John Walsh, D, will not seek election to a full term in November. Democratic chances of holding the seat against At-Large Rep. Steve Daines, R, might improve slightly with a new candidate without Walsh’s baggage. But whomever Democrats […]
My last column, which argued President Barack Obama’s situation going into his second midterm closely resembled President George W. Bush’s standing going into his second midterm, is reinforced in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. When I filed the column on Monday, I used the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll results from June, since […]
I certainly didn’t know foreign policy would be front and center in the final months before the midterm elections when I wrote in late April that these issues “could have an indirect yet significant impact on the midterm elections.” But now, it looks increasingly as if foreign policy — particularly problems in the Middle East […]
As Roll Call was preparing to post my column yesterday on the Montana Senate race and recent Democratic polls showing the contest “closing,” a report surfaced in the New York Times about appointed Senator John Walsh’s plagiarism in his master’s thesis. The Walsh story is a huge one and undoubtedly affects the Democrat’s already uphill […]
Maybe you believe in coincidences. I usually do — but not four months from an election. Almost simultaneously, two different memos appeared from Democratic pollsters insisting the Montana Senate race has closed and the outcome of the contest is very much in doubt. One memo, by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling, meets existing standards of […]