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 Party became known…
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 in The Mount…
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 of Sen. Joe…
“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 following last year’s…
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, Republicans have defeated…
Moments after the Rothenberg Political Report reiterated its “Safe” rating of the now open Michigan Senate race, I started hearing complaints. Some of the questions raised were reasonable — so reasonable that I thought I’d use this space to explain why my colleagues and I decided not to move the race immediately to a more competitive category. Republicans…
Every election cycle the party campaign committees, and many in the national media, make a big deal about party fundraising. Coverage of the money chase has been exacerbated by the fact that these committees file monthly reports detailing their fundraising, as opposed to quarterly. To wit: “House Democratic campaign raises more than $6 million in January,” a headline…
Democratic Sen. Carl Levin’s decision to not seek a seventh term certainly doesn’t come as a shock — and it also doesn’t immediately warrant a change in how competitive his seat in Michigan should be viewed. The rare open seat — the last since Spencer Abraham (R) was elected in 1994 — is sure to draw interest on…
Congressional Republicans figured that after the fiscal cliff, they’d have the advantage talking about the sequester and, down the road, the continued funding of the government. Clearly, they were wrong. One of the reasons Republicans are faring so badly these days is that the Democratic narrative, presented most persuasively and effectively by the White House, plays more easily…
Republicans continue to argue about whether the party needs to take steps to prevent the next Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Todd Akin and Ken Buck, as well as how it might do so. Those inept and seriously flawed candidates lost races that other Republicans would have won easily. Now, American Crossroads, the brainchild of Karl Rove and former…