[ Posted Wednesday, June 24th, 2015 – 16:30 UTC ]
Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, just became the 13th Republican candidate for president. Whether this will prove to be lucky or unlucky remains to be seen. Even though the field is already incredibly crowded, Jindal will not be the last Republican to announce -- there are at least two other contenders who will likely jump in (Scott Walker and Chris Christie), with the possibility of a few more longshot candidates as well. The more crowded the field gets, the harder it is going to be for any one of them to stand out, which is precisely Jindal's main problem.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015 – 17:04 UTC ]
Large corporations are getting more involved in politics. Whether that is seen as a good thing or a bad thing depends upon the political issue involved and the side the corporation takes (and, of course, the side you're personally on). Conservatives cheer when corporations take a stand on abortion, liberals cheer when a corporation stands up for gay or civil rights. But it does seem like we're entering into a new era of corporate political behavior, or (since they're apparently people now) perhaps "corporate citizenship" might be a better term.
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[ Posted Friday, June 12th, 2015 – 16:53 UTC ]
We begin with a story which is just ripe for mixing a few metaphors: The Iowa Republican Party just announced today that they are cancelling the Iowa Straw Poll.
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[ Posted Thursday, June 11th, 2015 – 16:51 UTC ]
I have to pity the poor mainstream media reporters covering Hillary Clinton's campaign, a tiny bit. No, no, I really do -- at least a smidgeon. They know full well that, barring any large and unforeseen events, they'll be covering Clinton's campaign for at least the next eight or nine months without having much of any "horserace" story to tell. If Clinton does as expected (again, barring a tremendous surge by Bernie Sanders or a sudden health problem for Hillary), she's going to become the Democratic nominee for president without much problem. This presents a deep quandary for the mainstream Clinton reporters, since all pundits (and I definitely include myself in this) absolutely love writing horserace stories. They're easy, they're poll-driven, and much like their namesake horseraces, it's always fun to see a dark horse pull into the lead or a frontrunner stumble or any other thrilling racetrack development that gets the heart pumping and the juices flowing. To put it another way: horserace stories are easy to write, which is why we get so many of them during each election.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 10th, 2015 – 16:06 UTC ]
Perry is the tenth Republican to throw his hat in the 2016 ring, joining Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Rick Santorum. There are at least five other Republicans who will also likely make a run for their party's nomination, but they have yet to formally announced their candidacies.
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[ Posted Monday, June 8th, 2015 – 16:01 UTC ]
For political wonks, June is not the month to celebrate grads, dads, and brides, but instead the biggest SCOTUS month of the year. SCOTUS (for the un-wonky) stands for "Supreme Court Of The United States." June marks the end of the Supreme Court's yearly session, and it is when all the biggest decisions get handed down.
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[ Posted Friday, June 5th, 2015 – 21:05 UTC ]
We really wanted to use a different subtitle for today's column, one we are actually astonished that more news organizations didn't go with, given Rick Perry's announcement of his second run for the White House. That headline, of course, would have been: "Oops, He Did It Again!" Now, we do realize that the Britney Spears album is actually 15 years old (how time flies, eh?), but even so, with "Oops" being so central to defining Perry on the national stage, it certainly seemed like an obvious choice.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015 – 18:03 UTC ]
We continue our running series of taking a serious look at all the announced candidates for president with two new entries this week, one from each side of the aisle. Republican Lindsey Graham made his formal announcement earlier in the week, and today Democrat Lincoln Chafee is also set to announce his candidacy.
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[ Posted Friday, May 29th, 2015 – 17:06 UTC ]
We're going to begin today with a rather loaded question. How much attention do you think the media should be paying towards a presidential nominee who is right now getting 13 to 15 percent support in public opinion polls of their party's voters?
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[ Posted Thursday, May 28th, 2015 – 17:18 UTC ]
Two things are worth noting here, before I jump in to taking a serious look (as I am doing for all announced presidential candidates from both parties) at the chances Martin O'Malley has of becoming president.
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