[ Posted Monday, February 16th, 2015 – 16:54 UTC ]
The Republican Party and the political media world are already off to the 2016 horseraces. With endless fascination, the latest polling from Iowa and New Hampshire is examined under the microscopes of the pundits and sweeping pronouncements are made as to who the eventual frontrunners will be. Of course, it is way too early for any real analysis of the public's mood, but that doesn't stop the oddsmaking within the Beltway. After all, the Democratic nomination race is setting up to be a snoozer, so why not get started obsessing over the Republican race?
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 10th, 2015 – 16:52 UTC ]
While the fight for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination is already fiercely heating up, over on the Democratic side there is really only one question even being asked right now -- when will Hillary Clinton formally declare her candidacy? Will she wait until summer, or throw her hat in the ring during the spring? Whenever she does launch her campaign, she will inevitably face the same problem she grappled with the last time she ran. Call it her inevitability problem (or maybe her "inevitable inevitability problem," if you're trying to come up with a clever headline).
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[ Posted Monday, February 2nd, 2015 – 18:16 UTC ]
President Obama just finished a very good month in public opinion polling. Obama showed such notable improvement in January that it's tough to choose which metric he did best in. In improvement over the previous month, Obama just had the best month of his second term (so far). His January improvement was the fourth-best of his entire presidency. He hit numbers he hasn't seen since the summer of 2013 -- gaining back all the ground lost (and more) since the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website. NBC's Chuck Todd, during coverage of Obama's State Of The Union speech, came up with the best metaphor for what has been happening since the midterm elections last year: Obama stole the GOP's "honeymoon." After a big Republican political victory, Obama has been increasingly bold. As a result, Obama got the bump in polling, instead of the Republicans. January was indeed a very good month for President Obama.
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[ Posted Friday, January 30th, 2015 – 17:54 UTC ]
That headline certainly does promise a large amount of schadenfreude over the misfortunes of a certain former vice presidential nominee (and half-term governor of Alaska), doesn't it? Well, that'll all have to wait for the end of this column, where we will be supplanting our normal talking points section with a few choice conservative reviews of Sarah Palin's recent speech in Iowa. But before we dive into this snarktastic dessert of vicious quips, we've first got to get through the meat and potatoes of the politics of the week.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 28th, 2015 – 18:00 UTC ]
The 2016 presidential election cycle is already underway. Whether you are delighted or horrified at the prospect, the race is indeed now on. While it might seem impossibly far in the future, consider that the Iowa caucuses are only a year away. So we're going to take a very early look at the Republican field, which seems to be getting larger every week.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 27th, 2015 – 18:00 UTC ]
I referenced the following article in passing last Friday (in relation to another outbreak of corruption in the halls of Albany), after which I was ceremoniously awarded a Commemorative Silver Edition Kickback by the Albany Museum of Political Corruption -- so I thought it'd be nice to return the favor and re-run the full interview I conducted a while ago with Bruce Roter.
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[ Posted Monday, January 26th, 2015 – 17:57 UTC ]
Marijuana just keeps growing. That's a weak attempt at a punny metaphor for which I apologize (hey, I could have used some variation such as "growing like a weed," so I did exercise a little restraint...), but its deeper meaning is that marijuana is actually outgrowing such cheap jokes and entering the realm where it demands to be taken seriously -- especially by politicians. Marijuana is now the nation's fastest-growing industry. The legal marijuana industry brought in $2.4 billion last year, so it's certainly no longer any sort of laughing matter. That figure represents an increase of a whopping 74 percent in one year's time, and it is estimated that the total legal market could be worth $11 billion as soon as 2019.
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[ Posted Friday, January 23rd, 2015 – 18:21 UTC ]
I have to apologize right here at the start, because that headline is not original. Credit should go to Chuck Todd of NBC, who stated during the State Of The Union coverage this week that President Obama had stolen the traditional post-election "honeymoon" period with the public right out from under the Republican Party's feet. We found this such an apt metaphor that we decided to run with it, so: "Thanks, Chuck!"
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[ Posted Thursday, January 22nd, 2015 – 17:50 UTC ]
Sammy Hagar, famously, couldn't drive 55. The double-nickel Hagar sang about was the national speed limit, in miles per hour. The Republican Party is about to find out that there's a new 55 limit in Washington, and it's going to cause some Hagar-level rage on its own. Because 55 senators is not the same as 60, or 67. This simple mathematical statement is about to confound the GOP's entire strategy for the next two years.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 21st, 2015 – 18:24 UTC ]
Because it is both playoff season in the football world and State Of The Union season in the political world, I felt it was high time to mix a metaphor or two. Because even though we're at the very earliest stage of the 2016 presidential race, it seems like the Democrats are pretty close to locking in "home-field advantage" on the subject of wages and inequality in America. By which I mean Democrats will be debating Republicans on very familiar territory for the Democratic Party, and very foreign soil for the Republicans. As in sports, this in no way guarantees a victory in "The Big Game," but it certainly does help the Democrats' chances.
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