[ Posted Wednesday, June 11th, 2014 – 16:51 UTC ]
Every so often, the American political world is turned upside down. Last night was one of those moments, as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was "primaried" out of a job. Nobody (including me) predicted this upset. Today, pundits are falling all over themselves to come up with an appropriate metaphor for the magnitude of Cantor's loss on the political scene. Living in California as I do, I'm going to go with earthquake terminology: this was a massive and cataclysmic temblor for Republicans -- the equivalent of about a 9.0 on the political Richter scale.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 10th, 2014 – 18:51 UTC ]
When we look back at this particular week much later on, it seems we'll remember it as the week the 2016 presidential race truly began in earnest. Measured by the sheer volume of headlines generated and punditry produced, now will be seen as the moment when Hillary Clinton reintroduced herself to America. With the kickoff of her book tour, Clinton has already started tongues wagging (in a major way) about what her chances will be in 2016.
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[ Posted Monday, June 9th, 2014 – 16:58 UTC ]
A proposal from Senator Elizabeth Warren would drastically change the program, but so far it hasn't gotten President Obama's full-throated support. While I understand that Obama can rightly say that he's doing what he can on student loans outside of Congress, if he truly wanted to reform the program he would get solidly behind Warren's proposal and push it as hard as possible, in an effort to shame at least the Senate into acting upon it.
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[ Posted Friday, June 6th, 2014 – 16:43 UTC ]
This week was notable in many respects in the political world, but one subject overwhelmed almost everything else. We're going to address the prisoner swap and Bowe Bergdahl in an unusual way this week, in lieu of our regular talking points at the end of the column. But first, we're going to take a very quick look at what else happened this week, and then hand out the weekly awards.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014 – 16:29 UTC ]
Today is primary election day in eight states across the land (including my own). The most media attention will be paid to the Mississippi Republican Senate primary, where the incumbent, Senator Thad Cochran, may be in trouble from a Tea Party challenger. So while the storyline a few weeks ago was "Establishment Republicans win big over Tea Party," the storyline tomorrow may be "Tea Party strikes back!"
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[ Posted Monday, June 2nd, 2014 – 15:55 UTC ]
President Obama's job approval ratings continued to improve, slowly, in the month of May. In five out of the last six months, in fact, Obama's numbers have gotten better. He is now roughly where he was right before the impact of the Obamacare website rollout hit his approval rating. This is still not fantastic territory for any president's approval rating to be in, but it does represent a steady increase as Obama has won back people he lost in the Obamacare website disaster. However, this trend may now be flattening out, meaning June's numbers may not be as positive. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start with a look at last month's chart:
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[ Posted Friday, May 30th, 2014 – 17:02 UTC ]
It has been a momentous week, with the resignation (read: "firing") of a cabinet secretary, a presidential speech on America's foreign and military policy, and the announcement of a timetable to bring home the remaining troops in Afghanistan. Plus all the usual Washington squabbling. But one story risks being buried among all this other newsworthy stuff, and that is the vote which happened late last night in the House of Representatives. Because, with a healthy bipartisan majority, they just voted to end the war on medical marijuana forever. If the Senate follows their lead, this could be one of the biggest turning points in ending the federal War On Weed altogether. In other words, it is a momentous event.
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[ Posted Thursday, May 29th, 2014 – 16:19 UTC ]
The window of opportunity for comprehensive immigration reform to pass Congress is getting narrower, and is about to slam shut until (realistically) the year 2017. More accurately, if John Boehner doesn't allow the House to vote on a bill before the August congressional month-long vacation, then there is little-to-zero chance of immigration reform passing before our next president is sworn into office.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 28th, 2014 – 16:59 UTC ]
In the past month, the Obama White House has found itself at the center of two new scandals. While one is being (so far) treated as a minor matter, it may later grow in importance once Republicans wake up to the political embarrassment potential for the president. The second scandal is systemic and entrenched, and is going to require a lot of drastic action to fix. How Obama reacts to both the "outing" of the C.I.A. station chief in Afghanistan and the ongoing problems at the Veterans Administration will wind up reflecting on his presidential legacy, for better or worse.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 27th, 2014 – 15:22 UTC ]
Today President Barack Obama announced the beginning of the end of America's longest war. This announcement was fully anticipated and therefore came as no surprise, seeing as how Obama was elected in large part to end two wars. He successfully withdrew all American troops from Iraq in 2011, and he announced today the schedule for withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan. From 32,000 current troops, we will draw down to 9,800 by the end of this year. This number will then shrink by half (to roughly 5,000) by the end of 2015. By the end of 2016, they will all be out (except possibly for a small force left for security, in the range of 1,000 troops or less). Thus will end a 15-year-long war effort -- the longest in American history.
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