[ Posted Wednesday, June 25th, 2014 – 17:28 UTC ]
Enough digression, though. Last night, Senator Thad Cochran pulled off an upset of sorts, by defeating his Tea Party primary challenger in the rematch atmosphere of a "top two" runoff election. His chance of victory had been seen by many (at least before the election results began coming in) as increasingly unlikely -- which is why the political world is abuzz over what just happened down in the Magnolia State. Consider the fact that Cochran came in second in the original primary, and it was only due to a third candidate being in the race that he was even given the second chance of a runoff election (because main Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel failed to reach 50 percent of the vote, to put this another way). Because of this, and because of what was perceived as the growing national momentum of the Tea Party after Eric Cantor's epic defeat (more on this in a moment), it seemed Cochran was doomed. The energy was supposed to mostly be on the Tea Party's side, and turnouts for runoff elections are notoriously low, so most watchers of politics had all but written off Cochran's chances to pull off an upset victory. And yet, against all this conventional wisdom, Cochran still won -- he successfully "iced out" the Tea Party.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 24th, 2014 – 16:27 UTC ]
As we were entering into the shank of primary season a few weeks back, I wrote an article discussing how the political world would view the gains and losses of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. Since that time, we have seen the Tea Party lose many big races, and spectacularly win at least one race. Today, voters in Mississippi are going to add another chapter to this saga, as they decide the runoff election between sitting Senator Thad Cochran and his Tea Party challenger.
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[ Posted Friday, June 20th, 2014 – 17:07 UTC ]
Today, we're going to have a special edition of the talking points, where we get to know a Montana politician who seems to be seriously considering taking on Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. But before we do so, it was a busy week otherwise, so let's just dive right into it. First, a look at what's going with Republicans.
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[ Posted Friday, June 13th, 2014 – 17:39 UTC ]
I have to begin this week by apologizing for the irreverent nature of that title, but then how often do you get a chance to coin a cool word like "selenofriggatriskaidekaphobia"? The proper answer is that the chance won't come again until 2049, which explains why we couldn't resist. The word is a mashup of two phobias, the fear of a full moon (selenophobia) and the fear of Friday the 13th (friggatriskaidekaphobia, not to be confused with fear of the number 13, which is just triskaidekaphobia, of course). The rare occurrence of a full moon on a Friday the 13th won't happen again for another 35 years, so today's pretty much it for this generation of selenofriggatriskaidekaphobics, at least. But enough of this looney etymological fun, let's get on with a week chock-full of political happenings, shall we?
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[ Posted Thursday, June 12th, 2014 – 16:56 UTC ]
In one week, House Republicans will vote on a replacement for Eric Cantor, who will be stepping down from his Majority Leader position (due to his loss in this week's primary). This vote will provide a test of strength for both the Tea Party faction and for the Establishment Republicans. Who wins this power struggle may eventually determine the direction of the Republicans in the House for years to come, meaning it'll be a fairly important vote.
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[ 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 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 22nd, 2014 – 15:53 UTC ]
As has been noted, at times art imitates life and at other times life imitates art. This is one of those latter times, when what was purported to be a "Women and Colorado's Future" debate among Republican gubernatorial candidates seemed like nothing more than a Saturday Night Live sketch ridiculing the awfulness of the Republicans' continuing failure to reach out to women voters in any meaningful way. And that is actually the most polite thing I can bring myself to say about it: it seemed like satire, but (sadly) it wasn't.
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