[ Posted Monday, February 10th, 2014 – 18:17 UTC ]
Last week, John Boehner made a rather stunning turnaround on whether the House will be passing some sort of immigration reform this year. To be snide: first he was for it, before he was against it. What happened in between (one assumes) is that he tried to sell the idea to his own caucus. Who (from all appearances) wasn't buying it. While this might not be the end for immigration reform this year, the idea certainly can now be said to be on life support, at best. What this means for the future of immigration reform is anybody's guess at this point, so I thought I'd map out a few scenarios which assume immigration reform is not going to pass before this year's elections.
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[ Posted Friday, February 7th, 2014 – 19:18 UTC ]
Americans across the land are banding together to solve one of the country's most pressing problems, it seems: demanding that Justin Bieber be deported!
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 5th, 2014 – 17:32 UTC ]
Other than the Electoral College shift, another rather strange dynamic seems to be shaping up between the two dominant American political parties. Democrats and Republicans are reversing their traditional scenarios when it comes to nominating presidential candidates. This tradition even comes with its own bumpersticker slogan to define it: "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line." Democrats, in other words, have a large field to pick from and select the one that everybody likes best, in the end, and then enthusiastically gets behind them for the general election. Republicans, however, pretty much know who is "next in line" for the nomination, and while other candidates may put up a limited fight, everyone knows who the nominee is going to be long before the first primary happens -- after which, Republicans all fall into line behind him, like him or not. But this time around the primary field is going to be wild and wooly over on the Republican side, with nobody being able to convincingly claim to be "next in line" (Rick Santorum or Paul Ryan could come closest to making such a claim, but this is going to be challenged by many others). But over on the Democratic side, there is only one woman standing, at least at this point, and her name is Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 4th, 2014 – 17:17 UTC ]
If you buy car insurance and then get into an accident, when the insurance pays for your repairs, have they "bailed you out"? Most people would answer "no," because planning for risks in advance by buying insurance is a responsible thing to do. There is no "bailout" involved at all. But that's the basic concept Republicans are planning on selling, if today's rumors are to be believed.
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[ Posted Monday, February 3rd, 2014 – 16:23 UTC ]
President Obama just had -- relatively -- the best month in job approval polling he's had for his entire second term. The reason for the qualifier in that previous sentence is that in absolute terms, Obama's poll numbers are still pretty bad, but when measured by month-to-month change, January was the best month Obama's had since the afterglow of his re-election. But then a picture is clearer than all these words, so let's take a look at the chart:
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[ Posted Friday, January 31st, 2014 – 18:21 UTC ]
Republicans in the House have announced they are now ready to do something on immigration. I only mention this in passing here, because the entire talking points section is going to be devoted to a warning for Democrats: there will be traps laid by the Republicans, so Democrats have to be vigilant about defusing each one as it pops up.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 30th, 2014 – 17:22 UTC ]
What prompted this column (clippy though it may be) was the breaking news that House Republicans have leaked a two-page document to the press outlining their priorities in new immigration bills. The first thing they stress is the plurality of that last word -- as in "bills," and not "bill." Republicans have, of late, developed a bizarre and unreasonable fear over legislation that they consider long and hard to read. They score some sort of political points with their base by opposing such bills, which is inexplicable outside of that base, so we'll just accept it as fact so we can all then move along. The House Republicans will have lots of little bills rather than one big bill -- that's a given, at this point.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 29th, 2014 – 17:37 UTC ]
Last night, President Obama gave his annual address to Congress and the American people. Reactions, as usual, were all over the map. Listening to some of them, though, I found myself wondering what will happen if the conventional Washington wisdom proves wrong in the 2014 midterm election. Because while I didn't actually hear anyone toss out the "lame duck" term to describe Obama, most commentators were assuming that it's going to be a good Republican year at the polls, and that the only real question is whether Republicans will win control of the Senate or not. But what if this proves not to be true? Call me a cock-eyed optimist if you will, but I couldn't help wondering how different next year's State Of The Union speech will be if Democrats have a much better year than expected, and not only hold the Senate but win control of the House.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 28th, 2014 – 22:38 UTC ]
OK, as usual, I'm sitting down to write this without really dipping into the oceans of ink (and electrons) that are being spilled right now by other pundits, so that my reactions to both the "State Of The Union" speech and the Republican response are untainted by either groupthink or the herd mentality. So there's a very good chance (as always) that what I thought will be a long way away from what others think (on both sides of the aisle).
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[ Posted Monday, January 27th, 2014 – 16:46 UTC ]
As the city of Washington prepares for its time in the spotlight tomorrow night (the "State Of The Union" speech being approximately Washington's "Oscar night" on primetime television), pundits will go into overdrive on the question of "what it all means," for roughly the next week or so. Every paragraph of the speech will be examined microscopically, supporters will cheer, opponents will boo, and conclusions will be drawn among the inside-the-Beltway set.
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