OK, folks, so far this experiment has to be judged a failure. Tuesday, I threw down a challenge in an attempt to inspire people to submit their own columns to ChrisWeigant.com so we could feature them on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next month. So far, I have gotten none.

If I don't get any by next Tuesday, I'm going to start running old columns, just to fill up this space. Next Thursday is scheduled to be Obama Poll Watch day, but then there's nothing but empty slots for all of August.

Perhaps people are getting hung up on what to write about. If I were one of those snarktastic blogger types, I might take this opportunity to point out: "See? It ain't as easy as it looks!" Ahem. Being above that sort of pettiness, here's an idea for those of you perhaps wondering what would make a good column.

August is traditionally "Silly Season" month. So, what will this year's Silly Season obsession be? Go back and look at any one of my Hallowe'en columns over the years, and make a funny prediction, in a similar vein. Bonus points for outrageousness. Complete the following: "This year's Silly Season obsession will be..."

See? It's not so tough to come up with something amusing. Now, sit down, write it out, and send it to me via email. Posting it in the comments to another article doesn't count, because it defeats the purpose (because people will already have read it).

C'mon, people, we can do better than this! I swear, I will bust out the re-runs if I don't get any submissions, so help us all avoid this fate, and send me your submissions. Do it today!

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Welcome to that magic time of year when political junkies in the media get so frantic for stories they just start rampantly speculating on everything under the sun. This is a yearly contest to see who can come up with this year's "Silly Season" story that everyone else will obsess about for the entire month of August. What will it be this year? Mitt's "dancing horse" at the Olympics (as David Letterman has taken to calling it)? President Obama secretly plotting to (fill in the blank)?

Of course, while all that is going on, there will be serious stories with dramatic consequences in the political arena which will get short shrift (or no shrift at all) in the national media, as usual. One of the biggest of these non-silly stories this year is the trend towards voter suppression laws in states with inordinate amounts of Republicans in their state government. The comic Doonesbury has been brutally pointing this out all this week with a series of strips on a "Jim Crow tour" of America.

I'm not going to get into the main issue here, I should state. Voter suppression laws are a giant step backwards, and there are plenty of other commentaries out there which explain why. Instead, I'd like to focus on one aspect of the laws which everyone seems to be missing: who will be affected, and how this will affect the overall vote.

Continue Reading »

Program Note:

OK, since everyone's getting so frisky in the comments section here, I am going to try an extended experiment -- in letting the inmates take over the asylum (so to speak... ahem). No, that wasn't the humor referenced in the title -- that comes after this program note, in a hilarious bit of satire from C.W. Cunningham.

As I did last year at this time, I'm going to cut back on my blogging for the next month or so. The reason now is the same as the last time around: to be able to devote more time to a book proposal I am currently writing.

Sadly, last year at this point I was confident that I could complete my book proposal by the end of August. This year, I am hiding behind the old chestnut: "Well, I didn't say which August, now did I?" Sigh.

Yes, this project has taken much longer than I expected. But you'll be happy to hear that the end of the tunnel is actually now in sight. I am preparing a final draft of the sample chapters to send out to agents and publishers, and I am targeting the end of August to achieve this goal. August is a slow political news month anyway, commonly called the "Silly Season" of politics in America. Plus, I am going to have a ton of things to do to get ready for the upcoming Democratic National Convention. So, from this point on, I will only be posting here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, likely right up to the convention itself (right after Labor Day).

Which leaves two days of the week free. Now, I can just re-run old columns here, or I could leave the site un-updated, but that's kind of boring. So I am going to throw the door open to my faithful commenters to sit in my metaphorical chair and fill in for me. You write a blog post, and if I like it, I will post it here. Got something original to say? Well then, have at it!

I will not be editing the submissions (other than perhaps for minor grammar and punctuation problems), and my acceptance criteria will not include which side of the aisle you're coming from, but rather whether your submission is well-written and not too long or too short. It will be up to you how the work is credited: with your real name, or with the login name you use here (either way is fine with me, this will be completely up to you).

If this experiment crashes and burns, then I will stop taking submissions. If I am so snowed under by numerous submissions, then I may stop taking them as well (remember: this idea is supposed to save me time). If you start to see column repeats, it is because I am not getting enough submissions. Nobody is guaranteed to be posted, and I can reject any submission for any reason under the sun. But rather than be all reactionary in the comments, I would encourage you to try driving the conversation itself. Here's a hint: humor always catches my eye.

We'll see how it goes. Contact me privately via email (use the Email Chris page, if you have never done so before) with any questions or submissions (DON'T use the comments to submit something, because that kind of misses the point).

With that out of the way, we have our first example of a guest columnist. Today's article is a satirical news release from our old friend C.W. Cunningham (whom everyone might remember from his days as "house cartoonist" here). It needs no real introduction, other than to point out you've got to read the date at the top, for this news report to make sense. Enjoy.

-- Chris Weigant

Dateline: January 8, 2014

President Romney today announced that Sri Lanka has won the bid to represent the American people in Congress, having narrowly edged out both India and China with a spate of well placed bribes in the final hours of the race.

President Romney explained that this will be the most responsive Congress in American history. The Sri Lankans have vowed to show up four days each week -- a 68% increase over the previous session -- and since they won't be given any vacation time, they will be poised to pass any and all bills as quickly as lobbyists can type them up.

In keeping with the president's vow of "More jobs for more millionaires," the outgoing legislators will be retained, freeing them up to devote all their time to fundraising -- a 2% increase over the previous session. In an expression of the President's focused managerial style, each ex-legislator will be given a monthly quota, and those who fail to meet their numbers will either be laid off, or given a post in the Cabinet. Democrats will naturally be given higher quotas since they are well connected with latte-drinking elites, and are more likely to have George Soros' phone number.

In related news, President Romney announced that Offshore Investments for Freedom (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bain Capital) has once again won the bid to oversee the I.R.S. and the Congressional Budget Office. Though many have complained that these arms of the government have become less transparent and basically unaccountable since the Bain takeover, it's almost universally agreed that their reports are visually stunning, since they now use office products exclusively from Staples.

-- C.W. Cunningham

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

The most telling commentary on the Aurora massacre was actually created in 2011. Tom Tomorrow, in response to the recent tragedy in Colorado, reposted a "This Modern World" comic he had originally drawn in response to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. The comic is brutally and nakedly truthful about the current politics of gun control. Sparky the Penguin, speaking to a nameless conservative, admits defeat:

Barring some seismic realignment in this country, the gun control debate is all but settled -- and your side won. The occasional horrific civilian massacre is just the price the rest of us have to pay. Over and over again, apparently.

No matter where you stand on gun control, this is where the country stands politically -- like it or not. Democrats learned, back in the 1990s, that they could get thrown out of office when they voted for new gun control laws. You can quibble over whether the assault weapons ban was the sole motivating factor for any individual lawmaker's defeat, but in this case perception has become reality, at least in Democrats' thinking. "Once burned, twice shy" is the party's mantra now on gun control.

Continue Reading »

To begin, we're not going to have our normal partisan talking points today. We're going to follow the lead set by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and we're just not going to go there today. There will be plenty of time for many vicious partisan talking points in the upcoming weeks, never fear. But today, it just doesn't feel right.

Second, we're not going to talk directly about the horrific shooting today in Colorado. But we are going to have a few choice words to say about idiotic snap judgments, with a heaping side order of scorn for the mainstream media, in lieu of our normal talking points.

To tell the truth, we were already in a sad mood this week, upon hearing the news that Tom Davis passed away. Davis was half of the comedy team "Franken & Davis," which is how both I and millions of other Americans ("of a certain age," these days) were first introduced to now-Senator Al Franken. Davis, while at Saturday Night Live with Franken, came up with such instantly-memorable sketches as the "Coneheads," Steve Martin's "Theodoric of York," and one of the funniest one-time bits they've ever done, the Julia Child "Always save the liver!" sketch. The Washington Post ran a very nice obituary, which is worth reading if you understood those references in the previous sentence.

Continue Reading »

Today's column has been pre-empted, so that we may bring you a major announcement. To compensate, we have linked to a funny video at the end, in an effort to hold your attention until then. So, are you sitting down? Comfortable? OK, here goes:

ChrisWeigant.com is going to the Democratic National Convention!

The kindly folks at the Democratic National Committee have generously seen their way to awarding this organization a press credential so we can get access to the interesting parts of the convention hall. There is a great danger in offering such credentials to yours truly, and this danger is that if I walk by one of those blowdried helium-brains who is our society's poor excuse for a "national news anchor," that I will not be able to restrain myself from telling them exactly what I think of their "journalism." Heh. Even now, I am restraining myself from naming names as possible candidates to receive my valuable insights as to their shortcomings.

Continue Reading »

Welcome back once again to our quadrennial column series examining the state-by-state polling in the electoral race. I should mention I've gotten one question from many folks about this series: "When will the next one be?" The answer is "When I get around to doing one," which is not, admittedly, very informative. Unlike my other two column series (one of which is weekly, the other monthly), the Electoral Math columns are on what I'd call an "increasing frequency" schedule. This far out, expect one about every three or four weeks. As we get closer, and as the state-level polling activity increases, we'll start doing them more often, until (just before the election) we'll probably have one every week. The first column in our 2012 series ran on June 25, and I'm going to start listing an archive of all these columns at the bottom, in the data section, so you can go back and read what came before.

OK, enough of that. For this installment of the series, we've got even more charts and graphics! Woo hoo! The first of these is a fairly blunt assessment of the state of the race. It adds all states for each candidate, no matter how solid they are, and puts all the data into a single chart, which also (unlike the breakdown charts) shows the tied states where the polling is exactly even. How to read this chart: Romney starts from the top (in red), Obama starts from the bottom (in blue). Ties are any white gap in between the two. If the blue section is above the green line, Obama has the advantage. If the red section is below the green line, Romney has the edge. The scale (which really is only accurate for Obama, sorry about that) is in percent of the total Electoral College. Here's the current "all in one" chart:

Continue Reading »

Despite what you may think from that title, this article has nothing to do with Mitt Romney. Or, at least, not directly.

For the past two days, Democrats fought in the Senate to pass the "Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections Act," otherwise known as the DISCLOSE Act. Today, they failed to break a Republican filibuster attempt, and while a majority of 53 senators voted for it, 45 voted against it -- including 14 Republicans who had previously voted for it the last time the bill came before the Senate.

The DISCLOSE Act would force political donors of $10,000 or more to (as the name suggests) disclose their political expenditures publicly. This should not be a partisan bill -- it applies equally to unions, corporations, and individuals. It would not change any campaign finance laws (who is allowed to give what to whom) -- it would merely shine some disinfecting sunlight on the process.

Democrats in the Senate, led by folks such as Sheldon Whitehouse, Al Franken, and Carl Levin (as well as plenty of others), held a late-night vigil last night to force a vote. Today, they held a second vote. Both times, Republicans killed the legislation on party lines.

Continue Reading »

The team of people working diligently to re-elect Barack Obama should really, right about now, be sending a big "thank you" note to none other than Karl Rove -- for providing them the playbook they are now using to maximum effect on Mitt Romney. Maybe Rove left a copy of it lying around, when the Dubya administration was packing up its things to exit the White House, who knows?

In pre-Rovian times in American politics, election strategy went something like this: Find the major weaknesses in your opponent. Exploit those weaknesses by informing the public what a serious lack each weakness is. Build on attacking the opposition candidate's weaknesses, until you eventually undermine even their strongest points in the public's eye.

Karl Rove, however, stood all that on its head, to brilliant effect. The re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 was the most successful example of this new way of thinking: Find out what your opponent thinks are his strengths. Directly, indirectly, and through innuendo, launch a full-scale attack on his perceived strongest point. When you've obliterated the opponent's main rationale for running, then there'll be plenty of time later on to take on the minor stuff -- the opponent's weaknesses. By destroying the strongest part of their campaign first, you define them to the public before they get a chance to define themselves -- thereby making it impossible for your opponent to create his own "first impression" with the voters. The first impression that they'll get is "the main reason he says he is running is based on a lie," and that's the one that will stick in their minds.

To put this another way, Mitt Romney is finding out what it's like to be John Kerry. The two, after all, have a lot in common -- a political career in Massachusetts, lots of money, and a serious deficit of charisma. Terms such as "Bain-boating" and "Swissboating" are starting to be used to describe the similarities between Romney's current position and the infamous "swift boat" ads of 2004.

Continue Reading »

To fully appreciate that subtitle, you really have to read it in your best impression of The Simpsons character "Comic Book Guy." I'm just sayin'....

The phrase refers to a very in-depth article by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, who gives us (happy Friday the 13th, by the way) thirteen reasons why this is the "worst Congress ever." It is an excellent article which I highly recommend, and I'm not just saying that because I am (admittedly) a sucker for articles with lots of graphs in them.

Continue Reading »