The House Republicans' "Pledge To America" document, released last week with much ballyhoo, appears to not be quite the rallying cry they had hoped for. It seems that very few Republican candidates for office are embracing the Pledge as a ready-made campaign platform, or as some sort of blunt instrument to wield against Democrats. But none of this may matter, depending on how the media eventually decides to tell this story. Because the myth is always stronger than the reality, and the media simply loves simplistic storylines. Meaning the Pledge may indeed eventually be seen as the second coming of the "Contract With America." Which is, ultimately, even more ironic.

This is due to the fact that it is still highly debatable how much influence Newt Gingrich's Contract With America actually had on the 1994 midterm election. Conventional wisdom has largely settled on the storyline that the Contract was the main reason Republicans did so well in '94, but the evidence actually points to it being a very minor influence, at best. Most American voters in 1994, it turns out, had never heard of the Contract when they voted. 1994 was a Republican "wave" election, but it likely would have been just as big (or almost as big) a wave even if Newt had never come up with his gimmick. But it's easier and more comfortable for most political reporters to stick with the agreed-upon myth: the Contract was what swept Newt's crowd into Washington.

Continue Reading »

Obama holds his ground

President Obama got a bit of a bounce in his monthly poll average in September, but the news is of a decidedly mixed variety. There is good news and bad in the numbers from last month for Obama, and it's looking like there won't be much of a pre-election change in his numbers which could help congressional Democrats out on the midterm campaign trail.

But we'll get to the good and the bad numbers in a bit, and then at the end take another look at which president's approval ratings are the closest match to Obama's, at this point in their presidencies. First, though, let's start off with this month's Obama chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

Continue Reading »

I will begin today's column by drying a tear as we all wish Rahm Emanuel a fond farewell. Actually, I am lying. I am drying no tears for Rahm because I am crying no tears at his leaving. Chicago's loss is the White House's gain, as far as I'm concerned.

A quick review is in order here, and then we'll announce a contest winner from a long-ago-and-probably-forgotten contest in a previous Friday Talking Points article, where I opened the field of betting as to when, exactly, Rahm Emanuel would be leaving.

Way back in FTP [110], we were already more than ready to see Rahm make an exit. This was in response to the news breaking about Rahm comparing Lefties to "[sexual expletive deleted] [slur on developmentally-challenged people deleted]," as you'll all remember. Back then, I wrote (while awarding the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to Rahm):

Continue Reading »

Since I haven't done one of these in a while, let me explain that title for our more recent readers. Every so often (on Thursdays in particular, for some reason), I have to clear my metaphorical desk (my actual desk will remain just as messy as always, fear not) of a bunch of minor stories which have cropped up. While this often appears as nothing more than laziness on my part, these articles usually wind up being more time-consuming, due to the amount of links.

But all of that is neither here nor there. The style of journalism known as "three-dot" was pioneered and perfected by the late great Herb Caen of San Francisco newspaper fame, and consists of stringing together many disparate items conjoined with a liberal usage of ellipses, or those three little dots which indicate "sentence trails off here" or, in journalism, sometimes "there's a bunch of stuff I cut out from this excerpt here." Three-dot journalism relies on the first, and more common, usage... to trail off... into vagueness... or even innuendo....

Continue Reading »

It is time once again to take a look at the state of the midterm election races in the Senate. It has been over a month since we last examined the state of these races, and there has been some movement in both directions. Of course, the most dramatic of these has been in Delaware, but other states have been moving around as well (although admittedly, not as drastically).

I should also mention that there appears to be a bit of movement over on the House side of things, at least from what you hear through the filter of politicians and the mainstream media. Republicans, once confident in their bragging about how they were definitely going to wrest control of the House from the evil clutches of Nancy Pelosi, are now not sounding quite as confident as they sounded a few weeks ago. The media is slowly picking up on the storyline "Have Republicans peaked too early?" or perhaps "Democrats see rise in fortunes." Whether all of this means anything is impossible to know (well, I should say: impossible without subjecting 435 House districts to a microscopic analysis, which is beyond our abilities given our resources and schedule).

Continue Reading »

Democrats in the House of Representatives, most pundits agree, are going to pay a price for the public's perception that Democrats in Congress can't get much of anything done. People are frustrated by the lack of action from Congress on all sorts of issues, this line of thinking goes, and will vent their frustration on Election Day by voting a significant number of Democrats out of the House.

This, to me, is ironic. Because the House has actually done a fairly good job over the past two years. So it's ironic that they're going to pay the price for the Senate's inability to act.

Continue Reading »

First, I have to warn folks that I'm just kind of "phoning it in" today, as I'm still recovering from being sick over the weekend. Consider yourselves warned.

Frank Zappa was recently honored by the city of Baltimore (where he spent the first years of his life) by the erection of a bust in front of a public library. And, yes, I like to think Frank is up there somewhere smiling down on my usage of the words "erection" and "bust" in that sentence. More on that in a bit.

Continue Reading »

The White House has been in the news this past week, mostly for who will be leaving it soon. One is tempted to insert the old "will the last to leave please turn out the lights" joke here; but one will not, because one holds oneself to a higher standard than that. Ahem.

The first announcement was that Larry Summers will be leaving after the elections, and returning to the ivory tower from whence he came. At first, this seemed to be good news for progressive Democrats, since they've never been big fans of Obama's economic team in the first place. Budget director Peter Orszag and economic guru Christina Romer have already departed, and now Larry Summers will be the next to go. Rumors swirl around Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's exit as well, although they've (so far) been unconfirmed rumors. What's not to love for Lefties, right?

Continue Reading »

American schoolchildren are not the best in the world when it comes to doing math. This is a fact which is proven over and over again by comparing test scores here with those achieved in other countries. The long-term problem with this, though, is one few people ever think about -- those kids grow up to be American adults, who still apparently can't do basic math. And, not to put too fine a point on it, this includes politicians. Either politicians can't do math themselves, or they cynically know that their constituents can't do math and exploit this when making promises to the public.

On both sides of the aisle, this leads eventually to the line of thinking which Vice President Dick Cheney was bold enough to put into words: "Deficits don't matter." If you're a Republican, then you drink the "supply-side" Kool-Aid, and convince yourself that down is up and it'll all magically take care of itself (forty years of proof to the contrary). If you're a Democrat, every time you actually try to solve the problem you are attacked so viciously for doing so that big changes never are deemed "politically possible." Or, from either side, you just don't care about handing a crippling debt to the next generation of Americans, because it is so much fun to put all the ever-popular "bread and circuses" stuff on the First Bank of China credit card.

Continue Reading »

The upcoming midterm elections are likely to change the party numbers in both houses of Congress, but this may happen faster than most people now realize in the Senate. Because while most incoming members of the new Congress will get sworn in on the traditional timeline (i.e., next January), there are a handful of Senate races whose victors will be sworn in immediately after the election. This could alter the balance of power between the parties for the "lame duck" session -- the period between the election and next January. Which could have consequences for any legislation being put off until then (such as just happened with the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal, and the DREAM Act).

The reason a few senators will be sworn in early is that the races are "special" elections, held to replace vacancies which are now being filled by temporary, appointed senators. In other words, while most Senate elections are happening on their usual six-year cycle, these races are not in synch with this cycle, due to unexpected vacancies.

Continue Reading »