Monthly Archives: November 2011

This was a pretty big story a little over ten years ago: In November, another right-wing wolf cloaked in family values sheepskin was unzipped to the American public. George Roche III resigned as president of conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan after … Continue reading →

The WSJ’s Gerald Seib, citing the most recent WSJ/NBC poll, tells us that that Democrats face a possibly dire enthusiasm gap heading in to the 2012 election. Jamelle Bouie addresses Seib’s argument: For comparison’s sake, the 2010 congressional elections saw an enthusiasm … Continue reading →

Sam Brownback and his staff finally cried uncle: “My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms. “I enjoyed speaking to the more than 100 students who participated in the Youth … Continue reading →

The big news from Washington this morning is that Barney Frank will not be running for reelection. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake points out that Frank is the ninth Democrat to retire from the House of Representatives without any intention of … Continue reading →

If you think state government should bully high schoolers for exercising their right to free speech, that it has a right to poke through the medical records of women who’ve had abortions, that there shouldn’t be a separation between church … Continue reading →

Check out this CNN poll from April: Add up the totals for the candidates who quit or never got in the race–Huckabee, Trump Palin, Daniels and Pawlenty–and you get 55%. Since then Perry, Cain and Huntsman have joined the race. … Continue reading →

For months political scientist and former Clinton official William Galston has been pushing the weird idea that the Obama campaign must choose between a strategy designed to win Ohio or a strategy designed to win Colorado. Nate Silver picked that … Continue reading →

Democrat Heidi Heitkamp is running for Senate in North Dakota. That may not sound like a big deal, but it is. Holding the seat of retiring Democrat Kent Conrad’s is crucial to maintaining or expending the current Democratic majority in … Continue reading →

From Twitter: That tweet expresses the conventional wisdom of smart political analysts and has held true since the advent of the modern presidential primary system in 1972. How Joe Lieberman polled nationally in July 2003 was meaningless compared to what … Continue reading →

The unemployment rate is not correlated with the results of presidential elections. Since FDR, in years where a sitting president was on the ballot and the yearly unemployment rate was 7.5% or higher, the incumbents–all Republicans–lost by 6 points (George … Continue reading →