In the Arena

Delicious

Only possible word for this. Judith Regan, Bernie Kerik, Rupert Murdoch…and Rudy Giuliani. This would be, ahem, HUGE in the New York Post if the Post weren’t owned by RM. Can’t wait to see how the Daily News plays it. Oh, wait, here it is.

In the Arena

The Only Polls that Count…

Are on election day, or so I’ve heard. And the national polls are useless, at this point. And Iowa polls are notoriously unreliable, but this poll of the early states, Iowa and New Hampshire, but especially Iowa, from the relatively reputable CBS-NYTimes numbers crunchers is fascinating on two counts. The Democratic race is a three-way [...]

SwampCast: A Bold Prediction!

In this SwampCast, some thoughts on the field below the top of the ticket on the Republican side. Say hello to New Hampshire winner Ron Paul, everyone…

Re: How It’s Done AND Hillary and the Press

WARNING: This is inside baseball/horseracey. I think the planted questions story may be an example of the fragility of Clinton’s “aggressive” media strategy. While I — and maybe Iowans — do care about planted questions, the practice of suggesting a question or two is not necessarily a crime. If Clinton does sink to Bush-style “screening,” [...]

Hillary and the Press

Michael Crowley has a very interesting piece in The New Republic about how the Hillary Clinton campaign manages the media. The essence is here: Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a [...]

In the Arena

Edwards=Desperate

He may still win Iowa, but as Garance Franke-Ruta points out, this sort of demagogic nonsense is really dreadful.

Edwards’ New Ad

In it, he declares, as he does so often at campaign appearances: “When I’m president I’m going to say to members of Congress and members of my administration, including my cabinet: I’m glad that you have health care coverage and your family has health care coverage. But if you don’t pass universal health care by [...]

How It’s Done…

CNN talks to the student who asked Hillary Clinton a planted question. As scandals go, this isn’t much. But it is a telling glimpse of how campaigns actually work.:

News of the Weak: Can Republicans Escape the Legacy of the War?

Politico assesses the progress congressional Democrats have made in blocking funding for the war in Iraq and put forward this metric as measure of success: Since taking the majority, they have forced 40 votes on bills limiting President Bush’s war policy. Only one of those has passed both chambers, even though both are run by [...]

In the Arena

Are We Winning in Iraq?

We’ve seeing a fair amount of triumphalism from the usual suspects on the right about the situation on the ground in Iraq. Premature, I think–in part because of the limits of the bottom-up strategy. We may just be in the midst of a vast Iraqi exhale before the next phase of the civil war. That [...]