This piece, today’s cover story in the New York Times Magazine, is long and complicated, and it may not even be right–vast global geo-strategic syntheses rarely are–but it does get you thinking…and what it got me thinking about was John McCain. You watch McCain talking about the world and it very quickly becomes apparent that [...]
Well, the John and Teddy wings may be going for Obama, but the Bobby clan seems to moving in a different direction. This statement from Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was just released by the Clinton campaign: “I respect Caroline and Teddy’s decision but I have made a different choice. While I admire Senator Obama greatly, I [...]
Last week, the political arm of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family released an online video voter guide to help Christians sort through the “pro-family” records of the presidential candidates. The guide offers largely negative appraisals of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mike Huckabee, and a far more glowing description of Mitt Romney. But not [...]
As Joe did, I spent the final two days before the South Carolina primary seeing the Clinton campaign up close–in my case, from the vantage point of Hillary Clinton’s press bus. The most enthusiastic response she received was at a community center run by Freedom Temple Ministries in Rock Hill. Over the years, I have [...]
We tend to make more of them than they really mean, but this strikes me as one that carries a lot of symbolism, especially given that famous Rose Garden handshake at Boys Nation in 1963.
Make no mistake: What happened in South Carolina today was a moral reprimand delivered to Bill and Hillary Clinton by a united Democratic Party–but especially by the African-American segment of that party. I chased the Clintons around South Carolina yesterday and the absence of black faces at their rallies was striking–eerie almost, the absence a [...]
McCain wants the Florida primary to be an election about national security, his best issue. But until Saturday, the contest was humming along as an election more about the economy, Mitt Romney’s best issue. So McCain went on the attack Saturday, lashing out at Romney by accusing him of having once wanted to set a [...]
Winning and losing primaries is not a clear-cut, black-and-white issue. A candidate can essentially win by coming in second as long as he defies expectations. Conversely, if a candidate is unable to attract enough of a key group of voters, he can be judged to lose a race even if his name is tops in [...]
Dominating the front page of South Carolina’s largest newspaper this morning is a prediction that turnout for today’s Democratic primary could break all records. Officials are expecting as many as 350,000 Democratic voters; in 2004, there were about 290,000. (By comparison, turnout for last Saturday’s Republican contest was 445,000, which marked a sharp 22% drop [...]
