Miami Here’s the youtube link to my questioning of McCain about Ahmadinejad yesterday. Once again, before a Latino audience today in Miami, McCain used his standard line about Ahmadinejad as the leader of Iran and added, “What are they [Obama and Ahmadinejad] going to talk about, the destruction of Israel?” That got a laugh. I’ll [...]
What is the most important factor to winning a presidential campaign? More popular issue positions? A better message? A better stump performance? More discipline and endurance? More money? A greater ability to disqualify your opponent? The conventional wisdom in Washington D.C. has long been that George Bush beat John Kerry in 2004 not by winning, [...]
1. The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney argues that micro-problems can add up to macro-losses in national political campaigns. He lists eight relatively small factors that added up to big worries for Hillary Clinton. In no particular order: the timing of the Edwards endorsement; Michigan and Florida; Bill Clinton; The Drudge Report; the tipping scandal; [...]
One of the most controversial acts of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Bush Administration has been its refusal last December to grant California permission to implement rules aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 30% over the next eight years. That EPA action–sought by the auto industry–also prevented other states from following California’s lead [...]
In today’s Washington Post, Hillary Clinton talks with Lois Romano about sexism on the campaign trail and in the media: In an interview after church services in Bowling Green on Sunday, Clinton for the first time addressed what women have been talking about for months, what she refers to as the “sexist” treatment she has [...]
Or rather, if a presidential candidate, or this case spouse, holds an event without press, did it happen? It’s bad enough being late – like the two hours late Edwards usually ran – but somehow it’s even worse being early. People who show up on time are disappointed to have missed the event. And press [...]
Savannah, Ga. At a press conference here, I just asked John McCain about why he keeps talking about Obama’s alleged willingness to talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has no power over Iranian foreign policy, rather than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who does. He said that Ahmadinejad is the guy who represents Iran in international forums [...]
Money is a dominant theme in much of today’s coverage of John McCain’s campaign. First, there’s the continuing storyline about staffers and advisers to the McCain campaign having to resign because of their ties to lobbying firms or outside political groups. The latest casualty, deemed the biggest story of the morning by the Washington Post, [...]
…as Bob Dole once said to George H.W. Bush, memorably, before getting whipped in the 1988 New Hampshire primary. Relevance? Oh, sorry: It seems the only way the neoconservatives are able to attack Barack Obama’s foreign policy proposals is to exaggerate and misrepresent them. The evidence? On Friday, I promised to check into whether Obama [...]
• “The mag’s publisher Carey Exton says he thinks many tattooed people are for Clinton because she ‘tells it like it is.’” [Philly] • “In the seemingly counterfactual, hateful sentence ‘Obama IS a muslim and he IS a racist and this is a fulfillment of the 911 threat that was just the beginning,’ the slashless [...]
