Michael Scherer

Michael Scherer is the White House correspondent for TIME. He previously worked for Salon.com, Mother Jones, and the Daily Hampshire Gazette. A native of San Francisco, he graduated from U.C. Santa Cruz and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

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Rick Santorum Wants to Fight ‘The Dangers Of Contraception’

Candidates often say things when polling in the single digits that come back to haunt them when they start leading the polls. Last October, Rick Santorum gave an interview with an Evangelical blog called Caffeinated Thoughts, in which he said contraception is “not okay,” and that this would be a public policy issue he would [...]

The United States Of America Still Doesn’t Know How To Vote

You want an argument against American exceptionalism? Take a look at how the nation votes. According to a new report by the Pew Center for The States, the U.S. voting system remains “plagued with errors and inefficiencies that waste taxpayer dollars, undermine voter confidence, and fuel partisan disputes over the integrity of our elections.” What [...]

Obama Flip-Flops on Super PACs. Now He Is Consistent.

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images

Reversals in politics are typically cast as character blights. So for politicians preparing major flip-flops, the best defense is often a character-defining offense. 

Obama’s Prospects in Swing States Deteriorated in 2011

Most Americans won’t have the power to choose the next President because they live in states so tilted towards one end of the political spectrum that the election outcome, barring calamity, is not in doubt. Mitt Romney doesn’t really have a chance in California. Barack Obama is not going to win Texas. What matters instead [...]

Why Donald Trump’s Endorsement Was a Win for Mitt Romney

Gerald Herbert / AP

A couple of hours after Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney for President, the Obama campaign sent out an “In case you missed it” tweet with a link, not to a new DNC attack ad mocking the endorsement, but to video published by the Associated Press documenting the event. The message was clear: Any way you [...]

Class War 2012: Why Both Parties Are Flying the Anti-Wall Street Banner

Susan Walsh / AP

Newt Gingrich ended his campaign against Mitt Romney in Florida with the same message strategy that Romney’s senior advisers had used in another Republican primary two years earlier: Attack Goldman Sachs. There was a good reason.

The Obama Campaign’s Humorous Dog Whistle

The best attacks are cast with humor. That’s why it worked when John McCain’s 2008 campaign used Paris Hilton against Barack Obama, and why the windsurfing spot that George W. Bush used against John Kerry in 2004 got so much traction. The humor takes the edge off and builds a bond between the viewer and [...]

The Most Important Number Update: Not Quite Good News For Obama, Yet

A couple of weeks back, I explained the historic importance of economic growth, and more particularly disposable income growth, in predicting presidential election results. When incomes are rising, incumbent parties tend to get reelected. When they are static or falling, incumbent parties tend to lose. On Monday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released December’s income [...]

What You Missed While Not Watching the Last Florida GOP Debate

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

“Only one thing is certain,” CNN’s opening montage declares. “Expect the unexpected.” That hits the spot. We need false hope at a time like this. It’s the 19th Republican debate. Everything that can happen probably already has. The screen flickers with a Romney video clip from the campaign trail. “We’re not choosing a talk show host,” he says. This will need to be fact checked.

The Numbers and Politics of Barack Obama’s New Buffett Rule

Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images

The moral case President Obama has made to explain his “Buffet Rule” proposal is pretty simple. “Let me tell you something,” Obama told a crowd in Iowa on Wednesday, “asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary, that’s just common sense.” But the policy rationale behind that statement is far less [...]