In the ArenaUncategorized
I’ve got to dispute Karen on the importance of money in politics. I think that it’s less important than it’s been in recent campaign cycles for several reasons. I mean, why do politicians feel compelled to raise gazillions? To buy television advertising, mostly negative. It’s just a gut feeling, but I suspect the public is increasingly …
Some of the thoughtful commenters to my earlier posting about the Kerry donors rushing to Obama have asked for a further discussion about the role of money in the 2008 presidential race, and why we in the media cover it so closely. The simple fact is, it matters more than it ever has, for reasons–mostly, a fast and brutal calendar–that …
By winning the Bob Farmer Primary and scooping up other Kerry donors, Obama is putting a hurt on the competition as much as he’s helping himself. As Chris Cillizza noted on The Fix, Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd were supposed to reap fundraising benefits from Kerry’s decision not to run. No doubt they still will. But Obama isn’t …
In a presidential campaign where the table stakes are expected to be $100 million or higher, John Kerry’s decision not to run in 2008 is turning out to be a financial windfall for Barack Obama. I’m told he is picking up some of the biggest names from Kerry’s massive fundraising operation. Just a few who have flocked to the junior Senator …
Ana Marie Cox, Time’s on-scene reporter at the Scooter Libby trial, just emailed this dispatch:
David Addington is probably not much fun to work with. To judge by his performance in the witness box today and yesterday, he is a gruff and blunt man — and, like all good Bush soldiers, loath to share a shred of information beyond what is
…
In the ArenaUncategorized
A number of readers raised the astute point that Hillary Clinton’s failure to question Gen. David Petraeus at the Armed Services Committee was less obnoxious than some of the questions asked by other members of the panel, namely Senators McCain and Lieberman.
I agree, especially about Lieberman, whose line of questioning seems to have …
My former colleague John Dickerson doesn’t recall things quite the way Fleischer testified. The discrepancy is good news and bad for the Libby defense.
In the ArenaUncategorized
I’m so pleased to have received the coveted wanker of the day award from Atrios, whose civility knows no bounds. But slightly disappointed in the Matt Yglesias post that Atrios links to, since Yglesias does have a reputation for substance over slime.
And then there’s this from a reader:
Exactly what “little people” does Broder talk to?
…
In the ArenaUncategorized
I know it’s become common practice to slag David Broder in the blogosphere. But let me say this in David’s defense: he is not an armchair pundit. Even now, at the age of 236, or thereabouts, he goes out and really does his homework, riding the buses and hitting the living rooms of voters in the crucial states. If you’ve ever wondered why …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Seems to me that thisis a clever response to Bush’s attempt to provoke a war with Iran.
The brand-new Hillary Clinton presidential campaign already feels like a White House operation. Even in a state where voters pride themselves on a famously blase attitude toward people who think they want to be President, she counts as a celebrity. On Saturday, the campaign booked a school gymnasium that could fit 1,800 for her first big …
Protesters were waterboarding someone near Charlie Palmer’s. Really. They were pretending to interrogate a guy in an orange jumpsuit, but the rest wasn’t for pretend. They poured water through a cloth held over on his face as he lay on a steep incline, his head near the ground. He was screaming.
About five or six people were taking …
This post is for the political horserace fans out there in Swampland. Everyone else may want to move on to the next post:
After a day following Mitt Romney through Waterloo and Dubuque (and getting a really interesting tour of an ethanol plant–wish I could have brought my 10-year-old son), I’m beginning to wonder whether this first …
