ChrisWeigant.com

Archive of Articles for May, 2011

From The Archives -- Candidate Speech Series: Joe Biden

[ Posted Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 – 12:00 UTC ]

[Program Note: While I'm on vacation, I thought it would be fun to jump back about four years here. Because the 2012 presidential campaign is not going to be very interesting on the Democratic side, we're going to take a look back at when it was a real race, last time around. For [...]

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From The Archives -- Candidate Speech Series: Chris Dodd

[ Posted Monday, May 30th, 2011 – 12:00 UTC ]

[Program Note: While I'm on vacation, I thought it would be fun to jump back about four years here. Because the 2012 presidential campaign is not going to be very interesting on the Democratic side, we're going to take a look back at when it was a real race, last time around. For [...]

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Obama Poll Watch -- May, 2011

[ Posted Thursday, May 26th, 2011 – 23:04 UTC ]

This month was the best month President Barack Obama has ever had in the polls, when measured as change over the previous month. If you count it one way (measured by absolute values) Obama's best month was technically the second month into his term -- when he was still enjoying his "honeymoon" period, and had 63.4 percent support from the public. But in terms of actually changing public opinion, May was indeed the best month Obama's had, by far.

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Program Note

[ Posted Thursday, May 26th, 2011 – 14:41 UTC ]

First off, there will be no column today, sorry. Even more drastic, after tomorrow's column, service is about to get very intermittent for the next month. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I'm about to travel to London, Dublin, and Paris to attend a wedding and deal with some other family issues and visits. The second is that almost immediately after returning, I will be flying off once again to attend Netroots Nation.

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Spinning Hochul's Special Election Win

[ Posted Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 – 16:39 UTC ]

Sometimes special elections are harbingers of things to come. And sometimes they are not. The tricky part is that nobody can tell the difference until long afterwards. Which certainly doesn't stop rampant speculation in the meantime. Last night, a Democrat pulled off a surprising upset in New York's 26th congressional district, in an election that was forced due to the resignation of a House member who got caught trolling the internet (with shirtless pictures, no less) for extramarital fun and games. What this signifies for the 2012 election is anyone's guess, at this point.

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A Son Of Erin

[ Posted Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 – 17:42 UTC ]

Barack Hussein Obama is not exactly the first name that springs to mind when the average person thinks of American politicians with Irish roots, to say the least. But Obama does indeed have Irish ancestry, and he certainly played this up in his recent visit to the Emerald Isle. Today, we are going to print the full text of Obama's address to an ecstatic Dublin crowd.

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Republican Field Shaping Up

[ Posted Monday, May 23rd, 2011 – 16:34 UTC ]

With all this frantic jumping in and out of the race, I thought it was time to take another look at the Republican field to see how it is shaping up. At this point, there are only a few holdouts left on the sidelines, as most of the bigwigs (and some decidedly "smallwigs") have made their intentions known.

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Friday Talking Points [168] -- Zombie Attack!

[ Posted Friday, May 20th, 2011 – 16:46 UTC ]

A word here about timing is necessary, I think. While the blog post is quite obviously meant as a semi-joke, wouldn't this have been more fun in, say, mid-October -- a few weeks before Hallowe'en? Instead of this week, with the "End of Days" prophesied for midafternoon this Saturday? I'm just saying....

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Media Gets Punked, Again

[ Posted Thursday, May 19th, 2011 – 16:24 UTC ]

In this year's version of the "Balloon Boy" fake news story, it was revealed today that the "Botox Mommy" story was a complete fabrication. In other words, those stalwart "journalists" -- busily gatekeeping their little hearts out to keep the mainstream media so very, very far above the blogosphere when it comes to fact-checking -- once again got punked. Not only did they get punked, but it actually cost them at least ten grand in the process.

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The Ryan Budget Acid Test

[ Posted Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 – 15:41 UTC ]

It's rare for me to have a moment of pity for someone like Newt Gingrich, but I have to admit I'm feeling a little sorry for the guy this week. But before we delve into Newt's campaign problems in greater detail, it seems to me that most pundits are missing a big underlying new reality in the Republican Party. The focus has all been on Newt himself, what he said, and the subsequent ire directed at him by prominent Righties. But after the dust settles on the incident itself, people are going to notice the bigger fact this fracas has illuminated: Republicans are doubling down on Paul Ryan's budget rather than backing away from it, to the point where it has now become the acid test for Republicans in 2012. Which should be good news for Democrats.

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