[ Posted Wednesday, July 1st, 2015 – 16:43 UTC ]
June was a busy month for President Obama's job approval ratings. Lots of things were happening during the month, good and bad, and Obama's approval rating swung through an initial steep decline, but then at the end of the month experienced a spectacular recovery. What July will bring is anyone's guess, in other words. Obama wound up down for the month when the monthly averages were calculated, but they could very easily go right back up again in July. Here's our updated chart.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, June 26th, 2015 – 16:49 UTC ]
For political wonks, June is not the month to celebrate grads, dads, and brides, but instead the biggest SCOTUS month of the year. SCOTUS (for the un-wonky) stands for "Supreme Court Of The United States." June marks the end of the Supreme Court's yearly session, and it is when all the biggest decisions get handed down.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Thursday, June 25th, 2015 – 14:46 UTC ]
President Obama has been having a pretty good week. Actually, to be perfectly accurate, President Obama's legacy has been having a pretty good week. At the end of all presidencies, everything they've achieved and failed to achieve is lumped together under this term, so that historians can debate about the president's legacy for decades to come. It's a normal part of the American cycle. This week, Obama won a preliminary victory in Congress and he just won a resounding court confirmation of his biggest legislative victory to date, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (which has become the eponymous "Obamacare"). Next week, the Supreme Court is expected to declare marriage equality for all, in every state. As I said, a pretty good week all around, legacy-wise.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015 – 17:04 UTC ]
Large corporations are getting more involved in politics. Whether that is seen as a good thing or a bad thing depends upon the political issue involved and the side the corporation takes (and, of course, the side you're personally on). Conservatives cheer when corporations take a stand on abortion, liberals cheer when a corporation stands up for gay or civil rights. But it does seem like we're entering into a new era of corporate political behavior, or (since they're apparently people now) perhaps "corporate citizenship" might be a better term.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, June 19th, 2015 – 17:30 UTC ]
It's been a rollercoaster week in the political world, beginning with Hillary Clinton shifting the gears of her campaign by holding her first big rally, which was immediately followed by the man we're going to call "Jeb! Bush!" finally officially announcing his own candidacy.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Wednesday, June 10th, 2015 – 16:06 UTC ]
Perry is the tenth Republican to throw his hat in the 2016 ring, joining Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Rick Santorum. There are at least five other Republicans who will also likely make a run for their party's nomination, but they have yet to formally announced their candidacies.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Monday, June 8th, 2015 – 16:01 UTC ]
For political wonks, June is not the month to celebrate grads, dads, and brides, but instead the biggest SCOTUS month of the year. SCOTUS (for the un-wonky) stands for "Supreme Court Of The United States." June marks the end of the Supreme Court's yearly session, and it is when all the biggest decisions get handed down.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, June 5th, 2015 – 21:05 UTC ]
We really wanted to use a different subtitle for today's column, one we are actually astonished that more news organizations didn't go with, given Rick Perry's announcement of his second run for the White House. That headline, of course, would have been: "Oops, He Did It Again!" Now, we do realize that the Britney Spears album is actually 15 years old (how time flies, eh?), but even so, with "Oops" being so central to defining Perry on the national stage, it certainly seemed like an obvious choice.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015 – 18:03 UTC ]
We continue our running series of taking a serious look at all the announced candidates for president with two new entries this week, one from each side of the aisle. Republican Lindsey Graham made his formal announcement earlier in the week, and today Democrat Lincoln Chafee is also set to announce his candidacy.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, May 29th, 2015 – 17:06 UTC ]
We're going to begin today with a rather loaded question. How much attention do you think the media should be paying towards a presidential nominee who is right now getting 13 to 15 percent support in public opinion polls of their party's voters?
Read Complete Article »
