[ Posted Friday, October 16th, 2015 – 18:45 UTC ]
After two seemingly-endless Republican debates, this week the Democratic candidates for president finally got their turn to face off against each other on national television. While the audience was smaller (since Donald Trump was not on stage), it was still a lot bigger than most political debates in the past -- over 15 million people watched on CNN, and a further million livestreamed it. This is up from the usual audience of 2-to-5 million, it should be noted, from years past.
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 13th, 2015 – 22:32 UTC ]
Overall, I would agree with some of the closing statements -- this was a much more substantial debate than anything the Republicans have yet put on. No insults were hurled, no bigoted statements were made, on the whole it was a lot more sober than watching Trump take on all comers. However, having said that, tonight's debate was a lot more spirited and feisty than I expected. There weren't direct face-to-face confrontations, but a lot of differences were clearly outlined between the candidates' stances.
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[ Posted Friday, October 9th, 2015 – 17:19 UTC ]
Two weeks ago, we wrote one of these columns and snarkily subtitled it: "New Job Vacancy: Chief GOP Cat-Herder." This week, we really should have gone with: "Babysitting Experience STRONGLY PREFERRED," but Salon had already used it (we'll explain that joke in a bit, promise). Instead, we chose to feature the word which appeared in too many headlines to accurately count over the past two days, because describing what is going on in the Republican Party these days is pretty downright hard to do without using the word "chaos" in some fashion or another.
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[ Posted Wednesday, October 7th, 2015 – 17:08 UTC ]
Next Tuesday, we will finally get some degree of parity in the world of televised presidential debates, as the Democrats come together for the first time to make their case to the American public. The Republicans have already held two debates and will hold their third later this month. The Democratic National Committee decided to restrict the number of debates held, which has left the field open to the Republicans for two months now. This decision has been hotly debated, mostly by Democrats not named "Hillary Clinton" (who make the case that the debate schedule was shortened to give Hillary an easier time of it). But whatever you think of the decision, we're finally about to see all the Democratic candidates on one stage.
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 6th, 2015 – 16:29 UTC ]
President Barack Obama had a pretty good month in the polls last month, as he saw his approval take a big step up and his disapproval take a tiny step down. Obama exited the summer doldrums earlier than usual this year, and chalked up a positive month all around. Let's take a look at the new chart.
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[ Posted Friday, October 2nd, 2015 – 17:43 UTC ]
Kevin McCarthy is not worthy. Of using the English language correctly, among other things. Amusingly, though, this will likely not stop him from becoming the next speaker of the House. And if his past is any prologue, hearing the speaker speak should provide all sorts of amusement for the rest of us. It may not be the return of the garbled George W. Bush era of mangled English, but it could be close.
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 30th, 2015 – 16:58 UTC ]
Bernie Sanders, as far as the media is concerned, is the Rodney Dangerfield of presidential candidates -- "he don't get no respect." Of the 23 candidates running for president in the two major parties, precisely four of them have ever shown even 20 percent support (in their polling averages from their base voters). Actually, to be completely accurate, five people have hit the 20 percent support level since the race began this year, but Joe Biden is not actually a candidate yet. The other four are Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders.
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[ Posted Friday, September 25th, 2015 – 15:03 UTC ]
Every so often, when preparing to write these weekly wrap-up columns, I wake up Friday morning and a political bombshell has happened which pretty much wipes out all the political news from the entire rest of the week. Obviously, today was one of those days, as we all learned this morning that Speaker of the House John Boehner will be a private citizen again by Hallowe'en. He'll step down not only from his speakership, but also from his House seat itself, more than a year before the end of his current term. So it looks like the Republicans are going to need a new cat-herder to (attempt to) lead them in the House.
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[ Posted Monday, September 21st, 2015 – 17:01 UTC ]
For the past few days, the presidential election has focused on religion -- in specific, the Islamic religion. This started with Donald Trump failing to challenge a questioner's assertion that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and then shifted to asking Republican candidates whether they could hypothetically support a Muslim to become America's president. This time it was Ben Carson who stumbled, not Trump. Other Republican presidential candidates have -- to their credit -- condemned Carson's remarks, most notably Ted Cruz (on constitutional grounds: "the Constitution specifies there shall be no religious test for public office and I am a constitutionalist") and Lindsey Graham (on historical grounds: "America is an idea, not owned by a particular religion"). Bobby Jindal tried to win the gotcha battle in his own unique way:
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[ Posted Monday, September 14th, 2015 – 18:02 UTC ]
The second debate of the Republican nomination race is fast approaching, so in preparation I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the entire GOP field once again. First, though, a word about the debates themselves.
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