Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign is methodically building a political firewall across the South in hopes of effectively locking up the Democratic nomination in March regardless of any early setbacks in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. … Mrs. Clinton’s Southern strategy shows in sharp relief the imprint […] Read more »
What have Bush, Clinton learned from voters’ attraction to the outsiders?
At the beginning of this year, the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania sponsored a focus group in the Denver suburbs composed of a dozen adults — Republicans, Democrats and independents. Looking back almost nine months later, the two-hour discussion proved to be a prescient guide to […] Read more »
As Trump and Sanders rise, the two major parties fall
Does the 2016 presidential campaign seem chaotic? For good or ill, that’s because it is. The rise of Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left is proof that the country’s two major political parties have lost their grip on the nominating process. They can still provide […] Read more »
The Populist Revolt Against Brain-Dead Politics
… While there are 22 presidential candidates — 23 if Biden runs — most of them are human tape recorders. On the top 25 or 30 issues, each has memorized a paragraph or two; mention the issue and the candidates push the “play” button in their heads. Almost word-for-word each […] Read more »
How Iowa’s premier pollster sees the 2016 race shaking out
The release of new Iowa poll numbers by the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics is one of the few stop-what-you-are-doing-and-see-what-they-say moments left in politics. The woman behind the poll, which gets Iowa right every time, is Ann Selzer. After the new Register numbers came out Saturday night, I reached […] Read more »
Is There Room For Joe Biden In This Race?
Will Joe run? That’s Vice President Joe Biden, of course, and that’s been the topic in Washington this week as he’s publicly flirted with the idea. If Mr. Biden decides to run, the most difficult task for him may come in cobbling together a coalition capable of challenging Democratic front-runner […] Read more »