One key factor in any election is the popularity, or unpopularity, of a president. An unpopular president can drag down his party and make life difficult for vulnerable incumbents in tough races. That can be especially true in midterms when fewer voters turn out. The ones who do show up […] Read more »
Crises Cascade and Converge, Testing Obama
… Rarely has a president been confronted with so many seemingly disparate foreign policy crises all at once — in Ukraine, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere — but making the current upheaval more complicated for Mr. Obama is the seemingly interlocking nature of them all. Developments in one area, […] Read more »
The limits on presidential leadership
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) demonstrated that he is certainly not qualified to chair the “intelligence” committee, by mindlessly repeating that “the president of the United States is the only person” who can stop Russian President Vladimir Putin from aggression several times during a brief interview with […] Read more »
100 days: Three bets being made on the midterms
In 100 days or so, Democrats and Republicans will know whether the bets they’re placing for the November midterm elections pay off — or don’t. … At stake is control of the Senate, where the Democratic majority is imperiled, and the political landscape Obama will have to negotiate during the […] Read more »
The Difference in the Senate Battleground: Economic Agenda for Working Women and Men
A new poll of the 12 states where control of the Senate is being contested, fielded by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Fund, shows that control of the Senate rests on a knife’s edge, but that Democrats’ have a powerful weapon in a […] Read more »
The Immigration Conflagration
Inflammatory as it’s been, the debate over unaccompanied Central American children crossing the U.S. border is only the warm-up for an approaching immigration confrontation with even greater stakes. Regardless of how Congress handles his request for more border resources, President Obama is moving toward a historic—and explosive—executive order that will […] Read more »