There’s a reason why President Barack Obama has chosen to put gun control at the top of his second-term agenda. No issue draws as bright a line between the Old America and the New America as the gun issue. It will keep his coalition mobilized – the New America coalition […] Read more »
Obama Averages 49% Approval in First Term
President Barack Obama averaged 49.1% job approval during his first term in office, among the lowest for post-World War II presidents. Only Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford had lower job approval averages. Obama’s first-term average is most similar to Bill Clinton’s. Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, and Dwight Eisenhower were the […] Read more »
Are We There Yet?
… The second inaugurals we remember bear witness to political realignment. The words of Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, in particular, testify to the closing of one era and the opening of another. In 1936 and 1984, Roosevelt and Reagan each won big. Their triumphs consolidated political transformations that had been […] Read more »
Republican strategists return to the dinner table, hungering for a way forward
If at first you don’t succeed . . . On inauguration night four years ago, pollster Frank Luntz organized a strategy session for leading Republicans at the Caucus Room, a steakhouse in downtown D.C. The widely reported dinner has become the creation myth of the Obama opposition, in which Luntz, former speaker […] Read more »
Obama’s Unwanted Legacy: The Renewed Influence of ‘Old-Fashioned Racism’
As he looks back on his first term, President Barack Obama can take satisfaction from a series of significant accomplishments. But according to a new analysis by a Brown University political scientist, his rise to power has also produced a less-welcome result: A renewed alignment between political preference and “old-fashioned […] Read more »
Political ads: Not as powerful as you (or politicians) think
In the weeks before the 2012 election, pundits debated the impact of President Obama’s team’s unorthodox advertising strategy and Mitt Romney’s side’s last-minute “ad bomb.” Now, with the election returns in, we can begin to assess just what the presidential candidates and their allies got for the hundreds of millions […] Read more »