No image available
/ 21 October 2008
There is an ugliness and menace voiced at John McCain’s rallies that he doesn’t just tolerate but encourages, writes Michael Tomasky.
No image available
/ 20 October 2008
Republicans have race-baited in one form or other in most of our presidential contests since Richard Nixon’s time.
No image available
/ 29 September 2008
The financial crisis ended the Palin circus but the Democratic presidential candidate must buck up
his ideas to exploit McCain’s weak point.
So, bloodied and at least partially bowed, Barack Obama is finally the putative Democratic nominee.
So, round one of the 2008 foreign policy debate goes to … Barack Obama? Improbable as it seems, in the first direct rhetorical showdown of the general election campaign — over a question, foreign policy "toughness", that’s been a perceived Democratic weakness since Vietnam — it was the guy with the thin foreign policy resumé.
The Democratic presidential hopeful showed some steel this week in decisively breaking with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Well, he couldn’t have been much clearer than that. Barack Obama has thrown his old pastor to the dogs.
The maths is still the maths. But after Hillary Clinton’s substantial win over Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, the maths is now competing with the mo — that is, momentum. Even after Tuesday’s 10-point defeat, Obama still appears all but certain to finish the primary season with more popular votes and more pledged delegates than Clinton.
No image available
/ 15 February 2008
Of all the ways to describe last Tuesday night as a bad night for Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most dramatic is to point out this: the pundits on CNN and MSNBC started comparing her to Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani, of course, has become a national punch line for his decision to skip the first four Republican contests and put all his chips on Florida.
No image available
/ 18 January 2008
There is gleeful laughter coming from Michigan in the wake of Mitt Romney’s victory in that state’s primary — some of it emanating from the Romney camp. The win was crucial for him — if he’d lost his third straight contest he’d have been offering his withdrawal speech. So he lives to fight another day. But the loudest chuckles are coming from Democrats.
No image available
/ 31 October 2007
I have interviewed Hillary Clinton a handful of times since our initial meeting in 2000, during her first Senate race, when I must have seen her give 50 to 100 speeches en route to her thrashing of Republican opponent Rick Lazio. She is a much more fluid politician today than she was in 1999, certainly. But she is still not known as an especially expansive interview subject, writes Michael Tomasky.