Can the Clinton campaign and the GOP continue to insinuate that Obama is a Muslim, while simultaneously painting the former minister of his church as anti-American for his belief — shared with many pastors on the far right of the conservative movement, but relatively rare in the canons of traditional Protestant thought — that God [...]

It’s hard to see how the results last night aren’t a unmitigated disaster for the Democratic Party. Having previously lost eight hundred primaries in a row, there’s no way that Hillary Clinton can win the nomination. Having won Ohio and Texas last night, there’s no way that she can plausibly drop out of the race.
Given [...]

Terry McAuliffe is on my television screen, going on about how Ohio and Pennsylvania, but not Missouri or Wisconsin or Virginia or Colorado or Iowa or Minnesota or Washington, are critically important swing states in the fall. Also, caucuses are unfair because every vote should count, but superdelegates are fair because the rules say so. [...]

Airing a fearmongering commercial in which a sleeping child wears pajamas that say “Good Night”.

Ron Brownstein has an article in the National Journal on the changing demographics of the Democratic Party, namely that we are “growing younger, more affluent, more liberal, and more heavily tilted toward women, Latinos, and African-Americans”.
Brownstein notes that:
this year’s changes have accelerated a clear movement away from key elements of the historic New Deal [...]

I like Hillary Clinton, and once her presidential ambitions are put to rest, I think she’ll go on to make a superb majority leader. If she wants to, she can be the next Ted Kennedy, a lion of the Democratic Party with a national voice and an undisputed mastery of the Senate. There’s nothing but [...]

The answer appears to be no.
As a reward for winning every single precinct in Dane County, and for winning big in all the neighboring counties as well, Barack Obama will win five delegates from the 2nd CD, while Clinton will win three.
Unfortunately, unless things change, his actual advantage at the convention will be only a [...]

Barack Obama won Wisconsin 58% to 41%, but it’s more fun to look at the local results. He won Dane County 67% to 31%, and he won the city of Madison 71% to 28%.
There are 188 wards reporting in Dane County (*). Barack Obama won all 188 of them.
My own ward 99 is [...]

I’ve mentioned many times that, although I prefer Obama, I like both of our candidates. I like Senator Clinton, and I think she has the ability and the potential to be a very good president. But this is where I get off the train:
Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a [...]

Brad Vogel is growing (understandably) weary of the mockery that McCain has endured for his quip about staying in Iraq for a hundred years:
McCain’s explication of the statement is anything but off the wall - it demonstrates a better understanding of U.S. military and global history, as well as Middle East politics, than I’ve seen [...]

Can twenty thousand Madison residents stand patiently outside in 8° weather for an hour and a half, in order to get into a packed-to-the-rafters Kohl Center, with people sitting in the aisles, and on the stairs, and in a huge overflow room? Yes we can.
After getting seated, can we wait patiently for another hour for [...]

Everyone seems to be assuming that Mike Huckabee is the presumptive nominee for Vice President, and that McCain needs to pick him to shore up his conservative base. It doesn’t seem so clear-cut to me, and putting Huckabee on the ticket is a pretty mixed bag:
1. Mike Huckabee isn’t ready for prime time. One can’t [...]

When you lose the delegate count (845-836), the popular vote (50.2% - 49.8%), and the number of states (14-8), it’s preposterous to send your spokesmen out to claim “victory”.
On a broader level, when I hear Hillary Clinton speak for herself, answering question after question in town hall meetings with detail and precision and intelligence, I [...]

John McCain usually does better than any other Republican in head-to-head match-ups against both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The polls have shown this repeatedly for many months, but I still have a hard time believing it. Is McCain really the GOP’s strongest general election candidate? To me he looks like the next Bob Dole, [...]

One of the under-noticed results from Iowa was that all three Democratic candidates received more votes than Mike Huckabee, the Republican winner. Almost as many people voted for Barack Obama as voted for all the Republicans put together.
And today, after two weeks of terrible press, Obama more than doubled Clinton’s total, and won more votes [...]