As we discussed last week, the Democratic Party’s presidential field in 2016 hinges greatly on the decision of one person: Hillary Clinton. The Republican Party’s early primary picture is much more complicated, and the top-tier contenders are grouped much closer together at the starting gate.
As the 2012 election fades into the history books, we begin our first look at the 2014 contests for Senate, House and Governor. Let’s start with the Senate, which will be the site of an intense battle for control once again. Before looking ahead at the Republicans’ prospects to gain the six seats they need to win control of the Senate, it is first important -- though for Republicans, painful -- to look back at the past two Senate cycles.
It’s pretty obvious who turned in a stronger performance in the first presidential debate last night. And it certainly wasn’t the incumbent. This may have been Mitt Romney’s best debate ever, and it almost certainly was Barack Obama’s worst. The question is, will it matter and, if so, how much will it matter?
Whenever the Library of America -- the publisher that releases those elegant volumes with white, cursive writing on black covers -- comes up with its next book of classic political oratory, we’ve got a pretty good idea of two speeches that won’t be included.
While no one enjoys dissecting the presidential swing states more than we do, we also recognize that swings in the states are oftentimes uniform -- as in, changes in the national polls will trickle down to the states.
And then there were five.
After starting out with more than 20 names a few months ago, we can now count our list of Mitt Romney's vice-presidential possibilities on one hand.
In the beginning, there was the Etch A Sketch.
Some analysts have been making the case that 2012 is going to turn decisively one way or the other — perhaps evolving into a 2008-style margin for Democrats or Republicans.
The London Olympics isn't the only venue for world-class sport this year. Political gold is waiting to be won in November, and the only way to grab the top U.S.A. medal is to master Electoral College math. It is both deceptively easy and maddeningly complex. A candidate has to accumulate 270 votes in a tiny universe of 538, but those 538 will be generated by 130 million votes cast in 51 separate entities. A game that looks like checkers is really multi-dimensional chess.
Three of the four candidates for the Republican presidential nomination -- Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul -- might soon agree with T.S. Eliot: for them, April may indeed be “the cruelest month.”
