The upcoming election is unique in that both current candidates have a record to run on. Not as a senator or governor, but as the U.S. President, each having served a term in the White House.
Four weeks after former President Donald Trump's conviction in a much-criticized Manhattan prosecution and a week before the first and earliest-ever scheduled post-primary presidential debate, it's a good time to look at how these two unusually elderly and oft-reviled candidates stand in the contest.
America is now almost $35 trillion in debt. That means every American owes $100,000.
First came Brexit, then came Trump -- and now it's happening again.
School's out for the summer, so now it is time to examine the state of our education system.
"The far right made big gains in European elections," reads the Associated Press headline on last week's European Parliament elections. Lest you wonder why you should dread gains by the "far right," the lead sentence of the article notes that the EU has "roots in the defeat of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy."
— We are making six Electoral College rating changes this week, all in favor of Republicans.
— However, we don’t really see a clear favorite in a presidential race with many confounding factors.
— We consider Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to all be must-wins for the Democrats. While one can hypothetically come up with paths to 270 electoral votes for Democrats without them, we don’t find those paths to be compelling.
— Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) remains a favorite in our ratings, but our shift of Pennsylvania to Toss-up in the presidential race prompts a concurrent change in his race, from Likely to Leans Democratic.
Americans still read George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," 75 years after it was first published on June 8, 1949.
Politicians in Washington have very short memories, so they repeat the same mistakes over and over.
"A sham case, and everyone knows it." So writes the iconoclastic Matt Taibbi, once counted as a left-wing writer, and he's not the only one from outside MAGA precincts who has been appalled by the Manhattan district attorney's case that produced a guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump.
— A persistent finding in swing state polls is that Democrats are doing better in Senate races than Joe Biden is doing in the presidential race.
— At the topline, 2016 and 2020 produced hardly any split presidential and Senate results, suggesting that perhaps the presidential and Senate polling should converge.
— However, even in those years, there still was variation from state to state between the presidential and Senate margins.
— Focusing on the Senate races in the presidential swing states distracts from the races that will truly decide the Senate majority: red state seats with Democratic incumbents, Montana and Ohio.
Donald Trump recently spoke at the Libertarian National Convention.
The Biden administration has spent tens of billions of dollars on green energy, yet last year the U.S. and the world used record amounts of fossil fuels.
Donald Trump became president by flipping states no Republican nominee had won in nearly 20 years.
For three and a half years, the Biden White House has seemed remarkably leakproof. Even amid popular backlash to administration policies -- the spending splurge in 2021 that was followed by sharp inflation in 2022 and 2023, the changes in enforcement of immigration laws that have produced numbers of incoming illegal immigrants unmatched even in border boom periods in the 1980s and '90s, and the endorsement of policies allowing biological men to compete in women's sports -- top officials have stuck to talking points and avoided finger-pointing.
Election season is well underway. President Joe Biden is mumbling and stumbling his way toward his party’s nomination for a second term, the final nail in the coffin of American greatness and exceptionalism.
—Using data from Dave’s Redistricting App, we are looking at when each district has leaned most Democratic and most Republican, compared to the national popular vote, since 2008.
—By this metric, Biden’s 2020 performance represented the best Democratic showing since 2008 in a plurality of districts (145 of 435).
—Though his result was less impressive in raw terms, when adjusting for the national popular vote, John McCain was the best-performing recent Republican in 143 districts, the most on the GOP side.
—Some familiar trends, such as Mitt Romney’s strength in white collar areas and Hillary Clinton’s support from Hispanics, show up when comparing district voting across the years.
California now leads the nation in imposing dumb wage laws.
Javier Milei is a rock star.
The president of Argentina was, in fact, in a Rolling Stones cover band as a teen.
But now he plays stadiums -- like Buenos Aires' 8,400-capacity Luna Park -- as a political phenomenon, a charismatic cross between Donald Trump and Milton Friedman.
