Supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy are privately blaming
aggressive campaigning by Bill Clinton for her recent decline in Iowa's pre-caucus polls.
On the issues, not very much separates the front-runners for the Democratic nomination. What's interesting is that all of them are running well to the left of the only Democratic presidents in the last 40 years, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
Truly important election years for the U.S. House of Representatives come around only every so often-years when party control is at stake and the House actually changes hands or the balance of power is significantly altered one way or the other.
There are two underlying trends that have emerged when examining recent poll results.
Sound familiar? A young, charismatic candidate campaigns calling for change and new directions. Defying the traditional prejudices that have kept his ilk out of the White House, his effortless good looks and measured cadence attract voters to his vision of new possibilities.
Look at recent history. The Senate has changed party control six times: in 1980 (D to R), 1986 (R to D), 1994 (D to R), 2001 (R to D), 2002 (D to R), and 2006 (R to D).
The era of celebrity endorsements ended some time ago. We no longer buy the shaving cream that Derek Jeter tells us to use; nor do we vote as some Hollywood actor suggests.
I have argued for the last couple of months that the Democratic primary race has been static, representing a strong, if not dominant position for Hillary Clinton.
Bill Clinton’s poll ratings are very high so Hillary figures he can be of great help to her on the campaign trail. So far, so good — but then they extrapolate that view and conclude that he would be a good person to make her negative attacks on opponents, to answer charges against her and to take the media to task for their coverage. And that’s where they are wrong.
It now seems possible, and some would say probable, that both front-runners for their party nominations will be wiped out in the early caucuses and primaries.
"It's always easier the second time around," goes the lyrics of the old song. But while that may be true in love and romance, it is certainly not the case in presidential politics.
Several recent polls and the Real Clear Politics Averages have suggested that Hillary Clinton no longer leads the Democratic race in Iowa, raising questions about her inevitability as the Democratic nominee.
This is not a good time to be Mitt Romney. After almost a year of having the Iowa and New Hampshire airwaves to himself, he is now facing a challenge on the right from Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson and on the left from Rudy Giuliani.
This week, the Crystal Ball publishes another installment in our intermittent series of observations on the 2008 campaign and the politics of the day.
The new Rasmussen Iowa numbers taken together with earlier polls taken by ABC News and the Washington Post, throw many assumptions about the likely result of the Republican Presidential primary into doubt.
The race among Democrats is too close to call. Drawing any finer distinction will drive the analysts to distraction as there are so many polls being done it is impossible to divine a clear trend indicating which way the race is going.
Even as he continues to hold a convincing lead in the national race, Rudy Giuliani may be riding for a big fall in Iowa and the other early state primaries. Mitt Romney, despite his anemic national showing, could sweep Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan, a trifecta that could give him such momentum as to sweep him to the nomination.
During his first term, George W. Bush was arguably the most successful party-building president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Like FDR, who fashioned a Democratic coalition that dominated American politics for a generation, Bush during his first four years in office helped the Republicans post gains in Congress and around the country that many in the party viewed as the cornerstone for a similarly long-lived GOP majority.
According to Real Clear Politics, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney continues to enjoy a solid double digit lead in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
Mike Huckabee is on a roll. Nationally, I just won my bet with Bill O’Reilly when he broke 10 percent in the latest CNN poll. And in Iowa, he is now running second.
