It's easy to assume that the worst place to be in a campaign that's going through tough times is right in the middle of it. At least you're not Hillary, people say to me all the time. But in my experience, the hardest place to be in a hard campaign is not right in the middle. I've been there, and it can be eerie and strange, but you rarely get as depressed as you do when you're one step removed. Maybe that's a good thing.
As the closely fought Democratic presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama moves deeper and deeper into the primary season, there is a growing sentiment that the nomination should go to the candidate that ultimately wins the popular vote.
The presidential primary races have almost finished and the two current front runners for their respective parties have a striking similarity – they both have an appeal that extends beyond their party base.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Overwhelming repudiation of President Pervez Musharraf by Pakistan's voters did not immediately dilute the Bush administration's support for him. On the contrary, the first election returns were barely in Monday night when the U.S. government began pressing victorious opposition leaders not to impeach the former military strongman.
"NAFTA bad" has become Democratic shorthand to explain the misery spreading through America's industrial heartland.
As a presidential candidate, John McCain stands out not only for his vocal endorsement of the unpopular war in Iraq, but also because one of his own sons is a Marine Corps officer on active duty there. He supports the war, even at the price of his own career or the life of a child he loves.
Allow me a dose of hardened market realism concerning Barack Obama's landslide victory in Wisconsin. The race is over. Hillary Clinton is over. Her electability is over.
Not much, in my experience, if you're a presidential candidate. The speechwriter gives the candidate the speech for the next stop on the flight. He marks it up, or not, and out come the words, like magic. Original means he's never said it before. Usually he has, albeit in a different way. Original doesn't mean he wrote it, but that he's the first one to say it.
Like Michelle Obama, I am a "woman of color." Like Michelle Obama, I am a working mother of two young children. Like Michelle Obama, I am a member of the 13th generation of Americans born since the founding of our great nation.
Despite the hard contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, party leaders keep telling Democratic-leaning voters that they have two good candidates. They are right, but one of them may well be a Republican.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A closed-door caucus of House Democrats last Wednesday took a risky political course. By four to one, they instructed Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call President Bush's bluff on extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to continue eavesdropping on suspected foreign terrorists. Rather than passing the bill with a minority of the House's Democratic majority, Pelosi obeyed her caucus and left town for a 12-day recess without renewing the government's eroding intelligence capability.
Who was it that defined neurosis as repeating the same mistake again and again, and expecting a better outcome each time?
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Strategists for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign believe it is imperative to identify her high-flying opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, with the "McGovern wing" of the Democratic Party -- but they want to keep their candidate's fingerprints off the attack.
It's appropriate that our two major political parties are depicted as different animals. Forty days and forty nights out from the Iowa caucuses, the elephant and the donkey seem very different indeed. The Republicans have been split on attitudinal lines, between varying strains of conservatism and moderation.
My friends who are also Hillary's friends, many of them classmates and fellow Wellesley women, keep e-mailing me about their concerns, not so much with the campaign, but with the outright meanness and hostility the media seem to be heaping on our friend.
NEW ORLEANS -- The imposing presence of Robert A. Cerasoli as the city's first inspector general is the clearest sign that Hurricane Katrina's changes wrought on New Orleans in 2005 were not limited to physical devastation. By declaring war on municipal corruption, Cerasoli has signaled that life in the Big Easy no longer will be so easy.
During the push to privatize Social Security, the idea's foes were accused of not trusting the American people to manage their own money. The naysayers prevailed, and aren't we glad.
The most anti-conservative rhetoric against conservative talk radio these days is coming from supposedly free-market conservatives. It's disgusting.
For the next month or so, the conservative valentines will arrive every day at the headquarters of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
Some things in life are quite simple. Here's one of them: Sen. John McCain is going to be our next president.
