Everything has to start somewhere, so the quest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination more or less began at last month's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington -- not that it's easy to take seriously any presidential nomination straw poll that Ron Paul wins.
During a stop in Madison, Wis., this week, I was grabbed by a phrase I had never heard before -- "sifting and winnowing." The friend who used it later explained that the term was from an 1894 report on higher education and is immortalized on a sign outside Bascom Hall on the University of Wisconsin campus.
In a perfect world, Democrats are supposed to relentlessly push for higher taxes as Republicans zealously advocate for cutting government spending. The theory is that if both sides are equally passionate in pursuing their goals, there will be sufficient revenue to pay for government and enough vigilance to keep spending from spinning out of control.
An observation that strikes a strong chord with a great many people these days is that although Democrats in Washington have certainly performed poorly enough over the past year to deserve being thrown out of power, congressional Republicans have done virtually nothing to deserve being thrown back into power.
In today's hurry-up world, we're often told, "Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable." A more forgiving notion is, "Better late than never." And President Obama and congressional Democrats must hope that the attention they're finally paying to the econ-omy will help put voters in a forgiving mood by November.
Obviously, a great deal has happened over the last year to affect the political situation for President Obama and congressional Democrats. Serious mistakes and miscalculations by Democrats on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue created some of these problems, while others were problems that were not necessarily of Democrats' making.
Having given himself "a good, solid B-plus" for his first year in office and declaring he would "rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president," President Obama has a lot of people, even in his own party, wondering what on earth constitutes a good performance to his way of thinking.
Whenever someone asks if the 2010 midterm elections will be "another 1994" it makes me roll my eyes. No two election years are alike -- the causes, circumstances and dynamics are always different to anyone who takes more than a casual look.
Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown's victory in Tuesday's special election for the Senate should serve as an air-raid siren for the Democratic Party. Warnings began sounding last summer, and by now it seems impossible for Democrats to deny that something has gone terribly wrong for their party. In the year since President Obama's inauguration, their celebration has turned into a nightmare.
Honorable and intelligent people can disagree over the substance and details of what President Obama and congressional Democrats are trying to do on health care reform and climate change. But nearly a year after Obama's inauguration, judging by where the Democrats stand today, it's clear that they have made a colossal miscalculation.
In the world of economics, a virtuous circle is created when a series of positive events triggers a self-perpetuating pattern of other good occurrences -- a positive feedback loop, in other words. A vicious circle, of course, is just the opposite and appears to be what Democrats are caught in these days.
Take a step back and consider how much the political climate has changed over the past year.
Just 12 months ago, Democrats were blissful, celebrating their White House victory plus the expansion of their majorities in the House and Senate. Republicans were sullen, contemplating their total removal from power.
Monday morning's announcement by Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., that he would not seek re-election certainly stirred things up on Capitol Hill.
It's an exaggeration to say that the dam is breaking for House Democrats as incumbents in tough districts retire. But it's an understatement to say that four such members announcing their retirements in four weeks is a trickle.
This week, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs took a potshot at the Gallup tracking poll. Was he really questioning the poll's accuracy and reliability, or was he just trying to shoot the messenger?
Republicans hope the back-to-back retirement announcements of Reps. Dennis Moore, D-Kan., and John Tanner, D-Tenn., will set off an avalanche that could make a takeover of the House more likely. While two does not a trend make, if this does mark the beginning of one, GOP hopes and Democratic fears could turn out to be true.
For those of us who pore over polls and election data every day, there is nothing quite like sitting behind a one-way mirror and watching a skilled pollster conduct a focus group: probing beyond the numbers, getting voters to voice their hopes and fears, and putting faces on those sentiments.
It is trite to say that any given week is of critical importance for the president of the United States. In that job, every week either is or has the potential to be pretty critical. However, in terms of defining the trajectory for the next year, the year that leads into the report card known more commonly as the midterm elections, this week is pretty key.
As House Democrats try to avert political disaster by limiting their 2010 losses to about 16 seats, the norm for post-World War II presidents' first midterm elections, dealing with their members' ethics problems may be one of their toughest tasks.
For better or worse, politics, like life, is rarely simple or one-dimensional. Generally, there are competing dynamics, ones that most would agree are relatively important, and others whose importance is highly debatable. Certainly, this 2010 midterm election is no exception.
The skills that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel displayed working from their respective ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to get the health care reform package through the House last Saturday night were quite impressive.
Denial is not a river; it is a state of mind. It's inhabited by Democrats and liberal-leaning journalists who blame Virginia state Sen. Creigh Deeds for Democrats' loss of the governorship, all statewide offices, and a five-seat net loss in the state House of Delegates, with a sixth seat too close to call.
Many years ago, one of the great Republican campaign consultants of the day, Eddie Mahe, wrote a fascinating, periodic memo, "Assumptions," where he laid out what might be expected in politics, domestic policy, economics and anything else he thought relevant.
