Joshua Tucker

Official Monkey Cage cartoonist Ted McCagg: [Cross-posted at The Monkey Cage]

There’s apparently a meme developing in the early general election reporting that goes like this: I know Obama is in a difficult position heading into 2012 but I can’t just report on the poll numbers or the fact that everyone knows incumbents have a difficult time getting re-elected when the economy is doing poorly, so […]

New campaign advertisement this week from United Russia, the ruling party in Russia: The tag lines? “Let’s Do it Together …. Vote, Dec. 4, 2011” [Cross-posted at The Monkey Cage]

The sky is falling! The Euro is collapsing! What can we do? Look, up in the sky: it’s a bird! it’s a plane, it’s….TECHNOCRATIC GOVERNMENT! Destined to save small and large European governments alike, the sudden appearance of technocratic government as a deus ex machnia is probably raising a similar thoughts in most (especially American) […]

With Nate Silver asking yesterday whether Obama is toast in 2012, I thought it would be a good time to revisit an Associated Press story last week about Obama’s supposed donor problem. The AP reported that: Tens of thousands of people who together gave millions of dollars to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign have gone […]

Yesterday I addressed the question of whether Obama was actually having trouble raising money for his 2012 re-election campaign. This of course begs a larger question: how much does campaign spending actually affect election outcomes in US politics? I put this question to Andrew Therriault, a post-doctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University and an expert on […]

The media and financial markets are abuzz over the decision of the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s decision to hold a referendum on whether to approve the current EU bail out plan for Greece and its many conditions for reform and austerity in Greece (see for example here, here, and here). While most attention is […]

Official Monkey Cage cartoonist Ted McCagg: [Cross-posted at The Monkey Cage]

The Washington Post has a new poll out asking respondents to name the the ONE word that comes to mind after hearing the names of Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain. The top word for Romney? Mormon. For Perry? Texas. For Cain? 9-9-9. Interesting that the two governors – who have […]

I am pleased to welcome Kevin Deegan-Krause, our resident Slovakia expert, with the following guest post on Slovakia and the Euro Bailout The people of Slovakia are so accustomed to being ignored or misidentified that they have made it a source of national pride (as the above recent Slovak beer ad attests), but suddenly Slovakia […]