Steve Benen

The Washington Post‘s Charles Lane has a piece today arguing that the recent poll numbers are “gloomy” for President Obama. Campaign 2012 is upon us. Time to size up President Obama’s reelection chances. What do the data suggest? In 2011, an average of 17 percent of the public was “satisfied with the way things are […]

Mitt Romney addressed one of his biggest vulnerabilities — jobs policy — on Fox News this morning, and made a series of claims his campaign seems awfully excited about: “This is 2 million jobs that he lost as president. And by the way, when he was overseeing General Motors and Chrysler, how many factories did […]

There’s no great mystery as to why Newt Gingrich’s support collapsed in Iowa: Mitt Romney and his friends spent nearly $4 million in three weeks to tear Gingrich apart. But before the disgraced former House Speaker began calling Romney a “liar,” he used a different word to describe his recent experiences: Gingrich said Sunday he […]

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that won’t necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * Newt Gingrich said yesterday of his chances in Iowa, “I don’t think I’m going to win.” A few hours later, he reversed course, saying, “We may pull off one of the […]

Bill Clinton left the White House in January 2001, and in the 2004 race, Democratic candidates were tripping over each other to connect themselves to the nation’s 42nd president. I remember one September 2003 debate in which literally every Dem running for the party’s nomination said they’re the rightful heir to the Clinton legacy. Al […]

John McDonough has a good piece on an overlooked benefit from the Affordable Care Act: it’s doing quite well in combating fraud and abuse, which in turns saves Americans quite a bit of money. (via TOA) Members of Congress of both parties often complain about fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid (M&M), usually charging […]

The NYT has a good piece today on the extent to which Republicans used to support high-speed rail, and the fact that GOP presidential hopefuls like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry used to be some of the policy’s biggest champions. “If you want to be the most competitive country in the world in 2040 or […]

For the last several weeks, Newt Gingrich has gone out of his way to keep a positive message, making it a staple of his campaign strategy. It didn’t work — while Gingrich refused to go negative, Mitt Romney and his cohorts spent $4 million in three weeks to destroy the former Speaker, causing Gingrich’s support […]

Four years ago at this time, Mitt Romney was condemning John McCain for inviting corporate lobbyists to help run the senator’s presidential campaign. Now, Romney has begun taking strategic advice from one of those very same corporate lobbyists. Mitt Romney has added a veteran Washington lobbyist — Charlie Black, a top political aide to Senator […]

The focus of the domestic political world will obviously be on Iowa today, and the awaited caucuses will get underway in about 12 hours. Following up on an item Ed Kilgore published last week, I thought it’d be worthwhile to run a primer on how this process will work. At 8 p.m. eastern, Iowa Republicans […]