Month: May 2014

May 16, 2014

India’s election is a resounding call for change. More than half a billion Indians, a record 66 percent of eligible voters, cast ballots at some 930,000 polling places. Results released Friday show the conservative Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its controversial leader, Narendra Modi, on course to win more than half the seats in parliament, the first time in 30 years a single Indian party has won enough seats to rule without coalition partners.
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May 13, 2014

The Journal’s Gerald Seib wrote Tuesday about the importance Democrats are placing on women in the midterm elections. I would go further and say that the specific women Democrats must win in November are white suburban women. I call these swing voters Starbucks Moms.
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May 12, 2014

Given our dysfunctional government, it’s no surprise that most voters are not very excited about the midterm elections. Gallup polling released Monday found 53 percent of registered voters are less enthusiastic about voting this year than in previous elections. No group of voters is especially interested in the midterms, but Republicans do have a significant edge that bodes well for their electoral prospects.
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May 8, 2014

John Feehery argued in a Think Tank post Wednesday that one of the many reasons Republicans “hated” Bill Clinton was because he stole their ideas. But the point of governing is reaching consensus, using the best ideas, and actually accomplishing things such as balancing the budget and welfare reform. It shouldn’t just be about taking positions so you have talking points for the next campaign. That’s what most politicians in Washington seem to have forgotten but what disaffected voters know all too well.
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May 8, 2014

A Gallup poll out Thursday reveals that just 41% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents support the tea party–down significantly from the 61 percent who were tea-party supporters in November 2010. Among this group, opposition to the tea party has doubled, to 11%. Among all Americans, support for the tea party stands at 22%, down from 32% in November 2010
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May 7, 2014

Many in Washington have argued that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court’s oldest member at 81, should retire. But there is an angle to this debate beyond the much-discussed potential difficulties any Obama nominee–particularly a liberal one–would face if Republicans win a Senate majority this fall.
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May 7, 2014

Monica Lewinsky writes in Vanity Fair that she chose this moment to reemerge because she is fearful of becoming an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign. After her sexual relationship with President Bill Clinton was revealed, Ms. Lewinsky became a cudgel for Republicans trying to topple the Clinton presidency; a “scapegoat” for Democrats trying to blame her; and a subject of scorn, ridicule and endless jokes.
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May 5, 2014

I don’t know exactly when the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner jumped the shark. Maybe it was the first year a news organization rented an embassy for a lavish after-party, or when the dinner evolved into four days of events and schmoozing, or when the competition among news organizations for celebrity guests became an all-out arms race. Despite the millions spent and the dinner’s self-congratulatory and self-obsessed tone, in recent years it’s had a decidedly fin de siècle quality. Americans trust the media even less than they do the political leaders who have brought them governmental dysfunction and gridlock. Many news organizations are struggling to remain relevant. There really isn’t much reason to party.
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May 5, 2014

WSJ’s Peter Nicholas today details the decline in Barack Obama’s popularity with independent voters – with his approval rating down ten points in four years to just 29% in the latest WSJ poll. Independents, who now represent a larger share of the electorate than either Democrats or Republicans, are deeply disaffected not just with the Obama presidency but also with Congress. They may prefer Republicans at this point but it isn’t with great enthusiasm.
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