Campaigns & Elections

When it comes to the word “freedom,” liberals and conservatives long have told each other, in effect, “I do not think it means what you think it means.” Take Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, who in a Tuesday Washington Post column urged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to endorse a “far more expansive” concept of freedom than the right’s “constrained notion” that’…

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow on Tuesday couldn't help herself as she fawned over the liberal credentials of Republican turned independent turned Democrat Lincoln Chafee. Despite the fact that Chafee is no longer a member of the GOP, the journalist repeatedly hyped his former status. She recounted, "In 2004, when President George W. Bush was running for re-election as president there was one…

On Wednesday, NBC’s Today seized on two New York Times hit pieces against Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, as national correspondent Peter Alexander proclaimed: “He is one of the Republicans' fastest rising stars, just 44, the youngest presidential candidate in the field. But this morning, new scrutiny is focused on Florida Senator Marco Rubio's financial struggles and spending…

In the wake of the New York Times running multiple stories on Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, first on his accumulation of parking tickets and the second on his personal finances, MSNBC host Chris Hayes took to Twitter on Tuesday afternoon and seemingly mocked the paper for its coverage of the Florida senator. 

There’s no doubt The New York Times is showing an aggression in covering Marco Rubio that they did not show for Obama eight years ago. After the alleged “scoop” of Rubio’s four parking tickets over 18 years last Friday (and in Saturday’s paper), the Times on Tuesday ran a big piece on how Rubio is supposedly a disaster when it comes to his own personal finances: “a series of decisions over the…

The hosts of Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect dove into the latest New York Times piece about 2016 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio on Tuesday and came away with the conclusion that the story concerning Rubio’s personal finances is both “dangerous” and “totally legitimate.” Halperin declared “The New York Times has shoved Marco Rubio down deep into the barrel” and gushed to John…

Después del fallo del Tribunal Federal de Apelaciones del 5to Circuito contra la petición del gobierno de Obama para avanzar con su amnistía ejecutiva, el conductor de MSNBC y Telemundo, José Díaz-Balart invitó a dos activistas de distintas corrientes ideológicas, Daniel Garza, director ejecutivo de la Iniciativa LIBRE, y Alain Cisneros, de Texas Organizing Project, para debatir sobre el fallo y…

In the wake of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling against a request from the Obama administration to move forward with his executive amnesty, MSNBC and Telemundo anchor José Díaz-Balart invited two activists from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum - LIBRE Executive Director Dan Garza and the Texas Organizing Project’s Alain Cisneros - to discuss the ruling and the topic of…

During a panel discussion on Tuesday's Hardball, MSNBC's Chris Matthews picked a fight with his panel's lone Republican, who was highlighting the hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton's left-wing populist attacks on wealth given the track record of the Clinton Foundation. Matthews snarled that the Foundation was truly a charitable enterprise, although tax records show roughly just one-tenth of Foundation…

The editorial page editors at the New York Times posted a Tuesday item on their blog that shamelessly played up how the main villain from the Harry Potter book series, Voldemort, has a "higher rating than six Republicans, including Jeb Bush." The Washington Post's WonkBlog "compared polling data on the presidential hopefuls with Google Consumer Survey results on the fictional characters."

On Monday’s Nightly Show, Comedy Central’s Larry Wilmore took time out of his race-obsessed show to return to his favorite hobby, bashing Republicans, specifically the 2016 GOP presidential candidates who are engaged in the “unblackening” of America. 

Apples and oranges: or shall we say, Harleys and Abrams. On this evening's Ed Show on MSNBC, guest John Nichols of the far-left Nation mag and guest host Michael Eric Dyson lamely tried to analogize Scott Walker riding a Harley to the infamous episode of Michael Dukakis in a tank. The difference?  Walker is a for-real biker and Harley owner.  Dukakis did serve two years in the Army, but there's…

Even by the standards of Democratic presidential nominees, Barack Obama did exceptionally well among black voters, winning 95 percent in 2008 and 93 percent in 2012. The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky thinks that Hillary Clinton, assuming she’s nominated, will come close to those numbers in 2016, partly on her merits and partly because black people understand that today’s Republican party doesn’t…

Doing a postmortem of the Jodi Ernst's inaugural "Roast and Ride" event this weekend in Iowa, MSNBC's Chris Matthews has positive things to say about Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) as a strong contender for next January's caucuses in the Hawkeye State, namely that he had mixed it up with his network colleague Ed Schultz in the recall election and come out on top.