Campaigns & Elections

With the Democrats facing bad news in the coming midterms, the networks have largely been ignoring the possible electoral wave. Yet, NBC and CBS couldn't resist the "cute" story of Barack Obama bantering with a woman and her boyfriend on Monday. As the President was getting ready to do early voting in Chicago, a man walked by and told him, "Don't touch my girlfriend." 

Senator Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) and her Republican opponent, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, are currently locked in a close Senate race but with less than two weeks until Election Day Senator Hagan declined to participate in a debate Tuesday night. Despite Senator Hagan’s absence, all three network morning shows ignored the story on their Wednesday morning broadcasts. 

At the end of Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd led his panel of guests in warning Republicans against any effort to oppose ObamaCare if they win the Senate majority in the upcoming midterm election: "...the biggest, I would argue, false promise of the...midterm campaign has been about [repealing] the Affordable Care Act....[Mitch McConnell's] never gonna have the ability to do it…

In less than two weeks, voters head to the polls in midterm elections that seem certain to yield strong Republican gains, if not outright control of the U.S. Senate. Such a political sea change is big news, but a new Media Research Center study finds that, in contrast to their enthusiastic coverage of the 2006 midterms when Democrats made big gains, the Big Three broadcast evening newscasts are…

In relaying the results of their polling partnership's latest survey, Associated Press polling director Jennifer Agiesta and reporter Emily Swanson held their most important finding until their report's seventh paragraph. Despite their effort to downplay it, Matt Drudge, whose nose for genuine news is legendary, spotted it. Accordingly, his current headline screams: "POLL SHOCK: WOMEN WANT…

Add Debbie Wasserman Schultz to the list of Dem politicians running away from Barack Obama.  Kind of ironic, no, given that DWS is Chair of the Dem party and President Obama is its standard bearer? On today's Morning Joe, repeatedly pressed by Joe Scarborough as to whether voting for Dem candidates means a continuation of President Obama's policies, Wasserman Schultz refused to answer.  Instead,…

The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, appears determined that there not be any more reported embarrassments of Democrats who refuse to directly that they support President Barack Obama. One such embarrassing moment occurred in tonight's debate in New Hampshire between Republican Scott Brown and incumbent Democrat Jean Shaheen, who has reportedly voted as Obama would prefer 99…

On Tuesday, ABC and NBC made no mention of the upcoming midterm elections, which were two weeks away from Tuesday and include numerous Senate races that will decide whether Republicans or Democrats control the U.S. Senate. ABC’s Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, NBC’s Today, and NBC Nightly News made no mention of the midterm elections in their evening newscasts while…

On Friday in a Facebook hangout, in a statement noted Saturday afternoon by Tim Graham at NewsBusters, MSNBC's Chuck Todd described himself as "stubbornly neutral." Sunday, Mr. "Stubbornly Neutral" attacked the NRA on "Meet the Press" for having the nerve to oppose President Obama's Surgeon General nominee, a man who is obsessed with gun control.

The October 21 edition of MSNBC's Hardball conveniently failed to pick up on a damning scoop published Tuesday by the Washington Free Beacon regarding Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor (Arkansas) and a college thesis he wrote in the mid-1980s slamming the federal government's role in desegregating the South. Instead, Matthews and his liberal guests spent the lion's share of the program blasting the GOP…

"MSNBC had record-low ratings last quarter.  But the network remains dedicated to objective journalism, according to its program director, Barack Obama."  -- Jodi Miller

On Monday, Maryland conservative political blogger Jeff Quinton explained how The Washington Post ignored crowds streaming out of the October 19 Democratic campaign rally for Anthony Brown featuring President Barack Obama. On Tuesday, Post columnist Dana Milbank admitted that the crowds did thin out well before the event was concluded, but he made sure to put the best possible spin on the matter.

Elizabeth Williamson's coverage at the Wall Street Journal of the latest WSJ/NBC News poll has a very strange omission. It contains a graph showing "right track/wrong track" polling percentages heading each midterm election going back to 1990. But Williamson, while addressing why the American people feel as they do right now in larger historical context, never commented on the graph's specific…

Paul Waldman argues that low turnout in midterms “is particularly critical to [Republicans] maintaining what power they have,” but if voting were required, that GOP advantage would disappear.