Campaigns & Elections

As of about 4:30 p.m., a search at the Politico on "Hillary Clinton" (in quotes) returned about 20 results -- for April alone. While a few of the results are teases for longer items, that's out-of-control coverage of someone who officially left government weeks ago. The reasons for the obsession, of course, are to try to convince Mrs. Clinton to run for president in 2016 and to clear the…

It appears as though Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert has no shame when it comes to using his nightly comedy show The Colbert Report to push his sister Elizabeth Colbert Busch’s bid to be the next congressman representing South Carolina's First Congressional District.  Colbert's shtick, of course, is to lambaste conservative by hosting his program as an absurd caricature of Bill O'Reilly…

On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Jan Crawford played up how voters supposedly find Vice President Joe Biden's "gaffes almost endearing", as she reported on the potential face-off between President Obama's running mate and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. Crawford played clips of Biden's most infamous gaffes, and later added that these verbal slip-ups "may not be so funny for the…

I find that the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza usually plays things pretty much down the middle, and subscribe to his Fix email blast. So it came as an unpleasant surprise to find in my inbox a little while ago a Cillizza email, linking to his current Fix column, tthat referred to Mark Sanford as "the turd in the political punch bowl."  Cillizza repeated the line in the column itself. View…

Longtime Hillary Clinton fan Claire Shipman isn't waiting for the 2016 push. The Good Morning America reporter on Wednesday launched "Hillary Watch" and regurgitated talking points about a potential presidential bid. She breathlessly related, "But with the launch of an independent super PAC, the question is everywhere. Is Hillary ready to run?"  Shipman also featured a Clinton supporter…

I say "political integrity expert," you say "Eliot Spitzer."  I say "you're kidding me, right?" Rachel Maddow actually got off to a good start last evening in her segment on political sleaziness, ripping politicians both Dem and Republican for a variety of venal sins.  But of all the people to bring on as your expert to discuss how to raise the moral bar . . . Client 9?  Surely you make…

Married congressman texts pics of his private parts to other women but brazenly denies it. How would you characterize the fact that he was eventually forced to resign?   If "bum rap" springs to mind, you are on the same wavelength as Michelle Goldberg of Newsweek—and probably should seek immediate professional help. Goldberg's assertion, made on day deux of Chris Hayes's new MSNBC show, was…

NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on Tuesday's Today show, got a very early start on hyping a Hillary Clinton 2016 run for President as she touted Clinton as a "star attraction." Acting more like a talent agent promoting her client, Mitchell plugged Clinton's first major public appearances and noted that "one-thousand days from Iowa" the former Secretary of State would be "formidable" if she runs again…

Here's a case of "name one party and not the other." Though there is no question that arrests made this morning in connection with an alleged plot to rig the 2013 New York City mayor's include Republicans, and that they of course should be identified as such, there is also no question that the very first person named in the breaking Associated Press story which follows the jump is a Democrat…

Does Chris Matthews have a new Democrat to give him a "thrill" up his leg? On Monday, the Hardball anchor praised Hillary Clinton's stature leading up to a hypothetical 2016 run as the most impressive since General Eisenhower in 1952. Dwight Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, oversaw D-Day and defeated the world-wide threat of the Nazis.  Clinton, on the other hand,…

At the Politico, Darren Samuelsohn reports that "The public has largely tuned out the Democrats’ repeated warnings about ... (what will happen) if the sequester cuts stay in place." He also notes in a separate report that Republicans "Republicans are winning the sequester wars," and that "even the White House admits there’s little chance of reversing all the cuts." Of course, what's in…

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is at it again, telling us peons that we're not deserving of our full measure of yet another freedom, this time to express ourselves. As reported by Dana Rubenstein at CapitalNewYork.com (HT The Blaze), "As it turns out, Bloomberg, the highest-profile cheerleader for New York City's burgeoning tech scene, doesn't really like the social media revolution…

Maybe we should take to ironically nicknaming Sally Quinn as "Scoop" for this: On March 27, in a column headlined "Does Ben Carson Have a Prayer?"  the Washington Post On Faith editor attacked Dr. Ben Carson for his National Prayer Breakfast speech delivered on February 7. That's 48 days between the speech and Quinn's holding forth on why Carson, in her view, improperly politicized a…

Actress and Tennessee resident Ashley Judd announced today that she is not running for Senate in Kentucky. Politico has two items on this political development. The main story by Maggie Halberman and Manu Raju defensively describes her as "an eighth-generation Kentuckian." The second is a very short post from Caitlin McDevitt linking to the longer original which merely excerpts five…