Campaigns & Elections

Even though it was near the top of the raw news wire at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, when I saw it, I had to check the date on Tom Raum's item entitled "Why It Matters: Debt." Sure enough, it really does have a September 24. 1:36 p.m. time stamp. That is intensely ironic and somewhat delicious, because the final sentence of Raum's dispatch directly contradicts…

Journalists are tweeting about a YouTube video of Washington Post reporter David Maraniss speaking Monday at the University of Virginia's "nonpartisan" Miller Center. When asked if there were Obama books out there that he thinks were wrong, and he said to laughter, "Man oh man, are there." Maraniss began by listing all the Obama books by his fellow reporters in the WashPost/New York Times mob.…

George Stephanopoulos and Barbara Walters on Tuesday fawned over the "fun," loving marriage of Barack and Michelle Obama. Walters appeared on Good Morning America to promote the President's appearance on The View. Stephanopoulos, a former Democratic operative, hyped Walters' "lighter stuff." He gushed, "The President seemed to mix politics and fun, when he talked about coaching his daughter'…

On Saturday, President Obama spoke at a campaign rally in Wisconsin. As I noted on Sunday, contradicting a local Milwaukee Sentinel crowd size estimate of 5,000, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press reported that 18,000 were on hand, with the AP further claiming that the event was "the largest yet of Obama's reelection campaign." Charles Spiering at the Washington…

In a surprisingly tough interview with President Obama aired on Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie cited Mitt Romney's criticism that the President has sided with teachers' unions against education reform, to which Obama shot back: "I think Governor Romney and a number of folks try to politicize the issue and do a lot of teacher-bashing." Guthrie followed up: "Can you really say…

He clearly doesn't suffer from a shortage of chutzpah. According to the Politico's Josh Gerstein, President Barack Obama was asked the following question by The View's Barabara Walters in a Monday appearance to be broadcast on Tuesday: "What would be so terrible if Mitt Romney were elected? Would it be disastrous for the country?" His response: "We can survive a lot. But the American people…

Sunday's 60 Minutes couldn't be bothered to air Steve Kroft pursuing President Obama about "nasty and negative campaign ads under your name, or under the name of your various PACs." Obama begrudging admitted, "Do we see, sometimes, us going overboard in our campaign, or the mistakes that are made, or...areas where there's no doubt that somebody could dispute how we are presenting things? You…

On Monday, ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today failed to air any full reports on the continuing inquiry into the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and mentioned the issue only in passing. CBS This Morning did devote a full segment to the dispute between the State Department and CNN over their use of a Ambassador Chris Stevens' personal journal, but didn't mention…

Saturday, Joel Pollak at Breitbart's Big Journalism observed that President Obama is having some trouble drawing big crowds these days, and that the national press is exaggerating the turnout at his events. He specifically cited the situation this weekend where Politico and the Wall Street Journal claimed there were "18,000 people inside a 5,000-seat arena at an Obama event in Milwaukee on…

Kossacks notice things the rest of us don't, or maybe they just imagine things that aren't there. This past week, one picked up on the supposedly racist subtext of Mitt Romney's 47-percent comments, while another smelled a "fetid odor of fascism coming from Lord Romney's castle" (and also announced that he's "ready to compare Romney to Hitler"). As usual, each headline is preceded by the…

President Obama basically admitted failure when he said that Washington cannot be changed "from the inside," but CNN tried to explain his gaffe on Friday's Early Start while later dumping on Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remarks. CNN's John Berman insisted "I know what he [Obama] is trying to say there" and political director Mark Preston argued that "What President Obama said was correct." In…

One might have thought that Charlie Rose received an extra dose of caffeine before Friday's CBS This Morning, as the normally-subdued anchor hounded Romney campaign adviser Dan Senor on how the Republican presidential nominee would change policy toward Iran. Rose wouldn't let Senor complete an answer, interrupting six different times in 50 seconds.  [audio available here; video below the jump…

So what about the Democrats' would-be tempest about Mitt Romney's alleged 47 percent gaffe? Is there any "there" there? Mitt's statement was made at a private fundraiser, where he was trying to explain that his message of reducing taxes would obviously not resonate with the 47 percent of Americans who are not paying income taxes. It's purely logical; you aren't going to entice those who aren'…

Yesterday in the midst of defending his record in a tough interview with Univision, President Barack Obama said that he learned in his term in the Oval Office that "you can't change Washington from the inside" but only from the outside and that "that's how [he] got elected," by appealing to a frustrated electorate to vote for change. At a campaign event later in the day, Mitt Romney seized on…