Campaigns & Elections

Don't you find it odd that the word extremism seems to apply only to conservative Republicans? Terminology often drives political discourse and those who control the terms often determine the outcome. Establishment Republicans have too often been uncomfortable in their own skin. When they win elections, they sometimes seem unsure of what to do next. Democrats never seem to have this problem.…

Breaking news! Liberal activist Sandra Fluke will be voting for President Obama! CNN thought this announcement not only worthy of a CNN.com op-ed, but hosted Fluke in person for an interview during the 9 a.m. hour of Newsroom on Thursday. Fluke was welcomed on cable news after she was publicly defamed by Rush Limbaugh -- and was published on CNN.com -- and on Thursday CNN's Carol Costello…

Chris Matthews isn't even trying anymore. The liberal anchor on Wednesday went into full Democratic adviser mode. Talking to Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, he turned an interview into a strategy session, saying of the campaign against Republican Scott Brown: "Let me help you on this, to the extent that I, as a journalist, can help you." Providing an additional contribution…

On Thursday's CBS This Morning, Bill Plante pointed out that "a new poll shows President Obama's support slipping in one key demographic that helped him win in 2008: white men." However, Pew Research Center's presidential exit poll from that year found that Obama actually lost 57 to 41 percent to Republican candidate John McCain. Plante noted "concern in Mr. Obama's own party that his…

While CNN's Soledad O'Brien tossed softballs at Democratic Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, she was not so kind to her Republican guest during the next hour, on Thursday's Starting Point. O'Brien reported poor poll numbers for both the Romney and Obama campaigns, but went after only the Romney campaign's economic message in detail. O'Brien teed up the Democratic mayor to respond to…

NBC provided its first coverage of the Fast & Furious gun running scandal on Tuesday, providing a scant 30 seconds on Nightly News. In contrast, Thursday's NBC Today devoted a 37-second report to a video of "Obama Boy," a gay activist singing over his support for the President in 2012. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Today news anchor Natalie Morales proclaimed: "…

Maybe the answer to eliminating much of the annoying bias in establishment press business reporting is to have the reporters involved eliminate the could-might-maybe statements which almost inevitably follow the initial relay of the primary news. Take the first paragraph of Christopher Rugaber's report Tuesday on recent increases in state tax collections (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Might the man who once said of himself "there's been nobody who's a bigger Obama supporter" vote for Mitt Romney?  Maybe.  On today's Morning Joe, Donny Deutsch—ad exec, man-about-the-Hamptons and quintessential wealthy NYC liberal—declared that his support for President Obama is "wavering." Deutsch said that it was the bad jobs numbers of a couple weeks ago that "changed everything for me…

Washington Post reporter Ben Pershing dropped a very bizarre sentence into his Virginia election roundup on the front page of Wednesday's Metro section. Sen. George Allen won the right to attempt and regain his seat against former Gov. Tim Kaine, and Kaine "quickly made clear how he would run against Allen in their head-to-head matchup." I simply could not believe the audacity of what followed…

Last week, President Obama said "the private sector is doing fine." This was not reassuring to those of us who suspect the Democrats haven't the first idea what "private sector" means. He did not help matters by becoming lachrymose over the suffering of public sector employees: "Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. ... And so, if…

During the summer of 2009, conservative activists turned up the heat on Democratic politicians to protest the innovation-destroying, liberty-usurping Obamacare mandate. In the summer of 2012, it's squishy Republican politicians who deserve the grassroots flames. In case you hadn't heard, even if the Supreme Court overturns the progressives' federal health care juggernaut, prominent GOP…

President Obama continues to prove how out of touch he is with the plight of the American people under his anemic economy. No, Mr. President, the economy and the private sector are not "doing fine." Sure, Obama is pretending that he didn't mean it the way it sounded. But I am not buying that it was a gaffe. I watched the video, and he stated the point clearly and deliberately.

Sure President Obama has been on a huge fundraising kick lately. And yes, he's clocked 160 fundraisers thus far in the reelection season, "more than double the 79 events that President George W. Bush had held by this time in the 2004 presidential race," the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza confessed today in his 11-paragraph page A6 article. [The print article was a condensed and updated…

Continuing to beat the drum of Mitt Romney's campaign not being transparent on Wednesday's The Daily Rundown on MSNBC, fill-in host Luke Russert melodramatically asked: "Is this one of the most secretive presidential campaigns in history?" On Tuesday, regular host Chuck Todd predicted that Romney could be "the least transparent president in a generation." [Listen to the audio or watch the video…