Jon Margolis

Last night’s debate felt less about picking a winner and more about unseating the woman who is leading the Democratic field. But are voters paying attention?

Thompson’s failure to upstage the GOP debate with his formal presidential bid was to be expected in a race where the Republican candidates are all sticking to the same positions.

At yesterday’s Republican presidential primary debate in Manchester, ignorance was bliss.

In the Democratic presidential primary debate in New Hampshire, CNN aimed for grade-school name-calling.

Don’t believe the “hardy independence” nonsense. Americans eagerly pander to state and throne — and have throughout the country’s history.

NASHUA, N.H. — Thirteen television cameras, enough reporters to fill two press rooms, and 1,200 New Hampshire Democrats came to see Senator Hillary Clinton Saturday night at the massive Sheraton Hotel just north of the Massachusetts line,. But to veterans of these events, something seemed missing — and not just because the hotel no longer […]

In politics, as in comedy — assuming that they are distinct pursuits — timing is everything, and right now the timing of both the candidates and the commentators contemplating the 2008 presidential election appears skewed. They are operating under the assumption that the New Hampshire primary will be next January 22. To borrow a term […]

Thirty days before the election, a funny thing happened to Bernie Sanders on his way to the United States Senate — his opponent emerged. Not that the aptly-named Rich Tarrant had been invisible. Au contraire (as they still say in some of Vermont’s northern precincts) — he had been unavoidable. Spending $6 million of your […]

In Michael Moore’s 1995 Canadian Bacon, an American president decides to boost his re-election prospects by going to war against Canada. Canadians were not particularly amused, but neither were they upset. This was a fictional invasion. Besides, it only sought to capture their government. Now looms a U.S. invasion Canadians take more seriously. This one […]

Poor Ronald Reagan. Just because he was “caught extolling states’ rights to a southern audience and civil rights to the Urban League on the same day,” Andrew Busch reports, Democrats and political reporters accused him of being inconsistent. A bum rap, insists Busch in Reagan’s Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 and the Rise of […]