Thomas Schaller

On the On the Mark Penn/Howard Wolfson/Guy Cecil conference call right for Team Clinton. Following is a rough translation of some of Penn’s remarks. Most interesting is his claim that Barack Obama is the “establishment candidate.” This is a contest that would be all but overall if it were winner-take-all contest [in the states]. We […]

I used to serve on the board of Maryland NARAL (now Maryland Pro-Choice America), so I used to serve on the board of Maryland NARAL (now Maryland Pro-Choice America), so this just infuriated me. –Tom Schaller

Something’s been bothering me about Something’s been bothering me about Mike Huckabee’s rhetorical style. It had a naggingly familiar ring to it. And then, after seeing his new ad about government regulation, I figured out the analog: With his reliance on alliterations and clever rhymes, Huckabee is the white Republican version of Jesse Jackson. Doubt […]

Legendary civil rights attorney, progressive stalwart, and major Democratic donor Guy Saperstein has published an open letter to John Edwards asking him to get off the sidelines before Tuesday’s delegate-palooza and endorse somebody: Certainly, there must be the temptation for Edwards to step back and let the two remaining combatants battle it out. This path […]

Well, we can talk about all the demographic and groups and subgroups of John Edwards’ supporters who may or should or could break for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, but here’s what Gallup shows for their three-day tracking polls from January 28 thru 30, charted along with previous results this month: Rasmussen also shows […]

I’m not sure how much these polls mean, but I’m not sure how much these polls mean, but Barack Obama is now leading Hillary Clinton in Georgia and Colorado, states he never led her before this month and, in Colorado’s case, this week. Ditto for Connecticut, where as of today he is now tied with […]

John Edwards is dropping out. I caught one of his final “barnstorming” events through small-town South Carolina last week, and wrote about it for Salon. In trying to figure out why he never clicked, four things struck me: As the white male in a party whose 2004 nominee received almost three-quarters of his votes from […]

What is the takeaway from What is the takeaway from Hillary Clinton’s “victory” in Florida yesterday? There are (at least) two ways to look at it. The first is that, generally speaking, she is preferred by Democrats by a roughly 3-to-2-to-1 margin over Barack Obama and John Edwards, respectively. That is, she is the default […]

Listening right now to Listening right now to David Plouffe, Obama campaign chair, on a media call that was led off by Sen. John Kerry. Here are quick translations of Kerry’s opening remarks, which were directly specifically and near exclusively focused on the Clinton campaign’s attempt to claim significance from what happens today in Florida: […]

Something was nagging me about Bill Clinton’s devious little comparison Saturday morning, as the South Carolina polls were opening, of Barack Obama with Jesse Jackson, and how Jackson had won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988. And then I remembered what it was: Clinton won South Carolina the next cycle, in 1992. And if you […]