Thomas Schaller

It was announced today that It was announced today that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will campaign together next Friday. OK, let’s have some fun with this one. What’s going to be the big storyline? And what’s going to be the cute tag name for these events? I stink at this sort of thing, but […]

Whatever you thought of Tim Russert, boy did it take guts for Linda Hirshman at The Nation to write this critique of him. As for me, I only had one interaction with him in my life, and it was at a Mike Huckabee event in January at the Val Air ballroom in Des Moines. Russert […]

In the In the latest installment of my Baltimore Sun column I discuss the surprising number of policy reversals by John McCain in just the past month. The theme of the column draws heavily from Cliff Schecter’s new book, The Real McCain, in which he writes: “A conditional friend to conservatives, an appealing maverick to […]

Wow: Wow: Here’s Obama’s first national ad as the nominee. It’s “Country I Love” and it reaches directly for the “values” card the Republicans love to play, shreds it into a million little pieces and throws the scraps in their faces. The not-so-subtle imagery — pictures of Obama with his mom and her parents, mentions […]

Should Should Obama pick Hillary for veep? My friend Ed Kilgore and I debate that proposition over at Salon. He says “yes” and I say “no.” We debate, you decide. –Tom Schaller

With all due respect to With all due respect to Time’s Ana Marie Cox and AP’s Nedra Pickler — or for that matter, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe’s strategic plan, as reported by Pickler and blogged by Cox — I must rudely note that there are a few of us, particularly many western Democrats, who […]

Joe Lieberman is really pushing his luck lately. It’s clear he’s still bitter about being defeated by Ned Lamont in the 2006 democratic primary in Connecticut, and that he enjoys rubbing the Democrats’ noses in his victory as an independent in the general election (which he has the luxury of doing in a 51-49 Senate […]

National polls as charted here by Real Clear Politics show Barack Obama holding a consistent if small lead in head-to-head pairings against John McCain. In the 19 most current polls going back to the beginning of May, Obama was ahead in 18 and tied in the 19th. Going further back to the beginning of April […]

Holy smokes: Why is Holy smokes: Why is Barack Obama under-selling the notion of “Bush’s third term” when he rightly can and should be selling it as a third “Bush-Cheney term”?! Go read this post from Matt Corley at Think Progress for all the frightening details. –Tom Schaller