Thomas Schaller

I have I have new piece out today in Salon arguing that, had Hillary Clinton kept her support levels to just 20 percent among African Americans, she would be leading the popular vote and down probably 100 total delegates. And if 20 percent seems like a ridiculous supposition, consider that she got 19 percent in […]

I got to know I got to know Sid Blumenthal four years ago when he asked me to write a Salon piece about the decline of the Howard Dean campaign. He seemed like a nice enough person and a good editor. Over the years I’ve asked him for advice. I like his son, Max, a […]

Presume for a moment that the Presume for a moment that the Jeremiah Wright controversies (plural now) would have eventually made national headlines.* For Barack Obama or Democrats more generally, when would it have been best for this story to break? Consider four possibilities: (a) Last autumn, before Obama rose up to catch Hillary Clinton; […]

Chris Bowers is worried about Barack Obama’s scheduled appearance this weekend on Fox News Sunday. I was a bit skeptical myself about the decision until TPM’s Greg Sargent reported that a top Obama campaign official told him that Obama will “take on” Fox, whatever that means. Here’s what the adviser told Sargent: “We are clear-eyed […]

Even though her Pennsylvania win is arguably Even though her Pennsylvania win is arguably Hillary Clinton’s biggest since New Hampshire — especially given the gobs of cash she’s raised since Tuesday night — the fact is that the chances of a Clinton comeback, though better now than they were Monday, are still slim. And so, […]

I have mad respect for I have mad respect for Tom Edsall, truly, but he’s just plain wrong in his new HuffPo piece about how the white male voter just must be crucial (as ever…yawn) to all things electoral in American politics. And invoking the Pennsylvania primary as a case in point was not the […]

So, So, David Sirota is correct again about the curious, but entirely logical u-shaped relationship between states’ black population share and Barack Obama’s performance. Obama does well where the black population is low (and therefore racial polarization is low as well) or high (black votes swamp out polarizing effects). Hillary Clinton wins the states with […]

A few weeks ago, NBC/ A few weeks ago, NBC/National Journal’s Matthew Berger reported that there were 101,499 new Democratic applications and 132,688 others who switched to the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania since January 1, compared to just 32,191 new Republican registrants and 13,937 switchers. Overall, these increases boosted the Democrats to a 900,000-voter registration […]

Pharmaceutical companies spend millions market-testing the retail names for their prescription drug products (they’ve got the dough), and apparently names that include z’s and x’s for some reason create a soothing effect: Xanax, Zoloft, etc. But these new television ads (Jezebel caught this yesterday and has the video) for Aciphex—a drug that helps reduce acid […]

Though the Though the Hillary ad I mentioned below is not, in my view, offsides in its invocation of terrorism, this repellent and highly misleading ad produced by a conservative 527 group is clearly out of bounds. It is amazing, but never surprising, just how low the conservative movement will stoop — particularly in their […]