Tim Fernholz

Like everyone else in the Washington press corps, I attended the briefing yesterday by transition chief John Podesta. It was, as others note, not the most news breaking event in the world, leading to these kinds of scene pieces. (I chose to spare you my efforts at purple prose.) Takeways: Don’t expect Cabinet appointments until […]

With DNC Chairman Howard Dean leaving his post at the end of this year, there’s been some concern that his signature (and initially unpopular) 50-state strategy may be leaving with him. True, most of establishment Democrats had come around to the idea after the gains of 2006, and the Obama campaign has emphasized it as […]

Which is to say, you make your own luck. Relatedly, Fred Kaplan writes today that Barack Obama is lucky to get some breaks in the foreign policy environment. But Kaplan has confused wise foreign policy decisions with luck. It’s tough, I know, after eight years of madness, to discern wise thinking, but not all good […]

Priorities are everything in a transition, a process which is in many ways path dependent, to take a trip down poli-sci memory lane. This morning, Politico had a blind quote (that seems to have since disappeared) up on their infinitely confusing “Politico 44” page that said we shouldn’t expect Cabinet announcements this week because the […]

There aren’t as many women on the Cabinet speculation lists as one would like. In part, that’s because the lists are just theoretical exercises for talking about government, and it’s very possible that the Obama team has some different ideas. But one good sign is that the possible names for the post of solicitor general, […]

Alan Ehrenhalt does some amazing work in the Times this morning. He explains why Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton had difficult first years in office, demonstrates why the current situation is fundamentally different, and then urges Barack Obama … to overlearn the lessons of Carter and Clinton and be as cautious and conservative as possible. […]

Yglesias scoffs at the idea that Obama‘s Muslim background will improve the U.S.’s public image abroad: Obama’s not a Muslim. He’s not a Muslim when people are trying to smear him by suggesting he is, and he’s also not a Muslim when people are trying to suggest that he shares a secret connection with the […]

Just like everyone else, we’ve been doing a lot of speculation about executive branch appointments. To which Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett says… “There isn’t a single name on that list that you’ve heard from President-elect Obama,” Jarrett told the Trotter Group in an hour-long interview session in Washington. “There’s not a single name on that […]

From an Obama-Biden transition press release: This morning, President-elect Barack Obama will attend parent teacher conferences at his daughters’ school with his wife Michelle. I’m not sure if it’s awesome or terrifying to be those teachers. Obama will also do his first presser as president-elect today at 2:30 p.m. EST, after meeting with his economic […]