Politics

In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s midterm elections, the narrative of choice among the pundit class is that the GOP victories — 60 House seats, six Senate seats — indicate a “referendum on Obama’s policies.” Not only is this a theme all over the cable news networks, but on Thursday morning, Ohio Congressman John Boehner,…

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has a horrible reputation for “gaffes” that highlight Republican missteps in the glare of the media. But there was a nugget of truth in his election night comments that many in the mainstream media missed or ignored. American voters are not merely displaying Republican tendencies in 2010 after siding…

Say what you will about President Barack Obama, but his ability to be self-reflexive was on display during a taping of CBS’s 60 Minutes. In the segment, the president acknowledged that in the wake of this week’s election debacle, he hasn’t been able to successfully promote his economic-rescue message to worried Americans. According to the…

Colorlines’ Kai Wright lets President Obama know that he’s going to have to fight for his base with the same vigor that he pursues bankers. Wright states that what’s missing from Obama is reciprocity to those who put him in office in the first place. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: President…

In the wake of large Republican gains in this week’s election, many in the media are relating a familiar and predictable storyline to explain them: that in the two years since Democrats claimed the White House and large majorities in both houses of Congress, they have overreached, moving too far to the left and alienating…

From Selma to the Ivy League to Oxford to Wall Street to Congress — that is the improbable but impressive arc of Terri Sewell’s life. On Tuesday, Nov. 2, she became the first black woman elected to Congress from Alabama. Bull Connor must be writhing in the afterlife, and his nemesis Martin Luther King Jr.…

Acccording to Keli Goff, if the 1992 election was the Year of the Woman, then 2010 may well be dubbed the Year of the Mama Grizzly. But a look at the nationwide results from the 2010 midterms show a much more complex picture. There were Mama Grizzlies who roared, and others who got bit and…

In the immortal words of the great New York Yankee pundit Yogi Berra, “It was like déjà vu all over again.” Under a blinding media glare, yet another prominent American politician squirmed to sweep aside a damaging extramarital affair. This time it was Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., deflecting questions about a two-year-old indiscretion with…

President Obama conceded Wednesday that the voters had handed him a “shellacking” in the midterm elections and said the “humbling” losses by Democratic officeholders made him “feel bad.” But the president refused to concede that his policies were to blame for the shift in public sentiment that flipped control of the House of Representatives to…