the take

The last thing any sane or seasoned political observer expected from a president who just underwent a midterm-election root canal are two major deals with China on climate change and trade. Within days of a new Republican majority in the Senate and Tea Party sweetening in the House, he’s also got a sudden burst of…

More than a week later, we’re still trying to figure this one out: How much of an impact did voting restrictions have on the 2014 midterm elections? And remember, voting restrictions don’t just mean the infamous voter-ID laws that we all know and Republicans love. Altogether, 21 states kept an array of voting restrictions in…

The next two years will be twisted in knots—for Democrats, for Republicans and for the “black electorate.” University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald estimates that a little less than 37 percent of the voter-eligible population voted in this week’s election. That prompted President Obama to mic-drop twice during his mea culpa-less postelection press conference that…

Making sense of high-profile House, Senate and gubernatorial races this tight will mean breaking down every voting bloc into microscopic bits of data to parse in the postmortem. And of all the big mysteries that will be closely watched and dissected on Nov. 4, few will be as anxiously anticipated as the exit polling for…

Is it a recovering economy or not? That’s one of the great, persistent mysteries stumping modern economists and pundits. Most obviously don’t think so—a recent Politico poll tells the story of a national mood in perpetual funk. The answer is not that simple, and it’s hidden in pockets of partisan quackery obfuscating a solution. Each…

What we do know is this year’s midterm Senate races will be tight—what we don’t know is just how tight. Despite constant spinning in the news cycle, most Americans either don’t know a big election is coming up or don’t care. In the last major midterm of 2010, only 41 percent of voters turned out…

Ebola had been on blast since the spring, but despite the thousands of West Africans dying from it, few in the U.S. thought seriously that it would ever hit American shores. Then 42-year-old Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan arrived in Dallas, dispelling any notion that the often fatal virus wouldn’t cross the Atlantic. Now Americans…

Let the appointment games begin. It may not be the kitchen-table topic of choice, but President Barack Obama’s replacement choice for outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder will be one of the more significant decisions of his presidency. The list is long, but the politics are just getting started for what could be a noisy confirmation…

The 2016 presidential race hasn’t officially started yet, but we all know the presumptive contenders for party nominee. One political brand name stands above the rest: Hillary Clinton. It can’t get any better once they make TV dramas that are a spin-off of your life. But just like in 2008, when that brother with the…

The News: Republican lawmakers are jockeying to succeed Rep. Eric Cantor as House majority leader following his embarrassing primary defeat Tuesday, with a vote scheduled for June 19 that could push the GOP further to the ideological right. The apparent leading candidate is Cantor’s longtime lieutenant, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who represents the Republican…