On Tuesday night after the last vote in the Democratic primaries has been cast, Obama will speak in the very hall in which John McCain will accept the Republican nomination in September. It is a smart move by his campaign as it pushes the general election story-line front and centre, relegating Hillary Clinton to the third paragraph of the article. It also sets up an inevitable comparison between Obama’s speech and McCain’s convention address—a comparison that is unlikely to be favourable to McCain who is not in the same league as Obama...
This Saturday, the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet to try and find a compromise for what to do about Michigan and Florida’s delegates. To recap, Michigan and Florida moved their primaries up before the date on which the DNC allowed them to be held. The DNC responded to this violation of its rules by stripping both states of their delegates. However, both primaries went ahead but in Michigan Senator Obama, in deference to the party’s rules, took his name off the ballot.
On Tuesday, I wrote about why Barack Obama should, thinking purely politicial, pick Republican Chuck Hagel as his running mate. It now turns out that Hagel’s wife has already donated to Obama’s primary campaign.
Yesterday, Bush and McCain raised coin together but the McCain campaign tried to minimise the coverage of the event, fearful that the unpopular president could damage McCain by association. Certainly, the Obama camp thinks that Bush’s third term is their most effective attack line against McCain. But I think they underestimate how hard it will be to make this charge stick.
Most voters feel they know McCain and so can distinguish him from Bush. McCain also has enough on the record policy differences and criticisms of Bush to put...
John McCain’s suggestion, first floated by his close ally Senator Lindsay Graham, that he and Obama visit Iraq together is smart politics not least because it has got out there that Obama has not visited since 2006. But on a broader level this ties in with McCain’s offer of joint town halls and unmediated Lincoln-Douglas style debates, it puts Obama on the back foot by making him either accept something that plays to McCain’s strengths or erode his post-partisan appeal by turning down or kicking into the long grass...
People don’t vote for Vice-Presidents is one of those clichés that is actually true. After all, George Bush senior got elected in 1988 despite all the doubts about Dan Quayle and adding John Edwards to the ticket in 2004 did little for John Kerry even in Edwards’s home state of North Carolina. But this year might just be the exception that proves the rule if Obama picks Chuck Hagel.
Hagel is a Republican Senator from Nebraska and a Vietnam veteran. He was one of the first Republicans to turn...
Out on the trail in Puerto Rico, Hillary is clearly having some fun. Watching this more natural, more human Hillary one wonders how she would have done if she had campaigned like this from the start rather than spending so long trying to prove that she was tough enough to be commander in chief.
New poll numbers from Newsweek show Obama and McCain running dead level. Some Republicans are concerned that McCain hasn’t used the extended Democratic primary season to open up a lead against Obama—who will probably get a significant boost when he is confirmed as the Democratic nominee—but when you consider the political environment that McCain is running in it is remarkable that he is so competitive.
Jon Meacham of Newsweek neatly summed up just how bad things are for the Republicans on Meet the Press today:
John McCain and Barack Obama have been involved in a fierce back and forth about Obama’s willingness to meet with the Iranian leadership without preconditions. McCain claims that Obama’s willingness to do this shows that he does not have the judgement or the experience to be commander in chief, while Obama argues that McCain’s refusal to sit down with America’s enemies proves that McCain comes from the George W. Bush school of diplomacy.
David Miliband has now waded into this debate. The Times reports that when Miliband met with Obama’s...
On Tuesday night after the last vote in the Democratic primaries has been cast, Obama will speak in the very hall in which John McCain will accept the Republican nomination in September. It is a smart move by his campaign as it pushes the general election story-line front and centre, relegating Hillary Clinton to the third paragraph of the article. It also sets up an inevitable comparison between Obama’s speech and McCain’s convention address—a comparison that is unlikely to be favourable to McCain who is not in the same league as Obama...
This Saturday, the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet to try and find a compromise for what to do about Michigan and Florida’s delegates. To recap, Michigan and Florida moved their primaries up before the date on which the DNC allowed them to be held. The DNC responded to this violation of its rules by stripping both states of their delegates. However, both primaries went ahead but in Michigan Senator Obama, in deference to the party’s rules, took his name off the ballot.
Yesterday, Bush and McCain 
People don’t vote for Vice-Presidents is one of those clichés that is actually true. After all, George Bush senior got elected in 1988 despite 
John McCain and Barack Obama have been involved in a 
