Sheri and Allan Rivlin

A lot of people are looking at close polls in the presidential horse race, and generic congressional preference and predicting a return to the almost evenly divided red state-blue state nation that characterized the 2000 and 2004 elections. This may well prove true, but most elections,...

We happened upon a debate between the influential centrist group the Third Way and Huffington Post featured blogger Mike Lux. Uninvited, we are inserting ourselves as referees because this really is a case where both sides are right, and the Democratic message-meisters would benefit greatly from incorporating the insights coming...

Last weekend, comedian Roseanne Barr announced her candidacy for President of the United States of America. This bid is a bit more serious than the short lived candidacy of another comedian, Steven Colbert, earlier this year. Roseanne's plan is to use her celebrity to gain attention for the Green...

What a nice holiday gift for Democrats! The Republicans are waving the white flag of surrender in their dispute over the two-month extension of unemployment benefit and payroll tax reductions. The substantive importance of this is fairly modest. This is only a two-month extension to a...

Some people do not know what our political future holds because they have not given it much thought. And then there can be people who reach a deep level of Zen meditation and know that they do not know what will happen in 2012. This is called "profound not knowing,"...

The Occupy Wall Street message: "We are the 99%" has the benefit of simplicity but conveys a deep and complex message that is likely to find acceptance far beyond the mostly young people camping in urban centers around the world. The slogan is a challenge to rebalance a system of...

Some excellent reporting by the Washington Post allows us to appreciate just how well planned and executed was the Republicans' maneuver to use the vote to raise the debt limit as an opportunity to exert influence over the federal budget. It worked just as planned months...

Political philosophies are like beautiful roses, and when we fall in love with ideals and ideas we tend to imbue them with magic, while overlooking their less agreeable parts.

Republicans love the idea of a small government that gives people freedom to pursue their dreams without interference, believing that the...

There were two developments on the Republican side of the continuing budget standoff on Monday: 1) House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his budget proposals for Fiscal Year 2012 and beyond and 2) House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) proposed

It seems like every day is Groundhog Day in Washington, DC.

Heading into the healthcare debate in early 2009 with Democrats riding high in the polls CenteredPolitics.com warned that the apparently strong support for health care reform in public opinion surveys would likely prove illusory by...

Part 1: Introduction and Assertions One and Two:

It has taken less than a month for the newly sworn in Republicans to show their determination to overreach their falsely perceived conservative mandate. It seems we are destined to see a sequel to this bad movie every two...

Barack Obama came to power promising to change Washington. In his election night victory speech in November 2008, Obama said, "In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity...

Paul Krugman should be praised for his January 14, 2011 New York Times column "A Tale of Two Moralities" in which he seeks common ground and ground rules and for non-violent, respectful political debates. But Krugman is pessimistic that calls for greater civility in political discourse...

It's one thing to suggest that some liberal commentators went too far in blaming conservatives following this Saturday's shooting in Arizona (as we at CenteredPolitics.com and many others have already done). It is another thing entirely to claim victimhood in the discussion following the tragedy. Sarah Palin's Jan....

Nearly every Republican has inserted variations on the phrase "it is time for an adult conversation" into their talking points in recent weeks, so much so that The Daily Show was able to put together a montage about it. If "Adult conversation" is Republican code-speak for a pivot...

We have read all of the Election 2010 post-mortems. Here are some of the most insightful: Charlie Cook, Democracy Corps, Senator Jim Webb, Ruy Texeira, Ruth Marcus, Larry J. Sabato,

Julia Kurnik is also a co-author of this Guide.

6:00, 7:00, 7:30, 8:00, 8:30, 9:00,

Since we started this series in mid-September, something seems to be going terribly wrong with the Democratic message machine. To say we are off message is charitable, when a more accurate reading is that we are trying every message at once, which is another way of saying we are not...

In Step 5 of this series we suggested that President Barack Obama challenge House Minority Leader John Boehner to a debate about the only issue on voters' minds, jobs. Several readers suggested this would be a "Hail Mary" pass. It was not then but with many

As we see it the Republicans have a lot of advantages heading into this election, especially when it comes the huge amounts of anonymous and unregulated corporate money that is buying attack ads from coast to coast due to the elimination of campaign finance rules following the "Citizens...