08 Election

Borah Peak, at 12,662 feet high, is the highest point in Idaho.

[That may sound like a strange place to begin this column, but please bear with me.]

It was named for Senator William Borah, known as "the Lion from Idaho." He had an impressive political career, even running...

[Those of you who prefer "all cynicism all the time" should just skip this column, since I'm about to get blisteringly optimistic here. You have been warned.]

Maybe this will be Karl Rove's legacy. One can only hope.

There have been three astounding elections recently which are absolutely terrifying...

With sincere apologies to Bill Maher for stealing his schtick, I have a new rule.

My new rule is for uncommitted Democratic superdelegates. The rule is: you are not allowed to publicly bemoan how "divided" the party currently is, or tut-tut that "the nomination process has gone on too long,"...

Now that that's all over with, can we please focus on beating John McCain?

Virtually everyone (with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton -- I guess nobody told her) now knows that the Democratic candidate for president is going to be Barack Obama. But while the end of this...

[Update: This article has been updated. I have received permission to credit the person who pointed out this coincidence, in a comment he made to another Huffington Post article, so it has been changed to add Brian Laws' name. I never cite commenters within the text of my articles, as...

"The road goes on forever and the party never ends."
--Robert Earl Keen

Tomorrow is yet another primary day in the Democratic presidential nomination race, between Hillary Clinton and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

What's that? Wright is not running, you say?

Oh, that's right -- the actual candidate is...

If every port on the West Coast of the United States of America was shut down because of a terrorist threat, do you think it would make the news?

So do I. Any event of this magnitude would be the lead story on every evening news broadcast in the nation....

John McCain should be taken at his word. He just gave a major speech in which he unveiled his "new" idea for how to fix health care in America (which is actually just recycled Bush policy). To prove he knows what he is talking about, I challenge him to be...

299 superdelegates on the wall,
299 superdelegates.
If one of those superdelegates should happen to fall,
298 superdelegates on the wall.

My apologies. Whoever created the song "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" shares some of the blame (along with John Yoo) for redefining the word "torture" for the...

It was a telling sign that neither Democratic candidate saw fit to visit Punxsutawney before the Pennsylvania primary. Nobody wanted the press to remember Bill Murray's Groundhog Day in any way, shape or form. But even without stump speeches next to Punxsutawney Phil, it's hard not to think of living...

House Republicans today massively defected from President Bush's harsh new Medicaid rules, always an interesting event in an election year. Two-thirds of House GOP members voted with all the Democrats to impose a one-year moratorium on implementing the new Medicaid rules which the Bush White House recently re-wrote. The...

Since we've got a primary tomorrow, it's (once again) time to "put up or shut up," and make a prediction for Pennsylvania. Plus, since it's also appropriate, we'll continue the contest to pick the date when the nomination will be locked up, and what the outcome will be, at the...

The twenty-first debate of the Democratic presidential nomination race happened this week. Much fulminating in the blogosphere immediately followed.

I must admit, I was kind of surprised at the ferocity of the response, myself. Because I actually expected exactly what happened during the first hour of the debate -- shallowness...

Back in the dim and distant past of this presidential campaign (i.e., February), I wrote a pre-debate column listing questions I would like to hear both Democratic candidates answer. Today's column is a revision of this original. Many of the questions I have are the same, for which I...

Thus endeth another Petraeus week on Capitol Hill.

I have to say, I was impressed at the caliber of the questions asked, but severely disappointed at the caliber of the answers given. The latter is no real surprise, but the former is indeed an improvement.

Before I begin handing out...

Could the recent firing (or, more accurately, recent demotion) of Mark Penn, architect of Hillary Clinton's campaign, save the party's chances in the general election? Has he, in other words, been designated at the official scapegoat for the campaign's viciousness? And will he serve this position well, becoming the lightning...

Since the campaigns of both Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama have seemingly taken my advice earlier this week, and are both concentrating on attacking Senator John McCain rather than each other, we have the luxury of getting away from the campaign trail this week and focusing on...

I heard a great idea on one of the blathering pundit shows this weekend, but I must admit I can't remember which one, so I can't credit it properly (apologies to whomever uttered the idea in the first place). In a nutshell: Obama and Clinton should declare a cease-fire between...

We haven't done a contest here in a while, so I'm going to open the betting window today on the outcome of the Democratic race. To play, just post a comment with the date and the outcome you predict will happen.

As an example, here is my entry: Hillary Clinton...

I sometimes wonder if the "reporters" covering the presidential candidates out on the campaign trail ever bother to read the front page of the newspapers, or whether they just flip to the campaign he-said/she-said stories about whatever trivial issue is being exploited in the press that day. Because time and...