Almost precisely at the midpoint between the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 and the general election on Nov. 4, the general election campaign is on. Neither party's nominee swept the primaries.
"It's the economy, stupid," James Carville famously said during the 1992 campaign, when a young Bill Clinton was running against the other President Bush. The same could be said during this presidential campaign. The headlines are full of economic bad news -- mortgage foreclosures, the collapse of an investment bank, higher gas and food prices and lower home prices.
As Barack Obama makes his slow but steady way toward the Democratic nomination, the assumption in the admiring precincts of the press corps is that voters have dismissed as irrelevant his longtime association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
What makes this presidential election different from all other presidential elections? And different from what we expected when the year began?
In trying to understand news about the conflicts in Iraq, I work to keep in mind the difference between what we know now about decision making in World War II and what most Americans knew at the time.
Is the bottom falling out for Barack Obama? It's too early to say that, but there are some disturbing signs. On the positive side, superdelegates still are breaking his way.
One thing many people haven't noticed about Hillary Clinton's 55 percent to 45 percent victory over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary is that it put her ahead of Obama in the popular vote.
Barack Obama seemed puzzled. Angrily puzzled. The apostle of hope seemed flummoxed by the audacity of the question. At the April 16 Philadelphia debate, George Stephanopoulos, longtime aide to Democratic politicians, was asking about his longtime association with Weather Underground bomber William Ayers.
"It's the economy, stupid." Those immortal words of the political philosopher James Carville in 1992 have been reverberating increasingly in the 2008 campaign. Polls show the economy as the top issue for voters, far ahead of Iraq.
Exit polls have shown that the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has produced deep divisions among Democratic constituencies. It looks something like tribal warfare.
Most people's views of the world are shaped by the times in which they came of age. That's why we speak of a baby boom generation or a Generation X. But some people miss out on the formative experiences of most of their peers.
It's a generational thing. That was the theme of Barack Obama's speech last Tuesday, in which he both failed to renounce and at the same time separated himself from the man he has described as his spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The abrupt resignation of Adm. William Fallon as the head of Central Command almost got lost amid the breaking news of Barack Obama's victory in the Mississippi primary and Eliot Spitzer's resignation as governor of New York.
Barack Obama won 11 out of 11 primaries and caucuses from Super Tuesday to Feb. 19. Hillary Clinton won three out of four contests on March 4.
It's time to throw out that old map with the red states and blue states. The map that implies that all but a handful of states will definitely vote Republican or Democratic and that the real contest will be decided in Florida or Ohio or whatever.
It's appropriate that our two major political parties are depicted as different animals. Forty days and forty nights out from the Iowa caucuses, the elephant and the donkey seem very different indeed. The Republicans have been split on attitudinal lines, between varying strains of conservatism and moderation.
Well, Super Tuesday is over, and now we have two major party presidential nominees. That's the lead sentence I thought five weeks ago I'd be writing for this column. But the 33-day round of caucuses and primaries that seemed likely to produce decisions after 23 states voted on Super Tuesday have failed to deliver.
Just shy of a month ago, after the first votes were cast in Iowa and New Hampshire, it seemed that the Republican Party faced a fluid and fractious nomination contest, while the Democrats faced a clear-cut choice between two not particularly adversarial candidates. What a difference a few weeks can make
South Carolina: In 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000, it was the state that, with its early primary, determined the winner of the Republican nomination for president.
My campaign and election memories go back to 1960, when I was one of the few who backed John Kennedy at an election night party that my parents were throwing.
