Political Commentary

March 24, 2015

Gentry Liberals Have Increasing Clout in Chicago's Shrinking Electorate By Michael Barone

Rahm Emanuel heads into a runoff April 7 in his bid for a second term as mayor of Chicago. He's the favorite going in, having won 46 percent in the Feb. 24 first round against longtime local officeholder Chuy Garcia's 34 percent and topping 50 percent in recent polls.

Emanuel, President Obama's first White House chief of staff and architect of the Democrats' 2006 takeover of the House, is politically astute, energetic and profane. Given all that, it's surprising that his support is down from the 55 percent he won in the first round in February 2011.

March 23, 2015

Measuring the Moral Posture of Rand Paul By Joe Conason

Expecting morally serious debate from any would-be Republican presidential contender is like waiting for a check from a deadbeat. It could arrive someday, but don't count on it.

Yet listening to someone like Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., feign outrage over a real moral question can still be amusing, if you know enough about him to laugh. The Kentucky Republican has seized on stories about millions of dollars donated by Saudi Arabian agencies and interests to the Clinton Foundation, demanding that the Clintons return those funds because of gender inequality under the Saudi version of Islam.

March 20, 2015

Will Hispanics fire up America? By Michael Barone

"Firing up America" is the cover line on the March 20 issue of The Economist, heralding a 16-page special report on America's Latinos. Its tone is resolutely upbeat -- perhaps a bit too much so.

March 19, 2015

Half a Heart on Marijuana Better Than No Heart at All by Froma Harrop

Give thanks for the little things, they say. A bill that would stop the feds from going after medical marijuana users in states that permit such activity is something for which we should give thanks. But it is little.

March 19, 2015

2016 PRESIDENT UPDATE: CLINTON ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE…YET By Geoffrey Skelley, Kyle Kondik, and Larry J. Sabato

Hillary Clinton went before cameras and reporters at the United Nations last week to address the ongoing controversy over her use of a private email system during her time as secretary of state. She was terse, combative, and essentially told the American people to “trust her” when she says that she didn’t do anything wrong and isn’t hiding anything. Clinton’s visceral dislike of the media was obvious and can be summed up by three words (“Go to Hell”), which was how Politico’s John Harris put it after Clinton’s presser.

March 18, 2015

Chicago Fray By John Stossel

Rahm Emanuel, current mayor of my old hometown, Chicago, is not a gentle soul. But he's smarter than his big-spending predecessor, Richard M. Daley, and the union pawn, Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who becomes the new mayor if he beats Emanuel in a run-off election April 7.

Emanuel was the tough Obama chief of staff who reportedly stabbed a table with a steak knife as he listed political enemies.

March 17, 2015

Letter From 47 Senators States the Obvious: Obama-Iran Deal May Not Last By Michael Barone

In her brief press conference at the United Nations, Hillary Clinton led off with a denunciation of the letter to Iranian leaders signed by 47 of the 54 Republican senators. This was in line with Democratic talking points -- a sign that the former secretary of state was, perhaps a bit nervously, taking care to curry favor with the Obama administration.

March 17, 2015

Clinton and Gender Politics No Simple Matter by Froma Harrop

Carly Fiorina has evidently hired herself as hit woman going after Hillary Clinton and her likely run for president. Fiorina is former chief of Hewlett-Packard and onetime Republican candidate for Senate from California. The thinking is that as a formidable woman, she can go after Clinton without being called a sexist male.

March 16, 2015

Media's Email Hysteria: Why Are Republicans Exempt? By Joe Conason

It is almost eerie how closely Hillary Clinton's current email scandal parallels the beginnings of the Whitewater fiasco that ensnared her and her husband almost 20 years ago. Both began with tendentious, inaccurate stories published by The New York Times; both relied upon highly exaggerated suspicions of wrongdoing; both were seized upon by Republican partisans whose own records were altogether worse; and both resulted in shrill explosions of outrage among reporters who couldn't be bothered to learn actual facts.

Fortunately for Secretary Clinton, she won't be subjected to investigation by less-than-independent counsel like Kenneth Starr -- and the likelihood that the email flap will damage her nascent presidential campaign seems very small, according to the latest polling data.

March 13, 2015

Obama's Policies Leave Democrats Weak Candidates in 2016, Except -- Maybe -- Hillary Clinton by Michael Barone

The controversy over Hillary Clinton's emails and her unconvincing press conference at the United Nations have gotten many Democrats and others thinking the unthinkable: Clinton may not be the Democrats' 2016 nominee for president. And it has many asking the question -- scary for Democrats -- of who else could be.

March 12, 2015

Cohabiting ... With Children By Froma Harrop

I know a woman. Works like a dog. She's a loving mother, raising a lovable boy. She's also a good businesswoman, running a successful salon.

March 11, 2015

What's Fair? By John Stossel

Donald Trump's kids and Paris Hilton's siblings were born rich. That gave them a big advantage in life. Unfair!

Inequality in wealth has grown. Today the richest 1 percent of Americans own a third of the assets. That's not fair!

But wherever people are free, that's what happens.

March 10, 2015

King v. Burwell's Very Existence Says a Lot About Obamacare By Michael Barone

On Wednesday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in King v. Burwell, the case challenging the IRS's decision to pay subsidies to lower-income health insurance buyers in states with federal insurance exchanges -- even though the Obamacare legislation authorizes subsidies only in states with exchanges "established by the state."

The Obama administration is thus in the uncomfortable position of arguing that the president's signature law says what it doesn't say. Nevertheless, initial analyses of the oral argument suggest the government might win.

March 10, 2015

The Dilemma: Angry at Obamacare, Angrier Without It by Froma Harrop

Obamacare supporters are praying that the Supreme Court won't chop down a main pillar of the Affordable Care Act -- but not so fervently, one suspects, as the politicians who've been demanding the law's demise. That's because come the next election, Republicans will have to face the voters they've made angry over Obamacare -- but who will be angrier should they lose it.

March 6, 2015

Is This a Scandal -- Or a 'Scandal'? By Joe Conason

To someone who has watched many "scandals" surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton evaporate into the Washington mist -- even when Pulitzer Prize-winning pundits predicted that she would end up in prison! -- the current furor over her emails hardly seems earthshaking.

March 6, 2015

Most Members of Congress Share Netanyahu's View By Michael Barone

If anyone had any doubts that most members of Congress oppose the Obama administration's proposed nuclear deal with Iran, they can put them aside after viewing the response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before Congress Tuesday.

Fifty-some Democratic members chose not to attend. Joe Biden arranged to be out of town, and Barack Obama let it be known that he didn't even have time to watch on television. But the House chamber was packed, the galleries were filled and Netanyahu was interrupted multiple times not only with applause but boisterous cheers.

March 5, 2015

Lower Fares No Substitute for Higher Wages By Froma Harrop

The idea of helping low-income people by subsidizing their fares on public transportation sounds noble. It truly does. But as a means of confronting the national problem of meager paychecks, it's rather misdirected.

March 5, 2015

Coattails and Correlation By Geoffrey Skelley

Few political observers will be surprised that the correlation between presidential and Senate results has been increasing over the last few presidential election cycles. That is, during a presidential election year, the Senate race in state A has increasingly tended to have a similar outcome to the presidential result in state A. Other analysts have noted the growing relationship between the two variables, such as National Journal, which produced a great infographic examining the 2000 to 2012 elections.

March 4, 2015

Raping Culture By John Stossel

A new documentary calls colleges like Harvard and Notre Dame "The Hunting Ground," where rapists prey on women. A bipartisan group of senators demand new rules to "curb campus sexual assaults."

Apparently, new laws are needed because at colleges, sexual assault is "epidemic." Rape is so common that there is a "rape culture."