With the Iowa caucuses only five days away, we at the Crystal Ball wanted to suggest some possible electoral scenarios that could play out next Tuesday and beyond. Because we love history, and because the past is often prologue, each scenario has some historical precedent:
This was the Year of the Middle Class -- as in, its falling incomes, loss of job security and anger. The global economic forces fueling the decline, such as foreign competition and computers, have been well reported. But what about cultural factors? Is the middle class going down partly because it stopped acting middle class?
The world usually turns out to work differently from what American presidents expected when they were campaigning.
Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on domestic issues in 1932 and ran a more isolationist foreign policy for his first years in office than any of the Republican presidents elected in the 1920s. But he became aware of the threat that Adolf Hitler posed earlier than most, and changed course accordingly.
The soft economy has left lots of Americans in place, whether they want to be or not. That would include the most mobile group, young people. But to the extent that adults ages 25 to 34 are still moving, their preferred destinations seem to be "cool cities," according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. What are the so-called cool cities? Denver, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, Raleigh, Austin, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Ore., among others.
When you think of Republican congressman Paul Ryan, terms like earnest, serious, and important come to mind. So does the term old-fashioned. Ryan comes from an old-fashioned place, the blue-collar town of Janesville, Wisconsin. He cherishes the old-fashioned values of a faithful family man. He even looks old-fashioned, with his white shirts and striped ties. And he uses old-fashioned argument skills, persuasively weaving big-picture themes with the numbers that back them up.
The latest evidence of simmering racial resentment on the American political fringe showed up Monday in a Facebook post by a California man who urged the assassination of the president and his two daughters in obscene, racist language.
Three weeks out from the New Hampshire primary, and voters in the Granite State don't seem to have settled firmly on one of the Republican presidential candidates.
Following the roller-coaster poll results from Iowa has been entertaining for some - and frustrating for many. In five consecutive Rasmussen Reports polls, five different candidates came out on top: Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and now Mitt Romney. Adding to the confusion, most Iowa voters are still deciding and could change their mind before the January 3 caucuses.
To many rational economists, holiday gift-giving is "an orgy of wealth-destruction," writes Dan Ariely in The Wall Street Journal. A behavioral economist at Duke University, Ariely makes pro-gifting arguments while acknowledging the bah-humbug view, which goes as follows: Givers often spend money on things others don't necessarily want, and the recipients frequently think the present cost less than the price actually paid for it. 'Tis more rational to give cash.
It's highly unusual in a presidential debate for two Republican candidates -- the two leading in current national polls -- to heap praise on a liberal Democratic senator. But in the Fox News debate in Sioux City, Iowa, Thursday night, both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney had very good words to say for Oregon's Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden.
If these are the last weeks of Rick Perry's ridiculous presidential campaign, his desperation is turning him into a nasty clown indeed. By publicly attacking the gays and lesbians who have chosen to serve their country in uniform, the Texas governor seems to have gained ground in Iowa.
MANCHESTER, N.H. -- "We're not going to lose in New Hampshire." So says Mitt Romney's state coordinator, Jason McBride.
Stuart Stevens, the Romney campaign's TV ad-maker, expresses similar confidence. Asked if Romney might finish second in New Hampshire, his answer is an unhesitating "no."
Moving at a stately 30 miles an hour, the woman drove her tank-like vehicle right through the stop sign and almost through me as I crossed the street. Like the psychiatrist assigning mental illness at the mere sound of crazy shouting, I didn't have to look at the motorist. I just knew from her behavior that she was yakking on a cellphone. Sure enough, she was.
Almost all political commentators agree on one thing. The Republican presidential campaign is unlike any we have experienced. It is not a campaign of steady trends and continuities, but rather of emotional reversals and discontinuities. Perhaps this is so because the last 3 to 4 years have been a shocking time of discontinuities and reversals for America.
Following the GOP debate that nearly the whole world watched on Saturday night, the president on Sunday made it very clear that he will not back off his class-warfare vision in the coming year. Obama told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes that middle-class inequality will be his big theme, and that somehow successful earners, investors, and small-business owners are to blame.
Yes, there are those charming reasons "French Women Don't Get Fat," as outlined in the popular book of that name by Mireille Guiliano. Portion control is key. Frenchwomen may eat their famously rich sauces and fatty pates with gusto, but only in dainty amounts. They go for quality over quantity and avoid "diet" foods -- said to drain off the hearty flavors that sate appetites. And, of course, they walk more.
It was a week of risk-taking in the 2012 presidential race.
Barack Obama, his job approval languishing in the low 40s, delivered a much heralded speech in Osawatomie, Kan., framing the choice between the parties in class-warfare terms.
Held aloft by the highest approval ratings of any governor in America, Andrew Cuomo scarcely seemed to worry about angering his state's progressives, who were disappointed by his refusal to extend a state surtax on New York's millionaires.
Liberals and conservatives both seem obsessed with the behavior of "the 1 percent," but there the similarity ends. Liberals seek to change the ways of the richest 1 percent, while many conservatives focus on the bottom 1 percent. The latter was on display as Republican Newt Gingrich proposed having poor young people clean their schools. He described them as "children in housing projects." You know who that is.
Conventional wisdom is that the Republican presidential field is set, and that it is much too late for a new candidate to enter the race.
In years past, that would be absolutely correct. Over the last few decades, dozens of primaries and caucuses have been shoe-horned into the opening weeks of the election year, with the tendency on the Republican side for the front-running candidate to score a quick knockout.
