Campaign

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has apparently decided to keep $100K in contributions from Bernie Madoff, who faces up to 150 years in prison for swindling billions from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Elie Wiesel, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick in a massive Ponzi scheme.

In campaigns, one side often calls on the other to return money for one reason or another. Sometimes it's valid, sometimes not. Regardless, it's Campaign 101. But when the contributor in question is the single biggest financial criminal in history, there can be no question that those illicit funds should not remain in campaign coffers. Read more...

I've worked on many political campaigns and supported many more. Often, I lose. It's on the day after that I look back and reflect on why we lost and what it all means. Actually, I'm pretty hung over the actual day after. Then I'm angry. Then I throw things. Then I like to rent some great action films like “Ronin” or “Die Hard” and “Die Hard 3” to forget everything. But then, on the metaphorical if not actual day after, I reflect.

My conservative friends are in the weeds right now. It's been rough. They bear the familiar signs of late-night benders fueled by rage, whiskey-and-cokes and editorials from The New Republic. As a survivor of what I'll generously term a "down cycle" I was going to dedicate this column to helping those poor souls by sharing a few things they should avoid doing. Then I realized I wanted them to lose. So here are a few steps they should take if they want to continue to take it on the chin during the next few election cycles: Read more...

Tom Daschle's withdrawal leaves an opening at Health and Human Services. Howard Dean is the man for that job.

Dean isn't given enough credit for his expert chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. His "50 State Strategy" is as responsible for Obama's large victory in 2008 as any other factor. Not to mention the 2006 congressional gains. He rebuilt the grass roots of the Democratic Party from the ground up, organizing a whole generation of young leaders.

His record as a five-term governor of Vermont is strong, including providing near-universal heath coverage. During his gubernatorial reelection bid, he had to wear a bulletproof vest because of death threats he'd received due to his support for gay civil unions. Read more...

The Republican Party took a small step last Friday toward climbing out of the deep chasm it has dug for itself during the past eight to 10 years with the selection of Michael Steele as its next chairman. I know Mr. Steele to be a man of great character — hungry and with vision for the party. I know he will serve that institution well.

His task is certainly daunting, and fraught with distractions from well-intentioned but misguided and stale power players in the organization’s structure. Read more...

By Friday afternoon, the preliminaries will be over and members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) gathered at the Capitol Hilton here in Washington will choose a new party chairman.

If history is any guide, it will be a long and perhaps brutal session as six candidates seek the GOP chairmanship. Most expect multiple ballots and some are predicting that the likely winner may not even emerge until the third or fourth ballot. When Jim Nicholson was elected chairman back in 1997, he didn't even take the lead in the voting until the fourth ballot and then "backed in" on the next ballot as the early favorites cut deals or left knowing that their moment had come and gone. Read more...

With the news that Caroline Kennedy had removed herself (or been removed) from contention to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) was considered by many to be a dark-horse pick.

She should not have been. Read more...

Before America rose to the illusions of globalization and the cloud-cuckoo land of world domination via guns, butter and bailouts, New York was a visionary land of warrior poets and artists. People like Truman Capote and Jackson Pollock.

But globalization hates the tall and the beautiful. Caroline Kennedy, like Sarah Palin, didn’t have a chance. Read more...

While Caroline Kennedy's withdrawal from contention to replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Senate remains murky and confusing, the fact that New York Gov. David Paterson (D) bungled the entire process mightily is all too clear.

As New Yorkers urged Paterson to get going and make an announcement these past months, he refused to bow to the pressure yet was content to keep on talking. He didn't want the media pushing him around, he didn't want the guessing game, and he was happy to let us know that Kennedy had something like a 50-50 shot, with pluses and minuses, he said. Read more...

“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”

That was the most significant line from the Obama speech yesterday for Republicans.

The ground has shifted beneath them.

Five years ago, when I first heard about an ambitious legislator from the Illinois state Senate who wanted to be president, a guy with a strange name whose father was from Africa, I scoffed. No way that was going to happen, I said. Read more...

Our new president has successfully purloined our nation’s greatest president for his own political party with nary a peep from the GOP.

By consciously patterning himself after Abraham Lincoln — his first presidential campaign speech given in Springfield, Ill.; his team of rivals; his train trip; his event at the Lincoln Memorial — President-elect Obama has claimed America’s 16th president for the Democrats.

It seems like Republicans are happy to give Lincoln up. Read more...