DC press so bored by sequester stand-off, now reduced to writing articles about how overwhelming public support may backfire on the President.
On the brink of being gutted by the Supreme Court, we look at how the Voting Rights Act changed America.
With Labor and Business apparently coalescing around a set of compromise principles on immigration reform (a very big deal as Benjy Sarlin explains), the sole big political obstacle that could complicate things for Democrats looks less likely to occur. And now comes news that Obama’s popularity is soaring with Latino voters in the wake of his immigration push.
As I said this morning, Washington and the country’s elite political class (and I mean that not as a pejorative but merely in a descriptive way) has convinced itself that the Tea Party and the base of the GOP no longer exists. They’re wrong.
What’s wrong with people? Crowd cheers after McCain tells mother of Aurora massacre victim that she needs to hear “some straight talk.” Watch.
They don’t have a final deal yet, but business and labor issued a joint set of principles today on immigration reform. Benjy Sarlin on why that’s a big deal.
A woman who helped to stop the Tucson shooting that injured Gabby Giffords came away from John McCain’s town hall in Phoenix yesterday disappointed. She talked to TPM’s David Taintor.
Until around the time Todd Akin blew up his Senate race, the conventional wisdom in campaign world was that if Romney won, he’d carry the House and the Senate as well. That supposition underlay the GOP’s entire substantive agenda from tax reform to entitlement cuts to repealing key provisions of Obamacare. You can’t circumvent the filibuster without controlling the budget process and you can’t control the budget process without controlling both chambers of Congress.
It turns out that CW was wrong. If Romney had won, he’d have had to contend with a Democratically controlled Senate. That means no tax rate cuts for the rich, no Medicare privatization, no Medicaid cuts, etc. etc. Read More
Washington is now focused on the political dance between President Obama and key Senate Republicans over immigration reform. The overwhelming assumption is that immigration will happen, certainly in this Congress and likely this calendar year. The question is just how the politics gets massaged. But what if none of this is right and immigration reform cannot happen unless and until Democrats retake control of the House. Read More
Newsflash: There’s still a Republican Party. The chairman of the committee that will have to move an immigration reform bill through the House has flatly ruled out any ‘path to citizenship.’