The Week: Most Recent 2010 Elections

America's big shift to the right: Fact or fiction?

The Week — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:22:00 -0500

The 2010 fight for control of Congress is over, but the battle to interpret the results wages on. And "the big dispute at the heart of most arguments," says Ed Kilgore in The Democratic Strategist, is "whether the U.S. electorate is moving ideologically to the right in a way that gives Republicans a natural majority in the future." The conventional wisdom, based on the GOP gains and exit polls, is "yes." But is the conventional wisdom right?

Conservatives, not America, moved right: There has been a slight shift to the right since 2006, says Ruy Teixeira in The Democratic Strategist (PDF)...

Why Obama still has the upper hand

The Week — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:14:00 -0500

Republicans say President Obama should heed the message voters sent him, says William Galston at The New Republic, but perhaps incoming GOP House speaker John Boehner and his colleagues are the ones who should be paying attention. In a new Pew survey, 55 percent of respondents say they want GOP leaders to cooperate with Obama to get things done — even if it means angering conservative voters. Only 38 percent want Republicans to refuse to budge. And, by an even bigger margin, Americans want Obama to try to get along with Republicans, too. That should make it easy, says Galston, for Obama to...

The bull market in fake facts

The Week — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 16:28:00 -0500

Voters say they want Democrats and Republicans to compromise and work together. If it's so easy, perhaps voters themselves should give it a try. I'd like to hear the discussion between the liberal Democrats who think the 111th Congress accomplished nothing of import and the Republicans who believe it created death panels to condemn the old and infirm. One group believes the past two years consisted of establishment business as usual; the other thinks Josef Mengele was named surgeon general. And John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi are the ones who need to find common ground?

Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously...

Should it matter how Alaskans spelled 'Murkowski'?

The Week — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:45:00 -0500

Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller has filed a federal lawsuit saying election officials should throw out every write-in ballot on which the name of his rival and fellow Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski is misspelled. The state has been allowing votes for "Merkowski," "Mirkowski," and other near misses where "voter intent" seemed clear, and Murkowski's campaign says discarding those ballots would be unfair. But Miller says Alaska law is clear — voters have to nail the spelling or their ballots don't count, no exceptions. Is he clutching at straws? (Watch an AP report about Miller's challenge...

Is the Tea Party already 'selling out' on pork?

The Week — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:15:00 -0500

Republicans are engaged in a civil war over pork, with Tea Party star Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) calling for a total ban on earmarks, and GOP leaders Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) balking. Surprisingly, it isn't clear which faction incoming Tea Party Republicans will side with. Two of the grassroots movement's biggest icons, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, have distanced themselves from the Tea Party since winning their Senate seats last week, and Paul told The Wall Street Journal he "will advocate for Kentucky's interests." Has the Tea Party insurgency already been tamed by...

Should Democrats compromise on tax cuts?

The Week — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:48:00 -0500

In what could be a sign of looming gridlock, House Republican leaders are warning that they have no plans to compromise with Democrats on extending the Bush tax cuts for...

Bill Maher vs. Jon Stewart: Round 2

The Week — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 10:45:00 -0500

The video: After Bill Maher slammed "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart for drawing what Maher considers false parallels between extreme liberal and conservative pundits, Stewart has responded in trademark deadpan style. (See highlights from last night's "Daily Show" below.) The Comedy Central star intercut clips of Maher and other detractors of Stewart's recent D.C. rally (Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow) with a parody of Martin Scorsese's boxing classic Raging Bull featuring Stewart taking a slow-motion beating. Then Stewart drolly announced "plans" to stage a new rally on the National Mall this...

Will Sen. Joe Manchin defect to the GOP?

The Week — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 09:29:00 -0500

Republicans are heavily courting West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D), who just won his state's open Senate seat, according to Fox News' Chris Stirewalt. As enticement to switch parties, the GOP is reportedly offering Manchin his choice of committee assignments and maybe $1 billion in federal seed money for his pet project, turning coal into diesel. Because it was a special election, Manchin has to run again in two years. Will the GOP be able to convince him that his odds would be better with an "R" next to his name? (Watch a Fox News discussion about Manchin's position)

Manchin is in play: Judging...

The Dems' lame duck Congress: A forecast

The Week — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 15:01:00 -0500

In less than two months, the House of Representatives will switch to Republican control. But in the intervening "lame duck" session, there's still plenty of business on the agenda. Here are four of the most pressing issues on lawmakers' plates:

Extending the Bush tax cuts
Unless the tax cuts enacted by George W. Bush's administration in 2001 and 2003 are extended by the end of the year, millions of Americans will get an unwelcome surprise in their January paychecks. The president wants to extend the cuts only for families earning less than $250,000 a year; whereas the Republicans want to extend the...

Bill Maher vs. Jon Stewart

The Week — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 10:49:00 -0500

The video: Bill Maher took on Jon Stewart on his HBO show Friday night, attacking him for claiming during his Rally to Restore Sanity that there are extremists on both the Right and the Left. Liberals are not as "violent and cruel" as Right-wingers, Maher said, adding that a "big mistake of modern media" was the idea of "balance for balance's sake." Stewart's parallels between Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck were particularly egregious, said Maher: "One reports facts, the other one is very close to playing with his poop." (Click here to watch Stewart's response.)
The reaction: "Bill Maher for president...

Compromise or gridlock?

The Week — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 09:21:00 -0500

Did Hispanics save the Senate for Democrats?

The Week — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:37:00 -0400

Hispanic voters turned out in surprisingly large numbers in Tuesday's midterms, giving Democrats a boost in several key Western states. In fact, Hispanics angered over the GOP's hardline stand on immigration appear to have rescued Democratic senators from defeat in heavily Latino Nevada, California, and Colorado. One poll that covered Spanish speakers found that 90 percent of Hispanic voters backed Democrat Harry Reid in Nevada. Do the Democrats owe their hold on the Senate to Hispanic voters? (Watch a Fox Business discussion about Hispanics and the midterms)

Hispanics absolutely made the difference...

A campaign cacophony

The Week — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 14:48:00 -0400

On the way back from an outing with my family last weekend, I drove past a grassy road median crammed with campaign signs, sprouting from little sticks stuck in the ground. I say crammed advisedly: The median was perhaps 100 yards long and 20 feet wide, and there were hundreds of signs, packed densely as cornstalks, shouting at me to elect dozens of candidates in red, white, and blue lettering. The effect was numbing, a cacophony of conflicting messages—free speech not in theory, but in practice, bought and sold by the ton.

Money, the U.S. Supreme Court tells us, is a form of speech, which...

Can the GOP repeal health care reform?

The Week — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:32:00 -0400

The Republican leaders in the House and Senate, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), have doubled down on their election pledge to repeal the Democrats' landmark health care reform bill. But even after their big losses Tuesday, Democrats still control the Senate and, of course, the White House. Are Boehner and McConnell making empty threats, or can they really find a way to defeat President Obama's signature domestic achievement? (Watch a Fox News discussion about the pressure)

Republicans have plenty of tools: The Senate and the Obama veto are "formidable roadblocks," says...

What if Hillary had won?

The Week — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:15:00 -0400

Before the Democrats' drubbing on Tuesday, Bill Clinton was relentlessly stumping for candidates and his party around the country, especially in areas "Barack Obama dare not tread," says John Heilemann in New York. Given Clinton's political skills, and his wife's relative popularity now, would the Democrats be better off if Hillary Clinton had beaten Obama in the primaries, then Sen. John McCain in the general? Heilemann takes a look:

Looking back on Clinton’s bi-partisan proclivities when she was in the Senate, it’s tempting to think she might have had more success at finding a functional...

Is Obama in denial?

The Week — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:31:00 -0400

After the "shellacking" Democrats took at the polls, President Obama has vowed to find ways to compromise with Republicans. But Obama says voters were not rejecting his agenda — they were merely expressing frustration over the economy, and the fact that the Democrats' policies had not fixed it faster. Is Obama right, or is he ignoring the most important message of the midterm elections? (Watch Obama's post-elections address)

The man is in denial: "President Obama still doesn't get it," say the editors of The Washington Times. Voters have just delivered "the most stunning rebuke to an incumbent...