One of the most important political lessons from both domestic and international government programs is that the best way to help the poor is to help the middle class. The most popular and effective anti-poverty programs in America are Social Security, Medicare and public education. In large part they are popular because they are truly [...]

Mitt Romney’s decision to pick Paul Ryan as his running mate and fully embrace Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program is looking more and more like one of the biggest unforced errors of the campaign. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll, voucherizing Medicare is extremely unpopular and Obama holds a [...]

In the last several weeks Romney has seen his support drop across the board, including with seniors who are his strongest age group. From Reuters: New polling by Reuters/Ipsos indicates that during the past two weeks – since just after the Democratic National Convention – support for Romney among Americans age 60 and older has [...]

Several months ago when the general election began in earnest the Romney campaign said they would keep a laser focus on the economy. The idea made sense. President Obama’s job approval rating on the economy is very bad and at the time, at least, Romney had an edge on which candidate voters thought would be [...]

While it seems the presidential race has already been fully underway for an eternity, the holding of the respective conventions has traditionally been considered the point when the race begins in earnest.  That is when Mitt Romney makes the transition from presumptive nominee to the official candidate of the Republican party. Going into the “start” [...]

President Obama continues to lead Mitt Romney in the two biggest swing states, Florida and Ohio, according to a new Quinnipiac/CBS/NYT poll. With a combined 47 electoral votes between them, it will be very difficult for Romney to possibly win without beating Obama in at least one of them. The poll also found that Obama [...]

Even since Mitt Romney selected Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate he has been trying to have it both ways. Romney is clearly benefiting from the excitement among conservatives who feel the selection of Ryan is a signal that Romney has embraced Ryan’s ideas. At the same time Romney is trying to claim the [...]

According to to new polling data from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, the Paul Ryan budget could be a serious political liability for Congressional Republicans who voted for it. The polling operation is Democratically aligned, so take that into account when reading their analysis. From GQRR: Just 41 percent support the Ryan budget plan, described simply [...]

I have two theories as to why we might be seeing this divergence. The first is that the economy has struggled for so long and Washington appears so dysfunctional, that a substantial share of the electorate has taken a “throw whoever is currently in power out” stance. This translates into wanting both President Obama and Speaker John Boehner to lose their jobs.

The current fall back plan from Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell would allow the debt ceiling to be raised without a bipartisan deal on deficit reduction, while shifting the responsibility for the unpopular task of raising the debt ceiling onto President Obama. It would mean no new spending cuts and no new tax increases. If [...]