Now you take them guns: The NRA claims that violent video games are the culprit. And, yesterday morning, I listened to Tom Brokaw accept that dumbass argument as ENTIRELY reasonable without once batting an eye. Continue reading
As Democrats gather in Charlotte, N.C., to formally renominate President Obama for another term, it’s critical that convention go well to propel the president toward re-election in the fall, according to a pair of top Democratic strategists. “This is a close presidential race where President Obama and the Democrats still need a good convention to get momentum and define the choice in the election to lock in their 3- or 4- point lead. In our view, that is very likely,” says an email from famed strategist James Carville and prominent pollster Stan Greenberg. A successful convention in Charlotte can refocus voters, they say, from the current dreary economy towards the president’s hopeful plans for the future. “In the survey we conducted just before … Continue reading
Americans don’t really like what they see in Rep. Paul Ryan as the new GOP vice-presidential candidate, and that gives President Obama and other Democrats an important chance to define the Minnesota Republican in the eyes of voters. A new Gallup poll finds just 39 percent who think Ryan is an “excellent” or “pretty good” vice presidential choice. In the USA Today story about the poll, even a Romney pollster admits Ryan is not well-known among Americans. That lack of identity provides Democrats a perfect opportunity to paint a negative picture of Ryan, the powerful chairman of the House Budget Committee best-known for a deeply conservative federal budget proposal which would essentially privatize Medicare. That’s just what Democrats and their allies are … Continue reading
In this video pollster Stan Greenberg discusses surveying voters in 54 “battleground” congressional districts. Greenberg says up to 30 “very weak” GOP incumbents risk losing their seats come November — enough for a Democratic takeover. More than 60 percent of those voters believe Republicans should cooperate with President Obama, who won most of those districts in 2008, rather than fighting the president at every step. WATCH NOW:
Even as the battle over Mitt Romney’s tenure at the head of a private-equity firm rages on, a group of Democratic pollsters say they’ve identified another potent line of attack for President Obama and other Democrats to use against the presidential candidate and his fellow Republicans. Leaders from the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner polling organization briefed reporters Monday about the results of their most recent survey and focus groups, which find deep opposition to the conservative federal budget plan put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and subsequently embraced by Romney in his White House bid. At the outset, the Ryan budget (described in Ryan’s own language) barely garners majority support, the pollsters say. And voters raise serious doubts when they hear about proposed … Continue reading
President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night should “help him a lot” in his fight for re-election this year, according to longtime Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, citing results of a focus group of swing voters held during the speech. The themes the president laid out during his annual televised address to a joint session of Congress cut across party lines and provide a “powerful framework for having an election,” Greenberg says in a briefing with reporters held after the president’s speech. Reaction from 50 swing voters in Denver, Colo., show that Obama’s populist defense of the middle class and their priorities in his State of the Union scored with voters, according to Greenberg’s polling organizations, Democracy Corps and … Continue reading
Barack Obama would be so much better off if he weren’t so mean to Wall Street. Amazingly, that’s not an attack from one of the Democratic president’s GOP opponents. No, it comes from another Democrat, Bill Clinton, in the form of the former president’s new book, Back To Work. Clinton’s criticism of his fellow Oval Office Democrat is oblique rather than harsh: “Many of them [on Wall Street] supported me when I raised their taxes in 1993, because I didn’t attack them for their success,” but the dig is there nevertheless. The problem is that the 42nd president’s defense of the Wall Street fat cats ignores too much. First, it ignores the role that the financial sector played in the … Continue reading
