2012 Presidential

On Tuesday’s morning news shows, ABC and CBS dredged up a five-year-old gaffe from former Governor of Texas Rick Perry in an effort to delegitimize Trump’s pick for head of the Department of Energy. ABC in particular seemed to go out of it’s way to make Perry appear ridiculous, playing an especially embarrassing clip from Perry’s time on Dancing With the Stars. The malicious reporting was just…

Considering that it's coming from the New York Times, reporter Sabrina Tavernise's account of what happened in Ohio to swing it from a close Obama win in 2012 to a near-blowout for Donald Trump in 2016 was reasonably well-done, but still had glaring flaws. Her story's human interest elements were strong, but the accompanying statistics provided were sparse, and really needed to be there to tell…

On Wednesday’s The View two of the most liberal hosts, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, came up with their own completely original and unheard of reason as for why Donald Trump had so many supporters: Because a lot of Americans are racist. Whoopi made the point, to which Behar agreed, before making the claim that Trump supporters hated Hillary Clinton simply because she was a woman, as well. This…

This is a volatile election year, to say the least. The two major-party candidates are far less than perfect, routinely commit gaffes (or perceived gaffes), and have been hurt by a variety of negative disclosures and actions. Two other challengers have gained a degree of attention and apparent support not seen since Ross Perot's presidential runs in the 1990s. Meanwhile, mistrust of the…

Unlike a lot of his fellow liberals, Jonathan Chait doesn’t believe presidential-debate moderators should be on-camera fact-checkers, but Chait’s reason for opposing the idea is unambiguously anti-conservative. In an item posted a few hours prior to Monday night’s Clinton-Trump clash, Chait argued that the way Republicans dealt with Candy Crowley’s intervention in a 2012 Romney-Obama debate “…

With the first 2016 presidential debate approaching on Monday, a portion of Tuesday’s Hardball on MSNBC was dedicated to looking back at some iconic moments from past debates and host Chris Matthews used the time to express his sheer anger that still permeates four years later at Mitt Romney for his “terrible performance” in the first 2012 debate where he “walked in like he’s a better man” than…

Stephanie Cutter believes that Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton really made a mistake in her Friday evening "basket of deplorables" statement about Republican nominee Donald Trump's supporters at a fundraiser in New York City when she limited the "basket" to "half" of them. On Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC, Cutter, the former 2012 Obama presidential campaign manager and…

NBC Chairman Bob Greenblatt slammed presidential candidate Donald Trump, calling him "toxic" and "demented," after his network spend more than a decade building his image. In a Facebook post he later deleted, Greenblatt lamented the “sad state of affairs” created by “pompous businessman turned reality TV star” Donald Trump. 

Plenty of Republicans have been lamenting their party’s nomination of “the one guy who cannot beat the historically unpopular Hillary Clinton,” but Gary Legum thinks they’re assuming facts not in evidence. In a Friday article, Legum indicated that Hillary would have been a prohibitive favorite against anyone the GOP might have chosen. He opined that the Republicans’ so-called deep bench was a…

At Monday afternoon's White House press briefing, Fox News reporter Kevin Corke asked Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz about the reasons for the White House's reluctance to account for President Obama's whereabouts and activities on the night of the September 2012 Benghazi attacks. Schultz never genuinely answered Corke's question, so then Corke zinged him with the fact that it took President…

When citing instances of “the worst in human behavior,” reasonable choices include the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and whatever ISIS did today. In a Sunday post, Washington Monthly blogger D. R. Tucker offered an absurdly unreasonable choice: the last ten Republican national conventions. Tucker did comment hopefully that “perhaps this year’s GOP convention will be so sick, so sordid, so sour…

The TV networks are heavily promoting the word “historic” in Hillary Clinton’s presumptive-nominee status – and “historic” is correct. This surely is a first.  “Historic” can be a factual adjective, but in the hands of the networks, it often carries a highly positive ring, often attached to liberal victories. By contrast, consider the historic nature of Mitt Romney’s nomination in 2012. On May 29…

The right’s widely varied response to Donald Trump’s presidential bid may be the political story of the year so far, but many liberals have ignored it in favor of arguing that Trump’s worldview is a pure product of conservatism. For example, in a Sunday article, Chauncey DeVega claimed that Trump is “the logical result of at least five decades of Republican political strategy” and defined…