It's pretty clear that Democrats are less enthusiastic about voting this year than Republicans. The latest evidence comes from Gallup, which reports that Republicans' 3 percent edge in congressional voting among registered voters increases to 13 and 18 points when you include just those likely and very likely to actually vote.
So why are Democrats less enthusiastic? And why has "the progressive donor base," as Democratic consultant Jim Jordans reports, "stopped writing checks"?
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This year the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate made a strategic decision not to pass a budget for the federal government. They feared their spending priorities might not win the approval of voters in November's elections, so they simply opted out of their budgetary responsibility.
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In Washington I'm often asked how many seats Republicans will pick up in the House and whether they'll win a majority in the Senate. But I'm seldom asked anything about the 37 races for governor that will be decided next month (except for Georgia, which will have a runoff if no candidate tops 50 percent). Yet governorships can be just as important in politics and public policy as seats in Congress.
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The Tea Party is an awesome force that could yield a Republican majority in the House and major gains in the Senate, but on Tuesday it may have shown its destructive side, possibly killing the GOP's chances in Delaware.
Democrats are now likely to hold onto Joe Biden's old Senate seat because Republican voters nominated insurgent candidate Christine O'Donnell over Rep. Mike Castle, the pro-choice, pro-bailout liberal Republican who was the pick of the GOP establishment.
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Two sets of numbers tell you a lot about an important difference between election year 2008 and election year 2010.
In 2008, 37 million Americans voted in Democratic presidential primaries and just under 21 million voted in Republican presidential primaries. One reason for the difference was that the Republican nomination was decided earlier. But even counting only the early contests, Democratic turnout was 26 million and Republican turnout was 17 million.
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Talk about nervous Republicans. Just when the GOP seemed to have Nancy Pelosi on the ropes on the key issue of taxes, just when Democrats were panicking in advance of November's elections, just when the White House seemed unsure of what to do next -- just as all of that was happening, John Boehner mixed things up by appearing to break with fellow Republicans on the Bush tax cuts.
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08/13/10 12:00 AM
After a widely admired start in the White House, first lady Michelle Obama's popularity is falling and, if the current downward trend in her approval ratings continues, could touch lows not seen since the scandal-tainted days of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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One of Bush’s signature initiatives was combating AIDS. Despite being a favorite cause of the liberal in-crowd, Bush never seemed to get much credit for it. But I guess you don’t know what you’re missing until it’s gone:
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Many years ago I was privileged to attend a dinner with James Rowe, one of the "passion for anonymity" young aides to Franklin Roosevelt, original author of the winning strategy for Harry Truman's 1948 campaign and close confidant of then-President Lyndon Johnson.
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Over the last eight years, most Democratic politicians have made a distinction between the Good War (Afghanistan) and the Bad War (Iraq).
That very much includes Barack Obama. As an Illinois state senator, he spoke out against military action in Iraq in 2002, and as a U.S. senator at a September 2007 hearing, he offered a blisteringly negative assessment of Iraq so lengthy that it left no time for Gen. David Petraeus to reply.
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