Two weeks ago we were astonished that Eric Cantor, a well-situated House incumbent from Virginia, could get defeated in his primary. Now we’re astonished that Thad Cochran, the six-term Republican senator from Mississippi, could pull out a victory against his tea party-backed opponent. Whether incumbents are winning or losing, it’s the latest example of a …
Wow. Who saw the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor coming? Certainly not Cantor. Or the nation’s political establishment. And not Greg Giroux, political reporter for Bloomberg News, who sat with Political Junkie host Ken Rudin and together they shook their heads at one of the more amazing primary upsets of recent times. We also hear from Kevin Broughton of the Tea Party Patriots …
It was the race the tea party wanted from the beginning. And while they didn’t completely accomplish their goal, they are thought to be on their way. In six-term Sen. Thad Cochran, tea party conservatives saw a politician from the old school, who spent a career fighting for earmarks and pork projects for Mississippi and who …
With 8 states holding primaries on Tuesday, June 3, the Political Junkie focuses on California, where Jerry Brown is the odds-on favorite to win a fourth, non-consecutive term for governor. KQED politics editor John Myers outlines the long path of Brown, who was first elected governor in 1974. He’s seen his share of ups and downs in his decades in politics, but …
A solid primary Tuesday for the Republican Old Guard, and a perfect day for incumbents — not one sitting member of Congress or governor went down, though several were thought to be endangered not long ago. The big primaries of the week were the Senate contests in Kentucky and Georgia. Al Cross of the Louisville …
It’s going to be a long primary season. So maybe we should decide right now that the strength and influence of the Tea Party should not be determined on a week-to-week basis. As Roseann Moring of the Omaha World-Herald reports, the landslide victory of first-time candidate Ben Sasse in the Nebraska GOP Senate primary was heralded as a big win for …
At long last, the 2014 primaries are here. And everyone is watching the ongoing collision between establishment Republicans and Tea Party insurgents. Speaker John Boehner, no friend of the Tea Party, won handily in his Ohio district. Thom Tillis, the establishment choice for the Senate in North Carolina, beat back his conservative opponents and won the nomination …
So how do you run your campaign in 2014 if you’re a Democrat and your president’s job approval numbers are not so good? That’s the question host Ken Rudin put to Democratic pollster and strategist Anna Greenberg in the latest installment of the Political Junkie. Greenberg acknowledges the weak numbers, the disappointing foreign policy and the history of the party …
In most cases, we know the difference between a good president and a bad one. We re-elect the good ones and we send the bad ones packing. But how do historians see them? How does Harry Truman, for example, leave office with an anemic 23% approval rating and wind up as a “Near Great” president? And …
With the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — and with the revived reputation of President Lyndon Johnson — comparisons between LBJ and Barack Obama are being made. Johnson, who left office in 1969 with the cloud of Vietnam hanging over him, is remembered as a master tactician who, with huge Democratic majorities in Congress, pushed a …