Unlike his predecessor as host of Meet the Press, Chuck Todd is an approachable, un-phony presence. He knows politics and clearly enjoys politics. But, boy, is he excitable, especially on the subject of immigration, where he often lets the drama of the moment cloud his judgment. [You need three examples-ed. Got em.]
1:00 AM 12/14/2014
Violating the No-Goad Zone: Last Tuesday, in Nashville, President Obama confidently predicted that no future president would be able to reverse his recent executive amnesty of some 4 million illegal immigrants:
10:38 PM 12/04/2014
Am I missing something ...? : I think Obama's executive amnesty is probably unconstitutional, and in any case it's bad policy. A Congress mindful of its place in our democracy would stop it on balance-of-powers grounds alone. I also share Byron York's puzzlement over why, exactly, it has to be stopped now, as opposed to after January when Republicans will have majorities in both Houses.
7:08 AM 11/27/2014
In a satisfying moment of intramural recrimination this week, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York pointedly second-guessed President Obama's decision to push sweeping health care legislation in 2010, when Americans were more concerned with the state of the economy and their economic futures.
6:29 AM 11/21/2014
You don't have to be Hari Seldon to figure out what the next two waves of Conventional Wisdom will be regarding President Obama's just-announced unilateral amnesty "Immigration Accountability Executive Action":
4:20 AM 11/20/2014
With Obama's executive amnesty imminent, anonymous White House aides are cockily dismissing John Boehner's threatened lawsuit against it as a stunt. Even among opponents of executive amnesty -- and I'm with them -- there's a tendency to pooh pooh the suit. It's a loser, it will take forever to decide, it's an attempt to 'redirect Republican rage' away from budgetary remedies like denying funding, etc.
6:38 AM 11/11/2014
Quagmire: 'We already intervened twice. You mean we have to go back there again?'-- Vox, TPM editors contemplating another rescue mission of MIT Obamacare expert Jonathan Gruber. P.S.: I told you so. P.P.S.: Gruber seems more clumsy, unpolished and unfiltered -- even goofy -- than slick. Slick would be worse. ...
6:59 AM 11/05/2014
FIND THAT MESSAGE: Obama's policies were on the ballot -- we have it on good authority (Obama's). That includes "comprehensive immigration reform," as embodied in the Chuck Schumer's Senate "Gang of 8" legalization + immigration increase bill. So how did it do? Let's see:
6:08 AM 11/03/2014
Liberals for Scott Brown? Here's why I think New Hampshire Democrats should vote against Jeanne Shaheen on Tuesday. I know this is a tough sell, and you're maybe sick of any kind of sell. I'll keep it short:
5:40 PM 10/29/2014
The Bias Matrix: What does kausfiles want? It's complicated! Before a modern political writer can slant his coverage practice explanatory journalism determine what readers need to know, he first has to figure out whom he wants to win. That's not always as easy as it sounds, especially if you are a blogger whose major issue** (control of our borders to help create a tight labor market) does not break down cleanly along party lines. Confronting the array of possible outcomes from the 2014 midterms, I can see two semi-contradictory imperatives:
6:30 PM 10/26/2014
The Prisoner and the Dilemma: We'd like to quarantine care workers who return from caring for Ebola patients in West Africa -- we're not 100% sure that symptomless people aren't contagious ("unlikely"), and symptoms seem to come on relatively quickly in any case. Voluntary quarantining has proven incompletely effective. At the same time, we don't want to discourage volunteer health care workers from traveling to West Africa, where the main fight against the disease is being waged. They're not exactly encouraged to make the trip if they know they'll have to spend 21 days in a tent with a portable toilet on their return.
10:45 PM 10/25/2014
Neutral Story Line That Isn't: Looks like NBC has its midterm election line set: It's all about "gridlock" and "polarization!" (Video clip, featuring Chuck Todd, here.)
8:23 AM 10/20/2014
Faster Ebola: Ebola -- and the administration's non-reassuring response to the threat -- seems to be the hot issue now in the midterms. There's even talk that the Republicans, previously (and perhaps intentionally) themeless, will be able to nationalize the election around the issue. The trouble is that the election is 15 days away. Will the Ebola meme last until then? The Feiler Faster Thesis says no! The ability of voters to process information with increasing speed means they will have grokked Obama's epidemiological performance in fighting the disease and be ready for a new issue long before November 4 -- at least unless new cases of infected Americans emerge.
9:41 PM 10/16/2014
677 Caterpillars: A man named Tyler Pearson had posted a list of the 1000 Twittter accounts most commonly followed by the 677 New York Times staffers on the paper's public list. It is, as you would expect, embarrassingly cocooned: Times staffers follow people who share the liberalish/leftish viewpoint of the Times itself, meaning these staffers are less likely to even find out discordant information. Which may be why they are so often surprised, or late to a story. ...
10:17 PM 10/09/2014
UKIP/Tea Party Statists May Be Onto Something: Alex Wickham of Breitbart London picks up an apparently not-very-subtle shift in the ideology of the surging UK Independence Party, which is trying to extricate Great Britain from the European Union.
2:55 AM 10/08/2014
Can't see the elephants for the regattas: You would think someone writing 800 words (with three charts) about the relationship between SAT scores and wealth -- the rich on average score higher -- would at least consider the possibility that (while expensive tutoring or something else might be a factor) rich people on average are a bit smarter, and they pass some of this on to their kids. You would be wrong. Not even in the Wall Street Journal! The P.C. consensus is powerful. ...
1:25 AM 10/06/2014
Solidarity: Paul Krugman addresses the question of whether there's "slack" in the labor market -- e.g. people still looking for work -- or whether the Fed should worry more about wage inflation (if employers bid to hire scarce workers) and less about unemployment. Do you feel any wage inflation? Krugman doesn't either. He seems to suspect the market still has slack, and if it doesn't we should maybe let wages rise first before we decide to call off the party:
6:04 PM 10/04/2014
Latino voters think whatever we say they think, OK? According to Politico
5:25 PM 10/04/2014
What Are You Doing With Your Time on Earth? You Could Be Switching Health Plans! We spend a trillion dollars on Obamacare, and "'winners' probably outnumber 'losers' in the new marketplaces." ..."Probably"? OK! See Jonathan Cohn's ringing defense .