Someone tuning in Tuesday night to the nation’s presidential race saw two frontrunners on television who couldn’t have been more different stylistically and politically. Hillary Clinton hosted a traditional campaign victory celebration in Miami, with a cheering crowd and a carefully crafted speech that touched on broad themes and repeatedly took direct aim at Donald […]
National Politics
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Baker’s Trump problem
Charlie Baker, like the Republican Party nationally, doesn’t know what to do about Donald Trump. Like a runaway train, Trump increasingly seems like he’s headed for victory in today’s Super Tuesday primaries, which would put him in the driver’s seat to win the Republican nomination for president. Baker is a moderate and substantive Republican who […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Black pols look to form Hillary’s firewall
The Massachusetts presidential primary is nearly two weeks off, but the Democratic battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders landed in front of the State House Wednesday morning, where minority political leaders were due to hold dueling events. A little past 9 am, a bevy of black leaders assembled to sound their support for Clinton. […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
W. goes after you-know-who
It felt like a scene out of a Harry Potter novel on Monday in South Carolina. Former president George W. Bush tried to give a boost to his little brother’s flagging presidential campaign, delivering a homespun speech to a crowd of more than 1,300 without ever mentioning Jeb!’s nemesis by name. “Americans are angry and […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Outsiders are in
New Hampshire voters did not deliver a shocker yesterday as much as they put an exclamation mark on the wacky ways of the 2016 presidential race. Donald Trump’s solid win in the Republican primary and Bernie Sanders’s blowout victory over Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side were the outcomes expected — and predicted by polls. […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Rubio tries not to break a sweat
Ever since Richard Nixon dabbed the sweat off his upper lip during his televised debate with John F. Kennedy in 1960, presidential campaigns have been about the optics and technology. While there’s nothing that can definitely prove it, most pundits think, and many Americans have come to believe, that Nixon lost the race because of how […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
We’re on to New Hampshire
Well, that will leave a mark on Donald Trump. The consensus front-runner right up until the first votes were cast is now leading from behind. The Iowa caucuses handed him a humbling second-place finish to Ted Cruz that showed the bombastic billionaire under-performing his poll numbers, suggesting his support is somewhat illusory. But is it? Does the voting […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Bloomberg news
There apparently can never be too many New York billionaires in the race for president. Or, at a minimum, one may not be enough. The weekend brought news that former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has instructed underlings to begin drawing up plans for a potential independent run for president. Medford Mike is said to […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Trump and The Surprise Doctrine
The Boston Globe’s Ideas section on Sunday offered a look at Donald Trump’s America. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot to it because Trump is so adept at talking in an entertaining way without saying much of substance. The Globe’s Alex Kingsbury, in a letter to his editor, said he had been unable to complete […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Cruz in for a legal bruising
If money is the mother’s milk of politics, hypocrisy is what journalism runs on. That makes the speculation that Ted Cruz might not be eligible to serve as president under the the narrow “originialist” view of the Constitution that he holds so dear an irresistible storyline . The Republican presidential hopeful was born in Canada, […]