Steve Kornacki | The New York Observer

Don't Blink: It's Rick Lazio's Moment

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:36:02 -0500

Before he became famous for donning ridiculous mascot headgear to make his weekly picks on ESPN, Lee Corso coached the Indiana Hoosiers football team for ten mostly forgettable seasons.

One year, one of his overmatched squads managed to score an early touchdown against mighty Ohio State, grabbing a 7-0 lead - at which point Mr. Corso called a time-out so his team could pose for a picture in front of the scoreboard. Then...

How About Some Questions for the Inquisitors?

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:28:59 -0500

The set-up for Sunday's "Face the Nation" was pretty irresistible - Dede Scozzafava appearing live with Dick Armey, the prickly Texan who helped sabotage her upstate congressional campaign this fall.

Alas, the follow-through was lacking.

Scozzafava and Armey were invited for a segment pegged to last week's news that the national G.O.P. may adopt a sort-of litmus test for future Republican candidates, requiring them to support eight of ten agenda items to receive official...

Rudy Giuliani, Serial Rumor Monger

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:08:20 -0500

Rudy Giuliani, the big scoop went, had decided to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand for her U.S. Senate seat next year and would announce his candidacy "in the next 48 hours."

120 hours later (and counting), the world is still waiting to hear from Rudy. And as the minutes, hours and days pass, the scoop is feeling more and more like a red herring.

All we know, for now, is that there was a Daily News...

Rudy's Unkillable Dream

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:03:26 -0500

In 1980, former Texas Governor John Connally spent $11 million—the equivalent of $29 million in today’s money—to run for the Republican presidential nomination. He won no primaries, earned just one delegate and spent the rest of his life clawing his way out of debt.

This made him a punch line, the standard by which disastrous White House bids are measured, and no one—least of all Connally himself—ever talked about him running for president again.

...

The Petty Revenge of Joe Lieberman

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:23:41 -0500

Maybe it's an oversimplication to say that Joe Lieberman's actions during his fourth term in the Senate can be explained by a simple desire to get even with the Democrats who abandoned him in his 2006 re-election bid. Maybe.

But his appearance on Sunday's "Meet the Press," in which he attempted to explain his opposition to the public option, sure seemed to suggest that he's willing to do or say anything to derail the...

Democrats for Rudy?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:44:07 -0500

One reason that Steve Israel, Carolyn Maloney, Jerry Nadler and every other New York Democrat who yearns to serve in the U.S. Senate someday may be particularly thankful next Thursday: Rudy Giuliani and his apparent readiness to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand next year.

Not that they'll say it out loud, of course. Assuming Giuliani does jump in the Senate race (and it remains very possible that he won't), all of the above-mentioned Democrats will spend...

Is Rudy Picking on a Weakling?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:30:51 -0500

It may turn out to be a red herring for the ages, but Thursday afternoon brought a report - citing a single, unnamed source - that Rudy Giuliani would within the next 48 hours announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Kirsten Gillibrand.

Let's assume the news is true.

If he really is running for the Senate, then Rudy ought to first be applauded for making an unexpectedly shrewd political calculation. All...

Obama and the Reagan Trajectory

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:03:36 -0500

A year after his sweeping election victory - and ten months after he was inaugurated amid widespread public optimism - the new president's support is slipping in the polls, faith in his policies is vanishing, and the opposition is smelling blood.

That sentence could aptly describe the political outlook that Barack Obama faces as the first year of his presidency nears its end. It also describes, just as aptly, what Ronald Reagan was facing...

Betting on the Terrorists

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:52:28 -0500

National Republicans are making a morbid political bet. It goes something like this: If there's a deadly terrorist incident in the next three years, we win - big.

Their almost uniformly hysterical response to President Obama's decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 terrorists to New York to face charges in federal court illustrates this vividly.

John Boehner, the top Republican in the House, called it "further evidence that the White...

Who Can Resist the Cuomo Slate?

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:00:17 -0500

Eliot Spitzer infamously dubbed himself "a f------ steamroller" in his early days in office - a description that didn't exactly hold up as the legislature stared him down and his popularity waned in the ensuing months.

But as a candidate for governor in 2006, Mr. Spitzer absolutely was a steamroller, powered by untouchable, sky-high-popularity that forced his fellow Democrats to give him wide latitude.

And with each day, it's more likely that there'll be...

Rudy Sounds the Alarm Again

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:15:13 -0500

Rudy Giuliani lives for weekends like this.

The Obama administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants in federal court gave the former mayor a chance to showcase his Tough Guy act on three separate Sunday morning shows.

On "Fox News Sunday," ABC's "This Week," and CNN's "State of the Union," Giuliani played up the fear and emotion, hyping the security risks that the trial could pose to everyday New...

A Massachusetts Snoozer

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:48:45 -0500

The last time there was an open Senate seat in Massachusetts, a pair of young Democrats, each with big dreams, waged a fateful nip-and-tuck fight that made a star of the winner, John Kerry, and a has-been of the loser, Jim Shannon.

Those of us who hoped for similar drama in the race to succeed Ted Kennedy have been sorely disappointed.

The Democratic primary that, in the deeply blue Bay State, will effectively double...

But Really: Why Didn't Weiner Run?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:36:53 -0500

Anthony Weiner is absolutely right when he says, as he did in Wednesday's New York Times, that Mayor Bloomberg and his re-election team were scared of him.

But Weiner is forgetting another perfectly valid point: He was scared of them, too. And he blinked.

It's no accident that he's not talking about this aspect of his decision-making process. The Brooklyn congressman, who nearly took Fernando Ferrer to a run-off in the 2005 Democratic mayoral race,...

The Democratic Calamity Club

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:54:30 -0500

For an ambitious politician, picking the wrong year to try to move up can be a career-killer - something that a fresh batch of Democrats may soon discover.

More than a dozen relatively unknown Democratic congressmen and state and local elected officials are making plays for Senate and gubernatorial seats next year, inspired by their party's profound success in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

But what looked like a smart move in November 2008,...

Racing From Bloomberg

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:14:37 -0500

Michael Bloomberg's embarrassingly narrow victory margin last week may embolden Democrats to do in his third term something they largely refused to do this year: attack him.

With all the world assuming that the mayor was coasting toward a re-election landslide - and with polls showing him running even with (or even slightly ahead of) Bill Thompson among registered Democrats - most big-name Democrats, in New York and nationally, calculated that there was more to...

The Democrats Who Voted No

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:50:37 -0500

Pushing a health care reform bill through the House on Saturday night was a trickier task than Democrats anticipated.

But it still wasn't that suspenseful: Somehow you knew that party leaders - and the White House - would manage to squeeze out the necessary 218 votes, something they ended up accomplishing by killing a plan to peg reimbursement rates for a government-run insurance program to Medicare and by granting a big concession to abortion...

Not a Referendum

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:46:56 -0500

It's too late to do any good, I suppose, but could we please stop acting like it was some sort of surprise that the Republicans won governorships in Virginia and (especially) New Jersey this week?

Yes, it is significant that the G.O.P., which was unable to post any meaningful victories in 2006 and 2008, finally managed to have a good night. And the party's successes on Tuesday will very likely be followed by more...

Four Conclusions to Come To About the Closeness of the Mayor's Race

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:15:20 -0500

1. Bill Thompson would not have done any better if Barack Obama had actively campaigned for him.

New York Democrats (at least the ones who stayed loyal to their party's nominee), we are hearing, are now pointing fingers at the White House, which refused to dispatch the president to campaign for Thompson - leaving Thompson to make transparently ridiculous hyped-up claims about Obama's engagement in the race. The suggestion is that with the mega-popular...

How Bill Owens Spoiled a Republican Narrative

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:28:17 -0500

So there we were somewhere around 10 o'clock on Election Night, watching as county after county reported devastating news for Jon Corzine.

New Jersey's governor—for whom Barack Obama made two splashy campaign appearances in the home stretch—was going down, the first Democrat to lose a statewide race there in 12 years, and only the second in 37 years to lose one by more than a point. And the national Republican Party was ready to...

Bill Thompson and the Last Great Near-Upset

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:20:28 -0500

Meet Bill Thompson: The Christine Todd Whitman of New York politics.

Not since 1990, when Whitman - then an unknown, underfunded one-time county official whose longshot campaign against Senator Bill Bradley was universally dismissed by the press and pundits - inexplicably pulled off a near-upset on Election Night have we experienced a surprise quite like this.

Yes, there have been plenty of political upsets in the 19 years since, but you could seem them coming...

How Will Bloomberg Remain Relevant?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:13:03 -0500

When he won what was supposed to be his final term as mayor four years ago, Michael Bloomberg quickly found himself - or made himself, really - the subject of presidential speculation.

The mayor never formally expressed interest in a 2008 White House campaign, but he managed to keep the talk alive for more than two years. Remember his dramatic exit from the Republican Party in the summer of 2007? And almost as soon...

Doug Hoffman, Democratic Champion

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:31:12 -0500

You don't have to agree with Doug Hoffman's very conservative politics to appreciate the value of his insurgent candidacy.

This has to do with the inherently undemocratic nature of special congressional elections in New York, where a group of county chairmen - and not the rank-and-file members of a political party - selects the candidates.

Just about anywhere else in America, John McHugh's resignation this summer (to serve as Barack Obama's Army secretary) would...

How a Rout Is Born

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:56:53 -0400

The next gubernatorial election is still just over a year away, but it's probably not too early to say this much: The contest will be between Andrew Cuomo and, most likely, Rick Lazio - and it won't be much of a fight.

David Paterson's long, slow march to the political sidelines advanced further this week with an ominous, if anonymously sourced, story in the Daily News that suggested the governor would reassess his plans...

NY-23 Proxy Battle: Gingrich Versus Armey All Over Again

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:54:51 -0400

Newt Gingrich made waves on Monday night when he used an appearance on Greta Van Sustern's Fox News show to take a subtle dig at Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin and Dick Armey - three of the big-name Republicans who have lent their support to Doug Hoffman's third party congressional bid in the upstate 23rd District.

"So I say to my many conservative friends who suddenly decided that whether they're from Minnesota or Alaska or...

Take It From Someone Who Knows Lieberman: He's Gone for Good

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:09:58 -0400

The big question in Washington right now is about how serious Joe Lieberman actually is about joining a Republican filibuster of the health care bill with a public option that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now pushing.

Connecticut's junior senator said on Tuesday that he'll probably vote to allow the bill to come to the floor for debate (opposing a G.O.P. filibuster at that point), but that "if the bill remains what it...

Bloomberg Beats a Dead Horse

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:02:42 -0400

One of the truisms of politics is that you can’t do anything if you don’t first get elected. Consequently, the noble, high-minded possibilities afforded by a high-visibility campaign almost always take a backseat to the more immediate need to win.

Case in point: Michael Bloomberg’s spare-no-expenses, take-no-risks bid for a third term.

There was a time earlier this year when it actually seemed possible that the mayor would wage a different kind of...

Ned Lamont, For One, Is Not Surprised

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:24:08 -0400

Back in 2006, some of the biggest names in Democratic politics, including an up-and-coming Illinois senator named Barack Obama, argued that Joe Lieberman-and not his more progressive Democratic challenger, Ned Lamont-should represent Connecticut in the Senate.

On Tuesday, Lieberman, who won that election as an independent but who (thanks again to Obama) still caucuses with Senate Democrats, announced that he is prepared to join a Republican filibuster of the most significant piece of social...

How NY-23 Can Change the Obama Narrative

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:12:05 -0400

It's become something of a tradition in modern American politics: Every four years around this time, the press declares the new (or newly re-elected) president humbled by the off-year election results.

Sometimes, the verdict is spot on. We knew, for instance, that the bottom had fallen out for George W. Bush when he paid an election eve visit to (then) red-state Virginia in 2005-only to see the candidate he campaigned with, Jerry Kilgore, soundly...

Schumer Lays It Out, Densely

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:24:08 -0400

Chuck Schumer, who stands to be a very big political winner if a public option is included in the compromise health care bill that will soon come to the Senate floor, offered a very specific assessment of where the public option debate in the Senate now stands on Sunday's "Meet the Press."

"I think we're very close to getting the 60 votes we need to move forward," he said, "and my guess is that...

The Public Option, With a Whimper

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:33:39 -0400

The rather surprising news that Harry Reid may now be ready to include a public option in the health care reform bill he will bring to the Senate floor next week has potentially huge short- and long-term political implications.

First, it would resolve the issue of whether Senate Democrats, who have exactly the 60 votes they need to (at least in theory) kill a Republican filibuster, are willing to proceed without G.O.P. support.

Before...

Pitchfork Sarah

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:35:45 -0400

Sarah Palin, should she decide to run for president in 2012, is on course to become the next Pat Buchanan or Jesse Jackson.

That's the takeaway message from a Rasmussen poll this week, which found the former Alaska governor lagging far behind co-G.O.P. front-runners Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in head-to-head trial heats.

Against Romney, Palin's deficit was 15 points, 52 to 37 percent. Against Huckabee, the gap swelled to 20, 55 to 35....

What an Obama Endorsement Actually Looks Like

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:23:40 -0400

After Barack Obama mentioned him by name at a D.N.C. fund-raiser in New York on Tuesday night, Bill Thompson released the following statement:

"I am excited and proud to receive the endorsement of the President. To have the president of United States get involved in a New York City mayoral race and endorse me, illustrates that he believes I will win and that I can lead this city."

But it's...

Running From the Embrace of America's Mayor

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:50:21 -0400

Eight years ago at this time, after he'd thrown more than $50 million at the mayoral race but still found himself trailing Mark Green by 16 points, Michael Bloomberg bet the farm on Rudy Giuliani, scoring a last-minute endorsement from the outgoing mayor and blanketing the airwaves with a 60-second testimonial from him.

It was all upside: 9/11 had transformed Mr. Giuliani into an exalted figure in New York, where voters, longing for a...

A Funny Judge of Civility

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:33:43 -0400

So George H.W. Bush used an interview with CBS News last Friday to decry the lack of civility in modern politics and to brand Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow "sick puppies."

"The way they treat my son and anyone who's opposed to their point of view is just horrible," the former president said of MSNBC's primetime duo.

Say what you will about Olbermann and Maddow, but there is rich irony in the former president-who...

Obama's People Stay Adamantly Noncommittal

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:41:09 -0400

The White House’s game on health care reform has been obvious since at least the middle of the summer, when President Obama unnerved much of his base by announcing that “the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform.”

That was news to much of the left, for whom the public option represents the only redeeming feature of the current reform...

Corzine Won't Follow the Script

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:34:51 -0400

Just weeks before Election Day in 2002, with the campaign of incumbent senator Robert Torricelli overwhelmed by questions about his relationship with a shady contributor, his party gave him the hook in favor of the tried-and-true Frank Lautenberg.

So it is that within hours of last Thursday’s spectacular roundup by federal agents of dozens of allegedly crooked public officials, word was circulating that Jon Corzine wasn’t long for the governor’s race.

There’s firm...

The Schumer Option: A Short-Term Winner

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:34:00 -0400

We still don’t know for sure what the final Senate health care plan will look like, but the most likely resolution to one of the stickiest issues has been obvious since early May. That’s when Chuck Schumer outlined his own compromise vision for an optional government-run insurance package. His proposal, a “level playing field” public option that would be subject to the same rules that govern private insurance plans, was vintage Schumer, reflecting his...

Change or Bust: In Prime Time, Obama Makes Things Stark

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:11:00 -0400

Near the top of his latest primetime news conference, President Obama acknowledged that “Congress is still working through a few key issues” as it seeks to produce a unified health care plan. That meant that there wasn’t any specific proposal for Obama to point to and rally support for. We still don’t know how whatever plan emerges will fund expanded access and we still don’t know whether it will include a public option—and Obama...

Obama's Grim Choice on the Public Option

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:22:00 -0400

A moment of choosing is fast approaching for Barack Obama and his party’s congressional leaders: to sacrifice the public option that the Democratic base holds so dear, or to stick with it, damn the consequences. Their decision looms as the difference between (almost) sure-thing passage of a compromise health care plan and an ugly, protracted legislative fight that could end up sinking all hopes of meaningful health care reform and severely wounding Obama. But...

Bill Clinton, Lagging Indicator

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:51:28 -0400

Bill Clinton has never been one to needlessly stake out an unpopular position, which tells us something important about his recent declaration that he’s “basically in support” of gay marriage: The issue is fast becoming a mainstream one in Democratic politics.

The former president had previously said that his position on gay marriage was “evolving,” but, really, does anyone think that Clinton has been that conflicted in his personal view? As on...

What Is Jeff Sessions' Agenda?

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:56:00 -0400

How many candidates for Congress—Democratic and Republican—have you heard loudly insist that they don’t believe in party labels, just in doing the right thing? And how many of them, once elected, end up voting with their party pretty much all the time? It’s an absurd dance. Voters like hearing about “independence” and “bipartisanship,” so candidates indulge them, only to take office and immediately morph into the party-line loyalists they just spent a year swearing...

Obama's Dusk, Obama's Morning

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:43:00 -0400

High unemployment is the domestic equivalent of an unpopular war--an overpowering drain on presidential popularity that can’t be countered with policy achievements in other areas, personal charm, or any other conventional political weapon. Barack Obama may soon offer the latest affirmation of this. A few weeks ago came news that the unemployment rate for June had climbed to 9.5 percent—a slight uptick that silenced wishful suggestions that the economy had bottomed out and that...

Palin's Exit Prompts Really Bad Punditry About Palin's Future

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:47:00 -0400

Sarah Palin is a living, breathing Rorschach test. It doesn’t really matter what she says or does: her fans and critics will see whatever they want to see. So when she suddenly quit as Alaska’s governor on Friday, the analyses about what it all meant were decisive, predictable and mostly wrong. The critics, when they weren’t speculating that a massive scandal would soon be unearthed to explain Palin’s hasty exit, proclaimed Palin’s move an...

Obama Stays With Engagement, at a Cost To Be Determined

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:17:00 -0400

The White House made clear on Sunday that Barack Obama will proceed with his push for diplomatic engagement with Iran, no matter the outcome of the current upheaval in the Islamic Republic. Appearing on several Sunday morning talk shows, Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, and David Axelrod, one of the president’s top advisers, stressed the same basic theme: that this month’s election shouldn’t dissuade the U.S. from trying to resolve the...

Last Southern Candidate Standing

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:20:00 -0400

Besides Andre Bauer, the South Carolina lieutenant governor who may soon luck into his state’s top job, the biggest beneficiary of Mark Sanford’s sudden fall from grace could actually be the governor of Mississippi. That would be 61-year-old Haley Barbour, who chaired the Republican National Committee in the mid-1990s and who is plainly interested in seeking the presidency in 2012—which explains why, as news of the Sanford scandal spread yesterday, Barbour was in New Hampshire...

The Last Thing the Iranian Reformers Need

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:55:00 -0400

It’s not a stretch for Americans to look at the scenes of mass protest in Iran and think back to 1989, when popular uprisings toppled one Soviet-backed regime after another in Eastern Europe. That mental association is one that Barack Obama’s critics have seized upon, arguing that the same presidential bully pulpit that hastened the liberation of those nations from Moscow 20 years ago should now be used to spur on the women, men...

As Tehran Roils, Obama Refuses to Pander

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:26:00 -0400

Rudy Giuliani used to like to tell the story about how, at the height of the panic and chaos of 9/11, he supposedly turned to Bernie Kerik, his then-police commissioner, and exclaimed: “Thank God George Bush is our president!” This was back when memories of the disputed 2000 election were still fresh, so the sentiment that Giuliani, who typically mentioned the anecdote to Republican crowds, was really conveying was more like: “Thank God Al Gore...

The New Teflon President

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:00:00 -0400

Flummoxed by Ronald Reagan’s enduring popularity in the face of a string of unsettling foreign and domestic developments, Pat Schroeder, then a Democratic congresswoman from Colorado, took to the House floor in 1983 and said of the first-term president: “He has been perfecting the Teflon-coated presidency: He sees to it that nothing sticks to him.” Her comment was meant to be disparaging, but in coining the term “Teflon president,” Schroeder actually identified a significant phenomenon...

Can Mark Green Really Be a Front-Runner?

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:16:00 -0400

Whatever you may think of him, you’ve got to hand it to Mark Green: The man just will not give up. He has spent the better part of three decades trying to be someone—someone big—in politics, and usually coming up short. Some actually believed we’d seen the last of him (as a candidate, at least) on that September night three years ago when, digesting his 20-point loss to Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for...

How to Invent Facts About the Iranian Election

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0400

Even when the evidence for something is overwhelmingly compelling, a small but noisy chunk of society will still resist it. The debate over evolution is an example of this. So is the present discussion of the Iranian election results. The clear consensus in the West is that the fix was in—that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supposed re-election landslide is a sham sloppily cooked up by the Islamic Republic’s conservative, change-resistant clerical elites. This isn’t simply because most...