Obama: 'Presumptuous' Nominee

Obama's 2008 effort gives party an edge in 2010 Senate races

(NEWSER) - Senate Democrats have a silver lining heading into the 2010 election: their party’s made huge gains in voter registration. The last time this crop of senators was on the ballot was 2004, when George W. Bush’s field operation, then the most sophisticated ever, was registering hordes of Republicans. But Barack Obama’s 2008 effort “made the 2004 Republican model look antiquated,” writes Tom Schaller on FiveThirtyEight.com . More»

Washington's full of preeners, fakers, and wannabes

(NEWSER) - The Salahis have finally gotten a real invite to a high-brow Washington event—a Congressional hearing into their infamous party crashing. Surely, the Salahis shouldn’t have been allowed to slip in—it shows a Secret Service “with glaring—and chilling—vulnerabilities and liabilities,” writes Maureen Dowd in the New York Times . “But if Congress investigates social climbing and party crashing in Washington, it won’t have time for anything else.” More»

Plouffe book recalls a historic campaign that got lost in transition

(NEWSER) - 'Yes, we can" was the rallying cry of a game-changing campaign that swept Obama to victory on the shoulders of a grass-roots tidal wave one year ago—and President Obama would do well to remember Candidate Obama, writes Arianna Huffington in a lengthy look at David Plouffe's new campaign memoir. The senator whose mantra was change has forgotten his middle-class mandate, and become the president who decided "the American people can only have as much change as Olympia Snowe will allow," she writes. More»

Brian Williams joins take-out trip for cheeseburger, fries

(NEWSER) - Yes, President Obama would like fries with that. The commander-in-chief made another cheeseburger run today, shelling out almost $80 on lunch for an entourage that included NBC’s Brian Williams, the Chicago Tribune reports. The president took aides and the Nightly News anchor, who’s trailing him for a “day-in-the-life” documentary, for take-out to a burger joint in southeast Washington. More»

(NEWSER) - An errant plane set off a brief security scare in Washington today, prompting the relocation of President Obama and VP Biden, Bloomberg reports. The small aircraft entered restricted airspace before being intercepted by military jets and obeying orders to leave the area and land at a nearby airport. During the alert, the White House and Capitol were locked down. More»