Moore: How to Lose the Election

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»

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»

The iPod, Guitar Hero, Twitter—and some serious moments, too

(NEWSER) - From the tragic (World Trade Center attacks, Hurricane Katrina) to the seemingly trivial (Stephen Fry's first Tweet), the Telegraph lists the top 100 defining cultural moments of the decade so far:

• April 2000: Metallica sues music-sharing service Napster.
• October 2001: The iPod is released.
• February 2003: Sacha Baron Cohen hits America.
• March 2003: Michael Moore slams President Bush at the Oscars.
• February 2005: YouTube is created.

He's losing good people for hard-to-fill administration spots

(NEWSER) - President Obama’s campaign pledge to run a lobbyist-free White House is coming back to haunt him, writes Jonathan Martin in Politico. The problem is that there’s an army of Democratic specialists in hard-to-master policy areas who worked as lobbyists during the Bush administration—and they're all off-limits. “This town is filled with crackerjack tax attorneys, but you can go bowling in the Treasury hallway and not hit anybody,” says one lobbyist. More»

Fast-growing urban demographic handed Obama election victory

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama's strength in cities won him the election, meaning he "might be America's first urban" president, statistics whiz Nate Silver writes in Esquire. Obama's "pragmatic, superior, hip, stubborn, multicultural" ways make him unmistakably urban, Silver writes, and America's changing demographics mean that urban voters matter now more than ever. More»