Washington Faces Seismic Shift

We still don't know how the candidates think: Noonan

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama is rising in the polls, but he still seems “exotic”; John McCain is playing the maverick but his maneuvering on the bailout may have been “too cute.” In a week with “all categories upside-down and out the window,” it’s time for both candidates to explain how they think, and why they believe in their respective parties, Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal. More»

An Obama win will energize the struggling party, but McCain won't accomplish anything in office

(NEWSER) - A John McCain win in November would be the worst loss Republicans have endured in decades, Peter Beinart writes in Time. On the other hand, an Obama win—and subsequent torrent of liberal legislation—would reinvigorate demoralized Republicans. If McCain takes the White House, he will likely compromise with Democratic lawmakers and rob the GOP of its conservative fervor. More»

President's miscalculations include scale, momentum

(NEWSER) - Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts is the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s first-year political strategy, John F. Harris and Carol E. Lee write for Politico . The miscalculations cover “three major counts":

• Believing 2008 was a game-changer: The Obama team thought the "election represented something seismic." But "the assumption that Obama would be swimming mostly with the current rather than often against it on issues such as health care, financial regulation and global warming was naive in retrospect."

(NEWSER) - The public is rapidly losing faith in President Obama, new polls show. His overall approval rating is below 60%—a USA Today/Gallup poll gives him 55%, putting him 10th among the 12 post-World War II presidents after six months in office. A Public Trust Monitor/Politico survey finds 54% trust Obama, down from 66% in March. Only 42% trust the Democratic Party. More»

Attack focuses on Bill Maher comments, White House 'boys' club'

(NEWSER) - Democrats often slam the GOP's "war on women," but now it's the Republicans who are hitting back at "Obama's war on women" in a new attack ad, Mediaite reports. The Republican National Committee ad focuses on controversial remarks Bill Maher—who is also a bigtime Obama donor—has made about women, and prominently features CNN's Erin Burnett interrogating an uncomfortable-looking David Axelrod over the remarks. It then moves on to Ron Suskind's Confidence Men, the book that painted a picture of the White House as a "hostile workplace" for women. More»