Apparently, the president-elect is getting a new limousine. Details are sparse, but one thing is certain: it's damned ugly. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Jan 16, 2009 - 90 comments

It's been a busy week for presidential libraries. The Nixon Library released 200 hours of tape (excerpts) and 90,000 pages of documents (excerpts) that detail his obsessive attempts to destroy his political enemies. The LBJ library released MP3s of dozens of phone calls, including one where he accuses Nixon of treason for stalling Vietnamese peace talks in advance of the 1968 election. Finally, the Reagan Library released 750,000 pages of documents (NYT, reg. req.) to researchers. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Dec 7, 2008 - 20 comments

Well, the Presidential election is only one day away...after which, the US begins the 11 week transition period to a new administration! [more inside]
posted by brandman on Nov 3, 2008 - 86 comments

Synchronized Presidential Debating
posted by blue_beetle on Oct 28, 2008 - 31 comments

Welcome to The Sacramento County Republican Party. The official website has removed content calling for Obama to be waterboarded. But it still contains fake quotes supposedly from Obama's memoir. In this political climate, 33% of voters do not identify Obama as Christian, and 8% believe he is Muslim. Yet, the polls predict a landslide, hinted at by early voting. McCain needs something spectacular, and he may be regretting his decision to invoke Bill Ayers in tonight's debate; and perhaps other things.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Oct 15, 2008 - 1600 comments

Now that the presidential debate is back on, it's time to prepare by selecting the most appropriate drinking game for tonight's debate. [more inside]
posted by nitsuj on Sep 26, 2008 - 607 comments

Nate Silver, the proprietor of the fantastic electoral projection site FiveThirtyEight.com, notices that the presidential betting market on Intrade is behaving very oddly: "[S]ome individual trader or some small group of traders are shorting all the Obama contacts in bulk and resetting the entire market. The markets then organically climb back upward until the rogue trader strikes again six or eight hours later." [more inside]
posted by WCityMike on Sep 24, 2008 - 39 comments

MSNBC is removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral in the heat of the presidential campaign.
posted by VicNebulous on Sep 8, 2008 - 270 comments

David Byrd, the President of Premier (formerly Diebold), has acknowledged that an error in touch-screen voting machines used in half of Ohio's counties may cause some votes to be "dropped". Oh, and there's no time to fix the problem before the elections. Premier Election Solutions and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner are issuing guidelines to counties for how to avoid the problem.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Aug 22, 2008 - 115 comments

The Misery Circle An article about the remaining 13 also-rans in past US presidential elections.
posted by idiomatika on Mar 29, 2008 - 17 comments

Unflattering photos from the campaign trail. My personal favorite is this one: NOMNOMNOM
posted by mr_crash_davis on Feb 21, 2008 - 40 comments

The times, they are a-changing? [pdf]: A Survey of Iowa State University Students' preferences in the presidential primaries. [spoilers inside] [more inside]
posted by orthogonality on Nov 27, 2007 - 47 comments

Tag-clouds for the first debates of the Democratic and Republican primaries. via the kreat orange satan
posted by geos on May 4, 2007 - 28 comments

CNN has invited Sen. Mike Gravel to the Democratic Presidential Debate on CNN. This was after reporting CNN would not invite him back and large public protest. Democrats will take the stage at Saint Anselm College on June 3, Republicans on June 5. Youtube links, If you missed him on the CNN debate or the after on MSNBC.
posted by IronWolve on May 1, 2007 - 89 comments

Michelle Bachelet wins the Chilean presidential election, the first woman to do so. She's also a socialist, a single mom and an agnostic. Santiago is starting to fill up with car horns, and her opponent, rightist millionaire Sebastián Piñera, is supposed to concede any minute now.
posted by signal on Jan 15, 2006 - 87 comments

How Bush Did It "A team of Newsweek reporters unveils the untold fears, secret battles and private emotions behind a historic election." An in-depth series of behind-the-scenes articles. [via Salon 's War Room, which also says Bush's bulge was a bulletproof vest.]
posted by kirkaracha on Nov 4, 2004 - 55 comments

While much of the blogging world has been ga-ga over getting into the Democratic National Convention, it's tough to find anything interesting going on among the convention bloggers (to their credit, go turn on CSPAN today and see for yourself how boring it is). While our own Jessamyn is there (here are profiles of everyone going), I've found the strange CNN/Technorati partnership to be the most useful thing. Technorati founder David Sifry is basically doing a metafilter of all convention blogs over on CNN as the daily blog roundup, highlighting the posts worth reading among the participants.
posted by mathowie on Jul 27, 2004 - 36 comments

open debates is a nonprofit that's working to reform the presidential debate process for the american election. they have some pretty big names on their board from across the political spectrum, including john b. anderson, angela "bay" buchanan, and randall robinson.

From the website:
Currently, the presidential debates are secretly controlled by the major parties, through the private bipartisan corporation called the Commission on Presidential Debates, resulting in the stultification of format, the exclusion of popular candidates, and the avoidance of pressing national issues.
The major party candidates never pay a political price for their antidemocratic practices; posing as an independent sponsor, the Commission on Presidential Debates shields the major party candidates from public criticism and public accountability.
posted by christy on May 26, 2004 - 9 comments

John McCain is open to running with Kerry. Is a Kerry and McCain a ticket combination that keeps President Bush up at night? McCain could help Kerry and the Democrats bring in a sizeable chunk of the important "Nascar Dad" vote that is key to this election. Expect big overtures from the Bush team towards McCain including the possibility of a Bush and McCain ticket. McCain's decision may rest on any lingering resentment over the 2000 Republican presidentialcampaign, particularly the dirty tricks the Bush campaign pulled in South Carolina. Stay tuned.
posted by thedailygrowl on Mar 10, 2004 - 35 comments

Whatever happened to Howard Dean?

"He was assassinated by Bill and Hillary with the assistance of Chris Lehane, the political hit man who first worked for Kerry and now backs Clark.
Desperate to keep control of the Democratic Party, the Clintons used their negative researchers and detectives to the ultimate and generated a story-a-day savaging Dean. The Vermont governor, not ready for prime time, cooperated by being thin-skinned, surly and combative. "

caveat: I'm not trolling, but as a democrat I find this interesting. Ok, nauseating.
posted by mecran01 on Jan 24, 2004 - 102 comments

The Kennedy Assassination It seems forty years later, more people believe in a conspiracy theory. So what do you think of Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby and others? Was Mark Lane right? Maybe Prouty had even more answers he didn't share.
A previous post here : ...Up Close and Personal
posted by alethe on Nov 21, 2003 - 35 comments

Pray for Paul Wolfowitz Many across America and Americans in other countries are heeding the call to pray for our President. In a short time since the September 11 terrorist attacks, well over a million people have registered their promise to pray daily for the President. That number is increasing by tens of thousands of new team members every day. News of The Presidential Prayer Team is spreading rapidly throughout America as people march to the tempo of an almost forgotten tune, "God Bless America." The independent, nonprofit organization behind The Presidential Prayer Team, has a singular purpose: to encourage specific nationwide prayer for the President. The goal is to enlist at least 2.8 million participants, or 1% of the American population, to make this prayer commitment.
posted by Slimemonster on Aug 22, 2003 - 75 comments

Dem Blogs This community is filled with bloggers and I wondered if anyone had seen Maureen O'Dowd's take on how the Presidential Candidates are starting to use, for better or worse, "blogging" as a method to get their "message" across. ( Registration required )
posted by RubberHen on Aug 13, 2003 - 9 comments

H.J. RES. 25. Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution.
posted by four panels on Apr 18, 2003 - 25 comments

Bush signed an executive order on Nov. 1 limiting the public's access to past presidents' papers. Many of Ronald Reagan's documents were set to go public, but the release was delayed while the current White House reviewed the policy for nine months. Now, records don't go public until after 12 years, and once a request is made, the current president and the president in question have to approve access. The only place I saw this reported was in a NYT editorial. Is there something to hide? Is the timing of this order improper?
posted by panopticon on Nov 16, 2001 - 30 comments

In the spirit of the American Memory Digital Library or Duke's Digital Scriptorium, the American Museum of the Moving Image has a new exhibit called The Living Room Candidate- a comprehensive collection of presidential campaign ads since the 1950's.
posted by kidsplateusa on Oct 23, 2000 - 6 comments

I don't recall this particular promotion showing up in a presidential campaign before, but then what would I know?
posted by chicobangs on Sep 16, 2000 - 3 comments

Al Gore has decided on Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) as his VP nominee, sez someone who ratted to the AP. I suppose there's a small chance they're just leaking this now to test public and media reaction before making a final fianl decision, but I doubt it.
posted by aaron on Aug 7, 2000 - 11 comments

Oh, happy day! Just when thought the 2000 US Presidential Race was going to be a woebegone contest between Dull and Duller, the impish whackjob returns for yet another round of merry hi-jinks and paranoiac delusions presented as fact!
posted by m.polo on Jun 29, 2000 - 4 comments