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If there is one law of politics the Clintons know better than anyone, it is the power of perception. Their masterful ability to twist, bend, and manipulate the truth -- even something as basic as the word “is” -- has afforded America’s Power Couple a Teflon-like resistance to scandal and corruption that is the envy of less savvy politicos. In Clinton World --where both public and professional personas follow a meticulously crafted storyline that has been thoroughly polled and vetted -- nothing is left unscripted; least of all, Hillary’s political swan song. The location of New York’s tiny Roosevelt Island...

Since the government shutdown, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some media member claiming Republicans are in a lot of trouble heading into next year's midterm elections. Breaking with the trend rather surprisingly Wednesday was the perilously liberal Mother Jones with a piece titled "New Poll Shows Democratic Incumbents in Big Trouble." The poll was actually from James Carville and Stan Greenberg's Democracy Corps and was titled "The Revolt Against Washington and the Republican Congress." Despite Carville and Greenberg's conclusions, author Kevin Drum dug deeper into the specifics to find some contrary nuggets: In Democratic districts, net incumbent...

"Barack Obama won because he recognized a new America." Or maybe an America more fluid, more insubstantial than post-election wisdom is ready to grant. You can't always tell about "new" -- a truth the human race rarely acknowledges. We'll see whether James Carville's and Stan Greenberg's words from a Democracy Corps survey stand up better than the consensus of November 1965, following the Lyndon Johnson-led slaughter of almost every Republican downwind from Barry Goldwater. Johnson, father of the Great Society, was all but run out of Washington on a rail after mucking up the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, as everyone these...

Be kind to Bob Shrum. Perhaps the 68-year old is suffering from the not-so-early-onset of some dread memory-loss syndrome. How else to explain his suggestion on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this evening that the National Restaurant Association's settlement for a relatively modest sum, in today's litigious world, proves that Herman Cain must have done something wrong? Does the failed presidential campaign consultant's support of Bill Clinton, despite his much larger, $850,000 settlement with Paula Jones while "adamantly denying" her claims, fire any synapses in Shrum's cerebrum? View the video here.

There’s lot of bad news for the Democrats in the survey just released by Democracy Corps and Third Way, conducted by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg’s firm. The numbers I’ll quote here are the results for likely voters and don’t include “dropoff voters,” who tend to be younger and significantly more Democratic. Republicans lead on the generic poll for the House by 47%-44% and even lead in party identification, including leaners, by 47%-46%. This is in line with the Real Clear Politics average on the generic vote which shows Republicans ahead 44%-43%; if you drop the AP/Ipsos poll, an outlier which...

It’s getting more and more difficult to avoid titling many of our posts, “How’s That Hope and Change Working Out for You?“, as so much of the news these days tosses so many slings and arrows at the Obama administration. And however outrageous Obama’s fortune may be, it certainly doesn’t seem to be working out all that well for him. From the millions of people now wondering why the President’s Chief of Staff was naked and poking Rep. Eric Massa in the chest in the Congressional locker room showers (ew!) to that unfortunate reference to visiting 57 states in his...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A new poll on Monday found signs of trouble ahead for President Barack Obama and his Democrats on national security issues such as the handling of terrorism suspects. The poll was conducted jointly by Democratic Corps, a Democratic organization, and Third Way, a progressive non-profit organization. It was done mainly to gauge voters' views on Democrats' handling of national security. The poll also found weaknesses for the Democrats on other issues ahead of November elections, in which they hope to defend their strong majorities in Congress. The poll found 60 percent of Americans believe the United States...

The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin -- 51 percent to 41 percent -- Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama's presidency. On the national security front, a massive gap has emerged, with 50 percent of likely voters saying Republicans would likely do a better job than Democrats, a 14-point swing since May. Thirty-three percent favored Democrats. "The erosion since May is especially strong among women, and among independents, who now favor Republicans on this question by a 56 to 20 percent margin," the pollsters...

Report on national survey and survey of presidential battleground states The latest events in the presidential campaign have tightened the race dramatically. In Democracy Corps’ latest surveys of 1,000 likely voters nationally and 1,017 likely voters in the presidential battleground states, the vote margin has shifted 7 points towards John McCain nationally and 9 points in the battleground. This swing puts McCain ahead of Barack Obama by 2 points nationally (48 to 46 percent), consistent with the national public polls, and by 1 point in the battleground states (48 to 47 percent).[1] Though these results are challenging, this is still...

Democrats Hammered In Memo March 3, 2005 Now, I mentioned earlier, ladies and gentlemen, that I had a revealing quote from the latest memo from James Carville and Stanley Greenberg to the Democrat rank and file. And here's the revealing paragraph as written by -- it's the Democracy Corps memo -- it's Greenberg and James Carville that came out yesterday. "So, we ask progressives to consider, why have the Republicans not crashed and burned? Why has the public not taken out their anger on the Congressional Republicans and the president? We think the answer lies with voters’ deeper feelings about...

After their shellacking in November, Democratic politicians promised to do a better job of telling voters about their moral values. But judging by a candid report last week from key party strategists, Democrats have made little progress presenting themselves in a way that would recapture rural voters or make inroads into Republican turf. The report by the Democracy Corps, based on interviews in rural areas and Republican-leaning states, offered a further testament to the cultural divide in America that has worked to Republicans' advantage in elections. In response, several Democratic strategists said they are working to reverse voters' perceptions about...

The Democracy Corps -- run by three veteran political consultants, James Carville, Robert Shrum and Stan Greenberg -- offered a mixture of good and bad news for the Democratic Party last week. In essence, their interpretation of their own latest polling data is that the Republicans are ripe for the taking -- but the vagueness of the Democratic alternative is limiting the prospects for a major comeback. Although they do not make the point, their findings illuminate the most striking failure of the Democratic National Committee under the chairmanship of Howard Dean -- the reluctance to create the kind of...

A poll on the political mood in the United States conducted by the Democratic Party has alarmed the party at its own loss of popularity. Conducted by the party-affiliated Democracy Corps, the poll indicated 43 percent of voters favored the Republican Party, while 38 percent had positive feelings about Democrats.

Culture & Cosmos April 12, 2005 Volume 2, Number 36 Democratic Strategists Issue Memo on Loss of Catholics A memo authored by a prominent Democratic strategy organization calls the decline in support of white Catholics for Democrats "striking" and "a big part of the 2004 election story." One of the analysis' key findings is that Catholic voters are becoming more pro-life which the authors called "a factor in the recent losses and one of the blockages for Democrats, at least in the Midwest." The data also reveals that young Catholics are more pro-life than their parents and that bishops who...

Warning: PDF files. http://www.democracycorps.com/reports/surveys/Democracy_Corps_October_14-16_Survey.pdf http://www.democracycorps.com/reports/surveys/Democracy_Corps_October_14-16_2004_Graphs.pdf

James Carville and company announced in a recent memo to the Democrat faithful that the political season is now open and it is "time to go hunting." A review of the memo shows that not only are the Democrats betting their fortunes on either the utter collapse of the economy or a major homeland security fiasco, but their analysis of current trends and public opinion is completely off the mark. The latest memo from "Democracy Corps," the organization led by Carville, Stan Greenburg, and Bob Shrum, acknowledges that the "perception of success and strong leadership is helping the Republicans." Yet,...