Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Two political talking heads at MSNBC , Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd, neither of whom are rightists, discuss Republican and Democratic prospects and conclude: Democrats should worry. Events are now riding the presidency.

In the first few weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has been, true to his word, an active president. He produced a “stimulus package” that represents a massive intrusion of the federal government into the private market place, an extension of a program hastily developed during the last frenetic days of the Bush administration. He has taken steps to keep his campaign promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, though it is still undecided what do with “detainees” such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed , the mastermind of the 9/11 attack on New York. The President has sent former diplomatic wunderkind George Mitchell to the Middle East to broker a peace between warring factions in Israel. And he has shown that his Middle East policy prescriptions during the campaign were serious by opening an entente with the Arab World. Iran, very much a part of that world, promises to be his stone of stumbling. The US-based International Institute for Strategic Studies on Wednesday conclud...

We live in the age of apologies, but here’s a corker: In South Carolina, African American state senator Robert Ford quickly threw his support to Senator Hillary Clinton, wife of the “first black American president,” Bill Clinton. The press thought this curious, since Barack Obama, also running for president, is a black American and, if elected to office, would be the second black American president, Hillary's husband being the first. So a reporter asked him about it. Ford said that if Obama got the nomination, “ Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose because he's black and he's top of the ticket. We'd lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything ." In South Carolina, this sort of thing is important. Naturally, Ford got grief. And after a few days of heavy pelting, he issued the following apology: “ If I caused anybody, including myself, any pain about the comments I made earlier, then I want to apologize to myself and to Senato...