Chris Riback's Conversations

It’s so hard to talk politics and not have the whole conversation be about Donald Trump. And with all of the coverage – even ours – seemingly centered on the Presidential race, it might be hard to remember that there’s another branch of government where the November 8 vote matters as well. We didn’t forget, though. So today, let’s talk about the House. You know the basics – the Republicans control...

I wanted to step away from the daily politics today and take a bit of a longer view, because maybe you’re wondering the same thing I am: What’s going on with the Republican Party? Everywhere you turn there’s another layer of erosion, whether from politicians  or party elders or longtime political donors. Regardless of who wins the Presidency, something big has changed within the Republican Party....

I just finished talking with Dan Drezner, Professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Stay with me now… because Drezner is most definitely not your parents’ poli sci professor.   For one, you’ve got to follow him on Twitter. He’s funny, topical, and as likely to tweet a goofy video as he is to include a scatter-plot graph. He’s also not abov...

So I just finished talking with Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s winning 2012 campaign manager. Boy this guy knows politics. He knows the numbers. He knows the states. He knows the strategies. He knows the personalities. And he offers this great mix of numbers and narrative – he’s a walking master class. The data doesn’t matter without the story, and if you’ve got a campaign message but no numbers to g...

So if this campaign is part psychological drama, part comical farce – a matchup of personalities that would be case studies 1 and 1a for any Psych 101 class… is there anyone better to talk to than Maureen Dowd? Of course there isn’t. Which is why I was really looking forward to this conversation. Maureen Dowd, as you know, is the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist. She’s a best sellin...

So I just finished talking with Robert Costa, the Washington Post National Political Reporter and political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. The call was perfectly timed, as just this morning, a bunch of publications – including the Washington Post and Bob Costa – were taken off the Trump blacklist. So I had a newly freed Bob Costa, ready to talk about Trump and the Republican Party and Congress and mor...

Where does Stuart Stevens find the time? He is a founding partner of Strategic Partners & Media, the political consulting firm. He’s a Daily Beast contributor. He was the lead political strategist for the 2012 Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And he just released his 7th book – this one is a novel – titled “The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear.” It’s an excellent read whose narrative is a...

Jim Lehrer, the Dean of debate moderators, as Bernie Shaw once called him, joins us on Political Wire Conversations. Moderator of 12 U.S. Presidential debates. He’s also a current member of the Board of Directors for the Commission on Presidential Debates, the group that organizes and runs the general election debates – three with Trump and Clinton and one for the Vice Presidential candidates Penc...

The 2016 presidential campaign is shaping up as Hillary Clinton's race to lose -- unless everything we know about politics is wrong. Clinton is leading Donald Trump in the national polls and most state polls as well. Nearly every forecast at this point show s landslide in the Electoral College. She has put together a better national campaign. She's running way more television ads. But can she win?...

We’re in the middle of a political campaign that everyone says is unprecedented. There’s never been a candidate like Donald Trump. There’s never been a candidate like Hillary Clinton. There’s never been a campaign like this one. Never more negative. Never more disorganized. Never more off the cuff. Never, never, never. Well, how truly “never before” is this campaign? Are we really in totally uncha...

So as you know, because you can hardly turn on the television without seeing him, Van Jones is a political commentator on CNN. But as you’ll hear, he’s got so much else going on. He is President of Dream Corps and Rebuild the Dream, and you’ll hear about that. As opposed to so many of the people we see and hear on TV and talk radio, this guy is out there getting it done. You may not agree with Van...

Chris Riback talks to Josh King about his new book, An Advance Man’s Guide to White House Stagecraft, Campaign Spectacle, and Political Suicide, and the 2016 presidential campaign. King, a veteran of Bill Clinton's White House, leads readers through an entertaining and illuminating journey through the Hall of Infamy of some of the most catastrophic examples of political theater of the last quarter...

If you really want to know how good the Cook Political Report is, you’ll want to listen up – because we’ve got the real thing! Charlie Cook is Editor and Publisher of the eponymous Cook Political Report. He is also a National Journal columnist, and it’s only a slight exaggeration that there is nothing in the political world that Charlie can’t analyze, clarify or explain. Which is good news, becaus...

The candidates may be riding the subway in New York. Perhaps they’re thinking about Pennsylvania – Even California. But all political eyes are on Cleveland. While polls show Donald Trump crushing in the Big Apple, Ted Cruz was the Big Cheese in Wisconsin. Cruz’ double-digit win there significantly increased the chances of a contested Republican Convention. 538’s panel of experts estimates Trump wi...

Many of us look at this extraordinary, ridiculous, seemingly-unprecedented political season and wonder: How is this possible? The anger perhaps we understand. The feeling that the system is so corrupted that the only effective approach will be to kick over the table and figure out later how to rebuild it? Even those who don’t agree the problem is that dire can get their heads around the idea. But...

Chris Riback speaks with pollster Mark Blumenthal on what we know about the 2016 presidential election. For answers to a Presidential campaign that few predicted and fewer, perhaps, pretend to understand, we often turn to the dark science of polling. Given the overwhelming amount of data each of us generates each day – from clicks to searches to surveys and more – the people who tell us what we th...

Chris Riback and Taegan Goddard discuss the how Donald Trump's campaign not only broke the Republican party but broke political science. What in the world is going on? We are well into a primary season with results few of us expected, headed straight to a general election that even fewer dare to predict. All of us – and certainly both major political parties – are in unchartered territory. For Dem...

With the elections finally behind us, our focus turns the hard work of governing – and the big question of what, if anything, will get done? With Republicans controlling Congress and a lame duck Democrat who’s surely thinking about his legacy in the White House, what will give? Or are we about to see gridlock so extreme that the last few years will look incredibly productive in comparison? It won’...

Midterms 2014 are just around the corner, and for Repubicans it seems the voting can’t come soon enough. State by state, poll by poll, the GOP appears to pick up steam by the day. They can taste Senate control. Are the appearances true? Might there even be a Republican wave? Which key races – in the Senate and the House – should we make sure to watch? David King is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy...

It’s almost time – Election Day 2014, Midterm style is less than two weeks away. We can see the finish line from here – unless, that is, the finish line gets moved. With Republicans seeming more and more likely to take Senate control, could this election instead go into overtime? With possible runoffs in Georgia and Louisiana, recounts in close races, vote count challenges in states like Alaska, d...

We’re proud to have as our guest today – our sponsor, Charlie Cook, Editor and Publisher of the Cook Political Report and Columnist for the National Journal. Few follow the ins and outs of political campaigns more closely than Cook and his team of reporters and editors. And with less than three weeks to go before the new "most important election of our lifetimes," they’re tracking all the key race...

With less than a month to go, the question that’s been at the center of the midterm elections continues to be the big unknown: Who will take control of the Senate. We know that stats: 36 races are on the ballots; to takeover control, Republicans need a net gain of 6. And the closer we get, the more the contest seems to be coming down to just 4 or 5 key states. As listeners of this podcast know, mo...

Is there any office in American politics with simultaneously more and less power than the Vice Presidency? Indeed, there may be no phrase in American politics that carries more unspoken meanings than “A heartbeat away.” It’s been used to create fear and doubt, as well as confidence and sure-handedness. It’s both an insult and an honor – the burden and opportunity that comes with attaining our nati...

It remains impossible to talk about the 2014 Midterms without turning immediately to the big question – the only question –which party will take Senate Control? And who are we to fight that power? So while we wait 6 weeks for actual results, we turn instead to predictive analysis –deep dives into dozens of race-by-race polls that seem to be released hourly. What do they show? How many seats are tr...

As we make our way towards the first Tuesday in November, a highly-watched, always-debated component of American politics is ready to take it’s place center stage: Statistical models. These models, which connect and weight a range of ever-changing data, have replaced the simple “who will win by how many points” projections. And with Senate control both still undetermined and central to our politic...