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DAVID S. BERNSTEIN
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By embracing full marriage equality, President Obama both reflected and hastened real change on many fronts
People will surely debate for years to come whether President Barack Obama's self-described "evolution" on universal, legal, same-sex marriage caused, or simply reflected, a turning point on the issue in the United States.
Romney needs to reach out to women voters, but his party has few who can help him do it
Last week, Barack Obama's re-election campaign launched a Web slide show, "The Life of Julia," depicting a woman helped throughout her years by Obama policies, and warning that — if elected — Mitt Romney would undo all of them.
Mitt’s Massachusetts Massacre
Saturday was an embarrassment of epic proportions for Mitt Romney and the Massachusetts Republican Party — an organization that, as I've chronicled in recent months, is essentially an extension of the Romney machine.
For the sick in need of medical marijuana, it looks like the people will have to provide the relief that their representatives won’t
It seems strange to say that politicians lack the courage to pass a bill that's favored by the vast majority of their constituents. But that's where Massachusetts stands on its long, strange trip to legalize distribution of medically prescribed marijuana.
Up to Old Tricks Dept.
If there's one thing the Mitt Romney team excels at, it's manipulating campaign-finance rules.
Sleepy Senate
Therese Murray's fifth anniversary as State Senate president passed by with little fanfare last month.
Who's next
State senators insist that nobody is thinking about succession when Therese Murray's tenure as Senate president ends.
Fehrnstrom ex machina
In late November, Mitt Romney sat for a rare interview, with Bret Baier of Fox News.
Chaos theory
The stereotype of Massachusetts Republican State Committee members, at the local or state level, is of genteel, moneyed Brahmins discreetly delivering their contribution checks during a pleasant social gathering over wine and brandy.
Bland ambition
Back in mid January, when the presidential primary season began and interest in the Republican candidates spread beyond the tight community of political junkies, Mitt Romney's previously untarnished reputation with the general public took a nasty turn.
New polls show Scott Brown winning re-election to the Senate. That’s no accident; he’s been out earning it.
After months without new polling on the high-profile Massachusetts Senate race, four firms took the pulse of the race in February — all finding incumbent Republican Scott Brown ahead of presumed Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren.
So far, the family mystique is working entirely in favor of Joe Kennedy III's Congressional bid — but recent events show how unpredictable Camelot can be
In his well-executed congressional-campaign launch two weeks ago, Joe Kennedy III took advantage of the intense media interest generated by his family bloodline to convey the message that he wishes to be viewed independently of those family ties.
Sal's baaaaaack!
For nearly a year and a half, Beacon Hill has been operating under the specter of the Massachusetts Probation Department patronage scandal.
It's no surprise that Barack Obama would copy from Deval Patrick's re-election playbook. But why is Mitt Romney making Charlie Baker's mistakes?
Last week, Mitt Romney stood uncomfortably to the side as he accepted the endorsement of reality-show blowhard and occasional birther Donald Trump in Las Vegas.
House of Incorrections
As you read this, Beacon Hill is debating a "three-strikes" crime bill, while waiting for the US Attorney's Office to hand down indictments in the scandal over patronage at the probation department.
Before she became a political phenomenon, Elizabeth Warren grew beyond academia to take her message to the public
The pundits and politicos have had a tough time analyzing Elizabeth Warren as a candidate in the coming race for US Senate with Republican incumbent Scott Brown.
Joe III is the new Kennedy on the block, and his campaign for Congress inevitably has Bay Staters thinking of Camelot
We are all mere mortals, Massachusetts pols like to say, and they are Kennedys.
The iconic campaign bus is no longer full of newspaper reporters writing for the folks back home. Are the political-junkie Web sites filling the void?
The media mob will have high-tailed it out of New Hampshire by the time you read this.
Going for Broke
A book about middle-class bankruptcy, being published this week, includes a chapter co-authored by US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.
Fear and loathing in the Granite State, as we follow the 2012 campaign trail
Our operatives bring you live-on-the-ground dispatches, live from the Granite State.
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