2014 House

On Friday, Dec. 6, the University of Virginia Center for Politics will host the 15th annual American Democracy Conference. The conference, which will be held at Alumni Hall on the Grounds of the University of Virginia, will feature panels of leading journalists and political experts focused on the 2013 Virginia election outcome, the upcoming 2014 federal midterm elections and the future of the American electorate. The event, which will begin at 9 a.m., is free and open to the public with advance registration, and the press is invited to attend. For more information or to register, please visit http://www.centerforpolitics.org/adc.html. View a livestream of the conference below: The panels are: Panel I: Post-Gubernatorial Discussion 9:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.: Moderator: Jeff Schapiro, Richmond Times-Dispatch political reporter and columnist Panelists: Kellyanne Conway, Republican strategist and pollster Thomas Guterbock, U.Va. Center for Survey Research director James Hohmann, Politico national political reporter Ellen Qualls, senior adviser to Terry McAuliffe’s (D) gubernatorial campaign Geoffrey Skelley, Sabato’s Crystal Ball associate editor Panel II: 2014 Midterms 11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Moderator: Larry J. Sabato, U.Va. Center for Politics director Panelists: Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard executive editor Christina Bellantoni, PBS NewsHour political editor Carl Cannon, RealClearPolitics

For the first time in his presidency, Barack Obama finds his aggregate approval rating hovering right at 40%. In some polls, he has already fallen below it: According to Gallup, the president’s approval dropped to 39% three times in November. Currently, RealClearPolitics’ aggregation of approval polls finds the president’s approval right at 40.1% while HuffPost Pollster shows 41.5%. Both show a consistent downward trend over the last few months. While Gallup’s three-day tracking had the president’s approval at 41% on Wednesday, it has been lower. In August 2011, Obama’s approval rating in Gallup dropped to 38%, remaining around 40% until late October. This previous encounter with the “dirty thirties” buoyed Republican hopes that Obama could be beaten in the 2012 presidential election. But as events proved (for the umpteenth time), a year in politics is a long time. Looking back at Gallup’s approval polls since World War II, Obama’s predecessors have a varied history in their tangles with sub-40% approval ratings, with some recovering, some stagnating and others falling further into the disapproval abyss. And as the 2014 midterm elections approach, it is worth noting that only two presidents in the Gallup era have had approval ratings below 40% at

John F. Kennedy speaks at Granby High School in Norfolk, VA, on Nov. 4, 1960. Credit: Associated Press. Choosing the topic of this article was easy for me, because it’s a personal story. No, it’s not your usual “Kennedy and me” tale. I never even shook hands with John F. Kennedy. But his presidential saga, tragic assassination and evolutionary image coincided with my coming of age, influenced the career path I chose and defined the political world I analyze for a living. Kennedy is bound up with the memories of my youth. When I think of Kennedy, I think of my devout Roman Catholic parents. My father was exactly JFK’s age and a fellow World War II veteran, while my mother was only a few years older than Jackie, with Caroline and John-John the image of my younger family members. I visualize my Catholic school, the priests and the nuns, my lay teachers and classmates, and a time distant and yet near. As a person piles up the years, writing about the past has an irresistible allure as powerful sentiment and a yearning for what once was become a part of many evenings. Born in 1952 and raised in the

The JFK Half Century App, produced by the University of Virginia Center for Politics, is now available for download on Android and Apple devices. The app features the complete Dallas police recordings from Nov. 22, 1963, which the Center acquired from the National Archives and is available to the public in one easily accessible place for the first time. What follows is the text of Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato’s introduction to the app, which you can listen to below. — The Editors Welcome to the JFK app. I am Larry Sabato, author of The Kennedy Half Century. My book traces the effect John F. Kennedy had over 10 Presidential administrations. This app allows you to listen to the audio recordings from the day of the assassination made by the Dallas Police Department and you can follow along with the written transcripts. As I demonstrate in the book, the Dictabelt is not the time tunnel to ultimate truth about the source of the Dealey Plaza shots as it was once heralded to be, but the recording is invaluable nonetheless. What we call the Dictabelt is actually a collection of belts that recorded all police communications on two channels

With the 2013 government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis now behind us, one conclusion seems inescapable — this was a disaster for the Republican Party. While both major parties received negative reviews from the American public for their performance in the crisis, it was the GOP that took by far the bigger hit to its image and standing in national polls. In the midst of the crisis, the Gallup Poll found that the percentage of Americans rating the Republican Party unfavorably was the highest ever recorded for either party since they began asking the party favorability question in 1992. The shutdown and debt limit impasse were almost exclusively the work of the Tea Party and its allies inside and outside of Congress. External groups like Heritage Action and FreedomWorks along with right-wing media commentators like Rush Limbaugh played key roles as cheerleaders for these confrontations. And members of Congress affiliated with the Tea Party, most prominently first-term Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), were the strongest supporters of the shutdown and debt ceiling conflicts and the most vocal opponents of the deal to end the crisis. In the aftermath of the crisis, there are signs of a growing divide within the GOP