Salon.com > Mark Halperin

Rename “Game Change 2012″

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:31:00 +0000

UPDATED: Dec. 12, 6:24 p.m. (EST): My favorite suggestion for what the "Game Change" sequel should be named was "Same Change" Michael Serafino of Brooklyn.

You can almost here the cries of “Too soon! Too soon!”

Following up on the campaign that wouldn't end, political scribblers Mark Halperin (no relation to this writer) and John Heilemann are going to ensure that the 2012 election lives forever in breezy prose. Following up on their bestselling, absurdly readable account of the 2008 race, “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime,” Halperin and Heilemann will be unleashing “Double Down: Game Change 2012” on a defenseless public, the Hollywood Reporter reports. Penguin is the publisher and HBO has already optioned the book.

Not even hurricanes can stop dumb punditry

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 19:52:00 +0000

Will Hurricane Sandy cause an Electoral College tie and turn Ohio into this year's Florida 2000? PROBABLY. At least, something along those lines is what political pundits are hoping for today.

The two most important events in the world right now are the presidential campaign and a major East Coast weather event, so obviously "politicos" are trying to figure out how to combine the two things into one convenient and snappy cable television hit.

Mark Halperin, MSNBC political talking guy, Time political writing guy, blogger and amateur meteorologist, has multiple competing opinions about what this storm that actually threatens to destroy much of the East Coast and kill and displace thousands of people means for the president's reelection bid.

On "The Morning Joe Show" this morning, Halperin said White House adviser David Plouffe was clever to convince the president to cancel his campaign event in Florida today and go to Washington to be the president of hurricane response.

1. Mark Halperin

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:30:00 +0000

What more is there to say about Mark Halperin? He certainly hasn't gotten any better since last year, when a panel of experts (me) named him the world's second biggest hack. He's still wrong about everything. He's still shallow and predictable. He's still both fixated solely on the horse race and also uniquely bad at analyzing the horse race.

Halperin spent 2011 gearing up for the presidential elections by parroting transparently lame spin from Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, insisting that Palin was really going to run for president and taking Trump's farcical vanity "campaign" seriously as anything other than a time-wasting stunt. He still takes Mark Penn seriously as a wise campaign sage and not an amoral grifter. And he got in trouble for calling President Obama a "dick" on "Morning Joe," because the president criticized the GOP at a press conference. (This after Halperin spends years writing columns calling him a weak-willed wimp, because he is a Democrat.) The worst thing was not that he called the president a dick, it was that the president hadn't even been dickish. (Well, the worst thing was the whole "Morning Joe" team giggling like stoned teenagers that Halperin said a bad word.) Halperin is so dedicated to being wrong about everything that, upon his return to the airwaves, he actually made a point of mentioning that, had he been on TV during his suspension, he would've been wrong about something. Plus he did a "Morning Joe" appearance from an airplane bathroom which is surely illegal.