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(04/27/09 4:00am)
I first appeared on this page three years ago, analyzing the implications of Ned Lamont's Democratic primary upset of Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. Anti-war progressives were on the cusp of a political breakthrough, I speculated. Forty-five columns later, progressive Democrats are wielding power in every elected branch. Well done, America.
(04/09/09 4:00am)
It is somewhat ironic that many of the issues most central to our political decision-making are the most avoided by the two major political parties.
(03/26/09 4:00am)
Dahlia Lithwick's Slate column last week was predictably strong, engaging and insightful. She astutely dissected the many ways in which Republican opposition to Elena Kagan and Dawn Johnsen - President Obama's nominees for solicitor general and assistant attorney general - is riddled with hypocrisy. After eight years of demanding an "up or down vote" on executive nominations, Republican senators are lurching for any excuse to obstruct the confirmation of officials who, although liberal, are unquestionably qualified.
(03/02/09 5:00am)
Barack Obama's first month as president has provided fresh evidence that may help resolve one of the most vexing political questions of our day: do Republicans do what they do because they're not particularly good people or because they're not particularly smart people?
(02/16/09 5:00am)
In 2005, the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor marked the end of an 11-year-long drought of Supreme Court vacancies. Last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized for pancreatic cancer - a reminder that several more Supreme Court justices may be approaching the end of the their careers. A new vacancy - or vacancies - on the court will provide President Obama with a critical opportunity. After acronyms like TARP and ARRA are long forgotten; after Sasha and Malia have graduated from college; yes, even after it's safe to eat peanut butter again, Obama's Supreme Court appointee will still be deciding fundamental controversies on weighty issues like equal protection, free speech and the limits of executive power.
(02/02/09 5:00am)
For eight years George Bush's lackeys took America's moral compass and discombobulated it with the magnets of torture, extraordinary rendition and so many other excesses that were seemingly justified just because they appeared alongside the words "War on Terror." Those days are finished. President Obama has made it clear that moral obligation is not reserved for times when the choices are easy.
(01/15/09 5:00am)
On a frigid December night in Des Moines, Iowa, - seven days before the first caucus - the Democratic race was tight and Barack Obama was playing his strongest card: preaching a new, post-partisan brand of politics. Obama echoed themes that made him famous, lamenting "our broken and divided politics" and promising the possibility of "a new kind of politics," one that replaced ideology with common sense.
(11/17/08 5:00am)
After a historic route, the Republican Party seems to have been reduced to a few dead-enders in the South. As a partisan Democrat, I might be out of line offering advice to my ideological opponents. But as a liberal, compassion gets the best of me. Here's the speech Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who just proved the mettle of the moderate GOP brand with a convincing reelection, should deliver to her party:
(11/03/08 5:00am)
One of the unfortunate tendencies in presidential elections is to ascribe too much credit to the victor's political strategists and to malign the loser's strategists with too much blame. Past Democratic presidential nominees Al Gore and John Kerry are both belittled as wooden bores who couldn't connect with America and couldn't compete with the genius of Republican strategist Karl Rove. But, of course, more voters chose Al Gore and his sighs than George Bush and his good ol' boy charm. And the liberal flip-flopper from Massachusetts came within a few hundred thousand votes in Ohio from taking down an incumbent president in wartime.
(10/16/08 4:00am)
All over the world, people have hyped the significance of this year's presidential and vice presidential debates. Australia's Canberra Times proclaimed "McCain, Obama Debates Crucial." The Guardian in London stoked the "make-or-break presidential debates." And here in the United States, viewers have tuned in at historic levels. With the three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate now behind us, it's worth asking who won.
(09/29/08 4:00am)
Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Democratic nominee Barack Obama must both wish they could call a mulligan on their vice presidential selections right now.
(09/15/08 4:00am)
Volunteer to umpire a Little League game and be prepared for maniacal parents to obnoxiously question your eyesight. Join the national press corps and expect rabid charges of bias from all political wings. Lampooning the media is as natural - and as fair - as coaches working the ref; no one wants to lose because of a blown call. But besides falling for a few flops and missing some hard fouls, the traditional media outlets are generally evenhanded in their coverage.
(08/28/08 4:00am)
Conventional wisdom is usually oversimplified and distorted - if not outright wrong, but when it comes to the Democratic Party's strengths and weaknesses it is especially so. The cable talking heads are quick to tell us that Democrats are automatically disadvantaged in national security debates, burdened with the need to prove their patriotism and demonstrate their willingness (eagerness?) to resort to violence. After President Bush followed Bill Clinton's eight years of relative peace with eight years of bellicose warmongering, it's frustrating to find that many Beltway wise men still propagate such ridiculous standards.
(06/19/08 4:00am)
As a Democrat of a certain age, I'm accustomed to Republicans nominating Ronald Reagan wannabes for president - candidates who never saw a war they didn't like or a rich guy that didn't deserve a tax cut. While some on the right fret that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is not sufficiently xenophobic, or that he might have a soft spot for ethics reform, they need not worry. McCain will be an able cheerleader for the same policies that have come to define the GOP brand: bigger deficits, more uninsured, fewer civil liberties.
(04/21/08 4:00am)
"I think a lot of people on both sides of the fence have a sneaking suspicion that democracy is kind of falling apart," Susan, a Cleveland voter, said in The New York Times last year. Indeed, I fear the veil has long been pulled on the Oz that is American Democracy.
(04/07/08 4:00am)
"What I want to know, is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the president's unilateral intervention in Iraq?"
(03/27/08 4:00am)
The Democratic Party is often painted as an amalgamation of discrete factions and diverse interests, a "big tent" holding together a circus of minorities, laborers, civil libertarians and foreign policy doves, among many others. The heterogeneity of its composition, goes the caricature, has produced a party unwieldy and unsustainable.
(03/03/08 5:00am)
For too many people, politics is a four-letter word. Politicians have largely managed to evoke the same immediate distrust as professional cyclists and baseball trainers. They make safe targets for aspiring comics, and they're often stand-ins for used-car salesmen.
(02/18/08 5:00am)
Don't vote against John McCain for president because you think, as Chuck Norris does, that the 71-year-old might die during his first term. Vote against John McCain because he's already dead.
(02/04/08 5:00am)
College-age voters are notoriously fickle. Surveys find 18- to 24-year-olds are significantly less likely to cast ballots than the rest of the electorate. Even as the youth vote surged in 2004, only 47 percent of voters under age 25 cast a ballot, compared to 66 percent of all other voters, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.