Jaime Fuller

Jaime Fuller is the associate editor at The American Prospect.

Recent Articles

Kristol's Blasphemy, Norquist's Denial

Thus far, the most ear-popping conservative reaction to last week’s election has come from Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. On Fox News Sunday, he spoke a truth that you would have expected to have been bleeped by Roger Ailes’s censors before it could reach the tender ears of shocked right-wingers: “It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires,” Kristol said. “It really won’t, I don’t think. I don’t really understand why Republicans don’t take Obama’s offer.” And there was more: “Really?

Karl Rove's Money Trouble

After declaring a new national post-election holiday yesterday—Liberal Schadenfreude Day—we’re starting to think it should be a week-long celebration. So much to gloat over after all these years of despair! Our favorite gloat-worthy item on Thursday came courtesy of the Sunlight Foundation. The money-in-politics watchdog did a nifty calculation of the returns that 2012’s big spenders got for their money.

Happy Liberal Schadenfreude Day

How long has it been since America’s long-suffering liberals had an Election Night like Tuesday? The answer is 1964, folks. So enjoy your schadenfreude and revel in the spectacle of the right wing dealing with the combination of dismay and cluelessness that has regularly, like clockwork, beset liberals after elections for decades now. Only if Michele Bachmann had lost her seat in Congress—which damn near happened—could last night have been sweeter. Because this was no mere Democratic victory, and no mere Obama victory.

Reasons to Cheer?

(Flickr/ Barack Obama)

For progressives, waiting for tonight's election returns is less a matter of giddy anticipation a la 2008 and more a cause of intense nail-biting. There is potentially more to lose tonight (or God forbid, in a couple of weeks if Florida, Colorado, or Ohio make a mess) than to gain. There’s health-care and regulatory reform, of course. But more than that, there’s the much-needed sanity that President Obama has brought to a politically fractious, often-unhinged Washington. 

Will Mendacity Win?

Looked at from a certain angle, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has been a grand experiment in whether it's possible to lie your way to the White House. Sure, all politicians stretch the truth like Play-Doh. They dissemble. They exaggerate. They tell the occasional out-and-out whopper. Traditionally, though, politicians tend to stick with truthiness, in the Colbert sense. Until now, there’s never been a presidential campaign built almost solely on a foundation of lies. Romney’s people have made no bones about it; his pollster, Neil Newhouse, told media at the Republican National Convention, "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers." Strangely, that might have been the single most honest statement to come out of the campaign.

Pages