Jamelle Bouie

Jamelle Bouie is a staff writer at The American Prospect.

Recent Articles

What's So Hard About Hardball?

Kevin Drum on the Democratic Party's congenital inability to play hardball politics:

Maybe a reluctance to play hardball is the issue here. But there are at least two other things involved. The first is simply that Republicans believe their own PR more than Democrats do. When Republicans get hysterical about something, it's genuine. They really believe, way down in their self-righteous little hearts, that they're speaking God's own truth, no matter how ridiculous it is. And it shows.

Foreign Aid and the Budget.

How do Americans think the government spends their money? Via Ezra Klein, is one answer:

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Republican Diversity, Cont.

Rep.-elect Tim Scott of South Carolina, the state's first black Republican since Reconstruction, has opted not to join the Congressional Black Caucus:

The Future of Campaign Finance?

If you haven't already, you should check out my column today on the Supreme Court's decision to hear arguments in McComish v. Bennett, a case which deals with Arizona's public-financing law. Here are the important parts:

McComish deals with an aspect of Arizona's public-financing law that provides extra funds for candidates who opt into the system when their opponents opt out. Candidates are still bound by spending limits, but if their opponent goes beyond that limit, they are given the funds to match their opponent's spending.

Paul Ryan Is Not a Serious Person, a Continuing Series.

And yet, this will do nothing to harm Paul Ryan's credibility with the Beltway deficit hawks:

Incoming Budget Committee chairman -- and fiscal commission member -- Paul Ryan (R-WI) will not be voting for the White House Fiscal Commission's report, he told reporters at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor today. [...]

Ryan was at pains to praise the commission's chairmen, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, for their efforts, but ultimately criticized the plan dramatically -- in particular, he says, because it reinforces President Obama's health care law.

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