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Marie Cocco

Marie Cocco is a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers' Group. As a reporter and columnist for Newsday, she has covered Congress, the White House, and presidential politics.

Recent Articles

Mr. Blackwell's Designs

Marie CoccoSep 17, 2006

Hundreds of voters mysteriously “dropped or displaced” from registration rolls when master lists were electronically merged. Absentee ballots invalidated because voters didn't receive a flier telling them not to remove a security stub. Poll workers who didn't show up to work on Election Day. Polling places unable to open on time because computer memory cards for new machines hadn't been installed. Suspicious shortages of machines in precincts that happened to be heavily Democratic. Voters who left the polls in disgust without having cast a ballot, because they just couldn't wait for overwhelmed precinct workers to sort through a monstrous mess of administrative and equipment problems.

Ohio, 2004? Nope. Ohio, 2006.

They've Got a Secret

Marie CoccoJun 18, 2006

Larry Berman didn't really believe that a journal article he was writing in 2004 would break much new ground in telling the story of Lyndon B. Johnson and his conduct of the Vietnam War. Berman, a political science professor at the University of California at Davis, already had published two books on presidential decision making in the mid-1960s, when LBJ devised and executed his tragic plan to escalate U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia.

Accidental Tourists

Marie CoccoMay 21, 2006

Had they been born and raised on this side of the Atlantic, they might have turned up as characters in a Bruce Springsteen ballad. They are the sort Springsteen tends to memorialize: Their roots are in a faded manufacturing neighborhood; their brushes with the law were petty scrapes that did not keep them from retaining their jobs as mail sorters or retail clerks, or from studying at a local university. All three have that knockabout way of going through life. It makes them neither aimless nor directed, but somehow it carries them along.

The Anti-Joe

Marie CoccoMar 27, 2006

Ned Lamont is an unlikely insurgent.

The founder of a small cable company that specializes in telecommunications systems for college campuses, Lamont is a wealthy man who speaks with the measured cadence of one who earns his living making deals, not political speeches. Yet the Greenwich businessman has got Connecticut Democrats all wired up: Lamont promises a primary run against Senator Joe Lieberman, an entrenched incumbent with national stature, a flush campaign account -- and a firm hold on state party regulars that resembles the grip of an old-time political machine.

Lamont was, in fact, moved to challenge Lieberman himself in part because he could find no established Connecticut politician to take on the senator.

The Anti-Joe

Marie CoccoMar 19, 2006

Ned Lamont is an unlikely insurgent.

The founder of a small cable company that specializes in telecommunications systems for college campuses, Lamont is a wealthy man who speaks with the measured cadence of one who earns his living making deals, not political speeches. Yet the Greenwich businessman has got Connecticut Democrats all wired up: Lamont promises a primary run against Senator Joe Lieberman, an entrenched incumbent with national stature, a flush campaign account -- and a firm hold on state party regulars that resembles the grip of an old-time political machine.

Lamont was, in fact, moved to challenge Lieberman himself in part because he could find no established Connecticut politician to take on the senator.

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