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Nicholas Confessore

Nicholas Confessore is a reporter for The New York Times. Previously he was an American Prospect senior correspondent and an editor of The Washington Monthly.

Recent Articles

The Plutocrat as Populist

Nicholas ConfessoreDec 19, 2001
"W e are so far behind," exclaims Terry McAuliffe, gazing out his window toward the Capitol. "I got a briefing last night that absolutely shocked me. I'm not going to give you the numbers. Let's just say they"--the Republicans--"have 50 times as many e-mail addresses as we have. It's unacceptable." McAuliffe has had to use this word a lot lately. It wasn't just the carpeting at Democratic National Committee headquarters, which "smelled terrible, " and which McAuliffe had fumigated even before he was elected DNC chairman last February. The whole place was decrepit. There was, for instance, the DNC's internal computer system, a 14-year-old relic that no one in the building used. "What is our technology?" he asks no one in particular. "We don't have any." The Democrats' direct-mail list, a crucial fundraising and mobilization tool, was one-tenth the size of the Republicans'. The national voter files--an all-important database that synthesizes demographic and voter registration data,...

Left In

Nicholas ConfessoreDec 19, 2001
A ll right, y'all," yelled a voluble young coordinator from the podium, "we gonna be disciplined and organized, so we can send our message !" Alas, it would not be that easy for the hundred or so protestors gathered at L.A.'s Pershing Square that day. The free-Mumia crowd, along with the anti-prison-industrial-complex protestors, spent most of its time screaming at the several dozen police in riot gear who lined the march route. But the Nader folks didn't have much enthusiasm for accusing the LAPD of "daily genocide," while the socialist organizers seemed primarily interested in "building a workers-student alliance"--which, in turn, didn't seem to be a priority of the libertarians. The pig-suited PETA protestors wanted to tax meat-eating. Two teenagers with Leonard Nimoy haircuts and red Star Trek uniforms had come, they said, "to Vulcanize the revolution." The black-clad anarchists seemed happiest burning American flags, though--let's...

Born Again

Nicholas ConfessoreDec 19, 2001

Young Master P

Nicholas ConfessoreDec 19, 2001
G eorge P. Bush does not smirk. He smiles. A brilliant, movie-star smile, a smile that has earned him the number-four slot on People 's list of America's 100 Most Eligible Bachelors and the adoration of thousands of reporters at the Republican convention. And when "P." bounds onto the stage at Philadelphia's Finnegan's Wake Pub, accompanied by the rapturous chant--"P! P! P! P! P!"--of several dozen College Republicans, when he grabs that microphone and smiles that smile ... knees weaken. Breasts heave. Men shake their heads, awed. Two bubbly blondes sidle up next to me, giggling, and snap pictures. Does it matter what P. says when he opens his mouth? Not really. For the record, it is something about getting involved--"You guys have incredible vision, getting started early and participating in politics!"--followed by something about apathy. Then P. announces that he is "honored to introduce this year's winner of the Lee Atwater Award ... John Kasich...

Southern Comfort

Nicholas ConfessoreDec 19, 2001
W hen Democratic strategists scratch their pointy heads, searching for places where their party might pick up House seats in November, they do not typically look to the South. For Democrats, after all, the South has for decades been a region not of opportunities but of slow-motion disasters. The Republican Revolution came from thereabouts. So did Bob Barr. Tom DeLay is from the South. Newt Gingrich is from the South. Now, California-- there's a winner, a state where new people register Democrat practically every minute, a golden land of opportunity where photogenic Latinas (like Congresswoman Lorretta Sanchez) can knock off blustery right-wingers (like former Congressman Bob Dornan) on Ronald Reagan's old redoubt (Orange County). In other words, such strategists might say, screw the South. Mike Taylor would rather they didn't. In 1998 Taylor ran against Representative Robin Hayes, an entrenched Republican incumbent, in North Carolina's eighth...

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