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Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a weekly columnist and senior writer for The American Prospect. He also writes for the Plum Line blog at The Washington Post and The Week and is the author of Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success.

Recent Articles

Voter Turnout in 2012: Meh

Paul WaldmanFeb 05, 2013
Flickr/zzazazz
Thanks to Michael McDonald at George Mason University, we have the final turnout statistics for the 2012 presidential election, and the verdict is ... eh. Not too bad, not too great. A total of 129,058,169 votes were counted, out of an eligible population of 221,925,820, for a turnout figure of 58.2 percent. How does that compare to previous years, you ask? Or rather, can you show me a chart comparing that to previous years? Why yes. Yes I can. voter_turnout_1948-2012.jpg Last year's turnout was right in the middle of the 17 elections presented in this chart—better than eight, but worse than eight. It was a bit down from that of 2008, which at 61.6 percent was the highest since 1964. And it's important to remember that there's a huge variation in turnout among the separate states. The friendly and civic-minded people of Minnesota always have the nation's highest turnout, and this year an admirable 75.7 percent of them came to the polls. At the other end, four states came in below 50...

Can We Live Without the Assault Weapons Ban?

Paul WaldmanFeb 05, 2013
Flickr/mr.smashy
So yesterday, Harry Reid hinted that he'll be introducing a gun-control measure that doesn't include a new ban on assault weapons. If we assume for a moment that other proposed measures eventually pass, but an assault-weapons ban doesn't, how bad an outcome would it be? Let's start by stipulating that it is utterly insane that in this country, anybody can walk into a gun shop and walk out a few minutes later with a military-style rifle whose sole purpose is to enable its user to kill human beings as quickly and efficiently as possible. They're not for hunting, and they're not for defending your home, unless you're Tony Montana. The fact that a lot of people find shooting them fun shouldn't carry any weight as a policy argument. And as we know all too well, they turn mass shootings more deadly. On the other hand, one of the arguments gun advocates make is that the kind of weapons that would be outlawed (for future sales, anyway) under an assault-weapons ban don't kill all that many...

How the NRA Is Helping to Pass Gun Control

Paul WaldmanFeb 05, 2013
We're in the early stages of a lengthy process that will involve hearings, competing bills, horse-trading, and the usual ugliness of life in the Capitol Hill sausage factory, but the contours of gun legislation are beginning to take shape. Though President Obama is out campaigning for the full package of reforms he has been advocating, there are indications that the assault weapons ban may get dropped in order to forestall a Republican filibuster in the Senate, and a bipartisan group is about to introduce a bill in the House on gun trafficking and straw purchases. (I'll discuss the assault weapons question in a later post). In other words, the actual legislative process is getting underway. And though it's by no means assured that some gun measures will pass Congress, if any do, we'll partly have the NRA to thank. That's because, I believe, the organization fundamentally misread the role it plays in the minds of the average voter. They've become more extremist in the last two decades...

GOP Slowly Realizes Free Money Is Great!

Paul Waldman AND Jaime FullerFeb 04, 2013
When the Supreme Court upheld the individual insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act, conservatives' disappointment was tempered by one element of the ruling, which allowed states to opt out of the ACA's expansion of Medicaid. Obamacare might have survived, but at least they'd be able to stick it to poor people. The Medicaid expansion was perhaps the most critical part of the ACA, potentially delivering insurance to 30 million people who don't have it, but now Republican governors and Republican legislators would have a chance to give Barack Obama the finger and refuse to accept the giant pot of money the federal government was offering to insure their poorest citizens. (Though Medicaid funding today is split between the federal government and the states, the feds will pick up almost the entire cost of the expansion). Ironically, the states where Republican rule is firmest stood to gain the most, since they're the ones with the stingiest existing Medicaid eligibility standards,...

Free "Super-Wifi" Everywhere? Don't Hold Your Breath.

Paul WaldmanFeb 04, 2013
Flickr/CollegeDegrees360
We spend a lot of time arguing about whether government should be big or small, which is almost always the wrong question. Among the right questions are how government should go about doing what it has to do, and on whose behalf it ought to operate. I bring this up because of a proposal by the Federal Communications Commission, discussed in this article in today's Washington Post , to open up a big chunk of spectrum to spread wifi hither and yon, potentially creating a nirvana of free internet and cell phone access. Sound too good to be true? Yeah, it is. But here's how the Post described it: The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month. The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to...

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