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Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a contributing editor for the Prospect and the author of Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success.

Recent Articles

Don't Count Romney Out Yet.

Paul WaldmanMar 24, 2010

Mitt Romney is in a bit of a pickle. The Democrats just passed a health-care reform bill that all Republicans agree will transform America into a freedomless hellscape. Yet it's almost identical to the one Romney pushed through in Massachusetts when he was governor. He's even on record defending the individual mandate, which is the least popular part of the reform, and therefore the one on which Republicans are hanging their attack. From the standpoint of today, it looks like the 2012 GOP primary may be fought on the ground of who hates "Obamacare" the most, an argument that Romney can't possibly win.

Democracy -- Deal With It.

Paul WaldmanMar 24, 2010

Republicans have had many different reactions to the passage of health-care reform. But there seems to be a common strain running through them that might be described as "This can't be happening!!!" Just as so many of them couldn't bring themselves to see Barack Obama as a legitimately elected president, many can't bring themselves to see a piece of legislation they so vehemently opposed as having been legitimately enacted into law. 

The Value of Journalistic Introspection.

Paul WaldmanMar 23, 2010

We all have a tendency to justify our mistakes, convincing ourselves that either it wasn't a mistake at all or that we did the best anyone could have done given the exigencies of the moment. We throw good money after bad and good energy after bad, all in the service of convincing ourselves that we thought and acted properly. So it's refreshing when someone comes out and says, "I was wrong." Along those lines, Josh Green of the Atlantic has something interesting to say about Nancy Pelosi:

The Future of Advertising.

Paul WaldmanMar 23, 2010

If you use Google's Gmail, you probably felt a moment of unease upon learning that, in exchange for getting this free and extremely well-designed service (note to other e-mail providers: organizing messages into threads is the greatest thing ever), you'd have to give up a bit of your privacy. Namely, Gmail scans your messages, picks out keywords, and then puts up ads in your e-mail it believes are relevant to those keywords. For instance, if someone mentions China in a message to you, while you're reading it, there will be ads on the right side of your screen for travel companies offering tours to China.

Egging On the Crazies.

Paul WaldmanMar 23, 2010

I spent some time yesterday talking on Canadian radio, explaining health-care reform to our neighbors to the north. They were a bit puzzled at what's been going on down here. Why, they wanted to know, was there all that talk about "socialism" when the reform left in place the private insurance system? And why were people so angry? I found it a little hard to explain without going into an hour-long history of right-wing populism in America.

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