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Robert Dreyfuss

Robert Dreyfuss is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He can be reached through his website.

Recent Articles

The Turnout Imperative

Low voter participation favors conservatives. If liberals want to avoid a reprise of 1994 in 1998, they have to make turnout a top priority -- and fortunately some are already hard at work.

Robert DreyfussDec 19, 2001

With no presidential contest to focus public attention, voter turnout this year promises to fall once again, to less than one-third of the electorate by some estimates—and low turnout generally means that blue-collar workers, the lower middle class, and the poor don't get to the polls. The last off-year election, 1994, saw fewer than 39 percent of eligible voters turn out to vote in the "Republican revolution." (That's compared to 55 percent turnout in 1992, when Ross Perot helped fire things up, and 47 percent in 1996, when Bob Dole helped cool things down.) A return to 1994 voting levels could help to entrench Republicans in both houses and keep liberal policies on the margins of debate.

Popping Contributions

Last year conservatives tried and failed to destroy the effectiveness of food and drug regulation. Now they say they want only modest FDA reforms. Watch out.

Robert DreyfussDec 19, 2001

As the 104th Congress stumbled to a
close in 1996, defenders of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
breathed a collective sigh of relief. Despite intensive lobbying
by the drug and medical device industries, legislation designed
to scuttle the FDA ran aground on the shoals of partisan acrimony
and voter unease. Weary from bruising budget battles, Republicans
abandoned the measures and industry lobbyists regrouped.

Reforming Reform

Robert DreyfussDec 19, 2001

Even as it prepares for yet another attempt to ban unregulated soft money in the form of the modest McCain-Feingold bill, the movement for campaign finance reform is further than ever from its goal of getting money out of politics.

Reform Gets Rolling

Robert DreyfussDec 19, 2001

Reform Beyond the Beltway

While Congress is deadlocked, real campaign finance reform is moving ahead in the states.

Robert DreyfussDec 19, 2001

B
eltway insiders generally treat public financing of congressional elections
as a joke—it's politically unthinkable, they say. Senator Mitch McConnell, the
Kentucky Republican, seems to revel in denouncing the idea (along with any other
proposition for campaign finance reform), with no visible political damage to
himself. Even the half-a-loaf reform measure sponsored by Arizona Republican
John McCain and Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold studiously avoids any mention
of public financing. Yet while reform has foundered in Washington—not a single
bill has been signed into law since the 1970s—many states across the country
have moved ahead.

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