×
In an article form our last print issue, Ben Branzel reports on efforts to replicate MoveOn.org's success in other countries and what those efforts say about what role progressive activists would have in a Democratic administration:
This transformation is what so many of us have been fighting for over the last 10 years of Gingrich-Bush-Rove-dominated politics. But, ironically, a brand-new context could pose an existential challenge for the independent grass-roots forces that helped to get us here. Groups like MoveOn.org that were born and bred in an era of opposition will have to act fast to avoid a weakening of outsider progressive pressure just when we need it the most.
And, in the first installment of his new biweekly column, Matt Yglesias explains why Barack Obama has the upper hand in the presidential campaign regarding Iraq and why he shouldn't be afraid to talk about foreign policy:
A funny thing happened on the morning of July 19 -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq endorsed Barack Obama's plan for a 16-month withdrawal timeline from Iraq in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine. In a stroke, the entire conservative argument on Iraq was demolished. Withdrawal, they'd been telling us, was abject surrender and the abandonment of our Iraqi allies. The conservative counter that this was merely political posturing by Maliki made no sense -- if the reason Maliki was calling for withdrawal was the overwhelming demand for withdrawal on the part of the Iraqi public, that was all the more reason for us to leave. And, of course, looking backward John McCain was (and is) still committed to the idea that, even in retrospect, invading Iraq was a good idea. It looked to me like the election was in the bag. Democrats were going to win the national-security argument, and hence, the election.
Subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they’re published.
—The Editors
