EDWARDS’ STRENGTH: John Nichols of The Nation highlights a poll that shows John Edwards is the only Democrat to beat John McCain in a head-to-head matchup. Nichols ascribes Edwards’ advantage over Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to his position “as the far more progressive candidate in the race.” A more cynical progressive might point instead […]
Ben Adler
Ben Adler is a senior editor at City & State NY. He previously worked for Politico, The Nation, and Reuters, and he has written for The Washington Post and The New Republic, among other publications.
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MCCAIN TRUE COLORS WATCH UPDATE.
MCCAIN TRUE COLORS WATCH UPDATE. Ari Berman at The Nation reminded us on Friday that there’s more to Terry Nelson, the campaign hatchet man whom John McCain has hired, than the racist tv “bimbo” ad attacking Harold Ford that Nelson created this year. He has also engaged in anti-democratic trickery. An unindicted co-conspirator in Tom […]
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FOR “GROUP THINK.”
FOR “GROUP THINK.” Elle Reeve has a diarist up today in TNR tut-tutting the tendency of young Washingtonians to screen their roommates for political leanings. She writes, Julie puts her political orientation in her ad because she’s “part of an interracial couple and my housemate is gay, so we like to put this up front […]
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MORE WHERE THIS CAME FROM.
MORE WHERE THIS CAME FROM. Last week, Think Progress called attention to an excellent local news report out of California debunking a new right-wing myth about Nancy Pelosi. In his compendium of agitprop, Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, Peter Schweizer of the Hoover Institution accuses Pelosi of hypocrisy […]
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FASCISTS OR HYSTERICAL PUNDITS?
FASCISTS OR HYSTERICAL PUNDITS?: Diane McWhorter has the most bizarre interpretation of this year�s election results to date, in Slate*. It appears to argue that the midterm elections confirm not that Americans are more populist, or even more conservative, but that they are more fascist. Based on a 66 year old musing from Eleanor Roosevelt, […]
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WANKIEST OP-ED COLUMN EVER.
WANKIEST OP-ED COLUMN EVER. “For the Democratic Party to revive, major tenets of American liberalism, economic and sociocultural, will have to be discarded. The party can join Studebaker and the Glass Bottle Blowers union, it can trudge along as No. 2, or it can undergo a painful transformation.” Gee, it sure sounds like Tom Edsall, […]
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MCCAIN TRUE COLORS WATCH.
MCCAIN TRUE COLORS WATCH. In anticipation of a good two years (let’s hope not six or ten) of John McCain sucking up to the bigoted base of his party, I’m hereby inaugurating “McCain True Colors Watch” (naming credit goes to Ezra) — an occasional update on craven McCain’s latest disappointment. First installment: The Hill reported […]
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DEMS PROVE DOBBS WRONG:
DEMS PROVE DOBBS WRONG: A while back I accused Lou Dobbs of misleading readers of his November 1 CNN.com column by asserting that “whether the Democrats or Republicans take control of the House and Senate, corporate America has just bought a license to outsource more middle-class jobs to cheap foreign labor markets, to continue unabated […]
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DON’T FORGET THE GREENS.
DON’T FORGET THE GREENS. Rick Perlstein‘s piece from Friday is right to caution that just because Democrats squeaked out a victory in the midterms, progressives should not ignore or forget the fact that Republican chicanery very nearly turned the tide the other way — and that it might do so the next time. Along these […]
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Poor Initiative
Among the more initially puzzling results to emerge from Tuesday was the case of the anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives. On the one hand, progressives had plenty of reason to be depressed — they passed in all but one state, including moderate swing states, like Wisconsin, where a serious opposition movement had been active. On the […]