Ben Adler

OBAMA BUBBLE. I think Malcolm Gladwell‘s next book should explain the phenomenon of political speculation bubbles. Iit happens every couple months: a spectrum of the major middle- to high-brow magazines and newspapers run major features on the same topic all at once. There was the June 2005 “how do we deal with the emergence of […]

THE FRAUD CAUCUS FUND. I have to agree with Ari Berman of The Nation that the logical underpinnings of Republicans Who Care are shaky at best. A bunch of decrepit moderate millionaire Republicans are jumping into the breach between their far-right party leadership and moderate districts to save members of the Fraud Caucus like Chris […]

DEAF EAR. In an aggressive demonstration of their establishmentarian orientation, The Washington Post‘s comprehensive coverage of the current controversy at Gallaudet University (the nation’s only liberal arts college for the deaf), on both the news and opinion pages, has clearly skewed towards the school administration. The issue, for those who haven’t been following, is that […]

THE SUBSTANCE ABUSE DODGE. As Bob Packwood discovered a few years back, now that substance abuse is (correctly) viewed as an illness rather than a sign of moral degeneracy, one can blame one’s actual moral degenaracy on substance abuse to soften a public fall from grace. Not any old substance will do, mind you: crack […]

DEPARTMENT OF DELICIOUS IRONIES. The headline and subhead from this Washington Post article today are almost too good to be true. Now, Even Allen’s Apologies Are Getting Him in Trouble Sons of Confederate Veterans Is the Most Recent Group Offended by Senator’s Comments So, after years of wrapping himself in the confederate flag, George Allen […]

NELSON: CASE IN POINT. I don’t want to keep beating up on Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) — I realize he may be the best one can hope for out of Nebraska — but today he once again cast a decisive (corrected, as commenters had noted) vote of major importance. By a 51-48 margin, the Senate […]

HOUSE ENACTS A POLL TAX. Following up on my post from yesterday about the importance of election oversight at the state level comes news of an attack on voting rights at the national level. From Katrina vanden Heuvel at The Nation: Republicans in Congress are on the job and doing everything they can to further […]

HOW ABOUT SOME SOS LOVE? Massive disenfranchisement in the closest swing states have marred the last two presidential elections, and with that in mind, now would be a good time for progressives to focus on putting control of election oversight in the hands of competent and honest officials. While Secretaries of State Ken Blackwell and […]

VALUES VOTERS’ VALUES. I just got back from the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. The audience was what you’d expect — white and old. The speakers, on the other hand, mixed things up a little. Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), addressing George W. Bush‘s original “compassionate conservative” framework, suggested that being “pro-life” also means caring […]

DEMOCRATS FOR REPUBLICANS? In his latest piece, Jacob Weisberg addresses the question of whether the party that loses the midterms will, as a result, actually win in the long run. Although I think he takes the silly proposition a little too seriously, he admits that the right answer to this is the “boring” one: “the […]