Ezra Klein

Last year, during the presidential debates, a girl named Tammy wandered into where my girlfriend, some friends, and I were watching Kerry’s dismantling of Bush. This was during the first confrontation, the one between the Incredible Shrinking President and his surprisingly large challenger. Bush, you’ll remember, slipped up and blamed Hussein for 9/11. Kerry caught […]

The Field Poll’s out (pdf), and it’s enough to set even Arnold’s steel-rod of a jaw a-quiver. In February 2005, 56% of voters were inclined to reelect Arnold, while only 42% wanted the guy gone. Now 39% want another go on the governator’s merry-go-round while 57% want to get off. Amazingly, the news gets worse […]

So the speech. Didn’t watch it. But, you’ll be happy to know, the girlfriend and I had an excellent Italian dinner while it was going on. I win. Nevertheless, conscientious blogger that I am, I did give it a read through. Impressive it wasn’t, but redundant it was. The nice thing about this group is […]

Matt’s response to Derek Chollet’s post warning against a Democratic timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is worth thinking seriously about: I appreciate what Derek Chollet is getting at with his warning that advocacy of a nuanced timetablish withdrawal from Iraq could turn into a political fiasco for the Democrats. Still, the general form of argument […]

Over at TPM Cafe, the Piper sounds the alarm over tax reform. Good man, somebody needs to be doing it. The logic for the Bush administration here is fairly simple: they lost on Social Security reform, Iraq isn’t going to be a selling point, the election needs something else to turn on. Why not run […]

I’m not going to get in the way of Matt’s open-source advocacy, it’s very much a heart says yes, head says no issue for me. I do think he’s being a bit obtuse on the distinction between “making stuff” and infringement (it’s fairly well understood that many of these programs are specifically made for the […]

Survey USA has released a 50-state poll of Bush’s approval ratings. So if you were wondering what, say, Hawaii thinks of the Commander-in-Chief, now you’ll know. I’m not quite woken up yet, so serious number crunching will have to be done by others. Suffice to say that Bush only hits the magic 50% mark in […]

John Kerry’s penned an op-ed in today’s Times called “The Speech the President Should Give”, offering Bush a helpful outline for how tonight’s Iraq address should be structured. What’s not mentioned anywhere is that this is exactly the speech John Kerry should’ve been giving during the election, over and over again, rather than continuing with […]

Why does the right seem to have so many more serious, policy-oriented journals dedicated to hashing out intramovement questions? The National Interest, the newly-defunct Public Interest, and all the others lacking “Interest” in the title and traction in my memory comprise a pretty impressive group on the shelf. The left has Dissent, but even that’s […]

A big howdy-ho to our newest advertiser, the DNC. They — and their new online director, my former blog mate Joe Rospars — are pushing Democracy Bonds, an idea I like: Your “Democracy Bond” is a commitment to make a monthly contribution the Democratic Party in order to: * Reform the political process by building […]