Against their better judgment, the Democrats are starting to taste it. In the House, the number of Republican incumbents polling under 50 percent considerably exceeds the number of seats the Democrats need to pick up to make Nancy Pelosi Speaker. Controlling the Senate depends on winning two of the contests in three […]
Harold Meyerson
Harold Meyerson is editor at large of The American Prospect.
NO SPACE TO FILL.
NO SPACE TO FILL. Whatever the realities of family life that contributed to Mark Warnerďż˝s decision this morning to bow out of the 2008 presidential race, there had to be some pretty compelling political realities that contributed to his decision as well. Chiefly, the fact that there really isnďż˝t all that much political space to […]
Problem Politics
Let’s stipulate at the outset that if the Republican Congress had done a decent job addressing the nation’s problems over the past two years, the Foley scandal and cover-up wouldn’t now be plunging the Republicans into political perdition. Instead, the scandal has served chiefly to crystallize in the public’s mind much that […]
Fall Guy of Foleygate
It is a mark of the sheer panic sweeping the ranks of Republican congressmen that one of their most levelheaded members, Ray LaHood of Illinois, has suggested that Congress abolish its page program altogether in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal. It is a mark of the sheer panic sweeping […]
FRIDAY FIVE O’CLOCK…
FRIDAY FIVE O’CLOCK FOLKWAYS. The entire American labor movement has been atremble today, waiting for the National Labor Relations Board to deliver its decisions in the Kentucky River cases — decisions in which the Board is widely expected to reclassify as many as 8 million workers as management, and hence ineligible to join or belong […]
The Enablers
Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, is seeking reelection in his heavily Democratic state by insisting he’s not really a Republican, or at least not part of the gang responsible for the decade’s debacles. He didn’t even vote for George W. Bush in 2004, he protests. He cast his vote for […]
Into the Desert
At its highest levels, the literature of war is often about a hero gone bad, a hero, in fact, who becomes indistinguishable from his enemy. Achilles, to begin at the beginning, outrages the gods by his desecration of the body of his slain archrival, Hector, and it takes a message from Zeus […]
Whatever It Takes
On a sweltering Saturday morning in August, on the grounds of the old Rutherford County Courthouse just outside Nashville, where a Bible in a glass case is permanently turned to John 3:16, a young politician of considerable urbanity is convincing a crowd of his fellow Tennesseans that he’s just a New Age version of a […]
Fear and Loathing
Wasn’t it just a couple of years ago that Republicans were boasting that they were the party of ideas? They would privatize the commonwealth and globalize democracy, while Democrats clung to the tattered banner of common security in both economics and national defense. The intellectual energy in America, it seemed, was all […]
Arnold Gets Girlie
Sacramento — It was just two years ago that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, angered by his inability to get right-wing bills through his state’s Democratic-controlled legislature, termed that body’s leaders — Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senator Don Perata — “girlie men.” This political neologism went over particularly big with a subgroup […]

