Harold Meyerson

Dick Gephardt deserves Howard Dean. In a sense, he created him. If anyone has personified the failure of the Democratic establishment to provide the party with a distinct profile during the Bush presidency, it’s Gephardt. As House Democratic leader, Gephardt clung to Bush’s Iraq policy until it all but unraveled over the past month. Gephardt’s […]

As revolutions go, this one began with remarkably little fanfare. Last Thursday MoveOn.org sent out an e-mail to its members — all 1.4 million of them — asking if they’d like to take part in an online Democratic presidential primary later this month. Candidates would answer questions that MoveOn put to them, and if one […]

Save for the continuing search for its justification, the war in Iraq is over. For the United States, if not yet for Iraq, the consequences are clear. We have established yet again the utter supremacy of our hard power. Unfriendly governments tremble anew at our armed might and our willingness to use it. Some, to […]

There are no stubborn facts in the Bush White House, just stubborn men. This is an administration that will not be cowed by the truth. After all, it’s not as if the president’s baseless assertion in his State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to acquire “yellowcake” uranium from Niger was the last […]

If the House and Senate conferees assembling this week to negotiate a prescription drug benefit and Medicare reform bill do in fact come up with a final product, the only thing certain is that they will have built a house divided against itself. The bills that the House and Senate have sent to the conference […]

Antonin Scalia is raging against the coming of the light. Scalia’s dissent from last week’s epochal Supreme Court decision striking down Texas’ anti-sodomy statute confirms Ayatollah Antonin’s standing as the intellectual leader of the forces arrayed against equality and modernity in the United States. In establishing the deep historical roots of anti-gay sentiment in America, […]

Americans may have divided over the war in Iraq this spring, but one thing that brought them together was their health coverage. It was shrinking. From state to state and sector to sector, job-based health insurance either covered less or cost more or — the insurance companies were loath to force a choice on us […]

The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party convenes here today at a national conference sponsored by the liberal Campaign for America’s Future. The gathering comes not a moment too soon, not only because the party’s progressive base needs to assert and renew its principles, but also because it has come under assault lately from its […]

For a moment there, it almost looked as if the Democrats were getting their act together. Leaders of the key Democratic constituency groups have begun meeting to develop a strategy and the wherewithal for winning the battleground states in the 2004 presidential election. On May 8 the president of Emily’s List, Ellen Malcolm, hosted a […]