Pa Joad: Ain’t you goin’ with us? Casey: I’d like to. There’s somethin’ goin’ on out there in the West, and I’d like to try and learn what it is. —The Grapes of Wrath More than 60 years after John Steinbeck’s Oakies headed west, California retains its […]
Harold Meyerson
Harold Meyerson is editor at large of The American Prospect.
Posted inFeatures
City of Tomorrow
Even by the fast-forward standards of California politics, where term limits bump off the entire state legislature every eight years, Antonio Villaraigosa has had a meteoric career. In the early 1990s, he was an organizer for the teachers’ union, a county supervisor’s delegate on the L.A. transit board, and president of the American Civil Liberties […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Wither the Democrats
The Democrats still haven’t found a way to tap America’s discontent. Some new political books suggest how they can.
Posted inFeatures
The Purloined Presidency
T hinking about how Democrats should treat the new Bush administration, let’s consider what Bob Dole would do if he were in our shoes. A scant eight years ago, after all, Bob Dole was in our shoes. As the Senate minority leader, he headed the opposition to a newly elected president. Bill Clinton chugged into […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Waiting for Lefty
Warren Beatty can play a useful liberal role—but not as a candidate.
Posted inFeatures
Gore’s Mating Ritual
To those of you who’ve been feeling socially inadequate because your mind goes blank whenever the subject of Who Should Be Al Gore’s Running Mate comes up at barbecues or on white-water rafting trips: relax. The American Prospect‘s poll of the experts conducted in late June has uncovered a similar dearth of suggestions among the […]
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Union Man
Steve Rosenthal, political director of the AFL-CIO, is perhaps the only one of America’s thousands of political strategists who genuinely has armies to deploy. And as Rosenthal sees it, the time to elect Al Gore is now. “The campaign is going to be won or lost between now and August, not after Labor Day,” he […]
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A Clean Sweep
On Friday, April 7, I came upon one method of increasing the income of the working poor that, I confess, had never even occurred to me. The janitors of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877, embroiled in a countywide strike, were marching down Wilshire Boulevard from downtown Los Angeles to tony Century City, roughly […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Dead Center
The centrist politics of the election produced a shrunken electorate and mandate. Are there fresh sources of progressive energy at the grass roots?
Posted inFeatures
A Paler Shade of Gray
In the beginning was the money. Gray Davis isn’t running for anything in 2000; he is just now beginning the second year of his initial four-year term. Yet in his first 13 months as governor, he’s managed to collect about $1 million a month for his campaign treasury. That’s about five times as much as […]