Mark Schmitt

THE NEOCON PARTY. It’s tempting to make fun of Marshall Wittmann‘s newest guise, as Lieberman‘s communications director, as if it were just another twist in one of the oddest careers in Washington. The New York Times has some fun with that theme today. However, it’s quite obvious where this is going. John McCain will fail […]

WINNING BY LOSING. Ezra‘s fine article in the print edition reminds us that the Republican approach to policy was not just to pass what they thought were good ideas, but to use policy to disembowel their enemies. He does a fine job of identifying some strategies that are not only good policy, but would help […]

DEM GOVS: AN EMBARASSMENT OF RICHES. As Scott pointed out, Matt worries that there’s too little talk about good middle-America governors as presidential candidates, and that “we may be doomed to an endless cycle of Senators (who DC political reporters already cover), governors from Virginia and Maryland (whose exploits are detailed in the Metro section […]

THE “WRONG” CANDIDATES. Michael Tomasky yesterday delivered an eloquent version of the challenge to the conventional wisdom that Democrats won the House by running conservative candidates. He’s right, of course, although as I argued, the perception that the Democratic Party has moved a bit toward the center is not harmful, even if it just reaffirms […]

GO AHEAD, CALL THEM CONSERVATIVE DEMS. WHY SHOULD WE CARE? Unlike Tom Schaller, I have to admit, I wasn�t bothered at all by the spin that the Democrats won because they embraced a lot of candidates with conservative views and backgrounds. Now Tom�s a political scientist, so he has to be concerned with empirical truth […]

THE SENATE OF THE FUTURE. If the Democrats fall short of control of the Senate tonight or after a Virginia recount, or even if they hold only a one seat margin, begin to familarize yourself with the list at this link. These are the Senators of Class II, those whose seats will be up in […]

INVESTIGATE OR GOVERN! I have no appetite for making election outcome predictions, but one thing that I foresee with certainty is that if the Democrats win anything tonight, the spin over the next few days will be, to quote the Republican I appeared against on the BBC last night: “If the Democrats want to spend […]

THE RETURN TO NORMALCY. Here’s a brief attempt at a grand unified theory of Tuesday’s election: Think of the Republican Party as caught in the middle of an attempt to retreat back to a state of normal or equilibrium politics, after creating and exploiting a singularity, an unsustainable period of polarization around huge ideological questions […]