How does a candidate go about getting nearly a majority of the votes while advocating a tax program that will overwhelmingly benefit a tiny, super-wealthy elite? As the invaluable All The President’s Spin, a new book from the editors of Spinsanity.org, ably documents, you mislead people. You say your plan will benefit all taxpayers when, […]
Matthew Yglesias
Matthew Yglesias is a senior editor at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a former Prospect staff writer, and the author of Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats.
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Negative Energy
The official word out of the 2004 Democratic convention was that things were going to be positive, upbeat, and optimistic, putting a new face on a party that’s become known for negativity and “Bush hatred.” In reality, the convention was less positive than simply defensive. The endless repetitions of “strong” in its various permutations were […]
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Long Knives Drawn
The Democratic Party, as everyone says, has never been as unified as it is this week in Boston and will continue to be through the November elections. Such are the wages of Bushism, where implacable hostility to policy experts and dogmatic adherence to a platform of tax cuts über alles has made it clear that […]
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Present Dangers
Apparently comfortable with the moral cesspool into which he wandered during the Abu Ghraib hearings, Senator Joe Lieberman announced in a July 20 Washington Post op-ed that he planned to join with the least reputable figures in national-security circles to relaunch the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), an organization not heard from since the […]
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Present Dangers
Apparently comfortable with the moral cesspool into which he wandered during the Abu Ghraib hearings, Senator Joe Lieberman announced in a July 20 Washington Post op-ed that he planned to join with the least reputable figures in national-security circles to relaunch the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), an organization not heard from since the […]
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Have Faith, Round Three
If conventional wisdom is to be believed, John Kerry has a religion problem — namely, that Americans think he’s insufficiently devout. Every pundit in America has advice for Kerry on how to appeal to religious audiences on the trail and how to make use of his own Catholic faith — but should he listen? Ayelish […]
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The Fog of Advisers
The proposal forthcoming from the 9-11 Commission to create a Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to oversee all of the federal government’s intelligence activities will be no panacea to solve all the problems that have plagued the American intelligence community for years. Surely, though, it will be a step in the right direction. That the […]
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Have Faith, Part Two
If conventional wisdom is to be believed, John Kerry has a religion problem — namely, that Americans think he’s insufficiently devout. Every pundit in America has advice for Kerry on how to appeal to religious audiences on the trail and how to make use of his own Catholic faith — but should he listen? Ayelish […]
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War of the Words
Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that “The first draft of the Democratic platform that will be presented to the party’s convention late this month … declares that Mr. Bush’s ‘doctrine of unilateral pre-emption has driven away our allies.’” It’s the sort of talking point I hear so often in anti-Bush circles that […]
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Domestic Bliss
The near simultaneous release of Bill Clinton’s memoirs and some good news on the job front has afflicted the right with a case of cognitive dissonance. Clinton, as you’ll recall from the nineties and today’s commentary, was lucky rather than good. Presidents don’t really have all that much influence over short-term economic trends, which are […]
