Michael Tomasky

So I’d been thinking this thought over the past few days, and then last night I was chatting with some smart people who’d been thinking the same thing: John Kerry should put John Edwards on his ticket right now. The reasons are simple. Edwards has clearly earned the spot. His message has struck a nerve […]

Michael Tomasky: Dean as a revolutionary It’s an old rule of history that revolutionaries make bad governors (small “g”). The skill set required to storm the Bastille isn’t the one needed when it comes time to involve oneself in the mundane tasks of running a government. Among many others, Robespierre, Lenin, and, in a less […]

Memo to: Mary Beth Cahill, John Kerry’s campaign manager Re: New York primary Danger ahead, Ms. Cahill. The New York primary looms. And the danger doesn’t come from John Edwards. His anti-NAFTA message may play well in beleaguered upstate New York, but in a Democratic primary, there aren’t enough votes upstate to worry about. No, […]

So now it’s a four-way race, at least sort of. True, it may really be a one-way race: A guy who emerges as the winner in Iowa and New Hampshire is, after all, the favorite in a pretty huge way. On the other hand, Bill Clinton was neither of those things, a small fact still […]

So is Howard Dean finito, just like that? The Wednesday morning polls from New Hampshire confirm what seemed likely: that his formerly overpowering lead in that state is either gone or has dwindled down to the very contestable single-digit area. Theories abound on the Dean collapse. Mine can be expressed in one word: timing. After […]

In a better world, the debate about the Bush administration’s intentions toward Saddam Hussein before the September 11 attacks—rekindled by this week’s release of Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty—would have been settled ages ago. The disclosure by Paul O’Neill, the former treasury secretary on whose remembrances the book is largely based, that the Bush […]

Rough Christmas for Howard Dean, eh? From The Washington Post editorial page — which signals its posture by referring to him as “Mr. Dean,” not “Dr.” or even “Governor” — to, more stingingly, a growing chorus of his fellow Democratic candidates, Dean has been administered fresh lessons in loathing and envy, and surely more are […]

Can someone please enlighten me: Why the pity party for Joe Lieberman? The Connecticut senator has been parading around for the last few days, since Al Gore’s endorsement of Howard Dean, with the mien of a virtuous spurned lover, trying to position himself much as Princess Di did after her positively beastly treatment by Prince […]

Democratic insiders are in a state about Howard Dean. Their collective professional judgment is that the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is his to lose. Their collective emotional judgment is that sending him up against George W. Bush would be a disaster. So stands the moment’s conventional wisdom. Is it right? Well, first, we […]