Mori Dinauer

Ezra Klein has some thoughts on our “center-right nation,” which could be distilled to: Americans aren’t, on the whole, ideological. I suppose it’s fair to ask why Americans don’t have a coherent political worldview, but I doubt anyone could come up with an airtight theory. This is why “centrist” has become shorthand for “ordinary Americans […]

Given its importance to the Tea Party crowd, I would say past support for TARP and other “bailout” policies is something of a ticking time bomb for would-be 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls. Specifically, while the Republican primary electorate might be willing to ignore past support for TARP, et al, the gaggle of candidates holding debates […]

As we approach the final month before Election Day, I expect no shortage of analyses explaining Obama and the Democrats’ downfall in terms of the electorate’s attitude toward “liberal overreach.” For instance, Clive Crook tells us about “where Obama went wrong,” namely the president’s abandonment of “centrist policies the country could accept.” This does make […]

Conor Friedersdorf‘s comparison between Wall Street hucksters whose exotic financial products wrecked the economy and modern conservatives who cynically exploited their adherents has a lot of truth. Conservatives commonly assume that liberals don’t “get” the populist rumblings on the right. Not true! It’s perfectly clear people are angry. But it’s also clear that for every […]

I like Jonathan Zasloff‘s analysis of why Democrats did not bring a middle-class tax-cut bill to the floor before the midterm elections. He argues that there wasn’t a clear way to win on the issue given the procedural rules of the Senate and the House, and thus the best option was to simply wait until […]

There’s not much more to be said about the GOP’s “Pledge” but to note how it has failed to inspire movement conservatives in any big way. Red State’s Erick Erickson calls it “ridiculous” and “dreck” while the Club for Growth’s Andrew Roth assails it as “weak.” The most prominent supporter is National Review, which praises […]

I haven’t read Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson‘s new book on the rise of the business lobby, Winner-Take-All Politics, but if Kevin Drum‘s nickel summary is accurate, the book offers a compelling narrative about America’s long march to income inequality. And it is a narrative — the reason Republicans were able to adopt the mantle […]

How do Democrats close the enthusiasm gap, which is the only way to prevent a midterm catastrophe? According to Jon Taplin, they should use Barack Obama to re-create the excitement of 2008. And there’s always Obama’s vaunted election machine — oh, wait: “The outfit that put upwards of 8 million volunteers on the street in […]

Here’s a good example of how the Beltway press corps treats politics, courtesy of Mark Murray: “As NBC/WSJ co-pollster Peter Hart (D) argues, the upcoming midterms are more a referendum on the economy than on President Obama. But the war over the TV airwaves has increasingly become about the president, and we’re seeing high-profile Democratic […]

Harold Pollack breaks down conventional wisdom about the unemployed: “People seeking work aren’t dogs fighting over bones. The real insult is that we act as though they are.” These are words worth keeping in mind as you read Timothy Noah‘s article on the return of Gilded Age-scale income inequality. You know American exceptionalism is humming […]