Mori Dinauer

The interesting thing about political pundits flopping about trying to explain Democrats and Obama sinking in the polls is that it unintentionally reveals their prejudices about American political life. So, you get Eugene Robinson venting about “spoiled” Americans in our Vibrant Economy, or Jonah Goldberg convincing himself that pure salesmanship is what separates Clinton from […]

Time‘s Michael Scherer thinks explanations for Barack Obama‘s sinking popularity that blame the dynamics of midterm elections on the bad economy are “valid” but also “incomplete.” Why? Because he talked to some folks on the ground in some “moderate states” like Indiana! The article dutifully repeats false beliefs about why the president’s numbers have fallen, […]

So, if I understand National Review senior editor Rich Lowry correctly, Barack Obama should have gone for a “smaller and shrewder” stimulus which “might have been able to get a dozen or maybe more Senate Republicans,” and thus provide “political cover” instead of, I don’t know, getting the damn policy right in the first place. […]

Ezra Klein quotes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: “The revenue loss over the next 75 years just from extending the tax cuts for people making over $250,000 — the top 2 percent of Americans — would be about as large as the entire Social Security shortfall over this period.” He calls this “How […]

Consider the following: If Republicans had been allowed to pursue their own response to the recession, both the jobs and deficit picture would be worse. The public, on the other hand, prefers government spending on job creation over deficit reduction by a 20-point margin. Despite this, the administration has been anything but bold on joblessness […]

Via Kevin Drum, Bjørn Lomborg is optimistic that we can handle climate change, noting that rising sea levels will affect a mere 400 million people, most of whom live in cities, and that everyone else can be saved by politicians pursuing “smart, coordinated policies” costing something like $600 billion annually. In other words, we could […]

From the “never let a good crisis go to waste” files, Michael Grunwald surveys the one-sixth of stimulus money dedicated to, in his words, “a long-term push to change the country” and finds an array of programs dedicated to modernizing the country’s neglected infrastructure. But, contrary to Grunwald’s insinuation, including these investments — all necessary […]

There’s no great mystery about what a “Tea Party Senate” would look like: Just as uncompromising and radical as the current congressional GOP rump. Frankly, the ball is in the Democrats’ court — provided they retain control of the Senate. They can gavel in the 112th Congress and propose majority-rule changes or let the era […]

I’ve suggested before that the most noteworthy impact of new media won’t be on journalism but on academia, and a great story in The New York Times proves the point. It details an effort to reform publishing in academic journals from the peer-review model to one in which submissions are picked apart online. I’m sure […]

Wouldn’t it be great if we lived in a world where presidents facing a potentially tough re-election could simply turn to the op-ed pages of The Washington Post and find campaign advice two years in advance? Thankfully, Barack Obama lives in that world and can take David Ignatius‘ recommendation — he calls it a “second-term […]