Mori Dinauer

David Axelrod is engaging in some specious spin if he believes the public will punish Republicans at the polls because they are “rooting for failure,” but the fact of the matter is Republicans are rooting for failure. Now, it’s always useful to distinguish between Republicans, who are motivated by gaining and holding political power so […]

I’d wager that the consensus among liberals about the stimulus was that while it should have been larger to address a recession underestimated by the Obama administration, what we got was probably the best possible under the political circumstances and institutional restraints. That being said, there were some who argued that the administration should have […]

I’m of the opinion that while Evan Bayh provided a crucial vote on the two biggest accomplishments of the 111th Congress extant (the stimulus and health care — pending completion of a lengthy game of 11-dimensional chess), he was only a crucial vote because the game is now “majority rule = 60 percent.” So yes, […]

Ezra Klein says all that needs to be said on Obama‘s “victory” over Senate Republicans in getting them to release holds on 29 administration nominees. Clearly, the threat of a recess appointment was credible, because Republicans knew Obama could, and probably would, issue recess appointments. But they didn’t clear every nominee and now with Obama […]

And here I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, Democrats might start to get that chasing the bipartisan dragon only leads to weaker, less effective legislation that is inappropriate for the scope of the problem it is designed to solve. Case in point: a Senate Finance Committee “jobs bill” which includes a “core” of tax […]

It’s astonishing and very indicative of what drives Republicans these days that until Dick Cheney‘s crew issued marching orders, congressional Republicans were perfectly content with the handling of Umar Abdulmutallab after his arrest. The result, predictably, has been incoherence and lies about which administration did what with which terrorism suspect, culminating in The Sage of […]

Some early results from a forthcoming Washington Post-ABC News poll show that at some level, a majority of the public understands that efforts towards bipartisanship in Washington have largely been at the behest of Barack Obama and the Democrats, and that Republicans have done “too little” to reach across the aisle. The poll also shows […]

It strikes me that rather than being an educational moment to teach the public about obstructionism, continued “outreach” to Republicans on policy issues they are constitutionally opposed to is playing a game only Republicans can win. Democrats and the president will say they extended an olive branch, only to have it swatted away, and Republicans […]

Barack Obama continues to display a trait guaranteed to annoy his supporters: clearly articulating the nature of a problem, and then refusing to throw his weight behind a solution. The president’s remarks last night won’t put liberals at ease. To look at the big picture, House Democrats want the Senate to act first on a […]

My crack yesterday, denigrating Ramesh Ponnuru‘s integrity and intelligence was admittedly mean-spirited, and he has justifiably responded to me in kind. But in the course of responding to my substantive claims, he has essentially acknowledged that economic forces drive anti-incumbency sentiment, but without addressing why any discussion of these forces is absent in his original […]