Mori Dinauer

Now that the public option, triggers, opt-outs and buy-ins have been felled by a Senate without 60 votes and a White House eager to sign the bill and move on, the question is whether what remains of health-care reform is any good. On the activist side of the debate, I’d say the consensus is that […]

The filibuster relies on the assumption that after negotiating in good faith, one of the parties to negotiations can single-handedly hold the passage of legislation to a super-majority vote. What has broken down in this gentleman’s agreement, and what Joseph Lieberman has brought front and center, is that parties who negotiate in bad faith still […]

By all means, if the Democrats want to lose control of Congress, let them make superficial gestures toward deficit reduction a top priority for 2010. Voters only care about the deficit insofar as it is a symbol of their frustration with the fact that there is high unemployment. Long-term deficit reduction is and ever shall […]

Expecting consistency from Republicans these days is a tall order. And when it comes to health-care reform, the hypocrisy has been staggering. Even worse, the refusal of Republicans to negotiate even on provisions that should theoretically mesh with their political philosophy has led to worse legislation (from a conservative point of view). But as David […]

This PPP poll which finds that 50 percent of voters prefer Barack Obama as president compared to his predecessor, while 44 percent prefer the reverse, essentially summarizes the political zeitgeist nearly a year after George W. Bush left office. The recession which began in the final year of the Bush presidency didn’t just end when […]

I don’t think it’s much of a political gamble for the president to observe that government efforts at economic stimulus have been accomplished “without the help of an opposition party,” which “presided over the decision-making that led to the crisis” and “decided to hand it over to others to solve.” Voters will judge Democrats next […]

It’s not surprising to see that a big chunk of opposition to health-care reform is coming from the left, given that a portion of the activist left has all but given up on Barack Obama and Democrats as agents of progressive reform. Yet there is nothing to be gained for progressives in the defeat of […]

It has been frustrating to see the White House and congressional Democrats react in slow motion to the unemployment situation, wasting time with summits and relying too much on optimistic economic forecasts. Moreover, even good news can be bad news when it comes to instilling a sense of urgency about getting a jobs bill enacted. […]

It’s unsurprising that Americans are becoming increasingly more isolationist in their views, given that they’re now starting to see the cost of our imperial ways. And of course, this would have happened sooner, if there was any call for shared sacrifice. Atrios is of course right that unemployment affects the deficit insofar as there is […]

While the debate over Afghanistan has certainly played out on terms that the right wing has laid exclusive claim to since 9/11, I think it’s more complicated to say that deference to the military in the United States by political leaders is evidence that we are living in a “center-right” nation. The political consensus over […]