Paul Waldman

You’ve probably heard that one thing that is bound to doom Democrats this November is the “enthusiasm gap,” the fact that polls show Republicans far more enthusiastic about voting than Democrats. As Nate Silver tells us, this is really a turnout gap, and it’s more about Republicans than Democrats. The Democratic base isn’t actually particularly […]

Jon Chait makes a good point in responding to the excellent article in New York magazine on the trials of CNN and MSNBC: MSNBC, as Sherman reports, is now courting a liberal audience. But (my opinion) you’ll never have a liberal equivalent to Fox News that has anything like the same level of success. Conservatives […]

Here’s how representative democracy works: We send a representative from our district or state to Washington, where they become one of either 435 House members or 100 senators. They can introduce legislation, serve on committees, and make speeches. But for one of them to do something really far-reaching is rare. That’s especially true when you’re […]

My column today is about politicians’ lies — which ones we care about, and which ones we don’t. Lucky for me, Linda McMahon gives us a classic of the “He’s a liar!” genre (via Dave Weigel: OK, I’ll ask: What else is he lying about? Why don’t you tell us? There must be something you […]

I don’t envy legal reporters. If you’re a sportswriter, you don’t have to start every article on the latest Yankees-Red Sox game by patiently explaining the arcane rules of baseball — it’s understood that your readers know them. But if you write about the law, the context for your stories is a system with complex […]

Well, this certainly isn’t what I would have expected from Christine O’Donnell‘s first ad: Way to take that witchcraft issue head-on. The problem with saying, “I’m not X” — crook, witch, whatever — is that it makes people think about whether you are, in fact, the thing you’re claiming not to be. Not that anyone […]

Today it was announced that Robert G. Edwards, the co-developer of in-vitro fertilization, was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine. Which gives us an opportunity to see what folks were saying when Louise Brown, the first “test-tube baby,” was born in 1978. Witness this article from Time magazine (which began, of course, with a quote […]

During the Cold War, defense and intelligence officials used to routinely go to Capitol Hill and warn that the Soviet military was a gargantuan colossus, one that would inevitably crush us when the inevitable third world war came to pass. In response, of course, it would be necessary to dramatically increase our own defense spending. […]

It may not be the kind of thing that gets people joyously running to the polls, but the administration deserves some credit for this: The massive economic stimulus package President Obama pushed through Congress last year is coming in on time and under budget – and with strikingly few claims of fraud or abuse – […]