Scott Lemieux

So some PUMAs — the acronym stands for “Republican” — met with John McCain. The PUMAs immediately agreed to purchase an $1,800 vacuum cleaner with a 30-year extended warranty: Bower said he’d liked McCain’s answer on judges, in which he “pointed out that he supported Bill Clinton with both Ginsberg [sic] and Breyer.” Of course […]

Buried in David Frum‘s endorsement of 9/11 Giuliani is the kind of claim you hear sometimes: Since World War II, ten men have received the Republican nomination for vice president. Three of those men continued on to win the presidential nomination for themselves, and two actually became president. Meanwhile, a fourth nominee, Thomas Dewey‘s running […]

As was anticipated after the Court reversed course and decided to hear the case, the Supreme Court has held that “the petitioners at GTMO have a constitutional right to petition for habeas corpus.” The opinion was written by Kennedy. I’m sure Stevens would have liked to keep it for himself, but I assume he was […]

I remain convinced. See also Drum. Let me also add: Sebelius! I could see a case for Joe Biden if he hadn’t been in favor of the war. As it stands, I think it would be crazy to pick someone almost exclusively for foreign policy message who inevitably blurs the popular message of the Democratic […]

Patterico objects to an LA Times editorial asserting that McCain will appoint justices who share his views that Roe v. Wade is wrong and should be overturned. Patterico argues that McCain has said that he would appoint judges like Alito and Roberts, who have declined (so far) to argue explicitly that Roe should be overturned. […]

Mark Penn washes his hands of having helped to seal Clinton‘s fate. The thing is, there’s actually considerable merit to Penn’s argument that money and organizational issues were the key defects of the Clinton campaign; their inability and/or unwillingness to compete in February primaries and caucuses was far more important than any “message” problems that […]

Via Ezra, Michael Pollan has a good example of the problems that Matt discusses here. Evidently, it would be good if subsidies to wealthy agricultural conglomerates could just be eliminated (or severely curtailed.) But the structure of American institutions and policy path dependencies make eliminating these subsidies entirely politically impossible. The better course is to […]

I’m not surprised to see this. The fact that it was Robert Johnson and Lanny Davis making the public pitch made it pretty clear that Clinton was not interested in mounting a public campaign for the veep slot at this time (what she’s communicating privately to Obama I don’t know.) If you were really trying […]

As Dana notes below, Clinton will concede and endorse Obama on Friday. I am, once again, inclined to a more charitable view than Matt expresses here. I have been very critical of several aspects of Clinton’s campaign, although this was for specific acts (particularly the negative comparison of Obama and McCain and the increasingly farcical […]