Scott Lemieux

Jack Balkin has an interesting post about the possibility of 2008 being a watershed election, and I agree with several of his points. Certainly, there was always an obvious contradiction between the Rove/Bush strategy to create a dominant Republican coalition and their base-mobilizing, 50%+1 government strategy, and it’s now clear that the chance of long-term […]

Dana is right, of course, that there was a considerable amount of sexism inherent in characterizations of Clinton‘s debate performance on Saturday. (“Medusa look,” ugh.) This presents Democratic primary voters with a dilemma, for reasons that Matt makes clear: Getting good press is part of being an effective candidate and part of being an effective […]

Via a commenter at my other home, Jack Shafer seems to be unaware that for a reductio ad absurdum to be effective, it has to involve undesirable consequences. Shafer, on the other hand, argues that if the Times were to reject the worthless pro-war hackery of Bill Kristol, it would also be bound to reject […]

One does indeed hope that should Clinton go on to lose the primary it would have the salutary effect of permanently discrediting Mark Penn. (Although, alas, always losing competitive campaigns hasn’t been much of a bar to cashing checks from Democratic candidates in every cycle in the past.) And I also agree that choosing Penn […]

An important piece by Charles Peters about Obama‘s work in the Illinois legislature, including working to compel both houses of the legislature into passing a law requiring videotaped confessions — the kind of civil liberties protection that it’s very difficult to get legislatures to initiate. As Hilzoy pointed out, this has often been true at […]

Matt says with respect to Giuliani that “his strategy of skipping all the early primary states was clearly a mistake.” Although this risks adding additional embarrassment following my assertions that McCain was dead, I think it’s safe to send the floral arrangements to Giuliani’s campaign. What I do wonder is why it would ever — […]

In addition to Tom, I see that Josh Marshall — who, like me, had written off McCain‘s candidacy long ago — now sees McCain as the favorite. Depressingly, I think this is right. Certainly, I agree with Josh that the GOP is now an effective two-man race between McCain and Romney, and you have to […]

What should be my outrage about wrong-about-everything hack Bill Kristol getting a New York Times gig (because apparently the dozens of other media outlets he seems to have unlimited access to aren’t enough) is attenuated by the fact that the Paper O’ Record still employs Maureen Dowd. Melissa McEwan, Molly Ivors, and Echidne deal with […]

In addition to pressuring U.S. Attorneys to pursue isolated cases of vote fraud for which there was no actual evidence, the DOJ made sure to delay the investigation of actual systematic electoral theft which may have won the GOP the 2002 New Hampshire Senate race before the slime would be spotted on GOP elites: The […]

Although this is a great primary season for political junkies — made more interesting because in one party none of the candidates should logically be able to win — the one downside is the amount of silly discussion from the Tony Blankleys of the world about a brokered convention. James Joyner is right: It’s not […]