Scott Lemieux

WHAT COUNTERMOBILIZATION? Remember all the speculation about how the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision requiring civil unions was going to create a major, pro-Republican backlash because the courts were “getting ahead of the people”? Strange how we’re hearing less about that today, now that this seems to have had about as much impact on the […]

“THE VOTES ARE IN AND WE WON.” Spencer is happily prescient. Conservative Democrat or not, it’s nice to have a Democrat in a crucial race who understands politics. In a recount, you have to seize the initiative and establish the right narrative: Webb did it. Good for him. –Scott Lemieux

EVEN SOUTH DAKOTA HAS POSTIVE NEWS: Not only is the draconian aboriton ban heading for defeat, but the ridiculous initiative to impose retrocative legal liability on judges is going down by an 80-point margin. –Scott Lemieux

NOT WORTH THE PAPER THEY’RE NOT PRINTED ON, BUT… While I take Addie‘s (and Bob Somerby‘s) point about predicting election outcomes, I can’t resist saying something. I’m actually inclined to stick with Dems +5 for the Senate, which seemed pessimistic last week but now seems a little optimistic. Although Sam seems to buy the claims […]

FRAUDULENT ROBO-CALLS V. DEMOCRACY: Hilzoy has more on the Republicans investing $2 million in fraudulent, harassing robocalls intended to suppress Democratic turnout, which Josh Marshall has been doing terrific work on. What deserves emphasis here is that this isn’t rogue local campaigns, or over-enthusiastic volunteers — most of them are apparently part of a national, […]

AND DON’T FORGET — HE’S A LIBERTARIAN TOO! Shorter Verbatim Peggy Noonan: Most of [Rick Santorum’s] own impulses — protect the unprotected, help the helpless, respect the common man — have not been conservative in the way conservative is roughly understood, or portrayed, in the national imagination. If this were the JFK era, his politics […]

“TORT REFORM” ARGUMENTS — ARE THEY EVER RIGHT? Brother Ezra had a Slate piece this summer about the many empirical problems with the argument that capping medical malpractice suits would be a major source of cost reduction for the American medical system. (As Ezra points out, the overwhleming evidence against the idea that runaway malpractice […]

MISS AMERICA COMPASSION. Jennifer Roback Morse‘s claim that voting for Rick Santorum — conceivably the least libertarian major national elected official in the country — is the only responsible choice for libertarians to make is, above all else, pure comedy gold. But her attempt to claim the libertarian mantle for Santorum based on his support […]

FEMINISM: STILL NECESSARY. The Happy Feminist and Jessica Valenti draw our attention to a remarkable-in-a-bad-way ruling by the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland. The court threw out a rape conviction because the judge failed to instruct the jury that a woman could not legally withdraw consent after penetration. The Court’s ruling was based on […]

BENEFITS WITHOUT COSTS. As a follow-up to Tom’s point, I think it’s critical, when discussing potential outreach to religious voters, to consider the potential negative consequences of such strategies. One thing the journalist Peter Boyer has been guilty of is asserting benefits that would come from running more anti-choice candidates that completely ignore the costs […]