Terence Samuel

The political bigheads all over the country are sifting through the available evidence, trying to determine if this election is one that will turn on swing voters and swing states or on which side can better turn out its base. It may come as a surprise to some that it can’t be both. But that’s […]

John Lewis got up and proclaimed, “I don’t want to preach.” But Lewis hails from Troy, Alabama, and graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in 1961. He walked with Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, and so when he says he doesn’t want to preach, it just means that he’s going to […]

Chris Bell will tell you frankly that one term in Congress has hardened his politics. “I am a more partisan Democrat that I was,” he says. “The place makes you more partisan.” But he will also tell you that this deepened sense of partisanship is not what caused him to file an ethics complaint against […]

Candidate George W. Bush promised to be a uniter, not a divider, and it’s hard to dispute the notion that as president he has botched that pledge. Indeed, Dick Gephardt’s “miserable failure” refrain may have been invented for Bush’s performance in bringing the country together. Still, in time, Democrats may look back fondly and remember […]

We live in an age of extreme contrariness and unintended consequences, so it is hardly a surprise to hear Democrats on Capitol Hill praising Ronald Reagan for his leadership and his commitment to restoring America’s greatness. While the aspiration to a certain graciousness and respect at a time like this is understandable, one must be […]

In his third-floor office in the Capitol, Steny Hoyer is plunked down in a big red armchair, his left leg crossed over his right. He is wearing a dazzlingly white shirt and a red patterned tie. There are two pens in his breast pockets and visions of grandeur dancing in his head. Hoyer is the […]

John Kerry has some bad news days coming. How do I know? Because he is a Democrat, and because the party that is, and has been, so united behind him is also bipolar. Good news makes its members giddy; bad news sends them into paralyzing fits of self-doubt and recrimination. So, at some point, when […]

After the cascade of inflamed adjectives came tumbling in to express our revulsion with photos from Abu Ghraib — “disgusting,” “abhorrent”, “brutal,” “sickening”, “inhumane,” “un-American” — the debate about the causes and consequences of the Iraqi prison abuse is moving into decidedly more complicated territory for the administration. For a White House that hates having […]

Diana DeGette is a true-blue liberal from what in the conventional wisdom has to be considered a solidly red state. And despite her reputation as a legislator who is particularly effective when her party is in the minority, it is easy to view the efforts of the Colorado Democrat as the pointless flailings of a […]

If Arlen Specter wins re-election in November and serves out his full term, he will become the first person in Pennsylvania history to serve five terms in the Senate. Boies Penrose is the only other senator to match the four terms Specter has served so far, but Penrose’s tenure was in an age before the […]