Features

N othing about the 2000 election matters nearly as much as the ugly means by which it was brought to an end. Throughout our history, with the terrible exception of 1860, every party has been able to live with the victory of an opposing candidate for president. One reason is our confidence in a legal […]

Since the mid-1990s, Democrats have played a deftlyexecuted but ultimately evasive game on fiscal policy. As surplusesbegan to appear on the horizon, they parried Republican calls for taxcuts with their own proposals for paying down the debt and “savingSocial Security.” This was effective–even ingenious–politics preciselybecause it ducked the root question of whether unspent revenues shouldbe […]

E ven the best political systems cannot eliminate corruption, venality, and civil strife, but they are supposed to limit their sway. Enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the American electoral system was designed to do that, yet the recent presidential election has revealed serious weaknesses in the way a president is chosen. The country appears to […]

When Indiana Democrat Tim Roemer announced recently that he would retire from the House of Representatives at the end of this session of Congress, the officially cited reason was that he wanted to spend more time with his family. That’s no doubt true. But it is surely also the case that Roemer didn’t want to […]

A fter trailing for almost all of the last six weeks before the election, Al Gore wound up the victor in the popular vote on November 7, nosing out George W. Bush 48.6 percent to 48.3 percent. Where did all these Gore voters come from? First and foremost, they came from the Democratic base. According […]

You had no reason to notice it, but The American Prospect was totally Y2K-free this past year. We didn’t run a single article about the disasters that were supposedly going to befall the world after the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve. We also didn’t run any articles giddily anticipating all the wonders that […]

If nothing else, the 2000 election mess has begun to produce real political engagement and debate about democracy. For some this debate will focus narrowly on improving election equipment and modernizing election administration. Conservatives may even try to turn the debate to one that restricts voting opportunities under the guise of efficiency, racial neutrality, and […]

T here are few issues on which Americans are as much out of sync with their elected leaders as they are on the so-called war on drugs: suppression of crops and traffickers abroad, interdiction at the border, criminal sanctions for users at home. If it’s hard to find voters who believe U.S. drug policies are […]

At least since 1996, when voters in california and Arizona approved ballot initiatives legalizing the medical use of marijuana, Americans have been trying to send the same message to Washington, D.C.: The nation’s escalating, $20-billion drug war is a disastrous and costly failure that is stuffing the prisons, ruining thousands of lives both here and […]