Blog: TAPPED

PLAYING POLITICS ISN’T A POLICY. I’m going to dissent, with Ezra, from the emerging TAPPED line on Iran here and say that any Democrat who comes out and argues that we can’t deal with Iran until Bush is out of office will do nothing more than reaffirm to the nth degree the perception that Democrats […]

THE RETURN OF POTTERY BARN. I’ll second Matt‘s comments below; so much as George Bush‘s staggering incompetence should have a prime part in the Democratic production of “No Sequel: Why We Shouldn’t Fight Iran,” to build the whole argument around Bush himself would be a profoundly unstable edifice for the anti-war camp. Indeed, it would […]

AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. David Ignatius, aiming to make me love Don Rumsfeld by arguing that he should resign in order to increase public support for the indefinite continuation of the Iraq War, observes that “As bad as things are in Baghdad, America won’t be defeated there militarily. But it may be forced into […]

FIRST THINGS FIRST. Greg asks a good question below about the politics of Iran, and I don’t have a super-good answer. I would say that the beginning of political wisdom on this topic, however, is a little dose of the old moral clarity. There are two different questions Democratic officeholders can be asking themselves, their […]

MORE ON DEMS AND IRAN. I see that in last night’s post on Iran I inadvertently wrote that Dems should be figuring out how to respond after strikes come. Since the post was meant to make the opposite point — that Dems should be thinking through how politically to approach Iran now — a quick […]

HOW SHOULD DEMS HANDLE IRAN? As depressing as this is, it’s never too early for liberals and Dem thinkers to start figuring out how to prevent Dems from dividing if Bush orders, say, limited strikes on Iran. Al Gore and Howard Dean might oppose them, as perhaps will the new and improved John Edwards. But […]

MR. DONKEY SIR. Commenting on Noam Scheiber‘s story on Howard Dean, MyDD’s Matt Stoller writes: While Reid and Pelosi and Rahm and Chuck might bitch about Dean ‘not playing the traditional party chairman’s role’, where were they in February of 2005 when the elections were held? Why did they let uber-local pol Donnie Fowler become […]

OFF INTO THE SUNSET. Budget negotiations within the House GOP conference stalled last week over disputes between moderates, who wanted some boosts in spending, and the Republican Study Committee (RSC) folks, who were pushing for some of their usual litany of draconian caps and budget process changes. John Boehner and Dennis Hastert have pledged to […]

DRAWING KNIVES? The Washington Post surveys veteran congressional handicappers and concludes that the Democrats’ chances of taking back the House in November remain very slim. I’ll let the Midterm Madness folks judge whether the piece is trustworthy or persuasive on the merits; needless to say, it remains the case that structural barriers still do render […]

DEMS ARE EITHER PHONIES OR THEY’RE RADICALS. One of the more devious verbal tricks commentators use on Democrats is to rhetorically box them in: Either Dems are too cautious and scripted, or they’re too radical and hate America. Atrios is right when he says of Joe Klein‘s new book: I’ve got nothing against insiders dishing […]