D emocracy, many people have said, is a matter of faith, but why, dear Lord, must our faith be tested so often? Lately, the role of money in political campaigns has been mocking our civic creed. “Here the people rule,” we are taught, and we would like to think so. But if the voters (and […]
Elections
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Behind the Numbers: Tilt!
The partisan imbalance in campaign cash.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Harder Than Soft Money
The explosion of issue advocacy — money spent by individuals and independent groups to support political causes — threatens to make even an outright ban on “soft” money irrelevant. Worse, much of what passes for “issue advocacy” is really covert campaign financing. Still worse, it can’t be regulated.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Senator Dole’s Greatest Harvest
How long-cultivated interests help advance the Majority Leader’s political fortunes — and circumvent campaign finance limits.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Reform Beyond the Beltway
While Congress is deadlocked, real campaign finance reform is moving ahead in the states.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
An Emerging Democratic Majority
The 1994 election devastated the self-confidence of the Democratic Party, and 1996 only partially restored it. After narrowly escaping the “Republican revolution,” many Democrats have lowered their expectations and become resigned to the prospect of center-right government. And now President Clinton’s budget and tax deal with the Republicans in Congress has left his own party without […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Constitutional Amendmentitis
The rash of amendments being proposed by Republicans has profound — and dangerous — implications for our system of government.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Clinton’s Not-So-Good Deeds
Richard Rothstein may be right that Clinton is the best liberals can hope for in our present institutional environment (“Friends of Bill?” TAP, Winter 1995, Number 20), but many who have fallen away from Clinton feel that he failed to test the potential of liberalism and populism, and in so doing contributed decisively to the […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Liberalism’s Third Crisis
This isn’t the first time liberals have faced reverses and needed to reframe their ideas.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Up From 1994
S ince Franklin Roosevelt, the central liberal credo has been the use of government to benefit ordinary people. That premise is now battered–fiscally, politically, ideologically. In 1994, swing voters rejected both the concept and the party of government. The 1994 midterm election is not yet the epochal realignment that prefigures a new governing coalition and […]