Elections

On October 17, The American Prospect cosponsored a conference on campaign finance reform at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Only weeks earlier, reform legislation had died in Congress. Participants in the conference included representatives of public interest organizations and both Democrats and Republicans; the conference received financial support from the Arca, Schumann, and Joyce Foundations, […]

Bill Brewster, junior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, works hard on behalf of the money that elected him. Unfortunately, he is emblematic of a system that skews politics away from the people.

Could either party nominate a full-menu libertarian or populist? Our national political logjam explains why artifice has become endemic.

In the primal act of citizenship, we face the ballot alone, face to face with our own ignorance.

As the 1990s began, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. argued that America was due for a new era of affirmative government in keeping with the cycle of liberal and conservative periods that runs through our history. Uncannily, Bill Clinton’s election came right on schedule, roughly 90 years after Theodore Roosevelt became president, 60 years after Franklin Roosevelt, […]

My liberal friends are being too hard on Bill Clinton. His mandate and congressional majority are wafer thin, and he’s doing well with what he has. Would you rather have George Bush?

There isn’t much new or Democratic about the New Democrats. They preach the same brand of conservative politics that has run this country into the ground.

Last time around, campaign finance reform failed because it lacked public financing. Twenty years later, Congress seems determined to make the same mistake.

Using models to predict presidential elections can be fun. Too bad they don’t work.