We Fight Low Information
Brent Budowsky: The Senate becomes a farce: Democrats propose, Republicans filibuster. Democrats retreat, Congress recesses. Tiny victories are hailed as great achievements. The Democratic legacy is dumbed down by the day. The voice of a generation is silenced.
Brent Budowsky: President Obama blew it, but he can still lead Democrats to a landslide victory in 2012 by understanding the sources of the third great realignment in more than a century, which should have been realized after his election in 2008.
Brent Budowsky: If Rove is not colluding with Romney in violation of law, there is no law, even by the shabby standards of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United.
Brent Budowksy: It is Republicans who deviate to extremism of politics and obstructionism for partisanship from historical norms of American political discourse and practice.
Tom Hayden: The peace movement can and will have to merge with the populist movements opposing austerity budgets and Wall Street crimes.
Brent Budowsky: Word on the street is Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Democrats will launch a major battle supporting pay equity for the women of America that could be a defining moment in the 2012 campaign.
Brent Budowsky: his week, former Vice President Al Gore called for an Occupy Democracy movement using the Internet to escalate the battle against the corruption of democracy.
Brent Budowsky: As President Obama and Democrats battle during this holiday season to enact a tax cut for the 99 percent of Americans who constitute the heart of the nation, House Republicans are making a seismic political blunder reminiscent of the self-destructive overreaching of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) that rejuvenated the Clinton presidency during the 1990s.
Brent Budowsky: When the full truth is told about the secret deals that will define the fiscal future of America and the fate of programs at the heart of the Democratic Party heritage, it will be clear that Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is the most important leader in Washington carrying the torch, against great odds, for what true Democrats stand for.
Brent Budowsky: Never before in American history has unemployment been so high, yet neither the president nor Congress pushes for a major jobs bill.
Brent Budowsky: The president’s budget and congressional responses will have a revolutionary impact on American politics that will either cement the total domination of the right and humiliation of progressives in the battle of ideas, or pave the way for House Dems to restore Democratic control in 2012.
Paul Hogarth: What good is defending a Democrat, who will simply give bi-partisan “cover” to right-wing forces of obstruction who want Obama to fail.
Paul Hogarth: For years, House Democrats have joked that House Republicans are the “opposition” but the Senate is the “enemy” – and it’s easy to understand why.
Norman Solomon: It’s one thing to support a Blue Dog Democrat in a general election against a Republican. It’s quite another thing for members of the Progressive Caucus to defend a Blue Dog Democrat against a primary challenge from a genuine progressive Democrat. In the case of the Harman-Winograd race, the best grassroots response from progressives around the country will be to strongly support the Winograd campaign between now and Election Day, June 8.
Robert Reich: Today’s Republican battle plan is exactly the same as it was sixteen years ago. In fact, it’s been the same since President Obama assumed office. They never were serious about compromise. They were serious only about regaining power. From the start, Republicans have remembered the lesson of 1994. Now, as they prepare to vote, House Dems should remember the lesson as well.
Paul Hogarth: In the past year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats have made major strides passing progressive legislation – only to see it die or lull in the Senate, with the President barely lifting a finger. Voters are getting restless, Obama’s approval ratings are down and Democrats are in trouble because they haven’t gotten much done. Now with the Senate acting like a House of Lords, it’s time for House Democrats to get a little respect – and give Obama a piece of their mind.
In remarks to a health reform forum in March, Barack Obama acknowledged, ‘The greatest threat to America’s fiscal health … is the skyrocketing cost of health care.’ How he deals with this danger will arguably be as important for the historical reputation of his presidency as his foreign policy initiatives to safeguard national security.
Why has it come down to these six? Who anointed them? Apparently, the White House. At least that’s what I’m repeatedly being told by sources both on the Hill and in the Administration.
Bachmann doesn’t point out that 9.5 million of uninsured noncitizens that she cites includes both legal and undocumented immigrants.
It should be noted that anti-choice activists not only want to prevent a public insurance plan from covering abortion, they want to prevent private plans from doing so as well.
Ultimately, the progressive’s “grand plan” involves an ambitous legislative agenda which seeks to remove barriers to quality health care and fix the broken immigration system through separate pieces of legislation because they are in fact two very different goals.
Thursday morning, House Democrats took firm control of the environment issue by ousting Energy and Commerce Committee chair Rep. John Dingell. In his place, the caucus chose Rep. Henry Waxman. Besides seating a committed environmentalist as head of the influential energy committee, the vote removes one of the auto industry’s best friends from a key [...]
Some astute political observers are seeing a parallel between this year’s general election in California and the elections of 1976 when the Republican Party cratered in the aftermath of Watergate. I remember 1976 very well. It was the year I graduated from law school, passed the bar, became an attorney, and began working for an [...]
Michael Sigman: For many old-media types I talked to, there was more resignation than outrage this time around, as though a cherished institution were already gone.
Julie Driscoll: Students and their parents’ only hope is Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown, two Democratic Senators who have the cojones to take on big banks, Wall Street, and the powers that be.
Berry Craig: Called the “Ride for Respect,” the demonstration at Walmart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, will be modeled on civil rights volunteers who rode buses into the South in the 1960s to protest Jim Crow racial injustice.
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Pelosi on a Mission
Brent Budowsky: Great dreams ultimately come true because of conviction politicians like Nancy Pelosi. Her mission lives on. Her work is far from done.