Victoria Defrancesco Soto: Latino support for President Obama had grown by a full ten percentage points in the last two months of the general campaign.
Ideology and Politics
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Steve Hochstadt: onsiderable pressure has been brought on Republicans at the federal level to make ideological promises which exclude political compromise. The most notable is the Taxpayer Protection Pledge not to raise taxes ever on anyone, promoted by Grover Norquist.
Ideology and Pragmatism: The Republicans and Obama
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Walter Moss: One also wonders if there is still another word that better describes a man who in his dogged desire for the presidency has twisted and turned in so many ways. And that word is opportunist.
Bill, Not Big Bird, to the Rescue
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Brent Budowsky: Obama should tell his story, and offer his narrative, about why people’s lives have gotten better in the first Obama term, which they have, and will get even better in a second Obama term, which they will.
The Bill Clinton Mega-Bounce
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Brent Budowsky: Nobody remembers what Mitt Romney said at his convention, but everybody remembers what Clinton said at the Democratic convention, which gave Obama a mega-bounce that has lasted for more than a week.
Mitt, I Owe You an Apology
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Tina Dupuy: [dc]P[/dc]resumptive nominee Mitt Romney is seemingly fixated on apologies. He’s obsessed with apologies like Bristol Palin is obsessed with teen abstinence
Vietnam Is Back in Town
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Jerry Lembcke: Just as perennial announcements that “Freud is dead” or “God is dead” signal that they’re anything but, the recurring claims that America is over and done with the war in Vietnam are just as certainly premature.
AFL-CIO Declares Victory in Wisconsin in the Face of Defeat
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Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer: Rather than mobilizing members to defend their standard of living by putting up a fight, organized labor has relied exclusively on electing Democrats to office.
President Obama: Ladies’ Man
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Victoria Defrancesco Soto: Obama is the ultimate ladies’ man, but not because of his swagger or looks. His popularity among women boils down to politics. His administration has aggressivly courted women by highlighting women’s policy issues.
Welfare “Reform” Laws Deepen, Perpetuate Poverty
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Sherwood Ross: In passing TANF, Congress and Bill Clinton made good on their promise to ‘end welfare as we know it.’ It’s time to end welfare reform as we know it instead.
Healthcare: What Democrats Should Have Learned By Now
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Robert Reich: Had the President and the Democrats stuck to their guns during the health-care debate and insisted on Medicare for all, or at least a public option, they wouldn’t now be facing the possible unraveling of the new health care law.
Real Crises and Fake Ones
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Steve Hochstadt: Our economic disaster is not about national debt, but about national poverty. America cannot be a great country, if we do not alleviate the critical economic problems gripping our poorest families.
The Republican Death Wish
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Robert Reich: Instead of talking about Medicare as a problem to be fixed, Democrats should start talking about it as a potential solution to the challenge of rising health-care costs — as well as to our long-term budget problem.
Mimicking Marcy
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Nick Antonicello: The Winograd message is being hijacked, lifted and repackaged by two centrists in Hahn & Bowen who’ve never had to clearly explain to Democrats what they truly stand for in any previous party contest.
America’s Gay Confederate and Union Soldiers
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Rev. Irene Monroe: Queer Civil War buffs have been arguing for some time that the deafening silence around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) Confederate and Union soldiers indicates proof of their very presence.
Across-the-Board Cuts Needed to Avoid Fiscal Armageddon
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Ivan Eland: To keep with the bipartisan spirit after the Gabrielle Giffords’ assassination attempt and also to avoid partisan fighting over spending priorities, which will bog down and probably eventually kill any significant budget cuts, all government programs should be cut by 15 percent from last year’s budget level, including heretofore sacred defense and entitlement programs.
Port-au-Prince Still Buried Under Rubble of Competing NGOs
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Georgianne Nienaber: Honestly not wanting to be cynical and sincerely wanting these programs to succeed–looking at the organizations that “benefit” from the Clinton Bush Fund–one sees the list of usual suspects of foreign NGOs and religious organizations.
Bringing Democrats and Republicans Together over Food
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William Lambers: In a hyper-partisan age, is there anything that can bring Democrats and Republicans together? Yes: fighting global hunger. Drawing on the history of the postwar Marshall Plan, Lambers argues that food policy must be the foundation of all foreign policy.
The Real Deficits
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Lydia Howell: A brutal reality is undeniable in the fight over the Bush-era tax cuts and expiring unemployment benefits: American democracy isn’t working for everyday people — that is, the non-wealthy.
The Full Gingrich
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Tina Dupuy: Gingrich’s schtick is Scorched Earth meets Straw Man. He not only incinerates the hypothetical Straw Man – he also verbally salts the soil where the Straw Man’s make-believe family lives after razing their made-up home.
The Tea Party: Brought to You by Joseph Stalin
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John MacMurrary: Exactly how much the Kochs have spent to make America over into their image of a Libertarian paradise may never be known outside the company and the foundations the family controls. Current Federal tax law permits anonymous personal donations to politically active nonprofit groups. But what can be gleaned shows spending somewhat north of $200 million since the late 90s alone.
Will Tea Party Climate Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”?
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Irene Monroe: With the momentum of Tea Party candidates, who are anti-Obama, anti-abortion, and anti-gay civil rights, unseating long-term Republican incumbents in this recent primary aggressively trying to retake Congress and with midterm elections now just weeks away the chances of repealing DADT is looking slimmer.
Bill Clinton Puts Influential Muscle Behind Agricultural Production in Haiti
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Georgianne Nienaber: Given the huge remaining humanitarian and economic crisis facing Haiti, it is puzzling that mainstream media in the United States short-changed coverage of former President Bill Clinton’s early August visit to Leogane. The symbolism is significant, considering that Leogane and the nearby village of Fayette are at the epicenter of the 7.0 quake.
Are We Not Patriots, Too?
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Rev. Irene Monroe: As LGBTQ Americans, our patriotism is not recognized. But one of our community’s greatest moments of patriotism was the Stonewall Riots of June 27–29, 1969, in New York City’s Greenwich Village. We celebrate their heroism every day as out-of-the-closet people who are intentionally visible in various facets of American life.
Is Obama Avoiding Responsibly for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”?
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Rev. Irene Monroe: The posturing last week from Congress was great theater. All the thespians performed their parts well, especially Obama. Why? If DADT is not repealed it gives the President an easy out. It allows the President to distance himself politically by shifting the responsibility and blame for DADT’s outcome from himself to some one else.
Obama Suggests Lincoln-Like Humility
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Walter Moss: One of the great ego traps for any president is being surrounded by “yes men and women” who tell him (and maybe someday her) that he is always right. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote of an occasion when President Bush’s “eyes became fixed, his voice took on the agitated, rapid tone of someone neither accustomed to nor welcoming interruption. His easy affability was replaced by an almost messianic certainty. As I watched my mostly Republican Senate colleagues hang on his every word, I was reminded of the dangerous isolation that power can bring, and appreciated the founders’ wisdom in designing a system to keep power in check.”
Hate Crimes Legislation’s Torturous Path
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Carl Matthes: As you may remember, 21 year-old Matthew was pistol-whipped, bludgeoned and lashed to a fence post, just off an isolated rural road, during one of Wyoming’s cold, lonely October nights. He was left for dead by his killers. Eighteen hours later Matthew was discovered still alive, but in a coma. “I mistook him for a scarecrow,” said 18 year-old Aaron Kreifels. Five days later he died. In 1998 America, Matthew was just one of 33 anti-gay murders.
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Atlanta’s Own Bishop Feelgood—Eddie Long
Jasmyne Cannick: Much to the chagrin of Black gay men everywhere, who have enough to deal with without the latest outing of a Black pastor, and to the relief of Catholic priests everywhere, all eyes are on Atlanta’s Bishop Eddie Long.