Randy Shaw: Prior to Brown’s win, national Democrats were adrift, the base was deeply demoralized, and a path to finally passing health care reform was unclear. But Brown’s win changed this, providing a desperately needed wake-up call to national Democrats and the Obama Administration.

Joseph Palermo: Peter Baker’s profile of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in the New York Times Magazine raises some interesting questions about President Barack Obama’s top aide. For Emanuel, it seems that all politics are electoral politics. He wouldn’t know a social movement if he saw one.

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.

Berry Craig: Republicans like McCain love it when Buick Guys trash “liberal elitists.” They love it more when Buick Guys vote Republican. Never mind that that the polices of the GOP (and its conservative Southern “Blue Dog” Democratic soul mates) help make the rich richer and leave Buick Guys living in housing projects and driving heaps.

Joseph Palermo: he Republicans, who control the state’s finances through the “two-thirds rule,” tell us every day that in a $1.8 trillion economy we can’t do anything but cut, cut, cut because we simply “don’t have the money.” They tell us that a $19 billion budget deficit — about 1 percent of the state’s GDP — requires us to dismantle the higher education system, lay off teachers and social servants, close parks, and demolish public institutions that took a generation to build.

Sharon Kyle: When asked if the movement was broad enough to attract conservative democrats, Palin said, “they’re already peeking in — it’s pretty cool to see some of the Blue Dog Democrats peeking under the tent and finding out what is this movement all about and, holy geez, I’m scared if I’m not a part of this.”

Joseph Palermo: The Democrats must pass a lot of legislation before the midterms or they’re going to be very sorry. Soon enough, given the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, we’re going to see campaigns where our choice for U.S. Senator will be between the “Doritos Nacho Cheese Tortilla Chips” candidate and the “Pepsi/Pizza Hut/KFC/Frito Lay/Taco Bell” candidate. Former President George W. Bush is raking in the bucks speaking at the National Grocers’ Association. First he defiled the presidency by getting John Yoo to turn the Justice Department into a law factory for monarchical presidential powers, now he shares the stage as an inspirational speaker with Terry Bradshaw. Our elections are about to become a satirical skit that Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report did a long time ago.

Robert Reich: Mad-as-hellers don’t trust big government. But they don’t trust big business and Wall Street, either. They especially hate it when big government gets together with big business and Wall Street – while at the same time Main Street is in shambles and millions of people are losing their jobs and homes.

Andrea Christina Nill: Though Kellar insists his remarks weren’t intended to “express animosity towards non-whites,” local Democrats describe Kellar’s comments as “symbolic of the Republican Party’s attitudes toward immigration in general.” The rally was organized by several California anti-immigrant groups including the Santa Clarita Valley Independent Minutemen, the Santa Clarita Tea Party, and designated hate group Save Our State.

Ed Rampel: It’s time to dump and jump the sinking two-party ship of state and create a new progressive people’s party. If those well-meaning activists who’d wasted time and money supporting Obama, just so he could backstab them once he got in power, had expended that energy and money on creating a new genuinely pro-worker, pro-peace, pro-human rights, pro-gay rights, pro-single payer, pro-woman, pro-ethnic rights, anti-global warming, anti-Wall Street party, we’d be better off.

Joseph Palermo: The Obama Administration cut far too many deals with the same corporate special interests that have dominated Washington since the Reagan years. Obama watered down his agenda. The Democratic base stayed home. The Republicans were energized beyond belief. And the Democratic candidate in a Democratic state lost the “Lion of the Senate’s” seat.

Jerry Drucker: The G.O.P. does it for greed and power and they don’t believe anyone can stop them if they stay in lock-step and continue to stick to the lying talking points, the powerful CEO’s and the huge corporations that continue to control the mass media.

As long as the Democratic leadership insists on being directed by the supposed wisdom of this advice, they will continue down their present path to an electoral train wreck next November as bad or worse than the one they suffered in 1994, when they played their cards the same way.

The accusations put ACORN in a situation similar to a man who is asked, “when did you stop beating your wife?” Even though the accusations weren’t true, ACORN was put on the defensive, and lacked the resources to respond effectively to the onslaught of negative publicity.

When President Barack Obama took office, many activists and organizations saw their role as mobilizing the public support necessary to enable him to implement progressive change. After Obama’s September health care speech this strategy appeared to be working, but the President has since ignored the progressive base and taken a sharp turn to the right.

Any political party solely dedicated to get out the vote (GOTV) or electioneering is 
doomed. Today, tomorrow, soon. Ask the Republicans. Mickey Edwards, 
former Republican Congressman from Oklahoma, has stated that the demise of the 
Republican Party derives from the day that they decided to turn 
the Party into an “incumbents-only” GOTV machine.

Next year, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s circus will leave Sacramento. The cigar tents will be packed up and his menagerie of lobbyists and hangers-on will follow him out of town. And like a departing circus it will leave in its wake a barren field strewn with garbage and elephant shit. Whoever is the next Republican nominee for governor will have to at least promise to clean up some of this mess. The last thing the state needs is a Margaret Thatcher wannabe.

Now we have proof that the crazies grabbed control of the asylum and bullies are shaking down and thumping – not entirely figuratively – Republicans in the halls of the US Senate.

On September 9, 2009 while President Barack Obama was addressing congress, Rep. Joe Wilson yelled, “you lie” as the president discussed what was in or not in the healthcare reform bill. Wilson’s outburst can be …

The 30-year class war the rich launched against the working people in this country (and reached its apogee during the George W. Bush years), has left the middle class reeling and wounded. Only bold federal action that puts something concrete in the palms of middle-class Americans can begin to turn these dire social conditions around.

Obama is using every political chit to secure health coverage for 47 million “common “ Americans, strongly endorsing the public option that other Democrats and the Republican Party are seeking to kill.

The current state of the health care “debate” illustrates, even with the election of Barack Obama and large Democratic majorities in Congress, we might have already lost the vocabulary for collective moral discourse.

Activists often make the mistake of fighting battles on their opponent’s turf. Small town hall meetings are so easy to disrupt that they offer a perfect forum for the passionate Rush Limbaugh crowd that lacks a broad base

Olbermann differs from O’Reilly in that he cares about truth and falsehood, and he understands the distinction between journalism and propaganda. Bill O’Reilly is a liar and a demagogue and a right-wing propagandist.

No wonder even Ann Coulter — Ann Coulter! — has distanced herself from Taitz saying, in effect: “I don’t want to encourage that woman, she’s a nutjob!”

Now we have a Republican governor in California who sees the state’s current budget catastrophe as nothing but a big joke. Why else would Arnold Schwarzenegger post a tasteless Twitter video where he wields a two-foot-long folding knife boasting about his budget-cutting prowess?

I can’t summon up any empathy for Michael Steele. Trying to rescue the Republican party while is sinks in a morass of scandal and historical irrelevancy is a task I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger calls an agreement “a really great, great accomplishment” you know average Californians are in for a fleecing.

Schwarzenegger doesn’t get the human costs of his actions. He seems to enjoy the attention he’s getting as well as playing on right-wing “populist” anger. He’s satisfying his Tea Bagger constituency by beating up on Californians who happen to be poor or work in the public sector.

Don’t conservatives, ConservaDems, the Republican Party, and the rest of the “climate change is a hoax” crowd ever get tired of being wrong?
For several years, business lobbyists along with GOP and other right wing mouthpieces …

After hedging his bets and unsuccessfully campaigning for the GOP presidential bid on an anti-immigration platform, Mitt Romney announced this past weekend that the Republican Party should not change its principles on immigration.
During the 2007-2008 …

Earlier this week, at a Washington DC fundraiser, in a statement that can best be described as regressive American exceptionalism, former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich said of himself:
“I am not a citizen of the world. …

According to the loonie chorus on the right, we’re all sons of bitches now.
When they’re not bashing Sonia Sotomayor for asking sharp questions from the bench – which would seem to be a pretty basic …

There was only one possible explanation.
The bullet entered the president’s neck, bounced off his necktie, made a right turn in midair, entered Governor Connolly’s back, broke a rib, and exited his arm after breaking his …

Neo-conservatives used the Republican Party as a vehicle to promote and employ their policies of muscular nation-building overseas. But like the parasite that eventually kills its host, the Republican Party’s virtual collapse, in large part …

On August 11, 1971, John Lindsay, the Republican mayor of New York City, radiating calm and charm after a 10-day camping trip in Colorado and Utah, stepped before a crowd in the ballroom of Gracie …

Poor Ralph Wiggum.
The hapless, slow-witted, frequently annoying son of Chief Wiggum on The Simpson’s is always getting picked on by kids at Springfield Elementary because he keeps saying totally out-of-context things like “I use the …

Ronald Reagan was a socialist. I didn’t say it. Bill O’Reilly got permission from Republican Party policy chief Rush Limbaugh to explain, on the air, the economic logic that drives the Republican Party to now …

Senator John McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, has served up a devastating critique of the direction the Republican Party has taken recently. “If figureheads like Ann Coulter are turning me off,” Ms. McCain writes, “then they …

The Republican Party put all its business in the streets as talk radio rhetorician, Rush Limbaugh, went on the offensive (even more than he’s been on the offensive since Obama has taken office) at the …

Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas.
– Lord Acton
The greatness of our nation can more easily be undone than you might expect. What I witnessed . . . only …

Southern Republican Governors Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Rick Perry of Texas, and Mark Sanford of South Carolina are making noises about “refusing” federal dollars from President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package. …

I started to laugh when I heard that Michael Steele was selected as the first African American to chair the Republican National Committee. I don’t think much of the “new” Republican Party, but then again, …

At his press conference on Monday, President Barack Obama had to remind Mara Liasson of Fox News and NPR that it was the Republicans who doubled the national debt over the past eight years and …

I watched all the Sunday stuff on the telly today. Who was that old guy on the show saying that we should not be spending money on American schools, American students in college, or on …

It didn’t take the GOP long to begin devouring its own.
No sooner had the Senate passed The Stim yesterday but notorious right-wing funder-in-chief Richard Mellon Scaife’s front organization, “The National Republican Trust PAC,” sent an …

In 1995, the Republicans swept into the House of Representatives winning 57 seats and running on term limits and a balanced budget amendment that they never passed. They implemented a strategy of obstructing everything that …

Michael Steele has been selected to lead the Republican Party. He is the first African-American to chair the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the second African-American to chair either of the two major party’s National …

We’re lucky the Democrats have large majorities in Congress because every Republican member of the House of Representatives voted against the $825 billion stimulus bill today. The vote was 244 to 188, with 11 like-minded …

It was a message not directly spoken but heard by all… President Obama met privately with House and Senate Republicans, all without aides, in the Roosevelt Room. Simply said, there’s room on this train for …

by David A. Love
Lee Atwater, GOP political operative and mentor of Karl Rove, was a Machiavellian conman and a purveyor of sleaze. And through the various political campaigns he ran, he not only won races, …

“Terrorist!” “Traitor!” “Kill Him!” “Bomb Obama!” “Obama Bin Lyin!”
These are the words one can hear from the crowds at the McCain-Palin rallies. Through race baiting and inflammatory xenophobic, anti-Muslim and …

I don’t understand.
As Juan Cole notes this morning, Republicans came to Washington in 2000 with a solid majority in both houses of Congress and on the Supreme Court, allowing them to steal the presidency. If …

OK, so like every other major, minor, would-be and never was journalist in the world, I want to interview Sarah Palin. Yet when I called McCain’s campaign headquarters in McLean, Virginia, this morning I was …

At this perilous juncture, America needs boldness. But it does not need to take unnecessary risks. The distinction between boldness and riskiness is critical, as evidenced by the events of the last two days.

I’ve heard of rooting for the bad guys, but this is ridiculous. John McCain’s elite advisor Charlie Black opined to Fortune magazine that if there were another terrorist strike against our country in time for …