As a substantive political project, E.J. Dionne is right - conservatism is finished. While he didn’t mention it, my pet example is the provision in the (failed) law to pre-empt state policies prohibiting tips from being counted against the minimum wage. When I mentioned the proposed law to my wife Dr. Brazen Hussy, she […]

One man I respect says that he’d no longer support another one. It’s no fun when your friends start fighting, is it?
PZ Myers of Pharyngula, like many good liberals, reacted quite strongly to Barack Obama’s recent speech suggesting that liberals take into account the role of faith in American life. Now I certainly have my […]

I’m going to do something out of character and offer up some good news. There have been a number of post-mortems on New York City politics which paint a very bleak picture for the Democratic Party. After all, the Republicans have managed to win 4 consecutive Mayor’s races - two of them by crushing landslides. […]

The oldest piece of advice in political science is to move to the center. If you’re losing elections, take a more moderate position (or highlight the issue areas where you are already moderate) and your fortunes will improve. But what happens when you move to the center and you still lose?
This is precisely what […]

Bull Moose doing his best Leonard Cohen impersonation:
The Roberts nomination is not the end all and be all of politics, but it has provided some valuable insight about the state of the Democratic Party. Everyone knows Roberts is eminently qualified for this position. Everyone knows that he is not a Thomas or a Scalia. […]

Sorry for the long absence everybody - I’ve been spending a lot of time working in a New York City political campaign and then recovering from it.
So it looks like Roberts is going to be confirmed easily, since Patrick Leahy is going to support his nomination. This is of course very disappointing, and I […]

Despite administration rhetoric, things in Iraq do not look good. For a summary read these posts by Juan Cole and MaxSpeak. The new constitution is not supported by many sunnis and the country’s constitution has effectively eviscerated any real civil rights protections. The ambitions to create a democratic, pro-American Iraq are ending in utter failure […]

A major debate has broken out over at TPM cafe over realignment. It started with Michael Lind’s piece, which argued that 2004 represented a watershed election in which the Democrats definitively become the minority party. He follows up by suggesting that cities are economic parasites and are doomed to decline, and that the Democratic party […]

The electoral college is a bit of a hobby of mine. I’ve written about it before at my own blog, The Third Estate ( you can read it here - it’s the second half of the post) Therefore when people like Ruy Teixiera or Chris Bowers start talking about it, I feel obliged to jump […]

What do Democrats do with the Roberts nomination? Do we give him a pass and focus on the Rehnquist retirement, hoping we get lucky and he turns out to be another Souter? Do we “Go to the Mattresses” and smear the guy? Do we just provide token opposition? Or do we do some “jujitsu” and […]