For moderate conservatives, the Special Election in New York’s 23rd district has certainly been a harrowing experience. Dede Scozzafava, the decidedly moderate Republican candidate in the district, was pushed out of the race by the dominant arch-conservative wing of the party, led in this instance by the ex-Alaska Governor and politically “rogue” hockey mom who poisoned the 2008 Republican ticket, also known as Sarah Palin. They instead favored the “Conservative Party” candidate Doug Hoffman, who serves the more popular hard-line brand that has characterized the Republican Party, in which moderacy is no longer tolerated. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, we’ve seen what the right has wrought on what seems to be the Frankenstein health care bill coming out of the Senate. Its a concoction made from the blood sweat and tears of Finance Chairman Max Baucus with heavy influence of right wing states rights concerns. It seems the Republican party will go however far it takes to defend these things, even when it is clearly an issue that the Federal government can tackle successfully without trampling on the rights of states. Read the rest of this entry »

Down to its final days, the race for New Jersey Governor has become far more dynamic than almost anyone expected. With unpopular Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine facing off against Chris Christie, a law-and-order Republican claiming to have the guts to shake things up in Trenton, the outcome seemed a foregone conclusion as recently as August. After over a decade of marginalization, it seemed that this would finally be the year Republicans would take back the Governor’s mansion.

Many observers, myself included, warned our conservative brethren of overconfidence, reminding them that Republicans typically look competitive in summer polling only to suddenly lose their luster with New Jersey’s voters around Labor Day. Indeed, it seems that this prediction has yet again come to pass.

Christie’s collapse, though particularly breathtaking this year, is nothing new. Neither is Corzine’s stagnant support, a reflection of his profound unpopularity. What is new, especially by Garden State standards, is that yellow regression line traversing the low double digits. That, my friends, is Chris Daggett. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Steele recently said during a Univision interview that: “I don’t think we need a comprehensive overhaul of our healthcare system.”

When Bill Caudle lost his job at a plastics company this year, he also lost his health coverage. That means that he lost the ability to pay for his wife’s healthcare, as she has ovarian cancer. He was so committed to making sure his wife can get the treatment that she needs, so committed that she not become one of the 45,000 Americans who die from inadequate health coverage every year…that he joined the Army.

Thomas Jefferson noted that a volunteer-based large standing army required a permanent class of paupers. At the end of his presidency he bragged about largely eliminating America’s standing army, saying that: “Our men are so happy at home that they will not hire themselves to be shot at for a shilling a day. Hence we can have no standing armies for defence, because we have no paupers to furnish the materials.”

Bill Caudle’s story is emotionally moving but is also very important. It’s stories like these that should make us all take a step back from the politics and statistics and look at the human element of all of this. It is morally inexcusable that in the richest country in the world someone would have to join the Army to get healthcare for his wife. That’s what the national healthcare debate should be about.

The Dow has recently hit above 10,000 points, and 79 metropolitan areas in the US are officially out of recession. However the unemployment rate is still officially 9.8%, and is realistically more like 16% if you include those who have given up looking for work, or are “underemployed” (working a part time job that does not sustain their family). It seems that though the bailout was capable of re-inflating Wall Street and Goldman-Sachs, everyone in Washington seems to be scratching their heads on how we can lower the unemployment rate. I’d like to submit my own suggestion for putting Americans to work, lets bring back the WPA and the CCC.

Despite what you might hear from Michael Steele, government has a very good record of creating public works jobs. Not only can public works projects give unemployed Americans temporary work, it can create new investments for America that hold real value. Not Wall Street making money with money value, or McDonalds “would you like fries with that” value, I mean real economic value. To paraphrase Adam Smith: when a stick is on the ground it has no value, but when you carve it into an axe handle your labour has given it value. New bridges, better roads, power lines, and high-speed rail…these are the sorts of projects that give jobs to Americans and invest in the public commons. It seems that when government gives truckloads of money to banks, the executives who sold all of us out get the dividends. But when government invests in the commons, everyone receives the dividends.

So if we want to see a real recovery for Americans, not a jobless one, we need let our unemployed citizens get back to work. This is a way to make them breadwinners again while also investing in the future of our country.

I just got back from a talk by Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein sponsored by the GW Jewish Progressive Political Association. Klein’s main forte of late has been the health care debate, and he spoke both on that issue and its corollary — how cumbersome the U.S. Senate is.

I found Klein’s thoughts very insightful, especially as they related to what the final health bill will be sold as. There is a tremendous sense of frustration among liberal Democrats at the difficulty in putting through a bill to their liking, even with 60 Senate seats. What he warned against, though, was the urge among Democrats to demand a total victory the way Republicans seek the bill’s total defeat. This is Obama’s first major policy initiative, and if it was to fail it would be disastrous for him.

But failure isn’t certain. With Olympia Snowe’s backing, Democrats will probably be able to pass a deficit-neutral bill with Chuck Schumer’s creative “opt-out” compromise on the public option. And even though the new law wouldn’t guarantee insurance to everyone, it would probably hit in the range of 94%, according to recent estimates. Klein also pointed out that social welfare programs tend to grow overtime, not shrink; what might be an incomplete bill could be mended later.

Given the ridiculous number of structural obstacles to meaningful health care reform — “death panels,” town hall mobs, insurance industry lobbying, Republican filibuster threats, unions angry over excise taxes, liberal and conservative wings of the party fighting, five standing committees and two negotiating committees to get the bill through — we ought not to feel too badly about this fight.

Joe Biden has taken a stance on Afghanistan that directly opposes General McChrystal’s call for 40,000 more troops being sent to the country.  This position also pits him against our president, who supports General McChrystal’s endeavors in Afghanistan.  The VP has exerted so much effort toward defending his own theory that we should be redirecting our focus toward extricating the Al Quaeda base in Pakistan that he even authored a piece last spring called “Counterterrorism Plus.” Biden, in his firm stance and independent voice, may be revolutionizing the role of Vice President.  How is the country reacting to Biden’s detoxification of the idea that VP just stands and waves in support of the President?  Newsweek put him on the front cover of last week’s issue and commended his “ability to stir things up.”  Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief of the controversial Huffington Post suggests that he “resign.”  Fred Kaplan, war expert and contributor to Slate Magazine predicted last May that the military would follow the advice of Biden as outlined in “CT-Plus.”  Biden, whose policy on Afghanistan was largely influenced by our involvement in Iraq, “sounded deeply pessimistic… but is no longer a lone voice,” according to The New York Times. What do you think about Vice President Biden’s policy on Afghanistan?

Canada’s very successful healthcare system was not started on the national level, but began in the great Province of Saskatchewan. There was no painful gridlock, no death panels, not even one teabagger. Instead, the successes of Saskatchewan were simply emulated by every other province until every Canadian citizen was covered. If your idea is good enough, someone will steal it. Canada seems to understand a cornerstone of American political tradition better than we do: states’ rights. Of course I’m not talking about the poll tax and Jim Crowe kind of “states’ rights,” what I mean is the idea of using our states as political “laboratories.” This is a long cherished American political tradition, allowing the states to try out new policies for themselves instead of on the national level, allowing the rest of the country to observe how successful a new policy could be. If this were done effectively, our Congress wouldn’t have to debate the hypothetical impacts of some new policy, but instead could say: “It worked for California, it could work for America.” Now of course just because something works in one state doesn’t mean it would necessarily work for all of the states, but why not allow those states to run more of their own policy if it works for them? Why not allow Californians to legalize marijuana if they want to, does someone from Tennessee really care? Read the rest of this entry »

Last November, moments before then-Senator Barack Obama broke the ceiling of 270 electoral votes to clinch the presidency, major news networks had announced that Virginia had moved into the Democratic column for the first time since LBJ defeated Goldwater in 1964, sending shockwaves through the party. Many of us believed that Obama’s revolutionary candidacy had brought about a new, unbreakable majority, best exemplified by an impressive seven-point victory in the Old Dominion.

But for most Democrats, last November seems like a decade ago. The Virginia Governor’s race, seen by many pundits as a referendum on President Obama’s increasingly unpopular domestic policies, has taken a drastic turn for the worse. Moderate Democrat State Sen. Creigh Deeds, ahead early in the race, now trails his Republican opponent Bob McDonnell by 8.8 points according to the RealClearPolitics average. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a Supreme Court case coming up the political pipeline that could result in all of us saying goodbye to the Senator from California and Congressman from Texas, and welcoming the Senator from Hewlett-Packard and Congressman from Exxon-Mobil. This case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee, is being used as a springboard by special interests to eliminate all limits on campaign finance laws and unleash corporate money into our government. Read the rest of this entry »