Dan Carol

We know from polling and focus groups that the administration's basic message on the economy (where's the love America, we got you out of the economic ditch with one hand while fighting with the Tea Party on the other) is not cutting it. The current Obama call for more roads...

So far, the Washington conversation around reorganizing government has focused, well, on Washington. That's not surprising, and the federal government clearly could be more efficient. But beyond the important work of streamlining agencies inside the Beltway, the strategy for reorganizing government must be expanded outside to better adapt to 21st-century...

We all know we need to create more jobs and do it in an era of severe budget austerity.

The debate that launches today about how we do that -- especially over what the federal government should do -- can be a great opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to...

"The project of the next president is figuring out how do you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth that George Bush has been so enamored with" (Candidate Barack Obama, 2/2/08)

With all the recent angst in Washington DC about the lost Obama presidency now giving...

Found in Chicago:

Short Prelude: Last summer and fall, I wrote a couple of HuffPo columns suggesting that if Gore and Hillary weren't willing to team up and run together as the two Democratic titans, then the idea of Barack Now seemed pretty darn good. Some college students on Facebook agreed...

While a scaled response to the climate challenge is still far off, we have certainly seen real breakthroughs in the last year in first identifying the climate mess and now, through excellent campaigns like Yahoo's 18seconds.org, the emergence of the compact fluorescent bulb as an early, easy thing that...

Like many of us, I have been struggling with the tragic fact that if we leave Iraq we leave a horrible mess behind, but if we stay, the mess will probably get worse due to the problems caused by America's military presence.

Now the Iraq Study Group is saying...

Like many of us, I have been struggling with the tragic choice that if we leave Iraq we leave a horrible mess behind, but if we stay, the mess will probably get worse due to the problems caused by America's military presence.

So how about this approach:

1-acknowledge...

I know we are all crossing our fingers that Diebold and voter fraud X-files don't haunt this election, and god bless 'em, teams of volunteer lawyers and videographers are standing by to tape bad behavior, file injunctions, and keep polls open if necessary. As are operators: 1-866-OUR VOTE is...

So with Mark Warner dropping out last week, Barack Obama's book coming out Tuesday with an Oprah boost, and with Richard Greene's good post yesterday, it seemed like a good time to review the bidding on 2008.

The polls show John McCain at the top of most heaps,...

After a year or more of dogging by yours truly and others for him to get real on where political spin stops and patriotic duty begins, I was thrilled today to read that GOP spin doctor Frank Luntz has finally come around on global warming. This is a big...

So there is all this chatter lately about a possible Gore v. Hillary bloodbath over the Democratic nomination -- but what about Gore AND Hillary? Together. For 2008. Running in remarkable tandem to win the whole presidential enchilada.

Yes I know it's a pipe dream. They have all kinds of...

So there is this ongoing, either/or, and most importantly FALSE debate going on in Democratic and progressives circles as to whether Democrats should be "for" something or run a "Seinfeld strategy" and essentially be "about nothing" like that old TV show since Bush and the Republicans are imploding.

False...

We all know that we can't fight something with nothing -- and that saying no to Bush, to the Iraq war, and to conservative cronyism does not a message make.

Yet when Democrats and progressives sit down to decide what we're for (WWF), we often put the other WWF...

Earlier this week I wrote a long post both complimenting the great new book Crashing The Gates and laying out some strategic choices I'd love to see the emergent Netrooters like Kos and MyDD address, or shape, moving forward.

Then came the Feingold imbroglio -- which aptly illustrates exactly...

I read your new book Crashing the Gates over the weekend and I will be recommending it highly to my 230 friends. As someone who's been barking semi-successfully about a lot of this stuff here and there for a while, it's great to see both a solid...

So here comes Adam Nagourney in the New York Times today goading national Democrats' failure to do better together and somehow come up with a winning "national message" like the Republicans did in 1994. To which I say - Roger Rabbit style -- pu-LEEEZE don't take this bait. We'd do...

Is that the sound of Greenland's glacier melting -- or the hearts and minds of our political elite in Washington? One can only hope.

Another good week of glacial like progress unfolded this week as the National Governors Association gathered. While NYT's Thomas Friedman keeps beating the good, sensible drum...

Watching the Dubai controversy story unfold I couldn't help but think of Neil Stephenson's brilliant 1992 sci-fi-cyber novel Snowcrash -- which prophetically paints the post-modern world we now see of dying nation states, United Arab Emirates, and of course, Olympic dancers on ice skates.

OK, so maybe I kind of...