Right now, I'd say the number one short-term problem facing the Democratic Party is sheer tone deafness (longer-term problems include corporate cronyism, cronyism and lack of vision). We've seen this from the Obama administration in its gentleness towards the financial industry and we've seen it from Congress in its coddling...

Way back in May of 2009, I and other progressives said President Obama needed to fire Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner because he was either lying or incompetent when it came to AIG. Per the norm, we were lambasted as part of the supposed fringe for saying this, just as...

There's no other way to read this story from Politics Daily and the Denver Post than to read it as Colorado Republican Rep. Mike Coffman admitting that government-sponsored single-payer health care "works":

Coffman, a former Marine who keeps buff at age 54, was jogging on the golf course bordering...

The most effective kind of propaganda -- as any propagandist will tell you -- is the kind that is almost completely invisible, cloaked in the argot of objectivity or worse, in the argot of a political ideology antithetical to the propaganda's message itself.

We can discount over-the-top press releases...

To follow on Chris's post yesterday, I want to point out that a lot of activists have been insisting that there's a Nixon-esque "secret plan" in the works -- only not to end the Vietnam War, but to make the health care bill radically better than the gutted carcass...

This month, a British government report admitted that one of the major rationales for invading Iraq -- the claim that Saddam could deploy WMDs in 45 minutes -- probably came from a cab driver. Had the public originally been told about this sketchy sourcing, there may have been a more,...

For those caught up in the obsequiously triumphalist bullshit coming from the DC elite - you know the crap about the Senate allegedly passing the most important piece of progressive legislation in American history today (an analysis I completely reject) - it's important for us all...

There's a lot of righteous - and rightful - outrage that President Obama is now blatantly lying about his campaign promise to give every American a choice of a public plan for health care. But that's only the beginning of the broken health care promises if you watch this...

I agree with with those who note the danger of progressives attacking individual mandates in the health care bill, and how such attacks could be construed to be a criticism of all compulsory policies. That's the conservative attack on mandates, of course, just like it is the conservative attack...

"By standing up to the special interests -- who've prevented reform for decades, and who are furiously lobbying against it now -- the Senate has moved us closer to reform." - President Obama, 12/21/09

The Lieberman-gutted Senate health care legislation is a major win for the insurance and drug...

My newspaper column last week was on the Obama administration's hideous flip-flop on the issue of drug importation, and the column and the ongoing reporting here at OpenLeft prompted a very solid story at the top of CNN Tonight's Friday broadcast. Watch it here:

In my piece yesterday about the rigged assumptions confining our health care debate, I might have added one more assumption that seems to be at work here: The assumption that "after this bill is passed, we will later come back and fix the things in the bill that are...

Without getting into the policy debate about whether this health care bill should be passed or rejected (my personal opinion is here for those interested), I think it's important to step back and just look at the false assumptions that are being made. Not about the bill's substance, mind...

NOTE: For background on this scandal, see this and this previous post.

TPM has a new story up about the now-thickening drug importation scandal - and the explanations are starting to get more and more convoluted and contradictory as the White House works to fight off the...

What are we willing to absolve politicians of? What are we willing to forgive them for doing, and what are we not willing to forgive them for doing? This is a question I ask in my newspaper column out today.

I look at it this way: As a voter,...

At OpenLeft, we've been aggressively covering the crazy story of the Obama administration crushing drug importation legislation that President Obama campaigned on as a presidential candidate and supported as a U.S. Senator. Now, days after the administration colluded with the pharmaceutical industry to kill the measure, one Democratic senator...

I want to take a moment just to recognize what has been recognized before, but needs to be recognized right here and now one more time: Howard Dean is a genuine hero.

In coming out against the Lieberman-gutted health insurance "reform" bill, Dean is leveraging every shred of power he...

It pains me to admit this, but I'll just admit it: Joe Lieberman is the single most powerful Senate force since Lyndon Johnson's Master of the Senate days. And his power teaches an important lesson to us all.

Here is a guy who campaigned for the Republican nominee for president...

Every now and then, rank-and-file writers, bloggers and radio hosts like myself (but by no means limited to myself) are accused of "self-promotion." This is not a charge usually leveled at very famous writers, bloggers and radio hosts, nor at television hosts (who are, almost by definition, famous) - it...

The New York Times this weekend profiled my old boss Rep. David Obey (D-WI) and his efforts to force the Obama administration to change course in Afghanistan. You can -- and should -- read it here.

I worked closely with Obey on a daily basis during the darkest of...