It's understandable that progressive listeners heard different things in President Obama's remarkable commencement address yesterday at Notre Dame. Martha Burk heard a disturbing mushiness and evasion on abortion rights. James Fallows heard an "eloquence of thought" that transcended the "prettiness" of more famous orators. E.J....

You do have to say this for South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint: he represents the unmediated subconsciousness of contemporary conservatives, coming right out and saying things that others probably just think.

That's certainly true of his rather novel explanation for the decline of Republican fortunes in the northeast, highlighted...

The word of the week in the chattering classes seems to be "polarization." Based largely on a new Pew Research poll showing the gap between Barack Obama's approval ratings among Rs and Ds being higher than those of six previous presidents at the same point in their tenures,...

As Republicans continue to shriek about the possible use of budget reconciliation procedures for health care and/or climate change legislation as though this represented some sort of revolutionary new technique for sneaking legislation through Congress, they need to be reminded that reconciliation in its current form was largely the creation...

One of the odder phenomena of contemporary public life is the enthusiasm of conservative gabbers and even elected officials for the idea of "Going Galt:" the suggestion that the oppressed wealthy of America withdraw their vast contributions to the commonweal in protest against the supposedly confiscatory taxes and redistribution...

Tax cuts in the stimulus package! Rick Warren at the Inaugural! Dinner with conservative pundits! Meetings with House Republicans!

All these developments in the Obama transition to the presidency have exacerbated longstanding progressive fears about Obama, which can be summed up in one word followed by a question mark: bipartisanship?...

Note: This item is cross-posted from The Democratic Strategist.

At the American Prospect site, Paul Waldman's written a good summary of the demographic trends that have largely doomed the Republican Party's ancient strategy of winning national majorities by appealing to the "unpoor, the unblack, and the...