There have been so many distractions around the health care bill this year, that it is hard to evaluate it on its merits. Health care reform has been something of a holy grail for progressives for more than half a century, so the debate was not likely to be simple...

The wheels have not yet come off the Obama presidency, but they could next year. The best way to prevent this from happening would be for Obama to reenergize his political base so that they can be help put pressure on uncooperative members of Congress and help work to minimize...

The White House job summit came and went, and seemed somewhat overshadowed by the Afghanistan speech, the climate change conference in Copenhagen, President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and even the White House party crashers. The result of the summit was a proposal for a battery of necessary and...

There were moments during President Obama's speech last night when if you closed your eyes, imagined the grammar a little mangled and a few words mispronounced, you could easily make the mistake of thinking you were listening to President Bush. Not only was the announced troop increase what one...

The recent attacks on the decision by President Obama and Attorney General Holder to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), one of the masterminds of the September 11th terrorist attacks, constitute one of those political moments where partisan sniping dominates everything else. For many Americans where KSM is tried is something...

President Obama's most enduring political weakness has been his relative difficulty connecting with working class, white Americans. He won the Democratic nomination in 2008 by building a coalition based around African Americans and white liberals. The economic collapse and the widespread anger at President Bush pushed a lot of working...

The passage of the health care bill is good news for President Obama and the Democrats, but it is more a case of avoiding defeat than of scoring a decisive victory. Given that the Democrats have control of almost 60% of the seats in the House of Representatives, by a...

The election of Barack Obama on November 4th, 2008 was unlike any election day in recent memory. It was not only a day that changed America -- all presidential elections do that -- but it was a day laden with symbolic, and real, meaning. The image of Barack Obama and...

Joe Lieberman's latest announcement that he will vote against cloture for a health care bill that includes the public option should surprise nobody, as Lieberman, in recent years, has demonstrated that his ideological home is no longer in the Democratic Party. Lieberman has also shown once again that he...

The noise in recent months made by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, the birthers and others on the far right as well as the bizarre accusations and claims that they make has obscured the more interesting story of the failure of any of these people or movements to get...

The decision by Senator Olympia Snowe to support the health care bill in the senate finance committee on which Senator Snowe sits is good news, but it may not turn out to be a turning point towards getting meaningful health care reform. Snowe's vote gave the bill a solid...

The NRCC issued a statement this week attacking Nancy Pelosi for daring to question General McChrystal and calling on General McChrystal to "put her (Pelosi) in her place." The NRCC is charged with defeating the Democratic congress, so attacks on Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders should not, in...

In the last few weeks, Republicans have put a new twist on their campaign of never ending fear. Now the Republicans are trying to scare Democrats into thinking that 2010 will be another 1994, meaning that the Democratic Party is poised for a sweeping defeat which will vindicate the Republican...

The question of whether or not some of the attacks on President Obama are racist is not likely to end anytime soon. There is little that can be done to persuade some supporters of President Obama that comparing the African American president to a witch doctor is not racist, or...

The Republican shenanigans during President Obama's speech to Congress last week, including, but not limited to, Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelling "you lie," while extraordinarily disrespectful of the presidency, the Congress, and not least the American people, follows directly from a pattern of behavior by Republican leaders or by ordinary...

One of the attacks on proposed health care reform that is rarely questioned is that the Medicare and Social Security systems are running out of money and that this would soon happen to any publicly funded health care system. This attack builds on some basic realities, but also takes some...

Eight months or so into the Obama presidency, it is pretty clear that Obama's bipartisan efforts have not been, and will almost certainly not be, fruitful. Critics of Obama might claim this is because Obama has already been captured by the far left of his party, while people more sympathetic...

The debate within the Democratic Party over health care reform generally, and the public option specifically, raises several bigger questions about the party. These questions predate the health care debate, but the controversy surrounding the extent of the Democratic Party's commitment to extend health care to as many Americans as...

One of the mantras of the opposition to meaningful health reform has been a fear of a government takeover of the health care sector. This fear is expressed virtually nonstop on talk radio, the right wing blogosphere, Fox News and at town hall meetings across the country. As we know,...

It is difficult to believe that only 16 years ago some of us were outraged by the Harry and Louise ads. Those ads seem quaint compared to what we are seeing today from the opponents of health care reform and their scare tactics that are just short of saying that...