Richard Kirsch

Cross-posted from Next New Deal.

Most people remember the famous sign in the Clinton campaign war room in 1992 as "It's the economy stupid!" But what is often forgotten is the second phrase in the admonition to Clinton campaigners to keep a sharp focus on the campaign's message:...

It is fitting testament to the fundamental problem with our health care system that the key legal question the Supreme Court is considering today is whether the requirement that most people have health coverage is a violation of the commerce clause. The legal issue is whether the act of not...

Last month I wrote about how economic issues like the minimum wage were twisting Republican candidates into pretzels as they tried to make it look like they cared about the economic squeeze on American families while toeing the line on free-market orthodoxy. As I said at the time:

When it comes to the economy, the GOP has a real problem that pollsters and message-massagers can't wave away. After three decades of the rich getting richer and the middle class being crushed and closed, Americans are very suspicious of the super-rich and corporate CEOs, and are looking for real...

A time-honored but largely useless exercise is trying to divine whether the actions of politicians are motivated by their core beliefs or by "politics." For most successful politicians, the line between the two is murky. In fact, it has to be. Politics being the art of the possible, elected officials...

The final selection from Fighting for Our Health doesn't need an introduction. The key lesson from our campaign is that change -- at least change that benefits the 99% -- won't come from elites or from Washington. When ordinary people get organized they can still do extraordinary things....

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

When Occupy Wall Street burst onto the scene, a consistent critique was that the movement lacked an agenda and political focus. But a key factor that made OWS powerful was that it was aimed at Wall Street -- a corporate target rather than...

Since the collapse into disarray of his plan for a grand budget compromise with House Republicans this summer, President Obama has moved dramatically to appeal to the Democratic base. From his speech pushing an aggressive agenda on jobs right after Labor Day to his fiery, populist address in...

With Mitt Romney's hold on the Republican nomination looking secure, the Tea Party will soon have to face the reality that despite pushing the Republican Party and its nominee to the right, they'll wind up losing the fight in the end. This isn't the first time. The Tea...

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

Small business is iconic in America. For years, big business has cleverly used small businesses to be messengers for campaigns financed by corporate America. And anti-government, free-market orthodoxy has dictated the policies of the leading small business associations, including the National...

How many lives does health care reform have? The law has survived a slew of near-death moments, but 2012 brings new lethal traps for the first-ever law that makes health coverage a right for almost all Americans.

First up is the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hold three days of...

Americans United for Change said it best in a recent e-mail: "You can't put lipstick on a pig," even if a Republican and Democrat are applying the red gloss together. The big hype in federal health care politics last week was the announcement of a joint proposal to...

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

One of the most common criticisms of progressives is that, unlike the right, we don't have simple messages that tell our story. Our young leaders at Occupy Wall Street have come up with a powerful answer: We are the 99 percent.

While the public debate about the Republican budget focused on the sharp reactions against Paul Ryan's Medicare privatization scheme, the other big "M" in health care, Medicaid, hasn't received the attention it deserves. As a result, the Obama administration...

Spinmeisters for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Republican politicians like Speaker John Boehner like to call businesses "the job creators." But what every American knows, if he or she thinks about it, is that unless you work for a small business, your boss will only create...

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

Yesterday, Speaker Boehner issued what Robert Bob Borosage of Campaign for America's Future correctly labeled extortion: "Give us trillions in cuts in Medicare and Medicaid or we blow up the economy." Boehner's threat to tie the lifting of the debt ceiling...

We're not broke. We've been robbed by the super-rich and big corporations who are raking in the cash and running up the deficit. Our economy is still more than twice as large as any other country in the world. With 4% of the world's population, we generate 24%...

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

Last month health care advocates around the country, joined by White House surrogates, held more than 200 events to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The events, which garnered extensive national and local press coverage, trumpeted the...

USAction President William McNary, one of the most powerful voices of my generation, often reminds us that budgets are not about numbers; budgets are moral documents, a statement of our values and priorities. Paul Ryan, the Republican Budget Committee Chair, agrees with McNary's attention to values, saying that...

I just left the New York State Capitol, where demonstrators were streaming into the building to protest Andrew Cuomo's state budget. The budget gives tax breaks to millionaires in a state loaded with them while making devastating cuts to education in the poorest school districts. The demonstrators plan to spend...