The "rising American electorate" is the name given to the core of the Obama electoral majority of the young, single women, and minorities. Democratic pundits suggest that this coalition essentially dooms Republican presidential prospects for the foreseeable future. Demography, they argue, is destiny.

This ignores one depressing reality: The rising...

Budgets are pure EGO -- eyes glaze over. But this week revealed two budgets -- Rep. Paul Ryan's Republican "Path to Prosperity" 2014 budget and the Congressional Progressive Caucus "Back to Work Budget" -- that in stark terms lay out two visions and two futures for America. Next week the...

On Tuesday, March 12, the Senate Banking Committee will begin review of the nomination of Mary Jo White to be chair of the Securities and Exchange Committee. The Committee should probe deeply on whether she will be a watchdog or a lap dog for Wall Street. One clear test is...

For years, the Obama administration has been pummeled for failing to bring criminal charges against a single major Wall Street bank or a single leading Wall Street banker for what the FBI termed an "epidemic of fraud" that blew up the entire economy. Investigations revealed the banks committed...

The "sequester" -- mindless, across-the-board spending cuts designed purposefully to be abhorrent to both political parties -- now seems likely to go into effect on March 1. If not reversed, we will see the degrading of all government services from food inspection to airport controls, as mass furloughs -- 20-30...

The U.S. economy shrank unexpectedly in the last three months of 2012, ending over 30 months of economic growth. Exports lagged, in part because of declining markets in Europe, now suffering a continued recession inflicted by misguided austerity policies. But the greatest cause of decline was unexpectedly large cuts in...

Francis Scott Fitzgerald avait prévenu: "Il n'existe pas de deuxième acte dans les vies américaines". Et dans l'histoire récente des présidents américains, les deuxièmes actes se sont révélés éprouvants. L'espoir du premier acte s'évanouit dans les estimations "karmiques" du second. Nixon chassé après ses délits du Watergate. Reagan...

F. Scott Fitzgerald warned, "There are no second acts in American lives." And for recent American presidents, second acts have been brutal. The hope of the first act succumbs to the karmic reckonings of the second. Nixon cast out by his crimes in Watergate. Reagan laid low by his Iran...

Washington is careening off the fiscal cliff smack into the debt ceiling. These mind-numbing mixed metaphors are not the currency of a well-governed nation. Once more, Washington is fixated on what and how to cut. Once more, the media is clamoring for a deal, for "shared sacrifice." Once more, Republicans...

Pressure for a deal to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff" at the end of the year is building. Even minor tremors in the stock market are treated as auguries of the panic that will attend a failure to act. A multi-million dollar campaign funded by Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson...

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." -- Warren Buffett.

But not this time.

Amid the flood of analysis about the 2012 election, too little attention has been paid to what may be its most obvious aspect....

After months of campaigning and hundreds of millions in advertising, voters and commentators still seem uncertain about Mitt Romney. Is he the "severe conservative" of the primaries, or the moderate eager to reach across the aisle of the last days? Does he have core beliefs or is he prepared to...

"Sometimes the dreamers are the only realists"
Sen. Paul Wellstone

Ten years ago today, a phone call brought the unimaginable news: Paul Wellstone, his wife Sheila, his daughter Marcia, three staff aides and two pilots had died in a plane crash in northern Minnesota. Paul, the source of energy,...

"I agree," said Mitt Romney, and so he did, with the same passionate intensity with which he previously scorned the president's foreign policies from one corner of the country to another. On Iran, on Afghanistan, on drones, on Libya, on Syria, on Egypt, on using military force, on bailing out...

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is...

Sen. Todd Akin calls for abortion on demand, and free distribution of condoms. The CEO of Exxon decries global warming and demands an end to oil company subsidies along with new public investment in renewable energy. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio calls for amnesty for undocumented workers.

Not likely, right? But...

Today, the Campaign for America's Future, of which I am co-director, and TheMiddleClass.org released a the 2012 Middle Class Voter Guide, available here.

The broad American middle class is disappearing. Working families have been struggling with stagnant wages and rising insecurity for over three decades. From 2002-2007, Americans...

After last night's tiresome presidential debate, President Obama's supporters were offering up what Groucho Marx used to call "departee" -- suggestions on what the president should have said. That's a pretty good indicator about how the debate turned out.

The evening featured a remarkable shifting of shape, a new Etch-A-Sketch,...

What we have here is a failure to communicate. Poll after poll shows that voters are concerned most of all about jobs and the economy. Yet in Washington and on the campaign trail, attention has turned to deficits and how to get our books in order.

Voters live in...

The young men and women who serve in our military return from fighting in the longest wars in American history to the worst jobs market in generations. They suffer higher unemployment rates than the general population: over one in ten is officially counted as unemployed -- and that does not...