Fearmongering

The encouraging lesson from Obama's huge win in North Carolina and near-win in Indiana is that perhaps the fear card no longer trumps all others. The Bush presidencies were fueled by what Jonathan Alter of Newsweek recently called, "underinformed voters," explicitly voting against their own economic interests, often for reasons...

As we stagger out into the middle of the ring for Round 1,293 of this heavyweight title-fight between two battered contenders for the Democratic Party crown, the cumulative effect of all the punches, head-butts and knockdowns has been to make us all feel soul-weary and half-concussed. As one who's become...

Discussing the newest depth to which the Clinton campaign has stooped has become so irritatingly repetitive, at some point I will have to just stop mentioning them. And there are real news stories of major importance this week, such as the implosion of Zimbabwe and the inexplicable posture that the...

The game to which American policy and politics have been anchored under the Bush administration is a remnant of the Industrial Age, an era when people like W. and Cheney and their cronies could get away with using the populations of entire nations as human lubricants for their massive, taxpayer-supported,...

It's 3 a.m. and your child is sleeping. A detainee groans at Guantanamo. On the campaign trail, the Clinton PR team is guzzling coffee, dreaming up new ways to milk votes out of fear.

Why, I wondered, is she going after these votes in the primary? Surely she doesn't imagine...

On September 7, 2004 Dick Cheney summed up the Republican campaign against John Kerry, warning a crowd in Des Moines, "It is absolutely essential that...on November 2 we make the right choice because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll be hit again and we'll...

It's been a busy week for Democrats, with a lot to cover. There has been good news and bad, but on the whole I'd have to judge the week a success for Democrats in general. Led by what the Washington Post reports as a "rare uprising" of House Democrats....

It's interesting to be in the work of fostering citizen courage in this time when a growing national theme seems to be: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

"Interesting" is, of course, sarcasm. What I'm really feeling is anger.

Are you listening to our "leaders"? To people seeking higher office? To...