John Nichols

The Secret of Bernie Sanders's Success

John Nichols on December 5, 2012 - 12:35 AM ET

“We will not accept cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid,” declared US Senator Bernie Sanders Monday night, at The Nation Institute dinner where the independent senator from Vermont was cheered for his absolute defense of programs that he argues must not be sacrificed to the austerity demands of those who would toss working American off the “fiscal cliff.”

That Sanders is a hero to progressives, like those who gathered Monday night in New York for the annual event, is no secret.

But what is the Sanders secret?

Is Paul Ryan Making Americans More Favorably Inclined Toward Socialism?

John Nichols on December 1, 2012 - 8:58 PM ET

Frank Zeidler would be delighted.

The last Socialist Party leader of a major American city, Zeider died in 2006 at the age of 93. But, to the end, the man who served three terms as the “red mayor” of Milwaukee always believed that it was only a matter of time before America began to renew its interest in socialism.

It seems that Zeidler was right.

Sorry, Erskine, America Rejected Simpson-Bowles

John Nichols on November 29, 2012 - 9:46 AM ET

Erskine Bowles, who is sort of a Democrat, met Wednesday with House Speaker John Boehner to help Republicans promote proposals to cut entitlements, as part of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.

This is the right place for Bowles, who has long maintained a mutual-admiration society with House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin. The former Clinton White House chief of staff has always been in the corporate conservative camp when it comes to debates about preserving Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

It’s good that he and Boehner have found one another. Let the Republicans advocate for the cuts proposed by Bowles and his former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, his Republican co-conductor on the train wreck that produced the so-called “Simpson-Bowles” deficit reduction plan.

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Don't Eliminate the Filibuster, Restore It

John Nichols on November 27, 2012 - 1:32 PM ET

Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

"If you haven't got men who have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose..."

A Mandate to Raise Taxes on the Rich? Election Numbers Say 'Yes'

John Nichols on November 26, 2012 - 12:15 PM ET

Joe Scarborough asks in his latest comment on the politics of the fiscal cliff: “Mandate? What mandate?”

The former Republican congressman turned able MSNBC host poses the question in order to examine whether rational Republicans might feel “bound by the same mandate Barack Obama presumes he owns” on tax issues.

Fair question.

Recognizing the Long Arc of Jesse Jackson Jr.'s Congressional Service

John Nichols on November 23, 2012 - 10:36 AM ET

Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned from Congress with a poignant note of acceptance after a personal journey that took a heartbreaking turn.

“For seventeen years I have given 100 percent of my time, energy, and life to public service,” Jackson wrote in a letter delivered on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday. “However, over the past several months, as my health has deteriorated, my ability to serve the constituents of my district has continued to diminish. Against the recommendations of my doctors, I had hoped and tried to return to Washington and continue working on the issues that matter most of the people of the Second District. I know now that will not be possible.”

Jackson pulled few punches. The congressman, who has been receiving inpatient treatment for bipolar disorder, acknowledged not just the health challenges he has faced but a deeply embarrassing federal investigation into the misdirection of campaign funds. “I am aware of the ongoing federal investigation into my activities and I am doing my best to address the situation responsibly, cooperate with the investigators, and accept responsibility for my mistakes,” he wrote, “for they are my mistakes and mine alone.”

Conservatives Griping About Obama's Thanksgiving Proclamation: Try a Helping of FDR

John Nichols on November 21, 2012 - 10:51 PM ET

To his credit, Barack Obama puts a modestly enlightened spin on his Thanksgiving proclamations. This year’s proclamation recalls that “the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony…enjoyed the fruits of their labor with the Wampanoag tribe—a people who had shared vital knowledge of the land in the difficult months before” and notes “the contributions that generations of Native Americans have made to our country.” He even celebrates community organizers, whose “actions reflect our age-old belief that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, and they affirm once more that we are a people who draw our deepest strength not from might or wealth, but from our bonds to each other.”

For this, the newly re-elected president is dinged by conservative commentators who fret that Obama’s proclamations have not been sufficiently religious in tone. “God is lucky to get a mention or two,” gripes National Review editor Rich Lowry. “What God has lost in prominence in Obama’s statements has been gained by the American Indians, in a bow to multicultural pieties.” Oh those First Americans, always elbowing their way into our history!

Perhaps our conservative friends are worried that Obama’s modest “multicultural pieties” serve as a holiday manifestation of the demographic turning that handed the president an unexpectedly broad mandate on November 6. They needn’t worry. Obama is safely within the bounds of Thanksgiving promulgation. It has been the better part of seventy years since Franklin Delano Roosevelt finished one of his many Thanksgiving proclamations with a thoroughly multicultural call to “let every man of every creed go to his own version of the Scriptures for a renewed and strengthening contact with those eternal truths and majestic principles which have inspired such measure of true greatness as this nation has achieved.”

Home-State Scandal Interrupts Scott Walker's Presidential Positioning

John Nichols on November 20, 2012 - 1:17 PM ET

It is no secret that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker would like very much to have his name added to the long shortlist of 2016 Republican presidential contenders. But the nation’s most militant anti-labor politician has suddenly been thrust into the center of a scandal that is likely to dim his national prospects, and that could yet cost him his state post.

Even after major setbacks for Walker’s Republicans in Wisconsin—where Barack Obama easily beat Mitt Romney and progressive Democrat secured the state’s open US Senate seat—the governor was jetting off to California last week to make high-profile appearances at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. And Walker—who came to national prominence in Febreuary 2011 after turning conservative talking pointrs into an anti-labor agenda so militant that it sparked mass protests and a recall campaign—was again performing conservative due diligence last week: refusing to develop a state-run health insurance exchange as part of an ongoing protest against the Affordable Care Act.

But while Walker was piling up presidential points for 2016, a scandal that has plagued him since his election to the governorship in 2010 was taking a dramatic and destructive turn.

Vulture Capitalism Ate Your Twinkies

John Nichols on November 19, 2012 - 12:37 AM ET

Courtesy: Kylie Hennagin/KOMU

What happens when vulture capitalism ruins a great American company?

An Easy Task for Congress: Save the Post Office

John Nichols on November 16, 2012 - 10:55 AM ET

The US Postal Service is in the midst of a manufactured crisis. It is supposedly broke and headed toward a sort of fiscal cliff of its own. If it goes over, the likely result is privatization of its profitable enterprises and elimination of the commitment to universal service that has been the service's promise since the founding of the republic.

But that does not have to happen.

Congress undermined the financial stability of the postal service during a lame-duck session six years ago.