State of Change

Minnesota to Norm Coleman: Concede!

By John Nichols

A new poll of Minnesota voters reveals that, by a 2-1 margin, they want former Senator Norm Coleman to quit contesting last fall's election.

Coleman lost the election by more than 300 votes, according to the count after a three-judge panel reviewed the ballots and the recount.

The panel ruled that Franken had won a fair, essentially well-run election.

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April 15, 2009

The Trouble With Tea Parties

By Ari Berman

I've been trying my darndest not to follow the supposedly "grassroots" right-wing tea party revolt (organized by the likes of Dick Armey, Fox News and the Club for Growth) against dear leader Comrade Obama, but it's too amusing to completely ignore.

The best coverage of the would-be revolutionaries comes from the Washington Independent's Dave Weigel, himself a libertarian and recovering man of the right. On his blog Weigel points to a rather illuminating op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman by Matt Mackowiak, who compares the wannabe tax revolt to the cult hit Fight Club. Mackowiak writes:

The coming revolution is akin to "Fight Club," the 1999 film that follows the struggles of day to day life for a regular guy who starts an underground fight club as radical and not terribly productive psychotherapy.

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April 15, 2009

Obama's Internet Director Finally Steps on Stage

By Ari Melber

Joe Rospars might be the most important Obama strategist you've never heard much about.

He oversaw Internet and new media for the innovative Obama campaign, but usually shunned the spotlight. While many operatives and organizers (understandably) took credit for their victory last November, and opened up about their work during the Inaugural press blitz, Rospars remained largely in the background, just as he did during the campaign. Until today. National Journal's Amy Harder has a detailed profile of the calm mind behind Obama's aggressive Internet strategy:

[One night in March 2007, Obama's web team was] waiting for someone special to arrive -- the campaign's 75,000th donor, a milestone that, at the time, seemed grand. Rospars, then 25, had recently come on as the campaign's new media director, overseeing a team of fewer than a dozen Web specialists. From the start he was committed to recognizing donors, not money, recalls [Sam] Graham-Felsen, who ran the campaign's blog. So when the donation came in, Graham-Felsen remembers Rospars saying, "Let's give that guy a call." The donor's story was spotlighted on the blog and e-mailed to thousands of supporters. The blog post was signed by Graham-Felsen, and the e-mail came from campaign director David Plouffe. Not from Rospars, even though the idea was his. That's how Rospars wanted it.

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April 14, 2009

Minnesota Judges: Franken Received Highest Number of Votes

By John Nichols

The three-judge panel charged with reviewing the votes cast in the tightly-contested Minnesota Senate race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party challenger Al Franken has declared a winner in the race.

"Franken received the highest number of lawfully cast ballots in the Nov. 4, 2008 general election," concluded the judges, who determined that the challenger was entitled to a certificate of election that will clear the way for him to be seated in the Senate.

The ruling came after a review of disputed ballots, which the Coleman camp had demanded be counted, turned out to favor Franken by a margin of nearly 2-1.

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April 13, 2009

Michael Steele's Nutty ACORN Obsession

By John Nichols

Michael Steele is still the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

He's just being picking fights with people who don't have microphones.

Instead of stirring it up with the real boss of the Grand Old Party, Rush Limbaugh, or with Arlen Specter and the handful of congressional Republicans who might actually want to extend their party's platform beyond the word "no," Steele has returned to the obsessive focus that made him a favorite of the party's neanderthal wing: picking on poor people, working families and the organizations that advocate for people who do not have closets full of pinstripe suits.

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April 11, 2009

Glenn Beck Faces Down General Tso's Sleeper Cells

By Leslie Savan

On Wednesday, Fox News talk-show host Glenn Beck and one of his guests, Nehru-jacketed, retired Marine colonel William V. Cowan, were chatting about how inadequately Semper Fi Obama's response has been to the pirates off the Somali coast. Suddenly the conversation veered into the (apparently real) news that Russian and Chinese spies have hacked into the U.S. electrical grid--Commies in the wall sockets! Perhaps encouraged by how Beck seemed to appreciate his cheerful, neo-Paranoid Style, Cowan (a Fox military analyst, who FNC calls an "internationally acknowledged expert" in terrorism and military special ops) shared some related intel: "every Chinese restaurant out there across the United States, every one is a sleeper cell."

Oh-kay. Beck--who's been trying to fend off charges that he encouraged alleged cop-killer Richard Poplawski with crazy talk about FEMA concentration camps and Obama coming to take your guns--laughed nervously and cut off the Strangelovian Cowan.

However, questions remain: Does this mean there'll be no Chinese tea at the April 15, anti-tax Tea Parties that Fox has been heavily promoting? (Beck will be "reporting" live from...the Alamo.) What does this episode tell us about the quality of the "experts" Beck invites on his show? Exactly how did a conservative blogger know ahead of time that "the liberal left" will try to "destroy" Beck over Cowan's comment? Hmmm.

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April 9, 2009

Secular Country? Obama Sides With Jefferson, Madison, Paine

By John Nichols

President Obama made one of the most important statements of his young presidency when he said in Turkey that the United States is not "a Christian nation."

Rob Boston was right when he noted on the Americans United for Separation of Church and State site, Obama's secular declaration "reflects the best of Jefferson's thinking."

Unfortunately, ahistorical social conservatives are not inclined to share the sense of presidents past or present that, in Obama's words, "(America is) a secular country that is respectful of religious freedom, respectful of rule of law, respectful of freedom, upholding these values and being willing to stand up for them in the international stage."

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April 7, 2009

Obama: America Seeks a 'World Without Nuclear Weapons' But...

By John Nichols

Barack Obama drew cheers from an estimated 30,000 Czechs as he declared Sunday that, "I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

Obama's restatement of his administration's commitment to negotiate a fresh arms reduction treaty with Russia was greeted with enthusiasm in Prague, as was his pledge to work to convince countries around the world to abandon nuclear weapons as a means of security and aggression.

"As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act," explained Obama, in a speech broke, at least rhetorically, from the Bush administration's hardline stances with regard to nuclear issues. "We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can start it."

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April 5, 2009

Unemployment Spike a Wake-Up Call for Obama

By John Nichols

The happy talkers in the financial media, and their amen corner in Congress and some parts of the Obama administration, like to focus on the recent uptick in the Dow Jones Industrial average.

But polls show that more Americans know the unemployment rate on any given day than know where the Dow is at.

And that fact should have the Obama administration and its congressional allies worried.

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April 3, 2009

Gay Marriage in...Iowa?

By Ari Berman

Gay marriage is now legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut and...Iowa. Yep, you heard right. The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled this morning that the state cannot bar gay couples from seeking to marry.

It's a decision, obviously, that will have wide-ranging ramifications that stretch far beyond Iowa's cornfields, becoming a test case for how this issue will play in the Heartland. You'd be hard pressed to find a more middle of the road state than Iowa, where I grew up. It is neither red (though it went for Bush in 2000), nor blue (though it voted Obama, twice, by comfortable margins), but solidly purple, veering back and forth depending on the political climate of the country.

The Republican Party in the state has been taken over by social conservatives, which is one reason Democrats have had success at the statewide level in recent years. These Republicans are sure to react with fury to the court's decision. Congressman Steve King, an outspoken right-winger from western Iowa (the most conservative part of the state), released this statement today:

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April 3, 2009