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Bloomberg Wins, But Barely
By John Nichols
Yes, of course, everyone was watching Virginia, New Jersey and upstate New York on Tuesday's off-year election night.
But one of the most dramatic stories played out in New York City, where Mayor Mike Bloomberg forced a rewrite of the city's term-limit law so that he could seek a third term.
Bloomberg left a Republican Party tha had turned exceedingly unpopular in the nation's largest city, spent an estimated $100 million of his own money and collected endorsements from the major daily newspapers and more than a few Democratic elected officials.
(35) CommentsNovember 3, 2009
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Four Off-Year Election Scenarios
By John Nichols
Yes, yes, we've all heard the "all-politics-is-local" bromide with regard to off-year elections.
While it is no longer an operative, let alone true, statement – as the nationalized election cycles of the Bush years so clearly confirmed -- there is one certainty with regard to the pop punditry of former House Speaker Tip O'Neill: Winning players and parties never use it, while losers invariably rely on it.
O'Neill, himself, never took the local line all that seriously when Democrats were doing well. Famously, he hailed the off-year election results of 1981 (Democrats won the Virginia governorship and lots of mayoralties) as a signal that his party was coming back from the battering it had taken a year earlier at the hands of Ronald Reagan's Republicans.
(2) CommentsNovember 3, 2009
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Tale of Two Special Elections: One Shifts Right, The Other Left
By John Nichols
The Washington Post positions itself as a "must-read" daily almanac of the political class – a reliable source of information and insight regarding all things electoral.
That goes double for congressional elections, since the Post is the "hometown paper" of the federal government's company town.
As such, the Post can be expected to follow congressional contests with a rigor and clarity that exceeds that of talk-radio and talk-TV, right? Wrong.
(63) CommentsNovember 2, 2009
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"Tea Party Activists Are the New GOP"
By John Nichols
Richard Viguerie, the legendary hard-right activist who spent much of the past decade arguing that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were too liberal, now declares that the days of even the most minimal moderation are now over in the Republican Party.
"Tea Party Activists Are the New GOP," says Viguerie.
There is little reason to argue with the man whose direct-mail campaigning funded the rise of the Republican right in the late 1970s and who grumbled loudly when Newt Gingrich, Bush, Cheney and Republican leaders tried to soften the party's roughest edges.
(317) CommentsNovember 1, 2009
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Pelosi's Not-So-Robust Public Option
By John Nichols
The public option was always a compromise for serious supporters of health-care reform, who -- like Barack Obama when he was running for the Senate in 2003 -- knew that a single-payer "Medicare for All" system was what America needed to provide health care to everyone while controlling costs.
But, in the reform legislation debuted Thursday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the compromise was even more compromised than had been expected.
Pelosi says the legislation is "historic," and celebrates the fact that is does still include a public option -- a component many pundits had said was destined for abandonment.
(148) CommentsOctober 28, 2009
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Warrior-Diplomat Asks of Afghan War: "Why and to What End?"
By John Nichols
About the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan -- not merely the proposal to surge more troops into the quagmire but the occupation itself -- he says: "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.'"
Who is this radical peacenik who fails to recognize the necessity of the mission in Afghanistan, let alone the role that it plays in the broader "war on terror"?
His name is Matthew Hoh.
(112) CommentsOctober 27, 2009
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What If, Instead of Fox, Team Obama Tackled Insurance Profiteers
By John Nichols
Suppose President Obama and his aides had decided to take on the worst offender among the big insurance companies this fall.
Suppose the White House had highlighted the failure of the company to provide quality care, the abuses in which it has engaged and the behind-the-scenes campaigning by a self-interested corporation to influence the health-care debate in a manner that helps it while harming Americans.
Suppose presidential aides highlighted the initiative in broadcast and cable interviews and reinforced the message with carefully crafted talking points that said the insurance company's top officers were not helping Americans to get medical care but rather engaging in self-interested profiteering.
(176) CommentsOctober 26, 2009
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A "Premature Antifascist" -- And Proudly So
By John Nichols
Clarence Kailin, a son of the Midwest whose lifelong commitment to social and economic justice led him to become one of the first Americans to take up arms against the fascist forces that swept across Europe in the years before World War II, has died at age 95.
Kailin was one of the last survivors of the 2,800 American volunteers who fought from 1936 to 1939 as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in defense of the elected Spanish government against a coup engineered by Generalissimo Francisco Franco with the backing of Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini. His role in "the good fight" of the international volunteers -- as it was immortalized by Ernest Hemingway and W.H. Auden -- gave Kailin, a scrawny kid from Madison, Wisconsin's multi-ethnic Greenbush neighborhood, a place in an essential chapter of 20th century history.
Yet, for Kailin, "There wasn't any choice. If you were against totalitarianism, if you were against injustice, you had to care about what happened in Spain. Spain was where the fight against fascism was focused in 1936. So Spain was where I knew I needed to be."
(48) CommentsOctober 26, 2009
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Byrd's Wise Warning: Afghanistan is the Grave of Foreigners
By John Nichols
West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd refers to himself as "a student of history."
In fact, he is history.
The longest serving senator in the history of the legislative branch of the federal government, the former majority leader of the chamber, the constitutional scholar who several presidents (Democrats and Republicans) considered as a potential Supreme Court nominee, the long-ago southern stalwart who reconstructed himself as a supporter of civil rights and an early backer of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, he is an epic figure who speaks with an authority steeped in the wisdom gained from having personally experienced what others know only from books.
(86) CommentsOctober 24, 2009
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Roger Ailes for President? Er, Maybe Not So Much
By John Nichols
It would be difficult to concoct a Washington fantasy more delicious than this one: Barack Obama declares "war" on Fox News and Fox boss Roger Ailes counters by signaling that he will challenge the president in the 2012 election.
This is William Randolph Hearst, Citizen Kane stuff--great fodder for political junkies.
But Ailes is not going to be president, nor even the Republican nominee for president.
(48) CommentsOctober 23, 2009
John Nichols
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