Democratic Party

Dems rush to abandon Obama

Alex Koppelman — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:25:00 PST

The Democrats who serve in the House and Senate can read a poll as good as anyone, and on one thing at least the polls have been pretty clear lately: Americans aren't exactly wild about President Obama's position on Afghanistan. So it's not surprising to see Congressional Democrats distancing themselves from the leader of the party on the issue, even in the midst of a big new policy rollout. But the speed and the passion with which they're doing it is pretty striking.

Can populism be liberal?

Michael Lind — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:05:00 PST

Is a Jackson revival under way? I'm referring not to the late King of Pop but to the 19th century populist president whom his opponents called "King Andrew." According to Michael Barone, in the 2010 elections Republicans have a chance to knock Democrats out of as many as three dozen insecure congressional seats in "Jacksonian districts."

Senate Dems at odds over health care bill

ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:01:00 PST

Senate Democrats on Sunday sparred with each other over how to fix the nation's troubled health care system, the moderates threatening to scuttle legislation if their demands weren't met and the more liberal members warning their party leaders not to bend.

Nelson off the fence on healthcare vote, Lincoln not

Alex Koppelman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:01:00 PST

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can rest at least a little bit easier tonight. As he heads into the first vote in his chamber on Democrats' healthcare reform bill, he knows he has at least one senator who was wavering on his side.

Bad news for Democrats in new polls

Alex Koppelman — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:55:00 PST

There's still quite a bit of time left before voters go to the ballot box for the midterm elections next year. But two recent polls are giving them reason to be nervous -- and there's a chance they could affect the Democratic agenda over the next year, too.

Bill Clinton tells Senate Dems to get to work

Mike Madden — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:11:00 PST

Bill Clinton had a pretty simple message for Senate Democrats on Tuesday: don't screw this healthcare stuff up.

The Democrats' new "Family" values

Jeff Sharlet — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:11:00 PST

American women will pay the price for the Democratic dithering that allowed Saturday's passage of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, a worm virus inserted into the House healthcare reform bill with surgical precision. But the Democratic Party will suffer collateral damage.

The Blue Dog Dems are in danger

Robert Reich — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:05:00 PST

The administration's biggest economic mistake so far was to badly underestimate last January how bad the employment situation would become by fall. As a result, it low-balled the stimulus -- settling for a plan that, while avoiding even worse job losses, didn't go nearly far enough.

The waiting is the hardest part

Mike Madden — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:05:00 PDT

Negotiations on healthcare reform legislation have reached a stage that's disconcertingly common on Capitol Hill -- one with few visible signs of actual progress, plenty of reassurances from the people involved that everything is going just fine, and a lot of waiting around for everyone else.

That sound you hear is the social fabric about to snap

Michael Lind — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:28:00 PDT

According to official statistics, the unemployment rate in the United States is now 9.8 percent. But those statistics understate the severity of the jobs crisis. The official statistics do not include the 875,000 Americans who have given up looking for work, even though they want jobs. When these "marginally attached" workers and part-time workers are added to the officially unemployed, the result, according to another, broader governement measure of unemployment known as "U-6," is shocking. The United States has an unemployment rate of 17 percent.

House Democrats paring cost of health care bill

Associated Press — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:01:00 PDT

House Democrats say they are getting close to President Barack Obama's cost target for health care overhaul legislation.

Democrats push back on insurance report

Mike Madden — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:13:00 PDT

The federal government was officially closed Monday. But you wouldn't know it from the pushback coming out of the White House and Congress against a health insurance industry report that argued healthcare reform would lead to higher premiums.

Accusing Obama critics of "standing with the terrorists"

Glenn Greenwald — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 06:11:00 PDT

Yesterday, I noted that the DNC accused the GOP of having "thrown in its lot with the terrorists" and putting "politics above patriotism" because -- just like the Taliban and Hamas -- some Republicans objected to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. Salon's Alex Koppleman described how some progressive groups, including Media Matters and some blogs, embraced the same theme, even producing videos "suggesting that the right has aligned itself with terrorists." Media Matters' Chris Harris wrote a piece entitled "RNC agrees with the Taliban," and actually labelled the mere act of questioning whether Obama's Prize was warranted to be "unseemly and downright unpatriotic."

DNC: GOP siding with terrorists over Nobel

Alex Koppelman — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:55:00 PDT

The Democratic Party has been hitting its opponents pretty hard recently over their criticism of President Obama. When his trip to Copenhagen, made in an attempt to secure the 2016 Summer Olympics for Chicago, was unsuccessful, the message from the Democratic National Committee and the White House was that critics were being unpatriotic. With Obama's having won the Nobel Peace Prize, and with people from across the political spectrum greeting the news skeptically, the DNC took things to a whole new level.

Rep. Alan Grayson, star of the left

Alex Koppelman — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:30:00 PDT

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

House Financial Services Committee member Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., listens to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testify before the committee on Oct. 1.

Oh, those wacky Democrats

Alex Koppelman — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:01:00 PDT

The knock on the Democrats for some time now has been that they're too timid, that they roll over every time they face a little opposition, even when public opinion is in their favor. And of course, despite the fact that the party now controls both the Executive and Legislative branches of government, and has a theoretically filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, the Democrats are not doing much to change that reputation lately. Below, Jon Stewart has a little fun at their expense, as only he can.

Obama crushes Democratic dissent

David Sirota — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:05:00 PDT

The recent headlines about President Obama working to crush primary campaigns against Democratic incumbents would be great fodder for a canned column looking at hypocrisy.

Deal with it, liberals

Mike Madden — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:10:00 PDT

A few days into the Senate Finance Committee's work on healthcare reform, a process that threatened, over the summer, to go completely berserk has started to seem a little calmer. Especially for Democrats. For the most part, Republicans on the committee have been completely unhelpful (that is, when they've been awake), resorting to obvious delaying tactics; the notion that the GOP is interested in cooperating with Democrats is evaporating quickly. Meanwhile, the panel's chairman, Montana Democrat Max Baucus, who spent the summer pursuing blue-sky dreams of bipartisanship, has suddenly turned tough, ruling the sessions so firmly that Republicans have resorted to shouting at him.

Max Baucus wants to come home

Mike Madden — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:23:00 PDT

There should have been a sense of urgency Tuesday morning as the Senate Finance Committee started work on its version of healthcare reform legislation. "While we're meeting, every six seconds someone is losing their health insurance," Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, reminded her colleagues.

Washington's selective deficit disorder

David Sirota — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 03:19:00 PDT

Watching the healthcare debate unfold these days is a little like watching scenes from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" -- the ones showing a collage of strung-out, deranged or otherwise incapacitated patients rotting away in a squalid psychiatric ward.