A Vote for Sanders is a Vote to Restore the Commonwealth

Government is essential to defending truth and dignity — and that requires changing minds

This past year, though, I spent much of my time torturing myself with choice. My YouTube account would show me flitting -- admiringly, on the advice of pundits, and for all the obvious reasons -- from Pete Buttigieg, to Elizabeth Warren, to Kamala Harris, then back to Warren, then, for ...
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A Vote for Sanders is a Vote to Restore the Commonwealth

Why I Don’t Like the Leading Democratic Candidates to be President of the United States

And why I would support anyone of them

“I am devastated. All of my public commitments are under attack. I thought there was progress during my lifetime. Democracy and the positive developments of democratic culture, free speech and expression, social justice and the fight against racism, sexism, class exploitation, xenophobia, and much more, all seemed to advance, even ...
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Why I Don’t Like the Leading Democratic Candidates to be President of the United States

With Impeachment, Messaging is Everything.

And the Democrats seem behind the curve.

Strategic communication. Trump’s White House has eliminated press briefings, viciously attacked the press and indeed all independent media sources, and organized a cynical and relentless campaign of disinformation via Twitter, Facebook, Fox News, Breitbart, YouTube, the One America News Network, and a range of other media. Trump in office -- with the ...
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With Impeachment, Messaging is Everything.

Obama’s Strategy for the Primaries and the Convention

Supporting Buttigieg ensures that Warren will win the nomination – and then lose it

What will – what can -- Obama do? As we learned recently he and his surrogates will support Buttigieg. This strategy launched today with endorsements from Reggie Love, Austin Goolsbee and Linda Douglass—three top Obama aides. The following is a speculation based on the best evidence we have. Obviously Buttigieg will not get the nomination. ...
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Obama’s Strategy for the Primaries and the Convention

Who is the Audience for the Judiciary Committee Hearing?

An Evaluation of the House Democratic Leadership’s Performance

I have long expressed my exasperation with the timid way in which the House Democratic leadership has only reluctantly moved toward impeachment, even in the face of the damning Mueller Report, and then has proceeded in the most narrow and legalistic way imaginable. Trump is a very dangerous President, and it ...
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Who is the Audience for the Judiciary Committee Hearing?

I Would Love to Vote for a Gay President

But Pete Buttigieg is not my guy

Many remember this loss because of Dean’s cowboy moment at the lectern. Masochists and political junkies can watch the famous “scream” that provoked endless media mockery here. But the swift collapse of the Dean campaign following Iowa also revealed other weaknesses that early polling had not: the excitement of this ...
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I Would Love to Vote for a Gay President

A Lesson from Watergate

How Democrats Should Broaden the Impeachment Charges

That is a very welcome development for two reasons: because Trump’s record of malfeasance extends far beyond “Ukraine,” and because, as I have been arguing for months, impeachment necessarily points beyond impeachment, to November 2020. Democrats thus need to present as strong an overarching narrative of Trump’s malfeasance as possible. ...
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Can Bernie Do It?

An economist takes a hard look at the Sanders platform

But is he a plausible president? By that, I don't mean in comparison to Donald Trump, as implausible a president as there ever was. Sanders is a lifetime political figure with forty years of elected experience and intimate knowledge of Capitol Hill and of the federal government. But he is ...
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A Great Opportunity Missed

The Democrats should’ve exposed Republican Hypocrisy and Cynicism about Corruption

The lowest point of the Republican questioning came when efforts were made, by Jordan and others, to suggest that Trump’s insistence on Ukrainian investigations into Biden, Bursima, and Crowd Strike was based on his deep and sincere commitment to fighting corruption in a corrupt country. This suggestion is risible. And yet ...
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Impeachment Must Be More Than Impeachment

Politics as Performance and Spectacle to Defeat Trumpism

If an avalanche felled the tree, does it make sense to focus only on the fallen tree and to ignore the broader and more terrifying cataclysm that caused it? House Democrats, apparently buoyed by last Tuesday’s election results, are prepared to begin the public hearing phase of their Trump impeachment inquiry. ...
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