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The Gulf oil spill, Shirley Sherrod, and Afghanistan may have chased some of the economic news off of the front pages, but everyone nonetheless knows the economy will be at the top of the voters' agenda for the fall election, and Democrats are slipping in public opinion polls when on the question of which party is trusted to do a better job on the economy. On the one hand this ...
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As one general replaces another in Kabul, it's worth noting that Obama started out last year determined to get American troops out of Afghanistan in the shortest feasible time. If that is still the president's aim, I don't think he can expect much support from the new man he's put in charge there, Gen. David Petraeus.In The Promise, his authoritative book about Obama's first year in office, Jonathan Alter reports that the ...
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Some survey findings have more legs than others and the recent report "Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor" from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press seems to be getting more attention than most. Conservative commentators such as the Wall Street Journal's Dan Henniger are using the finding that just 22% trust the government to do what is right "just about always" or "most of the time" to ...
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The conventional wisdom has Democrats potentially looking at huge losses in the midterm elections in the fall. The party that wins the presidency has historically faced losses in the next congressional elections and Republicans have been creeping upward in the generic congressional polling question. Republicans seem to have political momentum having won two contested races for Governor in New Jersey and Virginia in 2009 and Edward Kennedy's Senate seat in a special ...
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Immigration reform appears to be moving forward and so does health care reform with the support of the Hispanic Caucus. The complicated relationship between the forces fighting for immigration reform and the labor movement have been on display this week. A potentially uncomfortable moment on the stage was averted before the March For America rally for immigration reform on the National Mall in Washington this Sunday. Andy Stern, the President of the Service ...
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Today, Dennis Kucinich announced that he was going to support the Health Care Bill, saying "I have to make a decision on the bill as it is, not on the bill as I would like to see it." (via @markknoller). This is a step in the right direction. Democrats are starting to gain a sense of maturity and wisdom. There was never any likelihood that the process of creating a Health ...
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Maybe there's a game on. The President had three meetings on immigration reform at the White House today. He is increasingly under pressure to act on promises he made as a candidate to enact immigration reform in his first year in office and, now in his second year, the patience of pro-reform advocates - and Latino and immigrant voters - is wearing thin.The power of the Latino vote is a ...
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Immigration doesn't break cleanly along left/right, liberal/conservative, or Democratic/Republican lines. There are lots of pro-immigration and pro-immigrant conservatives and they come in different varieties. Likewise, there are lots of progressives with deep reservations about immigration reform and immigration in general. But the divisions the immigration debate creates on the right are deeper, more passionate, and much more destructive to GOP unity than the division on the left and the last few ...
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Perhaps it is easier to see the value of slow politics now that everyone is so frustrated that the fast "Big Bang" politics of 2009 seems to have come to a grinding halt in 2010. With health care reform, jobs, energy, and immigration initiatives all apparently stalled, fast politics has been exposed as exceedingly slow. Fast politics now seems as likely to lead to lasting progressive policy change as speed ...
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Progressives need a game changer. Assuming progressives have the twin goals of helping Democrats avoid a monumental defeat in November and positioning progressive policies to have more sway in the two- or six-years that remain of the Obama administration, progressives need an issue around which to mobilize and energize. Consider immigration reform. It builds coalitions on the left, divides coalitions on the right, and mobilizes Latino and immigrant voters who ...
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--In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.(Deepak Chopra) http://bit.ly/opy0d Monthly Archives
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