Canada also held elections this past week. Widely expected to be a boring election which changed little, in the last few weeks it instead became apparent that the election would be a nail-biter and might change quite a bit. In terms of governance, the most significant result is that the Conservatives – a rather young [...] Read more »

I started to put together a synopsis of the protests taking place across the Arab world, only to find that Wikipedia had beaten me to it. Nevertheless I’m putting up my own map and summary of where things stand. Red: Governments Overthrown Tunisia and Egypt thus far. Orange: Significant Governmental Change Jordan is ruled by [...] Read more »

OKCupid is a popular dating site these days, and one of the things that makes them awesome in my eyes is that they sometimes publicly analyze their extensive database of user-generated question responses. In a recent post on OK Trends, the folks there dug into the correlations between some question responses and others. I found [...] Read more »

Markos has a post up entitled “McConnell handled ‘bipartisanship’ correctly“. It starts with a quote from Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority leader: “We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off [legislation advanced by Democrats],” McConnell says. “Because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the American people would know that [...] Read more »

This would be so, so cool: A short text message could be the next big thing in campaign finance. Cell phone carriers are seeking to get approval to let customers make small donations to a political party or candidate via text messages. Read more »

Paul Krugman is right: Urk. I just gave up on the presidential press conference. When Obama declared that Americans rejected Democrats in part because “We were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn’t change how things got done,” I checked out. Nobody cares about this stuff — they care about results. [...] Read more »

Like so much of what Paul Rosenberg writes, I found this post of his fascinating. I don’t read his stuff as faithfully as I ought to, because it usually requires a significant investment of time, but when I do it’s almost always worth it. In this posting he’s drawing from several thinkers in responding to [...] Read more »

From Roll Call: Facing a tough political cycle, the DCCC is redoubling its efforts to enlist K Streeters to help its most vulnerable “Frontline” program Members with fundraising, messaging and campaign strategy. The ask was formalized Wednesday evening at a dinner at Acqua Al 2, an Italian restaurant on Capitol Hill, organized by Jennifer Crider, [...] Read more »

…Capable of being stopped only by this Republican candidate for US Representative in Pennsylvania. In a new ad supporting Republican Tim Burns, who’s running for the seat vacated by the late Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA), the group RightChange.com depicts an animated Nancy Pelosi as a cross between Frankenstein’s monster and Godzilla. Obama and Harry Reid [...] Read more »

So, this Indiana Republican congressman is resigning because he had an affair with a staffer. So fine. The funny part? Souder and his mistress actuallly made an anti-sex tape together: they appeared together in a video in favor of abstinence-only education. Rich. Read more »

I thought this post was fascinating. And hard to excerpt, so read the whole thing: Over the long-run, Democrats in Congress will look more like the Progressive Caucus.  Right now, the CPC is only group of Democrats in Congress who are representative of the Democratic rank and file.  At least 74.7%, or 59 of 79, [...] Read more »

I love this post by Chris Bowers so much, I’m going to reproduce it in full: If the public option campaign succeeds, it will be a proof of concept for the Progressive Block strategy–House Progressives threatening to join with Republicans to block must-pass Democratic legislation unless they receive a major concession. After all, the public [...] Read more »

I really really liked this: The idea that the left and the right are both inhabited by a “fringe” is a favority mainsteam trope, which PPP plays off of, though it does note that, “It’s hard to call a third of the country a fringe.” Nonetheless, the “fringe” characterization is a long-standing one, and it’s [...] Read more »

I thought this article was fascinating, but it’s hard to find a snippet that gives you a flavor of teh whole thing. Therefore I’m doing a definite disservice by quoting only a little bit, and it’s well worth clicking through to read the whole thing. From a mobilization point of view, running an electoral campaign [...] Read more »

I really like Chris Bowers’ strategic thinking in this instance. Just for the purposes of backstory, Collin Peterson is the Chairman of the Agriculture committee, (Democrat, therefore) and he’s using his position to water down global warming legislation (though why it has to go through his committee, I don’t know). Here’s a bit more backstory… [...] Read more »

This is what Chris Bowers, over at OpenLeft, thinks might happen if Obama and the Democrats win in a rout: Republican Party moves to the right: Yes, that’s correct–I am pretty sure the Republican Party will become even more conservative if they are entirely blown out in this election. The reason is simple: all remaining [...] Read more »

Gee, do you think this is newsworthy? Read more »

Atrios argues that handing debates and a good part of the political discourse over to the whims of currently undecided voters may not be the best thing in the world, and Matt Stoller elaborates: Pandering to undecided voters makes the assumption that decided voters are irrelevant.  And we’re not.  Here are some choices a decided [...] Read more »

A fascinating overview of the Canadian election and the major issues there, for anyone who’s interested… Big Issues: Economy: Our banks aren’t collapsing, but Canada is seeing a great deal of economic change. High oil prices have driven up the Canadian dollar, which has hurt the manufacturing base in Ontario and Quebec. Jobs are drifting [...] Read more »

Tonight Sarah Palin and Joe Biden squared off and it reminded me of two things that really bother me about debates Inclusion The “Commission on Presidential Debates” which has been given control over setting the debates each four years (given control by whom? The two parties) says that nopresidential candidate can be allowed to participate [...] Read more »