Elections & Political Parties

Can there be liberalism without labor? Can a progressive movement exist in a country in which organized labor has lost its political influence? My friend Mark Schmitt, the executive editor of the American Prospect, asks that question:

The right is coming back. Inevitably, it's a messy and even ugly process, one that involves fear-mongering and utter falsehoods as well as legitimate concerns and old-fashioned righteous indignation. The Obama White House and left-leaning media outlets are focusing on the "nonsense feedback loop," the fears of "death panels," the outrage of Birthers--all of the outré untruths you'll hear raised at congressional town brawls.

Don't get too outraged, those of you who are looking down your noses at those unreasonable, misinformed anti-healthcare-reform town hallers. No matter what particular clan, tribe or party you belong to, you can't really disown them any more than you can your own grandmother. You may not agree with them, but their brand of hotheaded, self-righteous, obnoxious, stick-it-to-the-manism is as American as apple pie.

To understand America's economic future, it helps to look at some of our largest trading partners. Will we move towards a smaller state, a more egalitarian economy or both?

The young, aspiring Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia's seventh congressional district launched what looked like an exciting effort to recast his party last winter. It began in a packed strip mall pizza parlor in Arlington with the aim of engaging regular Americans with an Obama-style outreach both on the Web and in town halls. It has fizzled and failed.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver is likely to be most remembered for her blood relations, especially her politician brothers John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Teddy Kennedy.

In California, she has a lesser-known but crucial role: as the state's most important mother-in-law.

Eunice's son-in-law, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has described her as his mentor and strongest political supporter. He's not exaggerating. Without her, there never would have been an Arnold governorship.

All but the most ostrich-like of conservatives recognize that their movement is at its lowest ebb in more than three decades. Democrats control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, and the polarization of the two major parties has rendered conservatives more isolated and irrelevant to policymaking than in their previous stints in the minority. Democrats are using their majorities to pass sweeping changes in public policy that will reshape the contours of the American state for decades to come, and it hardly matters whether

Back in the 1960s, Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard Hofstadter and other liberal sociologists, historians and political scientists, puzzled that anyone could support Barry Goldwater rather than Lyndon Johnson, concluded that Goldwater supporters were deranged. They didn't say so directly, of course. They said that members of the radical right were emotionally disturbed victims of "status anxiety." The evidence? They didn't vote the way that Lipset and other academics thought that they should vote. Therefore they had to be crazy.