Sometimes contrarian political positions are annoying in their mistaking of playfulness of stance with genuine insight. Sometimes, though, they’re really challenging in the best sense. Go read Tyler Cowen on the modern liberal vice and the libertarian vice.
Wow. I’ve refrained from commenting on a race that’s out of my state, but I have to say that now that Lieberman has lost, it’s quite a gratifying spectacle.
The news coverage, often in subtle ways, manages to patronize anyone with an anti-war position, or anti-Lieberman vote. Take, for instance, the lede of Rick Klein’s piece […]
At Blue Mass Group, Charley is trying to put a stop to the invective of the comments and recriminations flying back and forth between campaign supporters. I don’t have any grand way to resolve those tensions or any speaking authority to lay down any ground rules for political discussion, but I think he’s on to […]
Mark Schmitt makes a simple point that gets overlooked a lot, namely that the supposed self-reliance underpinning many strands of conservatism is illusion that can slip easily into delusion:
To an amazing degree, Western and sunbelt conservatism is built on the risible delusion that the federal government never did a damn thing for them and they […]
Who are you calling a special interest party? Scot Lehigh thinks the State democrats have a choice between the public interest and playing to their constituencies:
Still, your platform opposes the MCAS, just as it opposes any expansion in charter schools, another important educational development, and one that has proved a popular option for inner-city families.
Provisions such […]
I find this Steve Bailey article bizarre. Set aside the fact that the U.S. is probably alone among democracies with a weak party system. (U.S. voters don’t belong to the Democratic party in the way a Brit can belong to the Labour party, or a German to the Christian Democrats, etc.) If we approached politics as […]
Jon Keller is impressed.
American Footprints, however, has some reasonable doubts about McCain’s “Stop the Bullshit” doctrine.
By the way, to Keller’s point, I know he’s trying hard to tar the “left” at any opportunity he can get, but he’d be hard-pressed to find many on the American left who are crazy about a French or German-style guest […]
The ever reasonable Brad DeLong swims against the tide of “conservatives won by losing” historical consensus:
A political edge, yes. But not a policy edge. Medicare. Medicaid. The EPA. OSHA. Goldwaterism certainly did–in the long run–unmake Republican Party commitment to the New Deal Consensus. But in the short run Goldwaterism had other consequences: the damage it […]
Jay Fitzgerald (among others) points to a new map - put out by these folks - showing that contrary to word of a red state-blue state religion divide, people in the Southeast are less religiously adherent than people in Massachusetts.
It’s always good to match up political shorthand against empirical evidence, but color me unpersuaded. The map, […]
At .08 Acres, sco gives us a nice review of Markos Moulitsas’ Crashing the Gate and in the process asks:
Is there any way to objectively measure the performance of a consultant? Won-loss record? Dollars spent per vote? Year over year turnout increases? I don’t know what criteria you would use, but I do know that […]
Sorry for the cagey post yesterday, but I’ve been mulling a pet hypothesis: that the major political parties in the US are due for — or at least may likely see — a major realignment of their base coalitions. I first really got thinking about this when I read a Mark Schmitt post last year: […]
Last week I wrote,
The good news is that class conflicts, whether economic or prestige-social in orientation, aren’t set in stone. I’m always mystified by Judis-Teixeira-esque studies that predict that the Democratic party is demographically destined to victory or failure. In the short run, clearly, political parties work with the demographic possibilities at hand. Over the […]
A commenter at Blue Mass Group wonders about "blog bubbles":
So how do we avoid the bubble effect? How to we make sure that we’re actually connecting with the real world and not just reinforcing what’s already in our own heads?
I think that it’s great that the founders of BMG have different opinions and […]
Another interesting political science feature in Sunday’s Ideas section of the Globe, this time about a book from political scientists Richard Johnston and Byron Shafer called The End of Southern Exceptionalism. Sounds like another book to add to the reading list. In short,
[E]conomics, not race… upended the Southern apple cart. As the South boomed and […]
Mark Jurkowitz pointed me to a Globe op-ed claiming that Jon Stewart is ruining our political discourse and dooming liberals to isolation and failure. I don’t think I’m exaggerating here. It’s Jedediah Purdyism run amok. If the writer, Michael Kalin, thinks liberals lack earnestness, of all things, he’s not hanging out with the same crowd […]