Bailout Increasingly Unpopular in Congress

By Ari Berman

The Bush Administration continues to aggressively push its Wall Street bailout plan on Congress, where it's reaching a surprising amount of resistance. Congressional Leaders in the House and Senate are still trying to cut a deal with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, but the bailout seems to be getting more unpopular by the day with rank-and-file members of Congress from both parties.

Democrats are unhappy because the bailout favors Wall Street over Main Street. Republicans are unhappy about the $700 billion cost and expansion of "big government."

Matt Stoller of Open Left has been doing an excellent job of monitoring how members of Congress are reacting. Here's a great clip from Ohio Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur:

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September 24, 2008

Gary Hart: Obama Should Blame GOP for Economic Collapse

By Ari Berman

Gary Hart was a groomsman at John McCain's wedding to Cindy Lou Hensley, so he knows a thing or two about the Arizona Senator.

On the day of Sarah Palin's visit to Colorado, Hart--who represented the Centennial State in the Senate for twelve years--had a message for Palin and McCain: now is not the time for political ignorance to be rewarded.

"It's more than a little concerning that one of four people who may take up the highest national office is unwilling to engage in any serious questions or real discussion," Hart said on a conference call organized by the group ProgressNow. "I hope that this attention she is getting now is a bubble of sorts. Given the financial markets and what has happened just this weekend, stakes are even higher than they were 72 hours ago. This is not just another national election."

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September 15, 2008

Swift Boaters Support McCain

By Ari Berman

In 2004 Republicans had a strategy: turn John Kerry's biggest strength into an electoral liability. Democrats nominated Kerry largely because of his decorated military service in Vietnam, believing that Kerry's Purple Hearts would insulate him from Republican attacks on national security.

Kerry's military service was indeed an asset, until the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacked both his combat experiences in Vietnam and his antiwar activism after.

Now what Wesley Clark said about John McCain is being compared to what the Swift Boaters said about John Kerry. I can't imagine a more ludicrous comparison. Clark, a retired four star general and former commander of NATO, was offering his opinion about whether McCain is supremely qualified to be commander-in-chief. As my colleague Ari Melber wrote today, others who wore the uniform have made similar points (including McCain!), without inciting the least bit of controversy.

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July 1, 2008

Small Donors Matter More Than Outdated Laws

By Ari Berman

Last winter, in the early stages of his run for the presidency, Barack Obama said he'd consider accepting public financing for the general election if his Republican opponent would do the same and agree to a set of ground rules, including limiting spending by party committees and outside 527 political advocacy groups.

That statement by Obama came before he assembled the most impressive fundraising juggernaut in modern political history, thanks in large part to an explosion of small donors giving over the internet. If Obama accepted public financing in the general, he'd have $85 million to spend between the end of his party's convention in late August and November 4. Obama realized he could raise far more than that for the late stages of his campaign and do so in a generally honorable way. (John McCain, in turn, refused to limit spending by the RNC or referee 527 groups active on his behalf). So today his campaign announced it would opt out of public financing in the general. As the great economist John Maynard Keynes once said, when accused of inconsistency: "When the facts change, I change my mind -- what do you do, sir?"

The facts changed for Obama. "It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections," Obama said in a message to supporters today. "But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system."

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June 19, 2008

Iowa Needs Your Help

By Ari Berman

The state of Iowa was the star of this political season for over a year. The Hawkeye state launched Barack Obama's candidacy, derailed Hillary Clinton's and turned Mike Huckabee into a GOP power-broker. All eyes were on Iowa--and then the political circus left, on to New Hampshire and the 48 caucuses and primaries that followed.

Now Iowa needs your attention again. Key parts of eastern Iowa, in case you haven't heard, are underwater, the result of catastrophic flooding. Nearly half of the state is considered a disaster area. "The economic costs of the devastating floods were also beginning to seep in," the New York Times reported today, "tourism officials, who depend on the short summers, were bracing for washed-out seasons; farmers in many states stared out at ponds that had once been their fields of beans and corn; and officials were preparing to shut down 315 miles of the Mississippi River, a crucial route for millions of tons of coal, grains and steel."

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June 14, 2008

Key Women Clinton Supporters: McCain Won't Get Our Vote

By Ari Berman

John McCain has made it clear that his campaign intends to aggressively court supporters of Hillary Clinton, include her major base of women voters.

Now top women Clinton supporters have a message for McCain: not so fast.

"The McCain campaign has been talking about the mythology of trying to pick up HRC supporters," says Ellen Malcolm, president of EMILY'S List. "This is a pipe dream, because he's out of touch with their lives and the issues they care about."

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June 11, 2008

Fox's "Terrorist Fist Jab"

By Ari Berman

There's a few different ways to react to Fox News host E.D. Hill labeling Barack and Michelle Obama's fist bump in St. Paul last week as a possible "terrorist fist jab."

1. Hill should be reprimanded for her breathtaking ignorance and cultural myopia.

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June 10, 2008

The 'Obamican' Phenomenon

By Ari Berman

In early April I visited the political battleground of suburban Philadelphia to interview a bunch of former Republicans who'd registered as Democrats to vote for Barack Obama in the April 22 primary. These interviews formed the basis of my latest Nation article, "Pennsylvania's 'Obamicans.'"

The story is largely set in Doylestown, one of Philly's oldest and most picturesque exurbs. It's a swing town in a swing area in a crucial swing state. As such, the political trends in Doylestown and the rest of Bucks County are pretty indicative of what's going on throughout Pennsylvania and the rest of the country.

The article is subscription-only on our website (so become a subscriber!), but I'm posting an edited excerpt below for the loyal readers of this blog.

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April 18, 2008

Clinton's Anti-Union Allies

By Ari Berman

Robert Johnson's nasty comments about Barack Obama earlier this week caused a huge stir in the media. Johnson issued a less-than-convincing clarification and then apologized to Obama on Thursday.

Yet few of the stories on Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television and a top surrogate for Clinton in South Carolina, noted his controversial standing in the African-American political community. Johnson has been one of President Bush's top black allies, lobbying for the repeal of the estate tax and the privatization of Social Security, as Jonathan Chait of The New Republic reported in a 2001 profile of Johnson.

Johnson also has a history of opposing unions that makes Clinton's allies in labor quite uncomfortable. Back in 1993, workers at BET voted to join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Writer's Guild. According to an article in the Washington Afro-American, a historically black newspaper, AFL-CIO organizer Ed Feigen alleged that "during and after the election, BET violated the workers rights by offering them raises and promising benefits if they didn't join the union in."

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January 18, 2008

Clinton Needs A New Narrative

By Ari Berman

Post-primary update: I was wrong about Hillary. As Bill might say, we all make mistakes.

Salem, NH--Something happened to Hillary Clinton between Iowa and New Hampshire: she lost her message. In the final weeks of Iowa, Clinton focused almost exclusively on her record of experience and time in Washington, cloaking herself in the legacy of the 1990s and the shadow of Bill's presidency.

Experience is still virtually the only rationale for her candidacy, particularly the claim that she is the only Democrat prepared to be president on "day one"--a phrase she repeats over and over on the trail. But, in the wake of Iowa, Clinton seems dazed that voters want a fresh start. "I don't know when experience became some sort of liability in running for the highest office in the land," Clinton said last night in Salem. Maybe it's when your time in Washington is symbolized by a vote for an unpopular war, ties to big corporations and a soap opera presidency. Judging from the results in Iowa and the buzz on the ground in New Hampshire, most Democrats think Bill was a good president and Hillary is an able and astute senator, but they are ready for something different and new.

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January 8, 2008