Hold Fast

First Chris Hayes of MSNBC absolutely obliterated NY Governor Andrew Cuomo for his refusal to intervene on behalf of the Democratic caucus in the NY State Senate. Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Then Alex Pareene of Salon piled on: Cuomo doesn’t hide his conservative tendencies — they’re part [...]

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Some thoughts on the day after the election: Pro-gay marriage referenda passed in Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington state. This is an incredible victory, given that in years past these sorts of popular votes were brought by anti-equality conservatives. The culture war is changing and marriage equality is becoming a reality in an ever-larger swath [...]

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This piece at the sports blog Deadspin by David Roher on the spurious attacks on poll analyst Nate Silver from the right, as well as from established Beltway pundits like David Brooks and Joe Scarborough, is must-read. In particular: In fact, we’ve reached the point in our screwed-up political media culture where the polling companies [...]

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As we approach the presidential election, there has been a new flurry of articles from radical and progressive leftwing writers on why not to vote for Obama, from various particular frameworks. Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic had already been the focus of much of the earlier phases of this debate when he, a libertarian, identified [...]

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Dean Baker’s piece in The Guardian on the politics and economics of Social Security is must-read. The story here is a simple one: while social security may enjoy overwhelming support across the political spectrum, it does not poll nearly as well among the wealthy people – who finance political campaigns and own major news outlets. The [...]

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Pretty hilarious and spot-on.

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Rick Perlstein has a very good article in Rolling Stone about the failures of the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. I think there are a lot of overlapping dimensions to the loss and Perlstein lays out a number of them in the piece. One of the more important aspects, though, is the tendency for Democrats to [...]

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I’ll be honest, after the labor-backed candidate for governor in Wisconsin lost the Democratic primary in a recall election that was happening because of an assault on workers’ rights and public sector unions, I paid significantly less attention to the race. And even before that, once the choice was made by labor unions and Democratic [...]

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Democratic Party message discipline, as exemplified by defenses on Bain Capital and private equity. President Bill Clinton Cory Booker Ed Rendell Deval Patrick Harold Ford Jr. Let’s be clear. While these high level Democrats – most of whom are currently or have been in the past top-level surrogates for President Obama – are saying something [...]

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