NewsTrust - Democratic Party - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Why Are the Loudest Political Voices the Most Extreme?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ABC News - By Lee Dye - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - Those bombastic self-appointed spokespersons who rant from both the political right and left are likely driven by the conviction that their extreme views are shared by the majority of the members of their political party, but they are probably wrong, according to new research.

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Obama Faces His Anzio

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Nov. 06 (Opinion) - President Obama chose a cautious approach rather than bold action on the economy, and the decision may haunt Democrats for years to come.

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Hark! The Voters Speak!

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Gail Collins - Nov. 05 (Opinion) - Endorsements don’t work if they’re oblique and half-hearted, as if they had been sent via Candygram.

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It Doesn't Mean Squat

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Marc Ambinder - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - Along with tarot cards and goat entrails, a lot of people believe they can divine hidden meaning from the results of off-year elections, like the ones in Virginia, New York and New Jersey on Tuesday. I'm skeptical. For one thing, nobody bothers to wait for the polls to close anymore--the "meaning" of the results has been hammered out in advance. A GOP sweep will be taken as proof that conservatives are resurgent and President Obama's agenda is in trouble, while Democratic wins in New York and New Jersey--Virginia is hopeless--will demonstrate that conservatives have gone off the deep end. (Any other combination will mean a dull night for cable television.)

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The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - This week’s election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.

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Healthcare has rationing in abundance

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Doyle McManus - Oct. 11 (Opinion) - Late last month, as the Senate Finance Committee labored to produce its version of a healthcare bill, the Republican whip, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, renewed an old warning. If the federal government intervenes to hold healthcare costs down, Kyl said, the result would be something nobody wants: rationing. "The federal bureaucrats would, in effect, reduce the payment to providers, forcing them to reduce the care," Kyl warned. "It's not the government directly that is actually rationing care; now, we wouldn't want to do that. We cut the providers to the point that they have to do it instead -- and that result is still rationing. As far as the patients are concerned, it's still the same result."

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Government-Run Health Care

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Fox News - By Neil Cavuto - Oct. 07 (Interview) - Key Democrat is confident health care reform will pass with a 'public option'?

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Government-Run Health Care?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Fox News - By Neil Cavuto, Elijah Cummings - Oct. 06 (Interview) - Video interview by Fox anchor Neil Cavuto with Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), who expresses confidence that health care reform will pass with a public option.

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Democratic Super Majority

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Sep. 30 (Comedy News) - The Democratic supermajority fails to pass health care reform, but succeeds in funding abstinence-only education.

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American Politics stands at a crossroads

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Walter Russell Mead - Sep. 14 (Opinion) - Walter Russell Mead, PoliticoAmerican politics stands at an unusual crossroads. Buoyed by victories in the 2008 election and feeling vindicated by the financial crisis. liberal Democrats headed into 2009 feeling that their hour had come. The fallacies of Reaganite free-market economics had been exposed; Americans were returning to the old time religion of the New Deal. History, which for liberal Democrats had been running disastrously off the rails since Richard Nixon's election in 1968, was finally back on track.

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Progressives shouldn't confuse a party with a movement

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By David Sirota - Sep. 08 (Opinion) - Though the 2006 and 2008 elections were billed as progressive movement successes, the story behind them highlights a longer-term failure. During those contests, most leaders of Washington's major labor, environmental, antiwar and anti-poverty groups spent millions of dollars on a party endeavor — specifically, on electing a Democratic president and Democratic Congress. In the process, many groups subverted their own movement agendas in the name of electoral unity.

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Majority Rule on Health Care Reform

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Aug. 30 (Editorial) - In recent weeks, it has become inescapably clear that Republicans are unlikely to vote for substantial reform this year. Many seem bent on scuttling President Obama’s signature domestic issue no matter the cost. As Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, so infamously put it: “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

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The real Ted Kennedy

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Dan Kennedy - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - Ted Kennedy was the quintessential public man who overcame adversity to serve Massachusetts with honour Those of us who live in Massachusetts always had a different relationship with than did the rest of the country – and, for that matter, the world. Depending on your point of view, Kennedy was either an icon of progressivism or an avatar of evil. What he was not, except to those of us who were fortunate enough to be his constituents, was a regular guy who went about the mundane business of representing his state in the US Senate with diligence, seriousness and joy. For us, Kennedy was not a symbol. He was a real-life human being. The final stage of Kennedy?s home-state career – that of the eccentric but beloved uncle – goes back to ...

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The Cause of Ted Kennedy's Life

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - "This is the cause of my life," Ted Kennedy wrote. "For four decades I have carried this cause — from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society."

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Did Kennedy’s Dream Need Kennedy’s Presence?

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Katharine Q. Seelye - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - Senator Ted Kennedy’s chief goal on Capitol Hill was to pass universal health care. And it was a cruel twist for him to be sidelined from the debate by brain cancer just as health care bills were working their way through the legislative process.

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Change is tough. So liberals can't just leave it to Obama

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Michael Tomasky - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - I must report to you that the mood is somewhat grim these days among American liberals. Some feel President Obama has already sold them out. Others are angrier at conservatives and their deliberate lies about aspects of healthcare reform. But even many in this latter cohort think the White House hasn't been pushing back against the lies hard enough. Either way, expectations are diminished – nerves are fraying, temples are greying.

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Obama must win back progressives' trust

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Paul Krugman - Aug. 22 (Opinion) - there's a growing sense among progressives that they have, as my colleague Frank Rich suggests, been punked. And that's why the mixed signals on the public option created such an uproar. Now, politics is the art of the possible. Obama was never going to get everything his supporters wanted. But there's a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Sen. Charles E. Grassley feeds the death-panel smear, warning that reform will "pull the plug on grandma," and two days later the White House declares that it's still committed to working with him. It's hard to avoid the sense that Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can't be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

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The Truth About Health Insurance

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - Aug. 12 (Opinion) - Only nine states have the costly rules that Obama wants to impose nationwide.

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The GOP decline starts Phase Two

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Robert Shrum - Aug. 11 (Opinion) - Republicans seem to be enjoying their August delirium and perhaps they should. For them, it only gets worse from here as the economy improves and Democrats ride growth—and their enactment of health care reform—into the midterm elections.

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Is Obama Punking Us?

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Aug. 10 (Opinion) - While it’s unlikely that the chorus of Obama’s most strident doomsayers will be proven right, there is growing cause for concern that the President is not the reformer he promised to be.

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Them versus us

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Joseph J. Ellis - Aug. 09 (Opinion) - From the very beginning of our national history, Americans have been arguing about the proper role of government. Put succinctly, the dispute is between those who regard government as "them" and those who see it as "us." Our two founding documents embody the tension in its classical form. The Declaration of Independence locates sovereignty in the individual citizen, who possesses the rights of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," as Thomas Jefferson so lyrically put it, and the power of government is described as an alien force that must be put on the permanent defensive. The Constitution enshrines "the people" as the sovereign agent, with a Bill of Rights that defines a protected region where government cannot intrude, but otherwise identifies a collective interest best managed by a federal government empowered to make decisions for the society as a whole.

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Health Care Hullabaloo

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Charles M. Blow - Aug. 08 (Opinion) - While many Democrats are sitting it out, anti-reformist Republicans, blinded by fear and armed with misinformation, are attempting to shut down the debate rather than add to it.

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‘You Are Terrifying Us’

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Peggy Noonan - Aug. 07 (Opinion) - We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven’t looked like in years, and that is: desperate. They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan. A Democratic operative the other day called it “Hillary’s revenge.” When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care vision. He won. Now he would push what he had been forced to highlight: Health care would be a priority initiative. The net result is falling support for his leadership on the issue, falling personal polls, and the angry town-hall meetings that have electrified YouTube. In his first five months in office, Mr. Obama had racked up big wins—the stimulus, children’s health insurance, House approval of cap-and-trade. But he stayed too long at the hot table. All the Democrats in Washington did. They overinterpreted the meaning of the 2008 election, and didn’t fully take into account how the great recession changed the national mood and atmosphere.

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Shocked. SHOCKED. Astoturfing Exists. ... Now What?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Marc Ambinder - Aug. 04 (Editorial) - In eight years of writing about politics, nothing gets people angrier than when I try to make the case that most activists and most journalists practice politics differently, have different worldviews, and are both forces for good in the democracy. 3....2....

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The Health Care Bill Dies?

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Matt Taibbi - Jul. 28 (Opinion) - The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it. There is insufficient political will to get it done. It doesn’t matter that it’s an urgent national calamity, that it is plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ over 8 that our system could not possibly be worse and needs to be fixed very soon, and that, moreover, the only people opposing a real reform bill are a pitifully small number of executives in the insurance industry who stand to lose the chance for a fifth summer house if this thing passes. It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters.

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