Working Life

Democrats will know this Saturday who is tapped as head of the party. But, will the party figure out what’s wrong with its pitch to voters? I talk with linguistics guru George Lakoff, who a decade ago began pushing the party to understand how voters’ brains really work.  And for those of you who want […]

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This is clear, I think: on to Philadelphia! WASHINGTON – Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign spokesman, Michael Briggs, issued the following statement on Tuesday after the senator met with Secretary Hillary Clinton at the Capital Hilton: “Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton met in Washington on Tuesday evening and had a positive discussion about how best to […]

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Just a little nick at a time. Let it bleed. If you want a little window into the absolutely woeful performance of the traditional media in covering politics generally, and this election in particular, and the way in which the overriding imperative is to win ratings, just check out the last 24 hours. The traditional […]

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I ran into a well-known super-delegate a few days ago as we crossed paths doing some media stuff (I’m only leaving her name out of this for now because it’s not the point of the story). We chit-chatted and I raised the issue of the potential undemocratic nature of super-delegates undercutting the actual vote of […]

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In the wake of last night’s victory for Tea Party Republican Matt Bevin in the race for governor in Kentucky, this just came across my desk. Bi-Partisanship lives! From the Republican National Committee: “The entire Republican Party wants to extend its heartfelt praise and admiration for the leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz in her role […]

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A common theme at Friday’s DNC meeting was the clear intention by the Democratic Party elite–principally, the chair of the party, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, to prevent much debate during the primaries. This is a pretty obvious tactic to prevent the “presumed front-runner” from having to answer many questions along the way and prevent the voters from […]

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Excuse me while we interrupt the hocus-pocus exercise of throwing a meager bone to a few workers on the minimum wage (a proposal, by the way, that is pathetic at $10.10 an hour) to point out: the few cents you think you are putting into a person’s left pocket by hiking a smidgen the minimum wage you are, then, yanking out of that person’s right pocket a whole lot more by promoting the horrendous Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and its malignant so-called “free trade” predecessors.

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The silence is pretty amazing. The man most responsible, or at least, a central player, in the greatest financial crisis in generations–a crisis that cost tens of millions of people around the globe their jobs and their futures–gets a whopping RAISE…and not a single political leader has stood up to challenge the generosity of the “free market”. This is corruption writ large. And, yet, not a word from the White House, not a word from any figures, future presidential candidates or otherwise, to take on what is a big middle finger to the entire American public.

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The typical theme you might read in the papers goes something like this: the off-their-rocker Republicans (and they are) shut down the government because of a maniacal obsessive hate of Obamacare but the president and Democrats, particularly in the Senate, are just tough bastards and are holding the line. The problem is: the Democrats have already given in when you look at the big picture.

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This is not another analysis or observation focusing on the strategy and tactics that led to the deal just made on taxes. I was bored by the whole debate weeks ago because, frankly, it missed a much more central fact: the Democratic Party long ago gave up the fight over having a sensible tax rate for the richest people.

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