bipartisanship

Evan Bayh abruptly announced he was quitting the Senate days before the filing deadline for his Senate seat, without notice to his constituents, to his colleagues, to his party's leaders or to the White House. He deprived the Democratic voters in Indiana who had voted him into office of the opportunity of choosing their own nominee. Nice work.

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While President Obama has yet to tell his progressive grassroots supporters directly, his words and actions make it clear that he wants progressives to stop working to elect Democrats. The problem is that Obama has a strange, overwhelming bipartisanship fetish. more »

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I have been struggling since the election to write the big piece about "what it all means" but others here and elsewhere have said it all so eloquently that I've been stymied. It goes without saying that Barack Obama's win is a great victory for racial progress, and there is no doubt that the country has finally awakened from its post 9-11 trance. But what does it all mean for progressivism? I honestly don't know yet. The contours of this victory are still amorphous to me. I'm watching it unfold with excited interest and hope.

It's much more obvious to me what has changed for the right considering their epic fall from grace--- absolutely nothing. This is because in their minds they didn't actually lose --- liberalism did. more »

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For seven years, when Democrats were in the minority, there was nary a peep from the "punditocracy" about bipartisanship, despite strict party-line votes specifically designed so that Democrats would not cross over. Yet since the Democrats won the Congress in 2006, there has been a nonstop keening from the political establishment to stop the partisan bickering. This new obsession about bipartisanship, which blames both parties equally for the sins of one, comes at the moment of progressive ascension.

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