American Prospect

A leftist magazine co-founded by former President Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor Robert Reich urged the federal government to seize control of the fossil fuel industry. Because…climate change.

The affinity of some American conservatives for Vladimir Putin was a minor phenomenon well before Donald Trump ran for president, and for obvious reasons it’s still grist for the mill of punditry. Liberal blogger and columnist Waldman delved into the topic in a Monday piece for The American Prospect. Waldman mused that maybe Republicans “are just now realizing that Putin is a leader after their…

Give columnist Paul Waldman credit for coming up with a real grabber of a lead: “Get ready, America: we're about to take a long and unpleasant journey back down Bill Clinton's pants.” Less amusing is the rest of Waldman’s Monday American Prospect piece, which trashed Republicans for raising the 42nd president’s sexual behavior as an issue in the current campaign. Waldman jeered at GOPers for “…

If Paul Waldman had wanted to put the main argument of his Monday American Prospect column in Obamaesque terms, he might have written that conservative opponents of political correctness have gotten bitter and are clinging to their supposed right (and maybe even their duty) to act like jerks. “For today's Republican, if people think you're a jerk then you must be doing something right, and the…

Liberals, hinted Waldman in a Monday American Prospect column, need to remember that the legislative journey of a thousand miles begins with a few steps. Waldman acknowledged that even if “modest gun control” measures such as expanded background checks were to pass, the U.S. would “still have more gun deaths than any other industrialized country,” but that’d be better than the status quo.…

In mid-July, The Huffington Post announced it would cover Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as entertainment news. Waldman might like that policy extended to GOPers in general, since he thinks they’re more about sound-and-fury theatrics than ideas or legislative accomplishments. “Today's Republicans,” wrote Waldman in a Sunday American Prospect column, “truly have created not just a politics…

Among the insights: Fiorina "has a notable facility for delivering answers that thrill conservatives but fall apart under close examination"; a discussion of childhood vaccines showed that the party is "fervid, claustrophobic, recklessly insinuating, and, at the same time, utterly timid when it comes to extremism in its own ranks”; and the GOP as a whole is "wedded to the tenets of [George W.]…

For close to a hundred and fifty years, the elephant has represented the Republican party, but The American Prospect’s Meyerson suggests that these days, a more fitting choice for the GOP’s symbol would be an extended middle finger. In his analysis of Thursday’s prime-time presidential debate, Meyerson, who also writes a weekly column for The Washington Post, identified several of the candidates…

To lefty pundit Paul Waldman, journalists are like detectives, not activists. They relish discovering and exposing the secrets of politicians, but they don’t much care whether the pols are liberal or conservative, given that “ideological bias is among the[ir] least important” motives. For example, regarding recent New York Times stories about Marco Rubio’s driving record and personal finances,…

Edmund Burke wrote that “a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.” To American Prospect blogger Paul Waldman, “change” for conservatives means living to fight another day by conceding battle after battle to liberals. “Much of the history of the United States,” wrote Waldman in a Friday post, “is a slow but inexorable movement in a progressive direction,…

For liberals, the great mystery of the last few decades is how Republicans usually have won enough votes to control one or both houses of Congress even as the party moves increasingly to the right. As political-science profs Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson put it in their 5,500-word article in the spring issue of The American Prospect, “In a 50-50 nation, Republicans have learned how to have their…

Vaccine skeptics have a well-deserved reputation for not caring about facts, but according to American Prospect blogger Paul Waldman, many right-wing anti-taxers resemble anti-vaxxers in terms of their shaky grasp of reality. “All the GOP presidential candidates are lining up to receive the wisdom of Arthur Laffer as they formulate their economic plans,” wrote Waldman in a Friday post. “This is…

In a Friday American Prospect piece (originally published on Wednesday in the Washington Post) WaPo columnist Harold Meyerson suggested that even though the South didn’t win the Civil War, its mean-spirited ideas, racial and otherwise, now drive the Republican party. Meyerson asserted that today’s GOP “is not just far from being the party of Lincoln: It’s really the party of Jefferson Davis. It…

The American Prospect’s Waldman sympathizes with conservatives who are “unfairly accused of racism,” but says that overall he doesn’t feel too sorry for them given that right-wingers routinely condone actual bigotry from their leaders. Addressing his conservative readers, Waldman admits that sometimes “liberals are too quick to see racist intent in a comment that may be innocuous or at worst…