Campaign

On Monday, Huffington Post published a piece I wrote about Bill Clinton campaigning for democracy in Washington, in which I called for every Democrat, progressive and reformer to vote. My point here is that once the ballots are counted in Wisconsin, the general-election campaign for president will begin in earnest and the liberal base of the Democratic Party will roused for the first time since 2008, no matter who wins in the Badger State.

Whether it's Scott Walker or Tom Barrett, there is an overwhelming view of Wisconsin Democrats, national Democrats and liberal and labor groups that President Obama and national Democrats should have done far more to support Barrett.

On the issues of fairness in finance, economics and consumerism, Elizabeth Warren and the Occupy Wall Street movement speak for the majority of Americans. This terrifies the right, frightens the Republicans, and worries a few Democrats who like that money from the 1 percent. In my column this week, “Karl Rove's Grand Slam,” I suggested liberals and Democrats can attack the abuses most recently seen in the JPMorgan trading losses and the Facebook IPO fiasco and attack the Supreme Court travesty in Citizens United, while also raising money from wealthy liberals and Democrats until Citizens United is overturned.

Now Elizabeth Warren admits she told Harvard and Penn that she was Native American.

When you check those boxes and grab the benefits, you deny others who truly deserve them.

The Hill’s A.B. Stoddard sits down with Pundits Bloggers John Feehery and Peter Fenn to discuss the Wisconsin recall election and the 2012 Presidential campaign.

“Ya turned Injun, didn’t ya?” — Yankee soldier, just before he beats First Lieutenant John J. Dunbar (Indian name, Dances With Wolves) to a pulp with a rifle butt.

I guess it has been overall a pretty good couple of weeks when I’m invited to New York to meet with a religious conservative Israeli leader I deeply admire and when one piece is reported on extensively in The America Conservative (“Empire and its Jeffersonian Discontents,” 5/4/12) and another praised and reprinted by Lew Rockwell. Then a third is blasted across the Internet by the marginal fringe.

The Hill’s A.B. Stoddard takes your questions on the Obama campaign's attacks on Bain Capital and the direction of the 2012 presidential race.

Elizabeth Warren might be excused for wanting to be Native American. She can claim an old American soul, going back generations in Oklahoma. In the heartland it is almost universal for those who have been there for a few generations to claim Indian blood; that is, to wish it were there even if it isn't. It is not so much a lie as it is the acculturation of personal and regional American myth; the fabric of old-soul American consciousness. "Our spirit will walk among you," said Chief Joseph. Indeed it does.

The Hill’s A.B. Stoddard sits down with Pundits Bloggers John Feehery and Peter Fenn to discuss the 2012 election and the Republicans' new budget message.

From journalists to Democrats to Republicans, many in Washington this week lamented the defeat of Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar in his GOP primary election Tuesday night — he is literally the embodiment of a time gone by. Known for his vast record of accomplishments in foreign and domestic policy, particularly in his pioneering work on securing nuclear weapons, Lugar was known for always striking the right tone and working with Democrats. The election wasn't even close. Lugar's opponent, Richard Mourdock, backed by the Tea Party, beat the 80-year-old, six-term incumbent by 20 points.

In a statement regarding his loss to Richard Mourdock last night, Dick Lugar said, “If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate.”
 
Wise words from a man who spent the last 36 years in the United States Senate. Wise, but completely irrelevant in a primary election, where the biggest bloc of voters are not that interested in compromise.