As he said on 60 Minutes Sunday night: I think first and foremost, [the election] was a referendum on the economy. And the party in power was held responsible for an economy that is still underperforming and where a lot of folks are still hurting. The bad economy doesn’t fully explain what happened, of course. There were many other factors in play. I’m sure I don’t have to rehash them here. But it was the economy that fueled the anti-incumbent sentiment that swept much of the country...

I just wanted to let you all know that I and my team of bloggers over at The Reaction are live-blogging tonight’s election results/coverage. We’ll be at it until the early-morning hours with frequent updates, sometimes every couple of minutes. Apocalypse now? Live-blogging the 2010 midterm elections We all lean Democratic, and tonight looks to be a fairly miserable night, but do stop by (and keep checking back) if you’re interested — and feel free to join in by adding your...

For what it’s worth, I’ll offer my own predictions when I start live-blogging the election returns at my place this evening, but, for now, here’s a taste of where things stand: – Prognosticator (sometimes extraordinaire) Charlie Cook is predicting “a Democratic net loss of 50 to 60 seats, with higher losses possible,” far more than the 39 needed to take control. In the Senate, Republicans will pick up 6-8 seats, with Democrats now doing better in California (Boxer),...

There was much ado yesterday about reports that Bill Clinton had tried to get Democrat Kendrick Meek to withdraw from the Florida Senate race and throw his support behind Republican-turned-independent Charlie Crist in an effort to beat Republican Marco Rubio. Crist is even saying that he talked to Meek and “several people” at the White House about it. Clinton has confirmed that he did urge Meek to withdraw. What is not clear, though, is whether Meek did in fact agree to drop out, twice,...

Ken Buck, the Colorado Republican who thinks that gays are like alcoholics, said last year that he objected to a fundamental principle of American constitutional democracy: I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution. Now, he rightly noted that the Constitution bars “a religion that’s sanctioned by the government,” but, in his view, that “doesn’t mean that we need to have a separation between government...

Contra Frank Rich (in an otherwise good column) and others, FDL’s Blue Texan makes a great point about the Teabaggers (one that many of us have made but that the media are generally ignoring, as it contradicts their narrative). It’s not all about the economy, stupid: Anyone who thinks the Teabaggers’ unhinged “anger and bitterness” will subside in the face of an improving economy really needs to take a closer look at objective polling on the Teabaggers and review the...

Angle continues to outdo herself. The Las Vegas Sun‘s Jon Ralston has the latest — and it’s a doozy of a whopper: If this isn’t Sharron Angle, the great revisionist historian, in a nutshell, I’m not sure what is. In the video clip at right [ed. note: click on the link above to see the clip], you not only can see the GOP U.S. Senate nominee telling a group of Hispanic children at Rancho High School that images of Latinos in her ad that are clearly Latinos may not be....

Alaska blogger Jeanne “AKMuckraker” Devon has obtained “internal emails” that, in her view, “provide the most conclusive evidence to date that Palin will be running for president.” Specifically, a September e-mail from Todd Palin to Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller, SarahPAC Treasurer Tim Crawford, and Palin and Miller attorney Thomas Van Flein states that Sarah’s earlier endorsement of Miller for Republican nominee (over incumbent Lisa Murkowski) shouldn’t...

Yes, believe it or not, World War I is finally about to come to an end — even though there’s already been a II and neocons are angling for a III. From Britain’s Telegraph: The First World War will officially end on Sunday, 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies. The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another. Germany...

Yes, they’d be bad, really bad, for the economy if extended. Ezra Klein: CBO Director Doug Elmendorf testified before the Senate Budget Committee [yesterday] and dropped something of a bombshell. Extending the Bush tax cuts, he said, will “probably reduce income relative to what would otherwise occur in 2020.” The reason is simple: Debt. Elmendorf doesn’t deny that tax cuts stimulate the economy. But they don’t stimulate it that much, he says, and over the long run,...

Dear Mr. Vice President, I like you. I really do. I was very happy when your current boss tapped you as his running mate back in ’08. I think you’ve got a good head on your shoulders and that you usually know what you’re talking about, even if it doesn’t always come out well. But… seriously. What’s with telling the Democratic base, your base, to “stop whining“? Sure, I get your point — as inartful as it was. If you put Democrats up against Republicans,...

The other day on Governor’s Island, just off Manhattan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, responding to the controversy surrounding the planned Islamic community center near Ground Zero, a overheated controversy drummed up by conservatives, most of whom are not New Yorkers and yet who want to tell New York what to do (e.g., Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich), gave what I can only describe as a truly brilliant speech on the freedom of religion, the acceptance of cultural difference, and the diversity...

Yesterday at WaPo, E.J. Dionne responded to the Shirley Sherrod fiasco with a blistering indictment of the mainstream media. It’s worth reading in full, but here are a couple of key passages: The smearing of Shirley Sherrod ought to be a turning point in American politics. This is not, as the now-trivialized phrase has it, a “teachable moment.” It is a time for action. The mainstream media and the Obama administration must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently...

With the Bush tax cuts (on both the wealthy and middle class) set to expire, Democrats have a great opportunity to back Republicans into a corner and to win both politically and on policy, argues Jon Chait: The key factor here is that, just as Republicans got to frame the debate in 2001 by combining the tax cuts into an up or down vote, Democrats can frame the debate now by separating the policies Republicans pretend to care about from the ones they actually care about. Republicans want to have a...

So BP has apparently stopped the oil leak — for now. And not a dead sea turtle too soon. (Seriously, click on this link to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which is posting “daily wildlife collection reports” as part of its oil spill response. It’s sad and depressing and terrifying.) Thanks BP! You’re the best! ********** No, not really. You’re not the best. And the catastrophe isn’t over. Brad Plumer: [T]he Macondo site won’t be fully and permanently...

Argentina’s had a pretty crazy, if not uninteresting, political history — from a military regime in the ’40s, to Juan Perón and “peronism” (and Eva “Evita” Duarte, his famous second wife) in the ’40s and ’50s, to various coups and a succession of short-lived governments in the ’50s and ’60s, to an authoritarian military dictatorship in the ’60s and ’70s following the so-called Revolución Argentina, to Perón again, now...

Did you know that in 2001, around the time Chandra Levy, an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, disappeared and media attention focused on Democratic Rep. Gary Condit, with whom Levy, who was from Condit’s district, had had an affair, there was another serious incident, if one that received far less attention, involving a young woman, one Lori Klausutis, who worked for then-Rep. Joe Scarborough, now a big-shot MSNBC host? I didn’t either, until I read about Markos “Kos”...

I spent the past several days well away from Toronto’s downtown core, well away from the G20 protest areas, well away from the security net that effectively divided the city into two. I used to live downtown, near the University of Toronto, and I still work downtown, in a high-security area, but I now live in the suburbs east of the city. I didn’t ignore what went on, though. I couldn’t. It was all over the news, scenes of a police car on fire, of protesters crowding the streets,...

Last Friday, Canadian-American billionaire Mort Zuckerman posted an opinion piece at his U.S. News and World Report in which he claims — right in the headline — that the “world sees Obama as incompetent and amateur” in the area of foreign policy. In an attempt to support his claim, he cites criticism of Obama on a single issue (nuclear weapons) from French President Nicolas Sarkozy (a man fighting for his political life in a country that thrives on populist anti-Americanism),...

Perhaps you’ve already seen this now-notorious clip of Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC) confronted by a student-reporter (and a cameraman) and responding, well, let’s just say, inappropriately: Glenn Greenwald thinks that it’s a clear-cut case of assault — or at least that Etheridge should be arrested and charged with assault (I assume that Glenn does not presume guilt, which would be for a jury to decide). Glenn is backed up by John Amato and John Cole, among others. And the evidence...