“If you work for the DNC or RNC, or if you cover politics for the media, elections are the end. The conversation of policy isn’t even really about policy, so much as it’s about how policy will effect the next election. But for others of us, policy is the end. Winning elections is nice, but you don’t elect candidates so that they can stand in front the capitol and look pretty, anymore than you send soldiers to the field for a photo-op. They’re there to do a job. And sometimes...

As noted here and elsewhere, multiple retirements have been announced in the last 24 hours: Democratic Senators Byron Dorgan (ND) and Christopher Dodd (CT), plus Democratic Governor Bill Ritter (CO). Adding in the other Senators planning to retire (three additional Democrats, six Republicans) — plus the D and R members of the House calling it quits (nine and 12, respectively, by last count) — this seems like one of the most extensive bipartisan movements of the past year. But is...

Others have probably written about this topic already, and I missed it because I was (until this morning) suffering from a severe case of holiday fog. In case you have also been a victim of said fog, David Brooks tosses a spotlight on the following in his column today. The tea party movement is … now more popular than either major party. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of the tea party movement. Only 35 percent of Americans have...

Writing in the NYT, Michael Kinsley begs the question and suggests “the nation’s border is as good a line as any” … … the national border is a “bright line,” and if people captured within the United States are going to be treated as if they were somewhere else — provided that they are certified terrorists — things are going to get complicated quickly. What about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in...

Rep. Parker Griffith (Ala.) announced last month his intention to switch parties, from Democrat to Republican. Now we learn that his “staff has resigned en masse.” Details at The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room. UPDATE: Rep. Griffith’s departed staff might want to be a little more robust in their fact-checking when they list examples of “great Democratic conservative leadership” from Alabama’s Fifth Congressional District.

Friendships are typically developed on the ground of common experience and perspective. It should thus be no surprise that — as a Republican until 2006 — I count among my friendships a fair number of Republican and Republican-inclined individuals. Granted, those friendships are based on much more than politics, which is a key reason why these individuals are still my friends. One of those friends, more so than the others, enjoys challenging my political change of heart. He frequently...

My boss is not an Obama fan. No, I’m not referring to Mr. Gandelman. I’m referring to the other boss — the one at the company that pays me for what I do. That boss is not an Obama fan — and he struggles to understand why I am. Two days before Christmas, that boss dropped by my office. I was one of the few still there; many had already left for some extended R&R over the holidays. We chatted about work-related items; about our sons, who long ago attended the same...

Earlier this month — around the time Sen. Ben Nelson’s United Methodist Church was chiming in on health care reform — Washington University announced the formation of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics, named for the former Senator who offered a (very good) book on the same topic in 2006. This confluence of events was the subject of my latest guest commentary for St. Louis Public Radio, aired yesterday morning. ——————- Addendum:...

The editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch offers its take on a “decade of hyper-partisanship.” One paragraph from that editorial summarizes its premise perhaps better than any other … The money is in partisanship. A member of Congress can’t afford to be a moderate, not if he wants to keep his job. Politicians who stray too far from party purity will face a well-funded primary campaign from the left (Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut in 2008) or the right (Sen. Arlen...

Mike Allen bylines an article for Politico re: Dick Cheney’s tirade about Obama “trying to pretend we are not at war.” Andrew Sullivan accuses Allen of being a “stenographer” for Cheney, relaying the former VP’s accusations verbatim, sans critical analysis. I don’t know much about Allen and I suppose there could be a history here that triggered Sullivan’s reaction; a history that might be readily discoverable if I took the time to look for it, although...

This Politico report from yesterday suggests it might be … After nearly a year, this is what’s become of the health care debate: Democrats hunkered behind closed doors on a bill struggling to gain public support, Republicans lobbing one partisan grenade after the next. In the wake of this grinding fight, Obama’s campaign pledge [of bipartisanship] now seems hollow, either hopelessly naïve or deeply cynical. Far from being a show of bipartisan goodwill, the health care debate has proved...

Sen. Jeff Sessions is convinced they were … Savings from Medicare touted by Democrats as a means to pay for the Senate health care bill were double-counted and the legislation will increase the deficit, not decrease it, a senior Republican senator said Wednesday, citing a new letter from the Congressional Budget Office. I’m not inclined to give unwarranted credibility to FOX News or the GOP, but I thought this was a serious-enough allegation to click through to the actual CBO letter,...

Chris Cillizza’s “5 Myths about a president’s first year” — to be published in Sunday’s WaPo, available now online, and previewed in Cillizza’s blog yesterday afternoon.

Case in point … Senator Ben Nelson’s United Methodist Church sent out a sharply-worded email this afternoon to its members in Nebraska, urging them to push Nelson to vote for health care legislation, a sign of the increasing organization and sophistication of left-leaning religious groups. For what it’s worth, my wife and I left the Catholic Church earlier this year and joined a United Methodist Church in our neighborhood. Increasingly, we found that our political and social views...

Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, seems to be doing just that … Our message is that it’s time for the Senate to finish its job. We probably have the best we are going to do, and trying to improve the Senate bill doesn’t seem realistic right now. The real final chapter in this story is going to be written in the conference committee. Regarding what to ask for in conference, Stern says … I think there are certain issues here that are far less ideological...

Weighing in on the side of progressives who believe the Senate health care bill should pass, Paul Krugman admonishes his political cousins to “take a deep breath, and consider just how much good this bill would do, if passed — and how much better it would be than anything that seemed possible just a few years ago.” I rarely read Krugman. He too often breathlessly demands more government action. And while my conservative heritage has softened (some might say dissolved) during the...

From an op-ed in today’s NYT … Climate talks have been going on in Copenhagen for a week now, and it appears to be a two-sided debate between alarmists and skeptics. But there are actually four different views of global warming. The writer proceeds to offer a “taxonomy of the four,” labeling them the “Denialists,” “Skeptics,” “Warners,” and “Calamatists.” He then summarizes … The calamatists and denialists are primarily...

I suggested yesterday that Senate progressives would not be acting rationally if they killed their chamber’s health bill because it doesn’t go far enough — i.e., because it was tailored back from their vision of “great” to something “less great” in order to secure the votes of the Independent senator from Connecticut and/or the Republican senators from Maine. Nate Silver goes a step further, claiming Senate progressives would be ‘[expletive] crazy’...

Sen. Lieberman is at it again, frustrating the party with which he caucuses: In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said on Sunday that he would vote against the health care legislation in its current form. This potentially spells the end of the notion (in 2009 at least ) of expanding Medicare to qualified individuals as young as 55. Now Senate Democrats face what is perhaps their final and most difficult challenge: Even after...

In my unsolicited and potentially wrong opinion, Andrew Sullivan is at his worst when he fixates on Sarah Palin. He’s at his best when he writes about the conservative motifs in Obama’s words and governing style. In the latter category, consider one if his posts yesterday, “The Tragedy of Hope.” An excerpt: When I have been asked why I, as a conservative, support [Obama] the way I do, I can only answer: listen to him. What is the philosophy that most affirms “the...

Earlier this week, Andrew Sullivan noted a left-leaning voice disavowing the left. We picked up on that, contrasting the disenchanted left-leaner with a disenchanted right-leaner. Subsequently, Andrew published several of his readers’ favorable reactions to the renegade lefty. Glenn Greenwald decided to chastise those Sullivan readers — and then the readers (predictably) punched back. I’m highlighting this back-and-forth because it’s much more than a petty squabble; there’s...

If your political mind has been entirely consumed by issues like Afghanistan and health care reform, you may have missed the reports about the continuing unrest inside Iran. Today’s NYT has an update. In the course of the opposition’s evolution since this summer’s stolen election, it appears the most widely recognized of the losing presidential candidates, Mir Hussein Moussavi, has been somewhat sidelined. Still, he continues to display moments of defiant courage: As Mr. Moussavi...

Last week, we heard one blogger explain his departure from the political right. This week, we hear a different blogger explain her departure from the political left. Good for both of them. And welcome to the “disenchanted majority,” a term I first used three-and-a-half years ago, in an old-media op-ed (no longer available online), to identify those of us who live in a diverse space between the contemporary poles of political debate.

Confession: I disproportionately read and link to Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks. So be it. Let’s move on. Today, Brooks on the innovation economy: … there’s a straightforward way to revive innovation. In an unfairly neglected white paper on the subject, President Obama’s National Economic Council argued that the U.S. should not be in the industrial policy business. Governments that try to pick winners “too often end up wasting resources and stifling rather than promoting...

Fascinating: One quasi-hybrid insurance plan, however, has long tantalized policy makers as a potential model for expanding insurance coverage, and in recent days Democratic negotiators have returned to it as perhaps the last best hope of a deal: the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, or F.E.H.B.P., which provides insurance coverage to more than eight million federal workers, including members of Congress and their dependents. A team of 10 senators, tapped by the majority leader, Harry Reid...