Yesterday the NY Times reported that the military is preparing a big troop buildup in Afghanistan. This could be a terrible miscalculation and I'm only slightly less worried about it under Obama than I was under Bush. In fact... when you think about which politician is more like Alcibiades......

One of the best candidates Blue America ever worked to elect-- albeit unsuccessfully-- was John Laesch, who ran against Denny Hastert in 2006 and attempted to fight off the Democratic bosses and bring progressive politics of working families to IL-14. We asked him for his take on the Rahm Emanuel...

I can't even keep track of all the Republicans, ex-Republicans, Republicans-turned-Independents, ex-Bush staffers, former Reagan advisors, GOP pundits, NeoCons and fellow travelers who have dissed McCain and endorsed Obama in the last month. I was almost relieved when I saw that McCain got an unexpected nod in his direction yesterday...

Ever since McCain clinched the GOP presidential nomination and marched right into Denny Hastert's congressional district to campaign vigorously with Jim Oberweis for the seat Hastert was giving up, a shudder went up the spine of Republican incumbents. An unknown Democratic challenger, Bill Foster, straight from a bitterly fought primary...

Olbermann is never kind to extremist lunatics. It's taken him a while but he's finally gotten around to Robin "Weepy" Hayes, a kind of feudal type who represents a sprawling district that stretches from Charlotte to Fayetteville (NC-08). Apparently he had either just lost control of himself or he was...

Earlier today, at DownWithTyranny, we discussed how the Republican brand is so tarnished nationally, that even in deeply red districts in The South, voters are turning away from the hatred and divisiveness the GOP represents to embrace the Democratic message of change and of shared prosperity for working families....

In his weekly radio address this morning John McCain warned that Barack Obama wants to-- Heaven forbid-- spread the wealth around. He would tax-- at a rate even less than under the Clinton Administration-- multimillionaires like... well, like Cindy McCain who inherited a fortune from her gangster, bootlegger father, and...

As Barack Obama puts away state after state, it's starting to dawn on the special interests behind the Bush Regime and the Republican Party that the only chance they have to cling on to power is through congressional obstruction. The GOP's shifting strategy and an alarmist editorial in today's...

If you're serious about seeing a progressive agenda in this country, it isn't enough just to help elect Barack Obama to the White House or even give the generic Democrats -- from solid progressives like Richard Durbin, Barbara Boxer and Sheldon Whitehouse to the nominal Democrats from deep inside the...

Alan Grayson, the progressive Democrat running against a desperate Bush rubber stamp in Orlando, Ric Keller, has had some of the best press of anyone running for Congress this year. The Vanity Fair feature about his work fighting for taxpayers against Iraq war profiteers is powerful and the article...

I was furious the other day when I read that the Sierra Club had declined to endorse Darcy Burner (D-WA) in what is arguably the most important congressional race in the country. It made me think back to Markos' first book, Crashing the Gates and how he chastised single-issue...

This morning CBS News reported that Lagging In The Polls, Palin Shifts To Fear Tactics. Can anyone in their right mind take A Know Nothing Winky-Dinky seriously enough to fear the nonsense that comes randomly shooting out of her lipsticked trap? Apparently not in Virginia, where Obama now...

Early in his congressional career McCain was taking bribes -- to the tune of $112,000 in campaign contributions -- from Charles Keating, a family friend and crooked banker for whom he was caught strong-arming federal regulators. Eventually McCain's interference on behalf of his pal Keating -- who was also involved...

A few weeks ago we did a Blue America contest to award $5,000 to a congressional candidate. Our winner, Annette Taddeo (D-FL) wound up with over $36,000 (including matching funds from Chris Van Hollen and some other DCCC leaders). This week we started a week-long contest to pick a Senate...

A few weeks ago Blue America launched a competition among 9 of our progressive House candidates. It was far more successful than we had imagined when our PAC offered $5,000 as seed money to get the show on the road. In the end, 1,899 individual donors contributed over $43,000 to...

Even if you don't blame McCain, per se, for the Wall Street meltdown this weekend, there is no getting around the fact that the Republican Party mania against the federal regulatory agenda protecting consumers and workers has been part of the McCain gestalt from the time he was...

Earlier today DownWithTyranny covered an aspect of the infrastructure crisis and how the amendment to fund the Highway Trust had passed unanimously in the Senate and by an overwhelming bipartisan vote in the House, 376 to 29. With the exception of one lunatic fringe extremist from Indiana (Mike Pence),...

Not all artists get angry when political figures appropriate their music for campaigns. Many people are aware how furious the Wilson sisters are about how McCain pirated the classic Heart song, "Barracuda," to further the mythologizing of right-wing extremist Sarah Palin. Meanwhile, though, every other songwriter in the world...

Last Saturday when we started a little Blue America contest to ask our readers to choose a House candidate to receive a Blue America PAC check for $5,000 we had no idea we were about to raise five times that amount for our 9 candidates. And yet, as we...

When my friend Jane saw what Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the DCCC's Red to Blue program, which is charged with defeating Republicans and replacing them with Democrats, saw how shabbily Wasserman Schultz had treated progressive Navy veteran Doug Tudor, her astonishment was palpable. "Wow," she wrote, "We...