http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ en Copyright 2008 Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:23:29 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.33 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:33:48 -0600 The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate.Speaking from the Rose Garden about 14 hours after the late Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and "take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people."The problem is that the Senate won't run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2009/Nov/08/big_question_mark__fate_of_health_care_in_senate.html 224314 PM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:17:53 -0600 Sunday, November 08, 2009Mutiny in Scrutiny?   [Jeffrey H. Anderson]It was always clear that the real health-care battle would be in the Senate.  But what would have been shocking eight months ago is to hear that it would take until November for the Democrats to pass a bill even in the House.  It would have been even more shocking to have heard that, even after a full-court-press by the White House, the bill would pass by only five votes — meaning that if just three of the 435 members had changed their minds, it would have changed the bill's...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/nothing_like_house_bill_will_pass_the_senate_224311.html 224311 PM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:54:01 -0600 Our national map allows you to see state-by-state voting patterns since 1960, and track the geographic and ideological shift in the Republican party since 1976.One year after hitting bottom in the aftermath of President Obama's election, Republicans have taken their first concrete steps toward recovery. But they remain an embattled and divided force, facing an electorate still skeptical about their capacity to govern and embroiled in a struggle between party regulars and populist conservative forces over how to return to power.With gubernatorial victories by Robert F. McDonnell in...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/republicans_seek_a_path_to_revival_224288.html 224288 PM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:50:11 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/obama039s_divisive_presidency_224281.html 224281 PM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:09:44 -0600 WASHINGTON "” As the most gifted orator of his generation, President Obama finds speechmaking perhaps his most potent political tool. It propelled him to national prominence in 2004 and to the White House in 2008. And whenever he needs to calm economic fears or revive stalled health care legislation, he takes to the lectern. But the limits of rhetoric were on display last week when the president could not rescue two foundering candidates in governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia. Has Mr. Obama lost his oratorical touch? Is the magic finally beginning to...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/the_president_whose_words_once_soared_224291.html 224291 PM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:28:39 -0600 LOS ANGELES -- Was George Santayana right when he said that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it?Well, perhaps the Republican Party can test that thesis for the rest of us. Forty-five years ago the Republicans in convention -- the convention that nominated Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater for president -- tried to boo New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller off the stage when he said: Receive news alerts"These extremists feed on fear, hate and terrorism. They encourage disunity ... The Republican Party must repudiate those people."It was no tea party, that one. Angry...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/08/conservatives_poised_to_repeat_history_99068.html 224312 PM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:29:44 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/08/bad_climate_for_global_worriers_99071.html 224313 PM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:44:25 -0600 Turn autoplay offTurn autoplay onPlease activate cookies in order to turn autoplay offImagine The Sopranos, The Wire and Gordon Gekko all rolled into one. You don't have to: the FBI has just broken one of the largest-ever insider dealing rings in Wall StreetImagine The Sopranos, The Wire and Gordon Gekko's Wall Street all rolled into one. You don't have to: the FBI has just broken one of the largest-ever insider dealing rings in Wall Street. It wire-tapped its way into a seedy world of secret tips, kickbacks and disposable, pre-paid mobile phones. A network including staff of...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/welcome_to_the_seedy_side_of_wall_street_224273.html 224273 PM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:36:21 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/08/downside_of_an_extended_hand_99062.html 224315 PM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:30:53 -0600 Hours after President Obama exhorted Democratic lawmakers to "answer the call of history," the House hit an unprecedented milestone on the path to health-care reform, approving a trillion-dollar package late Saturday that seeks to overhaul private insurance practices and guarantee comprehensive and affordable coverage to almost every American.After months of acrimonious partisanship, Democrats closed ranks on a 220-215 vote that included 39 defections, mostly from the party's conservative ranks. But the bill attracted a surprise Republican convert: Rep. Anh "Joseph"...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/house_dems_pass_sweeping_health_care_bill_224278.html 224278 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:01:21 -0600 With the House's landmark vote complete, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is facing dissent in the Democratic ranks over his health-care strategy "“ leaving him struggling to meet a Christmas deadline and fielding White House pressure to get the bill done. Even before Saturday's House vote, senators had begun to question why Reid suddenly embraced a public health insurance option "“ one that he didn't yet have the 60 votes to pass. In the process, the Senate debate over health-care has stopped dead, raising the possibility the Senate...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/all_eyes_turn_to_harry_reid_224282.html 224282 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:50:45 -0600 Saturday's debate on the House floor was at various turns entertaining, depressing, amusing, and even enraging. But, strictly speaking, it was not particularly dramatic.Yes, the final vote was close. A bill needs 218 votes to pass. This one got 220, including one not entirely expected Republican. And at least according to one Capitol Hill source, the leadership didn't have a bunch of extra votes in its pocket. (If they had, the source noted, they would not have made the deal on abortion funding.) But whatever the margin, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was saying all day long the bill would...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/the_drama_was_in_the_history_224277.html 224277 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:48:49 -0600 Why right-of-center candidates are succeeding in the age of Obama.Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.Separate multiple addresses with commasAll year, leading democrats from the president on down have argued that the Republican Party is in the midst of a catastrophic civil war. You know the story. Successive election defeats have narrowed the GOP's ideological range, and now an open struggle is afoot for control of its voice and agenda. Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, it seems, are out to destroy Republican moderates and commit the party to a radical...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/instead_of_splitting_the_gop_obama_united_it_224290.html 224290 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:45:48 -0600 FOR all cable news’s efforts to inflate Election 2009 into a cliffhanger as riveting as Balloon Boy, ratings at MSNBC and CNN were flat Tuesday night. But not at Fox News, where the audience nearly doubled its usual prime-time average. That’s what happens when you have a thrilling story to tell, and what could be more thrilling than a revolution playing out in real time? Frank Rich As Fox kept insisting, all eyes were glued on Doug Hoffman, the insurgent tea party candidate in New York’s 23rd Congressional District. A “tidal wave” was on its...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/cautionary_tales_from_last_tuesday_night_224301.html 224301 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:58:33 -0600 Americans are angry with Washington as much for what it isn't doing as what it is. What it isn't doing the most is paying attention to the still-raging economic disaster. Last week's job numbers show unemployment nationally bumping past 10 percent and surpassing 15 percent in Michigan. Unemployment keeps climbing, even though President Barack Obama and Congress nine months ago committed $787 billion to creating jobs. Since then, neither the White House nor Congress has spent a minute honestly analyzing whether the stimulus program is accomplishing its goal, and if not, what...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/why_are_jobs_a_low_priority_for_democrats_224296.html 224296 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:47:32 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/obama_by_the_numbers_224269.html 224269 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:18:49 -0600 Accessibility links Digital Publisher of the Year | Sunday 08 November 2009 | Barack Obama feed Advertisement Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business, latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV. Enhanced by...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/cool_obama_makes_americans_wistful_for_bush_224272.html 224272 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:42:57 -0600 The Great Recession is over — not officially, but by popular acclaim — and in this accepted fact we are invited to take comfort, even as the unemployment rate last week rose into double digits for the first time in a quarter-century.Experts have long assured us that economic life is governed by the business cycle, a repeating loop of downturn followed by expansion, as reliable as the seasons. In this context, worsening joblessness is like a punishing blizzard in April: Misery notwithstanding, the calendar promises spring. But just as climate change has altered how we...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/the_recession_is_over_but_not_the_layoffs_224286.html 224286 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:47:06 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/08/get_serious_sarah__99054.html 224287 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:07:27 -0600 Win tickets to the ATP finalsAriel LeveWhere am I?Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn’t look like a place to stop and stare, and that’s just the way the people who work there like it. The men and women who arrive in the watery dawn sunshine, dressed in Wall Street black, clutching black briefcases and BlackBerrys, are very, very private. They walk quickly from their black Lincoln town cars to the lobby, past, well, nothing, really. There’s no name plate on the building, no sign on the front desk and the armed...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/mr_goldman_sachs_039doing_god039s_work039_224270.html 224270 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:41:05 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/time_to_walk_away_from_peace_process_224285.html 224285 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:54:26 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/08/our_dangerous_cold_war_nostalgia_99058.html 224289 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:07:13 -0600 America’s dealings with Pakistan may be increasing the risk of radicalization.In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/are_nuclear_warheads_safe_in_pakistan_224279.html 224279 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:12:53 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/recall_heroic_deeds_that_changed_the_world_224298.html 224298 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:25:19 -0600 Forget the fall of the iron curtain: the events of '79 matter more.Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.Separate multiple addresses with commasWhat exactly was the historical significance of Nov. 9, 1989? Having spent much of the summer of that year in Berlin, I have long bitterly regretted that I was not there to join in the party the night the wall came down. I mean, what kind of an aspirant historian misses history being made?Customize the Newsweek homepage to feature the latest word from your favorite columnists.But two Berlin friends recently made...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/forget_berlin_03979_is_year_that_matters_more_224299.html 224299 AM Update Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:43:51 -0600 Thirteen dead and 28 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a "tragedy" (as too many people called it) but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the "war on terror." Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America's enemy abroad were killed in the safety and security...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/shooter_exposes_hole_in_us_teror_strategy_224295.html 224295 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:17:01 -0600 WASHINGTON - Democratic House leaders scrambled to round up enough support yesterday for their sweeping health care overhaul, getting last-minute help from White House advisers on the eve of a historic vote scheduled for today.Amid signs of division in the Democratic ranks, majority leader Steny Hoyer acknowledged that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her team had yet to secure the 218 commitments needed for passage. Obama, who picked up the phone and asked fence-sitting Democrats to get on board with his top domestic priority, delayed a trip to Capitol Hill until today. Representatives were put on...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/health_care_headache_for_house_democrats_224248.html 224248 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:05:36 -0600 What a difference a year makes. Charles M. Blow In October 2008, the candidate Barack Obama delivered a major economic speech in Toledo, Ohio. In it he said: “Right now, we face an immediate economic emergency, and that requires urgent action. We can’t wait to help workers and families and communities who are struggling right now — who don’t know if their job or their retirement will be there tomorrow; who don’t know if next week’s paycheck will cover this month’s bills. ... We need to pass an economic rescue plan for the...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/obama039s_economy_to_fix_224235.html 224235 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:36:33 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/07/pondering_the_fort_hood_massacre_99067.html 224251 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:56:35 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/will_us_medical_innovation_survive_224257.html 224257 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:19:54 -0600 MUCH OF the health care debate is focused on whether the country can afford the $850 billion the Congressional Budget Office estimates it will cost. The debate centers on whether the bundle of new taxes, credits, efficiencies, and Medicare spending cuts will be sufficient to offset the new spending so as to deliver health care reform without, in President Obama’s words, “adding a dime to the federal deficit.’’This debate misses the point. It assumes that doing nothing will cost nothing. It turns out that not expanding health insurance is a pretty...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/the_cost_of_not_enacting_health_care_reform_224249.html 224249 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:58:16 -0600 What is so wrong with the current medical system in the United States that we are being urged to rush headlong into a new government system that we are not even supposed to understand, because this legislation is to be rushed through Congress before even the Senators and Representatives have a chance to read it?Among the things that people complain about under the present medical care system are the costs, insurance company bureaucrats' denials of reimbursements for some treatments and the free loaders at hospital emergency rooms whose costs have to be paid by others. Receive news...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/07/the_costs_of_medical_care_part_iv__98984.html 224234 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:53:55 -0600 The health bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is bringing to a vote (H.R. 3962) is 1,990 pages. Here are some of the details you need to know. What the government will require you to do: • Sec. 202 (p. 91-92) of the bill requires you to enroll in a "qualified plan." If you get your insurance at work, your employer will have a "grace period" to switch you to a "qualified plan," meaning a plan designed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. If you buy your own insurance, there's no grace period. You'll have to enroll in a...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/obamacare_what_gov039t_will_require_you_to_do_224242.html 224242 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:38:57 -0600 Democrats need to focus on the economy.Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.Separate multiple addresses with commasSometimes I think the Democrats have a death wish. For Harry Reid to ruminate about putting off health-care reform until next year is to give the Teabaggers even more time to stir up populist outrage about an out-of-touch Congress. With every poll showing that the No. 1 concern among voters is the weak job picture, the White House seems unresponsive. The news, first reported by BusinessWeek, that Goldman Sachs received a supply of H1N1 vaccine...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/dems_need_to_focus_on_the_economy_224259.html 224259 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:22:50 -0600 Here we are at the big Health Care Bill Weekend! The House of Representatives is actually getting ready to vote on legislation. How long has this been in the works, anyway? Was "Mad Men" on TV when the debate started? Had TV been invented? Gail Collins Gail Collins and David Brooks talk between columns. On the eve of the big vote, leaders admitted that things could stretch into next week. But no later than Tuesday. Unless something else happens. Rome wasn't built in a day. Anyhow, we concerned citizens need to decide exactly what we're rooting for. Public...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/gop_wins_have_nothing_to_do_with_obama_224236.html 224236 AM Update Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:48:19 -0600 « What to do about bankers' pay | Main 06 Nov 2009 01:53 amA lot of the post-election commentary has been entertaining, if not very enlightening. To any disinterested observer,  the Republicans had a good day on the whole last Tuesday. Not an unalloyed success, bearing in mind the self-inflicted wound in New York, but looking at New Jersey and Virginia, a pretty good day. So the question was how this good result for the Republicans was going to be turned into a bad result, or a result of no significance either way. Eric Alterman...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/if_i_were_a_democrat_i_wouldn039t_be_smiling_224221.html 224221 AM Update Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:47:28 -0600 Accessibility links Digital Publisher of the Year | Saturday 07 November 2009 | Simon Heffer feed Advertisement Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business, latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV. Enhanced by...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/barack_obama_is_beatable--but_by_whom_224231.html 224231 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:45:41 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/dem_strategist_wh_warning_after_going_on_fox_224218.html 224218 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:22:15 -0600 One has to hope that the Obama administration does not believe its own rhetoric about the supposed success of its fiscal stimulus program in generating new jobs. For while the administration assures us that the fiscal stimulus is generating new jobs according to schedule, the U.S. labor market continues to deteriorate at an alarming rate. Failure to arrest this deterioration threatens to abort the incipient economic recovery and to aggravate an already bleak labor market situation.The Obama administration would like us to forget how reassuring they were about the U.S. employment outlook at...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/what_jobs_cognitive_dissonance_at_the_wh_224238.html 224238 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:10:53 -0600 In Baltimore, the 300 block of East 23 1/2 Street is getting patched up in time for winter. One economic stimulus program is paying to insulate 11 rental rowhouses, another is paying for furnaces and a third is covering the cost for reflective roofs to be installed by prison inmates in a job-training program. The block is part of one of the biggest initiatives ever undertaken by the federal government, a nationwide push to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. But as the national unemployment rate crosses into the double digits and Republicans question the stimulus program's...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/green_initiative_hasn039t_stimulated_jobs_224258.html 224258 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:51:32 -0600 The administration's biggest economic mistake so far was to badly underestimate last January how bad the employment situation would become by Fall. As a result, it low-balled the stimulus -- settling for a plan that, while avoiding even worse job losses, didn't go nearly far enough. Yes, I know. We're already in the gravitational pull of the midterm elections (look at the bizarre attention given to gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and even to a congressional election in the 23rd district of New York, as supposed harbingers of voter behavior a year from...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/why_we_need_even_more_stimulus_224256.html 224256 AM Update Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:48:56 -0600 First thought on Tuesday's elections: There's a lot of firing going on in America, and now that includes politicians. Seems only fair and will likely continue. I don't think voters in New Jersey and Virginia were saying, "Oh the Democrats are awful, and we hate them," nor were they saying, "Republicans are wonderful, and we love them." The voters were being practical, and thinking policy: "Will he raise my taxes?" In Jersey, they fired the incumbent governor because they couldn't imagine the state getting off its current trajectory (high...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/white_house_has_gotten_bad_at_listening_224170.html 224170 AM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:09:24 -0600 Work begins this weekend on one of America's newest national parks. The families of the people aboard Flight 93, which went down in Somerset, Pa., in the Sept. 11 attacks, will gather at the crash site today for the ceremonial groundbreaking. America's national parks preserve our most sacred natural spaces, such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, as well as important pieces of our national history such as the battlefields at Gettysburg. Construction of the first phase of the Pennsylvania memorial is scheduled to be completed in time for a dedication ceremony on the 10th anniversary...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/07/a_call_to_service_from_flight_93_224246.html 224246 AM Update Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:54:17 -0600 « America and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Jobs Numbers | Main 06 Nov 2009 01:34 pmThis was premeditated.  This wasn't VBC again.  That guy snapped, not this one.  He was so damn calm when he was shooting.  Methodical.  And he was moving tactically.  The Army really is diverse and we really do love all our own.  We signed up to be shot at but not at home.  Not unarmed.  No one should ever see what the inside of that medical...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/06/the_evil_that_men_do_224224.html 224224 PM Update Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:03:34 -0600 ]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/06/anguish_of_fort_hood_attack_will_echo_224220.html 224220 PM Update Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:51:13 -0600 Like a cold front on the weather map, everyone saw it coming. But that didn't mean that we weren't caught without our coats on today when US unemployment broke into double digits: 10.2% of the American labour force is now without a job. Most forecasts weren't expecting this sort of heavy weather until early next year, but a shrinking overall workforce "“ probably caused by discouraged workers dropping out of the hunt for new jobs "“ drove up the unemployment percentage. After last week's news of growth in the US economy for the first...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/06/america039s_jobless_chill_224223.html 224223 PM Update Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:01:13 -0600 It's one thing to be serene under fire, it's another to be delusional.More than a few Democrats in Congress are perplexed and worried that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting on ramming through a 1,900-page health care bill on Saturday, just days after her party took heavy losses in Tuesday's elections. "It reminds me of Major Nicholson, the obsessed British major in the film 'Bridge on the River Kwai,'" one Democrat told me. "She is fixated on finishing her health care bridge even as she's lost sight of where it's going and what damage it...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/06/dems_shouldn039t_push_through_a_partisan_health_bill_224216.html 224216 PM Update Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:34:26 -0600 Given the orgy of gloating on the right and the hand-wringing on the left that followed this week's elections, it would not seem unreasonable to conclude that next year's midterm elections have already been decided via Tuesday's results.The parties -- and their associated franchises in the punditocracy -- have split in predictable ways. Progressives see the two congressional special elections, which Democrats won in New York and California, as way more predictive of the national political mood than the two governor's races, which they lost in Virginia and New Jersey....]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/06/why_are_we_talking_about_2010_224217.html 224217 PM Update Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:40:07 -0600 Republican wins in the Virginia and New Jersey governors' races Tuesday and recent polling and economic trends reveal a political landscape that has changed dramatically since the president's convincing election victory a year ago.Democrats on Tuesday did win a New York congressional seat they hadn't held since the 19th century, in large measure because it became a proxy fight between warring factions in the Republican Party.But independents, the voters who often decide elections, shifted heavily to Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey. That trend, if it holds in 2010, could...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/06/democrats_fall_back_to_earth_with_a_thud_224174.html 224174 PM Update Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:21:41 -0600 On November 3, the fairy tale died. The election results in Virginia and New Jersey dismantled the self-satisfied, just-so story that Democrats have been telling themselves about last year's election.The story goes like this: In 2008, Americans voted for change not just in the nation's leadership, but in its fundamental political orientation. They wanted a shift to the left not seen since 1932. The nation's political map had been utterly transformed. Barack Obama owned the suburbs and independents, and laid claim to formerly secure Republican states. An outdated GOP had been...]]>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/06/does_obama_still_believe_the_fairy_tale_99052.html 224211 PM Update http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/more_stimulus_needed_224280.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/more_stimulus_needed_224280.html Editorials Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:16:53 -0600 http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/wrestling_with_tragedy_at_fort_hood_224294.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/wrestling_with_tragedy_at_fort_hood_224294.html Editorials Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:27:18 -0600 http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/too_scared_to_recognize_terrorism_224297.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/too_scared_to_recognize_terrorism_224297.html Editorials Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:07:59 -0600 http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/virginia039s_newest_lame_duck_224292.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2009/11/08/virginia039s_newest_lame_duck_224292.html Editorials Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:08:25 -0600