Category: American Politics

As I write, the 2012 home stretch is still a few months away. There’s still time to get beyond our own disastrous Democratic/liberal/progressive “groupthink/groupspeak.” What is “groupspeak?” It’s the verbal equivalent of what Professor Haidt has described as “motivated reasoning,” preconceived ideas that get draped in rationalizations and then expressed in tired old words or […]

Business and personal cards, that is. Once again, the word “disclose” is in the air. A federal appeals court recently ruled that big spending political groups must disclose their donors, despite Federal Election Commission fudging on the issue.(1) New light is also being focused on the much ignored second part of the Supreme Court’s naïve […]

Right now the national argument about progressive framing seems entirely focused on what story President Obama or the Democrats should be telling. But we could all do a lot better when we tell our stories. One way to start is by paying more attention to the fact that the American heart really is broken right […]

Right now the news looks grim: Republican hostage taking in state capitals, federal shutdown narrowly averted, bombing in Libya at taxpayer expense, continued economic pain for many Americans. But public resistance is growing. To keep that going, we need to get our own narrative right and create smart language to spread it. But there’s a […]

The March 4 deadline to get our nation funded or shut down is coming fast. The battle over our future is at a fever pitch now. What kind of a country do we want in 4, 8, or 10 years?  The decisions our legislators make by the 4th and after will set our course for […]

Word is that Congress will receive President Obama’s budget in early February. But it’s already in trouble, given the Rights’ latest hostage game—stopping U.S. default-prevention, unless they get their cuts. How can progressives help to counter this? The first step is framing the problem in a way Americans can get. To begin with, “the federal” budget […]

Although the Right claims their recent win justifies downsizing government etc., etc., everyone now knows they just plan to stop Obama.  Anything else they said is just a big con.  But it’s an “American” con. We progressives need to understand this much better over the next two years. Very often when the public votes the way […]

Let’s Reinvent America Ourselves! Right now the nation’s focus is starting to move to the upcoming election. But framing for election work is tightly scripted by the Democratic Party. It still looks focused on a few safe leverage points vis-à-vis the Republican message. Even if the Democrats do go a little bit “bigger” before November […]

These days it’s pretty much agreed that our country is at risk of a double dip recession or even a full-fledged depression. Yet astoundingly enough, some “Have” members of Congress were unwilling to extend unemployment benefits or provide aid to the states without new cuts elsewhere. Deficit Delirium and Fear of Creeping Socialism are the […]

Today the phrase, ‘the American dream,’ still means getting a house in the suburbs, holding down a well-paid job we like doing, and having enough money to buy whatever we want. Of course, ‘the American dream’ defined this way is looking more dead every day. Too many Americans are still unemployed or cannot get new […]