The American Prospect articles from December 2004

The American Prospect archives from December 2004

Morals of the election.(Prospects)
December 1, 2004... What has the past half-century of our history achieved if not a moral transformation? Equal rights and respect for black people have been a moral cause. So, too, have equality for women and open acceptance of gays. Liberals have advocated each...

An uncertain trumpet.(Prospects)
December 1, 2004... Were the Democrats repudiated as too left wing for the country, especially on cultural issues? Or were they mainly outplayed? Depending on what one concludes, dramatically different remedies follow. In fact, the country was split almost evenly,...

Let the record reflect.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... IN "SWIFTER THAN TRUTH" [November 2004], Todd Gitlin writes that I didn't "call" Swift Boat Veterans for Truth leader John O'Neill on his views when he appeared on This Week in August. That's not true. A look at the transcript of O'Neill's...

State speaks.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... IN TRYING TO SORT THROUGH Tara McKelvey's confusing, innuendo-filled article ["Of Human Bondage," November], I realize the crucial problem: She refuses to believe the empirical reality that tolerated, regulated, and legalized prostitution is...

Separation anxiety.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... I FOUND ROBERT KUTTNER'S article in The American Prospect headlined "What Would Jefferson Do?" [November] poignant, cogent, and deeply relevant in today's political discourse. As an American Jew, I find the Christian right-wing movement very...

A redder Senate in '06?(Devil in the Details)
December 1, 2004... AFTER THE PUMMELING they took on November 2, Democrats consoled them selves by thinking that history will be on their side in 2006. After all, midterm elections normally spell congressional gains for the party out of power in the White House....

Sales-tax scam.(Devil in the Details)
December 1, 2004... BASKING IN THE GLOW OF his first actual presidential victory, President Bush held a November 4 press conference in which he claimed a broad mandate for big-time "tax reform" the details--or even broad outline--of which he spelled out neither on...

While you were sleeping.(Devil in the Details)
December 1, 2004... November was a bad month for schadenfreude. For two weeks in October, it looked like the most maddening man in America was destined for a humiliating fall from power. Blue America was all bet squealing in anticipation. But when November broke,...

Brave new words.(Devil in the Details)
December 1, 2004... MORE QUALIFIED More rigidly right-wing, as in Dr. James Dobson's remark that there are many Republican senators who are "more qualified" than Aden Specter to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee HAS BEEN ACHIEVED Has gotten worse. Outgoing...

Top of the world, Ma.(Devil in the Details)
December 1, 2004... LOVE IT OR HATE IT, THE World Bank is one of the most influential forces in fighting poverty. Led by James Wolfensohn, the bank provided $20.1 billion for projects in developing countries this year and currently employs 9,300 people. "It's...

Uno, dos, tres ...(Devil in the Details)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... OH, THOSE EXIT POLLS! Stoking Democratic expectations in the afternoon and early evening of election day, only to have them come crashing down as the actual votes came in. Now those polls have been adjusted to more closely reflect the actual...

Life after Yasir: Ariel Sharon has outlived his hated rival Arafat. But now that he's gone, so is Sharon's biggest excuse for not negotiating with the Palestinians.(Dispatches)
December 1, 2004... TEL AVIV, ISRAEL -- YASIR ARAFAT'S death is a historic milestone in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a new starting point in the efforts to resolve the decades old holy land feud. It presents an opportunity to resolve the conflict, but lots of...

Clothes call: at midnight on December 31, WTO rules regulating the international trade in apparel are set to expire. If you think China is dominant now ...(Dispatches)
December 1, 2004... AT MIDNIGHT ON DECEMBER 31, AMERICANS will toast the new year with a drunken round of "Auld Lang Syne." On the other side of the globe, China will be celebrating by opening new facto ties more than 3,000 new textile and apparel factories that...

Tax missimplification: it's not a done deal.(The Taxonomist)
December 1, 2004... Two days after his re-election, President Bush offered the public some guidance on what he says will be a central goal of his second term: "tax simplification." Bush said he wants to "encourage people to invest and save," i.e., he favors still...

What's next? The mourning period is over. Now, four simple guidelines for becoming a majority party.(The Road Ahead)
December 1, 2004... THIS TIME THERE ARE NO EXCUSES--NO THWARTED POPULAR majority, no fatal butterfly ballots or hanging chads, no renegade Supreme Court decision, no Nader factor. This was a defeat, pure and simple--not a landslide, not an unambiguous mandate for...

Opportunity knocks: it may look grim now, but the Republicans' hubris and incompetence will ultimately prove their undoing.(The Road Ahead)
December 1, 2004... ALAN BRINKLEY'S ILLUMINATING PIECE IS RIGHT IN CONCLUDING that the "only real option" for Democrats is to convert Republicans (and, presumably, independent voters) into Democrats. He sees years of hard labor before this can be accomplished. I...

Voting alone: in red-state America, politics is much more deeply integrated into other aspects of people's daily lives.(The Road Ahead)
December 1, 2004... ALAN BRINKLEY HAS DONE AN ADMIRABLE JOB THINKING through why George W. Bush won. I particularly agree with his analysis of the damaged state of the Democratic Party's infrastructure and aim here to deepen our understanding of what needs fixing....

Conviction politics: one Democratic hero emerged from November 2. His fellow Democrats should study up on why.(The Road Ahead)
December 1, 2004... IT MAY BE A BIT MUCH TO BEGIN MY REMARKS BY PUTTING pressure, like a deconstructionist, on a single word--a word that may have been just a throwaway--but I'll take the risk. Near the beginning of his thoughtful essay, Alan Brinkley writes,...

Think globally: just how many elections do Democrats have to lose before they deal with their foreign-policy problem?(The Road Ahead)
December 1, 2004... THE 2004 ELECTION RESULTS CARRY ESPECIALLY PROFOUND implications for the Democrats on foreign policy. John Kerry's defeat means that the party must develop both new voices and a broader vision of America's role in the world. It will not be...

Mind the gender gap: why Democrats are losing women at an alarming rate.(The Road Ahead)
December 1, 2004... THE EROSION OF THE GENDER GAP IN THIS ELECTION starkly illustrates Alan Brinkley's insights regarding how issues of class and values pose challenges for progressives and the Democratic Party. In the last two presidential elections, the...

Operation save face: victory in Iraq as Bush has defined it is utterly unattainable. There's a better way out.
December 1, 2004... THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT THE PRESENT U.S. STRATEGY IN Iraq--if indeed the Bush administration's ever-shifting plans can be called a strategy--that suggests more of it will work. On January 31, national elections are scheduled in Iraq. Except when...

Heal Thy 'Self': what the Democrats didn't get: for most middle-class people, self-interest means far more than economics.(Self-Interest)
December 1, 2004... IT'S TIME FOR THE QUADRENNIAL DEMOCRATIC LAMENT about the false consciousness and dismaying distractibility of the poor. "John Kerry's supporters should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended...

Choice language: abortion is a right that ends in sorrow. Democratic rhetoric in the future must acknowledge this fact.(Abortion)
December 1, 2004... OK, I'VE UNLISTED MY PHONE NUMBER, CHANGED MY NAME, and moved to a different (red) state. Now I can safely say it: The Democratic defense of abortion makes me cringe. It's the stridency, the insistence, the repetition of a "woman's right...

Insecurity blanket: Kerry's foreign-policy problem was really his party's. It's time for Democrats to get serious once and for all.(National Security)
December 1, 2004... ANYONE PURPORTING TO TELL YOU THE REASON JOHN KERRY lost the election is either fooling himself or fooling you. The origins of any close defeat are necessarily multicausal, and any number of different things could have won it for Kerry. ...

Wedding-bell blues: it's possible that Democrats could have fought this one to a draw if they had emphasized discrimination.(Gay Marriage)
December 1, 2004... ON OCTOBER 28, AS DEMOCRATS SCRAMBLED VOLUNTEERS to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, Philip Burress, chairman of the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, was so confident of victory that he wasn't even in the state. Burress had championed Issue...

God and the New Deal: the men who made the New Deal and built the CIO were secular liberals and socialists. But they knew that to succeed, they would have to accommodate traditional religion.
December 1, 2004... SO THE DEMOCRATS ARE HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE POLITICS of cultural traditionalism? So what else is new? To be sure, the gap in the electorate between the observant and the secular is widening. But it's just one part of a larger cultural...

Staying the course: the fight isn't over; it's just begun. And progressives have more ammunition than you think.
December 1, 2004... THIS ONE HURTS BIG. BUT PROGRESSIVES HAVE LITTLE TIME for grief or recrimination. George W. Bush claims a mandate for his radical domestic agenda and for his preemptive foreign policy. The dollar has already begun to fall and interest rates to...

All action, no talk: the Democrats do a very good job of mobilizing. But they're not so great at persuading.
December 1, 2004... A CALIFORNIA LABOR UNION LEADER ONCE DESCRIBED TO me the 1966 campaign to re-elect Democrat Pat Brown as governor. "We had a massive campaign to identify our voters," he said, "we contacted everyone at least twice, and we did a tremendous job...

What's up, docs? It's impossible not to sympathize with liberal documentary filmmakers' political impulses. But there's a different progressive ideal that's been lost.(Film)(Critical Essay)
December 1, 2004... "WHO KNOWS?" KEN CORDIER ASKED, by way of an answer. It was a moment of uncharacteristic uncertainty for the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth member and former Vietnam War prisoner of war, who had just been asked by an audience member...

Then came the hammer.(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... THE HAMMER: TOM DELAY, GOD, MONEY, AND THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS BY LOU DUBOSE AND JAN REID * PUBLIC AFFAIRS * 306 PAGES * $26.00 ON CAPITOL HILL: THE STRUGGLE TO REFORM CONGRESS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, 1948-2000 BY JULIAN E....

Big-box battle.(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... SELLING WOMEN SHORT: THE LANDMARK BATTLE FOR WORKERS' RIGHTS AT WAL-MART BY LIZA FEATHERSTONE * BASIC BOOKS * 336 PAGES * $25.00 WHEN BETTY DUKES, A 56-YEAR-OLD African-American Wal-Mart worker in Pittsburg, California, first read about Sam...

Keeping the faith.(The Last Word)
December 1, 2004... Once again, Democrats are "rethinking" what they stand for. After previous defeats, such "rethinkings" resulted in rightward drifts. Democrats courted upscale suburban swing voters and steadily distanced themselves from the party's...