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Why Obama's Got "Complete Confidence" In Clinton
By John Nichols
So it will be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The senator from New York, who lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama because she supported authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq when her rival from Illinois opposed the move, will now be the face of President Obama's foreign policy.
The final detail of the plan to put Clinton in charge of the State Department -- an agreement by former President Bill Clinton to work with the Obama transition team to address potential conflicts of interest arising from his international financial dealings -- has been settled. Obama made the announcement Monday morning in Chicago, at a press conference where he confirmed that he'll retain Defense Secretary Robert Gates and name retired Marine General Jim Jones as his national security adviser, former deputy attorney general Eric Holder as attorney general, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as homeland security secretary and Obama campaign foreign-policy aide Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
(76) CommentsNovember 30, 2008
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Worried By Obama's Picks? Support Anti-War Groups
By John Nichols
Tens of millions of Americans will prayed for peace as they celebrated Thanksgiving Day, and they will do so many more times during the coming Holiday Season.
Even non-believers will acknowledge that prayer can be powerful – providing measures of solace, insight and inspiration.
But prayer is made meaningful when it is linked to action.
(48) CommentsNovember 28, 2008
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A President Who Spoke to America on Thanksgiving
By John Nichols
The surrender to corporate greed and Wall Street excess that is the legacy of the Bush-Cheney interregnum left Americans in a difficult spot this Thanksgiving.
To a greater extent than at any moment since the days of the Great Depression, our Holiday celebrations are colored by uncertainty, even fear, about an economy that shows every sign of having been badly broken by the wrecking crew from Texas and the scavengers of Wall Street.
Bush offers little solace. His Thanksgiving Proclamation for 2008 makes no reference to the hard times that have befallen the land under his watch.
(23) CommentsNovember 27, 2008
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Bailouts for Bankers, Not a Cent for Autoworkers
By John Nichols
This is the part of our nation's surreal economic crisis that seems particularly surreal:
The US auto industry, which employs 3 million Americans in auto plants, parts and supplier networks and dealerships nationwide is broadly understood as being essential to maintaining America as an industrial force. It's financial collapse, which even critics of moves to bailout the industry suggest is imminent, would devastate workers, retirees and communities in every state of the nation. Despite the grumbling from anti-union zealots, the auto giants have radically retooled in a manner that makes the cost of producing a vehicle at a unionized plant of General Motors, Ford or Chrysler roughly equivalent to the cost of running a car off the line at a non-union plant. And to top it all off: Auto plants actually produce something that most Americans consider to be useful.
Yet, proposals to provide what now seems to be a very small bailout -- $25 billion -- are currently stalled.
(142) CommentsNovember 24, 2008
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Key Committee Pick Signals Obama-Pelosi Direction
By John Nichols
There is usually reason to celebrate when the US House's tradition-bound seniority system is upset, and such is the case -- with a few cautions and codicils -- with the determination of the House Democratic Caucus to put California Congressman Henry Waxman in charge of the chamber's exceptionally powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.
In a showdown of the sort rarely seen in recent decades, the caucus voted Thursday morning to remove the current chair and long-time definitional player on the committee, Michigan Congressman John Dingell. The vote was close – 137 for Waxman, 122 for Dingell – but that does not make it any less significant as an indicator of the direction Congress is likely to take in a period when Democrats will control the executive and legislative branches of a federal government that Waxman thinks should be far more activist in its approach to environmental issues and the regulation of corporations.
That said, the Waxman-Dingell fight was never a precise left-right struggle.
(41) CommentsNovember 20, 2008
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It's Official: Democrats Have Won 58 Senate Seats
By John Nichols
The senior Republican member of the US Senate, Alaska's Ted Stevens, conceded defeat Wednesday in his race for a new term.
The announcement by Stevens confirmed that Democrats will have at least 58 seats in the new Senate. And with two contests yet to be settled -- in Minnesota and Georgia -- the party that just two years ago was a minority player in the chamber could begin the new Congress with a filibuster-proof majority of 60.
While several thousand ballots are still to be reviewed in Alaska, Stevens acknowledged Wednesday that he fallen so far behind Democratic challenger Mark Begich that his reelection was now out of the question.
(144) CommentsNovember 18, 2008
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Lieberman Keeps Chairmanship, Caucus Membership
By John Nichols
To the surprise of few on Capitol Hill -- and, surely, to the disappointment of many beyond the beltway -- Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman will retain his chairmanship of the powerful Senate Homeland Security Committee and his place in the Democratic Caucus.
Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic nominee for vice president who angered his fellow partisans first by embracing neo-conservative foreign policies and then by backing Republican John McCain for the presidency, had been targeted for punishment by grassroots Democrats who were furious with his positions and actions.
But the message of Lieberman's critics was never coherent -- it ranged from calls for expelling the independent senator from the caucus to stripping him of committee assignments to demanding an apology -- and it never achieved the sort of critical mass that might have influenced Democratic senators to demand a measure of accountability from one of their own.
(78) CommentsNovember 18, 2008
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Choosing Obama's Successor
By John Nichols
Barack Obama resigned his US Senate seat on a grace note.
Unfortunately, the process of replacing him may not be so graceful as his exit from the chamber in which he has served for the better part of four years.
Obama's letter to his Illinois constituents, published Sunday in the state's newspapers, recalled a distant era in American politics when legislators saw themselves as being of a state -- and deeply connected to that state's electorate.
(9) CommentsNovember 17, 2008
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Treasury Secretary Jon Corzine?
By John Nichols
Everyone is excited about the fact that President-elect Barack Obama is talking with New York Senator Hillary Clinton about the prospect that she might serve as Secretary of State. But the big news from inside the transition process is the speculation that New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine might be selected for the essential economic position of Secretary of the Treasury.
Corzine certainly has one of the "qualifications" that official Washington demands. He is a former senior partner with Goldman Sachs, the firm that has contributed so many Cabinet secretaries and administration insiders over so many years that it is referred to as "Government Sachs."
But Corzine is not your typical Goldman-Sachs man.
(87) CommentsNovember 14, 2008
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Obama Move Heats Up Race to Fill His Senate Seat
By John Nichols
Barack Obama is about to create one of the most attractive vacancies in American politics.
And two of U.S. House's leading progressive members would like to fill it.
The president-elect has announced that he will quit Sunday as Illinois' junior senator, creating an opening for the seat he has held for a little less than four years. Though he says that serving in the Senate was "one of the highest honors and privileges" of his life, Obama explained in a written statement that he's ready to begin "the hard task of fulfilling the simple hopes and common dreams of all Americans as our nation's next president."
(19) CommentsNovember 13, 2008
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