Almost two months into the BP oil disaster, more Americans oppose increased offshore drilling than support it.

Bill Clinton came to praise the health insurance industry, not criticize it, as the keynote speaker at its Las Vegas convention.

Leo Gerard is President of the 1.2 million member Steelworkers Union — also the biggest union in Arkansas.  Last cycle, the Steelworkers gave $25,000 to the DSCC, whose head Bob Menendez is now praising Blanche Lincoln for “standing up” to them as a “DC special interest.” In spite of this, Menendez now says he expects [...]

Robert Menendez, head of the DSCC, released a memo celebrating Blanche Lincoln’s victory over “powerful special interests in Washington DC,” the labor unions. The AFL-CIO’s Eddie Vale responds: The tens of thousands members of the Arkansas AFL-CIO are certainly not a DC special interest.  They poured their hearts and souls into supporting a candidate who [...]

Senators are doing the right thing by pushing an $8 billion addition to fund several more months of COBRA subsidies for workers laid off after June 1. We wonder, then, why House Dems, who say they care deeply about health care, didn’t sign on.

The commentary regarding the Lincoln/Halter race continues, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. Glenn Greenwald: “What happened in this race also gives the lie to the insufferable excuse we’ve been hearing for the last 18 months from countless Obama defenders:  namely, if the Senate doesn’t have 60 votes to pass good legislation, it’s not [...]

The sneering comments by a “Senior White House Aide” regarding organized labor and how they should use their money were echoed by Robert Gibbs today. Ed Schultz responds, stating the obvious: “If it wasn’t for labor, Barack Obama would not be the President of the United States, and all these ‘experts’ would not be in [...]

Senate Dems come to the aid of Wall Street millionaires, backing down on a House plan to increase how much of the hedge-funders’ income will be taxed at standard rates, not the more generous capital-gains rate.

While progressives have had some successes around the edges, it’s largely been Sherman’s March to the Sea for the corporate agenda during the Clinton-Bush-Obama years. Nothing progressives have achieved can compare to NAFTA, the lucrative wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, and the bank/insurance industry/PhRMA bailouts. Now Congress is preparing to dismantle [...]

These are the necessities of politics: exposure, campaign contributions, volunteers and votes. If you want to reward or punish politicians, these are the tools at your disposal. If, like the Anti-Saloon League in the early 20th century, you hope to achieve massive national political change, you’ll need to cast your web wide to find dedicated [...]