Disappointment in Georgia

By John Nichols

On the eve the last Senate election of 2008, a still-campaigning Sarah Palin declared: "You Georgians are going to have the opportunity to determine the direction this country is going to take."

The Georgians blinked.

Instead of stepping into the 21st century with most of the rest of the country – including the southern states of Virginia and North Carolina, both of which backed Barack Obama for president and replaced Republican senators with Democrats – Georgia opted for the past.

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December 2, 2008

Georgia Runoff is About More Than Filibusters

By John Nichols

President-elect Barack Obama can hardly be faulted for deciding against taking time away from the transition to campaign for Democratic US Senate candidate Jim Martin in today's Georgia runoff election.

Faced with the task of assembling an administration capable of righting the course of a dramatically-off-kilter economy and – as the Mumbai attacks remind us – of dealing with global challenges and threats left unaddressed by Bush-Cheney administration bluster and war-making, Obama can be excused for choosing against putting an overtly political spin on a demanding transition process. (Indeed, if he had gone to Georgia, Obama would have taken hits from a right-wing echo chamber that is having a hard time getting a grip in its efforts to discredit a popular president-elect.)

But if Martin loses today to incumbent Saxby Chambliss, there will be speculation about whether the determination by Obama's agile political team to keep the Democratic party's most dynamic top-tier campaigner out of Georgia might have been a deciding factor.

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December 2, 2008

UN Pick Rice: Another Wrong-on-Iraq Nominee

By John Nichols

On the outside chance that anyone thought that Dr. Susan Rice might be the exception to the rule of wrong-thinking that characterizes Barack Obama's foreign-policy team, well, think again.

Obama's nominee to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, had this to say February, 2003, after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made a wholly absurd presentation a plenary session of the United Nations Security Council regarding the supposed threat posed by those Iraqi imaginary weapons of mass destruction.

"I think he [Powell] has proved that Iraq has these weapons and is hiding them," said Rice, a former Clinton administration State Department aide, "and I don't think many informed people doubted that."

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December 1, 2008

Barack Obama's AIDS Advocacy

By John Nichols

Barack Obama has always spoken well and wisely about the challenges posed by the HIV/AIDS crisis, and about the opportunity the United States has to address them.

Two years ago on World AIDS Day, before he was a candidate for the presidency, Obama delivered a remarkable speech at the "2006 Global Summit on AIDS and the Church" at California's Saddleback Church. As part of his remarks, the senator said:

We are all sick because of AIDS - and we are all tested by this crisis. It is a test not only of our willingness to respond, but of our ability to look past the artificial divisions and debates that have often shaped that response. When you go to places like Africa and you see this problem up close, you realize that it's not a question of either treatment or prevention - or even what kind of prevention - it is all of the above. It is not an issue of either science or values - it is both. Yes, there must be more money spent on this disease. But there must also be a change in hearts and minds; in cultures and attitudes. Neither philanthropist nor scientist; neither government nor church, can solve this problem on their own - AIDS must be an all-hands-on-deck effort.

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December 1, 2008

American Muslims Mourn Mumbai Violence

By John Nichols

There will be many expressions of appropriate mourning and condolence when the final toll is determined from the terrorist attacks on Mumbai. The terrorists who struck the Indian city killed mostly locals in a brutal multi-day killing spree that left more than 160 dead and close to 400 severely wounded. But the targeting of westerners and religious minorities -- including a rabbi and others associated with a synagogue and Jewish community center in a city where Jews have lived bh.

Because of the sectarian focus of the attacks, one of the responses that is especially worth noting is the one from the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the twenty-year-old civil rights group that advocates "for the the integration of Islam into American pluralism, and for a positive, constructive relationship between American Muslims and their representatives."

Here's MPAC's statement:

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November 28, 2008

Indian Crisis Tests Obama

By John Nichols

This transition period was supposed to be all about getting a grip on the financial crisis -- and it looked this week as if Barack Obama has succeeded sufficiently to take the Thanksgiving holiday off. But on Wednesday, the president-elect was reminded that he is inheriting messes far beyond Wall Street.

The devastating attacks in Mumbai -- which have left more than 100 dead and three times that number seriously wounded -- have put the war on terror back in competition for Obama's urgent attention. And the reported focus of the attackers in U.S. and European visitors to India makes this anything but a foreign affair.

Wednesday's developments do not quite qualify as the "test" famously anticipated during the fall campaign by Joe Biden, the outgoing Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair who will now serve as Obama's loose-lipped vice president. But Obama and his aides are scrambling to refocus after a key American ally suffered a devastating attack that John McLaughlin, the former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency refers to as "India's 9-11."

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November 26, 2008

A Secretary of Defense We Can't Believe In

By John Nichols

Barack Obama in February, 2008: "I don't want to just end the war; I want to end the mindset that got us into war."

Barack Obama in November, 2008: "Never mind."

All indications are that the man who has run George Bush's nightmarish occupation of Iraq -- along with the downward spiral that is Afghanistan -- will now manage Barack Obama's nightmarish occupation of Iraq and the new president's plans to turn Afghanistan into a full-blown quagmire.

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November 26, 2008

Placeholder Senator: Ted Kaufman, D-Biden

By John Nichols

While President-elect Barack Obama has surrendered his US senate seat and said he'll stand back and let Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich name a successor, Vice President-elect Joe Biden is not letting go of his senate seat quite so easily. The Delaware Democrat plans to retain the seat he has held for almost 36 years until he takes his new job. And when he does give the seat up, Biden will hand it off to a short-term appointee who will quit in two years.

The placeholder senator, Ted Kaufman, served for nineteen years as Biden's chief of staff before becoming a co-chair of Biden's vice-presidential transition team. He will be appointed in mid-January by Delaware Governor Ruth Minner, a Democrat closely ties to Biden who is retiring at the end of this year, and will serve only until a 2010 special election.

Kaufman has announced that he won't be running in that election. "I also want to make clear that I am very comfortable with retiring after 2 years," says the senator-to-be. "I don't think Delaware's appointed Senator should spend the next two years running for office."

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November 24, 2008

It's 3 a.m., Hillary's on the Phone

By John Nichols

O.K., so if the phone call comes at 3 a.m., Barack Obama will be able to transfer it to Hillary Clinton.

At the ugliest stage of the race between Obama and Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, the Clinton's campaign aired a commercial featuring images of children sleeping peacefully as a soothing male voice said, "It's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Something's happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it's someone who already knows the world's leaders, knows the military -- someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?"

An image of Clinton holding a phone appeared on the screen.

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November 21, 2008

House Progressives Choose Grijalva, Woolsey

By John Nichols

Arizona Democrat Raul Grijalva, the son of a migrant laborer from Mexico who has in recent years been one of the U.S. House's most ardent defenders of the rights of immigrants and workers, will serve as the new co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Grijalva, a border-state congressman who has boldly challenged the anti-immigrant and anti-labor excesses of congressional Republicans since his election to the House in 2002, promised "to move (the CPC) to the next level and continue to advance our progressive agenda in an effective and pragmatic manner."

The Arizona representative will serve with California Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, a returning co-chair, as the head of a caucus that currently numbers 73 members but could grow to more than 80 with the intake of two dozen new House Democrats when the next Congress is seated in January.

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November 19, 2008