Liberals Shouldn’t Fear Ron DeSantisThe Florida governor may be popular for now. But his support for slashing Social Security and banning abortion will catch up with him eventually.
The Allure and Danger of Anti-Modern ReligionIn a perilous time, it’s easy to underestimate American pluralism and long for old and dogmatic religious forms. That doesn’t mean we should.
ByEd Kilgore
democrats
Democrats Disagree About Labels, Not IssuesA lot of the supposed “disarray” among Democrats involves abstract ideological questions that won’t really keep them from uniting in 2020.
Do Coastal Liberals Hate Middle America?Sometimes it is concern for, not indifference to, the values and needs of “the Heartland” that makes liberals fight its political representatives.
Bill O’Reilly Has Juan Williams’ BackPlus, Rachel Maddow wants to remind everyone that Williams’s firing is SO not a First Amendment issue, on our regular cable-news roundup.
Liberal Columnist Thomas Frank: ‘Journal’ Readers ‘Get Him’The 2008 addition to the paper’s opinion roster says the financially minded readers of the ‘Journal’ understand what he’s talking about, as opposed to the readers of the “small lefty magazines” he used to write for.
early and often
Bob Shrum Shows Bill Kristol How It’s DoneHey guys! Did you see Bill Kristol’s first column appeared in the Times today? Boy, was it a doozy. Kristol took his classic conservative bluster and put it front and center on his first day:
Thank you, Senator Obama. You’ve defeated Senator Clinton in Iowa. It looks as if you’re about to beat her in New Hampshire. There will be no Clinton Restoration. A nation turns its grateful eyes to you. But gratitude for sparing us a third Clinton term only goes so far. Who, inquiring minds want to know, is going to spare us a first Obama term? After all, for all his ability and charm, Barack Obama is still a liberal Democrat.
Blah, blah, blah, Hillary is a national nightmare, liberal Democrats will doom us all. Pretty standard boilerplate, most likely selected to startle the tepidly Democratic readership of the Times opinion pages. But Kristol doesn’t teach us anything we don’t know (“some Democrats are licking their chops at the prospect of a Huckabee nomination”), and he doesn’t question anything we take for granted (“Voters seem to be enjoying making up their own minds this year. And Huckabee is a talented politician.”). So it’s not really that startling at all. But over in the Daily News, we get the same sort of indictment of Hillary Clinton and her campaign machine — only more surprising, this time it’s from former Clintonite and Democratic mastermind Bob Shrum.
intel
There Goes the Neighborhood: Longstanding UWS Lefty Emporium to Close
Isn’t the Upper West Side — especially the upper reaches of the eighties and into the nineties (and well into the hundreds) — supposed to be for lefty intellectual sorts following familiar routines in their sprawling, rent-controlled prewars? Not anymore, it increasingly seems. The owners of Liberty House, a neighborhood fixture on Broadway and 92nd, posted a sign two days ago announcing it will close its doors after 39 years in business, leaving area residents wondering where they’ll find antiwar posters, jewelry handmade by local artisans, and Frida Kahlo tchotchkes.
