Liberalism in the U.S. has devolved into a cultish, pseudo-religion whose adherents believe that their fate and the future of the country rests on the ability of their rockstar candidate to hold on to the presidency for another four years. Obama backers no longer bother themselves with incidentals like habeas corpus, indefinite detention, military commissions,... Read More

Mitt Romney will be the Republican to face President Obama in the fall. Tuesday night was the clincher, as the Mormon zealot won in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington DC. He may stumble on, but the Catholic zealot Rick Santorum is finished. It’s hard to detect any alluring feature in Romney’s psychic or political make-up, and... Read More

He stuck his foot in his mouth a couple of times in the final days, but on Tuesday millionaire Mormon Mitt Romney cantered past the winning post in the New Hampshire primary with 39 per cent of the votes cast. Libertarian Ron Paul ran second with 23 per cent. Another millionaire Mormon, Jon Huntsman, got... Read More

Anyone who writes about the economy or politics will tell you that the chances of getting a 100 percent "positive" reaction to an article is virtually zilch. It just never happens. Until now. Of the 50-plus e mails I've gotten since yesterday when Counterpunch published "Is it Immoral to Vote for Obama?", not one person... Read More

Across two evenings this week, we've been offered America's future in a couple of visions. Neither of them offered the prime vitamin of bearable politics, the promise of good cheer and a better life at the end of a shortish tunnel. Version one came in the Republican presidential candidates' debate at the Reagan Library in... Read More

Will Palin run? Who knows, who cares? The press is agog because the ci-devant Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate is in the midst of her bus tour up and down the East Coast. A girl has to keep an eye on her tv ratings. At present the great bus tour seems to have... Read More

"I don’t know what more we could have done to win this election,” John McCain said in his concession speech in the Biltmore hotel in Phoenix. Actually there was a lot he could have done. He ran an awful campaign. Obama is now enveloped in an aura of inevitability, but let us raise a toast... Read More

In the crucial final weeks of the campaign John McCain is mostly doing only one event a day. This is the man of whom his primary care physician at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, said to journalists in a conference call last May 23: “At the present time, Sen. McCain enjoys excellent health and displays... Read More

The presidential campaign plummeted into imbecilic tedium last night in Nashville as Barack Obama and John McCain faced off in the second debate. The encounter took place against the vivid backdrop of economic catastrophe, the obvious failure of the $700 billion bailout to turn the tide, Tuesday's market averages hurtling into the abyss, a paralyzing... Read More

In whatever years remain to him – and the health prognoses for McCain are cloudy at best – McCain should look back at the 48 hours up to and including Friday night’s debate in Mississippi as the Rubicon he was too frightened to cross. He spurned a huge chance to turn the tables on his... Read More

Democrats, exquisitely sensitized to the footfalls of defeat by the disasters of 2000 and 2004, caught the first menacing chords of impending disaster last weekend and have been panicking ever since. The hours they had to revel in the apparent success of their Denver convention and Obama’s big speech were pitifully brief. The very next... Read More

I’m no great fan but certainly Barack Obama gave a strong speech on Thursday night that reassured an edgy Democratic Party that he is ready to trade blow for blow with John McCain, his Republican opponent. His tone of decorous pugnacity calmed those fearful that the Party had saddled itself not just with a black... Read More

Amid these very bad weeks for Republican John McCain’s hopes for victory in November, the cruelest blow of all is surely that President George Bush has decided to let McCain sink, without even pretending to toss a life belt to his fellow Republican. Two mean-spirited men by nature, Bush and McCain have never liked each... Read More

Barack Obama’s team worries that a politically significant slice of the American people think he’s not really a devout Christian as he claims, but a closet Muslim plotting to haul the green crescent up the White House flagpole. But what else have the American people got to chew on in this lull before the big... Read More

Everybody knows it, but it took a tacky Republican operator to come right out and say it. Charlie Black, John McCain’s campaign adviser, recently let drop to Fortune magazine that another terrorist attack on U.S. soil would be a "big advantage" for the Republican presidential candidate. Of course McCain lost no time in distancing himself... Read More

On Tuesday June 3 Barack Obama claimed the greatest prize the Democratic Party can offer, namely his nomination as its candidate for the presidency. The very next day the salesman of “change” raced from Minnesota back to Washington and publicly abased himself at the feet of an organization whose prime mission is to ensure that... Read More

Only two people have ever defeated a Clinton in electoral combat. The first was a Republican, Frank White who evicted Bill for a couple of years from the Arkansas governor’s mansion in 1980 and – a man of principle – used this window to try to install creationism as a palatable option in high schools.... Read More

Hillary Clinton continues to spend a million a day, staying in the nomination race on the calculation that that Barack Obama might assassinated, a possibility she is methodically fostering by race-baiting him as a black man trying to hustle his way into the Oval Office. Mrs Clinton frankly outlined this strategy last Friday in the... Read More

Ever since she realized back in early March that Obama was going to take the nomination Hillary Clinton’s long-term strategy has been to do her best to ensure McCain will win this November so she can become the Democratic nominee in 2012. But she had a short term strategy too and on Friday she deliberately... Read More

Every few years New York City cops hear the growl of clear and present danger and subdue the threat with powerful volleys of lead. With Sean Bell, an African-American, in November 2006 the fusillade rose to 50 shots, deemed necessary by the men in blue to lay low Bell outside a nightclub in November 2006.... Read More

Even though she won by a 9.4 per cent margin and not the blow-out victory in Pennsylvania she was predicting a month ago; even though Barack Obama is decisively ahead in both the delegate count and the national popular vote in all Democratic primaries and caucuses this far; even though polls show Americans think Obama... Read More

The race for the Democratic nomination now lurches on to what is already being billed as the next major battleground in Pennsylvania on April 22, and any Democrat with any memory of kindred blood lettings in the past should shiver as history begins to repeat itself. After eight disastrous years of Bush, with a candidate... Read More

Until last week John McCain's political handlers had been complacently sketching out their basic strategy: to portray Obama as a mere novice in statecraft, devoid of those powers of mature wisdom and sober judgment with which the seasoned McCain is so richly endowed. The problem here for McCain is that he's a dunderhead in statecraft,... Read More

Barack Obama and his supporters are exuberant after their victories this last weekend in the Washington and Nebraska precinct caucuses, in the Louisiana primary and the Maine municipal caucus. But they would do well to remember that since the mid-1970s the Democratic National Committee has spent countless hours plowing firebreaks between expressions of the popular... Read More