Eric Alterman

Most of the provisions designed to fix what ails our health system don't kick in until 2014, which, one wishes administration officials had noticed, is two years after he has to win an election.

Obama, like Carter, is reacting to warning signs by seeking to split the difference between dispirited Democrats and increasingly radicalized Republicans.

Stylistically speaking, Barack Obama could hardly be further from Jimmy Carter if he really had been born in Kenya.

Few progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment.

But particularly when the media profess to strive toward objectivity, gatekeepers play a crucial role in helping people navigate the news to make educated political decisions.

The consequences of President Johnson's campaign of deliberate deception regarding Vietnam could hardly have been more catastrophic for the nation, the military, the president, his party, and the presidency itself.

For the past eight years, the right has been better at working the refs. Now the left is learning how to play the game.

The myth of the liberal media empowers conservatives to control debate in the United States to the point where liberals cannot even hope for a fair shake anymore.

This trend of reporting process over substance is unfortunate, if omnipresent. Even worse is the media's inability - or unwillingness - to fact-check Republicans who are angry about the Democrats trying to debate and vote on Iraq policy.

American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn't be.

Whether people care enough about local news to pay for it is, sadly, an entirely different question than whether our democracy requires a strong watchdog function at the local level to ensure safeguards against abuse, chicanery, and outright dishonesty.

Local politics, like everything else, are not what they used to be. But the fact is that our political system - like our physical existence - still breaks down along geographical lines.

Liberals believe that they can't get a fair shake from the media anymore.

As with almost every significant aspect of the Bush presidency, its handling of 9/11 was a catastrophe from start to finish.

Americans have always evinced some distrust of government, but the current situation has exacerbated this to a degree that may be unprecedented.

Over one in five American children is living in poverty, and the number is rising.

President Obama has lowered taxes more than he has raised them, and they are today lower than they were in President Reagan's time. But you don't hear conservatives crowing about that.

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

Liberals do not appear to address potential solutions with anything like the far right's aura of God-given self-confidence.

Much of what Tea Party candidates claimed about the world and the global economy during the 2010 elections would have earned their adherents a well-deserved F in any freshman economics (or earth science) class.