The American Prospect: 'A Strategic Plan for Liberals'

Source:The American Prospect- just keep in mind: the people that The American Prospect and other left-wing publications call "Liberals", aren't really Liberals, for the simple fact that they don't believe in liberal democracy and the individual rights and liberal values that come from liberal democracy. The folks that TAP call "Liberals", are actually closeted, American Socialists. Which is a very different philosophy from what in America has been called and what Europe still calls liberalism.

"In August of 1971, corporate attorney Lewis Powell-two months shy of his appointment to the United States Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon-wrote a memo to Eugene Sydnor Jr., who chaired the education committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In Powell's and the chamber's view, the American free-enterprise system, and conservatism more generally, was losing the battle of ideas and policy to an ascendant liberalism. "No thoughtful person," Powell wrote, "can question that the American economic system is under broad attack."

Forty-one years later, Powell's memo can seem more than a little paranoid. Such marginal figures as William Kunstler and Herbert Marcuse loomed large on Powell's list of threats to the American system. But Powell was correct that conservatism had been marginalized for decades by New Deal liberalism. American social scientists, he noted, were largely liberal; environmental regulations were encroaching on corporate behavior (indeed, Nixon had established the Environmental Protection Agency the previous year); and business was not defending itself ably in the court of public opinion, much less effectively promoting pro-business candidates at the ballot box. Confronting a "massive assault upon its fundamental economics, upon its philosophy, upon its right to continue to manage its own affairs," Powell wrote, business had "responded-if at all-by appeasement, ineptitude and ignoring the problem."

It was high time the chamber began to change all that, and to that end, Powell laid out a number of specific steps that the chamber and business could undertake.

Corporate America, he wrote, had to learn "that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination." To reclaim the ideological battlefield, "the Chamber should consider establishing a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system" and help conservative academics publish their ideas both in journals and as books. Business should insist on getting its viewpoint represented on television news shows. It should publicize the crucial role of stockholders-"the real entrepreneurs, the real capitalists"-and try to mobilize them on behalf of corporate interests and priorities.

The Powell Memo must be reckoned as one of the most successful political directives in history. The chamber and American big business took his ideas to heart. They increased their involvement in both lobbying and elections, proclaimed the shareholder (not the worker) to be the most important figure in the American economy, and established and funded a host of new institutions (or reinvigorated old ones, like the American Enterprise Institute) to advance their viewpoints and interests. The Business Roundtable, composed of the CEOs of the nation's biggest corporations, was created in the memo's wake, as were the Heritage Foundation, the Cato and Manhattan institutes, and other pillars of laissez-faire thought and right-wing propaganda. The Powell Memo spawned an assertive business and intellectual infrastructure that formulated the ideas and policies of the revitalized conservative movement.

The triumphs of this conservatism are everywhere to be seen. Big money dominates politics and government as it has not since the Gilded Age. Anti-government ideology is pervasive and leading politicians seek either to dismantle universal social programs (the Republican position) that once enjoyed near-consensual support or scale them back (the position of many Democrats). Corporate America aims to end collective bargaining. Fox News and talk radio have become a massive source of counterfactual news and agitprop. And it was a right-wing organization, the Tea Party, not a left-wing one, that emerged in the wake of the greatest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression. The fortunes of ordinary Americans have been declining for years, but millions of working-class Americans remain in the sway of the right's idealization of markets and demonization of government.

The right is reaping the rewards of having built for the long term. And the left … the left needs a Powell Memo of its own, its own 40-year plan. Liberalism does not lack for either movements or organizations, but its battles are more frequently defensive than offensive and its forces scattered across an array of causes. It's time for some comprehensive strategic and organizational thinking on how to promote the ideas and build the infrastructure that can inform and spur a liberal revival. To that end, the Prospect has asked a number of organizers, thinkers, labor and business leaders, and funders to submit mini Powell Memos of their own. Reclaiming America from the financial and corporate powers that have taken it over is the work of decades. What follows are 19 essays on how to begin." 

From The American Prospect

Salon: Jeff Madrick: 'The Simpson-Bowles Consensus Makes No Sense'

Source:Salon Magazine- left to right: Erskine Bowles & Alan Simpson.

"Capping federal spending at 21 percent of GDP is arbitrary, short-sighted and wrong for America. 

The Simpson-Bowles budget balancing plan seems to have become the common-sense standard for dealing with America’s future budget deficits. I’d say this move toward the right is dangerous to the future of the nation and essentially cruel—far more dangerous than the level of the deficit over the next 15 years. The commission, formally known as the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, appointed by President Obama, achieves its deficit reduction by reducing government spending to do two-thirds of the job and raising taxes to do only one-third of the job. Even 50-50 would not be fair in such a low-tax nation. The commission proposed cuts in Social Security benefits of 15 percent for medium earners, for example.

But easily the most short-sighted objective is to hold federal spending to 21 percent of Gross Domestic Product into the future. How did they get this number? It is roughly the average level of federal spending since 1970. This is not a reasonable standard—it is not even a way to think about the issue. So where did the idea originally come from? The answer: the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

Now our most respected elder statesmen of the economy, Paul Volcker and Warren Buffett, are endorsing the 21 percent level in recent editorials. It may have been missed in Buffett’s piece, which endorsed a 30 percent tax on the rich, and correctly so. But he said it plain as day: “Our government’s goal should be to…spend about 21 percent of G.D.P.”

Oh my. Did they do any analysis at all about what that level would mean for retired, sick, and middle-income-to-poor Americans? Did it occur to them how vastly the U.S. economy has changed over those years? There are many more retirees, health care is more expensive and more extensive, the U.S. has chosen to fight expensive wars, and its infrastructure and educational needs are dire.

The words of the wise oracles should not be taken seriously. One wonders whether Volcker would have run the Federal Reserve or Buffett picked stock on such skimpy analysis. They present no evidence, nor do I think they have done any research or even reading that shows that a 21 percent spending level will make the economy more efficient than, say, a 24 percent level of spending. 

And they beat their chests as the exemplars of responsibility in an otherwise irresponsible America. Moreover, Pete Peterson, of course, is now financing a road tour for Bowles and Simpson to fight their great moral battle to get America’s budget under control—as a reminder, not by raising taxes significantly but by cutting social entitlements significantly. America cannot be run by men like these. America’s great moral battle is for social justice and adequate federal investment.

The heroic and correct analysis of the Simpson-Bowles plan has been done by Paul Van de Water of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Some think of the CBPP as left-wing, but it is only mildly so. It makes deficit reduction a top priority, and its analysis is typically excellent.

Van de Water concludes that keeping federal spending at 21 percent of GDP would require deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid over time, as well as virtually all other federal programs. He wrote this before the Budget Control Act and the sequester we now face, but its principles still apply.

Moreover, he reminds us that the Brookings Institution held panels on the future budget, and in general, centrists on those panels agreed that spending as a percent of GDP should be 23 to 25 percent 20 years from now. He thinks the Simpson-Bowles plan is simply wrong for America. In truth, Social Security is inadequate today, and Medicaid tragically so. The latter in particular needs building up.

And then the 21 percenters generally have the audacity to demand more investment in education and infrastructure. How?

Centrists had better get together and remind America, with analysis, pragmatism, and a keen sense of justice and America’s future, how deeply wrongheaded most of the basic principles of Simpson-Bowles are. This thinking has led to today’s fiscal cliff, and as a blueprint for the future it is both damaging to the economy and cruel for most Americans." 

From Salon Magazine

AlterNet: Erika Eichelberger: '12 Vital Social Programs That Might Be Vulnerable in a "Grand Bargain" Over the Debt'

Source:Mother Jones writer Erika Eichelberger.

"This article first appeared in Mother Jones Magazine. Get your magazine subscription here.

As the fiscal cliff looms, there's a consensus that, one way or another, the rich are going to have to pay up. But that doesn't mean poors are home free. Any "grand bargain" budget deal will be just that—a deal, which means that even though Democrats want to shield social programs from cuts, they will inevitably end up as bargaining chips on the table.

Obama's starting point for negotiations is the deficit plan that came out of the 2011 debt-ceiling showdown. It already contains heavy cuts in discretionary spending, which is spending on stuff that is not entitlements, including military and domestic programs. And 25 percent of that domestic spending goes to programs that help low-income people, according to Richard Kogan, a federal budget expert and senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Obama and the Democrats have been pretty set against cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and long-term unemployment benefits. However, Rep. Paul "62-percent-of-my-proposed-budget-cuts-come-from-poor-people-programs" Ryan will likely be leading the charge on the other side of the aisle. He won't be able to chop up the safety net to his liking, but he and his fellow Republicans will do what they can. 

Kogan says that even though a final budget deal is likely not to eliminate tax benefits for the poor, it will almost certainly include deeper cuts to lots of social programs. Here are 12 possible targets (program costs are from 2012 unless otherwise noted):

Medicaid ($258 billion): Though Obama has largely targeted providers for potential Medicaid cuts, Republicans want beneficiaries to fork over more. In which case, says Kogan, patients might be forced to make copayments, or program costs may be shifted to the states, which could decide to scale back coverage. 

Food Stamps ($78 billionin 2011): The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program serves about 45 million people. It is not part of discretionary spending, but Ellen Nissenbaum, senior vice president for government affairs at CBPP, told The Nation it faces a real prospect of being cut in negotiations.

Supplemental Security Income ($47 billion): Social Security itself is mostly off the table, but Supplemental Security Income for the blind, elderly, and disabled, is likely to take a hit, according to Nissenbaum.

Unemployment benefits extension in 2013 ($40 billion): If long-term unemployment benefits are allowed to expire at the end of the year, some 2 million jobless will be affected. Kogan says "there will be some extension, because that's just brutal. It's just a question of how much."

Pell Grants ($36 billion):These need-based grants help some 10 million low-income students afford college. 

Section 8 Housing Assistance ($19 billion):Section 8 vouchers allow more than 2 million super low-income families to afford decent housing in the private market. 

Job Training($18 billion in 2009): Loads of federal job training programs help millions of seniors, Native Americans, farm workers, veterans, young people, and displaced, and laid-off workers with career development.

Head Start ($7.9 billion): The program, which helps kids from disadvantaged homes be better prepared to start school, had about a million enrollees in 2010. Research has shown that Head Start generates real long-term benefits for participants. 

Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program ($3.9 billion):In 2011, about 23 million poor folks got help paying the winter heating bills through LIHEAP.

Community Health Centers ($1.6 billion): In 2011, more than 20 million patients, 72 percent of whom were below the poverty line, got healthcare through federally-supported community health centers.

Title 1 Education Grants ($322 million): Under the No Child Left Behind Act, school districts serving a big percentage of low-income kids get financial assistance to help them meet state academic standards.

Women, Infants and Children ($8.9 million in 2011): The Department of Agriculture's WIC program helps low-income moms and babies get access to supplemental nutrition and health care referrals. WIC has about 9 million participants, most of whom are kids.

Food Stamps ($78 billionin 2011): The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program serves about 45 million people. It is not part of discretionary spending, but Ellen Nissenbaum, senior vice president for government affairs at CBPP, told The Nation it faces a real prospect of being cut in negotiations.

Supplemental Security Income ($47 billion): Social Security itself is mostly off the table, but Supplemental Security Income for the blind, elderly, and disabled, is likely to take a hit, according to Nissenbaum.

Unemployment benefits extension in 2013 ($40 billion): If long-term unemployment benefits are allowed to expire at the end of the year, some 2 million jobless will be affected. Kogan says "there will be some extension, because that's just brutal. It's just a question of how much."

Pell Grants ($36 billion):These need-based grants help some 10 million low-income students afford college. 

Section 8 Housing Assistance ($19 billion):Section 8 vouchers allow more than 2 million super low-income families to afford decent housing in the private market. 

Job Training($18 billion in 2009): Loads of federal job training programs help millions of seniors, Native Americans, farm workers, veterans, young people, and displaced, and laid-off workers with career development.

Head Start ($7.9 billion): The program, which helps kids from disadvantaged homes be better prepared to start school, had about a million enrollees in 2010. Research has shown that Head Start generates real long-term benefits for participants. 

Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program ($3.9 billion):In 2011, about 23 million poor folks got help paying the winter heating bills through LIHEAP.

Community Health Centers ($1.6 billion): In 2011, more than 20 million patients, 72 percent of whom were below the poverty line, got healthcare through federally-supported community health centers.

Title 1 Education Grants ($322 million): Under the No Child Left Behind Act, school districts serving a big percentage of low-income kids get financial assistance to help them meet state academic standards.

Women, Infants and Children ($8.9 million in 2011): The Department of Agriculture's WIC program helps low-income moms and babies get access to supplemental nutrition and health care referrals. WIC has about 9 million participants, most of whom are kids." 

From the AlterNet

AlterNet: Alex Kane: 'Former Conservative: Right-Wing 'Stupidity & Closed-Mindedness' Will Doom the GOP'

Source:Alter Net writer Alex Kane.

"A one-time pusher of Reagan-style supply-side economics and a former writer for the Wall Street Journal has penned a devastating critique in The American Conservative of the Republican Party’s slide to the right over recent decades. While it is well known that Bruce Bartlett was a dissenting conservative, the article lays out his evolution and critique of the Republican Party in a way not articulated by Bartlett before.

Bartlett began his political life fully ensconced in conservative politics. He worked for libertarian Republican Ron Paul as well as the founding father of supply-side economics, the theory of “trickle-down economics” that many economists say contributed to the economic crisis. But a series of events transformed his political outlook, an avowedly right-wing one. And the reaction from the right was to throw him “under a bus.”

The first big event that Bartlett says was the impetus for his decision to publicly dissent against the GOP was George W. Bush’s decision to push for an expansion of Medicare to pay for prescription drugs for seniors. Of that decision, Bartlett writes: “I was shocked beyond belief when it turned out that Bush really wanted a massive, budget-busting new entitlement program after all, apparently to buy himself re-election in 2004.” After the legislation passed, Bartlett “felt adrift, politically and intellectually. I now saw many things I had long had misgivings about, such as all the Republican pork-barrel projects that Bush refused to veto, in sharper relief.”

Bartlett also blasts the “epistemic closure” of the right. As an example of this, he points to the fact that he was quoted in the New York Times magazine criticizing the Bush administration. While Karl Rove called his boss to “chew him out,” his conservative colleagues had no clue that Bartlett was quoted in the Times--because they didn’t read it and “they all viewed it as having as much credibility as Pravda and a similar political philosophy as well.” Bartlett says he was “flabbergasted” by the lack of reaction.

But Bartlett eventually made his views known to the world when he wrote Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. He was fired from his think tank, the National Center for Policy Analysis, because of the manuscript of his book.

“Among the interesting reactions to my book is that I was banned from Fox News,” Bartlett writes. “I later learned that the order to ignore me extended throughout Rupert Murdoch’s empire.”

Now, he’s using the lessons he learned over the years to critique the Republican Party’s right turn. “So here we are, post-election 2012. All the stupidity and closed-mindedness that right-wingers have displayed over the last 10 years has come back to haunt them,” writes Bartlett. “At least a few conservatives now recognize that Republicans suffer for epistemic closure. They were genuinely shocked at Romney’s loss because they ignored every poll not produced by a right-wing pollster such as Rasmussen or approved by right-wing pundits such as the perpetually wrong Dick Morris.”

However, on the whole, the Republican Party is not “yet ready for a serious questioning of their philosophy or strategy...There appears to be no recognition that their defects are far, far deeper and will require serious introspection and rethinking of how Republicans can win going forward.”

From the AlterNet 

I guess my response to Bruce Bartlett (assuming that he's being quoted accurately here) is what happened to Bruce Bartlett and who is he now? 

I can understand how a center-right, Conservative Republican, at least arguably one of the architects of the Reagan Revolution and I'm sure a big fan of Barry Goldwater, would now have a big problem with the Christian-Right, as well as now the right-wing-populist-right, also known as the Tea Party today, as well as the Neoconservative, budget-busting, preemptive war, national security over civil liberties and the U.S. Constitution, George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Republican Party of the 2000s, that produced President Barack Obama. 

But how do you go from a Reagan Conservative Republican, to now sounding like a left-wing, populist, Independent today. Which is how Bruce Bartlett sounds, of you read his articles and watch his TV interviews.

Al Jazeera: Egyptians Polarized Over President Morsi's Decree

Source:Al Jazeera with a look at Egypt.

"The decree to extend Mohamed Morsi's presidential powers has polarised opinion and caused violence to erupt in various parts of Egypt amid protests. 

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reports from the capital, Cario." 

From Al Jazeera 

"Al Jazeera Arabic (Arabic: الجزيرة Al-Jazīrah [æl (d)ʒæˈziːrɐ], lit. 'The Peninsula') is a Qatari state-owned Arabic-language news television network. It is based in Doha and operated by the Al Jazeera Media Network, which also operates Al Jazeera English. It is the largest news network in the Middle East and North Africa region.[3][4] It was founded in 1996 by the then Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Al Jazeera gained popularity in the Arab World as an alternative to the previous landscape of largely local state owned broadcasters,[5] with its early coverage being openly critical of autocratic leaders in the region, as well as hosting a wide range of viewpoints,[6] gaining credibility through its extensive frontline coverage of the Second Intifada and the Iraq War.[7] Independent sources have described Al Jazeera Arabic's news coverage as more partisan than that of Al Jazeera English[8][5][6], with the station openly supporting the 2011 Arab Spring,[5] as well as giving favourable coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups." 

From Al Jazeera

Steve Clemons posed the question of the day in a column in the Huffington Post: Is Mohamad Morsi an Abraham Lincoln or a Hosni Mobarak? A small d democrat or a dictator?

ABC News: 20/20- Pierre Salinger: Grace Kelly Interview (1982)

Source:ABC News- Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco, being interviewed by Pierre Salinger in 1982.

Source:The Daily Journal

“Grace Kelly – Her complete last interview: 22 June 1982.” 

From World of Flowers

Princess Baby Face of Monaco, was my first reaction to this video. Because that is the first that I saw and you add that incredible smile that Grace always had and that just adds to that.

She doesn’t look like she aged much since her Hollywood star years of the 1950s. And if there’s one woman who you would think looks like a European princess, it just might be Grace Kelly.

The thing being that Europe is such a diverse place ethnically and Grace looks more like an Anglo princess (being of Irish descent) than a Mediterranean princess.

Sophia Loren would be the Mediterranean princes. (At least in my opinion) But Grace always did have the look and class of royalty from her time growing up Philadelphia, even though you would never guess Philadelphia by the way she talked, all the way up to being Princess of Monaco.

Grit-TV: Jane McAlevey- 'Building the Labor Movement in President Obama's Second Term'

Source:Grit-TV- Jane McAlevey, talking to Laura Flanders about American labor.

"With a Democrat again in the White House for the next four years, the labor movement has won some much-needed breathing room, says organizer and author Jane McAlevey. Now's the time, McAlevey says, to get the best activists back in the field and push hard for expanded labor rights.

From Grit-TV

Professor Noam Chomsky who is an admitted Libertarian-Socialist, once said that America doesn't have a Labor Party, that we have two parties that are essentially business parties. Actually, he used stronger language than that when interviewed by Bill Moyers like twenty years ago.

Noam Chomsky- "America doesn't even have two parties, that we have one party, with two different factions, one of them called Democrats the other called Republicans". I as a Liberal Democrat actually I obviously disagree with that, we have two business friendly parties. As far as the leadership in both parties, but we also have a labor friendly party. A major party that believes in the right to organize, thats pro-union in the Democratic Party. But what we don't have is a major party thats not only pro-union and labor, but thats also anti-business, anti-big business, anti-corporate. Not necessarily anti-capitalist, just not in favor of large corporations.

We don't have a major social democratic or democratic socialist party, even. (However you want to phrase it) That every other major democracy has in the rest of the developed world at least. What America does have in the Democratic Party, a party thats made up of Social Democrats. But who for the most part except for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is more interested in governing and advancing the ball. Which includes compromise and doing things she normally wouldn't do, rather than never compromising and always standing up for the movement. And keep fighting partisan battles that never seem to end.

Which is what Social Democrats would prefer the Democratic Leadership to do rather than dealing with Republicans. Same thing with the GOP as it relates to the Tea Party. So what Social Democrats have as far as major party, is a party that may share a lot if not most of its goals.

Like affordable health insurance for everyone but doesn't share the same policies as far as how to achieve those goals. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 being a perfect example of that, where Social Democrats wanted single payer Medicare For All. The Democratic Leadership instead expanded the private health insurance system for people who currently can't afford it. Going forward Social Democrats need to understand this and figure this out and know that the Democratic Leadership doesn't always have it's back when it comes to passing policies and legislation to achieve the goals that both factions may share. And figure out what's the best path for them moving forward. Keep settling for a party that at best gives them half of what they want or developing a party that will fight for everything that they want instead.

Al Jazeera: Syria Rebels Try to Control Major Cities

Source:Al Jazeera- welcome to Syria. Also known as a small hell on earth.

"Anti-government fighters in Syria have captured new territory in the east and north of the country.  They say they're now improving their coordination, in efforts to control major cities like Idlib and Aleppo.  Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra reports.

At Al Jazeera English, we focus on people and events that affect people's lives. We bring topics to light that often go under-reported, listening to all sides of the story and giving a 'voice to the voiceless.'

Reaching more than 270 million households in over 140 countries across the globe, our viewers trust Al Jazeera English to keep them informed, inspired, and entertained.

Our impartial, fact-based reporting wins worldwide praise and respect. It is our unique brand of journalism that the world has come to rely on.

We are reshaping global media and constantly working to strengthen our reputation as one of the world's most respected news and current affairs channels." 

From Al Jazeera 

"Al Jazeera Arabic (Arabic: الجزيرة Al-Jazīrah [æl (d)ʒæˈziːrɐ], lit. 'The Peninsula') is a Qatari state-owned Arabic-language news television network. It is based in Doha and operated by the Al Jazeera Media Network, which also operates Al Jazeera English. It is the largest news network in the Middle East and North Africa region.[3][4] It was founded in 1996 by the then Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Al Jazeera gained popularity in the Arab World as an alternative to the previous landscape of largely local state owned broadcasters,[5] with its early coverage being openly critical of autocratic leaders in the region, as well as hosting a wide range of viewpoints,[6] gaining credibility through its extensive frontline coverage of the Second Intifada and the Iraq War.[7] Independent sources have described Al Jazeera Arabic's news coverage as more partisan than that of Al Jazeera English[8][5][6], with the station openly supporting the 2011 Arab Spring,[5] as well as giving favourable coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups." 

From Wikipedia

Thats one way for the Syrian rebels to knock the Assad Regime out of power, to successfully occupy Syrian territory.

Thom Hartmann: 'It's time to jump off the 'Fiscal Cliff!'

Source:Thom Hartmann with an editorial on the so-called, self-inflicted, fiscal cliff.

"Thom Hartmann explains why he thinks it would actually be a good thing if The United States went off the so-called "fiscal cliff'" 

From Thom Hartmann

So even though America has an unemployment rate at 7.9%, Thom Hartmann is advocating for cuts to people on Unemployment Insurance, as well as for low-skilled, low-income workers, who need public assistance, so they can afford housing, food, health care, etc. And hope by doing that, American voters will get pissed off (my words) at House Republicans and not just give Democrats the House back in 2 years, but allow them to retain the Senate, for President Obama's last two years. 

If Mr. Hartmann believes a word that he's saying here, he should try to tell that to 10 million or so unemployed Americans right now, as well as the 40 million or so Americans who are in poverty, including a lot of people who are currently working in poverty.

American Prospect: Mike Konczal: 'The Great Society's Next Frontier'

Source:The American Prospect inside a state legislature?

"Now that Obamacare—the largest expansion of the social-safety net in the last 60 years—is safe, what's next for the liberal economic project?

As The Washington Post's Ezra Klein declared shortly after voters re-elected President Barack Obama, one of the major winners last week was health-care reform. With Democrats holding on to the Senate and the White House, Republicans will be unable to repeal the law before all of its provisions go into effect in 2014-after which, the theory goes, the public will come to accept that government has the responsibility to ensure health care is available for all.

This is the end of a long battle for progressives: Health care has been the major missing piece of our welfare state for nearly a century, and for decades making it part of our system of social insurance has been a primary goal of politicians, think tanks, and activists. With this piece of the progressive puzzle in place, the natural question to ask is, What's next for the welfare state?

One useful way of thinking broadly about what the welfare state should provide comes from Lane Kenworthy, a sociologist and political scientist at Arizona State University. According to Kenworthy, the welfare state should accomplish three things: It should act as a safety net, providing a basic level of security for the poor and protecting citizens from sharp declines in income or unanticipated expenses; like a springboard, it should create opportunities for upward mobility; and, like an escalator, it should ensure that living standards rise across the board as the economy grows. Below are ways that liberals could fix the holes in the current safety net, expand opportunity, and make sure a growing economy benefits everyone.

In a recent paper, Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker and Yale law student Nathaniel Loewentheil give an outline of the holes in the current safety net that need patching. The two pieces in need of the most attention? Health care and retirement security.

Democratic Senator Tom Harkin called Obamacare a "starter home" that will require future work. The program will still leave millions without health insurance, and it may fail, due to its complicated design, to contain costs. Introducing a public option into the state exchanges when they come online in 2014 would go a long way toward controlling costs. As Hacker notes, a public option will build on the successful parts of Medicare while serving as a simple, affordable benchmark that private plans would need to compete with on both costs and quality. Outside of Obamacare, Medicare reform will require budget goals and payment reforms, which is essential for containing spending without shifting costs onto consumers.

The system for retirement security will also need some fixes. Policy wonks talk about the "three-legged" stool of retirement: Social Security, employer-retirement accounts, and personal savings. Government needs to step in to counter the decline of the traditional company pension. The government currently gives large tax breaks to private retirement savings accounts like 401(k)s, breaks that overwhelmingly go to the top 20 percent of workers. It could instead use its resources to provide a universal IRA with an automatic enrollment to all Americans, as well shifting 401(k)s over to a public-private, defined-benefit plan. This would boost the savings of those with less income while also providing greater retirement security.

Despite conservative claims, there's no immediate crisis in Social Security finances. If a solution is needed, it is important to remember that as inequality has grown, the "cap" on Social Security taxes has reduced the program's tax base. Eliminating it, or extending it to, say, capital-gains income would reduce any potential long-term Social Security shortfall.

Another way to boost our current safety net is by expanding the parts that don't reach everyone. For instance, unemployment insurance has kept millions of people out of poverty in this recession and functions as an important tool of macroeconomic stabilization by getting money into people's hands when the economy tanks. Unemployment insurance, however, only covers around 40 percent of the unemployed due to a variety of state-level eligibility rules. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that low-wage workers, in particular, are half as likely to receive unemployment insurance. Expanding unemployment insurance would provide greater security to those with more precarious employment who don't currently qualify.

Total equality of opportunity is a phantom goal. What the welfare state should accomplish, according to Kenworthy, is making sure each person has the most opportunity possible. As our economy continues to change, commitments to developing opportunities for people will require investment in education as well as a commitment to gender equity in the workplace.

Given that women are more likely to work jobs that don't provide health insurance, Obamacare already helps with gender equity in the workplace. The next step is to require policies protecting family leave. The United States, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea are the only three countries in the world that do not have guaranteed paid leave for new mothers. Paid leave makes it easier for mothers to return to work after a child is born as well as to maintain and continue their careers. It can also be expanded to cover both parents, a move that will strengthen women's access to the labor market even more.

Providing universal pre-K is another important step in ensuring all Americans have the most opportunity available. As New America fellow Dana Goldstein writes, "If we want to fight poverty and equalize educational opportunity, we cannot ignore the disparities that develop before a child ever enters the public education system." According to University of Chicago economist James Heckman, early educational intervention produces both positive and long-lasting effects on school achievement, job performance, and social behaviors for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Universal preschool should be universally available for children age three and older, and feature well-trained teachers working with small groups of children, focusing on a full range of development. This will also benefit women who want to work, creating opportunities for both those women and the children who will gain access to much-needed early education.

The final component of strengthening the social safety net is the escalator, making sure that as we become a richer country, rising growth benefits all workers. Since the late 1970s, wages for the median worker have stagnated while inequality has skyrocketed. How can the welfare state help ensure that growth is broadly shared and the economy works for the benefit of all? This difficult question will likely take decades to tackle, and there are already three conflicting ideas about what should be done.

Kenworthy argues that the best way to address inequality is to aggressively expand tax credits like the earned income tax credit (EITC), which boosts the wages of lower-income workers-particularly those with children. It is a form of wage subsidy that encourages work because one needs to be in the labor force to take advantage of it. Given trends in the global economy, Kenworthy argues that even if we get unemployment below 4 percent, it is unlikely that wages at the bottom end of the distribution would grow. Instead, he calls for using the EITC to subsidize wages. The EITC, he argues, could be used to boost wages even in the middle class, say, for workers making up to $80,000, and indexed to increases in GDP or average worker compensation. This would use the tax code to boost the stagnant wages of average Americans.

Another approach would create an unconditional basic income (UBI) that rises with GDP growth. The proposal gives every legal resident a cash stipend, usually targeted around the poverty level. This income is universal, so everyone gets it regardless of their income or work status, and it is unconditional. A UBI has support from across the political spectrum. Those on the left argue it will create greater egalitarianism by increasing the bargaining power of workers, force employers to find innovations that eliminate difficult and unpleasant work, and recognize the value of de-commodified caregiving and other cooperative, non-labor activities. Some on the right argue that it would allow for the removal of many government programs that either provide assistance or public services directly, folding them all under one that works entirely through cash payments.

These two approaches differ in one key respect: The EITC requires work participation, whereas the UBI would go to everyone whether they work or not. Kenworthy worries about the political and employment effects of providing everyone a basic income. That could make it politically unpopular while also affecting the tax revenues necessary to fund it.

Besides these two proposals, policymakers have suggested boosting wages directly by intervening in the labor markets. Policies that focus on "predistribution," to use Hacker's term, include a higher minimum wage, better rules for unionization, curbing the ways that big business uses the government to increase its profits (finance, copyright), as well as a greater emphasis on full employment. Predistributionists argue that additional, large-scale redistribution is politically difficult and fragile, particularly when workers have fewer resources and less organizational strength to demand and sustain it. In the end, though, predistribution and redistribution are likely to complement each other rather than cancel each other out.

The 40-year conservative project to dismantle the welfare state has failed. Ronald Regan couldn't reduce the size of the government (even his own), and the reactionary plans of George W. Bush and Paul Ryan to privatize Social Security and bleed out public health care have been rejected by voters. The slow-motion implosion of the conservative movement means that an abstract notion of a minimal state with no social insurance is not coming.

As Kenworthy notes, people value insurance more as they grow richer. Insurance provides protection against both the unknown and bad luck. And the welfare state is how social insurance is provided in the United States. As such it will take on a larger, not a smaller, role as our country grows richer. With the promise of health care completing the project of the 20th-century welfare state, liberals need to envision how to meet the needs of a new century." 

From The American Prospect

FORA-TV: Asa Hutchinson: Legalizing Drugs Would Create Widespread Social Problems'

Source:FORA-TV- former DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson.

"Asa Hutchinson, former Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, argues that the legalization of drugs such as methamphetamine would dramatically increase problems with child welfare, public health and contribute to a lack of productivity." 

From FORA-TV

Oscars: Grace Kelly- Receiving An Oscar For Country Girl (1955)

Source:Oscars- The Amazing Grace Kelly winning an Oscar in 1955. 

Source:The Daily Journal

"Grace Kelly wins Best Actress for The Country Girl at the 27th Academy Awards. William Holden presents the award."

From Oscars

Never seen The Country Girl, or have even ever heard of The Country Girl. I’ve seen country girls and of course have heard of country girls. And I love them generally, because they tend to be very healthy women physically, who take care of themselves and love how they look and present themselves.

But as far as commenting on that movie, it would be like a blind man trying to land a 747 on someone’s driveway. Why bother risking that, with all the potential fallout that could come as a result.

But I’m familiar with Grace Kelly, the Amazing Grace and can easily see why she won an Oscar for a movie I’ve never heard of. She’s The Amazing Grace after all, who could making talking about the weather sound fascinating. Because that is how great of a voice she had and how great of an actress she was.

The Daily Beast: Meghan McCain: 'What Republicans Are Doing Wrong & Why Karl Rove Sucks'

Source:The Daily Beast- political columnist and satirist Meghan McCain, talking about Republican operative Karl Rove.

"What Republicans are Doing Wrong and Why Karl Rove Sucks" 

From The Daily Beast 

Even though Megan McCain is still baby face adorable and could pass for 15-16 years old, she makes a good grown up point here that the demographic that Republicans continue to shoot every single election, since 1964 or 66, older rural Caucasian-Protestant men and their wives is no longer going to be enough for Republicans to get elected nationally. 

And if you looked at the Senate elections last week, no longer just enough for Republicans to get elected statewide for Senate. Just look at some of the Senate Democrats seats and the states they represent, one in North Dakota and in South Dakota, one in Missouri, two in Montana, one in Louisiana, one in Arkansas, one in North Carolina, one in Alaska, two in West Virginia, these are all Republican states that Mitt Romney won overwhelmingly that President Obama didn't put much effort into winning and yet Democrats can get elected to the Senate from there.

Republicans are either going to have to bring in new voters or they are going to go out of business. At least as a major political party and then Conservative adults and perhaps even Libertarians if this doesn't happen before they are no longer a major party, will put together a party that represents a real conservative party in the United States. Not some Far-Right party that can only appeal to, well if you said Far-Right, you would be correct.

The American Prospect: Ian Millhiser: The Judicial Bush Doctrine

Source:Center For American Progress Senior Fellow Ian Millhiser.

"President Obama needs to be more like George W. Bush.

Bush understood that a president's longest-lasting legacy is often the judges who receive a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. He understood that another Republican will occupy the White House someday, and they will need a slate of potential nominees to the Supreme Court. And he understood that the judiciary can quietly implement an unpopular conservative agenda that would never survive contact with the elected branches of government.

We are still living the legacy of Bush's appointments. The Supreme Court's five conservatives trashed consumers' ability to stand up to rapacious corporations. They greenlighted laws intended primarily to suppress minority, low-income, and student voters. They thumbed their nose at women's right to equal pay for equal work. And, while the Court's Citizens United decision did not enable Mitt Romney's rich friends to buy him four years in the White House, it will create a generation of lawmakers who take their oaths of office owing wealthy benefactors a big favor.

Meanwhile, the lower federal courts serve as incubators for some of the right's most ambitious plans. The case against the Affordable Care Act was widely-and correctly-viewed as frivolous until two federal judges at the trial level embraced it. Just a week before this year's election, three conservative federal appellate judges enabled Ohio to disenfranchise voters who were directed to the wrong polling place by poll workers. Nearly four years after President Bush left office, his appointees on a powerful federal court in D.C. continue to gut environmental protection. 

Bush's greatest triumph, however, was filling the lower federal courts with many of the conservative legal movement's brightest young minds. He understood that, if you nominate a long list of the kind of people you really want to be judges, you probably won't confirm all of them. Senate Democrats successfully prevented a very conservative Bush nominee named Miguel Estrada from becoming a judge, a fact Republican senators still complain about. But severe conservatives like Brett Kavanaugh, Jeff Sutton, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown were all confirmed to federal appeals courts despite devoting much of their careers to ideological activism.

On the day President Obama took office, there were 55 vacancies on the federal bench. Today there are 82. To be fair, much of the blame for these vacancies rests with Senate Republicans, who ran an unprecedented campaign of obstruction during President Obama's first term. And the new Senate must fix this problem in January, when a brief window opens up permitting them to enact major filibuster reform with only 51 votes.

The administration cannot lay all the blame for the vacancy crisis at the filibuster's feet, however. Obama has been genuinely slow to name nominees, and he's been just as reluctant to throw his political weight behind his judges. In a particularly costly miscalculation, the president turned his most outstanding nominee, future California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu, into a target by nominating him without also nominating several similarly young brilliant progressives at the same time. As a result, every Senate Republican knew where to point their guns, and Liu's confirmation hearings quickly degenerated into execution by firing squad.

As his second term approaches, Obama must nominate a large slate of Liu-caliber nominees who can provide an intellectual foil to the Kavanaughs, Suttons, and Clarence Thomases of the world (and to those who question my decision to include Thomas on this list of conservative thought leaders, don't. We underestimate him at our peril). Here are a few suggestions:

First, the single most important issue facing the judiciary right now are conservative attacks on voter enfranchisement; the last several years saw a rush of voter-ID laws, new barriers to voter registration, cut backs on early voting, and other efforts to make it harder to vote. Two names that have been mentioned in the press as potential Obama nominees stand out as the perfect additions to the federal bench in an era of widespread attacks on the right to vote.

The first is Stanford law Professor Pam Karlan, a leading expert on the Constitution and voting rights who spent much of her career defending the franchise in the federal courts. As a bonus, Karlan is also in a long-term committed relationship with a woman, so she would bring a perspective that is currently absent from a federal appellate bench that includes no openly gay members. The second potential nominee is Debo Adegbile, who as the acting head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund holds the same job once held by the nation's first African-American justice, Thurgood Marshall. Among other things, Adegbile successfully defended the Voting Rights Act the last time it was threatened by the increasingly hostile Roberts Court.

Second, a closely related issue is the problem of partisan gerrymandering. Although votes are still being counted in some parts of the country, preliminary tallies indicate that Democratic House candidates received over half-a-million more votes than Republican House candidates during this year's election. Yet, thanks to partisan gerrymandering, Republicans will enjoy a comfortable majority in the incoming House of Representatives.

The obvious candidate to confront this problem from within the judiciary is Paul Smith, who argued several important-if unsuccessful-challenges to partisan gerrymanders before the Supreme Court. The fact that Smith is also the nation's preeminent gay-rights litigator-he argued and won the landmark Supreme Court decision striking down Texas' "sodomy" law-is itself sufficient reason to place him on the federal bench.

Third, many of the Roberts Court's most significant decisions have nothing to do with the Constitution. They are hypertechnical statutory decisions that enable businesses to force their workers and consumers into a privatized arbitration system that overwhelmingly favors corporate parties, or similar decisions eviscerating consumers' ability to join together and fight powerful corporations via class actions. These cases rarely receive the same headlines as major constitutional showdowns, but they do at least as much harm to the middle class's financial security as anything Speaker John Boehner or vanquished presidential candidate Mitt Romney has ever done.

Meanwhile, one of the dirty secrets of the legal profession is the fact it is much easier for an attorney to rise to the top of their profession-both in terms of pay and in terms of prestige-by taking a job at a massive corporate law firm than by spending their career protecting workers and consumers. As such, the federal judiciary is riddled with former corporate attorneys sympathetic to their former clients' desires to immunize themselves from the law, while judges who cut their teeth representing plaintiffs are few and far between.

To address this imbalance, Obama should nominate more judges in the model of Judge Jack McConnell, a federal judge in Rhode Island confirmed despite scorched earth opposition from the Chamber of Commerce due to the fact that McConnell cut his teeth suing lead paint manufacturers and the tobacco industry. And when he's done with that, the president should raid the partnerships at top union law firms to ensure that workers' voices are represented on the federal bench as well.

Finally, the most important women's rights attorney in American history is in the twilight of her career. As director of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project, Ruth Bader Ginsburg authored the brief in Reed v. Reed that convinced the Supreme Court to hold for the first time that the Constitution's promise of equality extends to women. Just a few years later, her brief in Craig v. Boren convinced the Court to hold that government gender discrimination must be viewed with a skeptical eye by all judges in the future.

Justice Ginsburg continued this work since ascending to the bench, most recently in her landmark Ledbetter dissent which convinced Congress to restore the guarantees of equal pay for women that Ginsburg's five conservative colleagues briefly took away. The Court's conservatives are legitimately determined to roll back decades of progress on women's rights, but Justice Ginsburg has ways to shut that whole thing down.

President Obama owes it to the American people to ensure that when Ginsburg does retire, he has lined the lower courts with judges who demonstrate a similar commitment to equality for all Americans. As I write these words, the next Ruth Bader Ginsburg is toiling in a legal aid office, a non-profit law firm or in a law school litigation clinic. The president needs to prepare her to be on the Supreme Court some day." 

From The American Prospect

Thom Hartmann: Caller: Tax Cuts Are Not a Gift!

Source:Thom Hartmann mostly likely talking to a Tea Party supporter from Virginia.

"Thom Hartmann talks with a Conservative from Virginia who says tax cuts are not a gift because it was the tax payer's money to begin with." 

From Thom Hartmann

Steak houses must be serving nothing but vegetables now, especially their buffets, because I think I just agreed with Thom Hartmann on something, who at times can make Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders seem like a moderate. Hard to do, but not mission impossible.

I guess I would just phrase this differently. I don't want to say that taxes are the price that we pay for a civilized society, or even a free society. But they are the price that any free society pays to have a functional, responsible, but limited government. 

Wealthy people and I'm talking about millionaires and above, shouldn't pay 15% in income taxes, when Joe and Mary Jones, (or whoever) are paying 10-20% and only making 40,000 dollars a year and struggling just to get by. Taxes are what any responsible person pays for the government services that they receive, in a free, civilized, society.

Thom Hartmann: Tom Pauken: Time For a VAT Tax in the US?

Source:Thom Hartmann talking to right-wing blogger Tom Pauken.

"Thom Hartmann talks with Tom Pauken, Former Reagan White House staff member / Commissioner-Texas Workforce Commission / Author-Bringing America Home: How America Lost Her Way and How We Can Find Our Way Back Website:Tom Pauken who advocates a Value Added Tax or VAT Tax as a way to bring jobs back to the U.S." 

From Thom Hartmann

"How did the United States go from having the strongest economy in the world to facing the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression? What happened to an American economy that once was driven primarily by manufacturing companies, agriculture, small business entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class, but now is dominated by Wall Street investment bankers and financial engineers? A country that once prided herself on her strong manufacturing base producing good-paying jobs for American workers has morphed into an economic system in which American jobs are “outsourced” overseas. Our manufacturing base has been hollowed out, and middle-class Americans are sliding downward economically.

Over the past decade, there has been zero private-sector job growth in the United States. The only growth in jobs has been in government (and in sectors—such as health care—in which government is heavily implicated). Government, of course, does not create jobs—if by jobs we mean employment that contributes to the overall production of an economy—only the private sector does that."

From Tom Pauken

Thom Hartmann started off this conversation by criticizing Tea Party populist wing of the Republican Party and talking about how crazy he thinks they are and then trying to get Tom Pauken to respond to that. With Mr. Pauken basically just pushing that aside and going to David Frum, who Hartmann also mentioned and Pauken talking about how bad the Neoconservatives have been for the Republican Party and in America in general. 

Thanks to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other Neoconservative Republicans, the 2000s was the Neoconservative decade, not just in the Republican Party, but in America as well. They won two presidential elections and had complete control of Congress for four years from 2003-07. That's obviously changing now. Two unsuccessful wars, a lot of debt and deficits that were piled on by the Bush Administration, the Great Recession,  and the Republican Party losing complete control in Washington thanks to the elections of 2006 and 08. 

But now thanks to the Tea Party movement, the Republican Party has been combing back not just in Washington by winning back the House of Representatives in 2010 and retaining a smaller majority, but not that much smaller this year, and all of the state governorships and state legislatures that the Republican Party won in 2010 and retained in 2012. 

As far as the value added tax: two of the biggest middle class tax increases in American history, if they were ever passed, would be a flat tax and a value added tax. A value added tax would be on foreign goods, if ever passed in Congress and signed into law by the President, but that tax would get put on American consumers, mostly middle class consumers, who can't afford a tax hike right now, because foreign companies would raise the prices on their goods, to pay for the value added tax.

David Pakman Show: 'President Obama Has a Huge Mandate'

Source:David Pakman Show- President Barack H. Obama (Democrat, Illinois) 44th President of the United States.

"On the Bonus Show: Woman runs over husband because he didn't vote Romney, 1st ever cancer "chemo-bath," is intelligence declining?" 

From David Pakman 

What is a mandate? 

"an official order or commission to do something." 

From Dictionary.com. 

"In representative democracies, a mandate is a perceived legitimacy to rule through popular support. Mandates are conveyed through elections, in which voters choose political parties and candidates based on their own policy preferences. The election results are then interpreted to determine which policies are popularly supported. A majority government provides a clear mandate, while plurality or coalition government suggests a lesser mandate, requiring greater compromise between parties. Parties with strong mandates are free to implement their preferred policies with the understanding that they are supported by the people. When no mandate exists for a single party, the median voter may be used to determine what policies have a mandate for implementation. The modern concept of a political mandate first developed around the 16th century and became a prominent aspect of politics after the French Revolution." 

From Wikipedia 

I voted for President Obama on election night and was proud to do that. But the Democratic Party not only didn't win back the House, they only picked up 8 seats, which gives House Republicans at least enough votes to pass what they want too, even if it's DOA in the Democratic Senate, meaning it never makes it to The White House. 

If there is any mandate here for either party, it's a mandate to govern and in a divided country, with not just a divided government, but a divided Congress as well, that means governing together to keep the government open, the economy moving, and to defend the country. 

Thom Hartmann: FDR & The Fiscal Cliff

Source:Thom Hartmann talking about Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"Thom rants on what Americans really want - more progressive actions in this country.  He explains how even FDR new this and why Democrats should realize it now." 

From Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann is right about one thing here, he's just not aware of that. America has always been a liberal country. But what does that mean? It means we are a country that's built around the principles of liberal democracy. What comes with liberal democracy are liberal values like: 

limited government 

federalism 

rule of law 

checks and balances 

fiscal responsibility 

equal rights 

equal justice 

strong national defense 

individual freedom, opportunity, and responsibility for all, 

free speech, free press

property rights

freedom of choice

the right to privacy. 

These aren't leftist values, they're American values and also happen to be the real liberal values that closeted Socialists (like perhaps Thom Hartmann) have never been able to accept, because they keep losing at the ballot box when they want America to go to the far-left and transform America into some type of social democracy, that we've never been. America is not a right-wing or left-wing country. We're a liberal democracy, like any other center-right country in the world.

The Daily Beast: John Avlon, Meghan McCain & Mike Moynahan: 'Real Housewives of the CIA'

Source:The Daily Beast- John Avlon, Meghan McCain, and Mike Moynahan.

Source:The Daily Journal

"As new details emerge about Gen. David Petraeus' affair with Paula Broadwell, Meghan McCain, Michael Moynihan, and John Avlon debate the scandal's potential repercussions, on today's NewsBeast."

From The Daily Beast

Sounds like a real reality TV show in the works, perhaps Megan McCain will produce it. You heard that here first. As far as David Petraeus and his sex scandal, I guess this is the clincher that American politics and government is never boring and why we have a political junky industry. And for Progressives I guess who believe that America should be more like France, well we are when it comes to our public officials and how they live their personal lives. Political junky, is no longer just a hobby for unemployed politicians who can't seem to win another public office and keep losing. And spend all of their free time, which is really all of their time, especially if they have a Congressional pension, watching C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC and FNC. But a way for writers and pundits to make their living. To tell Americans how much they don't know about American politics and government.

As far as Benghazi, if it wasn't for that story, what would House Republicans do? At least some of them like Speaker John Boehner, are smart enough to know they can't repeal ObamaCare in this Congress with a Democratic Senate and Democratic President, that the law is named after. Most of them probably never have any attention of leaving Congress, at least the House of Representatives. So they don't want to work with Senate Democrats to pass anything constructive that President Obama might actually sign. And risk being primaried and having to go home and work for a living. Like washing cars, or hosting radio talk shows, teaching gym in high school, or whatever they were doing in 2009 before they decided to run for the House. So all they have left in their one page playbook that a five-year could read is a bogus (to be too nice) Benghazi investigation.

Remembering The Past: George McGovern (1922-2012)

Source:Remembering The Past- U.S. Senator George McGovern (Democrat, South Dakota) 1972 Democratic Party nominee for President.

"George McGovern, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972, left a lasting legacy to the Democratic Party. A political descendant of the Kennedys, McGovern was one of the first major political figures to come out against the Vietnam War in the mid-1960's. With that as a centerpiece of his campaign, he made the Democratic Party more inclusionary to the young, women, and minorities. His 1972 presidential campaign was marred by self-inflicted errors and conducted in the shadow of Watergate spying. Despite his epic defeat, he remained a decent and honorable man, and today's Democratic Party owes much to his efforts." 

From Remembering The Past 

To me at least Senator George McGovern represented the Henry Wallace Democratic Socialist wing of the Democratic Party, that is essentially lead by Senator Bernie Sanders (the only self-described Socialist in Congress) today. 

The reason why a George McGovern came anywhere near close to the Democratic nomination for President in the early 1970s, when the Democratic Party was still lead by FDR/LBJ Center-Left Progressives and even Center-Right Conservatives, is because the Democratic Party was split between it's Center-Left lead by Senator Humbert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie and its Far-Left that emerged in the Democratic Party lead by Senator George McGovern and others. Which is how McGovern gets the nomination because he was the only Far-Left Democrat running for President in 72, with a bunch of other Center-Left Progressives like Humphrey and Muskie running for President.  

President Richard Nixon wanted to run against the Senator McGovern. Think about it, 1972 America is still involved in the Cold War against Russia, Americans hated all forms of socialism, really and not just Communists and communism. And you have a Bernie Sanders Democratic Socialist leading the largest political party in America in the Democratic Party, running against a Center-Right President in Richard Nixon, who was fairly popular in the summer and fall of 1972. Which is how you get a 60-40 presidential election in 72, with the Democrats only winning one state, because the Socialists had taken over the Democratic Party. 

Losing a landslide presidential election is not the only legacy that George McGovern has even as a politician. He basically democratized the Democratic Party and is a big reason why the Democratic Party is a national, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, national political party today, that's no longer dominated by Anglo-Saxons in the South and Irish-Catholics and other European ethnics in the North. And George McGovern deserves a lot of credit for that.