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Parade features Governor Sarah Palin on it's cover for it's Best and Worst of the Year edition. Unfortunately , there isn't much about her there, other than this debunked story: LOW- People shouting, “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” when Obama’s name was mentioned at some John Mc-Cain-Sarah Palin rallies. While this was neither Mc-Cain’s nor Palin’s fault, it revealed the thin membrane separating civility from mob rule in politics today. —Jonathan Alter, NBC News analyst and author of “Between the Lines” Cover:http://www.parade.com/table_of_content/tableOfContent.html Home:http://www.parade.com/

The conventional wisdom, which I share, is that Barack Obama will win this election, perhaps by a healthy margin. But Democrats are nervous wrecks; they're having nightmares that defeat will be snatched from the jaws of victory. To add to their misery (and guard against complacency), here's how that horror film could play out: In the end, the problem was the LIVs. That's short for "low-information voters," the three fifths of the electorate that show up once every four years to vote for president but mostly hate politics. These are the 75 million folks who didn't vote in the primaries....

The conventional wisdom, which I share, is that Barack Obama will win this election, perhaps by a healthy margin. But Democrats are nervous wrecks; they're having nightmares that defeat will be snatched from the jaws of victory. To add to their misery (and guard against complacency), here's how that horror film could play out: In the end, the problem was the LIVs. That's short for "low-information voters," the three fifths of the electorate that shows up once every four years to vote for president but mostly hates politics. These are the 75 million folks who didn't vote in the primaries....

The test for the next president is whether he can use the powers of government to act on behalf of Americans. That's a liberal idea. John McCain's "Joe the Plumber" would no doubt like to have a beer with Sarah Palin's "Joe Six-Pack." In truth, Joe Wurzelbacher isn't a licensed plumber and Joe Six-Pack is a horrible cliché, but no matter. They're cultural kin to the iconic "Average Joe" who was part of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" in the early 1970s and Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1980s. But conservative majorities come and go. If the polls are to...

Congratulations to Jonathan Alter, he wins the Lighten Up Francis award for the week: Jonathan Alter: “Unleashing the furies of the dark side of American politics, perhaps risking some peoples lives if things get out of control. All of that is out the window in the service of winning an election.”Tried to embed the video, perhaps someone can do it, video at the link.

Happy birthday, Johnny Mac! You're 72 now, a cancer survivor, and a presidential candidate who has said on many occasions that the most important criteria for picking a vice president is whether he or she could immediately step in if something happened to the president. Your campaign against Barack Obama is based on the simple idea that he is unready to be president. So you've picked a running mate who a year and a half ago was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 8,500 people. You've selected a potential leader of the free world who knows little or...

When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he told potential investors that it was not edited for "the little old lady from Dubuque." This is still true, as the flap over the latest cover suggests. Publishing an illustration of Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim fist-bumping his wife Michelle (with a semi-automatic over her shoulder) may have been meant as a parody of the dopey Internet rumor-mongering that has dogged the campaign for close to two years. But it is indisputably harmful to the Obama campaign, which is why, though Obama himself wouldn't comment, his spokesman called the...

Give credit where it's due: Hillary Clinton has shown grit and determination in finishing out the race. She has proved herself a strong campaigner. And in the week since West Virginia, she has stopped the cheap shots that had marred her campaign this year. But Clinton has continued with one claim that could have a pernicious effect on the Democrats' chances in November. While she knows that the nomination is determined by delegates, Hillary insists on saying at every opportunity that she is winning the popular vote. And she has now taken to touting the new HBO movie "Recount," which...

Some Democrats terrified that their bloody primary campaign will doom them in November are floating a consolation prize for Hillary Clinton: governor of New York. The travails of New York Gov. David Paterson have opened up a new potential career path for Clinton, according to well-informed Democratic Party insiders who refused to allow their names to be used when discussing contingencies. They want her to consider the option if she concludes after the April 22 Pennsylvania primary that she cannot overtake Barack Obama for the party's presidential nomination. Hillary Clinton, while fully committed to continuing her presidential campaign, was said...

We know why politicians lie when they get in trouble: they think the consequences of telling the truth are too severe to bear. That's why Richard Nixon lied about Watergate, and Bill Clinton about Monica Lewinsky. The more complicated question is why they fib—why politicians insist on stretching unimportant stories in ways that are easy to check and refute. Hillary Clinton's oft-told yarn about ducking sniper fire on the tarmac in Tuzla, Bosnia, in 1996 has gotten a lot of publicity, maybe too much. Her misrepresentation of her role in the Northern Ireland peace talks was more serious but less...

Some Dems float the New York Statehouse as an option. Some Democrats terrified that their bloody primary campaign will doom them in November are floating a consolation prize for Hillary Clinton: governor of New York. The travails of New York Gov. David Paterson have opened up a new potential career path for Clinton, according to well-informed Democratic Party insiders who refused to allow their names to be used when discussing contingencies. They want her to consider the option if she concludes after the April 22 Pennsylvania primary that she cannot overtake Barack Obama for the party's presidential nomination. Hillary Clinton,...

A generational struggle is underway. What's so unusual is it's taking place within a single generation [Obama] represents a new generation of leadership, even though technically he's part of the same generation as Hillary, the baby boomers. Here's where it gets a bit complicated. This tussle pits an Early Boomer vs. a Late Boomer, and the two cohorts have little in common... In the case of boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—the whole frame is wrong. It's based on birthrates, not common cultural and political affinities... Worse, the Early Boomer sensibility gets all the attention. Five decades of newsmagazine boomer...

LAS VEGAS - A last-minute federal court battle over caucus rules demonstrates just how important a tight three-way Democratic presidential contest in Nevada has become in the battle for momentum headed into Super Tuesday's votes. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are in a statistical dead heat in polling here before Saturday's caucuses. And Nevada's sizable blocs of Hispanic, union and urban voters could provide an indicator of where the race is headed on Feb. 5, when hundreds of delegates will be awarded in states with significant minority populations. By contrast, Republican candidates have stayed away from the...

For right-wing conspiracy theorists, this is the belly of the beast—a dinner at the Four Seasons in New York for the 20th anniversary of Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Portentous Ivy League professors, Upper East Side gazillionaires, Precambrian media pooh-bahs; Dan Rather and Al Franken and Paul Pelosi, spouse of the Speaker-elect. Almost all in attendance cheer the results of the midterms while bemoaning the demise of old media. Suddenly, shimmering over the tabletops, comes a vision of what was and might yet be again: in full plumage, arriving and departing separately per their...

The GOP is in a deep hole and keeps digging. Even after Mike Huckabee won big among attendees at last week's "Values Voters Convention," many evangelicals have been telling the former Arkansas governor—and onetime Baptist minister—that they like him but won't back him because he can't beat Hillary Clinton. They have it exactly backward. He may be the only Republican candidate with a decent chance to beat the Democrats next November. Huckabee? Yes, Huckabee. To explain why, let's look at the shortcomings of the other Republican candidates first. Rudy Giuliani's performance so far has turned the conventional wisdom about him...

One of the more absurd complaints leveled against President Bush during his tumultuous tenure in office is that, in combating terrorism, he's eviscerated the Constitution. This hysteria is not confined to critics in the blogosphere or strident left-wing magazines such as the Nation but is found, as well, in mass-market newspapers and magazines. A citizen who reads, in a vacuum, editorials and oped columnists in the New York Times, say, might believe that since September 11 America, led by the Bush administration, has become a police state. The latest round of hyperbolic arguments offered by anti-administration partisans concerns the acquiescence...

Our way of electing presidents has always been fertile ground for mischief. But there's sensible mischief—toying with existing laws and the Constitution to reflect popular will—and then there's the other kind, which tries to rig admission to the Electoral College for strictly partisan purposes. Mischief-makers in California (Republicans) and North Carolina (Democrats) are at work on changes that would subvert the system for momentary advantage and—in ways the political world is only beginning to understand—dramatically increase the odds that a Republican will be elected president in 2008. Right now, every state except Nebraska and Maine awards all of its electoral...

Newsweek Editor Advises Dems on Surrendering While Saving Face Posted by Matthew Sheffield on June 18, 2007 - 10:23. With congressional Democrats' approval ratings in the basement (lower than President Bush's), some in the media are attributing this to the fact that the Dems have not succeeded in cutting off the war in Iraq. Trouble is, while that strategy may be beneficial in the short run, it makes Democrats play to their stereotype of being soft when it comes to foreign policy.To help his fellow liberals out, Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter offers Democrats a way to surrender, "without looking like...

by Mark Finkelstein October 17, 2006 - 08:26 "General Pelosi, I'm Matt Lauer, and I'm reporting for duty!" OK, Matt didn't quite say that as 'Today' kicked off its 'The War at Home' three-part series this morning on the lives of American veterans once they return home from war. But judging from the opening episode and the tease of what's to come tomorrow, he might just as well. NBC is clearly doing its part to tend the Dems' Victory Garden. Of all the reporters in the NBC News stable, 'Today' tapped for this segment Jonathan Alter, a regular guest on...

WASHINGTON -- It may take decades to change anti-American feelings around the world that have been aggravated by war in Iraq, U.S. policy toward Israel and America's "sex and violence" culture, the State Department official in charge of dealing with the U.S. image abroad said Thursday. "The anti-Americanism, the concern around the world ... this ideological struggle, it's not going to change" quickly, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's going to be the work of years and maybe decades." Hughes, a longtime adviser to President Bush, has worked for more than a...