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The Internets are buzzing about Mike Lofgren's takedown of the Republican Party published by Truthout, the left-wing rabble-rousing website. The news here is not that Truthout doesn't like Republicans; it's that Mike Lofgren is a Republican who worked for 28 years as a legislative aide to various GOP members of Congress. So it would be fair to say that he knows what he's talking about. What he's talking about is not exactly new, but it is a succinct (despite its length) statement of what has happened to the Republicans, why it happened and how the Democrats - or indeed, patriotic...

President Bush once remarked at a White House party that in the famously liberal enclave of San Francisco, his supporters were so rare that "you could probably fit them all in one room." He wasn't exaggerating, and he would do little to alter his standing. He never once set foot in San Francisco during his two terms, and he was hardly much chummier with California as a whole, the nation's most populous state and the world's eighth-largest economy. The 43rd president's legacy in the Golden State, according to the unsparing assessment of Democratic consultant Phil Trounstine, is "zilch." "He regarded...

Washington -- Love him or hate him, George W. Bush leaves office among the most consequential presidents in modern history. Like his home state of Texas, his presidency was big. He sought "to end tyranny in the world." He began two wars. He cut taxes three times, tried to privatize Social Security, and added the biggest expansion of Medicare since it was created under Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. He took on AIDS in Africa and redrew the federal role in education. He named two relatively young conservatives to the Supreme Court. He declared by himself a "global war on terror"...

It's no secret that in the past 30 years, Californians have become more tolerant of gay rights, as have millions of other Americans. But in California, according to data reported last Friday at a conference of pollsters by Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll, the change of attitude was almost entirely among Democrats and independents. Republicans are almost exactly where they were in 1977. So does that just make the GOP a party of genetically slow learners, a claque so rigid, insular and detached from changes in the real world that they either don't know or don't care? Their extortionate...

Let me now defend white males. We can't possibly be as dumb as the polls showing we are McCain's most reliable voting base would indicate. Do we white men believe for an instant that a vote for John McCain would not represent more of President Bush's failed economic policies at home and costly military adventures abroad, and if so, why are a majority of us expected to vote against the positive change that Barack Obama so clearly represents? Most of us know how to read, and can even Google, so why would we think that GOP candidate McCain, who has...

First, I want to stress that I am not at all nervous about the election. The sun will come up in the east no matter which candidates win, and no matter which propositions pass, and there will still be music and root vegetables and the glint of sunshine on the water. Politics is not everything - unless you live in a country that gets invaded by another much larger country that bombs your house and forces you into a refugee camp. Then politics matters. But who is more powerful than us? No one! Well, OK, China, and probably Russia, and...

With seven days until election day, this is a terrible week to be an undecided voter. The rumor-and-smear mill is in overdrive, and credible, substantive information about the presidential candidates is as rare as a quiet moment on "Hardball." The happiest Americans right now are the ones who have voted - they no longer have to pay attention. Many of the attacks flying through the air are reheated versions of attacks that have long been discredited by The Chronicle in its regular "Lies, half-truths outed" feature, other news organizations and independent fact-checking organizations. So despite what voters may hear this...

One of the most momentous and least-discussed topics in the presidential campaign is the likely departure in the next four years of as many as three of the more liberal justices on a closely divided U.S. Supreme Court. When the subject of judicial appointments was raised during Wednesday's debate, Democrat Barack Obama observed that Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, "probably hangs in the balance" on the outcome of the election. Obama, who supports the ruling, and Republican John McCain, who wants it overturned, then took pains to deny that they would use the case...

The Illinois senator has shown beyond a doubt that he is the one to lead the nation in troubled times.The stakes were extraordinarily high even before our economy began to spasm and hurtle toward the abyss.From the start of the campaign, Americans were confronted with profound policy choices about how and when to extricate this nation from a war it initiated, how to temper a looming recession, and whether to continue Bush administration policies that had widened the gap between rich and poor, eroded individual liberties, strengthened presidential power, shifted the Supreme Court to the right, weakened relations with our...

Republican Sen. John McCain had long promised American voters that he would be the ultimate maverick presidential candidate and run "a respectful campaign." Americans "don't want us to finger-point and question each other's character and integrity," he told Ohio voters just five months ago. But that was then - before the economy was in free fall and before his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, had gained ground in key swing states. And this is now - the Arizona senator's campaign is pounding the drum to raise doubts about Obama's patriotism and what it calls his questionable background, particularly his past...

He's done it: McCain just sang the praises of Todd Palin as a fisherman and union man at a rally in Missouri, saying his values are the ones he wants to bring to Washington. You were warned here first. Todd Palin is McCain's blue-collar weapon. Sarah Palin continues to suck the oxygen out news coverage and public interest. Love her or hate her, people are fascinated. And the media is following like a Yukon gold rush. She has dominated the front pages since her surprise nomination more than a week ago. Given the typical American attention span, this may not...

Democrats do not think that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's arrival in the enemy camp changes Sen. Barack Obama's path to the White House. As far as they're concerned, Republican John McCain's running mate is President George W. Bush. As Obama told voters in Pennsylvania on Friday, "This race is not a personality contest." That bet is about to be tested. Independent observers in Ohio think Palin does change the race, enhancing the GOP's appeal - not among the women who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but among white men. They say Palin's most potent weapon may even be her snowmobiler,...

Now that much of America is starting to pay closer attention to the presidential campaign -and with the race a virtual tie - Republicans have intensified their strategy to corral the undecided stragglers: reignite the culture wars. This version won't be as explicit as conservative Pat Buchanan's 1992 GOP convention call for a "cultural war" or even the 2004 race, where anti-gay marriage referendums drove cultural conservatives to the polls in 11 mostly swing states. Instead, this battle will be fought under the cloak of the candidates' personal biographies. Using the GOP paintbrush, the race pits the "ex-POW war hero"...

The U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling on Indiana's voter ID law will rank as among the court's worst – up there with Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 ruling allowing forced separation of the races. It wasn't overturned until 1954. Here's hoping it doesn't take 58 years to overturn Monday's misguided decision. The Indiana law is aimed at a phantasm: in-person voter fraud at the polls. In the words of the court's majority, "The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history." To find fraud, the justices went back to New...

Some supporters say Clinton, Obama had nothing to gain by appearing on Fox TV - Presidential candidates rarely turn down a network television interview, especially on a highly rated program. But some prominent liberals are wondering why Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama agreed this week to sit down for interviews on the Fox News Channel, for years the highest-rated cable news network and the bastion of conservative TV news analysis. The dilemma for the candidates: Is appearing on Fox a smart political move before Democratic primaries in two largely conservative states - Indiana and North Carolina - or...

Washington -- In high-profile appearances before Congress today, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will cite progress in Iraq and urge a pause in troop withdrawals. But in little-noticed testimony last week, top military and diplomatic experts painted a vivid picture of how tight a bind the United States now finds itself in, how precarious is the position of U.S. soldiers and how difficult are the decisions the next president will face. Petraeus is widely applauded for rescuing U.S. policy in Iraq from catastrophe last year. Yet stalemates in Iraq and in Washington leave an unspoken objective: Keep a...

We admit it. The Chronicle editorial board was disappointed when Hillary Rodham Clinton refused our invitation for a meeting before we endorsed a Democrat in the Feb. 5 presidential primary. But it really hurts to learn that not only did Clinton snub us, but Tuesday she also met with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. At the meeting, Clinton chatted up the paper's owner, Richard Mellon Scaife, the man who once served as the éminence grise/bankroller of what the then-first lady dubbed the "vast right-wing conspiracy." It's true. Clinton is fighting desperately for a huge win in Pennsylvania, while...

A growing chorus of Republicans says that the rough waters currently being navigated by Sen. Barack Obama may now make him an easier candidate to sink than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is not struggling with issues like race and religion.But those same Republicans may want to consider the dangerous straits ahead for their own presumptive nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, whose gaffe last week in Iraq - where he appeared to confuse Sunni and Shiite factions - raised eyebrows. In the wake of controversies over Obama's support from the divisive Rev. Jeremiah Wright, McCain may be pressed again to...

Whatever the outcome of Texas and Ohio voting tomorrow, there's enough dirt being thrown in the final throes of the Democratic campaign to arm Republican John McCain with an arsenal of attacks on Barack Obama. The Clinton campaign contends they are closing in Ohio and Texas after seeing their double-digit polling leads evaporate in both states. In a conference call with reporters, the campaign said voters will wake up Wednesday to newspaper headlines that show Sen. Hillary Clinton being being "successful" in both states, though they conceded that she would remain far behind rival Sen. Barack Obama in pledged delegates....

When a conservative talk show host introduced Sen. John McCain at an Ohio rally this week and referred to his possible opponent by his full name - "Barack Hussein Obama" - he highlighted a probable attack strategy, should Obama get the Democratic nomination: American xenophobia. If the ascendancy of Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic race shows that Americans' attitudes toward race and gender have evolved, the latest round of media images alluding - incorrectly - to an overseas Muslim upbringing for Obama will test the degree to which Americans fear foreigners in a post-Sept. 11 world....