Arthur Lieber's Political Blog
Progressive thoughts and strategies for the future
On January 27, 1998, in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky revelations, Hillary Clinton appeared on the Today show and said, “The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he … Read moreWhat we’ve learned from right wing reaction to Obama, and now Trump
Daily Kos called Joe Scarborough the “resident Republican blowhard on MSNBC.” Daily Kos and many other on the left-leaning outlets have taken Scarborough to task. Really. All Scarborough did was to assert that almost every mainstream news anchor or Sunday morning interview show is liberal. He cited a number: David Brinkley, Tom Brokaw, Walter Cronkite, … Read moreScarborough’s misconceptions about liberals in the media
You may have heard of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. He cites five levels of growth, beginning with what a newborn infant needs and moving on to self-actualization, which is the top level of the pyramid. Maslow describes self-actualization this way: This level of need refers to what a person’s full potential is and … Read moreMaslow’s hierarchy of needs vs. the Republican pyramid of political values
The first question that Anderson Cooper asked Bernie Sanders was, “A Gallup poll says half the country would not put a socialist in the White House. You call yourself a democratic socialist. How can any kind of socialist win a general election in the United States?” Sanders responded in part by saying, “Democrats at the … Read moreMedia does for Bernie Sanders what it never did for Dennis Kucinich
Some people posit that the Republican brain and the Democratic brain complement one another, somewhat like yin and yang. The theory would be that liberal people bring to a society a full measure of empathy, reason, and fairness. Conservatives bring order, structure, and rules. Together there is a harmonious and smooth functioning society. I’m a … Read moreAre Republican and Democratic brains like Yin and Yang?
Earlier this week I received one of those odious phone calls with a political candidate asking for, you guessed it, money. I wish that solicitation calls were on the EPA watch list for harmful pollutants that damage our environment, but sadly, such is not the case. Donald Trump seems to have solved the problem of … Read moreTrump knows how to reform campaign finance
A new CNN / ORC poll just revealed that the majority of Americans want Congress to reject the nuclear deal with Iran that the Obama Administration negotiated. This is a shift from April, 2015 when the majority favored approval of the deal. It might be farcical that the American people are asked their views on … Read moreIran Nuclear Deal too complicated for TV commercials
You may not like what Donald Trump has to say, but you have to admit that there is a certain openness, even rawness, to what he says. Politics is such a canned sport; it’s almost like professional wrestling with everything scripted in advance. Many progressives have had trouble with the status quo and the platitudes … Read moreWhat Progressives can learn from Donald Trump
In the worst nightmare for progressives, Hillary Clinton will become president and be a tool of Wall Street and other entrenched interests. The flip view is that Clinton will bring about progressive transformation in ways that Barack Obama never could. The real question is whether Hillary Clinton wants to lead women to the left in … Read moreHillary can do what Barack could not: Winning women over to a progressive agenda