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Harold Meyerson

Harold Meyerson is executive editor of The American Prospect. His email is hmeyerson@prospect.org.

Recent Articles

Wither the Democrats

The Democrats still haven't found a way to tap America's discontent. Some new political books suggest how they can.

Harold MeyersonMarch-April 1996
WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY: Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968 (Cornell University Press, 1995). Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (Simon & Schuster, 1995). E.J. Dionne, Jr., They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (Simon & Schuster, 1996). Stanley B. Greenberg, Middle Class Dreams: The Politics and Power of the New American Majority (Times Books, 1995). Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Basic Books, 1995). Michael Lind, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (The Free Press, 1995). Wilson Carey McWilliams, The Politics of Disappointment: American Elections, 1976-94 (Chatham House, 1995). I n the 1940 presidential election, pollster Samuel Lubell developed a simple formula for charting the Roosevelt vote. In each city he surveyed, Lubell...

Waiting for Lefty

Warren Beatty can play a useful liberal role—but not as a candidate.

Harold MeyersonNovember 23, 1999
From where I was sitting at a recent dinner honoring Warren Beatty, hosted by Americans for Demo cratic Action in southern California, I couldn't see Courtney Love, who was certainly among the youngest of the several dozen celebrities who turned out for the first pronouncement of Beatty's not-quite-yet-if-ever-it-will-be presidential campaign. But around Beatty's fourth reference to Walter Reuther, I couldn't help wondering if Hole's lead chanteuse had any idea what the hell he was talking about. For a generation that routinely turns out for benefits to save the rain forest or the Dali Lama, Beatty's fin de siècle social democracy must have seemed the cutting edge in exotica. For an American liberal, however- who'd abandoned all hope of ever again hearing the words single payer or plutocracy in polite conversation, let alone in a Democratic platform- Warren Beatty's coming-out party was a visceral kick. Calling himself "an old-time, unrepentant, unreconstructed, tax-and-spend,...

The Purloined Presidency

Harold MeyersonDec 19, 2001
T hinking about how Democrats should treat the new Bush administration, let's consider what Bob Dole would do if he were in our shoes. A scant eight years ago, after all, Bob Dole was in our shoes. As the Senate minority leader, he headed the opposition to a newly elected president. Bill Clinton chugged into Washington having dispatched a sitting president by a 7 percent margin--with hefty Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress--and claimed a mandate for universal health insurance and welfare reform. Dole, however, would have none of it. The new president had not received 50 percent of the popular vote, he pointed out, and Republicans still had enough senators to filibuster anything that smelled of big government. And Clinton had won only because Ross Perot had split the conservative vote. Throughout Republican ranks, moreover, there was already ominous rumbling about Clinton's legitimacy. No one argued that he hadn't won the election, but...

Gore's Mating Ritual

Harold MeyersonDec 19, 2001
T o those of you who've been feeling socially inadequate because your mind goes blank whenever the subject of Who Should Be Al Gore's Running Mate comes up at barbecues or on white-water rafting trips: relax. The American Prospect 's poll of the experts conducted in late June has uncovered a similar dearth of suggestions among the Democrats' keenest thinkers, not to mention an objective dearth of suitable vice presidential material. Consider this sample of responses from the party's ablest strategists: From one of the Democrats' most respected consultants: "I don't think we've got anybody who it makes political sense to put on the ticket." From one of Washington's most highly regarded pollsters, asked about the merits of the Democrats' heavyweights: "Who are the Democratic heavyweights?" From one of the most politically savvy members of the House: "If you want a woman--who? Kathleen...

Union Man

Harold MeyersonDec 19, 2001
Steve Rosenthal, political director of the AFL-CIO, is perhaps the only one of America's thousands of political strategists who genuinely has armies to deploy. And as Rosenthal sees it, the time to elect Al Gore is now. "The campaign is going to be won or lost between now and August, not after Labor Day," he told me on a mid-March morning. "The most important thing we can do over the next five months is to reach the quarter of the electorate that comes from union households, to let them know that Bush has opposed raising the minimum wage, that he supports anti-union 'right to work' legislation federally as well as in the states. We have a sustained message; we'll be leafleting in the work sites every month, phoning, mailing... ." The AFL-CIO long ago targeted key states for this year's general election; the budgets and coordinators have been in place for many months now. Like his fellow strategists, Rosenthal thinks the presidential contest is likely to be decided in a belt of old-...

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