Blue-collar workers are especially important to both Democrats and Republicans because they make up the group most likely to switch party allegiance.

They have been courted by both parties ever since they tipped the balance for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. Since then they have been called "Reagan Democrats."

Obama has had trouble winning that constituency -- a problem he shares with past Democratic candidates John Kerry, Al Gore and Michael Dukakis.

He has an academic approach to politics that doesn't go down well with Reagan Democrats. What that really means is that he comes across as middle-class, privileged and condescending.   more »

America Is Totally Unprepared for the Coming Catastrophe

How will Americans react when their economy collapses? The story of the coming crisis is barely being told because the corporate media's information bubble gets thicker by the day.

Very few people know or understand the depths of the coming crisis. There is talk of recession, and falling home prices, but there has been little if any explanation of the havoc that will be played out across the country when the day of reckoning comes.   more »

Republican front-runner John McCain in particular wastes no opportunity to rally his supporters with emotional commitments to use every ounce of energy in his body to fight "radical Islamic militants."

With his his usual hyperbolic Islamophobia he called terrorists "the quintessence of evil." He'll chase them to the "gates of hell," he thunders.

And the happy crowd roars approval -- not quite sure who the radical Islamic militants are, or why the combined powers of the world's mightiest democracies and allied Third World tyrannies have not even chased the rascals out of the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, or suburban London, let alone to hell itself.

The crescendo of McCain's simplistic appeal is always that "I'll never surrender!" and the happy crowd roars again, secure in the knowledge that surrender is not an option -- though still blissfully confused about whom exactly one might surrender to if surrender were ever an option.   more »

As an evolutionary biologist, I look at New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's now-public sexual indiscretions and feel justified in saying, "I told you so."

One of the most startling discoveries of the last 15 years has been the extent of sexual infidelity (scientists call it "extra-pair copulations" or EPCs) among animals long thought to be monogamous.

It's clear that social monogamy -- physical association and child rearing between a male and a female -- and sexual monogamy are very different things. The former is common; the latter is rare.

At one point in the movie "Heartburn," Nora Ephron's barely fictionalized account of her marriage to reporter Carl Bernstein, the heroine tearfully tells her father about her husband's infidelities, only to be advised, "You want monogamy? Marry a swan."   more »

Is it just us, or does Barack Obama seem a mite too quick to play the race card when facing criticism from political opponents?

In recent days, the Obama camp has been demanding an apology from Geraldine Ferraro, the former Vice Presidential candidate and current Hillary Clinton supporter who last week let slip that:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Though Ms. Ferraro resigned from the Clinton campaign yesterday, her remarks reveal little more than a firm grasp of the obvious, even if she could have found a less artless way to express herself.   more »