Latest Column

Mr. Klein: We could always count on you for the truth and to be a defender of the people, America and the constitution. Yes, it has been a long, hard, sometimes unscrupoulous fight. I hope you can do more writing on how we can improve our voting system; it badly needs reform. Thanks for your hard work and intellectual service to this country.

Joe, "well done" doesn't begin to describe you work over the last several weeks.

Mr. Klein: It was a pleasure reading your work on this exhaustive campaign. As an outsider from Toronto, I relied heavily on, and enjoyed, your coverage. Reading your work the last two years has made me a big fan of yours. I hope to read more of you in the future. For now, I think you deserve a well-earned vacation.

Hi Joe, (can i call you joe?...heh) The Time article, so good. You made me wait, but it was worth it. Thank you

Joe, thanks for your contributions to the Swamp as well as to TIME. You were a voice we could always count on to remember the rest of the world and bring things to us. I have also appreciated your views toward the end of the campaign. Going forward, please don't forget the Apology Not Accepted one!

It is a place where the primacy of racial identity — and this includes the old, Jesse Jackson version of black racial identity — has been replaced by the celebration of pluralism, of cross-racial synergy.
.

That's a nice sentence that captures what it feels like around here, in NYC, where we've been celebrating pluralism for a long time.

It's hard for any of us to admit we have been mistaken. Harder to accept we have been misled. Harder still to do it in public. What incredible courage it took for you with an audience of millions to do so, and even more, to try, forcefully, to push the press to fulfill the duties that accompany the privileges of the First Amendment. You did your profession, your publication, yourself, and all of us, proud.

"The Borgen Project has some good info on the cost of addressing global poverty.
$30 billion: Annual shortfall to end world hunger.
$540 billion: Annual U.S. Defense Budget."

Joe,
.
As you know I have come to be a huge admirer of your recent work and this is no exception.
.
I especially enjoyed your concluding with the line from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is hard to argue that we have taken a big step toward and America where one is indeed judged by the content of one's character and not the color of one's skin.
.
A new era has dawned, and America is ALREADY a stronger and more respected nation. Never before in my adult life have I been REALLY PROUD of this country.
.
G-d bless America

The Borgen Project has some good info on the cost of addressing global poverty.
$30 billion: Annual shortfall to end world hunger.
$540 billion: Annual U.S. Defense Budget

Mr Klein, as a 16 year old election onlooker in Edinburgh, UK, your wonderful entries on Swampland have been my favourite source for political commentary. At school my class reads and discusses your articles. And at home I look forward to reading your commentary when Time arrives each week. Thank you for all the work you've done in bringing me through this election. I look forward to more of your writing in future - after you return from a well-deserved break!

It's times like these that I'm grateful to have been around long enough to see this election in the context of the history that preceeded it. Joe, you've done a very nice job of providing that context. The list of old ideas that are now officially obsolete is long but they can be summed up with the one line that Obama is so fond of.

We are not the Red States and the Blues States. We are the United States. The Real America has spoken.

Thanks Joe the journalist. Hope to hear more from you in the coming months....

Joe,
.
Thanks for helping to lead a Renaissance in factually based journalism. Seeing large swaths of the MSM refuse to be led from one shiny object to the next by cynical campaign strategists was one of the most refreshing things about this election cycle. You played a pivotal role in this transformation.

I think your engagement with the blogosphere has been good for both.

Joe- you have been mighty impressive for the last few weeks. I'm sure I'll be disagreeing with you in comments you won't read in no time, but I'll bear in mind that you were right on some big stuff, and an exception among your professional fellow travelers.

A clear repudiation of Bush's lurch to the left. Americans are much more conservative than the electorate. Wherever the center is, if you splite the country right straight down the middle, America is to the right of that.

JK-very good work for the general. Your consistent calling a spade a spade has been very refreshing.
But you do know "We are in for interesting times" is pretty close to a famous Chinese curse, right?

As I've said elsewhere, the Culture War continues. We've just managed to gain a little bit of breathing room.
.
And to those who say it's time to reconcile and put away our ire, I say: No.
Things are not all right. If we let things slide, not only will nothing get fixed, we'll have the Right at our throats again in four years.

Thanks, Joe, for your consistently insightful columns and posts throughout this election.
-
Thanks for your clear-eyed assessment of th campaign and the country's mood. Not everyone was able to see that we weren't living in 1980-world anymore.
-
It wasn't just that Obama responded better to the crisis-- though of course he did-- but also that his policies and philosophy were responsive to reality, not GOP doctrine.

Thanks Joe, you've been an important voice in sorting it all out. It's a beginning, and how long has it been since we could say that with a smile, and a lift in our hearts?

I've been with Obama since the speech of 2004. We sensed it then: a voice that could remind us of our potential for greatness, instead of slicing us up into so many Pennsian demographic vote-bites.

I'm ready to be a whole American again.

So thanks for your sane and sober and at times passionate defense of our wonderful country, even when the fanatics were pounding on your head.

In another post I asked about whose star has risen in this campaign--thinking mainly about young media people like Campbell Brown (I won't soon forget her take-down of Tucker Bounds) and Nate Silver (538 has to be deliriously happy with their analysis today).

But my hat is off to you, Joe Klein, for being the first major media figure in a position of stature to call out the opponents' camp on its tactics. Today is not a day to revisit that issue. But it took enormous courage to do what you did--and to continue to stand by your principles.

Democracy cannot survive without that courage, and I commend you for your service in its cause.

Joe, you're the best. Well done this election season. You had the courage to speak your mind and show your independence in a way that is lacking in the American media.

Joe,
It's nice to see a journalist who not only reports the news, but plainly lets the reader know what he thinks, where he stands, and is not afraid to throw a red flag when he sees one side playing dirty. This is especially true at a time when I think journalism is headed into two extremes ends. One the one end, you have people like Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, etc. who serve as such self-caricatures that they don't even warrant further criticism. Then you have people like Dan Balz, Adam Nagourney, and Tom Brokaw who are just so taken by being seen as neutral observers and high pundits that they tend to dilute the substance of news into bland form that is not controversial but it keeps the country in status quo, and thus in a decline. And while I like Olbermann and Mathews, I often feel like they go over-the-top and seek celebrity rather than stand up for what's right. So, I turn to you, Joe, and say thanks for standing up at a crucial juncture in our country's future. Thank you for standing up to those who tried to smear Obama as anti-Semitic, for calling out Bill Clinton when he made his now famously controversial remarks in South Carolina, and for standing up to the neocons that that tried to smear you. (By the way, as a South Asian Indian raised in the US, I know race is a complex issue and so while I think Bill Clinton was wrong for what he said, I still admire him for what he's done for our country, and especially for minorities. One questionable comment does not wash away a lifetime's work.) I just wish the rest of the media would stop being boy scouts and tell the country what they see, hear, and feel on the ground, and stand up for their country like the way you have. I look forward to continue reading your columns.

Best,
Hemant

Joe, I have a new task for you since you have finished the current one. Many of your fellow travelers are warning Obama about actually trying to enact the policies he ran on. Given that this here is a center-right nation and all. I think there are three stories here.
.
One is, based on all available factual evidence, what kind of nation is America really. My understanding of polls is that America actually comes down on the Dem side of most issues. I say rely on facts, as opposed to Brokaw using "as evidence for the center-right thesis the idea that a majority of land area in the United States, if you measure it on the county level, voted for McCain."
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/11/thought_of_the_day_10.php
.
Two is a story on the msm itself taking up the center-right story against what I presume to be the result of your first story.
.
Three is a detailed comparison of media behavior accepting Bush's "mandate" in 2004 based on a historically thin electoral margin and their "immediate "center right" behavior now following a true mandate electoral result.
.
If you do all these, you can officially be shrill like Paul Krugman.
.
And please, don't forgive McCain. His vile and dishonest campaign has done irreparable harm.