The VP debate is over and the reviews are in -- Biden exceeded high expectations and Palin exceed low ones...she stayed on message, though not on topic. And now it's likely that, as so many VP nominees before her, Palin will disappear into small markets to work her conservative base...

7 DAYS PANEL w/ ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, BOB SHRUM, JAMIE GALBRAITH & MARK GREEN, September 27, 2008

Listen to the whole show at AirAmerica.com

MARK GREEN: Bob, you speak often about Obama having to pass the JFK "commander in chief" test. What do you mean and did...

Has this week's Wall Street "September Surprise" permanently altered the presidential contest? And now that mortgages rather than mooses are again on the agenda, let's return to a fair question -- is Palin qualified to be vice president or president?

Our panel discusses both and arrives at...

The facts were different but the mayoral abuse similar. In 1999, when running for the U.S. Senate, NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to change the rules in the middle of a term. His effort to keep me, as public advocate, from succeeding him under the city Charter was rejected 3-to-1...

This week I attended the U.S. Open and watched the Republican Convention. Guess which had more spin? Can McCain's pedestrian stump speech Thursday night convince voters that a Bush-look alike for seven years is the change agent? Only in America.

Our panel below performs the Emperor-Has-No-Clothes assignment of saying what...

Obama said he wouldn't question McCain's motives or patriotism, but I can: a man who said that Islamic terrorism is the #1 issue of our time has put political tactics above country and constitution by choosing a complete rookie as his VP nominee. Objectively, when you combine Dan Quayle and...

Perhaps the best columnist in America, Paul Krugman shares his anxiety on 7 Days in America about the gap between Obama's economic case and Obama's political candidacy.

In a week of excessive Democratic hand-wringing, though, the point is a fair one: given the Republicans' awful economic record, why is a...

5,535 of you responded to our First Air America Poll about the 2008 Election.

True, our poll might not represent a scientific sample but a) it is five times larger than the usual national poll sample and b) we do represent a growing progressive movement. And collectively, you all did...

As JFK's closest advisor for 11 years and then the first to prominently yoke Kennedy and Obama, Ted Sorensen's views are politically telling this month in our approach to Denver. But John Edwards' humiliating sex scandal is not for two reasons: it's a failing of person, not party, and...

Pundits on the talks shows say that the '08 election is all about Barack Obama: Can he pass the commander-in-chief test and avoid gaffes and reassure white voters? The burden is always put on him.

But another question is whether John McCain can pass the character test. So far, he's...

Obama's "Rolling Thunder Tour" through the Middle East and Europe has likely decisively changed the arc of both the war and McCain's presidential candidacy.

Usually it's only in retrospect that history judges a moment to be a turning point politically, like the day in 1980 that Jimmy Carter's helicopters...

Two fuses were lit this past week that could eventually explode later in John McCain's campaign -- a housing-banking crisis exposing Republican anti-regulation orthodoxy and the senator's penchant for falsehoods that gives new meaning to Bush III.

First, the modern anti-regulation crusade began officially in 1978 with...

When Barack Obama first met Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation magazine, he
said, "Remember, the perfect is the enemy of the good." So in a week when the conversation is rising about what the left should properly do when the presumptive nominee appears to emphasize his moderate side,...

In a debate on Hardball last week, I was asked about McCain's flip-flops vs. Obama's, which is like contrasting Bonnie & Clyde with an alleged jaywalker.

Of course, it should be no crime that a person or candidate changes her/his mind based on new information...until the Bush Team turned ignorance...

It will be forgivable that Obama opted out of the public finance system IF he appoints a White House "Democracy Czar" to obtain pro-democracy reforms, like repairing the broken presidential system he rejected.

I'm a life-long zealot for public funding of public elections but Obama's refusal to opt-in to...

Forget the relative skills, races, proposals and funds of Obama and McCain. Does an awful economy doom the nominee of the party in power, short of a calamity for the challenger? Probably yes, as Air America's 7 Days panel discusses. Events are in the saddle.

...

Many Democrats are fretting the fact that while a generic Democrat presidentially beats a generic Republican by 15 points, an Obama-McCain contest now is a near-tie, with RealClearPolitics putting the electoral math at 272-266 for Obama. But the Democrat is significantly stronger than today's polls indicate. While he certainly sounds...

If you add it up, John McCain had an unusually weak week, last seen angrily using his POW status to respond to Obama's criticism of his opposition to veterans benefits much as George Bush would reach for 9/11 to answer any criticism. Electorate to McCain: you were a heroic POW...

There was lots of hard news this week -- West Virginia, John Edwards, appeasement, McCain's 2013 Space Odyssey -- but it was Bill Moyers who uttered some hard truths on 7 Days in America on Air America. (Listen to the show here.)

Moyers is, simply, a national treasure, a...