Wednesday's Daily Brief

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 Arianna Huffington: By Accepting the Conventional Wisdom on the Deficit, Obama Is Ignoring the Lessons of 2008 Arianna Huffington: At the moment, the White House seems to be following the standard Washington playbook, which is premised on two dubious assumptions: a) elections are decided by "independents" b) "independents" are always to be found in the middle of the road. So, the Beltway thinking goes, count on those in your base to come out, and run a middle-of-the-road campaign to win over those independents before your opponent can. It's the classic way to run a campaign. And it was proven completely wrong in 2008 by the winning coalition that swept Obama to victory. He didn't win by swerving to the middle. Instead of fighting for the ever-dwindling number of swing voters, Obama fought to win over the much larger number of voters who had turned their backs on the process. It was audacious -- and it worked. But what will happen to all those 2008 first-time voters, many of whom have been disproportionately hurt by the recession? POLITICS White House Releases Obama Birth Certificate BUSINESS As Bernanke Meets The Press, The Stakes Are High BUSINESS For Black Unemployed, Education and Effort May Not Matter TECHNOLOGY Why You're Being Tracked WORLD Dalai Lama's Political Replacement Elected BLOG POSTS Robert Scheer: All the WikiLeaks Fit to Print There is a craven disconnect between the eagerness of leading editors to exploit the important news revealed by WikiLeaks and their efforts to distance themselves from both the website and Bradley Manning. Cheryl Saban Ph.D.: It Gets Better One would think that as a society we would have gained knowledge and wisdom and learned a thing or two about kindness and tolerance over time. But check the news, and you'll see that sadly, we haven't learned enough. Robert Reich: The Wageless Recovery America's jobless recovery is becoming a wageless recovery. That puts the odds of another recession greater than the risk of inflation. Wall Street and its representatives in Washington don't understand -- or don't want to. David Wild: From Russia With Phil: A Conversation With Phil Rosenthal About Exporting Raymond "The movie business is just like the TV business. A business. Same in Moscow, same in Hollywood. The "No" you get creatively is the same in every language. Just change the accent. And the drink you have after." Paul Carr: The Strip Diary, Day Twenty Three: Please Help Me! I'm Going On Television by Mistake A few days ago I received an email from a producer at KSNV Channel 3, asking me to come on their breakfast show and help commentate their royal wedding coverage. Idiotically -- publicity whore that I am -- I agreed.

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