Work & Finance

Politically Correct

The 10 most important voices to listen to this election cycle—all of which are likely new to you

1 Mr. Fish Political cartooning hasn’t evolved much since the days of Ben Franklin, but the art form may have found a new voice that can help bring back the edge: LA Weekly’s Mr. Fish, a.k.a. Dwayne Booth. The Harper’s and MSNBC contributor skewers politicos from the right and left (in particular, Hillary and W) in hyper-realistic pencil drawings and collages. It’s not for the squeamish, but Mr. Fish’s angry diatribes mirror the disgust many voters feel at various times…or all the time. Besides, has your local paper ever published a cartoon of two turds debating? blogs.laweekly.com/fish

2 Larry J. Sabato’s “Crystal Ball” This Nostradamus of the iPhone age almost perfectly predicted the 2004 and 2006 elections, so he can do away with the ironic quotation marks. Each week, Sabato and his team deliver a longish poli-sci essay (often including charts and graphs) on topics from Hillary’s electability to the family past that drives Mitt’s presidential ambitions. Sabato’s insights are evenhanded and academic, but the reason so many Washington insiders have Sabato’s ramblings delivered directly to their inboxes isn’t because he’s telling it like it is, but how it will be. centerforpolitics.org/crystalball

3 Anthony Cordesman As the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, Cordesman publishes a detailed report on American progress in Iraq or Afghanistan at least once a week. He has served as Senator John McCain’s national security assistant on the Senate Committee on Armed Services and as director of the intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and he has had numerous other government positions, working in Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. His views are highly respected on both sides of the aisle, and his Web site offers PDFs of all of his reports. csis.org

4 Matthew Yglesias This pundit is one of the most well-regarded chroniclers of opinion by blogosphere  members on both the right and the left because he is as fond of excoriating “liberal hawks” as he is of picking on the neocon crew. Fellow blogger Andrew Sullivan named the Yglesias Award after him, “given to writers, politicians, columnists, or pundits who actually criticize their own side, make enemies among political allies, and generally risk something for the sake of saying what they believe.” matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com

5 Justin Webb Stationed in America for the past six years, BBC North America editor Webb is no stranger to the land of the free and the home of the brave, but that doesn’t mean he has morphed into another Washington talking head. Instead, his take—presented on the blog “Justin Webb’s America”—goes against the conventional wisdom spouted by the U.S. press and is a view into how Europe perceives our political process. bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb

6 POTUS ’08 XM Channel 130, created in cooperation with C-SPAN, is completely commercial-free and covers the election nonstop 24 hours a day. Think of it as the triple-bacon cheeseburger of campaign coverage. It opens each day with a three-hour morning briefing by host Scott Walterman before moving into live campaign-event coverage. It’s loaded with weekly programs that feature campaign insiders such as national poll master John Zogby. xmradio.com

7 Charlie Cook’s Political Report Since 1984, Cook, a veteran political columnist whom The Wall Street Journal dubbed “the Picasso of election analysis,” has published a weekly newsletter that includes his big-picture breakdowns as well as updates on the presidential race, each House and Senate race, and each gubernatorial race. At $295 a year, getting the detailed report e-mailed each week is quite spendy for the typical voter, but Cook’s weekly campaign column, “Off to the Races,” is available for free from the National Journal, and it doesn’t skimp on the hard-won words of wisdom. cookpolitical.com