General
Left or Right?
Carter and I spoke Wednesday at a post-election panel sponsored by the Public School Forum, a group of education advocates. I suggested they have nothing to worry about in the coming legislature, since Republicans ran as Democrats, promising to raise teacher pay to the national average and improve the public schools. Tom Murry, who…
Read MoreIt’s Alive!
The would-be undertakers in the media and even within the Democratic Party need to cancel their burial plans. The patient’s charts show a strong pulse. North Carolina is the only state in the South – and one of few nationally – where Democrats gained legislative seats despite the national wave. Check out this chart…
Read MoreTherapy for Democrats
After last Tuesday, Democrats need a psychiatrist as much as a political strategist. Here’s helpful advice from my old friend and pollster extraordinaire Harrison Hickman, titled “Top 10 Least Helpful Democratic Excuses.” Harrison, an NC native and CEO of Hickman Analytics, Inc. in Washington, says, “To learn from our landslide defeat, Democrats should avoid…
Read MoreWhat Happened
“Anybody who says they knew this was coming – Democrat or Republican, pundit or pollster – is lying,” a veteran campaign operative said Wednesday The polls all missed it. Close races turned into routs. Narrow Democratic wins turned into Republican wins. Turnout models missed the mark, Early-voting hype was misleading. Tillis consultant Paul…
Read MoreStep Away From the Ledge
North Carolina Democrats should push the pause, not panic, button. It was, as George Bush famously said after the 2006 midterm, “a thumpin’.” It hurts like hell, especially when the other team spikes the ball and strikes a pose in the end zone. The temptation is to form up the circular firing squad and…
Read MoreGiving Up Roy’s Trophy?
The provost was heartbroken, the former faculty Chairwoman felt betrayed, and the poor tenured lambs on the faculty felt humiliated which, at the faculty meeting, bred a fervor not unlike a foot-washing Baptist in pursuit of the Devil which, of course, led to the demand the sinners – who’d caused the heartbreak and humiliation –…
Read MoreUp’s Down
It’s hard to sort out: Kaci Hickox sees healing the ill in Africa as a noble calling but protecting Americans from Ebola as pure villainy. Ole Obama rides to Hickox’s rescue, saying Chris Christie’s a mean-hearted varmint stigmatizing heroes with his quarantine then, in his next breath, Obama announces the Army’s going to quarantine soldiers…
Read MoreWhere’s Pat?
Governor McCrory is the Missing Man in Republican campaign ads. Thom Tillis campaigns with John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Mitt Romney. Wake County Republicans line up beside Sheriff Donnie Harrison. But no Pat. No “endorsed by Governor McCrory” boasts. Not many rallies featuring the Gov. The only ads about McCrory attack him on…
Read MoreWhat Judges Do
Don’t ever say campaign ads aren’t educational. We’ve learned a lot this year, for example, about what judges do. Judging (so to speak) from their ads, judges spend a lot of time reading things out of big books and copying them down on paper. They apparently must do this by hand, which seems laborious…
Read MoreBarefoot and Pregnant
Chad Barefoot must have asked his team: “What can we do that will so anger and offend women that they’ll vote AGAINST me?” They came up with an ad that has backfire potential approaching the “child molester” ad against Justice Robin Hudson. It portrays Sarah Crawford’s husband as a cigar-smoking lobbyist laughing about how his…
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