Issues
The Cure For Bluster?
Trump called Kim Jong Un ‘Rocket Man on a suicide mission.’ Kim called Trump ‘a dotard’ and ‘mentally deranged.’ Trump called Kim ‘a madman’ and Kim called Trump ‘a frightened dog.’ The Chinese stepped in and said everybody ought to take a deep breath and calm down and, of all people, the Russians said the…
Read MoreA Chess Game
When a politician takes a poll most folks figure he means to figure out how he can bamboozle people and there’s truth in that but a poll’s also a picture of the powers – like fear, revenge, blindness and rage – shaking the political world and even through a poll won’t show you angels and…
Read MoreTrump Versus the Base?
Down in Alabama there’s an election – a Republican runoff – today and the Washington Republicans led by Mitch McConnell have moved heaven and earth to elect Luther Strange (who was appointed to Jeff Session’s Senate seat) while the Anti-Establishment-Trump-Populist Republicans (from Steve Bannon to Sean Hannity) want to elect Judge Roy Moore but there’s…
Read MoreReading Signs
If you’re a Republican with an eye on the next election you’re searching for signs and reading tea leaves, wondering, What are the chances we’ll lose? The signs that measure President Trump’s strength – his Favorable rating and his Job Approval – are all troubling: Swing voters dislike the President by two to one. Compounding…
Read MoreNoble Tale or Fiction?
The News and Observer has published a dozen stories and editorials and letters by people extolling the virtues of the UNC Center for Civil Rights – all saying roughly the same thing: The professors leading the Center are warriors battling for the poor and the oppressed and the least among us. It’s a noble picture.…
Read MoreOne Question
Listening to him as he stood on the floor of the State Senate speaking, I wondered whether he believed what he was saying or whether he’d simply decided to spin a tale. He sounded like a history professor giving a lecture, talking about the new Senate maps, explaining meticulously why those maps were not a…
Read MoreIt Wasn’t Always This Way
The one thing you prayed for and lusted after in a political campaign in the old days was to catch your opponent in a lie – because a lie (caught on videotape) was as close to sure death as there was in politics. Back in 1984 I thought we had a pretty good chance of…
Read MoreQuick hits
So much is happening so fast. So let’s fire away at several juicy targets – er, topics. Trumped Just when you think he can’t get worse, he does. His 77-minute tirade in Phoenix was True Trump. The estimable Economist pegged him for who and what he is: “politically inept, morally barren and temperamentally unfit for…
Read MoreGeneral Lee’s Statue
A plump boy wearing a hand-made Confederate soldier’s uniform stood by himself alone at the foot of a statue of General Lee, standing straight at attention like a guard – surrounded by protestors waving their fists, index fingers raised, in his face. Immobile, expressionless, without making a sound, his lip quivered and leaning towards him…
Read MoreClean Hands
The General Assembly is redrawing State House and Senate Districts and it’s like the circus came back in town: Six years ago, last time they drew districts, Republican legislators used ‘race’ as one criteria and Democrats sued them. This time Republican legislators said they wouldn’t even look at or go near ‘race’ and the Democrats…
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