National Democrats
The Next Ted Cruz?
The newspaper reporter asked if North Carolina’s Senate Primary was going to be the next litmus test of the Tea Party’s political muscle – and as fast as he could Greg Brannon’s campaign spokesman said ‘Yes’ then added the Primary was just like Senator Rand Paul’s election in Kentucky in 2010 and Senator Ted Cruz’s…
Read MoreThe Dithers
Back before Christmas when Congress struck its ‘big budget deal’ the newspapers were running stories left and right telling everyone how Round 2 of the Sequester was going to be aw-ful and terr-ible and croo-el. In one story a lady in Fayetteville told how the army was going to be so decimated by the…
Read MoreWill Obama Get It Right?
Democrats fondly hope that, when he comes to NCSU tomorrow, President Obama finally gets his economic message right. He has struggled at that all five years in the White House. For all the good he has done, he has never done well at explaining what he’s doing. In retrospect, maybe he should have…
Read MorePolitics in Columbialand
A long time long ago in the far away Kingdom of Columbialand two tribes battled over control of Congress for years then one of the tribes (the Republicans) split into two smaller tribes: The Pachyderms and the Tea Partiers. The Tea Partiers turned out to be an unusual tribe. They had a creed and they…
Read MoreDeclaration of Independents
A “record-high 42 percent of Americans identify as Independents: Republican identification lowest in at least 25 years,” Gallup breathlessly tells us. But those numbers may obscure the truth about politics today. It’s not that four in 10 Americans swing bath and forth between the two parties – carefully studying the issues, judiciously judging the…
Read MoreClay for Congress
Don’t underestimate a candidate who already won 12 million Americans’ votes on TV. Clay Aiken may be a surprising candidate for Congress, but he may be just what Democrats need: a new face and fresh blood that energizes new voters, especially young voters. The social-media response to his possible candidacy in the 2nd…
Read MoreA Problem Congress Can Solve
Years ago a doctor asked my mother her definition of happiness and without batting an eye she said: Love and money. When it came to fundamentals mother got right down to brass tacks. A while back up in Washington a piece of the federal government – theNational Academy of Sciences – decided Congress needed to…
Read More2014
Millions of dollars will be spent and billions of words spilled, but only one thing will decide this election: Will voters be madder at President Obama or at Republicans in the legislature? On today’s market, the outlook for Democrats is as chilling as a New Year’s Day Polar Bear Plunge. For two months, the…
Read MoreE.T.
When I saw the headline I thought it must be a hoax but it turned out to be true: Congress, which hasn’t passed a budget in memory, had held a dead-serious, high-level, official hearing to establish whether there is extra-terrestrial intelligence in the universe. As one wit quipped on the Washington Post’s website, First, they…
Read MorePickpockets
You would think by now out of sheer boredom Congressmen would be looking for new ways to fool voters but, undeterred at using the same old worn-out trick again, just before Christmas eager-beaver Paul Ryan rolled out his new budget, saying how he’d made a deal with the Democrats to cut spending and cut the…
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