Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Anderson Clayton reminds me of Jim Hunt: the same energy, the same enthusiasm and the same determination to make North Carolina better – through the Democratic Party. A couple of us old Hunt hands saw that this week when the 86-year-old four-term governor and the 25-year-old first-term party chair met for the first time, at…
Read MoreGovernor Roy Cooper measures his words carefully, so his tweet Saturday afternoon was striking: “GOP demand for passage of their backroom casino deal in exchange for a state budget and Medicaid expansion is the most brutally dishonest legislative scheme I’ve seen in my 3+ decades. People are right to be suspicious. Something has a grip…
Read MoreFormer Senator Lauch Faircloth, who died last week at age 95, was a Democrat before he got mad at Terry Sanford. Faircloth got his revenge and got elected to the U.S. Senate. Then he got beat by John Edwards. I was there for the whole Shakespearean saga of vengeance, ambition and – sometimes – comedy.…
Read MoreGood for the Biden White House! The day after Speaker Kevin McCarthy caved in to the ultra-right and launched a bogus impeachment of the President, the White House fired back – and took a pointed jab at the media: “It’s Time For The Media To Do More To Scrutinize House Republicans’ Demonstrably False Claims That…
Read MoreIn Washington, Republicans block military promotions (still), vowed to shut down the government (again) and launched a bogus impeachment of President Biden. In Raleigh, Republicans can’t pass a budget (still), adjourned without doing anything (again) and were at each other’s throats over casinos. In the press room of Raleigh’s Legislative Building, there’s a FUBAR Meter…
Read MoreBiden’s itching to run against Trump – he’s the Republican Biden’s most likely to beat. And it looks like Biden may get what he wants – in a poll last week Trump had 52% of the vote, a big lead, in the Republican primary. But there’re warning signs (for Trump): A block of his voters…
Read MoreOle Trump’s a law unto himself. Back during COVID he speculated that injecting bleach in your arm might kill the virus. Last week, in New York, he said that when he was president he prevented a nuclear holocaust and saved millions of lives. Running for president, again, he says he’ll end the Ukraine War in…
Read MoreYou’ve hit bottom when Donald Trump Jr. accuses you of “shady back room deals.” He tweeted about North Carolina legislators’ machinations on casinos: “What’s going on in NC? Outrageous. Shady back room deals and crony capitalism are not the path to #MAGA!” One thing the Trumps surely know is The Art of the Shady Deal.…
Read MorePowers beyond our control, breeding crises no one saw coming, have changed politics in the blink of an eye: Pearl Harbor did that. So did 9/11. And Covid. The ‘unexpected’ makes predicting the outcome of an election a year away risky business. For all we know Putin may invade Poland next. Or Kim Jong Un…
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