Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
John Edwards’ withdrawal was an abrupt surprise – even to his closest supporters. Monday afternoon, his campaign was telling reporters on a conference call that he was in for the duration. Tuesday afternoon, they were sending out fundraising emails and laying on a full schedule through Super Tuesday. Clearly, this was a sudden decision. Politically,…
The battle is over. Let’s ride down out of the hills and shoot the wounded: Big Winner? Barack Obama. But he also faces a big racial divide. The question next Tuesday is whether he can win white and Latino votes. Big Losers. The Clintons. Hillary said she found her voice in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, Bill…
A couple of weeks ago, the Easley Administration rolled out a new approach on North Carolina’s disastrous mental-health system. Actually, it rolled out Mr. Fix-It: Dempsey Benton, the legendary master city manager from Raleigh who is now Secretary of Health and Human Services. Benton outlined a plan to fix the system. Why? Well, it turns…
What is it about South Carolina primaries? Of course, this is the state that gave us Pitchfork Ben Tillman, Strom Thurmond and Lee Atwater. Not to mention secession and the Civil War. Now South Carolina has given us two of the sleaziest presidential primaries in history: the Bush mugging of John McCain in 2000 and…
Imagine this. Two Democrats are arguing about John Edwards future. One says, ‘Why not? Why shouldn’t he do it? Here’s the scenario: Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid calls John Edwards, says, John, your running against Elizabeth Dole could mean Democrats keeping control of the Senate. Which could mean the end of the war in Iraq.…
Hillary Clinton went hard after Barack Obama in Monday’s debate. In front of the Congressional Black Caucus. On Martin Luther King Day. She even got jeered. Why? Because the Clintons’ strategy is to shake, rattle and roll Obama. Take him away from the set-piece orations where he is a master. Put him on the defensive.…
The worst wounds in politics are self-inflicted. Beverly Perdue was starting to draw blood by linking Richard Moore to the Randy Parton fiasco. Then The N&O got a copy of an email from one of her fundraisers soliciting $20,000 from the Parton crowd. It’s easy to say somebody should have seen this coming. As in:…
During the Republican debate last week, Pat McCrory said “twenty percent of the inmates” in the Charlotte jail are illegal immigrants. He also said in a speech last week over fifty-percent of the babies born at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte are Latino. McCrory didn’t make the numbers up. But it turns out he was…
This presidential race will leave in its wake a long trail of losers. One may be the myth of the unions’ voter-turnout power. John Edwards bet his campaign on the union myth. Then he lost Iowa, his must-win state. Then came Nevada. The TV talkheads told us Nevada was sewn up for Obama because he…
A new nationwide poll shows that, if they could run against each other in 2028, Barack…
Senator Phil Berger was out of touch with voters in his district – and suffered the…
A reassuring lesson from our trip to Germany and Czechia is that dictators, despots and tyrants…