Brace yourselves
Brace yourselves. Walk away from your inbox. Today is the final of day of the third quarter. It’s the most important deadline of the campaign. Some candidate (maybe me?) is just $1,374 shy of meeting her goal. Can you help her get there by midnight tonight? It’s all...
The face of the GOP
North Carolina is different. In 2014, the country as a whole saw the lowest voter turnout in decades. In North Carolina, turnout was about average for a non-presidential year. While a Republican wave washed over the rest of the country, North Carolina Democrats picked...
Baited
Hillary Clinton’s great line that “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons” was amplified last night. Donald Trump took the bait all night long and proved in front of 100 million viewers that he has little self-restraint....
Bringing out the worst in us
The shooting in Charlotte and the protests that followed have brought out the worst in us, especially on social media. The partisans on twitter immediately retreated to their familiar positions either blaming the cops and white racism or blaming the protesters and...
Standing in the bathroom door
Before the Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell warned of the “pottery barn rule”—you break it, you own it. His colleagues dismissed his warning and went marching into a war that has left us with instability in the Middle East...
Anatomy of a failed deal
A deal over HB2 less than two months before an election was always a long shot. Both sides are locked into a campaign narrative and changing it at the last moment adds chaos to an already unpredictable political environment. It was torpedoed, though, before it even...
Catching an anchor
Friday afternoon, word emerged that a compromise over HB2 was in the works. The deal, brokered by the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association, calls on Charlotte to repeal its ordinance and for the General Assembly to repeal HB2. The association’s members...
Unfit to govern
Something is terribly wrong with the Republican Party. Nationally, they’ve nominated a con artist who launched his unofficial campaign by questioning the origin of Obama’s birth. Donald Trump was chief birther and he’s still refusing to admit he was wrong. The party...
Pariah state
For months, Pat McCrory and the GOP leadership in North Carolina have been engaged in a game of chicken with college athletics in North Carolina. In the days following the passage of HB2, entertainers canceled concerts and businesses moved conventions. Pat McCrory and...
HB2: Turning red districts blue
There’s a crack in the Republican wall over HB2. State Rep. Tamara Barringer is the first GOP legislator to call for its repeal. Barringer voted for the bill but is now in a tough re-election fight with Susan Evans. She’s also running in the type of suburban district...
