What Democrats should do next
Democrats had a roller coaster of a week. The began by having tough elections in Virginia and New Jersey and ended it by passing a historic infrastructure bill with bipartisan support. The warnings of the Virginia election still stand, but Biden can now claim that...
More thoughts on Virginia, part 1
The takes from Virginia keep coming and I've still got more. That said, I think we need to remember that an election, much like a poll, is a snapshot in time. Right now, Democrats are struggling with a difficult national environment, some of their own making and some...
Running the last campaign
PoliticsNC has offered several takes on the elections last night. Below is mine. Last night confirmed my belief that Democrats are really bad at politics. Not only did they lose the governor’s race in Virginia, they are barely hanging onto the governor’s race in...
The House insurrectionist
Yesterday, the North Carolina House swore in a new member from Gaston County. Donnie Loftis replaced Dana Bumgardner who passed away recently. Loftis is a former county commissioner who stormed the Capitol on January 6. Democrats walked out of the chamber when he was...
Undermining democracy
I’ve been trying to avoid watching too much of the redistricting debate because I know what Republicans are going to do. They will maximize their advantage to rig the elections for themselves. Democrats, who are in the minority in both houses of the legislature, are...
Yes, Virginia, there is an election
I’ve been watching the Virginia governor’s race out of the corner of my eye. I haven’t been paying too much attention, but it’s hard to escape it with my Twitter feed. What I’ve seen has been ugly and misguided. Terry McAuliffe is trying desperately to make Glenn...
Governing in dysfunction
Watching Democrats govern has been frustrating to say the least. Biden seemed to start off with a bang, passing the American Rescue Plan and rolling out the vaccines quickly and efficiently. His infrastructure plan quickly garnered bipartisan support. Then, the...
Random thoughts on redistricting
As we get closer and closer to new district maps, I have a few thoughts on redistricting, some of which I expressed last week. In particular, there’s no way to take politics out of the process, but there are better ways than others to do it. In North Carolina, we’ve...
A multi-pronged attack on democracy
This weekend, I watched the new HBO documentary, Four Hours in the Capitol, about the insurrection of January 6. Combined with the news coming out of the investigations, any American patriot should be outraged. The perpetrators of the attack clearly intended to...
In defense of centrism
Last week, I got another email accusing me of being a centrist hack. The writer said, “You can talk a fairly progressive game at times but always seem to fall back on this belief that all the voters are in the center. This nation is so polarized that...
