Watch Virginia
The best predictors of 2022 are not the polls we’ve seen. It’s the election in Virginia in November. Virginia is one of a handful of states that holds its election for legislature and council of state in odd numbered years. With governors limited to a single term,...
More fearful of losing power than losing democracy
Over the past few months, several people have asked me about my audience and why I’m writing. My audience is people who follow North Carolina politics, but I also write for myself. I started PoliticsNC in 2013 because I was frustrated with the coverage of North...
Mayberry and the children of the Reagan Revolution
CBS This Morning ran a segment on Mount Airy, Andy Griffith’s home town and the basis for the fictional Mayberry of the Andy Griffith Show. Ted Koppel explores why Mount Airy has become a booming tourist destination for people searching for Mayberry. The show, he...
The rise of Neo-Patriots and the Idiot Wing of the GOP
When John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, he inadvertently created the Idiot Wing of the Republican Party. Until then, the anti-intellectual, anti-democratic tradition within the GOP was kept at bay by the free marketeers dedicated to profits instead of...
Dying because Democrats are worse
Seems every week, we watch some prominent or vocal conservative anti-vaxxer die of COVID. Today, it was a couple in Alabama who called themselves “Alabama Pickers.” They gave people advice on buying and selling used items on their Youtube channel. The husband, Dusty,...
Wrong questions and right ones
Republicans arguing against coronavirus mitigation efforts have been consistently dishonest, ignorant, or both. For instance, one columnist from National Review posted a chart showing the rate of deaths from COVID by state, starting from January 2020. The top ten were...
Get it done, Joe
On most of the big issues facing our country over the past 40 years, Republicans have been wrong. Beginning with Ronald Reagan, they told us that cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy “lifts all boats.” Instead, their policies led to the widest income...
Vaccine mandates are nothing new
Yesterday, Joe Biden announced that his administration would implement vaccine mandates for all federal employees and those of federal contractors. He also said that he would urge the Labor Department to look into requiring vaccines for companies that have more than...
The Boy Blunder of the GOP
In twenty years or so, the National Enquirer or some other grocery store tabloid will run the “Whatever happened to Madison Cawthorn?” story with a photo of a bloated, unrecognizable man on a motorized grocery cart in front of a burned out trailer. For now, though, we...
The Confederacy falls again
The removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond today illustrates how fast change can come even when it takes so long. On the one hand, Lee, who led a traitorous rebellion, remains a hero in the eyes of too many people more than 160 years after the end of the...
