The GOP unzipped
This year feels increasingly like 2006. Back then, the Republican Party was fighting off scandals, wars, botched responses to natural disasters, and numerous self-inflicted wounds. This year, the pandemic and the reckoning over race have replaced the wars and natural...
Poll shows bubbling economic populism and helps explain Tillis’ woes
A group called AccountableUS released a poll yesterday that indicates a bubbling economic populism in the state driven by COVID and in contradiction to the GOP approach to the coronavirus. The poll also shows how the GOP is out of step with the rest of the state and...
ISIS and Ebola, the Comey letter, and the rapidly changing political environment
For most of the time I’ve worked in politics, the political environment was pretty much baked-in by Labor Day. In the final two months of a campaign, candidates could fight around the edges, running against the tide, with a tide or battling out a more neutral...
Why North Carolina is trending blue
Another poll in North Carolina shows Biden leading Trump and Cunningham with a huge lead over Tillis. We’ve seen similar polls since the spring. Conservatives don’t believe them. They cite the 2016 polls that showed Clinton defeating Trump. They believe rural voters...
Trump won’t cancel the election but he will try to suppress the vote
No, President Trump is not going to move or cancel the election. Congress is not going to allow that. Even Republicans will oppose it. Still, the sentiment is widely accepted by the GOP: rig elections to benefit Republicans. We’ve been front and center in the attempt...
The party of dumb people
Yesterday, U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) tested positive for COVID-19. He blamed wearing a mask for contracting the virus. Gohmert announced he’s taking hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus despite no evidence that it worked. A staffer from his office said...
Chasing public opinion instead of crafting public policy
Nationally, Republicans are starting to hit the panic button. An article in Politico this morning highlights the fear that the GOP will lose more Congressional seats after believing they were close to the bottom after 2018. On the Senate side, enough incumbent...
Cooper is up 20, Cunningham up 9, and Biden up 7
Another poll shows Republicans struggling in North Carolina. The new NBC/Marist poll has Donald Trump trailing Joe Biden by seven, Cunningham leading Tillis by nine, and Roy Cooper over Dan Forest by a whopping 20 points. While the gap will close before November,...
The right leader for this moment
You know who we don’t hear much from anymore? ReOpenNC. You know why? Because they were wrong, wrong, wrong. Had we re-opened like they demanded, we would look like the states they cited as examples, Florida, Texas, Georgia and South Carolina. Now, after snubbing...
Wagging the dog
Donald Trump is invading American cities with the “jack-booted government thugs” the NRA warned us about 25 years ago. He’s sending federal law enforcement from a mishmash of agencies dressed in combat fatigues to attack American citizens. No mayors or governors...
