(Political Ramblings from a Little Left of Center)
We spent 2022 consumed with multiple criminal investigations involving a former U.S. President, an insurrection at the U.S. Capital, consequential mid-term elections, the demise of Roe v. Wade, a surge of inflation, a resurgence of COVID, the war in Ukraine, another major school shooting, etc. We’re starting 2023 with complete dysfunction in the U.S. House…
Oh, great. What 2022 needs is yet another opinion piece noting that our current political environment is polarized. “Hey! Have you noticed that water is wet?” My end-of-year variation on this well-worn theme will be to first make a few observations and to then pose a serious question to my readers who reside somewhere to…
While we’re just barely through the 2022 elections, I thought I’d take a very early look at the 2024 national landscape. Candidates do matter… but only to a limited extent. There are many races across the board that simply won’t be competitive – regardless of the candidates. Indeed, a majority of the 2024 races won’t…
The Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee recently approved President Biden’s proposed changes to the 2024 primary calendar. Their intention was to favor the Democratic party’s current demographics, rearranging state primaries so that the party faithful have more of a voice in selecting a candidate. Here’s a comparison of the first month…
While it would be logical to assume that the daily barrage of negative stories about Hershel Walker would be impacting the Georgia Senate race, I wanted to see if any available data would back up that assumption. So, I took a quick peek today at the data gathered by TargetEarly for the Georgia Senate runoff…
My previous post on the lame-duck Congress omitted a couple of very important priorities. Both can be accomplished without the Senate and without the dedication of high-value time on the House floor. House Democrats and their staffs will need to work overtime, but both of these issues can be handled entirely in House committees. Finishing…
While I will continue to post on this blog, I will be pausing my use of Twitter to reference future blog posts. I have multiple reasons: I have serious concerns about the direction of the platform under Elon. It’s a bit of a pain. There’s just not that many people that follow my minimalist Twitter…
The 117th Congress ends on January 3, 2023 and Republicans will thereafter control the House. Democrats do still have a lame-duck opportunity to move some legislation, but their timeframe is quite limited. The remaining calendar not only contains the holiday season but also includes the political distraction of the Georgia Senate runoff and a surfeit…
I want to plug an eight-episode podcast that just concluded this week, available on your platform of choice. “Ultra” is an absolutely fascinating, exceptionally well-researched, deep dive into an all-but-forgotten and, unfortunately, all-too-true chapter in American history. There’s that oft-repeated aphorism whose original form was likely “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to…
The 2022 elections aren’t quite finalized yet, but I thought I’d go ahead and post a quick post-mortem – summarizing the winners & losers in addition to evaluating my own projections as reflected in my Final 2022 Election Analysis post. U.S. House My projection: “While I don’t see as massive of a ‘red wave’ as…