Amid news that Donald Trump is about to be indicted by a hyperpartisan prosecutor and of his hysterical responses, and prompted by vagrant reading about the War of 1812 and Woodrow Wilson's violations of civil liberties in World War I, a thought occurred to me. America seems to go crazy every 50 years or so.
— The American electorate has changed dramatically over the past 40 years, and a pair of factors — race and education — have driven the changes.
— The electorate has become more diverse and more highly educated. Democrats rely heavily on nonwhite voters and have improved with white college-educated voters, while Republicans have cut deeply into Democratic support with non-college whites.
— Racial and cultural issues, rather than economic ones, have fueled Republican gains with the non-college white electorate.
All big American companies now require DEI training: diversity, equity and inclusion.
Since the early days of Henry Ford, Michigan was the proud symbol of America's industrial might.
As one who has spent pleasant time on Sand Hill Road and the Stanford campus, I'm dismayed by the demands for special treatment coming from the denizens of one of America's most privileged and affluent precincts.
— The fate of Wisconsin’s state supreme court will be decided next month.
— About two-thirds of the states will have supreme court elections next year.
— Key states with supreme court elections to watch in 2024 include Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, and Ohio.
"I have no respect for the passion of equality," Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., one of America's great jurists, once declared, "which seems to me merely idealizing envy."
Where did COVID-19 come from? Was it a lab leak or from a Chinese wet market? Any scientist or researcher suggesting the former, that COVID-19 originated in or was released from a lab, was ridiculed as a conspiracy theorist. The lab in question is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the “largest BSL4 lab in the world” the type of facility where such research would be conducted.
Big city elections provide clues about trends in national politics, the composition and attitudes of Democratic constituency groups, and voters' responses to emerging matters. Recent examples include the March 2019 primary for mayor of Chicago and the June 2021 Democratic contest in New York City.
— The calendar year before the presidential primary voting begins is often defined by winnowing, as contenders emerge and then fade.
— But Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are taking up so much oxygen that we may already have the top contenders, with everyone else who runs essentially an afterthought.
— DeSantis is polling well for a non-candidate, but we need to see how he actually performs before assuming that his support is solid.
— If another candidate supplants DeSantis (or Trump), or at least vaults into their stratosphere, don’t necessarily assume it will be someone who is currently well-known now or has a lot of formal political experience.
Government imposes a million rules. Americans seem to want more!
For at least the last 20 years, politicians in Washington, at the behest of green energy groups, have spent some $100 billion of taxpayer money to fight climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How is that going for us so far?
When the Wall Street Journal reported in a front-page lead story that the Department of Energy had concluded the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from a leak from China's Wuhan laboratory, you might have argued it was old news. The FBI had already, it turns out, come to the same conclusion and with a higher degree of confidence (moderate) than the Energy Department (low).
— If no candidate receives a majority of Electoral College votes, the U.S. House of Representatives elected in the 2024 election would decide the presidency.
— Republicans are very likely to continue to control enough House delegations to select the GOP nominee as the winner, meaning that 269 is effectively the winning Electoral College number for Republicans, while it’s 270 for Democrats.
— Republicans currently control 26 of the 50 House delegations, the bare majority to win in the House if the Electoral College does not produce a majority winner.
After a recent hurricane, Puerto Ricans desperately needed fuel.
Before President Joe Biden entered the White House, he consulted with several prominent historians about how to be a great commander in chief. Their answer: Grow government. Spend, spend, spend. Don't worry about blowing up the debt.
Jimmy Carter, the 39th and the longest-living U.S. president, has chosen to enter hospice care at age 98. This is a good time to try to place his presidency in history.
— The overall battle for House control in 2024 starts as a Toss-up.
— Relatively similar numbers of Democratic and Republican seats start in the most competitive Toss-up and Leans categories, although Republicans start with a few more targets in large part because of the likelihood that they will benefit from redistricting in North Carolina and Ohio.
— Big blue states California and New York, where Republicans have made key gains over the past couple of cycles, loom large as Democrats plot a path back to the House majority.
Classified documents are found in Donald Trump's home!
