When are we going to trust our fellow Americans again? When are we going to allow qualified individuals with responsibility to make decisions without consulting detailed rulebooks and formal procedures?
What were they thinking? Did President Joe Biden and the folks who put together his immigration policy imagine the voting public would celebrate policies that resulted in a record-high number of migration encounters -- more than three-quarters of a million -- in the usually low-immigration months of October, November and December 2023?
How are America's leaders measuring up against the standards set by the Constitution and the examples of the Founding Fathers? It's a question I've been asking as I seek refuge from contemporary politics in reading and occasionally writing, in my 2023 book "Mental Maps of the Founders," about the early years of the republic.
Donald Trump's anodyne if overexcited comment that the U.S. auto industry would face a "bloodbath" if he's not elected and doesn't impose 50% or 100% tariffs on cars produced predictable results.
Last week's Super Tuesday results ensured the renominations of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, barring some unanticipated adverse health events. So, who's going to win in November?
The headlines coming out of the Super Tuesday primaries have got it right. Barring cataclysmic changes, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the Republican and Democratic nominees for president in 2024.
Herewith some idiosyncratic, perhaps eccentric, observations on the electoral contests so far in this presidential cycle.
1. Turnout is down. In the first five contests -- the Iowa and Nevada caucuses and the New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan primaries -- Republican turnout was down from 2016, the most recent cycle with serious contests. That's based on precincts currently reporting and the ace New York Times number crunchers' estimates of as-yet-uncounted votes.
What's been missing these past couple of months from the coverage of and debate over the failed immigration bill? Some important basic facts and lots of historical context.
What does America's overclass think of the rest of us? The short answer is "not much." They think ordinary people's splurging on natural resources is destroying the planet and needs to be cut back forcefully. And that the government needs to stamp down on ordinary people enjoying luxuries that, in their view, should be reserved for the top elites.
What happens when a political party becomes demotic? Before answering the question, note that the word in question is not demonic, from the Greek word daimon, meaning a deity (remember that the Greek gods were notoriously jealous and greedy), but demotic, from the Greek word demos, meaning the people -- the same root as democratic.
The last six or seven months have been a couple of tough seasons for public policies based on lies. Two examples come to mind.
What went wrong with Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign? You can list many arguable mistakes, as you can with any campaign, and you can add, as some reporters have, that the candidate was not likable or good at retail campaigning -- which mostly reflected reporters' personal dislike of DeSantis or resentment at his refusal to schmooze what he considered unfriendly press.
Forty years ago, when Walter Mondale won 49% in Iowa's Democratic caucuses, far ahead of Gary Hart's 16%, the media spotlight nonetheless immediately focused.
With the help of a brilliant spot by consultant Ray Strother showing him tossing a hatchet into a tree, Hart went on to win the New Hampshire primary eight days later, 37% to 28%, and he suddenly became the favorite.
Is democracy at risk this election year?
To explain the latest young generation's pessimism, Washington Post opinion writer Taylor Lorenz took to what was then called Twitter last February to lament "the fact that we're living in a late stage capitalist hellscape during an ongoing deadly
pandemic w record wealth inequality, 0 social safety net/job security, as climate change cooks the world."
How's America doing? Government statisticians provide mounds of data that provide useful clues, and none more so than the Census Bureau's estimates of population, announced in the holiday weeks at the end of each calendar year.
The latest numbers measure the estimated population of each state as of last July 1 as compared to the constitutionally required decennial census dated April 1, 2020.
At a time when voters have rejected the party of the incumbent president in the last two elections, and in which current polling has the incumbent trailing,
both parties seem bent on nominating two men who have served as president and about whom substantial majorities of voters have negative feelings. What gives?
Institutional rot. That's the verdict recorded in recent days on the performance of leading institutions by observers not known for pessimistic temperaments or alarmist analysis.
For those dismayed at how many college and university students and faculty, even, or especially, at selective and prestigious institutions, have been cheering Hamas' Oct. 7 atrocities and calling, in only slightly veiled language, for the destruction of
Israel and genocide of Jews, the question is how this vicious line of thought gained hold in American secondary and higher education.
George Orwell, call your office. That's my initial and slightly out-of-date response to news stories about the Biden administration's efforts to stamp out "misinformation." It's an interesting irony that covert censorship should be
undertaken enthusiastically by those who call themselves "liberal" or "progressive" and who claim the opposition would threaten the survival of liberal democracy.
