The recent election suggested — and subsequent polls showed — that a public happy with the economy under Donald Trump is nevertheless very unhappy with the man himself. It took a massive amount of discontent with the president’s character and conduct for voters to punish his party at a time of low unemployment, rising wages […]
Op-Eds
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
A tribute to Wayne Stayskal: Cartoonist extraordinaire
Google “Great American Political Cartoonists” and you will undoubtedly find the late Herbert Block (aka “Herblock”) of The Washington Post, (Paul) Conrad of the Los Angeles Times, Michael Ramirez of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and several other cartoonists whose work, if not their names, are familiar to newspaper readers. One name that will take more […]
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A time to remember a message of acceptance
“Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.” — John Lennon A few words about “us” and “them.” It is, of course, the baseline division of human existence, probably dating from when the first person sparked the first fire. It’s a division that has been painful, bloody — and useful. Particularly in American politics. “Vote […]
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Absolute (and certain) corruption in college athletics
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That statement by Lord Acton in 1877 has become a staple in political science classrooms. He would have been dead-on if he had said money instead of power, too. Students in those political science classes can see the corruption firsthand. Just walk over to the practice […]
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What Trump needs to do to avoid being a one-term president
WASHINGTON — President Trump did defy history in the 2018 midterm elections. While his predecessor, Barack Obama, lost 63 House seats and six Senate seats in his first midterms, Trump held the GOP’s House losses to just over half of that and bolstered the GOP majority in the Senate. The combination of a Senate map […]
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The fragile state of Maine
The state of Maine is politically fragile. A simple statistical analysis of the demographic and economic conditions of the state reveals that we are dissimilar, not only to the country as a whole, but even to our New England neighbors. Based on these conditions, Maine requires a steady hand by its government to maintain the […]
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Democrats might want to go with Biden in 2020
Joe Biden is a gaffe-prone 75-year-old Washington veteran — who is exactly what Democrats need. The suburbs have turned against Republicans, but Donald Trump’s working-class base is still with him in a geographic and demographic stand-off that will — absent a game-changer — define the 2020 election. The play for Democrats should be obvious: Make […]
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Russia's war in Ukraine has global implications
Russia’s relentless and corrosive war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region continues. To the media savvy Kremlin’s delight, its dirty little war of pinprick savagery has managed to sink below major media headline radar. In concept, the pinpricks will eventually bleed Ukraine to the point of capitulation. However, as the going price for a barrel of […]
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The Florida election fiasco finally ends
After two recounts — one by machine, the other by hand — after a concession speech by Andrew Gillum, the Democratic candidate for governor, which was withdrawn and then re-delivered; after hordes of lawyers descended on the state to argue that “every vote should be counted,” including mail-in ballots with faulty signatures that were rejected […]
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GOP cannot win elections without cheating
So Georgia voters decided against Stacey Abrams as their governor. Maybe. With all the shenanigans perpetrated by Republicans in that state, we’ll never know for sure. Had they not passed a restrictive “exact match” law that put 53,000 voters (most of them reportedly African American) in electoral limbo over misplaced commas and transposed letters in […]