Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

About That Optimism Thing …

Watching the Democrats’ smoothly staged, potently scripted convention last week, voters could easily think that Hillary Clinton has this election in the bag. The critiques of Donald Trump made devastatingly clear that he’s a preposterous, dangerous candidate for the presidency. The case for Clinton was compelling, and almost every party leader who mattered showed up […]

I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT!!!

Okay, folks, here’s the deal.  Specifically, this happened this morning: A federal appeals court on Friday struck down North Carolina’s requirement that voters show identification before casting ballots and reinstated an additional week of early voting. The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit was an overwhelming […]

Brownshirts

The Clinton campaign has been strangely remiss in not publicizing the Trump campaign’s aggressive screening of journalists at Trump’s events—especially its denial of press credentials to several news media organizations, including the Washington Post and Politico. But this report by Paul Farhi, the Washington Post’s media reporter, this morning, titled “Post reporter barred, patted down […]

Trump Invites China to Hack His Emails—and Uncover All the Details of His Business Ties to Russian Oligarchs. Cool!

Well, by now y’all know that Donald Trump held a press conference today at which he invited Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton’s email server and retrieve the 33,000 emails she deleted.  When questioned about the propriety of encouraging anyone—much less a foreign power—to commit cybertheft, he said Russia probably already had the emails and […]

What Bill and Hillary Clinton Don’t Get: That the way to win Rust Belt white blue-collar voters isn’t to go centrist; it’s to go economic populist.

The changes to the platform testify to the strength of the Sanders campaign, and, like that campaign, they are a sign that the dynamism within the party arises right now from its left­wing faction, led by politicians like Mr. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. What is less clear is if Mrs. Clinton is […]

I’m with Brian Fallon

Campaigns are complicated things. No one gets every piece of them right. Some candidates are great at big rallies. Some are good only at small events. Some are terrific TV communicators but bad on the stump. Some delegate well, and others don’t. Some never waver from a message, while others can’t seem to find one […]

The most important endorsement of Clinton other than Sanders’ and Warren’s came today … from Al Gore

Paul Waldman has a lengthy post today at the Washington Post’s Plum Line blog titled “Despite what you’ve heard, Democrats aren’t in disarray. Their party is under attack from the outside.”   He argues that the Democratic Party itself isn’t that divided, and that the divisions really are between Democrats and the outsider Sanders supporters who […]

Apparently it wasn’t time for some traffic problems on I-95 during Kaine’s term as governor

Kaine’s emails show he was engaged on everything from traffic flows on southbound I-95 to explanations on why he picked one state lawmaker over another to sponsor income tax legislation. “Because I know him much better,” the governor wrote. — Kaine email trove shows media-savvy micromanager, Darren Samuelsohn, Politico, today I thought it was time […]

Ugh. Okay, still …

In a letter co-signed by 15 other Senate Democrats — and every Senate Republican — Kaine asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to exempt community banks and credit unions from many of its regulatory requirements. In justifying these exemptions, the letter suggests that these regulations would make it more difficult for these small banks to continue “spurring economic growth” […]