[ Posted Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024 – 15:48 UTC ]
The Democratic Party is now in a full-blown crisis of confidence. Part of this is media-fed, since writing "Democrats In Disarray" columns comes so naturally to most pundits, but it really goes a lot deeper than that. There are real worries out there that President Joe Biden is not going to be up to the task of defeating Donald Trump. There were worries about that before the debate, actually, since his poll numbers have been so anemic for so long. But after America saw Biden stumble through a 90-minute debate with Trump, these worries have gotten a whole lot more acute and immediate.
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[ Posted Tuesday, July 2nd, 2024 – 16:25 UTC ]
Back in the early 1980s (before he was in his early 80s), the punk band The Clash put out a song asking what has now become Joe Biden's new existential question:
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[ Posted Friday, June 28th, 2024 – 16:50 UTC ]
I cleared the decks for this column, preferring to spend today reviewing the first presidential debate of the 2024 cycle instead of writing a standard "Friday Talking Points" column. But if I had gone with my weekly format, President Joe Biden would easily have won my Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, hands down. His debate performance last night was not just disappointing, it was downright abysmal.
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[ Posted Thursday, June 27th, 2024 – 15:46 UTC ]
The first 2024 presidential debate is now mere hours away. I am going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction for tonight: Donald Trump will announce his vice-presidential pick at some point during the debate. He could do so very early on, in an effort to rattle President Joe Biden and/or to distract from whatever question Trump had been asked (but didn't want to answer), or he could wait until his closing statement and go out with a bang. But my guess is that Trump's big reveal will happen at some point tonight.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 25th, 2024 – 16:02 UTC ]
Four states hold primary elections today: New York, South Carolina, Utah, and Colorado. There are interesting races in all of them -- including a major Democratic showdown in New York -- but the one that interests me the most will happen in Colorado. Because the voters in one House district will have the choice of bringing an end to Lauren Boebert's congressional career.
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[ Posted Friday, June 21st, 2024 – 17:41 UTC ]
Maybe it's just us, but this week seemed like a waiting game. Perhaps the midweek holiday had something to do with it, but everything in the political world right now seems to be on hold in anticipation of next Thursday's first presidential debate. The debate is going to be incredibly early in the campaign schedule, but nobody really knows what this will mean until after the dust settles. Who will benefit the most from the earliness of it all? Well, that all depends on how they do, of course.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 18th, 2024 – 15:30 UTC ]
The Washington Post is now reporting that Robert F. Kennedy Junior will not meet the criteria that CNN instituted for inclusion in the first general-election presidential debate. This is not really all that surprising, since the criteria were essentially written to exclude Kennedy and other third-party candidates. And while Biden supporters might cheer the news that only President Joe Biden and Donald Trump will participate, it does highlight the hurdles built in to the American political system for those without a "D" or "R" after their names.
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[ Posted Monday, June 17th, 2024 – 16:21 UTC ]
Maryland Governor Wes Moore today signed a blanket pardon that covers 175,000 marijuana crimes committed in the state, reaching back to the 1980s. It could wind up covering even more, since records older than that are stored on paper -- meaning they will not be automatically pardoned, but if people from back then apply for one they will also get a pardon. This already covers an estimated 100,000 people (some of whom have multiple marijuana offenses). Moore is following in the footsteps of other states and jurisdictions who have already either pardoned or expunged criminal records for simple marijuana possession or use. What this all means is that not only is the War On Weed ending in state after state, but in some places people are retroactively trying to heal the damage the War On Weed has done to millions of people.
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[ Posted Friday, June 14th, 2024 – 16:36 UTC ]
The biggest political news of the week by far was Hunter Biden being convicted in record time on all three felony gun charges lodged against him. The jury spent only about three hours before returning these verdicts, which completely undercut the narrative Donald Trump has been spouting about how the justice system is "two-tiered" -- by which he means: "weaponized against Republicans while Democrats get a free pass." Kind of hard to make that argument when the president's own son just got convicted of felonies and is facing up to ten years in prison.
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[ Posted Thursday, June 13th, 2024 – 15:13 UTC ]
There was significant news today on reproductive rights, from two separate directions. The Supreme Court unanimously (!) overturned a case that challenged the F.D.A.'s approval of mifepristone, one of the two most commonly used abortion pills in the country. The unanimity was possible because the high court essentially punted on the legal question and instead ruled that the plaintiffs had no legal standing to bring their case. Meanwhile, in the Senate, a bill to create a federal right to in-vitro fertilization failed, mostly on party lines. Last week a bill that would have given federal protections to contraceptives also failed. Both will be used in campaign advertising by Democrats to paint Republicans as being against both contraception rights and I.V.F.
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