Do the Debates Reveal the Republicans' Master Plan?
As I was with my wife talking about the candidates’ debate performances last night—in particular, my disappointment that Sanders hadn’t performed more nimbly—the topic turned to the insane asylum that...
View ArticleDear Sanders Campaign: We Need to Talk.
I came home to my apartment today and found a number of these fliers strewn across the floor of my lobby, along with many more stacked on this table. Altogether, about seven times as many fliers as...
View ArticleThe Battle Over the Meaning of America: We Have to Fight It, and We Have to Win
To imagine that our times are defined primarily by the struggle between “liberalism” and “conservatism” or between the Democratic and Republican parties is to be dangerously distracted and misled....
View ArticleTime for a Fifty-State Shamestorm. Who's With Me?
Looks like it the Syrian refugee crisis was the tipping point from the neo-Confederacy that dared not speak its name to loud, proud all-American fascism.I and others have called out the Republican...
View ArticleThe Rec List Formula Is Broken
Insomnia sucks. There’s no reason on earth why I should be up reading Daily Kos at 4:30 in the morning. But I am. And here’s what I see on the Rec List: David Harris Gershon geebeebee geebeebee...
View ArticleKos Katalogue: 'The Game Board' and Other Phortogaphic Wrok
The Game Board project is a labor of love inspired by the square street grid of Chicago, in which major streets are laid out at half-mile intervals. I divided the city into 57 two-mile squares, which I...
View ArticleIf You Won't Vote for Hillary Clinton No Matter What . . .
. . . that doesn’t make you a bad person, it doesn’t make you a Republican, and it doesn’t mean you’re abdicating your civic responsibility.But you can, and should, vote for good candidates further...
View ArticleThe Seventh Party System: Trump Could Be the Catalyst
At one time or another, we’ve all endured the jaw-grinding, hair-pulling frustration of listening to some know-nothing right-winger accuse Democrats of being “the real racists” because they were the...
View ArticleSo Here Is Maybe Another Reason to Worry About Trump
Not much meat here, especially compared with my last diary. But I just discovered FiveThirtyEight’s Swing the Election tool today, and I decided to experiment: Suppose Donald Trump wins the Democratic...
View ArticleA Disquisition on Hypocrisy, Pie Fights and the DNC
“Mr. Hackworth,” Finkle-McGraw said after the pleasantries had petered out, speaking in a new tone of voice, a the-meeting-will-come-to-order sort of voice, “please favour me with your opinion of...
View ArticleDear Fellow Sanders Supporters: Let It Go.
Don’t worry about the coin toss thing. Bernie Sanders did what he needed to do.If Bernie Sanders could have won a majority of Iowa delegates outright, that would have been a miracle and a wonder and a...
View Article'Litigation, Lobbying and Defiance': Why the Republicans Don't Need the White...
Unfortunately, it sometimes takes me a while to get around to reading each new issue of Harper’s. Yesterday morning, I finally read the cover feature of the February 2016 issue, “The Trouble With Iowa:...
View ArticleI'm Not Gonna Say So in the 'Safe Space,' but the 'Safe Space' Is BS.
Hillary Clinton supporters, apparently, feel traumatized by the fact that Bernie Sanders supporters disagree with them.That’s the most charitable conclusion you can draw from the creation of a...
View ArticleHow Do We Win? We Begin With the End in Mind
I believe that one of the biggest problems with today’s Democratic Party is that it doesn’t ask itself, “How do we win?”I mean, it does ask this question in a limited sense, as in, “How do we win this...
View ArticleHow Are We Supposed to Beat Trump Without a Countermessage?
Yes, we get it: Donald Trump is bad. He shows contempt for women and ethnic minorities. He’s openly courting white supremacists. Protesters at his rallies are being assaulted, and he nods and winks....
View ArticleA Helpful Guide to Criticizing Hillary Clinton From the Left
No attacks on Hillary Clinton using right-wing tropes o[r] sources. Constructive criticism from the Left is allowed. There is a kind of binary thinking prevalent among right-wing authoritarians that...
View ArticleLet's Talk About Environmental Racism
The uproar over Bernie Sanders’ maladroit use of the word “ghetto” in the Democratic Debate in Flint, Mich., naturally demands the rebuttal that not all African-Americans live in poverty and racial...
View ArticleA Public Service for Cook County, Ill., Voters: voteforjudges.org
This is going to be brief (cue sighs of relief).If you live in Illinois, you walk into the voting booth and are confronted by a raft of names you’ve never seen before: the judicial candidates. Many of...
View ArticleAim High
If you want to hit a target, you have to aim above it.Life is not a frictionless surface. Lift is negated by weight, thrust by drag. No matter how great your momentum or how precise your aim, there...
View ArticleSo Here's What Happened in Chicago
Apologies for the roughness of the map. I don’t have proper cartographic software. Dark blue represents a Hillary Clinton majority; light blue represents a Bernie Sanders majority.The big news here is...
View Article