As I write this the 2020 Presidential Election has not yet been called for anyone, but right now the current vote coupled with where votes are still being counted suggests that Joe Biden has won an Electoral College victory that’s somewhere between adequate and comfortable. …

America’s modern Republican Party deserves the fate of the Whigs. You remember the Whig Party, right? It was once one of two dominant political parties in the U.S. The Whigs were a powerful political force before the Civil War. Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, Henry Clay, and William Henry Harrison were…

I took a “leadership” seminar last month. It wasn’t choice that I made so much as it was a work requirement. One hour of a longer professional development course was given over to learning about “leadership.” My instructor for the hour let us all know right off the top that…

I guess I’m just old fashioned: I don’t see anything at all “patriotic” about reducing the flag to an item of clothing. That supposed patriots are outraged by Nike’s decision to not release a “Betsy Ross” shoe doesn’t so much baffle me as it further convinces me that those who…

Just because I’m not watching the first Democratic Presidential Debate doesn’t mean that I’m not keeping an eye on the Democrats running for president. Both America and the Democratic Party seem to be at a crossroads, making this feel like the most momentous presidential nomination for Democrats in my lifetime…

I’ve been thinking about Doughfaces a lot recently. That’s not something that I normally do, it’s just that I’ve been reading The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War, by Joanne B Freeman. It’s not a tricky title or anything. The book is about…

My racist uncle passed away a few weeks ago. His twin addictions to nicotine and alcohol brought him to a slow, painful, and inevitable end. His exit from this world was unmarked by fanfare or ceremony. Calls were made to family members to share the news and a few memories…

Excellent reporting has once again revealed a truth of American politics: profits drive corporate political engagement. Everything else is just public relations. The most recent pieces of evidence for this fact about America came from Reid Chamberlin at Open Secrets and then from Judd Legum’s Popular Information newsletter. It turns…

American politics is . . . fraught at the moment. I’ve never seen anything like politics in 2019. Excluding the months around the birth of my children, I’ve spent the thirty years of my adult life following politics, and I’ve spent two decades of my adult life actively engaged with…