Tuning Out

The 2018 election season marked a high-water point for my political engagement. We supported ten Democrats identified by Mind the Gap running for winnable seats and were thrilled when seven won, the House flipped and Trump’s government takeover was slowed down. Then came 2020, when we expected a Blue Wave in revulsion to Trump’s disastrous […]

Amy Klobuchar

You asked about Amy. Her selling points: Personal appeal. She is likable, in a girl-next-door kind of way. But is that what you want in a president? Could she stand up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Israel lobby, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un? Electability. Yes, she won big in Minnesota. But, she hasn’t run […]

Disappointing Democrats

With over 20 professed candidates for president, it is dismaying that the Democratic Party does not seem able to come up with a convincing opponent to Donald Trump. It should be so easy for a candidate to set themself up as a superior alternative, but almost every liberal voter I know is currently in a […]

Mid-August Reflections

August 15, 2019: We mainly get dispatches from Iowa as the candidates jockey for position, striving to qualify for the third debate, or set of debates, coming next month. The mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton have raised the issue of gun control, giving the Democrats one more cause to cudgel Trump and Republicans with, […]

The Second Debate

August 2, 2019: Two more nights of debates did little to either clarify the Democratic presidential field or burnish the Party’s image. The biggest disappointment, perhaps, was Kamala Harris, who bounded out of the opening debate as a potential front-runner but seemed strangely out of it last night. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn she […]

The First Democratic Debate

June 28, 2019:  Until last week I was banking on a Biden/Harris ticket. I thought, while Biden is not electric, everyone is comfortable with “Uncle Joe” and would have no reason to vote against him. He could collect all the long-time Democrats plus everyone who was turned off by Trump, which should be enough to […]

My 2018

For my memory only: As we leave 2018 behind, I’d like to recollect some of the highlights. In most respects it rates as a terrible year: Donald Trump’s stupidity, egocentricity and meanspiritedness was a daily downer, and there were frequent reminders that our planet is heading toward an ecological upheaval that will make almost everyone’s […]

The Awfulness of Donald Trump

It is impossible to overstate how horrible Donald Trump is as a man or as a president. I can’t think of a single thing he has said or done that I agree with, which is a pretty amazing record. The only silver lining is that he will be out of office eventually, although not for […]

History in the Making

For years, as we moved relatively steadily through “the American Century,” I thought of history as something we studied in school. Now I am older, with a longer perspective, and the American Century is itself history. There are individual events I lived through that will merit mention in future history books: the Cold War, the […]

Endangered Species

Of all the horrible things the Trump Administration is contemplating or doing, weakening the Endangered Species Act is the one that, surprisingly, bothers me the least. I say “surprisingly,” because I consider myself an ardent environmentalist/conservationist/naturalist. The philosophy behind the ESA is that man is the steward of this planet and responsible for the health […]