Category Archives: Elections & Voting

Here’s what you need to know about Proposition 22 on the California ballot, and why I’m urging you to vote NO on this corporate power grab. Continue reading →

If you’re a rich Republican who’s done nothing in the House of Representatives for so long that you’re essentially seen as a piece of furniture, what do you do when faced with a popular, well-organized, grassroots opponent who’s about to overtake you? Continue reading →

On that day in July 2016 when Donald Trump chose him as his vice-presidential running mate, Mike Pence must have felt like the luckiest man alive, or at least the luckiest Republican—whatever species that is these days. Continue reading →

The only honest thing about Pence last Wednesday night was the fly on his head. Continue reading →

How nasty is the Republican Party’s massive campaign to thwart democracy? Ask the good people of Florida. Continue reading →

Without a shred of evidence, Trump claims that mail-in ballots are rife with fraud. Rubbish. Mail-in ballots, also called absentee ballots, have been used for years across America. They have proven safe and secure. Continue reading →

Perhaps more than anyone else, Jeb Bush organized the ‘electoral’ defeat of Donald Trump this year, and the installation of Joe Biden into the White House in 2021. Continue reading →

Republicans and Democrats alike fear that the other party will attempt to hijack this election. Continue reading →

Years ago, when I was a high school sophomore, at the beginning of the academic year one of our teachers gave us an assignment to come up with ideas to reform the American political system. Continue reading →

The first presidential debate was as horrific as we feared it would be. We were barely able to hear a word from Joe Biden or moderator Chris Wallace thanks to Trump’s incessant interruptions and nonstop insults. Continue reading →

The other night, amidst all our upending national disasters, I was taken with an offhand comment—or rather, offhand tweet—made by presidential historian Michael Beschloss. On March 4, 1861, Beschloss wrote, “Defeated candidate Stephen Douglas held Abraham Lincoln’s hat while the new president gave his inaugural address.” Continue reading →

WASHINGTON—When the U.S. Supreme Court opens its new term on the first Monday in October, the symbol of its most important looming development will not be an individual case but an empty chair draped in black. Continue reading →

Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump frankly stated his motive for rushing to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: To help him dispute the legitimacy of mail-in ballots in the November election. Continue reading →

The corporate Democrats refuse to back measures that appeal to huge majorities of their base, preferring instead to campaign against one evil man and his appointees. Continue reading →

President Donald Trump said during a campaign rally over the weekend that he is “counting on the federal court system”—which he has packed with right-wing judges—to declare a winner of the presidential election on the night of November 3, a statement that one journalist described as an “outright pledge to use the courts to stop votes from being counted.” Continue reading →

US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died, which means the US election is going to revolve around abortion and other civil rights for the foreseeable future. Which won’t change much since this presidential race hasn’t really been about anything since the end of the Democratic primaries. Continue reading →

Is private profit achieved by selling at the market the best way to benefit the greatest number of people and if so, how come so many people are homeless, unemployed, poor, without health care, while market forces accumulate trillions for war and billions for pets? Continue reading →

During the first Clinton term, I worked on the public TV series In Performance at the White House Continue reading →

WASHINGTON—Trump’s acceptance of the RNC nomination for a second term as president Thursday night was not the first time a fascist posed as a fighter for workers who was bucking the establishment. Continue reading →

Donald Trump continually breaks multiple laws. Yet the serial lawbreaking, lying Trump is playing the “law and order” card against street protestors reacting to fatal cases of police brutality. Armed pro-Trump provocateurs are attending civic protests and generating casualties and property damage, as was the case recently in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Trump uses such mayhem to attack Joe Biden and his hyped “radical leftists.” This is grotesque, but then that is how corrupt, dangerous, devious Donald operates when cornered by falling polls, and growing opposition from leading retired military leaders and national intelligence officials. Trump’s attack on the U.S. Postal Service is also producing a nationwide backlash and even red-state conservatives are troubled by delays in deliveries of medicine and Social Security checks. Continue reading →

One result of the Republican convention will be a drop in the number of progressives who are in denial about the Trump regime’s momentum toward fascism. This week’s relentlessly unhinged GOP gathering has probably done more to win votes for Joe Biden from the left than last week’s Democratic convention did. And that points up a problem. Continue reading →

Today’s conjugation lesson: I am worn out, you are worn out, we all are worn out. Continue reading →

The Democrats claim to be the opposition party, but they seek out Republicans, hate the left of their own party, and don’t seem to care if they lose the election. Continue reading →

All politicians lie. Rare exceptions prove the rule. Continue reading →

With little explanation from management, United States Postal Service (USPS) machines are being disassembled across the country. A USPS worker leaked images of a newly decommissioned machine—capable of handling 30,000 pieces of mail per hour—to NBC Montana. Local news outlet KUOW report that 40 percent of the post sorting machines in the Seattle-Tacoma area have been recently dismantled, to the dismay of the local workforce. “It would take a crew of 20 to 30 people hand-sorting the mail all night to do what one of these machines can do in a couple hours… Our infrastructure doesn’t work without these machines,” one worker said. “In our meetings with management, the union has been given no rationale whatsoever,” he added. Continue reading →

A national political nominating convention, as the Democrats have just completed, is, to be sure, a mutual admiration event. A steady stream of speakers led to the finale with the acceptance speech by the presidential candidate, Joe Biden. But the Convention has another declared purpose: to show the country what the Democratic Party stands for and the future it wishes to shape for the American people. Continue reading →

When the Democratic Party ends its charade of a primary process and spits out the person most closely aligned with neo-liberal policies, the gas lighting begins. Continue reading →

As the recently departed progressive champion John Lewis warned, your right to vote “is not guaranteed. You can lose it.” Continue reading →