Category Archives: U.S. Elections

This may be the weirdest election year ever. People are not happy about what’s happening in their lives and a supposedly “anti-establishment” candidate has risen by playing off these fears and scapegoating all of the usual suspects.

[caption id="attachment_2137" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Donald Trump signing the Republican pledge to support whoever becomes the GOP nominee. “So I will be totally pledging my allegiance to the Republican Party and for the conservative principles for which it stands.” (Michael Vadon/Wikimedia)[/caption]

Time and again, in talking to people I know they’ve told me that they like Trump because they see him as an “outsider.”

“How,” I ask, since this type of scapegoating and raging against “big government” has been going on for over 30 years, “is Trump any different?”

To me, this looks like Lucy laying down the football once again for Charlie Brown. “This time it will be different, Charlie Brown,” she says. And we all know what happens. The candidate was just playing us.

Don’t buy it. It’s the same establishment, tea party trick of pretending to run as an outsider that we’ve seen for years. Donald Trump is the establishment.

1. When you can tell people how corrupt you are without any consequences, you are the establishment.

I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And yunno what, when I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.

On January 18, New York Magazine published Jonathan Chait’s article titled “The Case Against Bernie Sanders.”

After reading this piece, the entire premise is that Hillary is more likely to win because she’s more likely to win.

For the record, I’m a Bernie leaner. What’s bothersome about Chait’s piece is that he’s completely ignoring several significant trends, and this same surface analysis is appearing again (Michael Cohen in the Boston Globe) and again (Greg Sargent in The Washington Post) and again (Jonathan Martin in the New York Times).

Whether you’re a Bernie supporter or not, there are at least four critical trends that insiders aren’t writing about. Here are the four trends and why they’re important not just to Bernie, but to Hillary, to the Democratic Party, and to anyone interested in change in our country.

Conventional wisdom has it that Donald Trump will eventually go away and a more moderate candidate will step up to consolidate the Republican party.

While this may be true and was certainly the playbook in 2008 and 2012 with McCain and Romney, I think the Donald has the potential to stick around.

He really knows how to attack the establishment candidates from the right, he’s more media savvy than the other Tea Party candidates, and he doesn’t have to play by the rules.

There’s also a few things we could learn from him. No, seriously.

He’s a populist

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting Paul McGann, the 8th Doctor Who, at a local comic expo.

As we were chatting, my friend Rick asked him about the Scottish independence vote. The 8th Doctor mentioned two things that really stuck with me.

What does it take to be the ideal Republican candidate?

Yes, I know. I’m as surprised as you are to see the words “Sarah Palin” and “truth” in the same sentence. Speaking at a Tea Party rally in Indianola, IN, Ms. Palin made the following key points: 1. The United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn […]

Dear President Obama, Two days after election day, Jon Stewart ran a hilarious clip about the media’s view that you don’t “get it”. No one in any of the clips seemed to be able to define what “it” was. Republicans wanted to spin “it” as you “ignoring the will of […]

In the spirit of the political season, here’s a few ads that have arrived here in my mailbox in Cincinnati. Thought I’d take a look and see what they can tell us about this year’s elections. Without further ado, let’s start with Erik Nebergall. The first thing you notice is […]

I know the Cincinnati Enquirer supports Jean Schmidt, but usually they can at least mask it better. Today, the Enquirer finally posted some coverage on the Jean Schmidt/David Krikorian hearings before the Ohio Elections Commission. As I was scrolling through the coverage, I discovered that the Enquirer left an older […]

There is something really bizarre going on in Southern Ohio District 2. Though bizarre and Jean Schmidt (R-OH) seem to go hand in hand, this one takes the cake. Schmidt has been in Ohio Election Commission hearings this week pursuing a case against David Krikorian, who she accuses of lying […]