Making liberalism appealing again

Sam Smith - When I first read about critical race theory, my reaction was, "there they go again." Not because I disagreed with the substance of history but that now was just not the time to try to make the rotten past a political tool. Sure enough, it seems to have been a factor in …

The Civil War hangs on

Sam Smith – Some time ago I raised the issue of who had really won the civil war. True, slavery and the confederacy are over, but other practices and values of the old South – particularly the purported superiority of the white male - remain with us, expanded to not only to subjugate blacks but …

A demi-decade of disaster

Sam Smith – The past five years have been among the worst in our history. Add four years of the Trump regime to the pandemic to the GOP efforts to undermine voting rights to the attempted coup at the Capitol and we have seldom been faced collectively with so many problems we are unable to …

Escaping our politics of myths & lies

Sam Smith - Myth and lie-based politics have been around for a long time before Trump. In its modern, dominant form, the Nixon administration is a good place to start. The Clintons' ability to conceal the reality of the Arkansas mob politics which they had led was another example as was the major dishonesty about …

More liberal gawk talk

Sam Smith - As noted here before, liberals have a tendency to use language that separates them from the very people they should be trying to reach. Two current examples are "defunding police" and "critical race theory." You can make an intellectual argument for both, but if you're trying to get someone elected it's not …

Some tips for liberals

Sam Smith - Over the past two decades there has been a significant decline in Democratic support from non-college grads. One factor in this has been an increasingly well educated liberal constituency with a decreasing skill at reaching those less educated. In fact, if you go back to the New Deal or Great Society, liberals …

Covering the Cambridge city council in the 1950s

Your editor's coverage of the Cambridge city council for the Harvard student radio station in the 1950s as one of the reasons he has never regarded politicians as role models. Here are some details of this experience. Sam Smith - On a May morning, the Harvard Crimson came out with a story that Cambridge city …

How to pay for Biden’s public works

 As President Biden prepares to launch of multi trillion dollar public works project – aka by the liberal gradocracy as “infrastructure” – the question arises: where will the money come from? Your editor addressed this in his 1997 book, The Great American Political Repair Manuel. A few excerpts:  The national debt is really not the …

The rise of puritanical politics

Sam Smith – I was introduced to politics in Philadelphia and Massachusetts as a teenager. I recall an FBI agent coming to our house to interview my father about a member of the Philadelphia city council and I still remember a Cambridge city council member arguing with another one and saying, “We’re all Christian gentleman …

What progressives can do now

  Sam Smith - With the Trump tyranny almost over and the Biden years about to begin, it's a good time for progressives to figure their new course. Here are a few suggestions:-- Presidents are not agents of change; they are reflections of change. From a progressive perspective, there is little doubt that Biden will …

Another way in the neighborhood

Sam Smith – Trying to figure out why the last few months have not been worse for me, I’ve come to realize that living in a Maine rural town has been much closer to what used to be normal for humans than the urban life I lived so long. The most annoying change has been …

The Civil War (Cont’d)

 Sam Smith – As noted here before, one can argue that other then ending slavery and secession, the South actually won the Civil War. One need only to consider that it took almost a century for the civil rights movement’s efforts against segregation to begin to be successful.  As a new reporter covering the Capitol …

Rediscovering the good

Sam Smith –  I’ve been watching The Godfather movie series, the first of which came out in 1972, the same year in which a bunch of men broke into the Democratic party headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington on behalf of Richard Nixon who was reelected later that year. Nixon was our first modern …

What if the Democrats acted like Democrats?

Over the past 60 years only two Democratic presidential candidates have gotten over 50% of the vote: LBJ in 1964 and Jimmy Carter in 1976. For nearly a quarter of a century, beginning with the election of Reagan, the Democratic Party has tried to reinvent itself as a party of the modified right. The effort …

What real liberals were really like

Sam Smith - Since well over half of the country hasn't ever seen a real liberal president in office, and since the media has generally bought the GOP line on liberalism, it might be useful to consider what life would be like if it hadn't been for liberals in the White House. Here are a …