How Trump and DeSantis became so important

The third party that became the second one

Sam Smith - Just read in a Facebook note by David Schwartzman that the DC Statehood Green Party had come in second again this year. He wrote: "We won 2 out of 3 head to head races. Our total votes for all offices was 73,629 (6 races), while the Republican's total vote was 55,676 (also …

Lawyers don’t define virtue

Sam Smith - One of the ways in which the current scandals have altered our thinking is a broad acceptance of the notion that it all is mainly a matter of law. What will judges and juries decide? We seem to have forgotten that virtue, fairness and decency are not legal matters but ones we …

The importance of community

Sam Smith - Largely because of national media and the Internet we have learned to define America by its national characteristics which have increasingly become more corrupt, anti-democratic and indifferent to individuals and their communities. Over my lifetime I have concerned myself with both national and local matters with the latter repeatedly keeping me going …

Why liberals don’t do better

Sam Smith - Joe Biden's plan to ease college student loans would be quite a different story if he had also passed along a similar advantage to middle and low income non college students. But liberals don't do that much these days. It's one reason they're not doing better. And because they're not doing better, …

Some ways to stop the GOP attack on democracy

Sam Smith – The rise in Trumpism is due I no small part to changes that have occurred in the Democratic Party and liberal polilcies in recent decades. Here are a few changes that could be made before the 2022 elections: Stop attacking whites. There are more whites in poverty than there are blacks in …

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 …