Reclaim the American Dream

Washington – Partisan gerrymandering has run so wild and rampant since the 2020 census that, hard to believe, the next Congress promises to be even more sharply polarized and gridlocked than the current Congress, and there’s nothing voters can do about it – unless the courts step in boldly, right away. The media focuses on […]

Washington – Republicans are rejoicing and Democrats are dismayed that population losses in the Rust Belt and gains in the Sun Belt, recorded by the 2020 census, will add Congressional seats in key Republican states and may tilt the 2022 elections. But don’t bet just yet on a GOP slam dunk. There’s more to this […]

Washington – The flood tide is still rising, but already the Mega-Money tsunami of Election 2020 is going into the record books as the most expensive election in American history with the biggest flow of dark money ever funneled anonymously to candidates – $750 million, up from a minuscule $5 million a decade ago. With […]

WASHINGTON – Do you sometimes feel as if our democracy is coming apart at the seams? Gridlock, hate speech, dark money, negative ads, political parties at each others throats instead of working together for our common good? It’s almost enough to make you give up on American democracy. But please,don’t go there.  Because I know […]

Washington – Except for the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination, our national media is so mesmerized and monopolized by the political war zone in Washington that you’d think nothing important ever happens in the rest of the country (except perhaps natural disasters). Unfortunately, that means the major media have largely missed one of the […]

WASHINGTON – The news flow has been pretty rough in the closing weeks of 2019 – the harsh conflict over impeachment, threats from North Korea and the persistent challenge of China, the dangers of fresh Russian interference in the 2020 elections, relentless partisan warfare. But there’s another story about American Democracy that gets little play […]

Raleigh, NC – The moment of truth has come for North Carolina, which epitomizes the nation’s mounting struggle over the partisan rigging of elections by Republican or Democratic majorities in state legislatures gerrymandering election districts to maintain their party’s lock on power. Fifteen states have adopted some kind of reform to make the drawing of […]

Orcas Island, WA – How about a quickie quiz on this year’s elections? Question – What did states as politically dissimilar as Utah, Michigan, Colorado and Missouri have in common in the 2018 election? Not House or Senate races. Not red or blue. No, the unique similarity is that in those four states, People Power […]

Washington – As we head into the 2018 election, you’ll hear more and more analysts talking about voter turnout and its importance in the battle for control of Congress. Turnout is typically low in mid-term elections and low turnout normally helps Republicans and hurts Democrats. What almost no one mentions is the fact that turnout […]

Raleigh, NC – When people decry the perilous state of American Democracy and declare the urgent need for reforms, they often ask plaintively, ”But where are the leaders going to come from? Where is our new Abraham Lincoln? Where is the new Martin Luther King?” People forget that Abe Lincoln and MLK did not suddenly […]