Olga, WA – If Donald Trump can get over his nonsense about President Obama being the “Founder” of ISIS and his hassling Gold Star families and fellow Republicans,  Campaign 2016 can get to America’s core issue – economic inequality and the rival pitches of Clinton and Trump of a better deal for the middle class. […]

Washington – In the end, winning elections rides on voter turnout – who votes and who doesn’t get to vote. Slowly, finally, the media gets around to the voters and, maybe, to America’s yawning voter gap – 41 million missing American voters, citizens eligible to vote but not registered. Ever since the conventions, the media […]

Washington – The untold story of Campaign 2016 is that political reform is on the move in grass roots America. Not just Bernie Sanders’s trumpet call for a political revolution, but citizen movements at the state level pressing for political reforms against Citizens United, partisan gerrymandering and dark money to make elections fairer, ease gridlock in […]

Washington – Economists call it “the Virtuous Circle of Growth.” It’s the dead opposite of “trickle down economics.” The core idea is that a well-paid middle class is the engine of America’s economic growth. In other words, America’s job creators are the 99%, not the 1%. That was the economic concept that powered America’s remarkable […]

Washington – The political earthquake now shaking the foundations of the Republican Party throws into bold relief the unique feature of Campaign 2016 –  the fault-line this year is not the typical polar clash of Left vs Right, but a far more fundamental Up-Down cleavage between rank and file Americans and what C. Wright Mills […]

Washington – If you’re tempted to think campaign MegaMillions no longer matter because maverick Republican Donald Trump is self-financed and Bernie Sanders has funded a nationwide rebellion with two million small donors, take a look down-ballot. MegaMoney is flooding into a high stakes battle for control of Congress. SuperPAC war chests and the lava of […]

Washington – If you think our tax system is rigged in favor of U.S. multi-national corporations, Exhibit A  is the laws passed by Congress that have let nearly 50 major American companies renounce their U.S. citizenship and merge with foreign companies in order to duck U.S. corporate income taxes. In the anodyne lingo of Wall […]

Washington – Given Donald Trump’s gutter politics – his foul mouth, his racist bigotry, his dark nativism, you have to ask yourself, “How does he keep winning?” and “Why does he so alarm the Republican Establishment?” And the answer lies not so much in personality politics, but in something more explosive:  Trump’s heresy against orthodox […]

Washington – In its focus on presidential personality politics, the mainstream media has overlooked a stunning watershed in U.S. political history  – campaign reform has jumped this year from a fringe issue, popular with grass roots reformers, to a high profile cause embraced by a major White House contender. This past week, Hillary Clinton promised […]

Washington – In a stunning defeat for what one judge called “gerrymandering on steroids,” a three-judge federal court has ruled that the Republican gerrymandering of North Carolina’s congressional districts in 2011 was unconstitutional on grounds that it was racially driven and illegally packed too many black voters into two districts. The court gave the legislature just […]