If you’re still puzzling or in shock over the 2016 election, this is a must-watch video. I dig into the roots of the populist mutiny that caused this year’s populist earthquake – a mutiny that has been brewing for three decades in Middle America and that finally exploded, firing the astonishing candidacy of Bernie Sanders […]

Sioux Falls –Time and again, opinion polls tell us that 70%, 80% and even 90% of Americans believe our political system is broken but think there’s nothing We the People can do about it. Perhaps a progressive state like California or Massachusetts might pass an isolated reform, but the political cognoscenti regard the rest of […]

Washington – From its raw beginnings to its stunning finale, the presidential campaign of 2016 has been a political earthquake, a broad populist rebellion that has shattered the landscape of power within both major political parties. The entire narrative of this campaign has been driven by a revolt from the bottom up, by two candidates […]

Washington –  SuperPACs in 2016 were  breaking records  once again – close to $1.6 billion raised – but there was a new twist. Instead of putting top priority on the presidential race, SuperPACs, political parties and independent donors poured more money into the battle for control of the Senate – $616 million, plus millions more to be […]

Washington – What got lost in the mudslinging of the second presidential debate and the political uproar over Donald Trump’s bragging about predatory sexism was an important watershed in U.S. political history  – the political reforms that a majority of Americans back in opinion polls gained a first tier advocate moving closer to the White […]

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 […]