At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
SOMERSET, KY. — Like an early fall snow flurry, the “what ifs” are swirling as Election Day nears. What if the polls are as wrong as they were in 2016? What if voting machines are hacked? What if armed Trumpsters show up at voting stations in heavily Democratic regions? What if the Justice Department finds a way to interfere in the count? Here’s my response. It’s not a “what if.” It’s an analysis of data …
SOMERSET, KY. — The nation is six days away from Election Day. The virus is infecting more people than ever before in the United States. The number of daily deaths has climbed above 1,000 again. The president is gathering his cult in super-spreading rallies in swing states, including those with raging disease, and insisting the pandemic is a figment of news media exaggeration. Joe Biden, campaigning in Georgia, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania — …
In this era of the anti-American president and his psychotic “law and order” campaign, it is easy to move past the import of what happened just six days ago. The F.B.I. infiltrated a cell of domestic terrorists and arrested 13 white men connected to the Wolverine Watchmen. The men were charged with plotting to attack the Michigan capital in Lansing and kidnap two United States governors — Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Ralph Northam of …
BENZONIA — With less than a month from Election Day, we’ve come to the Greg Fogle moment of the 2020 presidential election campaign. Fogle was a big, bullying energy industry executive who unwittingly served as an ally in a grassroots campaign I helped organize in Michigan in the mid-1990s. Donald Trump is now playing the same role in the 2020 campaign. Let me explain. Back in the mid-1990s, when the natural gas industry was clearing …
BILLINGS, Montana – About 1,000 people a day make their way off Interstate 90 and head a few miles north to the Little Bighorn Battlefield, a national monument in eastern Montana. Established in 1878 , the memorial’s mission has evolved. Initially it was meant to honor the 210 American cavalry troopers, including their commander George Armstrong Custer, who died on June 25, 1876 in a “last stand” against a much larger mounted war party of …
Here’s a question for Trump’s silent majority, that self-described swarm of acolytes poised to storm out of hiding to re-elect the president. Why does Donald Trump look like such a loser? He tried scaring the suburbs. It was a weak, ill-informed, poorly-timed message that did not work. Especially with the women it was intended to impress. He tried attacking Biden as a tool of the ‘socialist, radical left intent on wrecking America.’ That did not …
Seven weeks to the election. The choice for the country is ever more clear. Will Donald Trump’s dishonesty, malice, and incompetence become the reigning constructs of American governance? Or will the country trust Joe Biden to manage crises, restore order, and respond effectively to the century’s rapidly evolving ecological, social, and economic conditions? The 2020 election is a test of the character of our country. The winner, as I’ve said for weeks, is obvious. Americans will …
In Benzie County, there are 180 miles of primary roads—those with the signature signs that designate route numbers, like County Road 669. There are 138 additional miles of paved local roads, which are the two-lane thoroughfares outside the county’s seven towns that wind by lakes, over hills, past orchards, and through forests. It is easy to describe nearly every mile of these roads as scenic. They also are the county’s signature public asset. Aside from …
Supporters of the president convened by the hundreds in a parking lot outside Portland, Oregon on Saturday. At dusk they formed a convoy and drove into the city to confront Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Before the rolling protest concluded clashes occurred in several parts of the cities. One Trump supporter was shot and killed. The death in Portland followed just five days after Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter demonstrators confronted each other in Kenosha, …
BENZONIA — Earlier in my life, I lived in Charleston, S.C. and spent almost four years roaming the South as a journalist. Later I did the same thing as a national correspondent for the New York Times. In the 1980s and 1990s, the South was emerging from the dangerous era of segregation that had allowed — by state authority — white people to abuse black people in virtually any way that whites thought was necessary …
