2020 Election | ModeShift

On The Side of Fact, Truth, and Decency

by Keith SchneiderMay 31, 2021May 31, 20211

BENZONIA, MI â€” Though I never attended a formal class in journalism my career, now over 40 years in the making, is firmly centered in sturdy principles of reasoned conduct and examined execution. Stripped of adornment those principles encompass seven rules of engagement: Follow stories that matter. Interview thoroughly. Research carefully. Gather views from disparate quarters. Make the complex simpler to understand. Write with energy and grace. Follow the facts wherever they lead. Given that …

Thank You LeBron James For The Best of 2020

by Keith SchneiderDecember 31, 2020February 8, 20210

SOMERSET, KY â€“ The epic story of the 2020 election is easy to frame. Restraint vs. belligerence. Decency vs. desolation. Competence vs. laziness. Truth vs. lies. Joe Biden won because the majority of voters chose the former over the latter. His victory was a rebuke of all Trumpâ€™s ruinous political tendencies and sadistic personal behavior. Other prominent figures, among them Kamala Harris, also represented the values most Americans hold for qualified and sympathetic leaders. Still, in …

Trump’s Big Lie Like Other Big Lies – They Exact A Cost

by Keith SchneiderDecember 12, 2020December 12, 20200

BENZONIA — So here we are weeks from the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as president and vice president. A viral disease is infecting over 200,000 Americans and killing nearly 3,000 of us daily. A manic, insane sitting president remains in office, unmoved by the pandemic and acting out the anarchic farce that he won the election. The most charitable assessment is that the weeks since the election revealed, certainly for the majority …

Joe Biden’s Smashing Victory and What It Means For America

by Keith SchneiderDecember 3, 2020December 12, 20200

BENZONIA — One of the oddities of the 2020 presidential election is how Joe Biden’s smashing victory was greeted by such discouraged enthusiasm by his supporters. You’ve heard it. Democrats lost seats in the House. Republicans hung on to seats polls predicted they would lose in the Senate. Though Trump was soundly defeated, too many Biden supporters worry that he will somehow retain relevancy. Well, as Joe Biden would say, here’s the deal. Biden walloped …

Biden Wins White House. Dancing In the Streets; Dying in ICUs in the Dakotas

by Keith SchneiderNovember 8, 2020November 8, 20202

SOMERSET, KY. — Well, step one is a wrap. Every time Americans have confronted grave peril, we’ve displayed the good sense to pursue a saner path. We did that last week. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won election on the most progressive political agenda of our lives. It calls for beating the novel coronavirus. Improving our health care and health insurance systems. Ending racial and gender violence and systemic injustices. Working with allies and competitors …

Forget The “What Ifs.” Actual Data Portends A Big Biden Win

by Keith SchneiderOctober 29, 2020October 29, 20201

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 …

As Virus and President Rage, Biden Steps Closer to Election Victory

by Keith SchneiderOctober 28, 2020October 28, 20200

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 — …

Biden vs. Trump: It’s A Greg Fogle Campaign Moment

by Keith SchneiderOctober 6, 2020November 27, 20200

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 …

Donald Trump and George Armstrong Custer: Lessons in History

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 27, 2020November 27, 20200

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 …

Where Is Trump’s Silent Majority?

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 18, 2020November 27, 20200

Hereâ€™s a question for Trumpâ€™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 â€˜socialist, radical left intent on wrecking America.â€™ That did not …