I realize we’re in our post-election honeymoon period during which everyone has amnesia or hangovers, and platitudes are the order of the day, but in consideration of journalistic integrity — if we’re still doing that — honesty is in order. We can’t “sane-tize” this. This has been the weirdest damn thing. And it may get even weirder. I went to …
Relax. Take a deep breath. Things are going to be OK. Not easy but OK. Just imagine what might be going on in our country today if Kamala Harris had been elected president in a very close election, let’s say a handful of electoral votes, with very close races in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada or Georgia. Blood in the streets. And …
That headline is a reprisal of the one I wrote in this space eight years ago, when Doug Burgum dashed the hopes of Wayne Stenehjem ever becoming governor of North Daktoa, by beating him the June 2016 primary. As I wrote then, I didn’t see that one coming. OK, so much for my Predictability Quotient. Well, actually, it’s not too bad. …
On this date 44 years ago, I cast my first vote for president of the United States. I had eagerly awaited this date, having listened to discussions about civic duties within my own family and extended families, having read newspapers and Life magazines and more while growing up — I was an “early reader” — having listened to my elders …
We are volunteers with an organization called Faiths United to Save Democracy, which is doing its work in conjunction with Sojourners. It is a nonpartisan effort to serve shifts outside of polling sites to offer support and protection to voters, making sure every vote is counted. We are trained, nonpartisan, multifaith, multicultural, multigenerational volunteers — clergy and lay — who …
Many of our cell phones have been battered this election season with a torrent of pleas for moolah. I vote mostly Democratic/Independent, so my flogging by fundraisers comes from Democratic candidates and liberal-leaning causes. For 17 days (Oct. 14-30), I logged the source of 83 of such texts on my Verizon cell phone account and observed a often overly aggressive system …
There’s a list at the North Dakota Secretary of State’s Office, and if you live in North Dakota, you’re on it. You and about half a million of your neighbors. It’s a big list. Probably the biggest list in the state. How do I know you’re on it? Because every North Dakotan who regularly reads these dispatches surely votes in …
If you have any question about what the future of America will be like in a second Donald Trump term, please look carefully at what transpired Sunday night at Madison Square Garden. The racism, the xenophobia, the misogyny, the hatred, the anger, the division. This is where the road leads. Up until eight years ago, I would have described myself …
If you remain undecided about who you are voting for in this election, please consider that Adolf Hitler became chancellor because of a democratic election. The Nazi Party used hatred toward the “other” and demonization of those who were “poisoning the blood of our country” to scapegoat the marginalized and convince good people to vote for them because they believed …
This article first appeared in the May issue of High Plains Reader. I am an old man. I have been a politics junkie most of my life. I have been involved in many campaigns, but have not run for office myself. Each time someone has suggested I do that, I tell them the same thing: I will not put my …
In the Bismarck Tribune about North Dakota Lt. Gov. Tammy Miller’s announcement that she was running for governor this past week. Tribune reporter Jacob Fulton wrote this: Miller touted her childhood “cleaning toilets and stocking shelves” at the family lumber and hardware business in Brocket; she also said she “defended the store from robbers with her shotgun.” Now I had …
It’s almost here. 2024, an election year. I get the feeling that most North Dakotans, like their fellow Americans, shudder at the thought. That’s OK. Politics in America, which I used to call “my favorite spectator sport,” has taken a sad turn away from what used to be the path to the most successful democracy in the world. Elections, too. …