Category Archives: Uncategorized

In a friendly conversation over a couple of beers the other night, some left-center and right-center friends and I discussed the sad state of the two parties. The Republicans are obsessed with relitigating the 2020 elections while Democrats obsess over various issues of identity, like which bathroom transgender people can use. Meanwhile, the bulk ofContinue reading “The Middle May Be Bigger Than We Think”

Last week 10 people were gunned down at a Buffalo supermarket in what appears to be a racist attack. Yesterday, 19 children and two adults were murdered in a Texas elementary school. In both cases the killer was a young man with a military-style weapon that nobody outside of the military should be able toContinue reading “Another Mass Shooting; Expect Nothing to Happen”

The change in priorities is most striking on that bellwether of the hard-left, the Madison City Council. It used to be that the First Commandment was to honor thy neighborhood. Neighborhoods — often led by just a few highly motivated and opinionated activists — were all powerful. Alders were loathe to oppose anything their neighborhoodContinue reading “One Way Woke is Good”

The senseless dustup over the appointment of UCLA Law School Dean Jennifer Mnookin as the new UW Madison Chancellor has raised a more interesting — and worthwhile — question about the Wisconsin Idea. In case you were tending to more important matters, here’s a quick recap. The Board of Regents — both Democratic and RepublicanContinue reading “Midwest: Wisconsin Idea Has to Flow in Both Directions”

One big reason that Donald Trump won in 2016 and went on to take over the Republican Party is that he didn’t sound like a typical politician. In a counterintuitive way, the most demonstrably lying politician in history came off as genuine. Nobody would say things that offensive, that absurd, that nuts if he didn’tContinue reading “Lessons From John Fetterman”

Heading back to the Emerald City this morning, so we’ll make this a quick one. The UW Regents hired Jennifer Mnookin to be the next UW Madison chancellor. She’s currently the dean of the UCLA law school and she went to Harvard, Yale and MIT. All fine schools, but she has no ties to Wisconsin.Continue reading “Over the Mnookin”

Whether or not the Democrats can ride what appears to be the impending overturning of Roe v. Wade to victories in November turns on one word: rare. When I wrote about this last week I said that I liked Bill Clinton’s formulation that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” I suspected when I wroteContinue reading “Rare”

I admit it. I’ve got a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the Midwest. Virtually all of our national media and culture (movies, TV, radio shows, publishing houses, etc.) comes from the coasts. And their attitude toward the middle of the country? To paraphrase Rick played by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, “They’d despiseContinue reading “Midwest: A New Voice”

Florida rejected a bunch of math textbooks because they allegedly contained a liberal bias. The left went nuts. I tended to side with the left until I read the New York Times’ breathless take on the whole thing. Here’s one example of a math problem that was flagged as a problem by a Florida textbookContinue reading “Keep Politics Out of Math”

Last week, Capital Times editor and publisher Paul Fanlund wrote a nice review of my book, Light Blue: How center-left moderates can build an enduring Democratic majority. With his permission we repost it here. By Paul Fanlund When you’ve been a journalist in Madison as long as I have, you’ve seen the gamut of personalityContinue reading “Light Blue Gets Good Review”