Large parts of the African American and Latino elements within the Democratic Party are the most moderate elements within the party, playing the same role as the mostly white Religious Right played within the Republicans. A surprising new force has […]
This piece is an account of my experiences and reflections on the sudden narrowing of the Democratic primary, and Joe Biden’s ultimate victory. You may know that I am a free-market fundamentalist and a social moderate with conservative sympathies, and […]
The definitions of ‘Republican’ and ‘Democrat’, and even ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’, seem to dance in circles. Even the nature of the parties shifts over time. One is an ideology, the other a coalition, they say. But even that fact tends […]
The little known [in the States] Canadian sociologist Michael Adams has suggested a new classification of American values, in terms of a four-way box. The culture wars of the era after Nixon and before Trump were primarily between the Status […]
Nine years ago I became a nominal Democrat, a DINO [Democrat in name only] as I called it. I did so because it seemed to me at the time that the Republican party was being taken over by a group […]
Tim Draper, the Silicon Valley tycoon who gave us the ‘Six Californias’ plan a couple of years ago, has come up now with a ‘Three Californias’ plan. It is not acceptable in its current form. The main point of dividing […]
I just put out a post on the weaknesses and inconsistencies of the Democratic Party, and then realized that I had omitted one issue that is close to our heart here at Blue Kennel. I refer to, of course, the […]
The Democratic Party of California has reason for complacency. It is the only state level political party of significance. It unites the majority communities of color with the creative class portion of the still powerful non-Hispanic white minority. The tensions in […]
We have been warned both by Nate Silver and by the Washington Post that there is a possibility of an electoral tie with each side getting 269 electoral votes. How did we end up with that possibility? How did we end […]
Reinforcing my earlier comment on Barack Obama’s allergy to antithesis, here is Michael Lind claiming that Obama is, for practical purposes, an Eisenhower Republican. As for the so-called social issues, Allan Carlson, in The American Way, pointed out that the […]