It wasn't long ago that I wrote that I thought there was nothing to be gained by a Trump-Biden debate. Knowing that presidential debates are usually more about style than substance, I said that, if there were to be a debate, there should be real-time fact checking. Without it, I feared that Trump's repeated falsehoods …
Tag: Joe Biden
GOP Trump defense: performative art or stupidity?
How can someone be an ostrich, a worm, a sheep, a jackal and a dodo all at the same time? It's no zoological mystery. Trump supporters in Congress - the House particularly - do it every day, even those who criticize him privately. So too do most of the other Republican Presidential candidates, most of …
Continue reading GOP Trump defense: performative art or stupidity?
Reps and Dems know it: mail voting works
I voted Saturday. I responded to a universal mailing from the Secretary of State's office, indicating I wanted a mail-in ballot. The pandemic has blunted my decades-long pleasure of going to the local polling place and participating with others in my community in one of the greatest gifts of living in a democracy. I filled …
Super Tuesday: resolving the struggle between head and heart
It's time to play my role in Super Tuesday. I've joked that in November I'd vote for a ham sandwich over Donald Trump. Any of the remaining candidates could do a better job than the incumbent. Nevertheless, I have twisted and turned. I used to scoff at voters who were still undecided days before an …
Continue reading Super Tuesday: resolving the struggle between head and heart
Biden behavior outdated but not disqualifying
Talk to some politicians and they're always looking over your head to see if there's someone better in the room upon whom to bestow their attention. Not Joe Biden. He looks you square in the eye, exudes warmth, is generous with hugs to both men and women. Politics, he says, is about connecting with people. …
Continue reading Biden behavior outdated but not disqualifying
Hillary v. Biden: getting real
When late CBS newsman Daniel Schorr was asked about his move from radio to television, he reportedly observed, "If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made." It's in that spirit, and mindful of her declining poll numbers, that Hillary Clinton is getting tweaked again. The effort has been brilliantly satirized by my friend and …
Biden, Ryan debate reassuring to bases
Last night's vice presidential debate, expertly moderated by ABC's Martha Raddatz (a former Channel 5 colleague), was engaging, high energy, substantively revealing, stylistically contrasting, and reassuring to partisans on both sides. (David Brooks' piece in today's NY Times see this as a generational divide.) Vice President Joe Biden had facts, passion, authenticity, and an often …
Obama and the politics of gay marriage
It would have been easier for Barack Obama to wait until after the election to announce that he thinks gays should have the right to marry. He could have let people assume that V.P. Joe Biden’s and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s comments to that effect were a hint that such was the thinking inside the …
As markets tank, politicians hit the links, oblivious
Recent memories of Cape Cod breezes, warm sunshine and gentle waves can’t dispel the acid taste left in the mouth by Congress’ despicable( and self-inflicted) game of chicken around raising the debt ceiling, followed by the eighth largest drop in stock market history. Small wonder that public disapproval of Congress is at 82 percent, according …
Continue reading As markets tank, politicians hit the links, oblivious
Marjorie Arons-Barron 