Republican planners said last week that their convention would be nothing like the celeb-studded, zoomed-in production of the Democrats. They made good on that first thing Monday morning, with a nomination vote which could not have been farther from the Democrats’ rainbow-nation, virtual roll-call vote for Joe Biden last week.
Category: Tom Baxter
Posted inColumns
Georgia, especially Atlanta, is prominent in Democratic Zoomland convention
Georgia, and particularly Atlanta, will be featured prominently in this week’s Democratic National Convention in Zoomland. Stacey Abrams and state Rep. Sam Park will be among a group of young Democratic keynoters Tuesday night, and former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates also has an opening night slot. On Thursday night, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms will give one of the speeches leading up to Joe Biden’s nomination acceptance speech.
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As pandemic spreads, education issues have sharper teeth
Every few years, some well-meaning group does a big poll and comes back with the finding that the voting public considers education one of the biggest, next to the economy maybe the biggest, of political issues. With the coming of the pandemic, that sentiment has taken on a new sharpness.
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If only for a few weeks, a congressional seat has its allure
In a year filled with election mishaps, snafus and controversies, is there anything to compare with the Rube Goldberg process by which voters are being asked to choose John Lewis’ successor in the Georgia 5th District?
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Conventions go ‘nearly entirely virtual,’ but what will become of the funny hats?
By all accounts, the Texas State Republican Convention earlier this month was a red-hot mess. As such it was an ominous warning to both parties as they prepare for their pandemic national conventions.
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Democrats scramble to name the successor to a legend
John Lewis was so widely regarded as a saint during his life that it might seem a sacrilege to remember him as a politician now that he’s gone. But not to do so would miss something about this great man. He was a saint by calling, but he was a politician when he had to be, and a good one, too.
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Where the faithful gather, new trials call for new innovations
Since 1828, generations of Georgians have gathered every summer at the Salem Camp Ground in Newton County for a week-long immersion in their faith. Families stay in small cabins, called tents in homage to the old days, and fill summer days with sermons, Bible study and fellowship. Until this summer, the only time the annual Salem Campmeeting wasn’t held was during the Civil War.
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Can an election be too small to foul up? August runoff will tell us
The primary runoffs next month will be an easy-peasy test of how challenged the state’s new voting machine system really is. It didn’t fare well in the June 9 primary, and everybody expects the November election to be difficult. There shouldn’t be any problems in an election as small as the runoff, with four congressional races and a scattering of local races being decided around the state. But if there are, we’ll have a forewarning of just how bad November is going to be.
Posted inTom Baxter
With summer, the realization the pandemic will be with us for a while
The big news in the week before the Fourth of July is, depressingly, the same as the big news the week before St. Patrick’s Day. Some Americans have decided it’s time to move on from the coronavirus, but the coronavirus has not moved on from us.
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Torn in two by COVID-19, General Assembly session enters its final days
By midnight Friday, the greatly reduced denizens of the General Assembly will have thrown whatever there is to throw in the air at the end of a session as contracted as this one, and departed.
They’ll be going home in an election year to a state beginning to feel the effects of budget cuts so sweeping the legislators even cut their own pay.
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Georgia’s new voting machines, ‘fragile and error prone,’ get their first test
The good news last week was that in spite of an election system that failed them miserably, with a pandemic lurking and unrest in the streets, large numbers of Georgians came out to vote. Equipped sometimes with lawn chairs and umbrellas, they were determined, no matter the inconvenience, to make their voices heard. The bad news is they may have to make the same effort and more this fall.
Posted inTom Baxter
Early voting totals reflect the pent-up energies of this pandemic year
ver the past couple of elections, data miner Ryan Anderson has churned up lots of interesting information from early voting returns in his blog GeorgiaVotes. This year, like a geologist making the lucky tap that reveals a new rock face, he’s found as clear and clean a line as you’re likely to find in politics.
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Whatever it is we’re going through, it isn’t ‘just like the ’60s.” We’re far past that
What’s happened these last few days was not “just like the ‘60s,” or anything which has come along since. There are many elements of the past, but this is something new. We don’t really know yet what it is.
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A crowded summer calendar, as the nation struggles to get back to business
No summer in our lifetimes has been awaited so eagerly as this one. But their expectations for relief this summer don’t hang on much.
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Kemp’s numbers lag, even as the coronovirus curve flattens
The curve has begun to flatten, the public responded enthusiastically to his lifting of stay-at-home orders — judging by the crowds who came outside, at least — and everybody digs Sign Language Santa. So far, however, none of that has given Gov. Brian Kemp the big bump other governors have enjoyed during the pandemic.
Posted inColumns
What we didn’t know about the economy was bound to hurt us
By Tom Baxter What kind of economy is it, exactly, that we’ll be trying to jumpstart back to life in the coming months? The pandemic has churned up some surprising answers to that question. The Commerce Department reported last month that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product declined by 4.8 percent in the first quarter of […]
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Socially distanced candidates stuggle to control their messages, and their laptops
You could see the very picture of a politician’s frustration in this socially distant campaign season about eight minutes into the Atlanta Press Club’s first-ever Hollywood Squares-style debate, broadcast Sunday morning on Georgia Public Television.
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Mail-in voting combines with Postal Service woes to form a new political divide
In the past, both parties have accused the other of rigging elections, sometimes with good reason. What’s new is the rapid increase in mail-in, absentee and early voting, and the rising Republican mistrust of all of these.
Posted inColumns
From the chaos of pandemic policy, regional alliances emerge
Last week marked the first, still sketchy, indications that the COVID-19 pandemic may have begun to recede in the United States. We may also one day look back on last week as a fateful pivot in the way the states of our United States relate to each other.
Posted inColumns
2020 Census lurches forward under the cloud of the pandemic
*expand featured image to view full graphic By Tom Baxter Americans had already grown wearily accustomed to the rituals of counting by the time April 1 — Census Day — rolled around last week. Every day since Leap Day, when the first U.S. coronavirus death was announced, has been filled with tallies of deaths, infections […]
