Unless you’re among the select few who really know what’s going on, you may never have heard of the 305th Military Intelligence Battalion, or Executive Order 13848, or Scytl. You may not know that CIA Director Gina Haspel was killed last month in a U.S. Special Forces raid in Frankfurt, Germany, which retrieved a server used to control the Dominion voting machines in the U.S. presidential election. Or maybe she was just wounded. Or arrested, and singing like a bird about the global conspiracy to throw the election.
Category: Tom Baxter
Posted inColumns
Robot or empty podium? Press Club debates cap a week with months of news
Is it better to debate a robot or an empty podium? That’s a tough question, as Sunday’s debates demonstrated.
Posted inColumns
Between Trump and Trumpism, Georgia Republicans trace a narrow path
You just have to wonder where Sonny Perdue’s shiny bald head is at these days. It was the secretary of agriculture and his former chief of staff Nick Ayers, you will recall, who came to President Donald Trump before the 2016 Georgia Republican primary for governor and convinced him to endorse Brian Kemp. “I did that for Sonny Perdue,” Trump would later say.
Posted inColumns
Politics and bad math coalesce to numb our sense of pandemic’s toll
COVID-19, it was said many times during this election year, would go away on Nov. 4. There was that level of cynicism that all the alarm over the pandemic was merely politics, and would magically disappear after the election. This hasn’t proven to be the case.
Posted inColumns
As the Republican civil war over the last election rages, another battle looms
A year or so ago, no one would have characterized Buzz Brockway as anything other than a Georgia Republican of the suburban variety. But old party ties are being tested in the battle over the last election.
Posted inColumns
As Democrats lag behind their issues, Republicans eat their young
Last week voters elected a Democratic president, approved Democratic policy positions in referendums in both red and blue states, and soundly rejected the Democratic Party in most other categories of political competition.
Posted inTom Baxter
Democrats aim high in effort to win state House majority before next redistricting
In 2018, Democrats took a huge bite out of the legislative map which Republicans drew at the beginning of this decade, flipping 11 state House seats and two Senate seats. That set the stage for the battle which will be decided this Election Day.
Posted inColumns
Biden’s Georgia campaign visit signals state’s place on the margin-of-error map
What may have convinced the Biden campaign to pencil in a couple of stops in Georgia may be the extraordinary bang for the buck which it offers this year. Not only is the presidential race here too close for either party to ignore, but Georgia has two U.S. Senate races and the chance for Democrats to gain another U.S. House seat.
Posted inColumns
This year, all roads lead back to the 6th and 7th Districts
n one way or another, you can connect just about everything else that’s happening in Georgia politics this year to the two big congressional battles in the north Atlanta suburbs.
Start with this year’s most intriguing “what if?” What if Marjorie Taylor Greene hadn’t bought a condo in the mountains and jumped into another congressional race?
Posted inTom Baxter
CARES, like COVID-19, has widened the gap between rich and poor, old and young
hen Congress inserted a provision which allowed retirees to postpone taking the required minimum withdrawals from their 401(k)s this year, it seemed at first half-wink like a thoughtful gesture to older Americans. In retrospect, it looks like a microcosm of everything Washington has done wrong in its response to the economic challenges posed by the pandemic.
Posted inTom Baxter
Divided by plexiglass, the parties struggle for control of the Senate
The image which most powerfully captures the dynamics of this year’s battle for control of the U.S. Senate came from the televised debate Saturday night in Columbia, S.C., between U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison.
Posted inColumns
Lots of voting choices, and a little sliver of doubt
Last week, I cast an early vote in the special election to determine who fills the empty 5th Congressional District seat for the last few weeks of this year. Meaning no disrespect to the seven candidates who have spent considerable resources vying for this brief tenure in office, I did this mostly for practice.
Posted inColumns
Impact of Ginsburg’s death is felt quickly in Georgia Senate race
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins’ studied transgression of the norms of political discourse after the announcement of the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death Friday night was a sign of how quickly Ginsburg’s passing has shaken politics on the ground in Georgia.
Posted inColumns
What those annoying campaign ads tell us about where we’re at
There’s a general sense, talking to viewers in different parts of the state, that this year’s crop of political ads is more hard-edged and extreme than ever. Those 2018 Brian Kemp ads with his guns and his pickup truck raised some eyebrows, but they seem almost quaint in this season.
Posted inColumns
Keeping chins up as public health complicates the economy
Georgia government — not just this governor but all his predecessors, and the departments they oversee — operates on an ethos of chin-up prosperity that may seem a little dissonant in a time when the economy of the world has been shaken. Even in times of belt tightening, prosperity is never farther than just around the corner.
Posted inColumns
The particulars of absentee voting, because this year the picky things matter
You may have received a copy of this form in the mail, already filled out for you, from the Center for Voter Information or the Voter Participation Center, related non-profits which are seeking to increase voter turnout across the country. There should be noting wrong with using one of these completed forms to apply for a ballot … although there is one picky little thing.
Posted inColumns
Republicans struggle to recreate a sense of being “there” in a time of pandemic
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.
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.
Posted inColumns
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.
Posted inColumns
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?
