I can’t even finish the Wall Street Journal article it makes me so mad. Trump’s corruption is so blatant and he has no fear of accountability. All of Washington knows that pay-to-play is the order of the day and they also know that nobody is going to do anything about it.

Trump’s fundraising leans on billionaires and multinational corporations to fund his pet projects. They aren’t doling out tens of millions of dollars out of the goodness of their hearts. They are doing it because they will get something for their money.

The White House is for sale. Congress would be too, but Republicans there won’t do anything but defer to Trump. No need to pay twice. Washington is a one-stop shop of corruption. Pay Trump and you get the Congressional Republicans for free.

For billionaires and big corporations, the donations are investments. They give money to Trump and they get what they need — tax breaks, fewer regulations on their industries, government contracts, and so on. And Trump’s family and cronies are making bank while the rest of us struggle with mundane things like inflation and stagnant wages.

The rot may start at the head, but it’s infecting the rest of the GOP body. Here in North Carolina, Republicans in the legislature have been involved in their own pay-to-play schemes. There’s a widening investigation into a lobbying group called Greater Carolina that allegedly spent money on vacations and strip clubs in an effort to influence legislators. So far, four lobbyists have been indicted, but most people believe the State Bureau of Investigation is looking for bigger fish to fry.

Republican House Majority Leader Brenden “Boss Hogg” Jones is using his position to enrich big GOP donors. He tried to steer a liquor warehouse deal to a developer buddy despite opposition from the ABC chair. Fortunately, a spotlight on the corrupt deal has stopped it — so far.

In Trump’s first term, Republicans set a precedent. They wouldn’t hold him accountable for anything. He could abuse women, blackmail allies, try to overthrow the government, and the GOP would do nothing. Now, those rules apply to all Republicans. The party is rotting from the head down.

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Over the past few months, several readers have labeled me a “centrist,” clearly with a sense of derision. I would prefer pragmatic, but, yeah, I’m no raging leftist. Mainly, I want Democrats to win, especially in the places that matter — swing states and swing districts that will determine control of Congress and the White House.

My politics are less ideological and more strategic. I’m fine with Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York, Bernie Sanders as the senator from Vermont, and AOC as the representative from Queens and the Bronx. I think we need politicians pushing the country forward, but I don’t think any of them could win North Carolina, Georgia, or Wisconsin. I don’t believe Abdul El-Sayed can win Michigan.

I’m frustrated with the Democrats who call themselves “socialists,” not because I disagree with all or even most of their ideas, but because they are branding themselves with a label that costs votes. As a friend of mine wrote on Facebook, “You’re scaring people away from something everybody should want — affordable healthcare, affordable education, affordable housing, a living wage.” These are the same people who embraced “Defund the police.”

The left in this country is confusing frustration with a decrepit status quo with demand for transformational change. Broadly, people want, as Roy Cooper recognizes, stuff to cost less. They want their incomes to increase. They want the promise of a brighter future for their children.

Instead, they see stubborn inflation causing prices to rise. Their wages are stagnant and the future is uncertain. New technologies make some jobs obsolete and create others most people don’t even understand. Hence, the fight over data centers.

The divide between the haves and have-nots has grown too wide. We need a new tax code that makes powerful billionaires pay their fair share and laws that prevent them from exerting so much control over the government. But I don’t think most people blame the oligarchy for our problems. The masses aren’t grabbing their pitchforks yet.

To build the kind of transformational change pushed by the Democratic Socialists of America, the country needs certain conditions that are not present. There’s no broad consensus about what needs to be done. Trust in institutions is at an all-time low. People aren’t likely to embrace large government bureaucracies to deliver new services.

As I’ve said before, FDR launched the New Deal when the country had an unemployment rate of about 25% and we were in the midst of the worst depression in the nation’s relatively short history. The people were demanding that the government respond.

LBJ’s Great Society, which gave us civil rights legislation, Medicare and Medicaid, and food stamps, came about during the upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement and when Democrats and Republicans agreed that government could be a force for good. While many of the programs are still popular today, the reaction to the social programs and the taxes that funded them led to the Reagan Revolution fifteen years later.

The last great expansion of government came with the Affordable Care Act. Obama had watched Bill and Hillary’s attempt to pass health care reform go down in flames fifteen years earlier. He tried a different approach, setting broad goals and letting Congress hash out the details. It was still messy.

Passing the bill was hard even with 59 Democrats in the Senate. The country watched the sausage being made for almost a year. Progressives couldn’t even get a public option pushed through, much less single-payer. The uncertainty left voters skeptical for years, costing Democrats control of Congress and, arguably, setting up an environment that elected Donald Trump.

Before we can have the type of change that the left demands, we need to restore faith in the institutions that provide it. Government has to prove that it can deliver. We need to rebuild our public education system after years of assault from the right. Offering a public option for health care and expanding Medicaid to reach universal coverage is more likely to garner support than upending the existing system with a single-payer plan. A few years of smaller victories are more likely to build sustainable change than the massive disruption of wholesale transformation.

Finally, the left’s obsession with Gaza reminds me of my younger, more radical days. Back in the 1980s, US support for Central American death squads and Contras was the moral issue that consumed us. We protested and demanded that Americans pay attention and that Democrats take a stand. We were loud and drew a lot of media attention to our cause. However, like Gaza, most of the country didn’t care, or at least not enough to make them vote against the Republicans who supported those policies.

In North Carolina, Jim Hunt ran ads attacking Jesse Helms for his support of brutal right-wing nationalists. It didn’t work. Hunt lost. And while Iran-Contra became a scandal that brought down some people in the Reagan administration, George H.W. Bush was handily elected in 1988. Most Americans don’t really care too much about international affairs and may punish candidates who promote them over domestic concerns. Making Gaza a litmus test for Democrats is more likely to hurt the party than help Gazans.

My personal political journey has taken me from the far left to whatever you might call me now. Broadly, I believe that government can be a force for good. I also think that capitalism is the best economic system to deliver prosperity for the greatest number of people. That said, government is the only force powerful enough to mitigate the negative effects of capitalism and help the people who are left behind. The free market is the vehicle for creating wealth while government ensures that it is not too concentrated and is broadly distributed.

I believe that sustainable progress requires broad public support from an electorate that is inherently resistant to change. My political philosophy is basically to win elections to keep the assholes and greed heads out. I believe that competence and experience beat ideology most of the time.

Right now, I think that people want peace and stability. For the first quarter of the 21st century they’ve been roiled by 9/11, upended by technological change, knocked down by the Great Recession, quarantined by the pandemic, and plundered by Donald Trump and MAGA, all while some war rages in the background. The American people are tired. They don’t want more turmoil.

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Recently, a poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP) showed a much tighter race for US Senate in North Carolina than other recent surveys. According to the poll, Roy Cooper leads Michael Whatley by only four points. Other polls had shown Cooper with double-digit leads. The news rippled through the press with pundits saying the race is tightening.

In North Carolina, the polls almost always tighten for Democrats. Governor Josh Stein is the only statewide Democratic candidate to receive more than 52% of the vote in the last 15 to 20 years and he had a historically flawed opponent. If Cooper wins, he will probably garner around 51% or 52% of the vote and win by two to four points, about where the PPP poll lands.

North Carolina is a tough state for both sides. Republicans don’t get much more than Democrats when they win. Trump won by 3.3% in 2024 but only 1.3% in 2020. In 2022, Ted Budd won by only 3.2% despite a strong GOP year. He got less than 51% of the vote.

I agree with most of the prognosticators who rate the Senate race as leaning Democratic. Cooper is a demonstrably better candidate than Whatley. The former governor has outraised the former Republican National Committee chair by almost three to one. Whatley has faced criticism from his own party while Cooper seems to be energizing his base.

The political environment favors Cooper, too. The party in the White House generally loses seats in midterm elections. Right now, the country is angry at the GOP for rising prices and wars of choice.

Republicans will try to make the race about crime. It won’t work. Despite their greatest efforts, campaigns can’t drive the political narrative. Voters do that. Candidates either catch the wind driven by voters’ concerns or they fight against it. Whatley’s campaign will try to force the conversation to tack right, but it’s not likely to work.

Cooper, for his part, is tapping into voters’ angst. As New York Times columnist Frank Bruni points out, Cooper’s campaign slogan is “Make Stuff Cost Less.” It’s not flashy, but neither are the people who will determine the election. They aren’t activists looking for a hero. They’re just people trying to make ends meet and facing rising prices and higher bills.

Short of some sort of galvanizing event, I think Cooper wins North Carolina. I don’t think he wins big because nobody in North Carolina does. The four-point lead PPP found is probably how the race pans out. We’re a swing state for a reason. It takes a self-described Black Nazi with a porn habit to lose by double digits and even then he gets 40% of the vote.

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In the aftermath of the 2024 election, Republicans in North Carolina launched an assault on our democracy. In the race for a supreme court seat, the party tried to change the rules after the fact to overturn the will of the voters. Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin sued the State Board of Elections in an attempt to nullify Justice Allison Rigg’s victory. A ruling by the state Supreme Court almost made their effort successful.

Only the intervention of a Trump-appointed federal judge saved our democracy when Judge Richard Myers wrote, “You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done.”

It seemed like common sense. A principle so basic that no one should need a federal judge to explain it. But in North Carolina, by 2025, even the obvious needed defending.

It won’t happen again, because, in 2026 or 2028, Republicans won’t have a State Board of Elections standing in their way. While the state and country were focused on the outcome of the Riggs-Griffin race, the legislature stripped control of the SBOE from the governor and gave it to the newly elected Republican state auditor.

Within days of taking control of the SBOE, Auditor Dave Boliek fired election professionals and replaced them with GOP political operatives. Since then, the board has used mob-like pressure to force county boards of election to bend to its will. The legislature is trying to push through legislation that includes an additional 25 political appointees and grants the auditor the power to investigate election results in any county at his discretion.

What’s happening in North Carolina right now isn’t an isolated incident. It’s the culmination of a twelve-year experiment in stress testing democracy’s guardrails. And what Republicans learned in Raleigh, they’re now applying in Washington and in states across the country.

North Carolina was the prototype for the reactionary populism that became MAGA. In North Carolina, we had Trumpism before Trump.

In January 2013, Republicans took control of North Carolina state government for the first time in more than a century. They moved quickly to upend state agencies and purge them of Democratic influence. They slashed and burned, often with no obvious intent to rebuild.

In the legislature, Republicans introduced legislation so brazen that even some of their own members seemed shocked. They introduced bills to create a state religion. They allowed guns on campuses and in bars. They flattened the progressive income tax, shifting the burden from the wealthy and corporations onto the middle and working class. They ended teacher tenure and banned Sharia Law. They put limits on abortion and drug-tested welfare recipients. They began solidifying their power by making nonpartisan school board elections partisan, stripping authority from local governments, introducing voter ID bills, reducing early voting days, and ending public financing of judicial campaigns.

Republicans moved with breathtaking speed. Democrats were paralyzed and unable to muster any effective response. The press was overwhelmed and couldn’t keep up with the flood of stories coming out of Raleigh or offer the context needed.

For Republicans in control of the legislature and governor’s office, enacting their agenda was the easy part. With veto-proof majorities, they had little to stop them. Governor Pat McCrory, a former mayor of Charlotte, was elected as a business moderate but he was no match for the seasoned legislators in the North Carolina General Assembly. They overrode four of his six vetoes.

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As their policies shifted the state hard to the right, they changed the rules to lock in their power. Extreme gerrymandering effectively gave Republicans veto-proof majorities in the legislature and nine of the state’s 13 US House districts, even as Democrats won a majority of the Congressional votes and half of the legislative ones cast in the state.

North Carolina state Representative David Lewis, chair of the Redistricting Committee, famously said, “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and 2 Democrats.” A North Carolina lawsuit, Rucho v. Common Cause, validated gerrymandering for partisan gain and set the stage for the national redistricting wars ahead of the 2026 midterms.

In August 2013, Republicans passed a “monster” voter suppression bill that enacted a strict voter ID provision, ended same-day registration, restricted early-voting days, and expanded the power of observers to challenge voters at the polls. While the courts struck down the bill, asserting that it targeted African Americans with “surgical precision,” many of the provisions have been enacted since. Today, we see the spirit of the bill in the SAVE Act being debated in Congress.

More than a decade before the Trump administration pressured the University of Virginia to fire its president, the UNC Board of Governors abruptly fired UNC President Tom Ross, a highly respected administrator. They offered no reason for his dismissal other than his registration as a Democrat. The move began an ongoing effort to impose ideological changes on the university system and became a prelude to the broader assaults on higher education nationally.

In March 2016, North Carolina Republicans launched the culture wars that would rage throughout the next eight years. HB-2, the famous “Bathroom Bill,” quickly elevated a local ordinance to a national uproar.

In the short term, the tumult benefited Democrats as corporations and entertainment events boycotted the state. In the long term, it set off a backlash against the transgender community that echoes today. The seeds of Trump’s infamous ad tagline “Kamala Harris is for they/them; President Trump is for you” originated with the Bathroom Bill debate that began in North Carolina.

When, in November 2016, Attorney General Roy Cooper won the narrowest of victories, McCrory cried voter fraud and tried to stop the counting. He was rebuffed by his own board of elections. The system held, but the episode exposed what might have happened if people of lesser character had been in charge—a preview of what would unfold nationally four years later.

Before Cooper took office, the Republican legislature had their eyes on the state board of elections. They tried to remove it from the governor’s control, but the state supreme court blocked the measure. Republicans weren’t finished. They put an amendment on the ballot two years later to give the legislature control of the board of elections, but the voters rejected it.

While the courts battled over the Supreme Court race in 2025, the North Carolina legislature tried again. Before Josh Stein could even be sworn in as the new governor, Republicans in the legislature moved control of the state board of elections from the governor’s office to the GOP-controlled state auditor’s office—giving Republicans control of the election machinery. With a newly Republican-majority supreme court in place, the power grab succeeded.

The five member state board of elections now has a Republican majority. The new chair served as president of the Civitas Institute, an organization that spent millions to elect Republican legislative candidates. The new executive director served as legal counsel to the Republican speaker of the House. The new advisor to county boards of elections served as executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party.

The institutions meant to protect our rights—the state supreme court, the Board of Elections—are being captured by those who would use them as partisan tools. In 2013, Republicans began attacking democracy from the legislature. By 2025, they’re working to capture the very institutions meant to stop them.

This institutional capture represents the final stage of a twelve-year strategy. What began as a storming of the gates in North Carolina has settled into a coordinated elimination of dissent. National Republicans have followed suit. While establishment Republicans held Trump in check during his first administration, January 6 unleashed him.

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But North Carolina also offers a roadmap for resistance. To navigate this new Trump era, those who oppose it should look to North Carolina, both to understand the destruction of checks and balances and to chart a path forward. Through it all, the state is still standing. Democrats have battled Republicans to a standstill. The playbook for fighting back has been twelve years in the making.

The first lesson is to never give up. Before the Women’s March, pink pussy hats, or No Kings rallies, Moral Mondays energized the opposition in North Carolina and drew national attention to the state. Initially, the protests gave people a sense of hope and unity, showing they’re not alone. They spurred homegrown organizing efforts like Down Home NC and the New Rural Project that have multiplied across the state, reaching into rural communities and exurban counties where narrowing electoral margins have delivered results.

Rely on the courts. The federal courts protected the Allison Riggs victory. Lower-court judges often offer rulings more in line with the Constitution than the partisan warriors who inhabit the state’s appellate courts. They can slow or stop the pace of radical maneuvers.

Take the long view. The Democrats have a plan to take back the supreme court that began in 2024 but will not be complete until 2028. Holding a seat in 2026 is the next step, and winning two of the three seats up for election in 2028 will give them the power to reverse the damage done by the Republican justices.

Run everywhere. Democrats have filled the ballot in almost every contested race, giving voters a choice and candidates the opportunity to make their case for an alternative to Republican rule. They’ve also forced the GOP to defend their policies and actions. They might not win every seat, but they whittle down margins.

Nominate candidates with broad appeal and core competencies. While Republicans chose culture warriors as their standard bearers, Democrats nominated serious candidates with records to run on. Roy Cooper won two statewide races with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket; Josh Stein has won three. In 2024, Democrats won five of the ten council of state seats with candidates who focused on their accomplishments and broad solutions instead of divisive social issues.

Finally, understand the moment. Now is not the time for transformative agendas. Now is the time to counter populism and authoritarianism. None of the 2024 Democratic candidates who won in North Carolina pushed controversial policies. Josh Stein focused on his success combatting fentanyl, cutting taxes for workers, raising teacher pay, and job training while highlighting his bipartisan support.

Though we didn’t know it at the time, North Carolina was a dress rehearsal for MAGA. Republicans learned exactly how to dismantle democracy while claiming to protect it. They learned how to gerrymander ruthlessly, suppress votes systematically, weaponize culture wars relentlessly, capture institutions methodically, and strip power strategically.

Most importantly, they learned that the guardrails don’t have to be torn down all at once. They can be worn away.

The fight we’re in may last for decades. Those pushing back against the populist authoritarianism should look to North Carolina. The story here shows how far Republicans will go, but it also shows how to resist. In the battle for the soul of the nation, North Carolina has been ground zero.

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Just a few weeks ago, Senator Thom Tillis told reporters that he regretted his vote for Pete Hegseth to become Secretary of Defense. He almost certainly regrets his vote for Kristi Noem. He called for her resignation before she was unceremoniously shown the door. He probably regrets his vote for Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, Jr., two nut jobs who shouldn’t be employable at all, much less at the highest echelons of government.

With a record like that, Tillis should certainly be questioning his judgment. He’s clearly not a great judge of character.

Now, Tillis looks prepared to make the same mistake again. This time, he seems ready to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General. Blanche was Donald Trump’s personal attorney and seems to be more loyal to the president than to the Constitution or the people of the United States.

Blanche will do Donald Trump’s bidding. That’s why he’s been nominated. As bad as she was, Pam Bondi had lines she wouldn’t cross and Trump fired her. Blanche doesn’t seem to have any.

Tillis seems to be pulling a classic Thom Tillis. He’s been garnering all sorts of attention because he’s made a big deal about getting rid of the slush fund for the January 6 rioters. He’s said that if Blanche didn’t make it go away, he wouldn’t vote for him.

Now, he’s equivocating. Blanche says it won’t be used and Tillis is going to take him at his word, just like he did with all those other bad votes.

Don’t do it, Thom. Show us you’re more than just bluster. Don’t fall back into the pattern of saying what’s right and doing what’s wrong. And don’t find yourself making excuses for Todd Blanche.

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First, I owe an apology to the State Board of Elections. I assumed that Dallas Woodhouse worked for the SBOE since his title was liaison to the county boards of elections. In fact, he worked for the state auditor, Dave Boliek. I say “worked” because on Monday, Woodhouse resigned after several articles emerged showing he had pressured county boards of elections to change early voting schedules.

Woodhouse fell on the sword to protect Boliek and whoever is pulling Boliek’s strings. His resignation letter is a defense of the auditor and himself. He argues that his job was to prepare county boards for “one of the most significant changes in North Carolina election administration in decades.” In reality, nothing changed except who was running the state board. The rules of the county boards and their mission remained the same — or should have.

Pat McCrory didn’t need a county liaison when Republicans took over the boards when he became governor. Roy Cooper didn’t need one when Democrats took over after McCrory lost. The significant change was the state auditor’s office micromanaging boards of election and turning them into a partisan agency.

Woodhouse wrote of Boliek, “I believed in your vision that good government can strengthen both public confidence and public service.” That’s pretty laughable since the auditor put partisan hacks in control of the state board and put Woodhouse in as the heavy to pressure county boards.

I don’t fault Dallas Woodhouse. He knows what his role is in the North Carolina political landscape. He’s a partisan warrior looking for Republican advantage. That’s who he’s been since he left the world of journalism. There’s no reason to expect him to change. He had a job to do.

The question is, who is Dave Boliek and who suggested he needed to hire a bunch of political hacks to run the state board of elections? He was a Democrat until about three or four years ago. The man changed parties after the Republican Party had folded to Donald Trump and election denialism became a core tenet of the GOP.

It was one thing to change from Democrat to Republican when Reagan was redefining conservatism. It’s another to switch to the GOP as it became the party of grifters, racists, and authoritarians. That says a lot about a person.

Who would have suggested Boliek hire Woodhouse or appoint Francis De Luca board chair? I doubt he knew those folks very well. If he did, he knew that both were hard-core partisans, not election professionals. He clearly didn’t care much about the appearance of fairness in the administration of elections. On the contrary, he shoved it in our faces that he was turning the agency into a partisan tool.

I don’t really think Boliek came up with this plan on his own. I suspect it came from Republicans in the legislature who consider democracy a nuisance and for whom power is all that matters. Regardless, Boliek has diminished public trust in a vital public agency and done so intentionally. They aren’t even pretending anymore.

The GOP has been attacking democracy in North Carolina since they took power. They were early adopters of the extreme gerrymandering that has infected the country. They passed the “monster” voter suppression bill that was struck down for targeting African Americans with “surgical precision.” They tried to steal a state Supreme Court seat but were harshly rebuked by a Trump-appointed federal judge. Boliek is just the latest blunt instrument Republicans are using to pummel democracy.

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The State Board of Elections reassigned Dallas Woodhouse from his position as liaison to the county boards of elections. I’m glad that they made that decision, but it doesn’t give me any more confidence that the State Board of Elections is acting as a nonpartisan agency. They just got caught doing what they said they weren’t.

Woodhouse was using his position to pressure county boards of elections to make voting more difficult for constituencies likely to vote Democratic. He pressured Jackson County election board members to remove an early voting site from the campus of Western Carolina University. He told Pasquotank County officials to end Sunday voting.

Woodhouse was using his position to gain political advantage for the GOP. And he was doing it with the tacit approval of the state auditor and the state board of elections. Nobody admitted he did anything wrong. If they had, he would have been fired or disciplined, not reassigned.

Republicans clearly see controlling the state board of elections as a political advantage, not the administration of fair elections. Their goal is to undermine democracy, not promote it. They underlined that fact by putting political hacks in charge instead of election professionals.

Woodhouse is still in-house at the board of elections. Former president of the Civitas Institute Francis De Luca is still board chair. And Sam Hayes, former legal counsel for two Republican House Speakers, is still executive director. They’ve done nothing to build confidence that they will oversee free and fair elections. They haven’t even tried.

Republicans have been trying to rig elections to favor them for so long their antics barely get the attention of the press. A decade ago, appointing a former executive director of a political party to the state board of elections would have caused an uproar. Today, it barely gets noticed, even when they get caught.

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North Carolina Republican House Majority Leader Brenden Jones reminds me of Dukes of Hazzard County Commissioner Boss Hogg. They look alike. They control rural counties. They’re both buffoons. And they’re both grifters. But one’s an actor and one’s a Republican leader.

Boss Hogg was a parody of the old Southern political bosses of the 20th century. Jones is a parody of Boss Hogg.

In the Dukes of Hazzard, Boss Hogg controlled Hazzard County, Georgia, often through grift and ill-conceived schemes. He saw political power as a means to increasing his personal wealth. Brenden Jones is following his lead.

It seems Jones has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He’s using his influence to steer business to his cronies. And while Boss Hogg was concerned with illegal liquor, Brenden Jones is trying to take advantage of the legal booze business.

Jones is using his legislative power to steer business to developer buddies to give them a windfall at taxpayers’ expense. Jones has told the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission that they must use a developer that has given massive amounts of money to the GOP to build a new “high-tech warehouse.”

According to good government champion Bob Hall, Jones told his legislative colleagues that the ABC Commission approved his scheme when, in fact, the ABC chair actually opposed it, calling it a “horrible” plan. Jones’s plan “would cost $589 million in lease payments over 25 years, and the developer would still own the warehouse.” Commission Chair Hank Bauer “wants approval for the commission to borrow $310 million to build the warehouse, which it would repay with ABC sales and permits.”

Here’s the kicker: donors tied to the developer Jones is pushing gave more than $500,000 to North Carolina Republicans, including more than $50,000 to Jones’s campaign committee. That sure looks like a pay-to-play scheme to me.

Of course, Jones fits firmly in the grifter wing of the GOP. Don’t look for Republicans to hold their own accountable. Graft has become one of the party’s core values. They believe that getting elected should lead to getting rich. While that’s a time-honored tradition in politics, the Trump-led GOP has taken it to new levels.

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With another Graham Platner scandal arising, we’re reminded that Platner is a uniquely Democratic problem because character no longer matters in the GOP. He’s a failure of the activist base who rallied around an unvetted candidate with no political experience. And he’s a failure of the Democratic establishment who recruited an aging and unpopular governor at a time when the country is demanding change.

In this vacuum, Democratic Socialists are having a moment. They are winning primaries across the country and the most prominent Democrat at this moment is New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He’s using his platform to shape a new Democratic agenda. I like Mamdani and agree with many of his broader goals, I just don’t think the way he talks about them will fly in swing districts and states.

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The Democratic Socialists use language that is as divisive as that used by MAGA. They equate people who oppose more immigration with racists. They attack the oligarchy, a term that I doubt resonates with swing voters. They focus on the flaws of our country more than its promise. Their criticisms are often broad instead of specific, leaving people who might not see the world exactly as the Democratic Socialists do to wonder if they aren’t the target.

In a broad sense, I agree with many of the DSA positions including a stronger social safety net that includes universal health care, addressing income inequality to make the richest Americas pay their fair share, and increasing affordable housing. But I also want to win the election. At a time when moderate and less engaged Republicans have little reason to vote, DSA is giving them one—or some.

I think the change people want is a return to stability. I’m less concerned about policies than I am about beating Republicans and I’m afraid we are about to squander our opportunity.

Wave elections occur when one side comes out, the other stays home, and the middle breaks for the side that’s voting heavily. Right now, Democrats are motivated to vote against Trump. Republicans who aren’t on social media have little reason to show up on election day. The middle that’s concerned mainly with kitchen table issues is going to vote against the party in the White House.

As DSA flexes its new found muscle, they are defining Democrats and giving Republicans a rallying cry that might change the equation. They are making immigration and Gaza top priorities. Those issues may inspire younger progressives who are already likely to go vote, but it will also motivate some Republicans who might otherwise stay home.

As I’ve said before, I don’t understand embracing the socialist label. For people over fifty, the voters who make up a disproportionate part of the electorate, socialism evokes thoughts of the Cold War and failed states across the globe. Alienating those voters seems counterproductive.

I fear that Democratic Socialists are going to have to learn the lesson of the Tea Party. Back in 2012, Republicans should have taken the US Senate, but the anti-establishment wing of the party nominated Tea Party darlings, Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdoch in Indiana. Both lost, leaving the Senate in Democratic hands for another two years.

I would guess that Maine, which should be a relatively easy Democratic pick up, will remain in Republican hands if Platner insists on staying in the race. I also think that Michigan Democrats are going to nominate Abdul El-Sayed, putting at risk a seat Democrats would otherwise win handily in this political environment. DSA is making this election harder than it should be.

Instead of division, the election should be about restoring stability and unity. Great changes happen when the country is united, not divided. We need to restore faith in institutions or build new ones.

The New Deal happened when a large majority of Americans demanded something new. The Great Society came about during a time of broad economic prosperity when Democrats and Republicans agreed on the ability of government to make our lives better. Right now, our country is closely, but fiercely, divided. We need leaders who find common ground to unite us because our system of government requires us to move forward together.

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Frank Fetzer Mills, Jr. died July 5, 2026, from complications related to Wilson’s Disease. His wife, Becky, was with him as she has been throughout his long struggle.

Fetzer lived life on his own terms, often doing what so many others only wished they could do. He never had a traditional career, but he was always doing something interesting. At various times, he was a writer, journalist, political consultant, tour manager, teacher, music producer, actor, documentary filmmaker, and security guard, among other things. He threw himself into his interests and often found himself enmeshed with his subjects. The writer Hal Crowther described him as “versatile.”

Fetzer was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on August 7, 1960, but he grew up in Wadesboro, NC. He was the oldest of four sons of Fetzer and Penny Mills. By all accounts, he had a happy childhood at a time when small towns were still thriving and cohesive communities.

He learned to read early and devoured books for the rest of his life. He graduated from Bowman High School in 1978 and then joined the Navy. He was recognized for his work as an Arab linguist and was stationed in Rota, Spain, for much of his enlistment. He was extremely proud of his service to his country and stayed in touch with a network of fellow veterans throughout his life.

After four years in the Navy, he enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His college years kicked off a decade of creative energy. While in school, he took classes that ranged from political science to art. He ran for student body president. He acted in plays. He wrote short stories. Fetzer joined the Chi Psi fraternity at a time when it was turning out a combination of political leaders and artistic innovators.

In an earlier era, Fetzer would have been considered a BMOC, or Big Man on Campus. In the 1980s, he was a big personality who was well known throughout the University community. He was awarded both the Order of the Old Well and the Order of the Golden Fleece for his accomplishments as a student leader.

After college, he spent a few years working on political campaigns and covering them as a reporter for several news outlets. He was the legislative reporter for Freedom Newspapers, a chain of mid-sized dailies across the state, and the political reporter for the alternative weekly Spectator Magazine, where his writings leaned toward Gonzo journalism. He would continue to publish as a freelance writer for the rest of his life.

While covering the 1988 presidential hopefuls at a forum in Chapel Hill, Fetzer asked them which article of the Constitution establishes the executive branch. Only Al Gore could answer the question. Fetzer was unimpressed, comparing Illinois Senator Paul Simon to a character out of Revenge of the Nerds, bemoaning Tipper Gore’s “crackpot crusade against rock and roll,” and declaring eventual nominee Michael Dukakis “as bland and boring as he is stable and competent.” He recommended Democrats nominate the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, with the slogan “Get down with Brown.”

Fetzer wrote the definitive narrative of the 1989 House coup in the North Carolina legislature for Leader Magazine. A handful of rebellious Democrats joined with Republicans to oust Speaker Liston Ramsey, widely regarded as the most powerful man in Raleigh, and elect fellow Democrat Joe Mavretic. His blow-by-blow account still reads like a political thriller.

Music was an important part of Fetzer’s life and he was drawn to roots music like bluegrass, the blues, and rockabilly. He briefly served as tour manager for the Flat Duo Jets, the influential Chapel Hill band, and helped promote Southern Culture on the Skids.

In 1988, Fetzer met Becky. It was love at first sight — two quirky humans who were up for life’s adventures. They married in 1989 on top of a mountain and initially settled in Hillsborough, NC, where Becky practiced law. Fetzer fell in with a group of prominent writers and artists who inhabited the town.

During that period, he published a short story called “Hexema, Hexema” about a young woman whose husband got killed in a septic tank accident. It was laugh-out-loud funny.

A few years later, Fetzer and Becky moved to Ripley, Tennessee, to be near Becky’s aging parents. They bought a condo in Memphis and the city became Fetzer’s new creative muse. He loved the music, the culture, and the river that flowed through it. He found himself right at home among the blues musicians, folk artists, and aging rockabilly heroes who gave the city its character.

Early in their marriage, Becky took Fetzer to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s mansion on the edge of town. When their tour group reached the Memorial Garden where Elvis is buried, Fetzer got into an argument over whether the King was dead or not. Fetzer took the alive side, claiming to have seen Elvis buying a shotgun at the Walmart in Wadesboro. It caused quite a stir. Becky was thoroughly embarrassed and Fetzer was thoroughly pleased with himself.

Later, Fetzer went to work at Graceland, where he befriended Vester Presley, the last living relative of Elvis to live on the grounds. In his book I, Elvis, Confessions of a Counterfeit King, Bill Henderson describes Fetzer’s time at Graceland.

Fetzer blended into the Memphis music scene seamlessly. At one point, he recorded two songs at Sun Studio with rockabilly legends Roland Janes and Malcolm Yelvington backing him up. Later, he became friends with Sam Phillips, the original owner of Sun and the man who discovered Elvis.

By the mid-1990s, Fetzer was plagued by a myriad of illnesses that slowed him down and landed him in the hospital on several occasions. He was finally diagnosed with Wilson’s Disease, a genetic disorder that causes copper to build up in soft tissue, destroying or damaging organs including the liver, kidneys, and brain.

Despite struggling with his disease, Fetzer remained productive. He received a master’s degree in Southern Studies from Ole Miss. He produced a documentary about the fight for voting rights in west Tennessee. When three hurricanes hit North Carolina in the late 1990s, Fetzer published a series of articles documenting the environmental impact on eastern North Carolina. He also produced records for recording artists in Memphis and Taos, New Mexico.

In Ripley, Fetzer organized a street fair called the Tomato Festival. He used his Memphis connections to bring talented musicians to the small town and fought to ensure the entertainment was inclusive and diverse, reflecting the population of the community.

Fetzer taught creative writing at Dyersburg State Community College in west Tennessee. When he realized that most of his students did not have computers, he found a company that donated refurbished ones. He told his classes that if they could talk, they could write. Fetzer had a deep sense of compassion for people who need a hand up in life.

Fetzer attracted people and was well known wherever he lived. They were drawn to his eccentric sense of humor and stayed for his quick mind and firm convictions. He had strong opinions and the intellectual heft to back them up. He felt a kinship with those left behind by society and had an innate sense of justice. His friends came in all shapes and sizes, both figuratively and literally.

Fetzer loved to travel and saw much of the country and the world. He loved dogs and cats and always had a bunch of them around him. He and Becky collected so much art that their homes were virtual art museums. Fetzer always said he had a great life and would not have changed a thing, despite his often exhausting fight with Wilson’s Disease.

He is survived by his wife Becky, his mother Penny, his brothers Thomas and Smithson (Kathy), three nieces, two nephews, and four cats. He was predeceased by his father, Fetzer Sr., and his brother Eddie.

Senator Ted Budd is opposing Donald Trump’s spending request because it does not include funding for Helene recovery. I guess I should be applauding him. I certainly think Budd should be advocating for disaster relief money, but I think it’s a more cynical move than that. Budd is looking at his 2028 re-election campaign more than the people of western North Carolina.

Budd has been a reliable vote for Trump no matter the circumstances. He’s also been an almost invisible senator with no significant accomplishments or leadership positions. He’s been a go-along-to-get-along Republican senator with little evidence of any intellectual or political heft.

Now suddenly he’s bucking the president. It’s evidence that Trump’s grip on the GOP is loosening. It’s also evidence that Budd is thinking about his political future.

Budd watched Tillis brown-nose Trump and debase himself repeatedly in an effort to show MAGA that he was on their side. It didn’t work. Instead, Tillis found himself disliked by everybody. MAGA knew he wasn’t really one of them and Democrats knew Tillis lacked the political courage to stand up to Trump regardless of what he said.

Budd is not Thom Tillis. He does not like the spotlight and seems to be more an introvert than an extrovert. He’s also probably more sincere in his MAGA loyalty. He won his primary in 2022 after gaining Trump’s endorsement.

Now, though, he realizes he needs to put a little daylight between himself and Trump to attract the moderate voters in North Carolina that he needs to win in 2028. He’s not waiting for an election year. He’s planting the seed now that he will stand up to Trump where North Carolina is concerned.

He’s also probably watching western North Carolina. Some western counties are trending blue. Some of that trend is probably due to the type of people moving into the area, but part of it is frustration with an administration that hasn’t kept its promises about hurricane relief. Budd is trying to stem the tide.

I don’t think Budd would have bucked the president a year ago, even for North Carolinians in need. I think he’s making a political calculation. Trump is unpopular and Budd’s re-election campaign is just around the corner. He needs some distance between himself and Trump and he needs the people of western North Carolina to believe he will stand up for them.

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It’s hard to predict where the country is heading. Democrats seem to be following the path of the GOP as a split divides the far left from the center left. Democratic Socialists of America look to be ascendant, at least in northern primaries. Centrists still dominate the Southern and swing states.

The Tea Party and then Donald Trump divided the GOP. The Reagan Republicans lost control of the party after 2016 and Trump consolidated his power in 2024, leaving little room for the pragmatists in the party. Today, fealty to Trump is the single core value of the national Republican Party.

Democrats appear to be treading a similar path without the cult of personality leading it. The ideological battle is between the DSA and moderate Democrats who have led the party since Obama. Over the past few months, the left has handily won primaries in New York and Maine, making the left flank of the party dominant, at least in the Northeast.

Michigan is the next big test. DSA-aligned Abdul El-Sayed seems to have the momentum right now against US Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. Stevens has been defined as the establishment candidate while McMorrow has tried to split the difference. El-Sayed has led in most polls for the past two months or so.

In other swing states, more moderate and establishment candidates are on a roll. US Senator Jon Ossoff seems to be headed toward re-election in Georgia. He’s certainly not a member of the DSA, but he’s getting national attention and rising favorability numbers. In North Carolina, Roy Cooper is leading his Republican opponent, former RNC Chair and Trump toady Michael Whatley, by double digits in recent polls. Cooper is a former governor, so you can’t get much more establishment than that.

The left is reading the momentum as an endorsement of their agenda. Congressman Ro Khanna, who has emerged as a leading proponent of left-wing candidates, says, “Voters are supporting candidates who have the guts to stand up for Medicare for All, for ending foreign wars and standing up to corporate lobbyists.”

Maybe that’s true in primaries, but I’m dubious that most Americans think that way. The voters who determine general elections are more self-interested. They don’t support Medicare for All as much as they support health care that’s more affordable and accessible. I don’t think they care what it’s called. I doubt most of them think much about foreign wars or corporate lobbyists. They’re wondering why their grocery bills are so high, when gas prices are coming down, and whether they can afford child care.

The wave election that is building right now is a reaction against Trump, not a demand for increasing socialism. The angst among swing voters is driven by prices. People who voted for Trump based on his promise to make things more affordable feel betrayed, but I don’t think they are blaming the oligarchy. If they had $2.50 per gallon gas or could feed a family of four for $25 at McDonald’s, they wouldn’t care who was making billions of dollars.

There’s certainly an anti-establishment undercurrent, but I don’t think it’s very ideological, or at least not on the traditional left-right spectrum. It’s rooted more in fear of change. People want a return to stability, something that I’m not sure politics can provide — at least not in the short term.

The forces scaring the American people right now are big and difficult to predict. Technology, immigration, and trade have remade the country. People are scared of losing their culture. They’re scared of a changing environment. They’re scared of losing their jobs. And they don’t know what is coming next.

Groups like MAGA and DSA believe they can offer what people want, but their solutions generally just cause more disruption. Then they suffer the consequences in the next election. It’s created political whiplash.

MAGA was sure people wanted immigrants deported, but Trump’s experiment in mass deportations quickly became unpopular and kicked off his falling approval ratings. Barack Obama was elected to provide health care reform but watched reactions to the Affordable Care Act cause wave elections that killed Democrats’ Congressional majorities.

We're about to find out in November whether the country is ready for candidates like Graham Platner in Maine and El-Sayed if he’s the Michigan nominee. Even if they win, Democrats would be making a mistake believing the country has taken a hard left turn. A wave election against Trump is not the same as a mandate for Democratic Socialism.

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The polls for Republicans keep getting worse. The latest one from Catawba College has Roy Cooper leading Michael Whatley by 14 points in North Carolina’s US Senate race. Donald Trump is underwater with 54% disapproving and only 43% approving. Those two measures will strongly impact the election results in November.

Midterm elections are almost always a referendum on the party in the White House. Trump’s dismal approval ratings will likely dampen turnout among his supporters and turn lower-information swing voters against Republicans.

The Senate race is at the top of the ticket. If Cooper wins by more than a handful of votes, he will likely have coattails that run down the ballot. Candidates for Congress, the appellate courts, and the legislature will all benefit from a large victory margin. In addition, if Whatley can’t close the gap in the next two months, the national money won’t show up in the state for Republicans, hurting turnout and giving Democrats more control of the airwaves.

In other measures, voters favor Democrats for the state legislature. In the state House, voters prefer Democrats by a margin of seven points, 44% to 37%. In the state Senate, the margin is eight, 45% to 37%. If the 15% or so of voters who are undecided break heavily for Democrats, it’s Katy bar the door. Democrats would have a chance to take control of one of the chambers, most likely the state House.

Democrats also have the advantage in the Congressional generic ballot. Voters say they prefer the Democratic candidate by a margin of 46% to 37%. That margin puts the race in North Carolina’s 11th District in play, where Democrat Jamie Ager is challenging incumbent Republican Chuck Edwards. If those numbers hold, incumbent Democrat Don Davis will also likely win re-election in the district Republicans tried to gerrymander this year.

The numbers also look good for Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls. She holds a five-point lead over Sarah Stevens, who just stepped down from her state House seat last week. That’s a pretty narrow margin, but Earls has consistently led in polls and unless something changes, the undecided voters are more likely to break for Democrats than Republicans.

Republicans could still fix their problems, but time is running out. Getting out of the war with Iran would be a good start, but probably not enough. Prices need to start falling or at least stabilizing. Republicans in North Carolina still haven’t passed a budget, though that will probably happen. It’s hard to address the discontent in the country in just four months.

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I’m going to write this one more time. State Auditor Dave Boliek had an opportunity to build confidence in our elections and prove his critics wrong. He didn’t. Instead, he hired partisan operatives to oversee our elections. He’s put pressure on local boards of election to bend to his will to make voting more difficult for students. So forgive Democrats for being skeptical of the election bill moving through the legislature right now.

Republicans have been obsessed with voter fraud ever since Barack Obama got elected. They just could not believe that many white people would vote for a Black man to become president. It must be fraud. They’ve been trying to undermine elections ever since.

In North Carolina, Republicans passed the “Monster” voter suppression bill in 2013 that was struck down by the courts for targeting minorities with “surgical precision.” The legislators researched which methods of voting African Americans used and which kinds of IDs they likely held and then tried to ban them. The hyper-conservative US Supreme Court wouldn’t even take up the case on appeal, so you know it was bad.

In 2016, incumbent Governor Pat McCrory cried voter fraud when he lost to Roy Cooper. He claimed felons and people from out of state were voting in the election. After review of the fraud claims, McCrory’s own State Board of Elections found fewer than 30 ballots were cast illegally. To put that in perspective, 4.8 million North Carolinians voted in a state with 100 counties. That means only 0.000625 percent of the ballots were bad. We should be celebrating the security of our elections, not fretting over their credibility.

Not Republicans. They continued to cry voter fraud to undermine our elections.

Then, in 2018, North Carolina had a real case of election fraud, but it wasn’t the Democrats. It was the Republicans. Republican Congressional candidate Mark Harris hired a man in Bladen County who used ballot harvesting, turning in fraudulent mail-in ballots to give Harris a win in the county. The election was nullified but six years later, Harris won a gerrymandered seat in Congress because, you know, Republicans don’t really care about voter fraud.

In 2020, the voter fraud and stolen election mantra had been picked up by the President of the United States. Donald Trump signaled what would happen if he lost, telling reporters he might not accept the outcome. So when the election didn’t go his way, he sent his followers to attack the Capitol in an effort to stay in power. Republicans across the spectrum continue to cast doubt about the election to keep Trump happy and justify moves to rig elections.

Then, in 2024, Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin tried to change the rules of the election after it was over to steal the seat from Supreme Court Justice Alison Riggs. He was almost successful. After several rejections, the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court sided with him. It took a Trump-appointed federal judge to protect our democracy from Republicans when he wrote, “You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done.”

And while the state was focused on Griffin’s outrageous claims, the legislature was removing control of the state board of elections from the governor’s office and giving it to the state auditor. A previous Supreme Court had rejected the move just a few years earlier and the voters had rejected a constitutional amendment that would have stripped control from the governor.

So when incoming Auditor Dave Boliek had the chance to prove Democrats’ claims wrong, he took a pass and reinforced the notion that it was a partisan move. Boliek appointed former GOP Congressional candidate Francis X. De Luca, who had overseen independent expenditure campaigns against Democrats, as chair of the board and former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party Dallas Woodhouse as liaison to the county boards of elections. You can’t make this stuff up.

House Speaker Destin Hall (R-Disappointment) calls opposition to the current bill “performative outrage” and says the GOP has “been very public about wanting secure elections,” but the only people threatening our elections are Republicans. They have cynically used voter fraud to cast doubt on safe elections in order to undermine those same elections. They support a president and administration that tried to overthrow the government. They’ve been using election law and redistricting to make it more difficult for Democrats to win elections in North Carolina for fifteen years. Nothing they’ve done since they took power in 2011 indicates they are interested in free and fair elections. I don’t know why that would change now.

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Republicans’ assault on democracy has been relentless. It began with the “monster voter suppression bill” that was struck down by the courts for targeting African Americans with surgical precision. It culminated with the GOP taking control of the State Board of Elections and turning it into a partisan tool to rig elections.

To aid in that effort, Republicans in the legislature have introduced a new, massive bill that would further politicize the SBOE and give the auditor more power to investigate elections. The bill gives the state board 25 new political appointees. When State Auditor Dave Boliek had the opportunity to build confidence in the agency by hiring election professionals, he instead appointed political hacks.

The chair of the State Board of Elections is the former president of the Civitas Institute, who oversaw a massive independent expenditure operation to support Republicans running for the state legislature. The executive director of the SBOE is a former counsel to two Republican House Speakers. They also hired the former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party to serve as a liaison between the state board of elections and the county boards. They turned the agency in charge of ensuring free and fair elections into a partisan tool for the party that has consistently fought to undermine them.

The bill appears to be at least partially in response to last year’s attempt by Jefferson Griffin and the GOP to steal a Supreme Court election with an assist from the GOP-controlled state Supreme Court. They tried to change the rules of the election after the fact. Fortunately, a Trump-appointed federal judge rejected the move with a stinging and embarrassing rebuke, saying the GOP tried to “change the rules of the game after it had been played.”

At the same time Griffin was trying to undermine democracy, the Republican legislature passed a bill to shift control of the State Board of Elections from the governor’s office, where it has been for decades, to the auditor’s office controlled by Republican Boliek. The GOP had been trying to control the board for years. A similar measure was rejected by the previous Supreme Court just a few years earlier. Another attempt was rejected by voters.

The GOP was finally successful with an assist from the partisan Supreme Court, which essentially reversed the earlier ruling and left control of the SBOE up to the whims of the legislature. If Democrats win the auditor’s office in 2028, you can bet the gerrymandered Republicans will move the office again. Besides damaging democracy, the ruling is just bad government and clearly contrary to the intent of the state Constitution.

Republicans are going to use the State Board of Elections for partisan gain and really aren’t trying to hide their intentions. They’ve already pressured a local board of elections to move an early voting site to reduce voting by students. Adding 25 political appointees — read operatives — to the state board just invites skepticism about the fairness of the electoral process.

Republicans know that North Carolina is trending slowly Democratic. They might be able to hold control of the legislature through heavily gerrymandered districts for a while, but they will have an increasingly difficult time winning statewide, especially once Trump leaves the political stage. They’ve opted to undermine the democratic process to keep control.

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Last week, an Elon University poll asked Americans to name the best president. Twenty-six percent named Abraham Lincoln and another 12% named George Washington. Those answers are correct. Washington established the traditions of the presidency, most importantly the peaceful transfer of power, and Lincoln refined the definition of America as the country fractured.

Lincoln is my favorite president. He embodied the promise of America. Born into a poor frontier family, he rose to lead the nation at its most perilous time. He thought deeply about who we are as a country as he led us into the Civil War. He believed that equality, liberty, and democracy are worth the fight and the sacrifice.

Lincoln saw the Declaration of Independence as the foundational document of the country and the Constitution as upholding the principles set forth in the Declaration. He used a Biblical metaphor to compare the Declaration to an “apple of gold” protected by a silver frame that was the Constitution. One was a statement of ideals and aspirations that define the nation. The other established the rules for pursuing them.

The history of our country is divided by the Civil War. During the last 25 years of the 18th century, our ancestors were establishing a country and government like no other in the world. From 1800 to 1860, they were building a country that spanned the coasts, accumulating territory and establishing routes for expansion. The war created a dividing line.

Following the Civil War, we’ve been trying to achieve the vision that Lincoln had for our country. The expansion was no longer geographical, but ideological and emotional. Despite a brief period of imperialism at the turn of the 20th century, the great battles in the country have been over offering rights and liberty to all people.

We’ve had fits and starts. In the years immediately following the Civil War, we began the process of providing the full benefits of citizenship to African Americans, allowing them to enjoy the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that they had been denied. The backlash to their newfound rights and freedoms was fierce and by the early twentieth century, we had backtracked, creating a system of legal segregation that lasted until the Civil Rights Movement.

Beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the country picked up from where it left off in the late 1800s, trying to achieve Lincoln’s vision of a more perfect union. That lasted about 50 years.

Today, we’re in the midst of a backlash against expanded freedoms and democracy again. The people who once talked about liberty now embrace exclusion. The most extreme reject even legal immigration and the entire Republican Party wants to erode democracy. It’s ironic that the ideals of Abraham Lincoln have largely been rejected by the Party of Lincoln.

You don’t have to look far for an example. When asked his favorite president, North Carolina House Speaker Destin Hall said, “Here’s a good political answer: Thankfully, we’ve been blessed with a lot of good presidents.” That’s not a political answer. That’s a stupid answer, trying not to offend anybody and satisfying nobody.

More telling is his follow-up. “Abraham Lincoln did a pretty good job, all things considered. Reagan was great. And I’m a big fan of Donald Trump, and he is not done with his presidency yet, and so I imagine he’s going to be among the greats when he gets done.”

That’s just so disappointing. Qualifying Lincoln and listing Trump as “among the greats” is disingenuous. I don’t think Hall believes that because he’s smarter than that. He’s just pandering to a cultish base that still wishes the South had won the Civil War. Trump will be most remembered as the president who encouraged an attempted coup and was impeached twice. Hall knows that.

Maybe it doesn’t matter who our politicians like as presidents, but at least they should be able to articulate who they prefer and why. It really shouldn’t be controversial. That Hall thought he had to make a “political answer” says more about the people he’s trying not to offend than it does about him.

I had great hopes for Hall. Again, I’m just disappointed.

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The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia moved the US Senate race in North Carolina to “Lean Democrat” from “Toss-up.” The move reflects the polling that has consistently shown former Governor Roy Cooper to hold a statistically significant lead over Trump toady Michael Whatley. It also highlights the poor political environment Republicans face.

A Whatley spokesman responded to the move, saying, “Every cycle dating back for more than a decade, national ‘experts’ and national journalists try to prop up Democrat Senators in NC, and every year those Democrats lose on Election Day.”

That’s some serious cope. I can’t remember any of the national prognosticators rating a US Senate race in North Carolina as lean anybody. Polling has been too favorable to Democrats, but only by a point or two. Cooper has held leads outside the margin of error since the race began.

In addition, this year is the first time since 2002 that a midterm US Senate race in North Carolina has taken place with a Republican in the White House. That alone should give people pause, but with a president as unpopular as Trump, the GOP should be absolutely terrified. Midterms are almost always a referendum on the president’s administration and Trump is underwater by 15 points according to the latest Carolina Journal poll.

Whatley has also turned out to be a very poor candidate. He might do well with insiders in the GOP, but he lacks the political skills to be a top-tier candidate. Instead of reading the environment he faces, he’s merely parroting everything Trump says. He needs to put some daylight between himself and Trump but instead keeps wrapping himself around the president.

The contrast between Cooper and Whatley is stark and the Cooper team has been exploiting the differences. While Whatley is defending Trump and making everything about politics, Cooper is the unofficial leader of the Caniacs as the Carolina Hurricanes vie for the Stanley Cup. He’s like the Tom Jensen of hockey. He’s bringing people together around a shared passion instead of dividing them with a demented president’s ramblings.

Democrats may not have won a Senate race since Kay Hagan won in 2008, but they also haven’t had a candidate like Cooper in a year like this one. Cooper is the most experienced statewide candidate since Jim Hunt. The political environment keeps getting worse for Republicans as inflation and wars dominate the national conversation while Trump sleeps through various meetings.

The move to “Lean Democrat” is warranted. The prognosticators won’t make it “Likely Democrat” because you never know what happens in politics, but by the fall, most will believe it’s Cooper’s race to lose. I’m betting Republicans never come into the state for Whatley with a significant spend. Instead, they will be protecting incumbents like Susan Collins in Maine and trying to hold Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, and maybe Nebraska as the year gets worse for them.

Go, Coop! Go, Canes!

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We’re now a little over two weeks until the 250th anniversary of our nation’s birth and the celebration seems muted. Instead of the fanfare and year-long lead-up to the 200th anniversary, this year seems like just another Fourth of July. It makes me sad for our country and wistful for the country of my youth.

In 1976, I was thirteen years old. The country spent a year preparing for the Bicentennial. Red, white, and blue was everywhere. Elton John’s song “Philadelphia Freedom” blared from speakers at almost every event. People painted cars, houses, and anything else they could find in the image of the American flag. We had coins specially minted to mark the occasion and commemorative license plates.

On television, Schoolhouse Rock gave us a year of civics lessons. They taught us about how a bill becomes law. They introduced the original “No Kings” episode. And they celebrated the Melting Pot that makes our country great.

In Wadesboro, where I grew up, many men grew beards. I’m not sure what that signified since most of the Founding Fathers were clean-shaven, but it was a thing. People also painted every fire hydrant in town to look like a person. Some were made to look like Revolutionary-era soldiers and others were firefighters, policemen, soldiers, or sailors. Again, I’m not exactly sure of the connection to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but they were interesting.

The Bicentennial celebration came on the heels of a remarkably contentious time in the country and people were looking for a way to come together. The Civil Rights Movement had moved our country forward and after a decade of violence and assassinations, the country accepted a new social structure that included African Americans. The Vietnam War was over. Nixon and Watergate were gone from the political stage. The year 1976 seemed to be about redemption and remembering what our country was about, even if the scars of the 1960s and early 1970s would stay with us longer than anyone imagined. It felt like a time of hope and renewal.

There’s been no lead-up to the 250th celebration. Instead, there’s been acrimony. Donald Trump has made our country angry and he’s made the celebration about him. He’s giving some sort of speech that only his cult following will watch. Those on the left side of the spectrum will find it offensive. Those on the right will pretend that he’s brilliant. We no longer have a unified picture of our country to celebrate.

The 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence won’t get the recognition it deserves. Lincoln considered the Declaration the foundational document of our country, more significant than the Constitution. The Declaration didn’t just separate us from England: it laid out a vision of a new kind of country. As Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

And maybe that’s why we aren’t celebrating our 250th Independence Day the way we should. Trump and MAGA don’t agree with Lincoln’s expansive vision of America. They believe in a narrow place and want to protect a certain way of life for a particular people — those who look and believe like them. It’s a belittling view of a country that has offered so much to so many.

Lincoln concluded his speech by saying, “…[T]his nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” That’s the battle we have in front of us today — to protect democracy from despots. The stakes are so high. I hope we can celebrate again.

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Michael Whatley clearly doesn’t follow hockey. That’s not a sin and it shouldn’t be a political liability, but Whatley and his campaign turned it into one. Whatley tried to be something he isn’t and that’s what people hate about politicians.

Whatley’s campaign made a stupid error when they posted an AI image of generic hockey players in Carolina Hurricanes uniforms. They were begging for scrutiny and they got appropriately ridiculed. Then Whatley couldn’t name any players on the team when asked his favorites.

Paige Maston of the News & Observer got it right. Whatley’s problem is not about hockey or any other sport. It’s about, as Maston says, “relatability and authenticity.” Instead of looking like part of the growing Hurricane fan base, Whatley looks like a phony trying to score political points.

In the bigger picture, the episode shows the difference between two campaigns. Former Governor Roy Cooper has long been known as a Hurricanes fan. This season, he’s leaned into it. His campaign posted videos and photos of Cooper decked out in Hurricanes garb wandering through the parking lot of the Lenovo Center mingling with fans before games. It’s almost like they set Whatley up and he took the bait.

Cooper’s team didn’t even have to push the narrative. Hurricanes fans and social media did the work for them. Whatley’s campaign and their allies on social media spent two days trying to convince people that it wasn’t a big deal. The incident may be forgotten by October, but the campaign lost those days trying to fix an unforced error.

Whatley is still a largely undefined candidate. As Maston points out, “For some people, this Hurricanes fiasco could have been their first introduction, and it doesn’t exactly make a good impression.”

Whatley has turned out to be a hapless candidate running against a seasoned politician. He doesn’t seem to understand the political environment or campaigns in general. At a time when Republicans are trying to put a little daylight between themselves and a deeply unpopular president, Whatley is doubling down on his support for Donald Trump. Most recently, he embraced Trump’s slush fund at the same time Congressional Republicans were rejecting it.

He’s defining himself as a rubber stamp for Trump who is largely disconnected from average North Carolinians. Whatley has never really been a leader and has no practical experience. He’s a political operative and insider whose career has hinged on his relationships, not his accomplishments. That’s not a great résumé at a time when voters are angry at the political establishment.

Few people will remember the Hurricanes incident when the campaign heats up this fall, but it shows what type of campaign Whatley is running and what type of candidate he is. He’s chasing public opinion instead of leading it. His campaign is trying to be opportunistic but is too incompetent to find the right opportunity. He’s done little to define himself while wrapping himself around a flailing and unpopular president. Team Whatley will have to make significant adjustments to be competitive this fall.

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State Auditor Dave Boliek wants you to believe that he’s a fiscal hawk, holding agencies and municipalities financially responsible. He’s really a partisan hack who filled the state board of elections with GOP operatives instead of election professionals. Now, he is using his office to pressure local boards of elections to make voting more difficult for young people.

According to Republican members of the Jackson County Board of Elections, Boliek’s office pressured them to vote to remove an early voting site from Western Carolina University. Republicans control the board with a three-two majority. One GOP member, Jay Pavey, said, “I’ve been told that if I don’t vote a particular way, that they will do whatever they have to do to remove me from the board.” Jackson County Board Chair Bill Thompson admitted that he was told to eliminate the student voting site by Boliek’s office. Another member, Wes Hanemeyer, resigned saying, “If third parties feel they can demand that I take a completely illogical path, that means they are convinced they have control.”

Tellingly, the North Carolina Republican Party applauded Boliek, not the members of the Jackson County GOP.

Republicans gained control of the state board of elections after the legislature voted to strip the agency from the governor’s office and give it to the Auditor. They tried that before but the Supreme Court stopped them. The new court with a GOP majority, led by Chief Justice Paul Newby, an unabashed partisan, reversed the ruling and allowed the transfer. Ever since, Boliek has packed the SBOE with partisan operatives instead of election professionals.

Dave Boliek wants you to think he’s a serious guy. He’s got the credentials and résumé of a public servant, but those are deceiving. He switched parties after the GOP had abandoned its conservative principles and embraced the authoritarianism and corruption of Trump. In other words, power and the possibility of wealth appealed to Boliek, not limited government or free markets.

Boliek could have shown his independence by appointing a state board of elections made up of good government advocates and run by election professionals. Instead, he appointed hard-core partisans to the board and political operatives to run the agency. He’s weaponized the state board of elections, making it a tool of the GOP rather than the nonpartisan agency it’s supposed to be.

Board Chair Francis De Luca was president of the Civitas Institute and participated in independent expenditure operations to defeat Democrats. The liaison to the county boards of elections is Dallas Woodhouse, a former chair of the NC GOP and Republican operative for more than 25 years. The executive director is Sam Hayes, who served as legal counsel for GOP House Speakers Tim Moore and Destin Hall. I had some hopes for Hayes, but those are fading.

I don’t have any illusions about Boliek. He’s an anti-democratic opportunist driven by petty resentment, some deep-seated insecurity, or some combination of both. He’s 58 years old and looks 75. Something’s been eating at him to age him that fast.

Boliek looks grandfatherly and can run in the right social circles. I’m sure he’s pleasant, friendly, and professional, but there’s nothing really there except self-interest. His whole history is one of opportunism with few core values.

Boliek wanted to be appointed to the state Senate as a Democrat to succeed retiring Senator Tony Rand, but the appointment went to Margaret Dickson instead. Not long after that, he started supporting Republicans after they gerrymandered themselves into power after 2011. He switched parties in 2023 while Trump was running for re-election. We can only imagine what promises he got. He and the modern GOP deserve each other.

Republicans in North Carolina chafe at charges that they are anti-democratic or authoritarian, but their actions prove the accusations. They’ve used extreme gerrymandering to rig districts to keep themselves in power. They’ve implemented voter suppression laws to limit access to the ballot box. Now, they are weaponizing the state board of elections to bully counties into making voting more difficult for people they believe are more likely to vote for Democrats.

Dave Boliek could have proven himself to be an independent. Instead, he’s proven himself to be a hack. North Carolinians deserve to know who he is.

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