John Atcheson
John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, and he has just completed a book on the 2016 elections titled, WTF, America? How the US Went Off the Rails and How to Get It Back On Track, available from Amazon. Follow him on Twitter @john_atcheson
Articles by this author
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Views Friday, October 12, 2018 Justifiable Anger Fuels Trump's Hold on Power and Democrats Still Don't Seem to Get It Pundits, progressives and the press seem perplexed by Trumpism. How can a narcissistic, fascist, incompetent conman—whose White House seems always on the verge of chaos; whose own appointees fear that he’ll do something so insane that they snatch papers off his desk; whose positions mouth populism... Read more |
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Views Monday, October 01, 2018 Why Kavanaugh Shouldn't Be Confirmed The Republicans managed to make Thursday’s hearing a he said/she said debate, and they managed to make the standard for disqualifying Kavanaugh one of proving him guilty, “beyond a reasonable doubt” exactly as they wanted to do. And by having only two witnesses, Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh, it was... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, September 26, 2018 Harbingers: Florence, Forest Fires, and the Future Climate change catastrophe is upon us. We see it in the record-breaking floods from storms like Florence, and in the record-breaking fires across the US once again this year. But the media – which barely mentioned the link between these catastrophes and climate change -- is preparing to move on to... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, September 04, 2018 Democrats and the 2018 Midterms The collapse of the Democratic Party over the last four decades is nothing less than historic. It’s the kind of thing folks will study in the future, as what Barbara Tuchman called a “ march of folly .” Ms. Tuchman defined a march of folly as “the pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest,” and... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, August 21, 2018 Inchoate Anger Is the Animating Force in Politics We’ve known for a decade now, that people are fed up with Washington and with politics. We’ve known that they consider politicians to be little more than lackeys to the uber-rich and corporations; and we’ve known that the facts bear them out when we look at the legislation they pass. Republicans... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, August 14, 2018 With 3 Months To Go, Pundits and Democrats Still Clueless Democrats will win the House in 3 months , and they have an outside shot at the Senate. But it’s not because they’ve figured out how to win elections, it’s because Republicans have – once again -- handed it to them. That’s the only way Democrats win these days. Obama’s victory was a direct result... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 24, 2018 Why Looking for the “Winning Issue” Is a Losing Proposition There’s been a spate of articles and pronouncements from the usual suspects speculating on what the winning issue might be for Democrats. Pundits and politicians have pitched everything from Trump’s treatment of immigrant children to legal weed, to relief from college debt, to defense of social... Read more |
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Views Saturday, July 21, 2018 The Big Tent Is Really No Tent: Why the Democrats' Old Guard Has to Get Out of the Way Mahatma Ghandi once said, “There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” "The nearly complete defeat of the centrist, corporate Democrats over the last four decades should have made it obvious that the age of the DLC centrists has been coming to an end for some time." The... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, July 04, 2018 Listen Up Voters – If You Want Change, You Can't Keep Voting for the People Resisting Change The evidence that people are fed up with politicians and political parties is overwhelming. For example, the Smith Project found that nearly 80 percent believe that both political parties “…are too beholden to special interests to create any meaningful change.” And a recent poll found that just 35... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, June 27, 2018 Can You Hear Us Now? On Why Documenting the Daily Outrage Is Not Enough Can you hear us now? Ben Jealous and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just showed Democrats how to win. Both backed single-payer health care, a living wage, criminal justice reform, a more humane immigration policy, and both ran grass roots campaigns that didn’t hew to the party machine’s middle-of-the... Read more |