ArcaMax

I'm not going to write about Donald Trump today. I know, he is out there telling everyone he won't necessarily leave, even if he loses. Which may scare people into voting for him but is more likely to convince them that Joe Biden needs a landslide.

Stop. There I go again.

No news today.

No Trump.

Most mornings of my adult life, I have ...Read more

Twenty years ago, five conservative Supreme Court justices picked the president.

It could happen again.

Yesterday, Sen. Mitt Romney was President Donald Trump's nemesis and a hero to everyone else. No more. Romney gave Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell the vote he needed. Fifty-one Republicans are ready to go forward.

Most Americans ...Read more

On the afternoon of Election Day 2016, I was doing an Election Day panel with my old friend Bob Shrum, with whom I've won some and lost some, and who I have respected for decades. He was comfortable. Morley Winograd, the longtime and much-respected head of the Democratic Party of Michigan, assured me that Michigan would be fine. I emailed ...Read more

The only reason I know where Arcadia or Sierra Madre -- the communities closest to the Bobcat fire in Southern California -- are is because I used to do traffic reports when I was a talk radio host. Traffic and weather together. For traffic, I talked to Captain Jorge up in his helicopter. For weather, I just read the report, which tended to be ...Read more

Tom Bradley, a former police officer who served as mayor of Los Angeles for 20 years, was supposed to win the 1982 governor's race. Every poll said so. He was endorsed by everybody. Going in to Election Day, those polls consistently showed him to be 10 points ahead of his opponent, George Deukmejian, a little-known Republican at the time.

...Read more

Did you hear the word "Obamacare" during the Republican convention? It was once President Donald Trump's worst enemy. Then it got more popular, as people who had not been able to get insurance in the past then could. In this pandemic, it has been essential. The idea of taking health insurance away from tens of millions of Americans in the middle...Read more

There are moments when it all goes bad. I can barely even type the words. Nothing works. Everything you pick up breaks in your hands. Simple conversations, nothing conversations, escalate without either of you knowing why.

The air is all wrong: too hot or too cold.

Are you the only one who has mastered the difficult skill of pouring water into...Read more

No. Can you believe it? This is California. If not here, where? If not now, when?

This is just ridiculous. I read the story. Of course, the poor California Assembly speaker who denied the request is eating his words now. His gender made him do it.

The lawmaker in question was a member of the California State Assembly, whose rather reasonable ...Read more

Nancy Reagan was one of the most elegant women I have ever met: gracious, with impeccable taste. It must have been 1995 when I got an urgent call from the fellow I knew who ran the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, telling me that there had been an emergency cancellation for a panel the next morning with Newt Gingrich moderating, Mrs. Reagan ...Read more

I write this on International Dog Day, a holiday I had not previously heard of, clearly a creation of social media and some sharp marketers. Unlike the flower, restaurant and barbecue industries, which profit from earlier acts of genius marketing (thank you, Hallmark!), this one doesn't have an immediate profit angle. Could it be the work of the...Read more

The first thing I did when I realized the lockdown was coming was get my hair done. On the way home, I stopped by my almost-completely stripped supermarket and bought everything I could find.

I have been home, with few rare exceptions (doctors, hospitals, my son's house) ever since. I realized the other day that I have been wearing gym clothes ...Read more

I used to love conventions. As a kid, I watched every minute on TV -- good and bad. In 1964, I woke my parents urgently to tell them to send a telegram supporting Bill Scranton immediately or else Barry Goldwater would win and we would have nuclear war (which was sort of like the most famous commercial that then-President Lyndon Johnson used ...Read more

Caddies say he cheats at golf. It makes sense. He can't bear to lose something that matters as little as a round of golf. So he cheats.

Congress should be up in arms. We should all be up in arms. Lawyers across the country are already up in arms, prepared for an election the president of the United States has already taken action to undermine. ...Read more

Choosing a vice president is mostly a process of elimination. In Joe Biden's case, that process led to a very short list. Biden had already announced that he would choose a woman, and it's been clear for some time that he had to pick a Black woman. There were too many Black women on the list to find none of them qualified. This was the year.

...Read more

Monday night, hundreds of partygoers descended on a mansion on Mulholland Drive, allegedly owned by an absent Australian soap opera star. Houses like that rent out for occasions for very high multiples. Mulholland is a beautiful and windy street, dotted with big, huge houses with lots of land. This house was high above Beverly Hills. Living up ...Read more

Most people have never heard of her. But the people who have worked with her and know her best -- Republicans and Democrats -- have enormous respect for her. And those who haven't heard of her will be hearing quite a lot of her. There is an excellent chance that, come January, she will be the first Black woman to win a national election.

But ...Read more

In the post on Twitter, Herman Cain was surrounded by four grinning Trumpers, presumably members of Black Voices for Trump, which Cain co-chaired. They were crowded together at the Tulsa Trump rally on June 20, a maskless audience in the front rows of a mostly empty hall. Seat signs that intended to enforce social distancing -- an easy mission ...Read more

This is not the first time federal forces have entered a city to restore order. In 1968, federal troops moved into Chicago, Baltimore and Washington in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In 1957, then-President Dwight Eisenhower ordered federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, and then-President John F. Kennedy ordered ...Read more

It was the title of a speech by then-Gov. (and later President) Calvin Coolidge in 1919. He was talking not of race but of the disorder surrounding the Boston police strike.

But it was in 1968 -- in the aftermath of the riots triggered by the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.; in the aftermath of a Democratic convention during which the Chicago ...Read more

I was due to have a mammogram. I skipped it. I was due for a follow-up chest MRI. I skipped that. As a former smoker, I had scheduled a CT scan for May. I skipped that, too.

The woman who helped me raise my children, who has been with me for 30 years, who I love with all my heart, has been in chemo since last fall. She can't avoid going to the ...Read more