ArcaMax

Easy. Nominate Bernie Sanders. I've been through my share of blowouts. I was a kid when George McGovern won Massachusetts -- and nowhere else. I was in Florida working for Jimmy Carter (on loan from Ted Kennedy's office) when we lost not only the White House but also the Senate majority in Ronald Reagan's first landslide. I was in Minnesota ...Read more

Nine days after the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Times -- which treated the crash as if the entire city were on fire, taking down the paywall on digital stories about him in a transparent effort to boost its circulation numbers -- finally got around to acknowledging that Bryant's legacy might be "complicated."

Not ...Read more

Back in the 1980s, then-Democratic National Committee Chairman Chuck Manatt tried to get rid of Iowa, which is to say, get rid of the special status that allowed it to conduct the first of the nation's caucuses.

He was right, of course. Iowa is the wrong place to start, and caucuses that attract the hardcore ideologues who can be relied upon ...Read more

The winner of the Iowa caucus is very rarely the next president. Looking at the Democratic side, Barack Obama was the only Iowa caucus winner to go on to win the presidency since 1980, when it was actually uncommitted, not Jimmy Carter, that won.

On the other hand, since 1984, five Iowa winners have gone on to lose the presidency.

This year, ...Read more

For those who don't remember or weren't born, John Dean was the White House lawyer who blew the Watergate hearings wide open, which led directly to the so-called Saturday Night Massacre (Nixon's firing of special counsel Archibald Cox via the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, after the attorney general and his deputy refused to do so),...Read more

There were two TVs on in the gym. The one in the front -- where all the training goes on -- showed two teams from somewhere else battling for a ball.

The one in the back, with no sound, no captions, was focused on the House impeachment managers.

No one was watching.

"Boring," one of my otherwise-very well-informed friends said.

I think, from...Read more

It won't do. It is simply not the case that "nobody likes" Sen. Bernie Sanders. It isn't true that he hasn't accomplished anything. He ignited the progressive movement within the Democratic Party, and for 2020, Democrats will need every person who likes him.

In 2016, 13 million Democrats liked Sanders better than Hillary Clinton; she had ...Read more

It was in 1972 that Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment.

The Amendment provides "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

Last week, 48 years later, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment -- which would make it law but for the fact that ...Read more

What a coincidence. With less than three weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses, we suddenly learn about a meeting that took place a year ago, with only two people in the room. She, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, told him, Sen. Bernie Sanders, she was running for president; he allegedly told her that a woman couldn't win, which is a weird thing to say to a...Read more

When I go on Facebook, I don't see many ads for garden equipment, power tools or even big TVs and sound systems. But comfortable work clothes for a woman of a certain age? Low-heeled pumps with arch support? Expensive skin creams that turn back the clock? How did these companies find me?

The answer, of course, is simple. They asked. I fit their...Read more

I'm late with my column. I forgot it was New Year's Eve.

For most of my life, I couldn't have imagined such a thing.

New Year's Eve mattered .

New Year's Eve -- like Valentine's Day and my birthday, only more so -- was the day I judged my personal life most harshly. I dreaded it. It was a mark of failure if I didn't have a date, which...Read more

"The Dearly Beloved" by Cara Hall was my favorite book of 2019.

It's the story of two families, two ministers, jointly appointed to lead a liberal Christian church in New York in the 1960s.

I'm not Christian; I'm not much interested in books about Christian faith. If I'd understood where I was headed, I might never have picked it up. I just ...Read more

In other news, can you believe Christmas is next week?

I mean, who has bought anything?

It just jumped on us, like impeachment, but you need gift wrap and tape.

I have never seen impeachment show up at such at inconvenient time, even for die-hards like me. Not to mention all the new movies.

"Is there something new?" we ask one another.

Not ...Read more

Former Rep. Katie Hill was driven out of office by vicious revenge porn clearly orchestrated by her angry ex-husband and her defeated former rival.

Now Sen. Bernie Sanders -- ignoring the advice of virtually everybody, starting with the governor -- has jumped into the primary fray to replace her.

Sanders knows better than Gov. Gavin Newsom, ...Read more

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel in Pennsylvania rejected Bill Cosby's appeal of his rape conviction, holding that it was proper for the judge to allow five additional women to testify that they, too, had been drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby.

That evidence did not come in at the first trial, which is almost certainly why the first jury ...Read more

What should be a momentous announcement seems more like the opening gong of a bad reality show we've been living inside of for going on three seasons.

Trump really did it this time. Again. And we already know the ending.

The House Judiciary Committee will draft articles of impeachment.

Then speeches.

The House Judiciary Committee will send ...Read more

His staff used to brag that he was Donald Trump before there was Donald Trump. That was before he pled guilty but after he took to blaming his wife for the misuse of official campaign funds that allegedly financed his extramarital affairs.

Trump before, during and after Trump is more like it. Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Rep. Duncan Hunter ...Read more

No one forced him to go. The photo and video make clear that there was no one holding a gun to his head, no one forcing him to be there.

And I'm almost as certain that no one -- certainly no one on the royal staff -- thought that it was a nice invite, an opportunity for a man whose brother will be king to socialize with a rich pimp and his ...Read more

In 1976, the one-term Georgia governor who used to surprise locals in Iowa by introducing himself and telling people he was running for president finished first in Iowa (actually, he finished behind uncommitted, but that counted as first) and went on to win the Democratic nomination.

How did he do it? How did a little-known governor whose self-...Read more

What are usually the hard questions are easy this time. He did it. It was wrong. Now who cares is the question.

He did just what all the uncontradicted testimony has established, what we knew going in, witness after witness saying exactly the same thing. It doesn't matter who the whistleblower is, but the Republicans keep demanding his identity...Read more