The stakes in the 2018 congressional elections are greatest of any in midterm memory.  If Democrats can thread the needle and regain control of the Senate, the next Gorsuch-like abomination can be prevented.  The multi-faceted damage his votes and opinions will inflict has been hinted at but will become increasingly clear in the spring and crescendo this June. […]

Welcome back to Hopelessly Liberal after its long winter nap. Last year we tried to write about the “#MeToo movement” but each time HL’s advisory board vetoed the post.  The sage and prescient advice was that the exemplars written about (Kevin Spacey was one, Bush 41 another) would soon attract additional accusers, named and anonymous, rendering the point we were trying to make incomplete, at best. The hits kept coming as most of us spent considerable and painful effort recalling episodes of sexual aggression that we were party to. The allegations and introspection continue, but some interim reflections are in order. Politics Skew Perception Among social conservatives in Alabama, Roy Moore’s alleged pursuit of teenage girls during his thirties was quickly compared to Joseph’s marriage [...]

The Supreme Court will hear argument today in Gill v. Whitford, the partisan gerrymandering case.  The issue, whether Wisconsin Republican legislators who get a minority of votes can continue to draw district lines that guarantee them a large majority of seats?  This practice employed by both, and all parties when in power dates back to the earliest days of the republic.  A SCOTUS ruling that the practice is unconstitutional would rank among a score or so of the most important in over two centuries.  But even if the Court so rules and levels the political playing field in a manner and magnitude not seen since Reynolds v. Sims in 1964, that won’t help Democratic voters in New York State, not as long as  the Empire State has a governor with surname Cuomo. […]

A constant in these posts is the liberal conscience as it processes Trumpism.  Asking what do I want to happen in this or that context or contest?  What will I do to help bring that outcome to pass while also keeping eyes on the prize of ending Trump’s presidency? HL 27 “The Guilty Conscience of the Liberal Mind Confronts Trump’s Inheritance of ObamaCare” HL 29 about “Walking and Chewing Gum Simultaneously” and HL 44 “Trump Gonna Mess Your Mind” each and all addressed these issues involving personal responsibility. […]

Guess who the ugly old American Woman is these days?  Sorry sisters, the one Canada looks down on, the one the world despises, the one with war machines and ghetto dreams.  Its personification is Donald Trump – say T, say R, say U, say M, say P and Trump gonna mess your mind and already is.  For example, how are you feeling about the DACA deal that Trump appears to be cutting with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi? […]

Hopeless liberals of an age spent some of the 1960s debating which failed Eden, one resembling George Orwell’s “1984” or Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” was more likely in our future – pausing occasionally to ponder Robert Frost’s question of whether the world will end in fire or ice. […]

Less than 100 hours after his appointment as White House Communications Director Anthony  (the “Mooch”) Scaramucci did his imitation of “thunderbolt and lightning” but wasn’t “very very frightening” even to his staff whom he told “I’m going to fire everybody” [except Sarah Huckabee and himself] “I’m going to put [you] out on Pennsylvania Avenue to sell postcards to tourists outside the gates” if you don’t stop leaking the truth about this president because it damages “the presidency” – a phrase and concept new to Trump and one that he immediately began trying to pronounce in his daily Jeff Session’s tantrum.  As in the Attorney General’s Russia recusal was “a bad thing, not for the president, but for the presidency.  I think it unfair for the presidency.”  Watch him say those unfamiliar words here and a free HL subscription goes to anyone that can document him uttering those obscure words before. […]

Adapting a platitude from the formative 1960s, I’ll just croon that some of my best friends are people I’ve never met, white, black and other.  Though a security camera might reveal me chatting a few times with columnist David Brooks in front of 1601 Eye Street in D.C., when we both worked there.  Brooks’ July 11, 2017 Times Op-Ed “How We are Ruining America” and my unmet black friend, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s remembrance of the July 12, 1967 Newark riots (three years before his birth) formulated the question posed in HL 41’s title.  Like the “best friends” cliché, I am constrained to add another, I think Baraka and Brooks generally do their jobs very well. […]

Most attention paid to the SCOTUS actions announced Monday (6/26/17) centered on the grant of certiorari for Trump’s petitions to reverse the Fourth and Ninth Circuit’s injunctions against his second travel ban.  That and the Court’s partial stay of those injunctions pending a decision on the merits next term. Justice Gorsuch But the attention of SCOTUS watchers focused more intently on the work product of rookie Justice Neil Gorsuch, expansively revealed for the very first time in one tension filled hour, when the Court’s final day orders and decisions were announced.  It proved a very ugly picture, confirmed many gloomy predictions about Gorsuch and surpassed some dire ones in previous HL posts. In these “pages” it was predicted that Gorsuch opinions and votes [...]