Tag Archives: Ron Fournier

Trump Time Out To Restore Values, Institutions

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | JUN 2, 2018

We are a nation being consumed by our own anger, anxieties, disillusionment, and alienation from one another.

They are emotions widely exploited by a vast media empire that employs everyone from late night comedians to early morning news anchors. They are manifest in our tribal politics and social behavior. They are also, of course, manifest in the persona and politics of our President, who rubs them raw when he should be applying soothing salves.

It is Donald Trump, on whom we place much of the blame for this current condition, but the truth is he is not the cause; he is only the result. Continue reading →

Solutions Are in the Center, But It’s Invisible

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“The Vanishing Middle in American Politics” That headline made me reach for the reading glasses Sunday morning. Holy voter! Batman, when did the middle vanish?

The headline on a story by AP reporter Ron Fournier was misleading, of course. The great middle of American politics–centrists, independents, moderates, whatever you call them (it’s instructive that they don’t have a brand), has not vanished at all. Those voters, in the words of Democratic consultant Steve McMahon, make up “the invisible middle.” The middle is ignored, he said in the article, because the politicians are concentrating on the noisemakers.
Continue reading →