Thrilled that Axios in a commitment to investigative journalism just mapped America's favorite vegetables. Let's hear it for smart brevity with bullet points.

I squandered my first vote in 1968 on a foolish protest against Hubert Humphrey. In hindsight, I now realize that 'I stacked flawed premises on top of each other in the hopes that the entire edifice didn’t topple from the weight of its own illogic.' newrepublic.com/article/181660…

'I melodramatically framed my refusal to vote for Humphrey as 'a simple moral act.'' But it wasn't simple or particularly moral, Walter Shapiro writes in this timely must-read about his first presidential vote for Eldridge Cleaver. (Spoiler: Nixon won.)
newrepublic.com/article/181660…

Just got my hotel assignment for the GOP convention in Milwaukee. The hotel is a water park in Lake Geneva, WI, about 60 miles away. Somehow I suspect that I will be watching the convention on TV.

Seems like a good day to remind everyone that there was no studio audience for the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates.

Quick reaction to MD Senate primary: Every time a profligate self-funder loses, an angel gets its wings.

OPINION: This year, unlike in prior decades, Republicans are inextricably wedded to Donald Trump and Democrats are stoutly tied to Joe Biden because the era of split-ticket voting is virtually over, columnist Walter Shapiro writes. ow.ly/wZ4450RGnm0

Illuminating from Walter Shapiro on why 'the era of split-ticket voting is virtually over.' Trump and the decline of TV are 2 major factors. For congressional candidates, 'every 4 years it gets harder to defy gravity' and escape in a personal lifeboat. rollcall.com/2024/05/14/wil…

Smart Jill Lawrence column on Trump the Purported Business Genius: 'A penny-pinching, media-obsessed micromanager dad with three children as his trusted lieutenants is running a family business, no matter how large it is.' thebulwark.com/p/trump-run-am…

I've read this Times edit on campus chaos twice. I still can't figure out what it says other than the author seems to spend every sentence worrying about offending an important Times reader constituency. nytimes.com/2024/05/11/opi…

Enough with silly 1968 parallels. I write in The New Republic, Humphrey lost because of Vietnam; LBJ preferred Nixon and constantly humiliated his VP; the Democratic campaign was broke; a police riot in Chicago; and McCarthy didn't endorse until late October. newrepublic.com/article/181430…

But, alas, it isn't a split screen since the NYC trial isn't televised.

'The list of factors that make 2024 sadly and frighteningly unique is lengthy.' Convincing Walter Shapiro argument for why Joe Biden's low approval ratings — and past patterns, signs, portents and precedents — may not matter this year. newrepublic.com/article/181285…

Take what's sure to be a frightening journey into the mind of Donald Trump on May 18, when Rick Wilson talks about getting inside the ex-president’s head with TNR’s Walter Shapiro, at The Stop Trump Summit in Philadelphia. trib.al/82B4tUq

On Willie Mays' 93rd birthday, I want to say that I recently apologized to a childhood friend for ever arguing that Mantle was better than Mays.

Someday somebody in politics is going to remember that the easiest answer to a question like this is: 'No. It was an embarrassing error in the manuscript. It is being corrected and I am so sorry.'

I realize I am not part of Columbia. I realize that campus situations are usually more nuanced that they appear in the news. That said, I am hard-pressed to think of any university president who has handled things worse than Minouche Shafik.

Every time I go to the NY Times website, I see the same video of a pro-Palestinian protester breaking a window at Columbia. I understand about news photography, but this constant loop makes Columbia look like it is the stage set for the French Revolution. nytimes.com

It's bad enough that the Biden and Trump campaigns have found my cell phone number and regularly text to beg for money. But I just got a fund-raising text from perennial NYC candidate Scott Stringer more than a year before the 2025 mayoral primary. I need to get a burner phone.

From Eeyores to masochists to cross-tabs fanatics, Walter Shapiro nails the Democrats' crowded psychological big tent when it comes to 'dealing with the specter of the Once and Future President Donald J. Trump.' He outs himself at the end, btw. newrepublic.com/article/180452…