Author: Ron Schmidt
Dr. Ronald Schmidt is an Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of History and Political Science at the University of Southern Maine.
The first day a Congress meets is filled with so much ceremony – swearings-in, the introduction of family members and so on – that we often miss the important business that takes place in the opening hours of each session. The adoption of the basic rules that the new Congress will abide by is crucial,…
I love writing this column. I love figuring it out in my head, in the shower or on my commute; I love being forced to articulate my responses to political events that otherwise just leave me stewing in anger or sorrow. One of the many awful thoughts I had on election night was, “there is…
It has become a cliché in American politics to suggest that our elections system has been corrupted, or “bought,” or “rigged.” This year, even electoral victors, Governor Paul LePage and President-elect Donald Trump, asserted that the political system by which they were chosen was rife with fraud. (See here and here.) Well, they are right…
There has been a lot of debate about the dangers of normalizing the Trump victory. (See here, here, and here for examples.) On the one hand, as people rightfully point out, to treat a Trump presidency as though it were not the result of a campaign of hate, and that it doesn’t promise policy shaped…
On January 20th, 2017, the first African American president of the United States will hand over the White House to a man who was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. This has been commented upon many times since Election Day. But how did it happen? The New York Times, in its post-election analysis, emphasized the…
“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.” I’ve returned obsessively to this quote of James Baldwin’s in the waning days of this year’s presidential election. I cannot remember a general election in which hate has been so central an issue. Indeed, the…
Is there trouble in paradise? Governor LePage, who has been an enthusiastic fan of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, was not on hand to introduce Trump at his latest visit to Maine, and he recently advised Trump to “get over himself.” What could be prompting this sudden chill between Trump and the man who has…
Another hateful, self-pitying thug is trying to implicate Maine in his reign of terror, and we need to stop him. Eric Trump visited Maine’s Second Congressional District last week, and, as of this writing, his father is scheduled to make a second visit to Bangor in the days ahead. We know that these visitations are…
On September 13th, the Boston Globe published the results of a Globe/Colby College poll that showed that the presidential race in Maine had narrowed. A lot. Back at the beginning of August, one poll showed Hillary Clinton with a ten percent lead over Donald Trump in Maine, and as recently as September 5th, one poll…
The Maine Sunday Telegram just broke the news that the LePage Administration is near to closing a deal to privatize the ASPIRE program, and the story left me wondering, yet again, about the governor’s state of mind. No, I don’t mean that I think he’s drinking, or crazy; or at least, not that he isn’t…