Political Notes by Jon Fuhrman Monday, October 5. Economists put huge effort into trying to predict economic trends. As part of those efforts, they have identified “leading indicators” and “lagging indicators”: leading indicators anticipate changes, while lagging indicators confirm changes after the fact. Political pundits also fall into these two categories. Most are “lagging indicators”; they wait for repeated polling, obvious catastrophic missteps, hesitant to diverge from the group...

Political Notes by Jon Fuhrman Wednesday, September 9. As Republicans gather today and tomorrow in Dallas for their mid-term convention (aka All Praise Donald Trump), Democrats are not so quietly awaiting the November elections and our anticipated takeover of both the House and the Senate. But what will that mean practically? We’ll have Democratic Chairs of all the Congressional committees, oversight and investigative hearings, legislation passed, all of which sounds great. But, in truth, we...

Political Notes by Jon Fuhrman Sunday, June 7. ACT’s membership endorsed Xavier Becerra for Governor, and undoubtedly that was the key element propelling him into first place in the gubernatorial primary. Well, perhaps not the key element, but I suspect it was illustrative of the decision-making among Democrats writ large. Whether they knew him from his decades of public service, or saw him as steady and dependable, if not flashy or exuberant, or they figured that, after 35 years in public...