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Bookman: Atlanta’s northern suburbs speeding state’s blue streak trajectory
“There aren’t a lot of pundits who would have guessed four years ago that a Democratic candidate for president in 2020 would be campaigning in Georgia in the final week of the election,” a giddy Joe Biden said in Atlanta this week. “Or that we’d have such competitive Senate races in Georgia. But we do!” […]
Bookman: Of Georgia’s voter surge, Trump’s COVID and health care
Scenes from America, in a nice fall week in October of 2020… More than 125,000 Georgians stood in long, socially distant lines – some for five hours, six hours, eight hours, even 11 hours – to cast their ballots on the first day of early voting this week. Another 111,000 voted Tuesday, and half a […]
Bookman: Loeffler embraces Attila, QAnon as new Republican icons
In a new series of campaign ads hitting the airwaves, U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler appeals to Georgia conservatives by depicting herself as “more to the right than Attila the Hun,” who appears in the ads as a grunting, vicious barbarian. I’m admittedly an outsider to conservative circles, but that seems a curious choice: What is […]
Bookman: No need to adjust your set if you don’t recognize TV Perdue
There’s a man on my TV set these days claiming to be U.S. Sen. David Perdue, but I sure don’t recognize him. He’s nothing like the David Perdue that Georgians have come to know over the last six years. On TV, we see a people-oriented, compassionate Perdue, trying to pass programs to help Georgians; in […]
Bookman: Trump’s bad cop act fans flames of confrontation, vigilantism
Cops will tell you that domestic disputes can be the toughest calls they have to answer. Some do it well; others do not. A good cop knows that the first goal is to separate and calm the warring parties, to de-escalate the conflict before it blows up into something that becomes dangerous to everybody, including […]
Bookman: Virus toll ranks high in SEC country as teams huddle up
As you probably expected, the Southeastern Conference dominates the preseason national rankings. As of Tuesday, Florida could claim the title of No. 1 in the country, reporting the highest weekly per-capita death rate from coronavirus nationwide. Go Gators! Texas, home of the Texas A&M Aggies, had the second-highest per capita death rate, followed by Mississippi […]
Bookman: School teachers, parents inherit the wind of virus apathy
“My view is the schools should open,” President Trump said on Fox News Wednesday. “This thing is going away, it will go away like things go away.” Trump has been wishing the coronavirus would go away from the moment it appeared. As far back as early February, almost 160,000 dead Americans ago, he was reassuring […]
Bookman: ‘If you don’t stop the pandemic, the economy will fail’
On Tuesday, the state of Georgia reported an additional 3,413 cases of the novel coronavirus. Is that a lot? It sounds like a lot, but we’re six months deep into this pandemic, and it’s easy to become numb to all the numbers being tossed around. So maybe it would help if we put it into […]
Bookman: History might prove harsh judge of Kemp’s pandemic response
We are reaping what we have sown. Just six weeks ago, President Trump was pushing Republican governors in states such as Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Texas to reopen their economies faster than disease experts recommended, then applauding when they did so. Trump saw a recovering economy as essential to his re-election, and he didn’t seem […]
Bookman: We could be witnessing the deciding battle of the culture wars
We are living through history, through a tumultuous time in which change accelerates, the once-solid becomes fluid and no one has any real idea of where this thing is headed. Living in chaos, trying to make daily sense of it, has been frightening, exhilarating and confusing. Someday our grandchildren, reading about this era in their […]
Bookman: State needs to step up and fix voting system it bragged about
We should be proud of Georgia, or at least of its people. Their commitment to democracy, to being heard, to being counted, was impressive. They would not be denied. Many stood in line for hours, stubborn and simmering in anger, insistent on casting their votes. They stood through rain, through sun, wearing masks against a […]
Bookman: Let’s be honest about who really fans the flame of racism
As protests turned into riots here in Atlanta and elsewhere Friday night, as leaders such as Killer Mike, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Police Chief Erika Shields stepped forward in a time of crisis, Americans were once again searching for answers to the age-old question of race and racial division. On Fox News, the search […]