Author: Eric Sondermann
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Julie Gonzales’s long but not impossible odds | SONDERMANN
Allow me to start with a flashback. It was Thanksgiving 2024, just over 12 months back. For the first time, our son Clarke hosted the family Thanksgiving near New York City. It is a sign of our aging when the kids start to step into the role of host and convenor. The occasion was lovely.…
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Dear Abby: A better answer to your question | SONDERMANN
It was the beginning of October. I had been invited to speak to a class on political journalism at Colorado College, my old alma mater. The class was taught by none other than Vince Bzdek, the editor-in-chief of this paper and its sister publications. This was a relatively small seminar of perhaps a dozen undergraduate…
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COLUMN: Significance of Democratic triumph still unknown
Excuse the truism, but winning sure beats losing. Rarely has a political party needed a victory as badly as Democrats did in the off-year elections two weeks ago. Theirs was a party in despair, struggling to come to terms with how they were so thoroughly routed by Donald Trump and his partisans last November and…
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Please spare us your obvious pronouns | SONDERMANN
Oct. 15 is almost upon us. Can you feel the excitement? No, that is not Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day, as some states call it, or Cabrini Day, as it is known in Colorado. That all takes place earlier in the week on Monday. Federal workers will have the day off – oh, never…
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Some hard truths for Democrats amidst the despair | SONDERMANN
Across the country, Democrats remain deep in despair, accompanied by more than a bit of lingering disbelief that they lost to Donald Trump a second time. This is all compounded by the powerlessness of seeing the Senate and House also run by Republicans, mostly Trump apparatchiks, to go along with a Supreme Court dominated by…
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How does this fever break? | SONDERMANN
We have seen this play too many times and with increasing frequency. A news alert pops up or a text appears from a friend with a report of some new, shocking, horrific act of political violence. We then dial up our favorite news sources or jump on social media in search of what happened and…
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Scenes from a society off its moorings | SONDERMANN
It all took place in the immediate aftermath of Thanksgiving, our national day of gratitude. First up was Black Friday, an orgy of shopping punctuated by the random mall brawl, as consumers elbow each other aside, or worse, in search of the best discount on the latest must-have gadget. For a bit of good news,…
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DOGE and America’s finances are no laughing matter | SONDERMANN
Of course, there is much to parody in the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) to be led by those dynamic hobnobbers, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Let’s start with the very notion that it requires two people, both with oversized egos, to lead a downsizing effort. Then there is the creation of a new “department”…
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A clarifying election and a new normal | Sondermann
For five years, I have written in these pages under the heading of “Down the middle.” Before getting to the meat of today’s column, let me briefly discuss what I take that to mean. “Down the middle” does not mean I take a centrist approach to every question. Nor does it mean that my views…
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SONDERMANN | Litter here, litter there, litter everywhere
Lady Bird Johnson, we miss you. And we need you as much as was the case more than a half century ago. For those of more recent vintage (an ever-expanding share of the population), Lady Bird Johnson was America’s First Lady as her husband President Lyndon Johnson presided over the country during much of the tumultuous…