Heather Cox Richardson. In her History and Politics Q&A of July 7, she spends quite a bit of time on the electoral college, and reasons that the system is broken. She comments on the letter about cancelling culture published in Harper’s magazine, which rather amazing triggers a cascade of trolling in her comments feed while she’s talking! She also discusses whether Trump will accept defeat, and reminds us that Biden is only the presumptive candidate, and that other Democrat candidates are still in the race in order to influence policy.
In the History of the Republican party broadcast Episode 5, she takes us from the 1870s to the end of the nineteenth century. The Republican party has cemented itself as the party of big business, it ‘steals’ two elections where the candidate has lost the popular vote but won the electoral college (each time this has happened, it has been a Republican who comes out on top), and it all sounds pretty corrupt. She attributes (rather questionably, I reckon) the 1890s depression to Republican panic-mongering when the Democrats win both the Presidency and Congress (surely this was a worldwide depression- can American politics have that much influence?) – using the trope that the Democrats (read here in Australia- ALP) can’t handle money. This was all pretty detailed stuff.
The Jungle Prince (New York Times)My son recommended this three-part podcast. What an intriguing story- a family squatting on a Lucknow railway station platform for ten years, claiming to be the Royal Family of Oudh; a crumbling 14th century palace in the jungles surrounding New Delhi; a Miss Haversham-like existence inside the palace and a house in Bradford England with a garden full of garden gnomes. Really worth listening to. I listened to The Jungle Prince via Stitcher.
Rear Vision (ABC) The U.S. election is drawing closer- coronavirus, Black Lives Matter, ‘law and order’ – it’s like watching a movie. The Religious Right- politics and God in the USA argues that Reagan and Trump both won their victories through a disguised racism (less so in Trump’s case) that dressed itself in concern about abortion.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 