In the media universe we're in, where there are people screaming on one end, there is no problem at all with having a little bit of extra politeness.

I think I'm careful. My goal is to try to stay away as much from opinion journalism as possible.

If it were the Clinton people, they'd be sitting around figuring out how to pull themselves out. Instead the president is continuing to go around the country and peddling Social Security, which the needle is not moving on.

Aspiring black leaders are often asked to transcend race, even though no one ever asked, say, Hillary Clinton to transcend gender. This is a precarious race straddle that most members of the breakthrough generation seem to reject. Even the most well meaning white Obama supporters seem to take deep satisfaction in this idea. Obama, they insisted, could be raceless, a reasurringly optimistic view of America's deepest burden that ignores countless peices of evidence to the contrary.

The questions about Donald Trump temperament were raised - he suggested that the only way to stop Hillary Clinton from appointing judges that they disagreed with is that maybe the Second Amendment folks could handle it.

I'm not quite certain how you can force a candidate to stick by the rules.

I'm not really good at being predictive, so I guess I'm willing to be surprised.