So we have a new Congress, dominated by a combination of stupid, ignorant, and insane not seen in the history of the Republic.
When I've said how bad it is, I'll tell you where I believe there may be some hope.
We face enormous problems - economic, environmental, health-related, terrorism-related - for which we aren't at all prepared. And now we've selected as our representatives the office-seekers least able to deal with those problems.
Congress matters most, but unbelievably bad governors - Paul LePage in Maine, Sam Brownback whose policies wrecked the economy of Kansas, and the exceedingly divisive Scott Walker of Wisconsin may be the very worst of them - were given new mandates to wreak havoc.
As long as we have a two-party system with one of the parties controlled by corporate interests and self-interested billionaires who want it to be irrational and short-sighted, that party will win when people are sore at the other party. If Jon Huntsman wants to do something for this country - and to have a chance at the presidency - he can begin a new party that will draw out of the GOP all those who aren't raving loonies. That would be an enormous patriotic service.
I've never understood Barack Obama. I don't understand why someone who was inspiring of confidence on the stump should become self-defeatingly uncommunicative and opaque once in office. This election was successfully nationalized by the Republicult into a referendum on him.
My favorite candidate this year was Shenna Bellows, running for the Senate from Maine. If not brilliant, she was articulate, likable, and on the mark. She got swamped by the incumbent Susan Collins, who's supposedly moderate but useless. What does it take?
Looking around the country, I don't see, aside from Bellows, a single Democratic candidate who strikes me as compelling. There's Cory Booker, but, while personable, he's a Wall Street Dem of the Hillary type who hasn't had much to offer on the issues, more a celebrity than a leader. Mark Udall of Colorado put up a fight but only came across as untruthful and desperate. Mostly you had wimps who tried to be inoffensive and to quibble.
Here's where things look a little better. It has been pointed out that in two years 30% of the electorate will be minorities. Given that, a Republican victory is against the odds. And given that most Americans don't agree with the Republicans and have said so in poll after poll, rallying them should be possible once Mr. Obama is no longer the issue.
The Republicans could nominate Jeb Bush, who may seem competitive; but I don't think they're prepared to go with someone who comes across at least subliminally as rational. Romney is their other conceivably electable possibility, I'd say, but he has great problems - such as his business record, his offshore money, and his two-faced persona - and would again make a great target. Rand Paul intrigues some, but he seems a small-timer; for sure the neocons will bend every effort to take him down lest he stand in the way of their next war.
Who have the Dems got? Let's look again.
~Hillary and her charming hubby proved useless as Dem surrogates this year. There's no indication that she can transfer support - if she even has it - to other candidates. I continue to think that after a few attack ads she's gone - and good riddance.
~Joe Biden has this administration around his neck like a millstone.
~Bernie Sanders talks perfect sense. Whether he can get somewhere, I don't know. He may be trusted because he's a straight-shooter and an independent. But the word "socialist" scares people, and I don't know if he has the personality to get us with him and keep us there. I'm not writing him off, but I'm not too hopeful. In historical terms he resembles the great truth tellers and progressive champions who never made it to the White House, such as "Fighting Bob" LaFolette and George W. Norris. They were perhaps too right - as opposed to too far right - to be president.
~Governor Martin O'Malley of very Democratic Maryland just got smacked in the mouth. The speculation will be that he lost his teeth, but I don't think he did. His chosen candidate to succeed himself - his attractive, youngish black lieutenant governor, Anthony Brown - got swamped by a run-of-the-mill Republican. But since Dems lost everywhere because of public upset at the Obama administration, O'Malley (who has already been trading pot-shots with the White House) has the option of saying that what happened in his state was a referendum on the president's record and not on his own. O'Malley could be the likeliest kind of person to emerge as the Dem nominee, as he's nice-looking, smooth, accomplished, and an obvious compromise choice. I'm not impressed with him, but I'd by no means say he's out of it.
~Jim Webb may or may not go for it. If he does, he could be a bland, aging dud. Or he could be the type of fighting Scots-Irishman that he has celebrated in his writings. I don't know what to anticipate from him. I'd say that if he were to run to the left of Hillary on income redistribution and the environment, he could run to the right of her on everything else and possibly be in a position to form a national consensus.
When we've been confronted with enormous national tasks, we've also been blessed with leaders of such magnitude that with their guidance and assurance we were able to meet them:
~George Washington, with his stature and his practical sound sense, saved the new republic from dissolving because of the Jeffersonian hysteria over our having a strong central government. He made everything that followed possible.
~Abraham Lincoln proved himself up to the challenge of disunion.
~World War I, while I think it could and should have been avoided, required superior leadership of us once we were in it, and Woodrow Wilson gave that. Prior to the war, his progressive reforms were in sum a big achievement. He failed to convince Europe to put aside vengefulness and greed for the sake of a viable future, though perhaps no one could have done that. Today he's thought of mostly as rigid and thwarted, but he was one of our larger presidents and he navigated a tough period.
~Franklin Roosevelt may have been the greatest democratic leader in all of history to date. His achievements are so staggering that people today won't even look at them because we've taken it into our heads that government is a curse.
What's coming at us now may be harder to lick than any of those problems was. And we can't always know in advance what we're getting in a national leader. The usually discerning columnist Walter Lippmann met Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York and thought him a pleasant fellow who always agreed with the last person he had talked with. Who might we be underestimating now?
Perhaps no one. Or perhaps one of those I've named. Or perhaps someone we haven't even spotted yet on our horizon.
Don't give up. The chances are good that a society with so much to offer will yet offer it if only when worse comes to worst.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Saturday, September 20, 2014
'16 PROSPECTS
The '16 scene goes on taking shape as time passes.
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney continues to campaign for the nomination while denying that that's what he's doing. His chances of landing it are, I'd say, fair to good. He's expert at straddling the reactionary nastiness that appeals to the base and the apparent moderation that makes for mass appeal. About all I can say for him is that he might have sense enough to realize that wealth inequality is killing the economy and that climate change is a bigger threat than Hitler was. In office, as a sure one-term president, he might be independent enough of his party to address these things. But I wouldn't want to bet money either way.
Chris Christie doesn't come across as extremist enough for the tea partiers, and he has the George Washington Bridge tied to his shoes. He's likelier to sink than to swim.
Rand Paul is exposing himself as a featherweight. His unacknowledged plagiarism scandal and his unacknowledged changes of position will make him vulnerable in a campaign. I don't believe he has the resources of personality or even of intellect to surmount them.
Dr. Ben Carson was all for his fellow blacks till he got rich and decided that being rich was a lot better than being black. He has the political amateur's tendency to say what he thinks, and what he thinks is crackpot and heedless of what most people think. This is undoubtedly understood by the party regulars and Chamber of Commerce types who have been taking on tea party candidates in primaries; they don't object to reaction, only to the flagrant quirks that lose winnable elections. Carson has those.
Ted Cruz would have trouble gaining traction because he doesn't make any sense and because his fellow Repubs in the Senate hate him because he embarrasses them to advance himself. And the fact that he was born in Canada wouldn't help him a bit.
There are more Republicans eyeing it, but right now it's looking like Romney again.
On the Dem side, of course there's Hillary. But a party that has to appeal to the young isn't likely to go for someone whose persona and attitudes are pure yesterday. She wouldn't be convincing as a foe of income inequality - not when she gets $200,000 for a speech as well as the most extravagantly luxurious travel and lodging accomodations. She's believably for upper middle class women like her earlier self as regards abortion, equal pay, healthcare, etc. But the poor aren't convincingly on her radar, while Wall Street is. Today, when no other Dem aspirant is very visible, she's the prohibitive favorite. But after a few attack ads, I think she'd go down like a balloon with a leak in it.
I sometimes wonder if it's possible that Bill and she know that she wouldn't be viable and are up to something that nobody has figured out? What we're seeing is a big, broad, very well financed and publicized movement to draft her for the nomination. So the campaign infrastructure already exists. Suppose she were to say at some point, "Darn, folks! I can't run. I have an infected hangnail," and then Bill and she were to exert themselves mightily to shift that movement behind a dark horse candidate whose election would make them kingmakers and prime movers in the new administration, able to deliver wealth and influence to their many friends? Who would that candidate be? I don't know, but if the person were also highly regarded by Mr. Obama, that would be an asset. Senator Mike Bennet of Colorado could be it. He's youngish, attractive, moderate, clean, relatively new to politics. Has he charisma enough? Is he a talented enough campaigner? Does he have the fire in his belly? Hard to guess as of now.
Martin O'Malley increasingly looks to me like another Jimmy Carter: smart, decent, maybe electable, but not up to accomplishing things in the current climate and staying popular.
Bernie Sanders is now declaring that he may run as a Democrat. We for sure don't need another Ralph Nader draining away liberal votes. He's a steadfast 100% progressive who says exactly the truest and most relevant things and says them in the most pointed and quotable way. And that might be his undoing. I suspect that what the people want is someone who embodies some ambiguity, so they can fill in the gaps to suit themselves. Like a porn actress, Sanders leaves nothing to the imagination. A more nuanced and elusive personality might fare better. If he can get the popular backing to win and keep it throughout his presidency, he'll be outstanding. But I have my doubts.
Jim Webb, war hero, former moderate Republican, and former senator from Virginia, might, as things presently look, be the contender who could most readily be nominated and elected. He has begun to run, not just talk about it. Whether his speaking ability and his personality can win him enough interest remains unknown, but he has time to improve his campaign techniques. It's important, I think, that the wealth gap was an issue for him before others cared to talk about it. He can probably run as a liberal and yet get moderates and some conservatives with him. As both a warrior and a critic of elective wars, he personifies the ambiguity and you-fill-in-the-blanks quality that Bernie Sanders lacks.
As for other candidates, all I can say is, stay tuned. You never know!
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
JIM WEBB???
So far I've received four mailings from an outfit called "Ready For Hillary!" (As far as I'm concerned it might as well have been called "Ready For Herpes!") It also advertises on political websites I frequent. There's for sure a load of money behind it, and I'm wondering whose?
I also wonder what these people will do if Hillary bags it. Who's their fallback candidate? There has to be one. I'd bet this is about the ambitions of a self-interested clique and not about those of one person.
Just remind yourself that nobody will challenge Hillary. Except may Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, and a few others.
Sanders is acting like a candidate, by the way. He spoke in New Hampshire and got a good reception. His Facebook page is said to be more interacted with than that of any other member of Congress. What he says is clear and brief and pungent and hard to argue with.
There's one big question regarding him, I believe. It's: Can he get the youth vote? If he does, it'll be because he isn't just an oldster but an elder: someone who has fought for something and can offer conviction and wisdom. If the younger voters dig him, that might be his ticket to the nomination. But I don't know what to expect. They could see him as a bold truth-teller or as a socialist dinosaur.
Well, today we have a news story of '16 interest. Former Virginia senator James Webb, who's 68, said in an interview that he's considering running.
He didn't say whether he'd do it as a Democrat or as an independent, but he's both.
Webb is a moderate who has supported both parties and has taken some liberal stands without seeming like a liberal. He's one of the few Dems around who would be at home and popular in a VFW hall.
As an independent candidate, he'd have to get between the two main contenders and be more appealing to most voters than either of them. Could he? I don't know. But bear in mind that there have been five centrist independents elected governors of states in recent years: two from Maine and one each from Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Minnesota. So it doesn't look inherently impossible.
James Henry Webb is from Missouri originally. He went to Annapolis and is a much-decorated Marine
veteran of Vietnam. My first memory of him is as a young, curly-haired secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. I watched him on TV and thought he could have a political future. He quit that post because he wanted to expand the Navy while Reagan wanted to shrink it. And he wasn't a good match for the GOP.
He has made his living as a writer, and one of his books, about the Scotch-Irish to whom this country owes so much, is titled Born Fighting. That describes him, too. His instincts may be middle-of-the-road but he isn't afraid of contention.
In '06 he entered the race for the U.S. Senate from Virginia as a Dem and won. As a senator he had an impact if he concentrated on something, and he proved to be an adept in-fighter, impressing onlookers. He's obviously smart and energetic. But he's unpredictable and he seems to be allergic to bullshit. Hankering for private life, he declined to run again.
During his Senate race he wore his son Jimmy's combat boots every day of the campaign. Jimmy was serving in Iraq, where Webb thought we shouldn't be.
He defends our mission in Vietnam, and he once wrote an article arguing that "women can't fight"; but even on those topics his thinking was probably driven by data rather than by anything ideological. And, as mentioned, he was strongly against our invasion of Iraq, which he sees as a disaster. He's inner-directed and very inclined to realism.
If he ran, he said, one big reason would be because he thinks we have no over-all national security policy, which worries him. National security hasn't been a sexy issue, but he'd have others as well. At least as early as the start of his Senate term he was concerned about our concentration of wealth, which wasn't much talked about then. For that he prescribes some leadership, a commodity hard to find in today's Washington.
I have mixed feelings about a Webb candidacy. But I feel some liking and admiration for him. And, while he isn't particularly charismatic, I think most Americans would.
The Democrats have run military guys. But Carter seemed more like a technocrat and Kerry more like an aristocrat. Webb seems military.
And I'll tell you something else. If he chose to run as a Democrat and I were a Republican strategist looking to '16, I'd take notice. If I saw Hillary struggling up to the starting line with her five tons of baggage, I'd be chortling and giving my buddies high-fives. But if I saw Jim Web coming, I'd be crapping my drawers.
Nobody is going to make him out to be a wimp or a novice or a cynical pol in hock to unpopular minorities. If he gets in it, it's a new race as of then.
I also wonder what these people will do if Hillary bags it. Who's their fallback candidate? There has to be one. I'd bet this is about the ambitions of a self-interested clique and not about those of one person.
Just remind yourself that nobody will challenge Hillary. Except may Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, and a few others.
Sanders is acting like a candidate, by the way. He spoke in New Hampshire and got a good reception. His Facebook page is said to be more interacted with than that of any other member of Congress. What he says is clear and brief and pungent and hard to argue with.
There's one big question regarding him, I believe. It's: Can he get the youth vote? If he does, it'll be because he isn't just an oldster but an elder: someone who has fought for something and can offer conviction and wisdom. If the younger voters dig him, that might be his ticket to the nomination. But I don't know what to expect. They could see him as a bold truth-teller or as a socialist dinosaur.
Well, today we have a news story of '16 interest. Former Virginia senator James Webb, who's 68, said in an interview that he's considering running.
He didn't say whether he'd do it as a Democrat or as an independent, but he's both.
Webb is a moderate who has supported both parties and has taken some liberal stands without seeming like a liberal. He's one of the few Dems around who would be at home and popular in a VFW hall.
As an independent candidate, he'd have to get between the two main contenders and be more appealing to most voters than either of them. Could he? I don't know. But bear in mind that there have been five centrist independents elected governors of states in recent years: two from Maine and one each from Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Minnesota. So it doesn't look inherently impossible.
James Henry Webb is from Missouri originally. He went to Annapolis and is a much-decorated Marine
veteran of Vietnam. My first memory of him is as a young, curly-haired secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. I watched him on TV and thought he could have a political future. He quit that post because he wanted to expand the Navy while Reagan wanted to shrink it. And he wasn't a good match for the GOP.
He has made his living as a writer, and one of his books, about the Scotch-Irish to whom this country owes so much, is titled Born Fighting. That describes him, too. His instincts may be middle-of-the-road but he isn't afraid of contention.
In '06 he entered the race for the U.S. Senate from Virginia as a Dem and won. As a senator he had an impact if he concentrated on something, and he proved to be an adept in-fighter, impressing onlookers. He's obviously smart and energetic. But he's unpredictable and he seems to be allergic to bullshit. Hankering for private life, he declined to run again.
During his Senate race he wore his son Jimmy's combat boots every day of the campaign. Jimmy was serving in Iraq, where Webb thought we shouldn't be.
He defends our mission in Vietnam, and he once wrote an article arguing that "women can't fight"; but even on those topics his thinking was probably driven by data rather than by anything ideological. And, as mentioned, he was strongly against our invasion of Iraq, which he sees as a disaster. He's inner-directed and very inclined to realism.
If he ran, he said, one big reason would be because he thinks we have no over-all national security policy, which worries him. National security hasn't been a sexy issue, but he'd have others as well. At least as early as the start of his Senate term he was concerned about our concentration of wealth, which wasn't much talked about then. For that he prescribes some leadership, a commodity hard to find in today's Washington.
I have mixed feelings about a Webb candidacy. But I feel some liking and admiration for him. And, while he isn't particularly charismatic, I think most Americans would.
The Democrats have run military guys. But Carter seemed more like a technocrat and Kerry more like an aristocrat. Webb seems military.
And I'll tell you something else. If he chose to run as a Democrat and I were a Republican strategist looking to '16, I'd take notice. If I saw Hillary struggling up to the starting line with her five tons of baggage, I'd be chortling and giving my buddies high-fives. But if I saw Jim Web coming, I'd be crapping my drawers.
Nobody is going to make him out to be a wimp or a novice or a cynical pol in hock to unpopular minorities. If he gets in it, it's a new race as of then.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
MEANWHILE, IN CANADA...
Things have been rough lately for Hillary Rodham Clinton, as you may have noticed.
There was Monica Lewinsky's bitter but accurate complaint that Hillary's reaction to her husband's adultery was to "blame the woman". Then there was an article in Politico Magazine for May/June, 2014 in which journalists Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman knowledgeably claimed that Hillary hates the press and fears the attacks that will come if she runs for president. Then Thrush followed up on that for Politico with a description of Hillary's '08 campaign, which he covered for Newsday. According to him, the campaign's culture was one of finger-pointing anger and deep suspicion directed against reporters and outsiders, while Hillary creatively relieved this self-induced stress with activities like throwing an aide's cell phone down a flight of stairs.
Ah, but then came a bright moment! Veteran political operative Robert Shrum wrote a column in which he declared that Hillary will be "unchallenged" for the Democratic nomination and will be our next president.
But no sooner was Shrum's prognostication offered up than a speech by Joe Biden was reported in which he stated that the American middle class's woes began not under George W. Bush but earlier under Bill Clinton. It couldn't be more obvious that Hillary is being challenged. And Biden is good at projecting that I'm-really-a-populist-at-heart thing, while what Hillary projects is more like I'm-well-connected-and-you-better-watch-your-back-if-you-get-in-my-way.
A Hillary nomination, were it possible, would make the '16 campaign be about Boko Haram, Benghazi, Hillarycare, Whitewater, women who bake cookies, Vince Foster, and of course the charming Monica.
All that's necessary to avoid this is to choose a new face as a candidate.
And lo! the Anti-Hillary has appeared. Unfortunately, he has appeared not in the United States but in Canada.
The Liberals - Canada's equivalent of the Democrats - were hurting not long ago. In the last national election they came in third - something unprecedented - behind the governing Conservatives and the lefty New Democrats. And third place is where the Liberals remained in the polls, till they did something smart.
They chose as their new leader Justin Trudeau, the 41-year-old teacher son of their greatest prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. And immediately they shot to first place in the polls, and they've stayed there. That was over a year ago.
Trudeau has a young family and was at first unwilling to head the party. But he finally agreed to. And he's one of the most attractive people I've seen in politics anywhere. He isn't intellectual and witty and arrogant like his father but rather warm, good-natured, and unflappable. You get the feeling that he isn't mean but can be as tough as he has to be. The last time Canada saw charisma like his was in his old man. The last time we saw it here was when JFK walked among us.
To watch a brief, cynical, and funny but revealing treatment of Trudeau's impact, go to YouTube and type in "Justin Trudeau Song". You can see for yourself how he comes across.
Trudeau immediately put through party reforms, involving the Liberal electorate in formulating the platform and allowing it rather than insiders to choose the candidates; he let non-Liberals register as "friends" of the party and also participate in this. It has gone over well and produced some enthusiasm.
The Conservatives had succeeded in preemptively taking down Trudeau's two predecessors as Liberal leader, using attack ads. They tried to do the same to him. They did things like show pictures of him being a good sport and performing a partial striptease for charity, then declared that he's in over his head. And the ads backfired horribly! Polls show that seeing them has made voters more likely to vote Liberal.
Underestimating Trudeau isn't safe. Another thing he did for charity was to have a boxing match with a young Conservative senator named Patrick Brazeau. Brazeau is big and a real bruiser. Trudeau is muscular but lean and doesn't have Brazeau's body mass. Brazeau boasted about what he was going to do to the pretty-boy. Trudeau's wife was worried, but he took her to the gym and had her watch while he sparred with men of Brazeau's type, which he had been doing for years. And when the two politicians fought, Trudeau surprised many by winning.
Like Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau is seen to possess inevitability. But his doesn't come from political schemers and journalists. It's just there.
I find it hard to believe that in a country of 300 million people we can't find a leader with qualities comparable to his. We seem for some reason to be sunk in defeatism. All I can say is, we'd best get out of it and start expecting more of ourselves.
There was Monica Lewinsky's bitter but accurate complaint that Hillary's reaction to her husband's adultery was to "blame the woman". Then there was an article in Politico Magazine for May/June, 2014 in which journalists Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman knowledgeably claimed that Hillary hates the press and fears the attacks that will come if she runs for president. Then Thrush followed up on that for Politico with a description of Hillary's '08 campaign, which he covered for Newsday. According to him, the campaign's culture was one of finger-pointing anger and deep suspicion directed against reporters and outsiders, while Hillary creatively relieved this self-induced stress with activities like throwing an aide's cell phone down a flight of stairs.
Ah, but then came a bright moment! Veteran political operative Robert Shrum wrote a column in which he declared that Hillary will be "unchallenged" for the Democratic nomination and will be our next president.
But no sooner was Shrum's prognostication offered up than a speech by Joe Biden was reported in which he stated that the American middle class's woes began not under George W. Bush but earlier under Bill Clinton. It couldn't be more obvious that Hillary is being challenged. And Biden is good at projecting that I'm-really-a-populist-at-heart thing, while what Hillary projects is more like I'm-well-connected-and-you-better-watch-your-back-if-you-get-in-my-way.
A Hillary nomination, were it possible, would make the '16 campaign be about Boko Haram, Benghazi, Hillarycare, Whitewater, women who bake cookies, Vince Foster, and of course the charming Monica.
All that's necessary to avoid this is to choose a new face as a candidate.
And lo! the Anti-Hillary has appeared. Unfortunately, he has appeared not in the United States but in Canada.
The Liberals - Canada's equivalent of the Democrats - were hurting not long ago. In the last national election they came in third - something unprecedented - behind the governing Conservatives and the lefty New Democrats. And third place is where the Liberals remained in the polls, till they did something smart.
They chose as their new leader Justin Trudeau, the 41-year-old teacher son of their greatest prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. And immediately they shot to first place in the polls, and they've stayed there. That was over a year ago.
Trudeau has a young family and was at first unwilling to head the party. But he finally agreed to. And he's one of the most attractive people I've seen in politics anywhere. He isn't intellectual and witty and arrogant like his father but rather warm, good-natured, and unflappable. You get the feeling that he isn't mean but can be as tough as he has to be. The last time Canada saw charisma like his was in his old man. The last time we saw it here was when JFK walked among us.
To watch a brief, cynical, and funny but revealing treatment of Trudeau's impact, go to YouTube and type in "Justin Trudeau Song". You can see for yourself how he comes across.
Trudeau immediately put through party reforms, involving the Liberal electorate in formulating the platform and allowing it rather than insiders to choose the candidates; he let non-Liberals register as "friends" of the party and also participate in this. It has gone over well and produced some enthusiasm.
The Conservatives had succeeded in preemptively taking down Trudeau's two predecessors as Liberal leader, using attack ads. They tried to do the same to him. They did things like show pictures of him being a good sport and performing a partial striptease for charity, then declared that he's in over his head. And the ads backfired horribly! Polls show that seeing them has made voters more likely to vote Liberal.
Underestimating Trudeau isn't safe. Another thing he did for charity was to have a boxing match with a young Conservative senator named Patrick Brazeau. Brazeau is big and a real bruiser. Trudeau is muscular but lean and doesn't have Brazeau's body mass. Brazeau boasted about what he was going to do to the pretty-boy. Trudeau's wife was worried, but he took her to the gym and had her watch while he sparred with men of Brazeau's type, which he had been doing for years. And when the two politicians fought, Trudeau surprised many by winning.
Like Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau is seen to possess inevitability. But his doesn't come from political schemers and journalists. It's just there.
I find it hard to believe that in a country of 300 million people we can't find a leader with qualities comparable to his. We seem for some reason to be sunk in defeatism. All I can say is, we'd best get out of it and start expecting more of ourselves.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
THE GUZZARDI PARTY
Pennsylvania's first-term Republican Tom Corbett has consistently been rated the nation's most vulnerable incumbent governor. According to the polls, the people don't like or trust him; and certainly women, environmentalists, and the poor have no reason to. So for quite a while he has been derided as "One-Term Tom".
Like his fellow reactionary governors John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Scott of Florida, Corbett has made a shift to the center in hopes of becoming viable - a shift not on all issues but on one. Corbett's issue is transportation, which has broad appeal. This gov, who could get little through his very Republican legislature, did finally manage lately to get through a big transportation bill that was sorely overdue.
But in doing that he either did or didn't break his promise and raise taxes, depending on how you interpret this and that. The tea partiers say he did, and they're livid. In trying to make himself acceptable to most Pennsylvanians, he has alienated his right flank.
Tom has a tea party primary opponent, a businessman named Bob Guzzardi who looks like a chipmunk with gray hair and rimless glasses. While Guzzardi insists that he can win the nomination - he has to say that in order to motivate his voters - he clearly can't. And I think he knows he can't. While tea party challengers in other races probably start out believing they can overcome the incumbent, my surmise is that Guzzardi always knew better. And this is where it gets interesting.
I'll say more about him and why he's a significant figure further down the page. Meanwhile, let's take a snapshot of the Republicans' over-all situation.
Around the country tea partiers are going up against what they take to be Republican-In-Name-Only candidates. But also in some cases especially crazy tea party incumbents are being taken on by Republican regulars who are also reactionary while appearing more plausible. It's looking like a civil war, one so far limited but potentially all-out.
While business interests funded the tea partiers and deployed them as a weapon, the corporations and the big money people are increasingly viewing them as a pain - as too amateurish, too populist, too unpredictable, too apt to say idiotic things that get Democrats elected, too suspicious of the interface between big gov and big biz that the rich and the corporate leaders want at all hazards to keep intact.
In this new climate, Mitt Romney, plainly once again a presidential contender, has just made what I suspect to be a fatal mistake by criticizing the tea partiers. This after he sickeningly pandered to them throughout his '12 campaign. Apparently he sees that his rich friends and fellow biz execs and some of the regulars are putting down the tea partiers and has concluded that it's now safe to do that and be free of them. UH-uh.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, till now a tea party favorite, the other day suggested that abortion shouldn't be outlawed at this point because public opinion is too divided on it. That sounds suicidally sane. What ails Paul? Maybe the praise he has gotten from liberals on the government privacy issue and his winning several straw polls among conservatives have convinced him that he's invulnerable and can now be candid and sensible. UH-uh.
(Why is Paul popular, by the way? I'm not sure. It may be because he's a new face, because he seems younger than he is, and because he comes across as idealistic rather than negative and cynical. Or there may be an actual market among right-wingers for his Libertarian Lite positions, including his neo-isolationist foreign policy views. The latter will be sure to bring relentless attacks from the Repubs' dominant neoconservatives. A big deal for them is the alleged weakness of the U.S. under Mr. Obama; under Paul it would be even "weaker". Paul appears to me to be a flake with neo-Confederate sympathies. We'll see what he's made of, because he's going to be under terrific fire. And with his abortion statement, he may have just made himself look unreliable to his tea party base, not at all an advisable thing to do when he didn't have to.)
And then there's John Ellis "Jeb" Bush. The tea partiers don't like Bushes, as the latter are the insiders' insiders and the tea partiers the outsiders' outsiders. Jeb speaks fluent Spanish, is married to a Latina, is a Catholic, and should be in a good position to convince Hispanic voters that a Republican party headed by himself isn't their enemy. He's for "amnesty", but of course he doesn't phrase it like that. He has now said that those who risk everything to cross our border from Mexico should be viewed not as criminals but as acting from love of their impoverished families. The tea partiers thought he was a lefty anyway; this was just rubbing it in.
Romney, Paul, and Bush seem to me to be, as of now, the most favored GOP choices for '16. All of them may have a tea party problem.
Well, back to Bob Guzzardi. How is he unlike other tea party challengers? I've suggested that he doesn't believe he can win. I doubt he even wants to. And there's something else that's distinctive about him. Bob the Guz has a history of donating money to Democrats who are running against Republicans whom he considers to be RINOs. From what I'm seeing, he's after vengeance: a pseudo-candidate who would rather elect a Dem than a Repub who has disappointed the tea partiers. In other words, he wants to make certain that Corbett gets beaten, not in May but in November.
The tea partiers now taking on John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and other regulars are going to lose.
And there's a good chance that they'll also fail to get someone agreeable to themselves nominated for president in '16. There are Republicans who could satisfy both the tea partiers and the regulars.
Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker and Kansas's Governor and former senator Sam Brownback are two of them, though they could fall in this year's re-election bids. But the odds are that the regulars will want one of their own to be the nominee, which will allow them some wiggle-room on a few issues, such as a path to citizenship and gay marriage, where flexibility may be necessary to survival. They can probably defeat tea party presidential candidates rather than appease them - and they probably will want to.
But what happens then? Does anyone seriously believe that the tea partiers will be good sports and line up behind someone like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney or perhaps Rand Paul - someone they regard as their enemy?
Like the Confederates, the tea partiers are die-hards with a Lost Cause. Their Lost Cause is the vanished country that they believe in: a country wholly owned by greedy, intolerant Christian white men. They require of Republicans complete support for the impossible restoration of that kind of country. And because the regulars would rather survive than blindly go along with them on that, they feel that they've been betrayed and that the regulars aren't really Republicans but termites crawling in from the larger, moderate culture.
Tea partiers are all-or-nothing people with an acute sense of betrayal. And if Bob Guzzardi is a harbinger, they may decide that making their betrayers lose, and trying thereby to discredit them and reclaim control of the GOP, takes precedence over every other consideration.
I doubt a Repub can win in '16 unless the party is united, with both regulars and tea partiers satisfied. That unity is looking less and less probable. The tea partiers could start a rival party or could just stay home or vote for the Democrats. What's least believable is that they'll put aside their bitterness and accept the inevitable.
Like his fellow reactionary governors John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Scott of Florida, Corbett has made a shift to the center in hopes of becoming viable - a shift not on all issues but on one. Corbett's issue is transportation, which has broad appeal. This gov, who could get little through his very Republican legislature, did finally manage lately to get through a big transportation bill that was sorely overdue.
But in doing that he either did or didn't break his promise and raise taxes, depending on how you interpret this and that. The tea partiers say he did, and they're livid. In trying to make himself acceptable to most Pennsylvanians, he has alienated his right flank.
Tom has a tea party primary opponent, a businessman named Bob Guzzardi who looks like a chipmunk with gray hair and rimless glasses. While Guzzardi insists that he can win the nomination - he has to say that in order to motivate his voters - he clearly can't. And I think he knows he can't. While tea party challengers in other races probably start out believing they can overcome the incumbent, my surmise is that Guzzardi always knew better. And this is where it gets interesting.
I'll say more about him and why he's a significant figure further down the page. Meanwhile, let's take a snapshot of the Republicans' over-all situation.
Around the country tea partiers are going up against what they take to be Republican-In-Name-Only candidates. But also in some cases especially crazy tea party incumbents are being taken on by Republican regulars who are also reactionary while appearing more plausible. It's looking like a civil war, one so far limited but potentially all-out.
While business interests funded the tea partiers and deployed them as a weapon, the corporations and the big money people are increasingly viewing them as a pain - as too amateurish, too populist, too unpredictable, too apt to say idiotic things that get Democrats elected, too suspicious of the interface between big gov and big biz that the rich and the corporate leaders want at all hazards to keep intact.
In this new climate, Mitt Romney, plainly once again a presidential contender, has just made what I suspect to be a fatal mistake by criticizing the tea partiers. This after he sickeningly pandered to them throughout his '12 campaign. Apparently he sees that his rich friends and fellow biz execs and some of the regulars are putting down the tea partiers and has concluded that it's now safe to do that and be free of them. UH-uh.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, till now a tea party favorite, the other day suggested that abortion shouldn't be outlawed at this point because public opinion is too divided on it. That sounds suicidally sane. What ails Paul? Maybe the praise he has gotten from liberals on the government privacy issue and his winning several straw polls among conservatives have convinced him that he's invulnerable and can now be candid and sensible. UH-uh.
(Why is Paul popular, by the way? I'm not sure. It may be because he's a new face, because he seems younger than he is, and because he comes across as idealistic rather than negative and cynical. Or there may be an actual market among right-wingers for his Libertarian Lite positions, including his neo-isolationist foreign policy views. The latter will be sure to bring relentless attacks from the Repubs' dominant neoconservatives. A big deal for them is the alleged weakness of the U.S. under Mr. Obama; under Paul it would be even "weaker". Paul appears to me to be a flake with neo-Confederate sympathies. We'll see what he's made of, because he's going to be under terrific fire. And with his abortion statement, he may have just made himself look unreliable to his tea party base, not at all an advisable thing to do when he didn't have to.)
And then there's John Ellis "Jeb" Bush. The tea partiers don't like Bushes, as the latter are the insiders' insiders and the tea partiers the outsiders' outsiders. Jeb speaks fluent Spanish, is married to a Latina, is a Catholic, and should be in a good position to convince Hispanic voters that a Republican party headed by himself isn't their enemy. He's for "amnesty", but of course he doesn't phrase it like that. He has now said that those who risk everything to cross our border from Mexico should be viewed not as criminals but as acting from love of their impoverished families. The tea partiers thought he was a lefty anyway; this was just rubbing it in.
Romney, Paul, and Bush seem to me to be, as of now, the most favored GOP choices for '16. All of them may have a tea party problem.
Well, back to Bob Guzzardi. How is he unlike other tea party challengers? I've suggested that he doesn't believe he can win. I doubt he even wants to. And there's something else that's distinctive about him. Bob the Guz has a history of donating money to Democrats who are running against Republicans whom he considers to be RINOs. From what I'm seeing, he's after vengeance: a pseudo-candidate who would rather elect a Dem than a Repub who has disappointed the tea partiers. In other words, he wants to make certain that Corbett gets beaten, not in May but in November.
The tea partiers now taking on John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and other regulars are going to lose.
And there's a good chance that they'll also fail to get someone agreeable to themselves nominated for president in '16. There are Republicans who could satisfy both the tea partiers and the regulars.
Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker and Kansas's Governor and former senator Sam Brownback are two of them, though they could fall in this year's re-election bids. But the odds are that the regulars will want one of their own to be the nominee, which will allow them some wiggle-room on a few issues, such as a path to citizenship and gay marriage, where flexibility may be necessary to survival. They can probably defeat tea party presidential candidates rather than appease them - and they probably will want to.
But what happens then? Does anyone seriously believe that the tea partiers will be good sports and line up behind someone like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney or perhaps Rand Paul - someone they regard as their enemy?
Like the Confederates, the tea partiers are die-hards with a Lost Cause. Their Lost Cause is the vanished country that they believe in: a country wholly owned by greedy, intolerant Christian white men. They require of Republicans complete support for the impossible restoration of that kind of country. And because the regulars would rather survive than blindly go along with them on that, they feel that they've been betrayed and that the regulars aren't really Republicans but termites crawling in from the larger, moderate culture.
Tea partiers are all-or-nothing people with an acute sense of betrayal. And if Bob Guzzardi is a harbinger, they may decide that making their betrayers lose, and trying thereby to discredit them and reclaim control of the GOP, takes precedence over every other consideration.
I doubt a Repub can win in '16 unless the party is united, with both regulars and tea partiers satisfied. That unity is looking less and less probable. The tea partiers could start a rival party or could just stay home or vote for the Democrats. What's least believable is that they'll put aside their bitterness and accept the inevitable.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
CAN SPRING BE HERE?
For the first time we're reading that some persons close to Hillary Rodham Clinton don't think she should run for president. Apparently they see through the hype and recognize that she could take big hits from pols in her own party. I suspect, though there's no evidence for it, that the main thing propelling her forward is her hubby's itch to take back the White House and get his hands on some levers again.
It has also been suggested now that her seemingly unrivaled status has only amounted to the fact that persons who will eventually run have been avoiding early scrutiny by letting her have all of it, "using her as a human shield", as someone put it. Who might these aspirants be? I've nothing to base my answer on except who looks to me to be attractive, ambitious, and progressive. Try Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Try Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island (surely a name from Providence!). And Maryland's Governor O'Malley isn't working as hard as he is to get known nationally because he hopes to be Hillary's running-mate.
One illusion that was meant to be a self-fulfilling prophecy has just bit the dust. That is that her prospective candidacy would clear the field of Dem contenders. It's been made explicit now that she stands a real chance of being challenged for the nomination by a candidate who can't be ignored although he isn't even a Democrat. The media don't seem quite sure what to make of him.
Senator Bernie Sanders is 72, outspoken, and seemingly healthy. His popularity in Vermont hovers around the 70% mark. An independent, he caucuses with the Dems, who support him when he runs for re-election.
He calls himself a democratic socialist and makes it clear that his socialism is that not of North Korea but of Scandinavia: that of a mixed economic system that works better than ours does.
He started out working for civil rights and peace. He moved to Vermont, organizing politically, running unsuccessfully several times for statewide offices, then becoming mayor of Burlington, the state's largest city, and running it cleanly and well and for everybody. He got elected to the U.S. House, then to the Senate and is his state's one towering political figure.
His position is that, while he has nothing against Hillary personally, somebody has to take progressive stands. He hints that he might stand aside for someone who did.
He has indicated that if he runs it will be as a Dem. Is he viable? I don't know. It could be a plus for him that he stands for what the Democratic party stands for without being caught up in its pandering and sellouts and influence peddling and pathological timidity.
A friend (who's Jewish) says Sanders is too Jewish, too Brooklyn, too old, and too radical to win. Maybe at first blush. But I'm not convinced that anyone would oppose him who wouldn't also oppose Hillary or O'Malley or Whitehouse, Merkley, etc.
Everybody knows that his forebears weren't New Englanders, weren't sea captains, and weren't Congregationalists or Unitarians. But as you look at his halo of white hair and his weathered face, he seems to come across subliminally as one of those old-time flinty New England independents who are incorruptible and who stick around long enough to become institutions.
Why did he show his hand this early? Maybe because he wants to spike the Hillary bubble. Maybe to spur other progressives to get in motion and not be fatalistic.. Or maybe he likes the idea of being the Dem nominee and is putting some fear into other progressive candidates. His being in the race could split their vote. So it may have been a preemptive move, to get in first and make them think twice about competing with him.
Sanders' age could actually work for him, I'd think. It's said that each generation parts company with its parents and shakes hands with its grandparents. The young - and they're the soul of the Democratic party - always hope to find wisdom in elderly people. They sure as hell aren't finding it in middle aged ones. Sanders has acted with consistent integrity and vision throughout a long public career. It's possible that the newest political generation will respond to that.
Youthful voters may seem complacent so far. If they feel resigned to Hillary and four more years of agony, that can't be what they want. And we recall that the young, rallying to Gene McCarthy's insurgent candidacy in 1968, made Lyndon Johnson retire. If somebody inspires "the kids" and gives them hope, things may change.
And this is about not only idealism but realism. We're facing major, major crises including a broken economy, climate change, and an oligarchic situation that's strangling democracy. The only way we're going to have an effective administration is if we elect a candidate with a mandate to do specific and difficult things, who will tell the whorish members of Congress: "You'll do right or, by God, I'll put the hurt on you. Every bill of yours that comes to me will get vetoed if you won't listen to the people and take real action."
Hillary's strength is also her weakness: that she doesn't really stand for anything and has never really done anything, however hard she has worked. Once somebody starts pointing out that she's a bullshit candidate who represents a corrupt and unsustainable status quo, I think young Americans will realize, if they haven't already, that it's so.
We now have a promise that an uncompromised progressivism will play a role in 2016. That's a huge advance over where we were only a few weeks ago.
It has also been suggested now that her seemingly unrivaled status has only amounted to the fact that persons who will eventually run have been avoiding early scrutiny by letting her have all of it, "using her as a human shield", as someone put it. Who might these aspirants be? I've nothing to base my answer on except who looks to me to be attractive, ambitious, and progressive. Try Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Try Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island (surely a name from Providence!). And Maryland's Governor O'Malley isn't working as hard as he is to get known nationally because he hopes to be Hillary's running-mate.
One illusion that was meant to be a self-fulfilling prophecy has just bit the dust. That is that her prospective candidacy would clear the field of Dem contenders. It's been made explicit now that she stands a real chance of being challenged for the nomination by a candidate who can't be ignored although he isn't even a Democrat. The media don't seem quite sure what to make of him.
Senator Bernie Sanders is 72, outspoken, and seemingly healthy. His popularity in Vermont hovers around the 70% mark. An independent, he caucuses with the Dems, who support him when he runs for re-election.
He calls himself a democratic socialist and makes it clear that his socialism is that not of North Korea but of Scandinavia: that of a mixed economic system that works better than ours does.
He started out working for civil rights and peace. He moved to Vermont, organizing politically, running unsuccessfully several times for statewide offices, then becoming mayor of Burlington, the state's largest city, and running it cleanly and well and for everybody. He got elected to the U.S. House, then to the Senate and is his state's one towering political figure.
His position is that, while he has nothing against Hillary personally, somebody has to take progressive stands. He hints that he might stand aside for someone who did.
He has indicated that if he runs it will be as a Dem. Is he viable? I don't know. It could be a plus for him that he stands for what the Democratic party stands for without being caught up in its pandering and sellouts and influence peddling and pathological timidity.
A friend (who's Jewish) says Sanders is too Jewish, too Brooklyn, too old, and too radical to win. Maybe at first blush. But I'm not convinced that anyone would oppose him who wouldn't also oppose Hillary or O'Malley or Whitehouse, Merkley, etc.
Everybody knows that his forebears weren't New Englanders, weren't sea captains, and weren't Congregationalists or Unitarians. But as you look at his halo of white hair and his weathered face, he seems to come across subliminally as one of those old-time flinty New England independents who are incorruptible and who stick around long enough to become institutions.
Why did he show his hand this early? Maybe because he wants to spike the Hillary bubble. Maybe to spur other progressives to get in motion and not be fatalistic.. Or maybe he likes the idea of being the Dem nominee and is putting some fear into other progressive candidates. His being in the race could split their vote. So it may have been a preemptive move, to get in first and make them think twice about competing with him.
Sanders' age could actually work for him, I'd think. It's said that each generation parts company with its parents and shakes hands with its grandparents. The young - and they're the soul of the Democratic party - always hope to find wisdom in elderly people. They sure as hell aren't finding it in middle aged ones. Sanders has acted with consistent integrity and vision throughout a long public career. It's possible that the newest political generation will respond to that.
Youthful voters may seem complacent so far. If they feel resigned to Hillary and four more years of agony, that can't be what they want. And we recall that the young, rallying to Gene McCarthy's insurgent candidacy in 1968, made Lyndon Johnson retire. If somebody inspires "the kids" and gives them hope, things may change.
And this is about not only idealism but realism. We're facing major, major crises including a broken economy, climate change, and an oligarchic situation that's strangling democracy. The only way we're going to have an effective administration is if we elect a candidate with a mandate to do specific and difficult things, who will tell the whorish members of Congress: "You'll do right or, by God, I'll put the hurt on you. Every bill of yours that comes to me will get vetoed if you won't listen to the people and take real action."
Hillary's strength is also her weakness: that she doesn't really stand for anything and has never really done anything, however hard she has worked. Once somebody starts pointing out that she's a bullshit candidate who represents a corrupt and unsustainable status quo, I think young Americans will realize, if they haven't already, that it's so.
We now have a promise that an uncompromised progressivism will play a role in 2016. That's a huge advance over where we were only a few weeks ago.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
HANDY DANDY ANDY
Vlad "The Impaler" Putin, barbarian of all the Russias and would-be emperor, has just done a gigantic favor for New York's not-very-liberal governor. He has made him relevant at last. Or so it appears to me.
Hillary Clinton's much-hyped ascent had stymied Andrew Cuomo's presidential hopes to the extent that he had to seem not to be running. He joked in a phone interview not long ago that he couldn't hear a question about him becoming a candidate and that the caller was "breaking up". He has not even the skeleton of a national organization, and he hasn't been visiting other states. For as long as New York and the country are giving Hillary the benefit of the doubt, he's the forgotten man.
But Hillary has just taken another hit, along with the revelations about things she has said privately. It was she who pushed our attempt to get along with Putin. She wasn't wrong to do that, but her doing it now makes her look "soft" on Russia and naively optimistic.
When dealing with a sociopath like Putin, you have to do two things at once. One is to effectively block what he tries to do; the other is to let him save face and give him a means of backing down. This was precisely our policy toward the Soviet Union, and it succeeded in keeping the peace.
Because Mr. Obama hasn't been bellicose toward Putin in the Ukraine crisis and has been wisely keeping his moves under wraps, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina just accused him of being "weak" and "indecisive". To continue the Republican campaign to destroy the president's authority in an hour of crisis when the country has to have some confidence in him is one inch from committing treason. Yet I haven't heard a single Democrat say anything like that. That's what's wrong with the Democratic party.
This kind of thing is why it would be a good idea for somebody military or highly accomplished in business to be a candidate in '16. Getting somebody who unarguably can play hardball into it may be necessary just because the Repubs are always going to portray the Dems as wimps if they can.
And this brings us back to Andy Cuomo. Even before Putin made his reactive move after losing his foothold in Ukraine, Cuomo was positioning himself as an implacable warrior on behalf of preserving our fast-eroding social and economic gains. He wasn't talking about foreign affairs, but his tough-guy moves believably can extend to that sphere by implication.
The likeliest Repub nominee for New York governor this year is Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, who straddles tea party values and the presumed credibility of a conventional office-holder in an important job. Astorino is running. And Cuomo is running at him, playing offense rather than defense.
Liberal bloggers have made it known that they'll take down a Cuomo presidential run if they can. As long as he didn't seem to be after the White House, they held back. Now he'll have to answer them and drown them out.
Several weeks ago he made what may have seemed an impromptu remark about there being no room in New York for extremists who are anti-abortion, anti-gays, etc. This created a big stir, but he didn't back down or soften it.
He reportedly followed that up a few days ago in a meeting with top state Republicans, warning them that if they ran a social conservative like Astorino against him, he would, in effect, tear the guy's arm off and beat him to death with it. That is, he'd go all-out on social issues, about which New Yorkers generally agree with him.
The Repubs might hope to talk about other things; but because Astorino holds to those right-wing stands, Cuomo is saying they won't be able to do it. He'll make such a candidate radioactive.
If the Repubs had it more together, they might be able to come up with an attractive businessman who was kind of a muttering moderate on social issues. Then they'd lose the backing of the Conservative party, but they could get a decent vote by attracting some independents. But Astorino is their course of least resistance.
Cuomo figures to win big anyhow. Running up the score by breathing fire on social issues won't hurt him in the state and will make him seem a champion of established social liberalism nationally. That's not to say that he's ready to do anything about the emergence of our oligarchy or the disappearance of our middle class. On those things he'll play it safe like Hillary. But he'll be seen as aggressive, a gut-fighter.
Assuming Hillary runs, he won't find it hard to come up with an excuse for opposing her. Meanwhile, he can afford to wait while she bleeds out, thumping his manly chest all the while.
As with Hillary, he's a hard person to warm up to. It looks to me as though the I-just-don't-like-the-guy factor that dogged Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon may work against him. In the Northeast the tepidness of his progressivism is a problem for him, while in the rest of the country he'll be mistakenly seen as very progressive as well as being an "ethnic". It might have helped him if his ancestry had been Spanish rather than Italian. So, even apart from the Hillary factor, he has much to overcome.
But he now has a road ahead. By playing rough this year, he can be the General Patton of sellout centrism and not just another governor.
Hillary Clinton's much-hyped ascent had stymied Andrew Cuomo's presidential hopes to the extent that he had to seem not to be running. He joked in a phone interview not long ago that he couldn't hear a question about him becoming a candidate and that the caller was "breaking up". He has not even the skeleton of a national organization, and he hasn't been visiting other states. For as long as New York and the country are giving Hillary the benefit of the doubt, he's the forgotten man.
But Hillary has just taken another hit, along with the revelations about things she has said privately. It was she who pushed our attempt to get along with Putin. She wasn't wrong to do that, but her doing it now makes her look "soft" on Russia and naively optimistic.
When dealing with a sociopath like Putin, you have to do two things at once. One is to effectively block what he tries to do; the other is to let him save face and give him a means of backing down. This was precisely our policy toward the Soviet Union, and it succeeded in keeping the peace.
Because Mr. Obama hasn't been bellicose toward Putin in the Ukraine crisis and has been wisely keeping his moves under wraps, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina just accused him of being "weak" and "indecisive". To continue the Republican campaign to destroy the president's authority in an hour of crisis when the country has to have some confidence in him is one inch from committing treason. Yet I haven't heard a single Democrat say anything like that. That's what's wrong with the Democratic party.
This kind of thing is why it would be a good idea for somebody military or highly accomplished in business to be a candidate in '16. Getting somebody who unarguably can play hardball into it may be necessary just because the Repubs are always going to portray the Dems as wimps if they can.
And this brings us back to Andy Cuomo. Even before Putin made his reactive move after losing his foothold in Ukraine, Cuomo was positioning himself as an implacable warrior on behalf of preserving our fast-eroding social and economic gains. He wasn't talking about foreign affairs, but his tough-guy moves believably can extend to that sphere by implication.
The likeliest Repub nominee for New York governor this year is Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, who straddles tea party values and the presumed credibility of a conventional office-holder in an important job. Astorino is running. And Cuomo is running at him, playing offense rather than defense.
Liberal bloggers have made it known that they'll take down a Cuomo presidential run if they can. As long as he didn't seem to be after the White House, they held back. Now he'll have to answer them and drown them out.
Several weeks ago he made what may have seemed an impromptu remark about there being no room in New York for extremists who are anti-abortion, anti-gays, etc. This created a big stir, but he didn't back down or soften it.
He reportedly followed that up a few days ago in a meeting with top state Republicans, warning them that if they ran a social conservative like Astorino against him, he would, in effect, tear the guy's arm off and beat him to death with it. That is, he'd go all-out on social issues, about which New Yorkers generally agree with him.
The Repubs might hope to talk about other things; but because Astorino holds to those right-wing stands, Cuomo is saying they won't be able to do it. He'll make such a candidate radioactive.
If the Repubs had it more together, they might be able to come up with an attractive businessman who was kind of a muttering moderate on social issues. Then they'd lose the backing of the Conservative party, but they could get a decent vote by attracting some independents. But Astorino is their course of least resistance.
Cuomo figures to win big anyhow. Running up the score by breathing fire on social issues won't hurt him in the state and will make him seem a champion of established social liberalism nationally. That's not to say that he's ready to do anything about the emergence of our oligarchy or the disappearance of our middle class. On those things he'll play it safe like Hillary. But he'll be seen as aggressive, a gut-fighter.
Assuming Hillary runs, he won't find it hard to come up with an excuse for opposing her. Meanwhile, he can afford to wait while she bleeds out, thumping his manly chest all the while.
As with Hillary, he's a hard person to warm up to. It looks to me as though the I-just-don't-like-the-guy factor that dogged Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon may work against him. In the Northeast the tepidness of his progressivism is a problem for him, while in the rest of the country he'll be mistakenly seen as very progressive as well as being an "ethnic". It might have helped him if his ancestry had been Spanish rather than Italian. So, even apart from the Hillary factor, he has much to overcome.
But he now has a road ahead. By playing rough this year, he can be the General Patton of sellout centrism and not just another governor.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
STARS OF 2016
Mitt Romney says "No no no no no no" if you ask if he's running for president. But, watching him, I'd bet he's running.
So far his opponent for the not-insane Repub vote is Jeb Bush. But Jeb will probably take firm stands that reveal him as being in what today's unbelievably sick climate passes for a "moderate" conservative. Mitt, on the other hand, will pander to the extremists, then segue into someone seemingly reasonable, then revert, and so on - back and forth in a nimble dance. We saw it when he was caught telling a room full of rich monsters that 47% of us aren't pulling our weight and should be set adrift, then blithely informed the world that that was "completely wrong". His shamelessness and his ability to get away with it are his qualifications for the nomination. Can he get it again? Possibly, but I wouldn't put down any money yet.
On the Democratic side we now have Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri saying that he may run if Hillary doesn't. He's a successful governor, formerly a longtime state attorney general, and a tough guy. No particular charisma, but he seems solid. He may believably believe that he couldn't compete with Hillary because both are centrists.
Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland is another matter. He also more-or-less says he'll pass it up if Hillary goes for it; but don't believe it. He's running now. He has to be hoping she'll stand aside, in which case he won't have alienated the Clintons. But he'll run whether she does or not. Where he'll stand on the ideological spectrum, and how sincerely, remain to be seen.
Brian Schweitzer will be a commentator for MSNBC, which will help him become known nationally. He says the Dems aren't always right and the Repubs aren't always wrong. It's a good line, tends to open people's minds. But, apart from his positions for guns and for "clean" coal, he's very progressive. He also remains highly popular in his own state. And in important respects he's the Anti-Hillary: an outsider, a fighter, and a charmer. It's being insinuated that he doesn't have to be taken seriously. And he may end up not going for it. But he can't be counted out.
In a previous posting I said something truly dumb, and I apologize for it. What I said was that Joe Biden can't dissociate himself from the administration's record. Of course he can - and he is. A recent article about him mentions that he told a friend that he's more a populist than the president is. I've no doubt that was leaked. He doesn't really have to worry about anything besides where Hillary stands. And he can run to her left because, hey, conditions change and you have to look ahead. Will he try for it? Well, what does he have to lose?
My Spidey sense tells me that the Hillary-is-inevitable consensus is being orchestrated by Clinton and Obama loyalists, some of them journalists, who are the Dem establishment of today and who want to retain their connections, their influence, and their sweetheart deals even if it means that we get another lame president. And I think their secret fear is that someone they have no ties to is going to show up, make them an issue, and take it away from her.
Why shouldn't it be Hillary? Try these reasons:
~She's a neoliberal and an unabashed ally of Wall Street, when the Dem electorate is the reverse of that.
~She's a neocon in foreign policy, voted for the Iraq And Afghan wars, and even favored Mr. Obama's abortive plan to attack Syria.
~She's elderly, when the Dem nomination will be decided by the young and restless.
~She has no personality. None.
~She's a weak campaigner.
~She's old news with plenty of baggage.
~Her own words make her out to be masculine in outlook, power-hungry, and vindictive.
Are those reasons enough to look elsewhere? What more would you want? Well, try this.
I've said before, and I think it's a major point, that her indifference to her husband's infidelities will hurt her. An American president isn't just a chief executive but the head of the family, as it were; we want to be able to look up to him or her. There aren't many wives out there who would shrug if they caught their hubbies shagging other women. They'd want to be able to identify with Hillary, not only in public life but in her private attitudes. They don't accept an open marriage as anything but depravity. Added to that, we have the tabloids now attributing to her numerous affairs with persons of both genders. If she wants her reputation to remain intact, the way to make that happen is to bow out of the race soon.
The poll that showed her with 73% of the Dem primary vote means less than nothing this far out, when she has no challenger to serve as contrast with her and to controvert her empty wonderfulness.
I well recall that I said confidently that President Obama would be challenged for the '12 nomination. And he should have been, not least so since he's now nominating conservatives to be Federal judges. But Hillary isn't an incumbent, no matter how resolved some are to portray her as one.
The idea that no one of substance would get in against her is ludicrous. It goes against everything we've seen in American politics. For a number of prospective candidates it'll be now or never. They owe her nothing. And they want it "so bad they can taste it".
Angry young guys out of the military and self-confident billionaires are two groups that could produce a candidate for Dems who've had enough. The pain and frustration of the Obama years are probably sufficient to precipitate the nomination of a fresh face. That candidate's biggest attractors will be progressivism and an eagerness to slug it out with the reactionaries.
Keep watching the margins.
So far his opponent for the not-insane Repub vote is Jeb Bush. But Jeb will probably take firm stands that reveal him as being in what today's unbelievably sick climate passes for a "moderate" conservative. Mitt, on the other hand, will pander to the extremists, then segue into someone seemingly reasonable, then revert, and so on - back and forth in a nimble dance. We saw it when he was caught telling a room full of rich monsters that 47% of us aren't pulling our weight and should be set adrift, then blithely informed the world that that was "completely wrong". His shamelessness and his ability to get away with it are his qualifications for the nomination. Can he get it again? Possibly, but I wouldn't put down any money yet.
On the Democratic side we now have Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri saying that he may run if Hillary doesn't. He's a successful governor, formerly a longtime state attorney general, and a tough guy. No particular charisma, but he seems solid. He may believably believe that he couldn't compete with Hillary because both are centrists.
Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland is another matter. He also more-or-less says he'll pass it up if Hillary goes for it; but don't believe it. He's running now. He has to be hoping she'll stand aside, in which case he won't have alienated the Clintons. But he'll run whether she does or not. Where he'll stand on the ideological spectrum, and how sincerely, remain to be seen.
Brian Schweitzer will be a commentator for MSNBC, which will help him become known nationally. He says the Dems aren't always right and the Repubs aren't always wrong. It's a good line, tends to open people's minds. But, apart from his positions for guns and for "clean" coal, he's very progressive. He also remains highly popular in his own state. And in important respects he's the Anti-Hillary: an outsider, a fighter, and a charmer. It's being insinuated that he doesn't have to be taken seriously. And he may end up not going for it. But he can't be counted out.
In a previous posting I said something truly dumb, and I apologize for it. What I said was that Joe Biden can't dissociate himself from the administration's record. Of course he can - and he is. A recent article about him mentions that he told a friend that he's more a populist than the president is. I've no doubt that was leaked. He doesn't really have to worry about anything besides where Hillary stands. And he can run to her left because, hey, conditions change and you have to look ahead. Will he try for it? Well, what does he have to lose?
My Spidey sense tells me that the Hillary-is-inevitable consensus is being orchestrated by Clinton and Obama loyalists, some of them journalists, who are the Dem establishment of today and who want to retain their connections, their influence, and their sweetheart deals even if it means that we get another lame president. And I think their secret fear is that someone they have no ties to is going to show up, make them an issue, and take it away from her.
Why shouldn't it be Hillary? Try these reasons:
~She's a neoliberal and an unabashed ally of Wall Street, when the Dem electorate is the reverse of that.
~She's a neocon in foreign policy, voted for the Iraq And Afghan wars, and even favored Mr. Obama's abortive plan to attack Syria.
~She's elderly, when the Dem nomination will be decided by the young and restless.
~She has no personality. None.
~She's a weak campaigner.
~She's old news with plenty of baggage.
~Her own words make her out to be masculine in outlook, power-hungry, and vindictive.
Are those reasons enough to look elsewhere? What more would you want? Well, try this.
I've said before, and I think it's a major point, that her indifference to her husband's infidelities will hurt her. An American president isn't just a chief executive but the head of the family, as it were; we want to be able to look up to him or her. There aren't many wives out there who would shrug if they caught their hubbies shagging other women. They'd want to be able to identify with Hillary, not only in public life but in her private attitudes. They don't accept an open marriage as anything but depravity. Added to that, we have the tabloids now attributing to her numerous affairs with persons of both genders. If she wants her reputation to remain intact, the way to make that happen is to bow out of the race soon.
The poll that showed her with 73% of the Dem primary vote means less than nothing this far out, when she has no challenger to serve as contrast with her and to controvert her empty wonderfulness.
I well recall that I said confidently that President Obama would be challenged for the '12 nomination. And he should have been, not least so since he's now nominating conservatives to be Federal judges. But Hillary isn't an incumbent, no matter how resolved some are to portray her as one.
The idea that no one of substance would get in against her is ludicrous. It goes against everything we've seen in American politics. For a number of prospective candidates it'll be now or never. They owe her nothing. And they want it "so bad they can taste it".
Angry young guys out of the military and self-confident billionaires are two groups that could produce a candidate for Dems who've had enough. The pain and frustration of the Obama years are probably sufficient to precipitate the nomination of a fresh face. That candidate's biggest attractors will be progressivism and an eagerness to slug it out with the reactionaries.
Keep watching the margins.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
OUR ELECTED FAT BASTARDS
An American type of political office-holder that has been little noted is the obese tough guy who uses his physical bulk and his loud mouth to intimidate critics and to make himself seem an imposing and unstoppable leader.
I can think of three heavy-duty examples, two of them forgotten and one in the headlines now. In all three cases, we understand more about politics if we know who they were and what they did.
~Philadelphia's most colorful mayor wasn't Frank Rizzo but the Depression-era S. Davis Wilson. Cigar-chomping and way overweight, he was well-educated and generally well-spoken. But there was nothing genteel about his bellowed "I'll punch you in the nose!" and "I'll wring your neck!".
Time Magazine described him after his death as "Hard-working, hard-driving, hard-drinking red-faced Sam Wilson". Rampant and unpredictable, he dominated his city. He wanted to be governor. And he wanted to be president.
Wilson imitated his contemporary, New York's outstanding Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, in activities like going to fires at all hours and taking charge, conducting the municipal orchestra, and serving as committing magistrate in high-profile criminal cases. Unlike La Guardia, he also played detective and, several times, tried to frame suspects. And he did things like disguise himself and spend a night in a homeless shelter to check on conditions there.
Also unlike La Guardia but like another of his contemporaries, Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak, he tried to take over his city's rackets. Cermak had bootleg liquor delivered in police vehicles, but Wilson only created his own underworld czar, a fellow named Nate Schaeffer. Racketeers who wanted to stay in business paid off Nate; otherwise the vice squad shut them down.
But no matter how involved in illegal activities he was, Wilson was an expert at playing the reformer card, the I'm-the-only-one-you-can-trust card. He brilliantly exposed the dirty deals and crooked involvements of his political enemies. Over all, he probably lessened the political criminality of Philadelphia for a while.
During his strenuous and increasingly controversial tenure, he changed parties, becoming a New Dealer and raking in all the Federal largess that he could, and - like Rizzo - built up a large Democratic patronage machine. Whether he could have survived politically is arguable, but his body quit on him after years of booze, cigars, and self-induced stress.
~The late 1930s saw the election of New Jersey's "boy" governor, a glad-handing 38-year-old hail-fellow-well-met who loved to clown with the Circus Saints and Sinners and had a wealth of raunchy jokes. But he was another fat guy with a ton of attitude. His name was Harold G. Hoffman. He was a vice presidential possibility in 1940 even though he could never accomplish much.
Unlike S. Davis Wilson, Hoffman not only threatened to punch people out but actually did so.
Unable to succeed himself in office, Hoffman got himself appointed director of a state office he then held for years. After his heart gave out when he was 58, a letter he left for his daughter revealed that he had been stealing from the state - over $300,000 in all - from the time he was governor. He began out of necessity, he said, and would have paid it back except that another state official blackmailed him.
This sad, guilt-ridden fat man who seemingly had not a care in the world is perhaps best remembered for involving himself in the Lindbergh kidnapping case. His investigating and his attempt to hold up the execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann have often been attributed to political grandstanding. But I'm not so sure, because I have in mind other crooked governors who sincerely and even courageously opposed capital punishment when there could be nothing but risk in it for them. There was, for example, Tennessee's Ray Blanton, formerly a Congressman and later a convict. And there was Maryland's Spiro T. Agnew, afterwards a hideous vice president. I'd say Hoffman may have been acting from conscience.
~Lastly there's of course New Jersey's current governor, Christopher Christie, who has publicly boasted of being "a fat bully" and who does things like yell "Idiot!" at a veteran who questioned one of his decisions and deride a Democratic legislator as "Numb Nuts". He's fully in the great tradition.
Investigative journalists have begun revealing what the political condition of New Jersey actually is and what Christie has done to exploit it.
New Jersey has the strongest governor in the country, no matter who it is; he's the only elected statewide official and can appoint watchdogs like the attorney general and the state treasurer who could otherwise cause him problems.. And New Jersey has great corruption, fostered by the value of land, of which little is available, which makes for a culture of bribes by developers. And New Jersey i's the last state to feature real old-style political bosses, the most conspicuous ones being Democrats.
For example, there's George Norcross, the handsome, silver-haired unrivaled potentate of South Jersey politics. And there's Brian Stack, both state senator and mayor of Union City. And there's Essex County Executive Joseph "Joey D" Di Vincenzo, a Christie buddy all along. And there are the bosses' allies, such as State Senator Steve Sweeney, like Christie something of a bully, who wants to be governor.
These bosses and those aligned with them, although Democrats, were openly (Di Vincenzo, Stack) or covertly for Chris Christie for re-election. Why? Because he dealt with them as equals, gave them what they wanted, and refrained from using his high popularity to promote his party. Thus the Republicans made no gains in the legislature though he won a crushing victory. He also raked in endorsements from numerous Democratic mayors for whom he had done favors, while others, it now appears, may have been threatened or punished for maintaining their independence.
Christie doesn't seem to have lined his pockets, as so many Jersey pols have. He knows better, having put so many of them in jail as U.S. attorney. Rather, he worked this top-heavy system for his own political advantage.
Federal storm relief aid, we've begun to learn, has sometimes - maybe many times - gone not to benefit the citizens impacted but to projects proposed by politically connected builders. So, as usual, the fat cats stay fat and the lean suffer hunger.
Christie is in hefty trouble. I don't pretend to know what the George Washington Bridge sabotage was about, but I don't believe that someone as hands-on as he is wouldn't have known what was going on or would be as incurious about it as he professes to be. I'm skeptical that such an extreme action was done to get back at a mayor no one ever heard of for failing to back him. And I think it's very possible that his underlings who made it happen don't know what the real reason was.
But I also think we'll find out everything, as the Feds are looking into it and the Dems in the legislature are hell-bent to get answers while the Repubs don't dare hold things up.
That Christie will remain in office now seems to me improbable. And the exposure of how things work in the corrupt and outmoded system of Jersey government may start a wave of reform.
Formerly it looked as though the Dem gubernatorial nomination would be decided by a knock-down, drag-out fight between the bosses' man Steve Sweeney and the new 36-year-old reform Jersey City mayor, Steve Fulop.
Fulop is about as far from being Chris Christie as anyone could be. He interrupted a big-money-making career at Goldman Sachs to join the Marines and get shot at in Iraq. He retired one boss, Jerramiah Healy, the mayor he defeated, and is an enemy to the Hudson County Democratic organization. The bosses everywhere don't like him, and it's mutual.
It may be that bossism and the individual bosses are about to become the big issue in Jersey politics, which could make Fulop the favorite over Sweeney and anyone else for governor. Perhaps the Democrats have had enough of leaders who are in bed with the opposition. And perhaps the voters have had enough of a system that creates cynicism and costs them money by giving a few people who are out for themselves the ability to run everything.
Fulop, by the way, is quite thin.
I can think of three heavy-duty examples, two of them forgotten and one in the headlines now. In all three cases, we understand more about politics if we know who they were and what they did.
~Philadelphia's most colorful mayor wasn't Frank Rizzo but the Depression-era S. Davis Wilson. Cigar-chomping and way overweight, he was well-educated and generally well-spoken. But there was nothing genteel about his bellowed "I'll punch you in the nose!" and "I'll wring your neck!".
Time Magazine described him after his death as "Hard-working, hard-driving, hard-drinking red-faced Sam Wilson". Rampant and unpredictable, he dominated his city. He wanted to be governor. And he wanted to be president.
Wilson imitated his contemporary, New York's outstanding Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, in activities like going to fires at all hours and taking charge, conducting the municipal orchestra, and serving as committing magistrate in high-profile criminal cases. Unlike La Guardia, he also played detective and, several times, tried to frame suspects. And he did things like disguise himself and spend a night in a homeless shelter to check on conditions there.
Also unlike La Guardia but like another of his contemporaries, Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak, he tried to take over his city's rackets. Cermak had bootleg liquor delivered in police vehicles, but Wilson only created his own underworld czar, a fellow named Nate Schaeffer. Racketeers who wanted to stay in business paid off Nate; otherwise the vice squad shut them down.
But no matter how involved in illegal activities he was, Wilson was an expert at playing the reformer card, the I'm-the-only-one-you-can-trust card. He brilliantly exposed the dirty deals and crooked involvements of his political enemies. Over all, he probably lessened the political criminality of Philadelphia for a while.
During his strenuous and increasingly controversial tenure, he changed parties, becoming a New Dealer and raking in all the Federal largess that he could, and - like Rizzo - built up a large Democratic patronage machine. Whether he could have survived politically is arguable, but his body quit on him after years of booze, cigars, and self-induced stress.
~The late 1930s saw the election of New Jersey's "boy" governor, a glad-handing 38-year-old hail-fellow-well-met who loved to clown with the Circus Saints and Sinners and had a wealth of raunchy jokes. But he was another fat guy with a ton of attitude. His name was Harold G. Hoffman. He was a vice presidential possibility in 1940 even though he could never accomplish much.
Unlike S. Davis Wilson, Hoffman not only threatened to punch people out but actually did so.
Unable to succeed himself in office, Hoffman got himself appointed director of a state office he then held for years. After his heart gave out when he was 58, a letter he left for his daughter revealed that he had been stealing from the state - over $300,000 in all - from the time he was governor. He began out of necessity, he said, and would have paid it back except that another state official blackmailed him.
This sad, guilt-ridden fat man who seemingly had not a care in the world is perhaps best remembered for involving himself in the Lindbergh kidnapping case. His investigating and his attempt to hold up the execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann have often been attributed to political grandstanding. But I'm not so sure, because I have in mind other crooked governors who sincerely and even courageously opposed capital punishment when there could be nothing but risk in it for them. There was, for example, Tennessee's Ray Blanton, formerly a Congressman and later a convict. And there was Maryland's Spiro T. Agnew, afterwards a hideous vice president. I'd say Hoffman may have been acting from conscience.
~Lastly there's of course New Jersey's current governor, Christopher Christie, who has publicly boasted of being "a fat bully" and who does things like yell "Idiot!" at a veteran who questioned one of his decisions and deride a Democratic legislator as "Numb Nuts". He's fully in the great tradition.
Investigative journalists have begun revealing what the political condition of New Jersey actually is and what Christie has done to exploit it.
New Jersey has the strongest governor in the country, no matter who it is; he's the only elected statewide official and can appoint watchdogs like the attorney general and the state treasurer who could otherwise cause him problems.. And New Jersey has great corruption, fostered by the value of land, of which little is available, which makes for a culture of bribes by developers. And New Jersey i's the last state to feature real old-style political bosses, the most conspicuous ones being Democrats.
For example, there's George Norcross, the handsome, silver-haired unrivaled potentate of South Jersey politics. And there's Brian Stack, both state senator and mayor of Union City. And there's Essex County Executive Joseph "Joey D" Di Vincenzo, a Christie buddy all along. And there are the bosses' allies, such as State Senator Steve Sweeney, like Christie something of a bully, who wants to be governor.
These bosses and those aligned with them, although Democrats, were openly (Di Vincenzo, Stack) or covertly for Chris Christie for re-election. Why? Because he dealt with them as equals, gave them what they wanted, and refrained from using his high popularity to promote his party. Thus the Republicans made no gains in the legislature though he won a crushing victory. He also raked in endorsements from numerous Democratic mayors for whom he had done favors, while others, it now appears, may have been threatened or punished for maintaining their independence.
Christie doesn't seem to have lined his pockets, as so many Jersey pols have. He knows better, having put so many of them in jail as U.S. attorney. Rather, he worked this top-heavy system for his own political advantage.
Federal storm relief aid, we've begun to learn, has sometimes - maybe many times - gone not to benefit the citizens impacted but to projects proposed by politically connected builders. So, as usual, the fat cats stay fat and the lean suffer hunger.
Christie is in hefty trouble. I don't pretend to know what the George Washington Bridge sabotage was about, but I don't believe that someone as hands-on as he is wouldn't have known what was going on or would be as incurious about it as he professes to be. I'm skeptical that such an extreme action was done to get back at a mayor no one ever heard of for failing to back him. And I think it's very possible that his underlings who made it happen don't know what the real reason was.
But I also think we'll find out everything, as the Feds are looking into it and the Dems in the legislature are hell-bent to get answers while the Repubs don't dare hold things up.
That Christie will remain in office now seems to me improbable. And the exposure of how things work in the corrupt and outmoded system of Jersey government may start a wave of reform.
Formerly it looked as though the Dem gubernatorial nomination would be decided by a knock-down, drag-out fight between the bosses' man Steve Sweeney and the new 36-year-old reform Jersey City mayor, Steve Fulop.
Fulop is about as far from being Chris Christie as anyone could be. He interrupted a big-money-making career at Goldman Sachs to join the Marines and get shot at in Iraq. He retired one boss, Jerramiah Healy, the mayor he defeated, and is an enemy to the Hudson County Democratic organization. The bosses everywhere don't like him, and it's mutual.
It may be that bossism and the individual bosses are about to become the big issue in Jersey politics, which could make Fulop the favorite over Sweeney and anyone else for governor. Perhaps the Democrats have had enough of leaders who are in bed with the opposition. And perhaps the voters have had enough of a system that creates cynicism and costs them money by giving a few people who are out for themselves the ability to run everything.
Fulop, by the way, is quite thin.
Monday, February 10, 2014
HILLARY, MARTIN, AND BRIAN
(Hillary, Martin, and Brian aren't to be confused with Abraham, Martin, and John.)
This morning's Huffington Post contains an article from the Washington Free Beacon about the papers of the late political science professor Diane Blair, which are housed at the University of Arkansas where scholars can get at them. Hillary Rodham Clinton regarded Blair as her closest friend, and the papers contain their correspondence.
We find that some of what Hillary said privately contradicted what she said publicly, as when she privately said that single payer was necessary for healthcare but publicly said she had never considered it. We expect a little hypocrisy from our leaders. But the over-all picture, painted by her own words, is of someone easily construed as cold-blooded, high-handed, and inclined to be vengeful.
What I think is the worst revelation from a political standpoint is the indifference with which the former first lady regarded her husband's infidelities. She obviously didn't care about them. She made excuses for him (pressures of the presidency), credited him with trying to limit the damage, and blamed the women. People had picked up on that tendency of hers already, but in the papers it's made so explicit that there's no way she can say, "But I was crying on the inside." On the other hand, Bill's indecisiveness and ineptness drove her up the wall.
And most people just can't relate to her attitude, whether it's attributed to sophistication or whatever. The perception is going to be, "She isn't like me." That's damning. The voters will now know that they're looking at someone they don't understand and who probably doesn't understand them.
There are also the rumors, some from things Bill allegedly told people on several occasions, that Hillary is basically a lesbian. Those add to the sense of her as alien. By contrast, Senator Tammy Baldwin, an acknowledged lesbian, is very much "like us": a person of enthusiasm, lively warmth, and strong convictions.
With these disclosures, I'd say the chances have improved that Hillary won't run.
Now I want to say a little about the rest of the Democratic field for '16. So far, that consists of Vice President Joe Biden, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and, maybe, former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer.
Biden's recent statements have been parsed by one journalist to mean that he won't run if Hillary does. He would be competing with her for the support of the Democratic establishment. Obviously he's in no position to run as an outsider. He was born November 20, 1942, which could spell "too old", and he strikes many as somewhat erratic, though he's undoubtedly able and capable of boldness.
O'Malley is clearly running. He says he won't if Hillary does, which should tell us something about him. It says that he wants to be the establishment candidate. He's hoping that Hillary will bow out and that the Clintons will support him or at least not make a point of wrecking his chances. If he openly ran against Hillary, they'd never forgive him. If she does run, he can find an excuse for not deferring to her, maybe citing her stand on some issue and a need for new thinking. What he's really like remains difficult to judge confidently at this point, but one has to suspect that he's more of the woeful same.
Schweitzer may or may not be running. He has fun with whatever he does - he once used a branding iron to veto a bill - and, if he wants it, he'll be the most colorful and outspoken of the candidates. Journalists have looked at his refusal to run for the Senate this year and have wondered if that signals that he won't go for president. But there's another way to look at it. If he's going to run, he naturally doesn't want to be associated with Washington, D.C., which stands in the public mind for pure dysfunction He's the outsider's outsider, as he has underscored with his inability to find anything favorable to say about Mr. Obama and his recent swipe at Hillary.
On inauguration day, 2017, Hillary Clinton will be 69, Biden 74, Schweitzer 61. O'Malley will be in his middle fifties. The Democratic party is the party of the young and the future. Why does it have no youthful presidential candidates? People in their forties or even their late thirties ought to be charging onto the scene, proposing new leadership and a fresh vision.
Someone young, perhaps back from the wars and unwilling to put up with more nonsense, might be able to offer action and an end to the prevailing passivity. One can but watch and hope.
This morning's Huffington Post contains an article from the Washington Free Beacon about the papers of the late political science professor Diane Blair, which are housed at the University of Arkansas where scholars can get at them. Hillary Rodham Clinton regarded Blair as her closest friend, and the papers contain their correspondence.
We find that some of what Hillary said privately contradicted what she said publicly, as when she privately said that single payer was necessary for healthcare but publicly said she had never considered it. We expect a little hypocrisy from our leaders. But the over-all picture, painted by her own words, is of someone easily construed as cold-blooded, high-handed, and inclined to be vengeful.
What I think is the worst revelation from a political standpoint is the indifference with which the former first lady regarded her husband's infidelities. She obviously didn't care about them. She made excuses for him (pressures of the presidency), credited him with trying to limit the damage, and blamed the women. People had picked up on that tendency of hers already, but in the papers it's made so explicit that there's no way she can say, "But I was crying on the inside." On the other hand, Bill's indecisiveness and ineptness drove her up the wall.
And most people just can't relate to her attitude, whether it's attributed to sophistication or whatever. The perception is going to be, "She isn't like me." That's damning. The voters will now know that they're looking at someone they don't understand and who probably doesn't understand them.
There are also the rumors, some from things Bill allegedly told people on several occasions, that Hillary is basically a lesbian. Those add to the sense of her as alien. By contrast, Senator Tammy Baldwin, an acknowledged lesbian, is very much "like us": a person of enthusiasm, lively warmth, and strong convictions.
With these disclosures, I'd say the chances have improved that Hillary won't run.
Now I want to say a little about the rest of the Democratic field for '16. So far, that consists of Vice President Joe Biden, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and, maybe, former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer.
Biden's recent statements have been parsed by one journalist to mean that he won't run if Hillary does. He would be competing with her for the support of the Democratic establishment. Obviously he's in no position to run as an outsider. He was born November 20, 1942, which could spell "too old", and he strikes many as somewhat erratic, though he's undoubtedly able and capable of boldness.
O'Malley is clearly running. He says he won't if Hillary does, which should tell us something about him. It says that he wants to be the establishment candidate. He's hoping that Hillary will bow out and that the Clintons will support him or at least not make a point of wrecking his chances. If he openly ran against Hillary, they'd never forgive him. If she does run, he can find an excuse for not deferring to her, maybe citing her stand on some issue and a need for new thinking. What he's really like remains difficult to judge confidently at this point, but one has to suspect that he's more of the woeful same.
Schweitzer may or may not be running. He has fun with whatever he does - he once used a branding iron to veto a bill - and, if he wants it, he'll be the most colorful and outspoken of the candidates. Journalists have looked at his refusal to run for the Senate this year and have wondered if that signals that he won't go for president. But there's another way to look at it. If he's going to run, he naturally doesn't want to be associated with Washington, D.C., which stands in the public mind for pure dysfunction He's the outsider's outsider, as he has underscored with his inability to find anything favorable to say about Mr. Obama and his recent swipe at Hillary.
On inauguration day, 2017, Hillary Clinton will be 69, Biden 74, Schweitzer 61. O'Malley will be in his middle fifties. The Democratic party is the party of the young and the future. Why does it have no youthful presidential candidates? People in their forties or even their late thirties ought to be charging onto the scene, proposing new leadership and a fresh vision.
Someone young, perhaps back from the wars and unwilling to put up with more nonsense, might be able to offer action and an end to the prevailing passivity. One can but watch and hope.
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