Tag Archives: Joe Biden

What in God’s Name Are These People Selling?

Posted on by
Katie Britt calls Biden a 'diminished leader' in GOP response to the State of the Union | wtsp.com

I remember quite well rolling my eyes every time Ronnie Reagan went off on one of his “shining light on the hill” riffs. America the exceptional! A blemish-free paradise, by god! No worries ’round here other than those frumpy Rooskies! Ignore whatever’s going on with those Iranian mullahs and the guns we’re shipping to fascists in Central America. And no Gertie, AIDS is nothing you need to worry your pretty little heterosexual Christian head over.

It was platinum plated BS.

But the thing is … it worked. The guy got reelected in a goddam landslide. He was Mr. Upbeat. A doofy old dude you’d have a beer with and listen to him tell stories of fighting his way up Mt. Suribachi … the scale model one out on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. Listening to Reagan’s cheery BS made the rubes feel everything would work out and they could devote even more time to obsessing over football and cheesy TV.

So last night, allegedly decrepit and addled Joe Biden takes a page from Reagan — and even name drops ol’ Ronnie — while setting up what is clearly going to be the fundamental message competition of the coming campaign.

Not just that, “Yeah, I’m old, but my ‘predecessor’ is crazy.” But, “Where I see solutions to problems, and have already solved problems, these guys … like that f**king nut job in her MAGA hat yelling at me from the cheap seats … are about the gloomiest damn bastards I’ve ever met. Hell, no sci-fi writer could come up with dystopia grimmer than this crowd and their cult leader.”

The internet is on fire this morning with startled praise for the juice Biden brought to his speech last night. Not only did the guy look and sound vigorous, he was clearly enjoying batting Republicans (and Sam Alito’s Supreme Court) around like a cat with a yarn ball.

Simultaneously, I don’t think I’ve ever read worse reviews for a State of the Union response. We’re talking Alabama first term senator Katie Britt. Have you watched this thing? OMFG! Your way too put together, very white, super Christian, average Mom (with de rigueur crucifix necklace, gold variety) smiling … before she’s tearing … before she’s tearing again about the absolute wasteland of criminality, vice, degradation and despair … outside her homey kitchen.

It is truly beyond parody. (Betting is heavy she gets “Saturday Night Live” attention.)

But the essence of it all is simple and obvious. While Biden (and hopefully at some point his more youthful surrogates like Gretchen Whitmer, Jared Polis, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, etc.) talk up all the positives through the campaign …

Continued strong job growth.

Surprisingly improving wage growth.

Much, much lower inflation compared to what any economist much less any “Fox & Friends” host predicted.

Dropping crime rates.

… Republicans, led by Orange Jesus, are only capable of talking about what a godforsaken hellhole we’re living in. How the price of a dozen eggs is more than it was in 1985! And how no one has a spare nickel to drop on, I don’t know, a Redneck Riviera condo, a new Super Duty truck with a six-ton towing package to set up in a casino parking lot outside Vegas, a set of his and hers ATVs or concierge service at little Spider and Dewey’s summer Bible camp.

Never have so many endured so much deprivation and misery!

Purely by coincidence, I opened this morning’s e-mail from John Hinderaker and Minnesota’s own dystopian sourpusses at the American Experiment. This is the crowd that has still yet to calm themselves from “overreach” of last year’s Minnesota legislative session. You know, the one where Democrats delivered on damn near everything they campaigned on and for which voters sent them to St. Paul.

Here’s a taste of this morning’s litany of misery from our local conservative intellectuals:

Migrants (!) lining up in south Minneapolis looking for work. Horror! They’re all rapists and fentanyl dealers!

An arrest in a Dinkytown shooting. Subtext — black kids involved. Democrats are still letting black kids walk around on our streets!

$2 billion for another LRT line! When will the woke spendthrifts stop the insanity and build another four lanes on every freeway?

Welfare spending still too high. Is there a worse abuse of the public purse than using tax money to pay for housing and food for poor people? Those black kids need to learn to house and feed themselves … just like Republican intellectuals did. I mean, I think Jesus gave a speech about exactly that.

Subsidies for green energy! As everyone knows windmills cause cancer. Why are we subsidizing a clear health hazard? Far better we expand tax deductions for 6000-pound, gas-powered “work vehicles.”

And finally, Socialist activism in the “uncommited” primary vote. Quoting a piece of data from the rarely-if-ever credible Alpha News we learn that hard core lefties in Minnesota’s metro areas are practically running amuck, and unless they get a tough lesson upside the head they’ll soon be protesting on the lawn of the Lafayette Club. Something must be done! Hopefully by a reinvigorated police force. No mention though of Bob Kroll.

Bottom line: The next eight months will be defined by neo-Reaganism from … Democrats, and visions of a Cormac McCarthy hellscape from Republicans.

Wooziness is guaranteed.

You Gotta Let It Hang Out, Joe. At This Point Perception is Far Worse Than Reality.

Posted on by
Joe Biden Is Old. Get Over It.

After the Special Counsel report gratuitously describing him as “an elderly man with a poor memory” the clear consensus is that Joe Biden has to come out of his protective shell, say “f*ck it”, (as he is wont to say) and let it all hang out. Just as with “crooked Hillary” and “her e-mails” back in 2016 the meme has settled in that he, Joe Biden, an honest operator with 50 years of government experience is a bigger risk than a 77 year-old failed casino operator campaigning as the fool he is proud to be.

Sunday’s Super Bowl may have been the single most-watched telecast … in history … and Biden passed on an interview with CBS. Not with a self-serving gasbag like Bill O’Reilly or a smirking frat boy like Jesse Watters or some other right-wing stooge, but with an intellectually honest network’s interviewer. Someone with a professional allegiance to facts and respectful decorum. That was a big mistake.

Especially … especially … when you factor in that the game’s enormous audience was likely fueled by an unprecedented inflow of women primarily interested in the whole Taylor Swift side show. With women voters showing a 22% preference for Biden over a guy a lot of them likely regard as the epitome of a shit boyfriend/worse husband; an undisciplined, vulgar blowhard facing 91 criminal counts and officially judged a “rapist” for his assault on a woman in a department store dressing room, Biden failing to immediately recall the name of the president of Egypt could hardly be deemed perilous to their view of who is the wiser choice.

Both of these guys, Biden and Trump, are what they are. Both are old. One has five decades of experience with national and international crises. He understands climate and infrastructure policy. The other played a real estate mogul on a TV show, bankrupted a casino, lost more money than any other person in the United States over nine years, has never said a cross word about the Joseph Stalin of our era and has been regularly described as, “a fucking moron” by people he hired to work in his first administration.

So given the fact that barring some deus ex machina event that removes him from the nomination, Biden (i.e. his team of strategists) has to push him out for unscripted interviews. Not with MAGA fools like Watters, etc. But with people like, say, Jonathan Swan, now with The New York Times. Or Maggie Haberman of the Times. Chris Wallace at CNN. Jonathan Lemire of Politico. Hell, I see value in an hour-long chat with a bona fide conservative like Bill Kristol.

Let the public decide if his (lifelong) stutter or his occasionally lengthy reaches for a specific name or date is disqualifying early onset dementia or just an older guy whose head is full of names and dates. (Among the facts conveniently ignored amid the frenzy over Biden’s “gaffes” are all the times George W. Bush, 30 years younger, mangled names, dates and spewed out bizarre salads of incongruence.)

Neither of these guys is Bill Clinton or Barack Obama when it comes to slickness on the impromptu stage. But one is sane, sincere and qualified. The other is … well, we all know … . I don’t have to repeat myself.

Entertainment and Retribution. A Very Tough Act to Beat.

Posted on by

We’ve all got little moments, seemingly innocuous at the time, but that stick in memory nevertheless. Like this, for example.

October 2016 and I’m sitting in a hotel bar in West Yellowstone, Montana with a couple friends and a dozen or so guys out on a hunting trip or early season snowmobiling. The TV is carrying one of the debates between Hillary Clinton, who everyone assumes will win and Donald Trump, who is trying to recover from that pussy grabbin’ business.

At one point, Trump makes the crack about how Clinton should be in jail … and half the hunter-snowmobilers guffaw in unison. They are amused. This Trump dude is, you know, “just sayin’ it”, and they find it entertaining.

That’s the moment. Nothing more. I didn’t take names and follow up to see who they eventually voted for. Although one guy, figuring me for a Clinton voter, followed me out to lobby to register his moral outrage at the way Bill Clinton “defiled the people’s house”, with the Monica Lewinsky escapade.

The takeaway that has haunted me ever since is not just that Trump won — the electoral college — largely because he was a pop culture entertainment star who spoke in a common man’s vernacular. But that despite the seven years since, the 30,000 documented lies, the gross mismanagement of an epidemic that killed over a million Americans, the constant insults to allies, bona fide meritorious Americans and, you know, inciting a riot to overthrow the elected government, his followers, at their essence a deeply ignorant mob, still find him both entertaining and a better steward of their future than … well, just about anyone, but certainly Joe Biden.

All this was in mind when I read that recent New York Times/Siena College Poll that had Trump beating Biden in key battleground states. (Key and battleground because the fate of constitutional democracy is once again in the hands of … the electoral college.)

Among the facets of this coming campaign that are clear is that Trump’s voters, the MAGA crowd, most certainly does see him as their “retribution”, and this next election as their best and perhaps last chance to correct a terrible wrong and set the country back on a path that serves them, (and only them.)

Point being, the MAGA mob is 100% certain to come out with even more zealotry than they showed in 2016, since revenge and retribution have been added to the entertainment appeal of their leader.

The same can not and will never be said for Joe Biden. Tucked away in the Times/Siena poll was 25% of younger voters interested in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with options like Cornel West and Jill Stein still in play. (We of course hope Stein, to plump up her independent bona fides, can cadge another dinner invitation to Moscow with Vladimir Putin and Gen. Mike Flynn.)

A normal presidential campaign features all sorts of “critical issues.” This next campaign has only one: keeping Donald Trump, his praetorian guard of renegade legal experts, election denying state officials and his self-pitying red hat mob away from even a scent of government authority. That’s it. Nothing else matters.

This will not be an election that turns on policy. The deciding factor is not tax equality, climate change, or police reform. One side is afire and firmly set on on cult-like retribution, while a critical faction of the other is lost in self-absorbed silliness.

Which brings us to why Joe Biden, regardless of the legitimacy he’s restored to the White House, the legislation he’s delivered and the wisdom he’s applied to Ukraine and now Israel/Hamas, is simply too precarious a vehicle to risk in another match up with Trump.

Given the electoral college — vigorously defended with inverted, Mobius strip logic by greybeard Libertarians — the indifference to Biden of a couple hundred thousand Millenials, Gen Z’ers and blacks identified in the Times/Siena poll — restores to Trump to the White House. That’s how precarious the situation is … today. And a restoration of Trump incompetence, fraud and pop authoritarianism is simply too calamitous to imagine.

The presumption among the political cognoscenti is that we are far past the point of no return in terms of Biden-Trump. Biden is in it to stay.

That said, all of them that I follow go on to fret openly about the instantaneous death spiral of the Biden campaign given one “health episode” on Biden’s part, one mumble-mouth response in a debate, or another uptick in the price of gas.

Trump Vermin | claytoonz

Trump’s addled buffoonery has never deterred his voters. Nor will his dive deeper and deeper into truly ugly Himmler-Goebbels-speak. The MAGA mob either doesn’t get the historical references of “blood poison”, “rooting out vermin” and setting up “camps” for immigrants, or doesn’t care. Either way they’re still entertained, Trump is their retribution, and revenge is a very powerful human motivation.

By contrast, one Mitch McConnell-like “freeze up” and Biden is toast.

I know I’ve warned against catastrophic thinking, but I did say that some matters before us are “worrisome.”

This is the biggest. Biden can’t make the mistake Ruth Bader Ginsburg made. Voters, especially young voters, want to be “excited” about a candidate. Sad but true. Political leadership is a form of entertainment. Joe Biden can never give them that.

Their response then is to stay home or vote for some third party vanity act. And the consequence of that is the Trump restoration.

I repeat what I’ve said before. Biden has done an excellent job. But the realities of 21st century politics powerfully suggest he should step aside and let a fresher face give critical voters the dopamine hit they need to feel entertained.

OMG, Democrats Are Criminally Bad At Marketing What They Accomplish

Posted on by

I get this weird twitching sensation in my neck every time I hear some Republican voter or official or Trump sycophant talk about, “How much we accomplished.” It’s a thing with them. They’re conditioned to say it every time someone sticks a microphone in their face … and fails to ask the natural follow-up, which is, “What the [bleep] are you talking about?”

These days most post-Trump attention is being paid to The Big Lie and inciting a violent attack the Capitol. Important stuff. But every so often some wonk points out how astonishingly little Trump and Trump kow-towing Republicans accomplished during his four year dumpster fire. Other than the long sought after deficit-doubling Paul Ryan/Mitch McConnell tax cut, (mine went up $900, FWIW), I am not aware of any … any … significant legslation Trump and crew passed in four years. Put another way, as we know all to well, today’s Republicans are not in the policy business.

And yet … and yet … they have successfully sold the message, to their base, that they have delivered for them. Which they have as long as you count culture war attacks and grievance-mongery as “accomplisments.” (Which I believe they do.)

This all by way of contrasting the modern GOP and their entertainment echo chamber with the gross, borderline criminal ineptitude of Democrats selling their accomplishments to the general public.

Want an example? Try this on for size.

Allow me to excerpt a couple key takeaways.

“The bipartisan infrastructure deal (BIF) was a historic achievement that few thought possible. But since its passage in November, the law has done little to move voter opinion in Democrats’ favor. To find out why and what to do, Third Way and Impact Research conducted a survey of 2000 likely 2022 voters to investigate voter opinion on the BIF and its messaging.“

“Quite simply, voters do not know the bill was passed. While voters express high levels of support for the deal once they hear about it, only 24% of voters think the bill is law. Meanwhile, a plurality (37%) says they “don’t know” the status of the bill, 30% say “it is still being worked on in Congress but isn’t law yet,” and 9% believe it is not being worked on in Congress and will not be passed. Given that a large share believes the deal is still being worked on in Congress, it is clear that voters are confusing the BIF with BBB, which, of course, has not passed. In selling this legislation, the first order of business is to remind, inform, and convince voters that it is now law.“

The sound you hear is me bashing my head against a wall. An unprecedented trillion dollar bill to, you know, actually accomplish stuff. Repair roads. Rebuild bridges. Expand and improve airports. A trillion dollars worth of work for blue-collar worker-voters. And three-fourths of the public doesn’t even know it’s happening.

Jesus [bleeping] christ.

To paraphrase Joe Biden, “Here’s the deal, kids.” In modern America there is no reality unless it’s on TV. (I believe it was ex-George W. speechwriter David Frum who first said this.) All those “hard working Americans” we’re always valorizing? They’re not paying attention to legislation. They’re far more interested in who was on “The Masked Singer” and if the Vikings can win a play-off game this year.

You have to tell them …, over and over and over … what you’ve done for them. And you have to tell it to them where they are, which is watching cheesy primetime TV and sporting events. You have to rub their faces in what you accomplished for them.

Like the legendary Mayor of Chicago, Dick Daley, always did. No road or bridge in the city was ever repaired i.e. accomplished without a sign next to it saying that he, His Honor Dick Daley, made this happen … for you … much-loved fellow citizen of The Windy City.

I vividly remember back in 2010, sitting in my local roadhouse bar in Wisconsin, listening to a couple neighboring yobs piss and moan about Obama screwing things up and what a loser “that guy” was. Meanwhile, at that very moment, out the window not forty yards away a crew of a dozen guys was trenching in fiber optic cable next to the highway. A vital piece of work done by blue-collar guys a lot like the boys at the bar, and paid for by Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

I also remember someone asking Obama at one point why more people weren’t aware that this was something he signed off on, and maybe wasn’t the eye-glazing name, “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” kind of obscuring the identity of who made these jobs and improvements possible? To which Obama — a Chicago guy, mind you — said something to the effect, “What do you want me to do? Put my name on it?”

To which I screamed at the time, “Yes! Damn it! And a big picture of you pointing at it saying, ‘I did this’.”

Of course if this kind of thing were left to me not only would I slap my picture on every sign next to every construction site I’d add a line reminding “hard working Americans” that their local Republican congress critter and Senator voted against this “accomplishment.”

Afghanistan’s Collapse Was Inevitable

Posted on by

Everything about the situation in Afghanistan is bad, and the way these things work, “ownership” lands in the lap of whoever sits in the Oval Office at the time. So the collapse there will be in Joe Biden’s obituary.

But watching news reports the last few days I kept remembering first-person descriptions of the country and it’s people — especially its men — in New York Times war correspondent Dexter Filkins book, “The Forever War”. Assigned to the country shortly after the US’s post-9/11 invasion, Filkins was merciless in his assessment that the deeply conservative rural population being “recruited” to hunt down Al Qaeda was so impoverished, so illiterate and so feudal in their attachment to their local war lords that they were functionally useless. They had no loyalty whatsoever to far away Kabul, and given a couple hundred dollars they’d switch sides in a heartbeat and go off hunting men they had served with the day before.

The chances that that particular crowd — the essential core of the Taliban — would ever submit to America’s idea of “nation building” by, you know, embracing US-style democracy, by getting a dozen years of classroom education, by marrying a nice girl with a career of her own, by buying a big truck and by starting a family in the suburbs was significantly less than zero.

And that was before Filkins got to the gobsmacking corruption of the educated classes running the so-called government.

Put simply, civilizing Afghanistan, bringing it into the 21st century, was always mission impossible.

The stain on Biden right now is the abandonment of the thousands of Afghanis who served US interests over the past 20 years. That’s inexcusable.

But the the original idea of turning one of — if not the most backward and least educated countries in the world — into a version of Oman or some other “moderate” muslim theocracy was misguided from the get-go. And again, because in actual fact Afghanistan is more a name on a map than an actual, unified country.

Joe Biden will have ‘splainin’ to do when he makes his speech to the country sometime this week. But from what I’ve read, he accepted the CIA version of Afghanistan’s reality — profound ignorance, tribal loyalties, medieval religious zealotry — and not the military’s, who told everyone from George W* to Barack Obama to The Orange God King, (whose eye-roller of a “deal” with the Taliban last year set this collapse in motion), to Biden that progress was being made. That Afghani soldiers could be trained to fight off the Taliban, and protect their daughters, wives and mothers from the Taliban’s, um, “toxic masculinity.”

And maybe they would have if corruption wasn’t so bad they were rarely paid, fed adequately or the Taliban hadn’t offered them a better deal … which the CIA said was always a likely scenario.

Corruption in Afghanistan | CTV News

The argument that the 3000 US troops left in Afghanistan as of this spring was so modest we should have just accepted leaving them there … forever … like we do in Korea and Germany, overlooks the fundamental fact that Afghanistan is barely even a country, and more a collection of mini-empires riddled with religious-inspired ignorance and overall, wildly more corrupt than First World colossi like Korea and Germany.

The scenes coming over the next weeks and months, particularly the degradation of Afghan women back into 13th century subjugation, will be very hard to digest. But if you’re inclined to believe societies get the leadership they deserve, it’s hard to argue that the Afghanis aren’t getting exactly what was always inevitable.

The Times Drops the Big One and a Modest Proposal for a Deal with Donny.

Posted on by

Consider the crowd I travel with, but I was startled by how many people read Bart Gellman’s piece in The Atlantic — the one about all the manners of hell that could play out if/when Trump refuses to concede defeat in November. But I suspect many more will be reading The New York Times deep and epic dive into the fraud and incompetence revealed within the past 20 years of The Donald’s tax records.

If it doesn’t tell us everything we’ve wanted to know about Trump’s finances — and there’s no “specificity” about money that may have come in from Russians — it’s as good as we’re likely to get until the day Cy Vance in New York lays it out in a public trial. It’s a long read, as was the Times’ 2018 Pulitzer-winner detailing the fraud old man Fred Trump and family ran for decades while building up the fortune … that Donald quickly blew on casinos, bad steaks and cheap vodka.

While this latest Times piece confirms virtually everything any clear-headed adult suspected of a carnival act like Trump for the past 30 years, it will likely mean nothing to MAGA nation, assuming they even hear a word about it in their thickly-insulated echo chamber. But the moderator of next Tuesday’s first debate, Chris Wallace of FoxNews, will commit journalistic malpractice if he doesn’t push Trump on what is in the Times story.

That said, my alleged mind has jumped to something else. Something both James Carville and ex-Obama chief of staff and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have been saying over the past few days.

Namely, that all the noise Trump (and Bill Barr) have been making about the “rigged” election and “getting rid of the ballots” and the “continuation” is a tactical device to build leverage for a “deal” with Biden once Trump is defeated. (I’ve written about this before, because I think it is palpable likelihood. Like a layer of flop sweat forming under a bad con man’s comb over.)

As today’s Times story lays out, Trump is in (ridiculously) deep debt, with huge bills coming due in the next couple years, for which he is personally on the hook. And the tab gets bigger if he loses his much-referenced tax audit (over $100 million including penalties), and bigger still if New York and god knows how many stiffed contractors, harassed women, former employees go after him … hard … post the immunity of the White House.

Trump desperately … and I do mean desperately … needs a way out of this looming apocalypse. One way is if he wins the election. But barring that he needs something like blanket immunity from the state of New York. And that would mean striking … a deal.

As I’ve said before, only a hopeless idiot would enter into any deal with Trump that didn’t have airtight conditions and abusive-level penalties.

So this is my proposal:

Trump agrees to concede the election. In return, the Biden administration, in union with Andrew Cuomo and Vance in New York set the following conditions for Trump — and his family, (since Ivanka and the boys appear to have fat chunks of fraud splatter in their laps as well) — to avoid prosecution.

The deal requires Trump to submit to a public interrogation by tax and white collar fraud attorney/prosecutors into any and all of his business dealings, from the time he took over from his father through to today. This would include everything involving the Russians, the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks, and any other thug-ocracy he’s been trolling for loose change.

It also stipulates “the deal” is voided the second Trump lies, “misstates” or “mischaracterizes” any pertinent fact.

Why “public”?

Because the story of Trump and the foundational lies of Trumpism has to be told. It has to be admitted to and confessed by Trump himself. History has to be written by the winners … from the mouth of the loser.

Gellman’s post-election hellscape is based on the premise that “we will never know”. That the fog and stench of Trumpism and Federalist Society Bill Barr-ism is desaigned to prevent anything from ever being truly knowable. (Such is Putin’s game in Russia.)

I believe Adam Schiff for one will eloquently argue that accepting anything less than a full peeling of the Trump myth simply enables a smarter, less louche and preposterous Trump from picking up the pieces and starting all over again. Even the most oblivious and deficient Trumper has to be presented with stark evidence that they’ve been conned … again.

Thirty nine percent will ignore the Times’ tax blockbuster and/or dismiss it as “fake news”, and Biden still needs a solid victory in Florida election night and a landslide overall to neuter any plausible claim Trump and Barr might present.

But the basis is now visibly forming to squeeze Trump into a corner from which his only escape is a Walk of Shame, to reference the entirely apt “Game of Thrones.”

When Tara Met Joe.

Posted on by

While, once again, we have a situation where only two people know for certain what if anything happened, we are all being forced to make a call. Assault or BS?

At this moment in the matter of “Is Joe Biden Just as Much of a Predator as Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump?” the ball is back in accuser Tara Reade’s court. Biden submitted to acceptably tough questioning from (long-time social friend) Mika Brezinski last week and flat out denied he did what Reade is now telling people he did. With that, the contemporary standards for public adjudication now requires Ms. Reade to present herself to some credible news outlet for similar interrogation.

Personally, I’d be happier with Biden if he chose someone like ABCs Martha Raddatz rather than an old friend on a liberal-leaning cable channel. If only because he’d be on higher ground if Reade opts for FoxNews, even if it’s with Chris Wallace and not one of their prime time chuckleheads. But whichever route Reade chooses … she has to step up to the mic.

To date, contrary to the predictable raging of the right-wing echo chamber, the “lamestream media” has now given Reade’s charges substantial and serious investigation. The problem for Reade though is that none have yet been able to come up with anything offering unequivocal proof she’s telling the truth. The best they’ve got to support her story of a 27 year-old incident is the call-in to Larry King’s CNN show in 1993 by a woman who sounds like, and may well have been Reade’s deceased mother. That, and an on-record statement from a Democrat-voting friend who recalls Reade telling her the assault happened. In other words … they heard Reade tell them a story.

But other than that, Reade’s own story has wobbled seriously, as has her brother’s. And that’s before we get to the part where not only doesn’t she have any paperwork from the complaint she says she filed, but has now shifted to saying she “chickened out”, and never actually followed through with an assault complaint.

Knowing how these things go campaign-wise, even if Reade never submits to a conditions-free interview, Republicans will howl and rant about a “liberal cover-up” and “hypocritical double-standard”, at least in relation to Kavanaugh. (With 24 women on-record accusing Trump of everything up to and including rape, he bears no comparison, and his devout, evangelical white base will continue to embrace him as God’s servant on Earth.)

The Kavanaugh “hypocrisy” of course falls apart if you were among those who actually paid attention to that drama. Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford, not only was/is a credible professional with a career to protect, she never made bizarre social media references about the “sensuous image” of Vladimir Putin. What she did do was suck it up, put her face, reputation and family safety on the line in front of an enormous TV audience and submit to cross-interrogation.

More importantly, where Biden is at least saying he will cooperate with a Senate investigation, the investigations into Ford’s accusations and charges of entitled frat-boy behavior on Kavanaugh’s part were strangled at birth. They were thwarted and neutered in the Republican-controlled Senate’s rush to confirm him — to a lifetime seat on the highest court of the land.

The righteous cry to “Believe the women!” has always been fatuous. No sane person goes around uncritically “believing” anything anyone says. The appropriate cry is, “Listen to the women!” That implies granting an accuser a respectful, non-threatening forum to tell the story they believe is important enough that all should hear.

With that in mind, the stage is all yours, Ms. Reade.

Why Is Florida At the Front Of the Pandemic Response Line?

Posted on by

Sometimes, even the great Washington Post buries the lede.  Disguised in a terrific story with a bland headline that only a supply chain manager could love (“Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile”) was this disturbing and fascinating pandemic response story: “Florida Is Only State to Receive Everything It Asked For” 

That’s the salient nugget Political Wire chose to highlight from the Post story, even though it was buried in paragraph twelve of the Post’s 2,500 word tome. Political wire got the headline prioritization right.

While the Post’s headline and lede didn’t promote the most ethically troubling part of its reporting, the three reporters who worked on the article, Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sen, and Beth Reinhard, certainly did great reporting about the differences in how various states say they are being treated by Team Trump during the pandemic response. 

Beyond the widely publicized problems that hotspot states like New York and Washington have been having with the Trump Administration’s response, the Post piece documented how other states also are struggling due to lack of adequate federal help:

Democratic-leaning Massachusetts, which has had a serious outbreak in Boston, has received 17 percent of the protective gear it requested, according to state leaders. Maine requested a half-million N95 specialized protective masks and received 25,558 — about 5 percent of what it sought. The shipment delivered to Colorado — 49,000 N95 masks, 115,000 surgical masks and other supplies — would be “enough for only one full day of statewide operations,” Rep. Scott R. Tipton (R-Colo.) told the White House in a letter several days ago.

Florida has been an exception in its dealings with the stockpile: The state submitted a request on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves, among other supplies — and received a shipment with everything three days later, according to figures from the state’s Division of Emergency Management. It received an identical shipment on March 23, according to the division, and is awaiting a third.

“The governor has spoken to the president daily, and the entire congressional delegation has been working as one for the betterment of the state of Florida,” said Jared Moskowitz, the emergency management division’s director.”

“Florida has been an exception.” While my jaw dropped when I got to that part of the article, the Post shrugged it off:  “Anecdotally, there are wide differences, and they do not appear to follow discernible political or geographic lines.”

How about this for a potential “political line?” Unlike the underserved New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Maine, the fully served Florida is one of the six states widely considered a “battleground state” that will determine the outcome of Trump’s 2020 reelection bid.

“Those will be the six most critical states (Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin),” Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean, told Newsweek.

“There will be others that’ll be important in varying degrees,” he said, “but those will be ones we’ll ultimately look back on and say, ‘How many of them did Democrats win back and were they able to win enough to win the presidency?'”

Given Florida’s undeniable status as a crucial swing state in Trump’s 2020 Electoral College calculus, it’s critically important for any news publication to pose this very legitimate question:  Is lifesaving equipment being distributed based on patients’ needs or political needs?

I’m open to the possibility that there is an epidemiologically sound explanation for why Florida has been at the head of Team Trump’s pandemic response line, while bright blue hot-spot cities like Boston and New York City are not.  Skeptical, but open. But to ignore the obvious political angle, not pose that legitimate question to Trump officials, and bury the Florida exception in paragraph twelve is baffling.

What’s even more puzzling to me is why people like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi apparently aren’t raising the same legitimate question. Because the reckless game Trump seems to be playing here is not just ethically untenable, it’s also politically perilous.

Let’s Play Nightmare Scenario 2020

Posted on by

Well, 2020 has certainly started with a bang, hasn’t it? For months I’ve been telling the (very few) who would listen to buckle up for this one, because “normal” has never been an option. Never mind duelling attack/counter-attacks with Iran, the simple fact of Donald Trump requiring re-election to avoid a torrent of criminal indictments guaranteed a long season of ever-compounding insanities.

So, since dystopian fantasies are all the rage in teen sci-fi and Hollywood, let’s imagine what the next 358 days might be like.

Mid-January: With Congressional Democrats denied access to any intelligence proving the existence of the “imminent attack” necessitating the killing of the Iranian general, the House opens hearings … and as usual is denied access to administration communication and officials, many of whom do however go on “Fox and Friends” to vilify Democrats as “soft on Iran.” Simultaneously, Nancy Pelosi continues to outrage Lou Dobbs and Tucker Carlson by not accepting Mitch McConnell’s conditions for a Senate acquittal trial.

Early February: ISIS forces, no longer constrained by American troops, re-constitute, attack and re-take a major Iraqi city. This follows a mysterious day-long black-out in New York City. With impeachment still in limbo and thousands more U.S. troops re-deployed back to the Middle East, Trump delivers his State of the Union speech amid large-scale anti-war/pro-coniction protests outside the Capitol and around the country. An organized mid-speech walk out by progressive Democrats leads to Trump to extemporize about “America-haters”, for which Laura Ingraham says he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

March: Simultaneous terror attacks on U.S. government targets in South America and Asia and a Trump Hotel in the Phillipines are all Trump needs to demand a large-scale attack on Iranian military and government targets in Iran itself. Several key Pentagon offcials refuse to obey the orders and resign. Their replacements carry out the bombings, which kill hundreds of civilians as well. Iranians close-ranks around the once-reviled ultra-conservative religious government. Meanwhile, the Democratic race, post-Super Tuesday, has boiled down to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, with Sanders the standard bearer for impassioned anti-war activists. Bolstered by long-delayed court rulings, Pelosi and House Democrats add new articles of bribery to impeachment charges. But the Supreme Court rules along straight ideological lines that White House officials do not have to obey House subpoenas.

April: After demanding NATO allies join the U.S. build-up of forces in preparation for a major attack on Iran. Only Montenegro agrees, at which point Trump announces the U.S. is leaving NATO, a decision Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh and Vladimir Putin hail as a “courageous, principled stance.” This is followed by a series of large-scale hacks, brown-outs and cyber-corruptions of major U.S. corporate infrastructure. An actual invasion is left in limbo.

June: Three oil tankers are attacked and sunk, blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices in the U.S. spike to $5.50 a gallon. In retaliation, Trump orders attacks on all major Iranian military ports. The U.N condemnas Trump’s “reckless adventurism”. Trumps withdraws the U.S. from the U.N. Democrats fume and “call for” restrictions on his war powers but are, us usual, ignored by McConnell’s Senate. Despite a fever pitch of anti-war fervor, and the deaths of dozens of U.S. troops in skirmishes in Iraq, Joe Biden wraps up the Democratic nomination under the familiar cloud of “inside power players” freezing out Sanders. Bernie’s supporters denounce the system and mount a write-in third party candidacy for him.

August: Full-scale, violent riots break out at Trump’s nomination convention. Several demonstrators are killed, hundreds injured in the police/security response. Sean Hannity suggests that demonstrators were actually “Iranian agents and sympathizers.” Water purification systems in over a dozen U.S. cities fail simultaneously. ISIS attacks and seizes a Carnival cruise liner in the Mediterranean and holds 3000 Americans hostage. The impeachment deadlock is broken when Pelosi and McConnell agree to two witnesses and limited questioning. Trump is quickly acquitted and Brian Kilmeade appears on the “Fox and Friends” set wearing a red, white and blue “exonerated” t-shirt.

September: After a 21-day siege, Trump orders a SEALs/Special Forces rescue of the cruise ship hostages. ISIS terrorists blow up the ship. Only a couple hundred passengers survive. Trump, riding hardened support among his base, who are filling is twice-weekly rallies in West Virginia and Alabama to over-flowing, declares all-out war on Iran to ecstatic cheering. Democrats demand a formal Congressonal inquiry and vote on war, but on the advice of Bill Barr, Trump declares he has “total power” to “protect America” and ignores them. It goes to the Supreme Court. Anti-war rioting becomes a constant feature in every major American city.

October: On a straight-line ideological vote the Supreme Court rules Trump does not need Congressional authorization for a war against Iran. Rioting takes place outside the Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies. Trump nominates Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to replace her. McConnell orders a “fast track” confirmation. Polling shows Trump — who has refused any debate not moderated by Lou Dobbs — leads polling with 41% to 37% for Biden and 20% for Sanders.

November: Election day. Hundreds of computerized polling precincts across the country report hackings, breakdowns and “wildly erroneous” tabulations, yet Biden wins by two electroal votes. Trump though refuses to concede. The latest cyber attack cripples VISA and American Express, rendering them unable to process transactions. Washington D.C. endures a three-day power outage. Bill Barr meets with the Supreme Court to decide how to rule on the election melt-down. After more than a month of deliberating, marked by more demonstrations and rioting, the Court rules to void all election results. The decision about when to hold new elections is left to Congress. Pelosi and McConnell begin discussions … which linger well into 2021.

Until then Trump remains in office.

Against Trump the “Alpha Factor” Matters More Than Ever.

Posted on by
Yeah, it’s a new mugshot. Trump has aged me twenty years in three.

It’s a simple fact of human psychology that people see leadership in a lot of ways that have nothing to do with integrity, good judgment and basic decency. History is littered with characters who possessed none of those virtues yet were elevated to positions of power and influence because … well because … they create a special tingle in their audience.

As much as Democrats want to jockey for position by going Deeper Into the Weeds Than Thou over sub-sections of Obamacare, the lamentable but indisputably true fact of almost every kind of existence, especially politics, is that you have to make the people see and feel something special in you. Voters, no matter how wonky and nerdy and policy-driven, want you to project back on them an image of “alpha” … whether male or female.

As the years go by I’m more and more convinced that brain chemistry and brain structure is one of the most credible explanations for the tribal division between liberals and conservatives the world over. There’s nothing racial or ethnic about it. But there is an evolutionary aspect, I truly believe.

That said, liberals, (which does not describe every Democratic voter), do react very differently to the “strong man” concept of leadership than conservatives. In my humble opinion we lefties do inject our choice of leaders with a disproportionate factor of wonky bona fides than typical conservatives. How exactly does he/she plan to get us to universal health care? How “criminal” should it be to enter the U.S. illegally?

But it is the rare, wonky liberal who doesn’t still react, instinctively, like a man-ape on the African savannah, to the feel of a “leader.” I give you, Barack Obama, as opposed to Hillary Clinton.

Obama had it all. Everything about him projected that rare but essential quality of, “I got this.” Call it “The Cool Factor”. Call it “charisma”. He had and has it. Hillary didn’t. She projected “competent management”, which is great if you’re going to run Buffalo Wild Wings, but not enough if you’re trying to stir positive-to-rapturous emotions in 130 million potential voters.

Which brings us to a key dilemma in our current environment. While there is no question whatsoever that 42% of the public feels a once-in-a-hundred-years alpha male leader quality pulsing off Donald Trump, there’s no one yet among the Democrats emitting a similar quality to possible Democratic voters.

It goes without saying the specific qualities attracting conservatives to Trump and liberals to … whoever … are dramatically, qualitatively different. Therein lies your deep tribal divide.

But one component is, again without question IMHO, the factor of confidence, which is fundamental to establishing dominance. Confidence instills the same in those seeking to be led well. It imbues a calm that allows our still primitive emotions to relax so our brains can sort out the various options to problem-solving. And it soothes us.

Specifically, this is another problem with Joe Biden. There’s a “vigor” factor involved in “confidence” and humans’ choice of leaders. Very little about Joe projects vigor or, “I got this.”

It’s also the quality still missing from my pet fascination, Pete Buttigieg.

(Very) smart. Thoughtful. Expressive of good judgment. A calm and imperturbable demeanor. Yes. All that is there and eminently valuable. But “alpha male”? Mmmmm, not yet. In the parlance of show biz, Mayor Pete needs to make himself “bigger.” But liberals can’t do bigger like Trump does bigger. Strutting around like an absurd, obese Mussolini courts immediate, richly deserved mockery. The liberal alpha also has to express authenticity to acquire the ineffable magic of “alpha.” That’s tougher. You’re not allowed to fake it.

As for the women, Kamala Harris may have it. But like Buttegieg, it ain’t there yet. Unfortunately for Minnesota, that “alpha magic” is something Amy Klobuchar lacks entirely. With her, we’re back to selling “competent management.” And there’s no inspiration that comes with that.

We tend to forget that the “alpha-ness” of Barack Obama wasn’t fully formed until he began winning. After that point we saw and heard much more of him. Winning, which is to say actually demonstrating dominance, is a critical feedback loop firing human neurons. “He has done it!”, we think, and swoon. “He will always do it!”

This week’s Democratic debates certainly didn’t do anything to establish anyone’s “alpha-ness”. But let’s thin the herd and spend more than 30 seconds per topic with these people. A couple of them may have the instinct to convey, “I got this.”

(P.S. I’m a big fan of Ezra Klein’s podcast. Via his Vox network. Here are links to two recent shows.

One with Pete Buttegieg, which includes a very interesting conversation about structural reform, all the real world obstacles to it, but the need for it to be framed and regularly reaffirmed for voters.

And another with U of Delaware prof and author Danna Young. Klein is clearly struggling with the “biological” explanation for tribalism, but here again he and his guest pull right up to the line trying to explain it. )

It ain’t so, Joe

Posted on by

Joe Biden is stuck in a bygone era where Democrats were desperate to be accepted by wealthy donors.  That’s at the root of his recent comments that he opposed “demonizing” the wealthy.

“’Remember, I got in trouble with some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side, because I said, you know, what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people. Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who’s made money,’ Biden told about 100 well-dressed donors at the Carlyle Hotel on New York’s Upper East Side, where the hors d’oeuvres included lobster, chicken satay and crudites. 
 
‘Truth of the matter is, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done,’ Biden said. ‘We can disagree in the margins. But the truth of the matter is, it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living would change. Nothing would fundamentally change,’ he said.”

Just to clarify, contemporary Democrats are mostly talking about restoring tax levels for the wealthy to, at most, something like the Clinton-era levels, a time when the wealthy still were getting plenty rich.  That’s hardly “demonizing.”  If Joe doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t belong in the race. 

At a time when the United States has the worst wealth inequality since 1928, in no small part due to massive tax giveaways to the wealthy under Donald Trump and George W. Bush, a correction is obviously warranted.  If Joe doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t belong in the race.

Moreover, restoring tax fairness through progressive tax reform is the only real way to responsibly finance badly needed help for families, children, students, patients, workers and the environment. Democrats can’t live up to their progressive values if they don’t make those investments.  If Joe doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t belong in the race. 

Policy substance aside, this episode reveals a dangerous political blindspot, and/or insufficient awareness that everything you say anywhere in 2019 is very much “on the record.”  Characterizing core progressive ideas as somehow “demonizing” the wealthy is spectacularly dumb primary politics. It also forfeits perhaps the strongest issue Democrats have for running against a corrupt billionaire and his congressional apologists, whose entire agenda has been designed to further enrich billionaires at the expense of the middle class and future generations of Americans. 

If Joe doesn’t understand that, he especially doesn’t belong in the race.

And you know what? After reading Biden’s remarks, I’m pretty concerned that the 76-year old, who has been an elected official for 48-years, during political eras that were very different from the current era, doesn’t sufficiently understand any of those 2019 realities.

Joe Biden Serves No Purpose in 2020

Posted on by

Since most elections are run on the strategy of selling the biggest possible contrast between yourself and your opponent, I see even less reason to give Joe Biden another thought.

While Biden is a stark contrast to Donald Trump in terms of respect for truth, personal integrity and an interest in people other than himself, too much about him is attached to another time, a time rapidly disappearing in the rear view mirror. And we’re not just talking his old school, creepy uncle squeezing and sniffing and kissing of women he doesn’t know particularly well.

Biden has been around so long DC and the media are clogged with people who have been up close with the ex-Senator and Veep. None of them describe him as sexually predatory. To date no one has retold a tale of Joe pinching butts, trying to talk an intern into a one-on-one “counseling session” in his hotel room or ruining anyone’s career because they declined his offer for some free-range canoodling.

His style is more the sage and avuncular shtick. The wiseman/tribal elder forever ready to console and demonstrate empathy … personally.

But the thing is, that kind of paternalistic vibe gets more out of step with modern America with each passing day. Maybe it’s true that the Trump-voting blue-collar crowd in the Rust Belt still has a lingering affinity for old, straight white guys who can find Scranton on a map. But the energy driving  Democrats today is — I’m pretty sure — fueled by desire for a radical, dramatic change on wide range of topics, from women’s rights to tax fairness to climate change, and as top-of-the-ticket names there are at least a half-dozen better options than Biden already on the menu.

More and more I’m betting that Democrats in general are going to migrate toward a candidate most unlike Trump. Young and vigorous instead of old and decadent. Smart and well-read instead of intellectually lazy. Honorable instead of morally repugnant. Optimistic instead of fear-mongering. Whether this also means female rather than an appalling sexist [bleep]hole, I can’t say yet. But it’s trending in all those directions.

The desire for “the candidate” best able to drive a wave that not only defeats Trump but takes out another chunk of the Republican wall of obstruction is seen in virtually every poll out there today. The underlying attribute to that yet-to-be-determined person is the power to inspire.

Inspiration of course is weird, ephemeral thing. It’s a highly aspirational emotion. Voters project all sorts of hopes and dreams on such a person. And, somewhat ironically, that projection is easier to do the less they know about the person. Hang around the game 20, 30, 40 years and everybody knows everything about you and no one can project anything “dreamy” on you anymore. What they like about you is that you’re familiar.

Despite their current (name recognition-driven) standing in the polls, my bet is that Biden’s “known knowns” (to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld) also apply to Bernie Sanders. Both of the grand old men have the temporary benefit of affection largely based on the fact people know them. (There’s more aspiration attached to Bernie.)

But — prediction here — all that will begin to shift, and quickly, once revved-up, mad-as-hell voters realize that there are younger people, better attuned to the culture of the moment, (and in terms of the looming horrors of climate change, likely to still be alive in 2040 when the [bleep] really hits the fan), standing at the next podium over on the debate stage.

Do I have anyone particular in mind? Yes and no. There are so many Democrats out on the field at the moment it’s nearly impossible to get a full sense of each of their “inspirational” qualities, or lack thereof. But yeah, with every appearance he makes, Mayor Pete Buttegieg does more to elevate himself as someone who has thought well and thoroughly about the stuff that matters, even to a Boomer geezer like me.

Here’s his latest.

One thing for certain is that Donald Trump continues to destroy the value of tradition in politics. So let’s not expect a traditional candidate running a traditional campaign is going to flush him out office.

 

 

Handicapping the Democrats 18 Months Out

Posted on by

[Correction included]. Even if his name is not mentioned directly, every Democratic candidate entering the 2020 race is being measured and labeled on how much of a response they are to Donald Trump, or “Trumpism”. Which is to say, what degree of repudiation are they offering? Total? A bit here and there? Whatever they can get from “across the aisle”?

As of this morning Bernie Sanders, now 77 years old and grumpy as ever, is back in the hunt. Say what you will about The Bern, he isn’t shy about calling it as he (and most of us see it). Trump is a career low-life and criminal (laundering money for Russian gangsters to sustain his “brand” being the least of it), and establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are guilty as sin for greasing the skids for every absurd-to-vile thing Trump has promoted.

Personally, I don’t feel the need to throw myself on any bandwagon (or funeral pyre) this early in the circus performance. But I am telling myself to keep the radar up for what people like Yuval Harari think of as a fundamental breakdown of traditional politics. In other words, we could be seeing a large-scale disruption on the left in response to the disruption of the chaos and criminality of Trump and enabling Republicans on the right.

Put another way, it may be a feeling among comparatively well-informed and rational people who believe “the old way” is too timid and under-powered for the threats against decency and logic presented by Trumpism.

I can’t say how real it all is at the moment. But to mangle Gertrude Stein, there’s definitely some kind of there … there.

The wag-nerds on Nate Silver’s 538 podcast have broken down the Democratic field (as of last week) into a small handful of “lanes”. For example, our gal, Amy Klobuchar, and Kirsten Gillibrand are described as running in “the beer lane”, trumpeting mostly unexciting, traditional values that have satisfied collegial Democrats for decades. By contrast, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, are described as contenders in “the wine lane”, riling up the passions of mostly well-educated (and female) voters. That crowd can also be described as upscale, (in terms of smarts if not money) and extraordinarily upset with the numbskull, mysogynistic antics of the right as any specific policy position.

But then, by way of fine-parsing, 538 suggests a possible candidate like Beto O’Rourke, defies both of those appeals by splitting the difference with a “craft beer lane”. You know, lots of traditional stuff — blue jeans, rock’ n roll, drive through hamburgers, rural Texas, pickup trucks — all whipped together with a thick, rich hipster sauce of “stop the [bleeping] madness!”

As I say, I have no specific favorite in the hunt here 18 months or whatever before the next election. But I’ll do a bit of my own lane handicapping anyway.

In the “Forget About It” lane. Tulsi Gabbard. Too much conspicuous opportunism. Do four years of serious reading and get back to us.

The “Been There, Done That” lane. Joe Biden and Bernie. The Bud Light crowd loves you in Scranton, Joe. I get that. But the game has changed since you were in your prime, and that was 20 years ago. And Bernie: love ya too, man. But 77 is way past the “serve by” date in modern politics. Your job this time around is to keep goosing the actual contenders to keep the fire and faith.

The “A Little Too Cool for School” lane. Cory Booker. Kind of like what I say about people who want to be cops; the fact they want it so bad is the main reason to disqualify them. No human, much less any successful politician from New Jersey, can possibly be as immaculate as Booker purports to be.

The “No, Just No” lane. Kirsten Gillibrand. The creepy bane of the #MeToo movement. Way too many of the obnoxious “beliefs” she needed to play upstate have done a miraculously 180 since elevating to the Senate. Also, for so many reasons too obvious to mention: Michael Bloomberg.

The “If This Was 1956, Then Maybe” lane. Klobuchar. Being a darling of George Will, Republican colleagues and the Wall Street Journal editorial page doesn’t make my pissed-off little heart go pitter-patter. When you can’t quite say you’re in full favor of a medicare access for all on Obamacare I get an even worse case of morbid eye-roll. [*]

The “I Like What Yer Sayin’, Dude. But Yer Style Needs Some Work” lane. Sherrod Brown. Otherwise known as The Most Rumpled Man in the Senate. Unlike Amy delivering Minnesota’s 10 whopping electoral votes, Brown pulling in Ohio would be serious numbers in 2020. Wonk liberals know the guy and like what they hear. But it’s very hard to imagine any dispassionate independent spending 90 seconds listening to him.

The “You’re Checking My Boxes, Now Sell It” lane. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke. Harris has the feel of the front-runner, based on a near perfectly staged roll-out, and she’s got an interesting mix of prosecutorial dagger and pop-culture crede. Warren, while on the cusp of aging-out at 69, has demonstrated the mix of righteous indignation and legislative bona fides that play like sweet music to liberal ears. And O’Rourke has demonstrated a level of energy and charisma above and beyond anyone else out there.

But he’s got to, A: Decide, and B: Convince a whole lot of women like my friend at a dinner party the other night who announced to the crowd, “I’m never voting for another man!”

[*] The early version of this post suggested Klobuchar wasn’t on board with at least a public option into Obamacare, which she is. My mistake. (To many minds “public option” and “medicare access for all” are very nearly the same thing. But she’s being very careful here.)

 

 

 

 

Why Progressives Have Every Right To Question Hillary Clinton

Posted on by

Hillary_is_ready_for_HillaryA lot of liberals I know are privately not all that sure if they are “Ready for Hillary,” as the Clinton boosters put it.

How can a good progressive not want to elect the first woman to the White House? If we’re not “ready,” that must mean we are sexist, right?

Hillary Clinton is running for President, not just precedent. Progressives have to make sure she truly is the best person to promote the progressive agenda over the next eight years.

This progressive has questions, and I’m not apologizing for them. Here are a few:

Is Hillary progressives’ best messenger? John Kerry.  Al Gore.  Michael Dukakis. They are all fine people, brilliant policy minds, and relatively unpersuasive on the stump. Consequently, progressives lost with them.  The 2008 vintage Hillary Clinton fell into the same category for me – relatively robotic, condescending and insincere in tone.

After President Obama, progressives are spoiled on this front. During the last two presidential elections and debates over the stimulus, health care reform and other issues, Democrats have re-learned what we learned during Bill Clinton’s time in the White House — what a huge advantage it is to have a talented Persuader-In-Chief.

Having this concern doesn’t mean I’m a misogynist. It means I want progressives to win arguments. After watching Hillary Clinton on stage for a long time, I’m not at all convinced she possess that talent.

Is Hillary a hair-triggered neocon?   In the wake of President Obama finally cleaning up George W. Bush’s messes in Iraq and Afghanistan, liberals are understandably wary of more catastrophic preemptive wars promoted by neocons.  Therefore, it should give progressives pause that neocon Robert Kagan reportedly advises Ms. Clinton on foreign policy and military issues, and considers her a kindred spirit. Here is what Kagan told the New York Times.

“If she pursues a policy, which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that…”

Because of disturbing reports like this, and because Hillary voted to authorize the disastrous Iraq War, progressives have every right to question her very carefully before blindly endorsing her.

Will Hillary Take On Wall Street? As a U.S. Senator from New York, Hillary has built very close ties on Wall Street. She is no Elizabeth Warren in either tone or substance. Politico recently reported what corporate types who know Hillary well have concluded about her:

Two dozen interviews about the 2016 race with unaligned GOP donors, financial executives and their Washington lobbyists turned up a consistent — and unusual — consolation candidate if Bush demurs, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t recover politically and no other establishment favorite gets nominated: Hillary Clinton.

The darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation.

At a time when the country has the most income inequality it has had since 1928, I’m just not too thrilled with the idea of electing the corporate lobbyists’ favorite Democrat.

An unpersuasive communicator?  A darling of the hair triggered neocons?  The Wall Street lobbyists’ favorite Democrat?  No, progressives should not automatically pronounce themselves “ready” for that kind of leader.  These are not small issues for progressives. The rumpled septuagenarian socialist Bernie Sanders is hardly an electric personality, but he is getting an increasing amount of interest from progressives, because of these types of concerns about the front-runner.

To earn the right to win the Democratic presidential election, Hillary Clinton needs to prove to progressives that she has improved as a communicator since the 2008 race, explain in detail what kinds of military actions she would and wouldn’t support, and lay out a detailed plan for reigning in corporate abuses and reducing income inequality.

If Hillary Clinton doesn’t do those things in the coming months, I will make no apologies for supporting an alternative. (Oh, and I’m also extremely ready for Senator Elizabeth Warren, if she changes her mind in coming months.)  At the same time, if Hillary does those things, I then would be ready for her to be my party’s nominee for President, and precedent.

Note:  This post was featured in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.