November 22, 2019--Adam Schiff

Watching the Democratic debate the other night, continuing to be decidedly unimpressed with the 10 candidates still standing (plus the two hovering in the wings--Michael Bloomberg and Duval Patrick) I wondered if these are the best contenders we can come up with. With at least 330 million Americans, can't we do better? Much better?

I continue to have the fantasy that Michelle Obama will enter the race, convinced she could win in a walk. And wouldn't it be sweet revenge to have an Obama defeat Trump.

About this I've taken a lot of grief from readers and friends who think I'm crazy. Maybe I am. 

But I have another thought--Adam Schiff for president!

He's in his 18th year in Congress and we know from how he has been handling the impeachment process that he is brilliant and blessed with eloquence and practical intelligence. In his almost-too-many years in Congress he has played significant roles in issues ranging from press freedom to the Saudi intervention in Yemen. On the other hand he supported the invasion of Iraq.

And he's a marathoner and triathlete.

Think about it. We could do worse. In fact, it looks as if we are.

July 1, 2019--18.1 Million

A number of friends have given me grief recently, accusing me of being too "gloomy" and obsessed with what I have been writing about the Democratic candidates seeking the 2020 nomination.

I will admit to being obsessed with this, an endlessly long seven months before the Iowa caucuses. Not necessarily a good thing, but since it is urgent that we nominate someone who has the best chance to unseat Trump I feel it is none-too-soon to, well, be at least a little obsessed.

If Biden is the one, so be it; if now after Thursday's debate Kamala Harris is the one, even better.

My gloom, though, has been that neither they nor any of the other frontrunners thus far--for example, Elizabeth Warren (a rising star) or Bernie Sanders (a waning star)--lift my spirits when I imagine them going toe-to-toe with Trump.

But then there were the 18.1 million who watched the debate live Thursday night--the Harris-Biden night--which make me feel less gloomy.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the public has the good sense not to pay serious attention to national elections until after Labor Day just two months before the actual voting. And so to have a record number tuning in to the debate two months before the first of the two Labor Days  prior to the voting suggests an inordinate level of interest in the Democratic campaign on the part of the electorate.

As a result I feel my gloom lifting.

If you add the 15.3 million who watched the first half of the debate (let's call it the Warren half since most observers feel she won) that means a total of 33.4 million watched both halves, easily surpassing the record 24 million viewers who looked in on the first of the Trump debates on Fox in 2016 as his popularity was peaking.

This is significant since pollsters say that most important when attempting to predict voting outcomes of those voters most likely to actually turn out to vote are the number of "engaged" or enthusiastic voters. One measure of this is who pays attention and who gets involved early in the process. By this measure it may in fact be looking better for Democrats than I have been fretfully speculating.

I promise to try to cheer up and even write a few more happy pieces at the request of my friend John. Pieces, he urges, not about politics. And so for Tuesday I will try to finish a piece I'm working on about when as a 10-year-old I turned my family's East Flatbush apartment into a sweatshop.

Kamala Harris

May 14, 2019--Checked Out

A week into our Maine season one thing I noticed is that hardly anyone wants to talk politics. Not even many of the people we know who are Democrats and hate the idea that Trump is our president.

Mention Trump, mention Mueller, mention Mitch McConnell, and people avert their eyes and quickly change the subject. 

Mention Biden, mention the Green New Deal, mention Bernie and people want to talk about all the rain we're having.

I get it.

Everyone's exhausted, including me. Everyone is frustrated, everyone wants distractions. I'm embarrassed to admit that we've become obsessed with "Jeopardy" and the current superstar contestant, James Holzhauer, who has won almost $2.0 million. 

Many of the people I talk with want to ignore what's going on in Washington and the wider world. It's too depressing. I feel the same way.

I haven't watched "Morning Joe" since arriving. Never-mind Rachael

This is making me nervous. It's one thing if there's Trump Fatigue. One recovers from that. He wears you out, you take a step backward to recharge, lay low, and after a few days get back to exposing his lies, his dangerous moves, and you reengage in the struggle to find a Democratic challenger who can take him on and win in 2020.

On the other hand, what has me really worried is that he may be more than wearing us out but could be winning.

That his will to survive, his manic energy is a force of nature that some may feel is fundamentally irresistible. Perhaps transformative.

If I'm right about this, if I'm reading these vibes correctly, we need to make the effort to rouse ourselves and get back into the struggle. The consequences of allowing ourselves to be beaten down, of relenting, are too cataclysmic, too consequential to justify checking out. If only for a few weeks.

Then there is the good news--we have more than a year to get done what needs to get done. The polls suggest that some Trump supporters are experiencing their own version of Trump Fatigue. In this case, from their perspective, it is even more perilous because they have nowhere to go but with Trump. If they run out of interest and patience with him there is no one to replace them. Politically, they are the soft underbelly of his followers. They aren't making any more of themselves. Their's is a small pool that has no capacity for replenishment.

The bottom line, though, is that we had better keep our act together and pace ourselves for the long haul. After November 3, 2020 there will be time to rest and recoup. And hopefully celebrate.

April 29, 2019--Biden Steps In It

Joe Biden for me is the Democrat most likely to be able to defeat Trump in 2020. Perhaps the only Democrat. 

His announcement Thursday began well with a three minute video posted on line where Biden, announcing his candidacy, powerfully and persuasively said that at stake in 2020 is a struggle for nothing less than the "soul of the nation." And by not-so-subtle implication demonstrated he is best positioned to take on Trump on that issue and win.

But later in the day, without prompting, he revealed he had called Anita Hill to express regret about the way the confirmation hearings he chaired had gone when Clarence Thomas was being considered for a seat on the Supreme Court. He acknowledged that the conversation with her hadn't gone well. 

He really needed to call Anita Hill a couple of weeks ago to, sort of, apologize, after 28 years of silence and inform the public about it on the day he launched his campaign? 

Not that she doesn't deserve an apology for what he, in 1991, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee that was conducting confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas allowed his colleague senators to get away with as they trashed her credibility and personal reputation. 

It was one African-American women facing 15 white men, who, among other things, mocked her.  She had stepped forward to courageously accuse Thomas of sexually harassing her when he was her supervisor at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The way Biden allowed her to be mistreated is the worst blot on his record so it is understandable that, as he considered running for the third time for president, he would be thinking about how this would play out for him politically. Perhaps, too, he was thinking about an inner need to try to make heart-felt amends.

He knew it would be perilous to begin his campaign with an "apology tour" that would inevitably be more than about the Thomas hearings--it would also include needing to explain away his support for increasing the mandatory jail time for drug dealers and, more disturbing, why he voted to endorse the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Republicans love beating up on what they perceive to be wimpy liberals' alleged inability to be tough. Apologizing, therefore, is about as bad a thing a Democrat aspiring to be commander-in-chief can do. Girls apologize, real men plow ahead.

So what was Joe up to?

Whatever the range of his intentions and feelings about calling Anita Hill they must have included the hope that she would grant him absolution and, as a result, his problems with women who have long memories about his chauvinism would be one troubling thing he would no longer have to worry about in the middle of the night when he and his goblins are churning.

So what did he wind up with as a result of misunderstanding, miscalculating the depth of Anita Hill's residual issues and feelings? 

Did he think she would casually put aside the meaning of the defining moment of her life to throw him a cheap lifeline? This should have been an easy one--if he were serious, she said, he should have expressed more than "regret" for "what she endured."

What he tried to get away with is the classic non-apology apology. Not that he was sorry for his behavior. Instead he said that he was sorry she felt that way. Putting it off on her while taking responsibility only for how he made her feel. She told him this and refused to say never mind. The time for that for women is over.

So on this special day for Biden, he made one of his famous gaffs. Quite a big one. Friday's New York Times had his announcement as its front page lead--"Biden Joins Race, Invoking Battle for Nation's Soul." But abutting it, stepping all over his launch, was the story, "Biden's 'Regret' for Hill's Pain Fails to Soothe."

None of this is fatal, but being clueless on his first day suggests not just insensitivity but poor strategic thinking. 

More of this kind of behavior, though, could leave moderate Democrats and Independents bereft.

April 5, 2019--Plenty Gay

In a must-read opinion piece in the New York Times, openly gay columnist Frank Bruni writes about how some gay activists are asking if openly gay presidential candidate Pete Guttigieg is gay enough to garner support among homosexual voters to win the Democratic nomination.

The concept of "gay enough," Bruni pushes back, is anathema to gay people of his generation who spent their formative years fighting the homophobic perception that gay people display stereotypical mannerisms that mark them, stigmatize them as something abnormal. 

Bruni writes--

"I’m worried because there was an actual mini-debate on the left recently over whether Pete Buttigieg is gay enough. Do his whiteness, upper-middle-class background and Harvard and Oxford degrees nullify his experience as a minority and undercut his status as a trailblazer? This question is out there, in both senses of that phrase."

He continues--

"It’s nonnegotiable that Democrats hold their presidential aspirants to high standards on issues of racial justice, gender equality and more. It’s crucial that the party nominate someone who can credibly represent its proudly diverse ranks. But it’s also important that the party not demand a degree of purity that nobody attains." [My italics]

Bruni chides those on the left who consider Guttigieg, just "another white man" because it is alleged "he doesn’t come across as particularly gay, meaning . . . what? That he lacks stereotypical mannerisms? That his voice isn’t high-pitched? I’m kind of floored, because I and other gay people around my age (54) or older spent most of our lives educating people about the bigotry and inaccuracy of those very stereotypes and trumpeting the message--the truth!--that gay people can be every bit as buttoned-down and strait-laced as, well, Pete Buttigieg! Now his divergence from those stereotypes is deemed remarkable and in need of dissection?"

He continues--

"Democrats should reclaim the word 'freedom' from Republicans, who have tried to reserve it for their brand."

In an interview, Guttigieg told Bruni--

“You’re not free if you have crushing medical debt. You’re not free if you’re being treated differently because of who you are. What has really affected my personal freedom more: the fact that I don’t have the freedom to pollute a certain river, or the fact that for part of my adult life, I didn’t have the freedom to marry somebody I was in love with? We’re talking about deep, personal freedom.”

Bruni concludes--

"He sounds sufficiently gay to me. His powers of empathy seem plenty informed by his sexual orientation. And we need to stop making assumptions about how well someone can understand and address what minorities go through based on his or her looks or vocal inflections or anything of the sort. That’s the quintessence of prejudice. And it’s the antithesis of enlightenment."

Then, the question is, viewed from 30,000 feet, how do Democrats properly vet their presidential aspirants without cannibalizing them? 

Absolutist Dems are afflicted by a propensity to consume those with whom they disagree. Especially this election cycle, that is a ruinous strategy. If we can't figure out how to avoid this intraparty self-sabotage, get ready for four more years of Trump.

March 25, 2019--Barr Report: Blessing In Disguise?

To say I am disappointment is an understatement. 

I was hoping that the Mueller Report massaged and published by Attorney General William Barr would find that Trump and his gang conspired with Russians to undermine the 2016 election and that Trump like Nixon before him would be found to have directly led the effort to cover up that collusion, which in turn would mean that they obstructed justice. And thus the denouement would be history.

For Mueller and Barr to conclude there was no such conspiracy made it effectively moot that there was obstruction of justice because if there is no crime to obstruct there can be no justice to obstruct.

I say this in spite of the fact that it appears that Mueller, in fact, concluded that it's 50/50 that Trump was involved in obstruction. That it was Barr himself who disagreed with that assessment and "determined," after barely 48 hours, that Mueller was wrong and that there was no obstruction crime. Thus, the Mueller Report morphed into the Barr Report.

Out of this disappointment, what I next have to say may be more spin and wishful thinking than the truth.

And so on. 

As many have said and I have asserted here for well over a year, politically Trump in 2020 would be best dealt with by the voting public. He would not, perhaps should not be driven out of office by the press or even by the impeachment process. Yes, with Democrats controlling the House there was and still is the possibility that Trump could be impeached, but with the sycophantic Senate there is no way he would be voted out of office. To round up 67 votes for that is more than impossible.

So the focus has to be on nominating someone who can beat Trump in the Electoral College (he will again lose the popular vote) and for voters to work hard starting today to defeat him at the polls.

All polls show that voters do not care about collusion with Russia. A majority do not want to see the country obsessed with impeachment. Indeed, realizing this, Nancy Pelosi had her caucus back off from talking about impeachment 24/7. She knows from having lived through the Clinton impeachment how that is a losing strategy. It's likely that Trump, as with Clinton, would see his approval rating rise as he, victim-like, gets dragged through the process.

Voters are concerned about health care, the economic future of their families, the larger economy and how it is being permanently affected by artificial intelligence. They want to see the end of endless wars, the changing climate confronted, and of course education.

The media hates covering these issues because they are boring compared to the soap opera that Trump engenders. Would most people rather talk about Stormy Daniels or how much debt their college-age children are amassing? 

But with investigations and congressional hearings likely to slip back a notch or two in importance and entertainment value after a couple of weeks of us collectively exhausting ourselves with March Madness and Barr v. Mueller, with Democratic presidential candidates shifting focus to the issues that voters actually care about, that will present opportunities for them to scrutinize Trump's policy failures. How, for example, his tax cuts not only mainly benefitted the very wealthy but that they contributed to record budget deficits and the national debt reached an all time high on Trump's watch. Also, and related, that we recently saw the largest trade deficit in history.

We'll have the chance in the public eye to debate expanding heath care coverage and how to confront climate change. Potentially all good issues for Dems who, with less Mueller on the air, might be able to break through and actually talk about their ideas for how to deal with them.

Again, spin? Wishful thinking? Perhaps but this is what I'm thinking.

March 21, 2019--Mayor Pete

I didn't have enough time yesterday to write something. But I did have time to get to know more about South Bend, Indiana's mayor and Democratic challenger, Pete Buttigieg.

I did some reading about him and indulged myself by watching on YouTube his appearance on "Morning Joe" and his town meeting on CNN via CNN On Demand.

If you haven't seen these I urge you to do so and after that tell me if there is a better candidate for Democrats to nominate to run against Trump, of for that matter serve as president.

And, if you agree, urgently send him some money.

I know he is a very long shot for various reasons, but so was Barack Obama.