February 2, 2016--A Win Is A Win

After last night's results, I should drop out of the prognostication business.

Though I got Hillary right--she squeaked by by about a half a percent--I totally missed what was happening among Republicans.

Ted Cruz came in first?

Marco Rubio a very close third, almost leaving Trump in his dust?

What does this say about Iowa voters who had half-a-year to think about what to do?

How did Cruz sell himself as an alternative to the "system" when he and his wife are embedded parts of it? Princeton, Harvard, Goldman Sachs, the U.S. Senate? Bankrolled by billionaires?

Was it all about religion in a state that is made up of 60 percent evangelicals?

Maybe Iowa, as it has been in the past, is a niche electorate and that things will become more predictable and understandable in New Hampshire and beyond.

I have to do a lot of recalibrating.

It's hard to think that Cruz will win in NH or many places beyond.

And I am consoling myself by remembering that the last two GOP Iowa caucuses were won by Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.

A couple of things may be clear--

Trump will not win the nomination. Half of what he's about is his self-proclaimed winning. These results undermine that.

Cruz also will not win the nomination. I am certain the phones were ringing all last night from the Koch Brothers and Sheldon from Las Vegas, coalescing at last around a so-called "establishment candidate. One they can support and own--

Marco Rubio will be offered that deal as he has shown in the past that he is comfortable being supported by billionaires (car-dealer Norman Braham in his case) and has no problem answering his phone when they call and doing their bidding.

For Hillary, though messy, a win is a win and she should go on fairly easily to secure the nomination after losing to Sanders in NH.

By next week at this time, in addition to Huckabee and Santorum, it will be the end of the road for Carson and Carly and Christie and poor Jeb! And . . .

Here I go again, still prognosticating. I have to get over this addiction.

August 20, 2015--Election Update

I can't believe myself--it's fully 15 months before the election and six months before the Iowa caucuses yet I am obsessed with presidential politics. Almost equally interested in what is happening in both parties.

Friends are as well. And it's all because of Donald TRUMP and Hillary Clinton--one on the ascendancy the other soon, in my view, who will be in free fall.

None of this interest has to do with policy matters, either domestic or international, but is because of their larger-than-life personalities and how what three months ago would have been unthinkable is now feeling unexpectedly likely.

For example, I just got a phone call from a family member, a very progressive and politically savvy woman who for eight years has been a passionate supporter of Hillary Clinton's, who left a message saying, "Are you ready for President TRUMP?"

She was not mocking my interest in him (my interest in his remarkable political standing not an interest in hoping he wins the nomination and the election) but is herself coming around to the view, not uncommon among liberals, that TRUMP is trumping the field in some profound way, as opposed to doing so because of his entertainment value--it is because, some say in explanation, August's dog days are hot and everyone is looking to do some escaping.

But he may turn out to be the Republican real-deal because at least half the GOP electorate want a non-politican to win (almost 50% of Republicans polled in the most recent Fox national survey, with their numbers rising, support one of the three non-politicans--Trump 25%, Carson 12%, Fiorina 5%).

Say goodbye to Bush and Walker and Christie and Perry and Santorum and Paul and Cruz and Huckabee and whoever else is running. Half of them will be gone or dead in the water before Iowa. Expect the GOP race to come down to TRUMP, Kasich, and Fiorina. If you want a preview of one of the finalists, keep an eye on whom the Koch Brothers begin to bet.

On the Democrat side, the e-mail controversy continues to fester. Actually get worse. You know the details. How now it appears that hundreds of Clinton's e-mails likely contained classified information (a potential crime) and soon investigators from the FBI no less will have their hands on the 30,000 (30,000!!) Hillary deleted because they were too personal--about her yoga classes, Chelsea's wedding, and the like. Would you be surprised if quite a few of them contained a smoking gun? We'll know by the end of September.

In spite of this, all the Internet and cable news political junkies are saying Clinton's lead is insurmountable and that there is no way that even crazy Democrats are going to have Bernie Sanders representing their party come November 2016. That would guarantee a Republican president. Though they did go for George McGovern and Mike Dukakis.

So that means Joe Biden will soon get into the race and, considering the mediocre competition, be nominated.

A related sidebar--of those Hillary supporters you know, are any enthusiastic about her candidacy, saying that she will make a good much less a great president? Or are they saying they're for her because she's a woman? That having a female president is long overdo? If anyone said a similar thing about, say, Andrew Cuomo--that's it's time we had an Italian-American president--that person would be shouted down. And rightly so. But such is the still sad state of things in regard to gender. I get it but hate it.

Thus, I am predicting a TRUMP-Biden race with the outcome a tossup.

May 8, 2015--Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee--or Mike Huckleberry as my mother refers to him--this week announced to no one's surprise that he is again running for president.

There is room in the Republican clown car for him since he is literally a lot smaller than he was in 2008, the last time he ran, thanks to lap-band surgery and the pressure to look slim on TV during the years he had a talk show on Fox News. He has little chance of winning the nomination but should see a bounce in his lecture fees and at the minimum during the campaign be good for a few laughs.

In regard to that, he started off with a few zingers--

First, to differentiate himself from all other GOP candidates, while calling for cutting or eliminating almost everything else, he offered strong support for retaining Social Security and Medicare pretty much as they are. Chiding other Republicans--specifically those many no-shows in the Senate who, on the public payroll, are running for the presidency--Huckabee called for cuts in their own fat government pensions and health care benefits instead of those of more vulnerable citizens.

This was a smart move for him, considering his likely 65+ year-old base of supporters, and fits right in with the Populist passion to take regular swipes at anything having to do with government.

But beyond this, he is such a fiscal conservative (a GOP requirement) that he advocated the elimination of much of the rest of the federal government. Supporting the military--another imperative--aside. For that he wants to spend more and presumably use our troops more aggressively than he claims they are at present. Do I hear in Iran?

From his perspective I get eliminating the Department of Education--the federal role in education has for decades been a Republican whipping boy, with claims that it exists only to promulgate socialist, secular propaganda in our public schools. Of course, neither Huckabee nor any of the others tell us what they would do about various forms of student financial aid (the largest part of the DOE budget) that even Republican critics use to help them and their children pay for college.

OK so we'll figure out how to make that work. Probably through privatization--give those programs back to the banks. Who cares if it would cost billions more than at present. If the private sector is in charge, to conservatives by definition that's better than the government playing a role.

And of course, top of the list of federal agencies to be eliminated is the loathsome IRS. Even poor Rick Perry last time around was able to remember that was one to the three programs he would eliminate--he needed help with the other two. Perhaps soon he'll tell us which they are since he too is about to grab a seat in the clown car.

Without the IRS why would anyone feel compelled to pay taxes? Talk about America becoming just like Greece where hardly anyone does.

But, of course, that would be a good thing--no tax money means no federal government. Sure, Huckabee and his colleagues would have to figure out how to pay for the military and border security. Their two favorite federal programs.

Maybe we'll privatize the military. Turn it into a for-profit operation. For example, let Boeing or United Airlines run the Air Force, GM or Ford the Army, and Carnival Cruise Lines the Navy. Issue stocks and bonds to support it and peg dividends to how many wars we can drum up and  . . .

And then we could hire Blackwater to take over border security. Look how good a job they did in Iraq where the Bush administration had them provide security for American operatives. No matter a host of them were recently convicted of murdering Iraqi allies.

Do we want the CIA, FBI, NSA? If so, is it possible to privatize them? We could contract with Facebook and Google to do the electronic surveillance. For marketing purposes, by collecting big data about each of us, they are already doing a version of that.

Do we want an FDA to offer assurance that our medications work and are safe? Not if we have to spend tax money to do so. But since we do want to avoid the undue side effects of new medications (the current scary ones are enough) we could turn the FDA functions over to Pfizer and Novartis. They'd jump at the chance to fast track the approval of their own new products.

Our crumbling federal highways and bridges? Sell them to Abu Dhabi. They already have experience running the parking meter concession in Chicago so maybe we should ask them to repave our interstates.

The Government Printing Office and Mint? Turn them over to Citibank. In the early days of the United States banks offered their own currency so this would be a strict-constructionist way to manage our money 2015-style. And while we're at it, get rid of the Federal Reserve. With Citibank controlling the money supply, who needs them?

Federal Prisons? Many states have already privatized theirs so why not the U.S. government.

The airports? A perfect role for JetBlue.

The postal service? A no-brainer--FedEx is already handling a substantial portion of our packages and is venturing successfully into mail service. So let's turn the rest over to them.

And of course we should sell the national parks to Disney. That's an easy one. Grand Canyon Land. Yosemite World. Love it! Now if Disney would only add a water slide at Old Faithful and . . .

February 10, 2014--Hillary? Mitt? Bill? (Not that Bill)

We know Hillary's running.

There's a book just published, HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, that provides behind-the-scenes glimpses of her tenure as Secretary of State, a book that could almost be considered a neo-version of the classic "campaign biography." And then there is Hillary's forthcoming book, also largely about her days in the Obama administration.

This will have the HRC authors, Jonathan Allen and Amie Rarnes, making the rounds of the talk shows--coming to Morning Joe I am sure this week--and Hillary herself at the end of the year, taking time off from $200,000-a-pop appearances, also appearing everywhere. All just in time to launch the unofficial stage of her campaign for the presidency. The official announcement will occur during the spring/summer of 2015.

So that's settled. Hillary is a go and, maybe, as reported over the weekend, so is Joe Biden. But he trails Clinton by about 65 points in the latest polls--65 points!--and so, unless there is a looming Clinton scandal (which with them can never be fully ruled out), this plan of Biden's sounds masochistic.

Then, what about the other side? What's happening with the Republicans?

Most dramatic and politically meaningful is the decline and soon-to-be-seen fall of Chris Christie. He was universally acknowledged to be Hillary's most potent opponent because of his ability to attract independent and undecided voters.

But with Christie ostensibly out of the race (no senior Republicans wants to be seen in the same room with him), who has a chance to secure the nomination and can plausibly beat Hillary in 2016?

Rand Paul has a chance to be nominated by the Tea Party and Libertarian GOP base, but in a general election against Hillary would fare as badly as Goldwater did against LBJ in 1964. Mike Huckabee also looks like a base-pandering contender but also would have general election problems--women, for example, will not forget his recent dumb comments about their "out-of-control libidos."

Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio still look like boy scouts. The half-dozen Republican governors talked about as possible candidates are all excruciatingly borrrring. Think Scott Walker and  Bobby Jindal. Jeb Bush has the Bush problem--he's the brother of George (and that's a problem) and Mama Bush has been saying enough already with the Bushes. (And, to be fair and balanced, enough already with the Clintons--more about that in a moment.) Newt, Michele, Rick and Rick, and--my personal favorite from last time around, Herman Cain--have all been there and done that.

In the face of this undistinguished field, the Harold Stassen of the 21st century (young folks google him to find out who he was), Mitt Romney, it is reported, is again beginning to crank things up.

He apparently will be talking very soon with wife Ann to see if she's OK with another campaign. Mitt's 10 or 12 or 15 sons are apparently all on board. The Romneys are finished renovating their California house, with its twin car elevators, and all Mrs. R's dressage horses and Cadillacs are in good shape, so, what the heck, the money's there, life is short, why not.

So with the prospect of Hillary versus Romney I'm having a back-to-the-past moment.

I think Barbara Bush is right--enough with the Bushes, Clintons, and, I'll add, Romneys. We need some outside-the-box candidates to help us think in new ways about how to solve our problems, grow our economy, and restore our place in the world.

Thus, I'm thinking about Bill. Not that Bill. He's inside the box and thankfully the Constitution will not allow him to run again. Not to mention Hillary who would have a few objections. In there cosmology, it's her turn. And then Chelsea's and then . . .

Get Barbara's and my point?

The Bill I'm thinking about is Bill Gates.

Beginning in a college dorm room (OK, it was at Harvard) he built one of the largest and most successful companies ever. Talk about being a job-creator. With all of Microsoft's limitations, its products changed the world for all time. And now as the operational head of the world's largest foundation, he has been intimately involved in education reform, health care, resource conservation, renewable energy, and many other things we as a country, as a society need to pay attention to.

I'm also interested in a president who has real experience running things, not just a Senate staff of five, and is not timid about holding people accountable. Ask Microsoft senior staff about Gate's leadership and fierce efforts to hold them accountable for their work. If people were to screw up in a Gate's administration they wouldn't be retained for months after messing up and then allowed to resign so they can claim to want to spend more time with their families. Enough of that.

We need more than change we can believe in.