February 18, 2020--The Final Seven

If the remaining seven Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination want to win, they need to make some midcourse corrections.

Amy Klobuchar needs to make a 30 minute speech in which she tells us who she is and why she is running for the highest office in the land. It needs to be what she would do as president beyond working with Congress to get bills passed. At the moment she is making a better case for herself to continue in the Senate than move into the Oval Office.

Elizabeth Warren is the most puzzling of the candidates. Just weeks ago ago she was the front runner and now she is struggling to hang on to fourth place. She needs to figure out how to make herself more likable by showing her human side. Her problem is not that she is pushing Medicare for All and lacks a plausible plan for how to pay for it (this is true for Bernie as well and he is doing fine) but rather that in spite of all her energy, effort, and brilliance she has been turning voters off and her numbers have shown it. 

Tom Steyer has been creeping up. With Biden losing support among African Americans, a surprising number have been turning to him. Many who know the inclinations of voters of color see him to be a practical alternative to the former Vice President. But if he wants to continue to rise he too needs to make a major speech about who he is and why he has such a political fire in his belly. At the moment, he is a more effective critic of Trump than an advocate for himself.

Mayor Pete may be the smartest of the candidates but that very smartness at times makes him sound programmed and robotic.

And then of course there is his on-going problem with voters of color. He needs to take that on directly. Think the speech Obama delivered in 2008 about race and his relationship with his former pastor, the black nationalist, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. 

Then there is Joe Biden. Those counting him out shouldn't do so prematurely. In most national polls he is still in second place. Just 5 or so points behind Sanders. Though he has lost some African-American support, a plurality still say they plan to vote for him. Strong showings in Nevada and South Carolina would put him back in the thick of things.

But he needs some reinvention. He needs to show he has a pulse and the best way to do that is in yet another speech. This one has to put Hunter Biden back in the middle of the narrative. This time not in a conspiratorial one concocted by Trump and Fox News.

Do you remember how back in 1988 Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee was leading Vice President George H.W. Bush by double digits until the the race card was played? During one of the presidential debates he was asked how he would feel about the death penalty (he was opposed to it) if his wife Kitty was raped and murdered. Rather than showing any emotion he spoke with sociological detachment and that did him in.

Biden needs to learn from that. Thus far, when asked about what his son was up to in Ukraine, he has spoken about it dispassionately. This makes it feel as if there are things to hide, that he is trying to finesse the situation, or that he is too over the hill and lacks the energy to take on what will await him if he manages to win the nomination and the general election. Someone this passive and seemingly unwilling to defend his family appears to be too weak for the race and ultimately the presidency. He doesn't feel as if he's ready to be commander in chief.

He too needs to make a speech or grant an interview to Sixty Minutes in which he demonstrates he has the capacity to fight and win with appropriate passion. 

More than anything else Sanders has to buy a half hour of TV time to address the voting public about just one topic--he needs to tell us what he means when he calls himself a "democratic socialist."

I suspect that fewer than 10 percent of the electorate know. But we do know that if he is the nominee Trump and his Fox supporters will turn Sanders into a cartoon. They have already begun to do so. It is essential for Bernie to get ahead of this and address it directly. It is at the center of his political philosophy but he has yet to make a clear case for why he embraces socialism and why it would be good for America. 

Finally, there is the case of the complicated Mike Bloomberg. If he wasn't  compromised in regard to some of his attitudes about race and gender, after decades of philanthropy and public service in support of women's rights and racial justice he would likely win the nomination and even the presidency.

But there is Stop and Frisk, redlining, and too many examples of misogyny.

Thus far he has fumbled his explanations and apologies. He needs to do better, much better. He too needs to address this directly, forcefully, and convincingly in another speech similar to Obama's on race. He also needs to be ready to deal with this during Wednesday's debate.

If the final seven were to do this, we would have a nominee who could win since three or four are viable.

March 9, 2019--Saturday's Rats

This past week saw heated competition for Saturday's Rat. Who among Trump's closest people tried to push their way to the top of the gangplank in a panic to get off his sinking ship? 

First there was House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, whose anti-Semitic trope last November claimed that Jewish money provided by George Soros, Mike Bloomberg, and Tom Steyer was being deployed to "buy" the midterm elections. He tweeted this anti-Semitic canard and then a day later deleted it--

"We cannot allow Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg to BUY this election! Get out and vote Republican November 6th"

McCarthy had been on a campaign to cultivate Trump in the hope that he would allow the California congressman to ascend to and keep the House leadership seat abandoned by Paul Ryan.

But McCarthy could take only so much. Especially after seeing the disastrous results of the midterm election and then sensing Republican members of Congress acting friskier and friskier, wavering somewhat in their blind devotion to Trump.

Fearing for his own fate, McCarthy screwed up what little courage he has to squeak out a statement that though he agreed that Trump has the authority to declare a national emergency wouldn't it be better not to do so. 

Trump smacked him and as with the Jewish-money allegation he quickly backed off. No profile of courage here.

So McCarthy was a contender, but there were other Republicans who showed a bit more independence. Senator Rand Paul, for instance. He led the effort in the Senate to reject Trump's emergency declaration, speaking more forcefully and not willing to back off even if it meant no more visits to Mar-a-Lago. 

Paul sounded genuine and it was clear that establishing a few degrees of separation from Trump is perhaps a good strategy for him if he intends one more run at the presidency. 

Here is a little of what Paul said--

"I think he’s wrong, not on policy, but in seeking to expand the powers of the presidency beyond their constitutional limits.”

Moving quickly down the list of aspirants, there are a couple of others scrambling for the title--Mat Drudge in the Drudge Report declared Trump "swamped" after the Cohen testimony and the collapsed summit with Kim Jong-un; and Trump fave, Lou Dobbs who excoriated the president for his failed immigration and economic policies. He said Trump and the White House, "have lost their way."

Runner up though in the rat race is Ty Cobb. Not a household name, he was among Trump's first small group of lawyers hired to deal with the Mueller investigation. He is one of Washington's most esteemed attorneys and some wondered why he would want to sully himself by association with the likes of Trump. 

A fair question but one with an easy answer--even the most reprehensible individuals are entitled to strong legal representation. 

But Cobb, after leaving Trump, seeking to reestablish his reputation among the Washington establishment, in an interview with ABC News, felt the need to clarify why he agreed to be involved with Trump.

Among other things he said-- 

Mueller is an "American hero" and the probe he is leading is not a "witch hunt." He rejected the president's repeated characterizations of the Russia investigation and the man leading it.

This week's Saturday Rat, though, is Matt Whitaker. 

Remember him? Trump appointed Whitaker acting Attorney General after he finally tortured Jeff Sessions enough that he quit. At the time, as Whitaker was so obviously unqualified, it was thought that he got the job because he publicly boasted that he, like Michael Cohen and others, would "take a bullet" for Mr. Trump. This led Trump to assume he would take the initiative to fire Mueller.

That even a dunderhead such as Whitaker refused to do, but he may have perjured himself when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee.

The Wall Street Journal reported--

"The House Judiciary Committee believes it has evidence that President Trump asked Matthew Whitaker, at the time the acting attorney general, whether Manhattan U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman could regain control of his office’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and his real-estate business, according to people familiar with the matter."

After the next Attorney General, Robert Barr, was confirmed and took office, Whitaker was given a no-show job at the DOJ. But after just a few weeks, under cover of darkness, like Omarosa, he departed. No one seems to know where he is and what he might be up to.

My favorite speculation, which I am attempting to promulgate is that he is in a safe house somewhere, spilling what he knows to Mueller's investigators in the hope they will grant him immunity from prosecution for lying to Congress. 

Wouldn't it be confirming if he could provide corroborating evidence that Trump did in fact try to get him to assign a Trump-friendly U.S. attorney who would back off from investigating Trump and his family's nefarious business dealings in New York City?

Therefore, though there are other strong contenders, Matt Whitaker is this week's Rat!