How dispiriting.
I noted that it seemed pretty early when I started Part 1 of this running thread way back in February, starting off with an initial list of who was running at that time. That list has grown, but I'm not going to start off by repeating it. You can link back to that thread if you want to read the progress of candidates in listing.
What I noted occasionally in that thread I'll note again here. It just seems too darned early. Last night was the first night of the second Democratic Party debate, and like the first one, I didn't watch it, save for a few snippets. I can't muster up the energy needed to sit through a Presidential candidates debate this early.
I think entire normal population of the country feels this way, fwiw. That explains part of the era we're in right now, and the word to explain it is likely simply "fatigue".
Not that there aren't some new developments.
In Part 1 we noted the announcement of Cynthia Lummis that she's running for the Senate. This week an oddity occurred when spokesmen for Liz Cheney announced a fun raiser dinner in Denver tied to a 2020 U.S. House reelection effort. That would logically indicate she's running for reelection to that office, but her spokes people quickly backed away from that. It's just a fund raiser.
What does that mean?
Well, it might mean nothing at all. Nobody wants their staff to announce before they officially do. So it might really be a House campaign fundraiser but her staff goofed by making it a premature announcement of her run for that office.
Or it could mean that she's keeping her options open for a run for the Senate.
That'd be surprising, in light of Lummis' announcement for that office, and if fact such an effort would be completely doomed. But so far it appears clear that she really hasn't accepted any sort of assignment in favor of Lummis, which we earlier thought would have been something that had been worked out and occurred.
As an aside on this, there's a certain unfortunate unspoken element of having your opener be in Denver. Why Denver? Cheney is widely felt by Wyomingites to really be the candidate from somewhere else, supported by money from somewhere else. As noted here earlier, she would have lost her bid to become the candidate in the first place but for the fact that two more popular local Wyomingites destroyed each other in the primary, leaving her the third place victor, basically. That feeling has persisted even as she's rapidly rose in stature in the House. She'll have no serious opposition for the House, should she run, but if she runs for the Senate, she will. Starting off this way is a bit of a bad start.
Well on to the Presidential race (groan).
This past week, like most weeks, has been a strange one on this general topic. The last time we really dealt with the office of the President in this context was there was a flurry of name calling going on all associated with members of "the Squad". That died down, only to have a new odd episode come up when President Trump insulted West Baltimore after the situation between him and Representative Elijah Cummings deteriorated even further than it had. That managed to spread out to include insulting Al Sharpton. For a busy person, such as myself, the whole thing has been too odd to follow, but one interpretation is that the President is appealing to the instincts of a certain section of his base. I haven't heard any real defenses of his statements made, save for one political cartoon. It's been a strange diversion.
In terms of diversions, I caught only a snippet of the most recent round one (its a two nighter again) of the Democratic debate mentioned above. But even that brief snipped was disappointing as the candidates mostly seem to feel that they have to tack so hard to the left that they're simply driving their campaigns over a bus. There's some speculation that President Trump's 2020 strategy is to keep poking the Democrats and make them go further and further to the left in reaction, which if that is his idea, seems to be working.
The brief part of the debate I saw this was evident in the discussion on universal college education.
This topic is a simple throw away one that simply doesn't get any serious analysis. Of course, in a debate which is limited to such short replies, it won't. But it should.
For one thing, there's no reason to believe that this shouldn't be taken up on a state by state basis. As noted here last election cycle, Wyoming practically has a type of this designed for itself in the form of the Hathaway scholarship. If states feel its good for themselves, as New York state has, let them have at it.
Beyond that, however, it's already the case that the United States actually tends to graduate more citizens with university degrees than nearly any other Western nation. The problem we really have, therefore, isn't that too few people are receiving college degrees but rather that the sheer number of them is making a lot of bachelors degrees worthless. It's also causing the problem of over certification which is a modern American plague. There are entire occupations now that require college degrees which simply shouldn't, and didn't used to. Some of these areas have become less technical rather than more, and yet we're forcing people to get degrees to occupy them.
Finally, there's a really good reason to argue for personal investment in a degree. Not doing that means that university becomes 1) a sort of high school plus, and 2) it serves to be a rest home for academics whose fields have no real application, both of which are problems with upper level education that have really come into full flower since the 1980s.
While I was watching, I will note that two candidates did resist the "universal four year" argument, one being Amy Klobuchar who argued for something like targeted student loan forgiveness, which is similar to what I've argued for simply regarding the granting of student loans, as well as means testing for loans, and the other being Beto O'Rourke, who argued for two years rather than four years.
Both O'Rourke and the uber gadfly Marianne Williamson, apparently endorsed reparations for black Americans for slavery, an idea that really hasn't been fully pondered out.
Slavery ended of course in 1865 and the last person who may have been a slave died in 1971 (that claim is subject to uncertainty). Over 150 years later the basis for reparations for the suffering of remote ancestors is problematic, so you have to tie it to something current. But if you do that, certainly American Indians have a better claim to reparations.
But they aren't the only ones. Indeed, the more you look at it, the broader the possible claimants are, and ultimately nearly everybody has some claim. Something like this really should be thought out in a cooler atmosphere, but in the current one, that's not going to happen.
Something that does appear to be happening in the Democratic camp is a full bore move to surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The U.S. is well on the way to doing that in any event, but the Democrats I saw, save for one, we're all on board to do just that. Only Hickenlooper seems to have the honesty to admit that's what it will be, and to oppose it.
The war in Afghanistan was frankly very badly manged by the Bush II administration, for which Donald Rumsfield deserves the Defense Boobie Prize For Strategic Doltery, a fine award with the figure of a befuddled Robert Strange McNamara holding the Republic of Vietnam in one hand and the Ford Falcon in the other. But that's done. Pulling out now means handing the country back to people who truly believe that everyone who isn't their brand of Muslim deserves punishment, that any monument of any kind ought to come down, and that women really ought to be ignorant, barefoot and pregnant.
Indeed, on that last point, it's hard to grasp how the Democratic Party in the United States can be so long on the rights of women here, but so short on the rights of women there. We all know that if the country goes back to the Taliban a lot of brave women who have come out into public life in Afghanistan in the last twenty years are going to be beaten up and some killed. Why don't they count?
Not that the GOP is doing a lot better on this topic. It just isn't talking about it. Rather, the current administration is negotiating with the Taliban without the central governments participation, much like Nixon did with the North Vietnamese.
And we all know where that lead.
Maybe that was unavoidable. A surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan, however, is avoidable.
_________________________________________________________________________________
August 1, 2019
In spite of myself, I tried to watch a little of the second night of the debate. I didn't watch much, however.
The second night seemed to have a different focus which allowed the candidates to briefly debate each other. Perhaps it was that, or perhaps because it had different candidates, but it seemed an overall better debate. Indeed, to some degree, it wasn't bad.
Which is not to say I watched much of it.
The second night seemed characterized by an effort of the various candidates, mostly, to try to take shots at Joe Biden, who is the front runner. Biden and Harris engaged in some real back and forth and at least by my brief view of it, appeared to be the two candidates to beat in this debate, which in fact they may generally be in the Democratic field. Washington Governor Jay Inslee positioned himself as the candidate who was the furthest to the left and repeatedly attacked Biden. New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio simply looked uncomfortable and basically not really able to hold up in a debate. I wouldn't expect him to last long.
San Antonio's Julian Castro didn't appear to be the scrapper the rest of the field was, and that may hurt him. His performance, again on the brief part I saw, was underwhelming.
The real surprise for night two was that once again Colorado had a candidate that stood out and apart. Colorado Senator Michael Bennet held views that were uniquely his own, as Hickenlooper did yesterday. When Harris and Biden got into a scrap on busing, which is really an issue from the 1970s, Bennet just wiped out the entire argument by bringing it forward to today, and addressed current issues.
Which I suppose might be a good place to conclude as it might somewhat symbolize where this part of the race is currently at. Joe Biden is ahead with the rank and file Democrats in no small measure as he's a familiar face who isn't a radical in a field that's full of unfamiliar faces who are radicals. The remainder of the Democrats are attempting to tear Biden out of position in large measure by attacking his record, which is really long as he's been around for a long time, but that does indeed involve attacking positions that Biden might not hold today and frankly might not really even matter today. In doing that, they're going further and further to the left. Some of them are relying, ironically, on stereotypes to describe themselves which are ironically caricatures of archetypes from decades past and others are making themselves unelectable. Fresh faces who have unique views are having a hard time getting attention as there are simply too many faces in the picture.
________________________________________________________________________________
August 1, 2019, part two.
I saw the first political analogy to the 1919 World Series today in a headline from George F. Will's column in that paper.
Now, Will is a baseball aficionado, so that's likely not too much of a surprise. My guess is that it won't be the last time we see that event from a century ago mentioned in politics this year (and it certainly won't be the last time it's mentioned on this blog, of course). The always eruidite Will starts his column off with:
Watching Democratic presidential aspirants is like watching, a century ago, the 1919 World Series, when discerning spectators thought: Some of the White Sox are trying to lose. Michael Boskin, chairman of President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and currently at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, pays the Democrats the injurious compliment of taking seriously their aspirations, which are characterized by a disqualifying flippancy.You can log onto the Washington Post yourself and see if you agree or disagree with Will's column, but I'm noting it here as the Black Sox Scandal maybe the one event in the history of 1919 that Americans really remember.
At least baseball fans anyhow.
_______________________________________________________________________________
August 1, 2019, part three
From an NYT op ed:
I thought Cory Booker won last night’s debate. He was engaging and succinct and avoided the needless detail that many candidates went into. He won the face-off with Biden, including a funny line about Kool-Aid, and he also tried to stay focused on the real opponent: President Trump.Needless detail?
Personally, I think real details would be really refreshing all the way around. Indeed, I was pleased in the brief part of it which I watched when some of the candidates went into real detail.
Irrespective of that, I agree with the NTY on this:
I thought both of this week’s debates were too long. Combined, they stretched to about five hours over two nights. The next rounds should be more compact. |
________________________________________________________________________________
Related threads:
No comments:
Post a Comment