"The election is only one year from today".
"Only"?
That's the comment I heard on the news this morning, and my reaction, and that's why we've started a new thread here even though the last one wasn't at that stage where we'd normally go to the next installment.
The campaign has being going on for months and there's still a year to go. Frankly, that's patently absurd.
Canada recently had a national election that featured a campaign of about sixty days. That's just about right. An election process that takes over a year to complete is monumentally messed up. No regular person is paying that much attention at this stage and that means that the only ones who are, are political aficionados who likely don't reflect the views of average voters at all.
This isn't all of it of course. But it doesn't help. By this time we will have had an election, but we will also have had endless primaries, caucuses, and conventions. Congress will go in and out of session as will the Supreme Court. The House will have voted to impeach the President and the Senate will vote to keep him in office. Quite a few voters who voted in the early primary seasons will be dead by the election itself, and new voters who vote in the general election will not have been old enough to have voted in the primary. Pundits are fond of saying that tradition is the vote of the dead, but in this system, the vote of the dead actually is the vote of the dead.
November 4, 2020.
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Yesterday came the news that Michael Bloomberg is filing to run as a Democratic candidate for the Presidency in Alabama.
This is more in the nature of preserving his options than anything else. Alabama has an absurdly early deadline to file to run for the office. As I've noted before, the entire country would be better off if this entire process only had a 90 day lead into the General Election, rather than a year long one. Anyhow, Bloomberg has to file there if he intends to run anywhere. It doesn't mean he will run.
It also doesn't mean he won't and he's obviously thinking about it.
If he does, it'll be a real symbol of what's currently wrong with American politics. Bloomberg is 77 years old and yet another East Coast candidate.
Just a week or so ago a 25 year old New Zealand politician noting the average age of House of Commons members there in a speech was heckled by an older politician and suddenly became famous when she dismissed the heckling seamlessly with a "OK Boomer" retort. That action has shocked members of the Baby Boom generation, and no wonder given that they have such a death grip on American politics. The average age of the U.S. House of Representatives is 58 years of age, and the Senate 62 years of age. The average age of the top contenders for the Presidency right now has to be in the 70s. The last thing the Democrats need is another candidate whose political concepts were cast in the 1960s.
Indeed, my prediction is that if Bloomberg runs, the temptation for Hilary Clinton to run will become overwhelming. Bloomberg's candidacy only makes sense in any fashion if Biden is crashing towards a failure, assuming that Bloomberg isn't wholly delusional about his chances of success and assuming that he's not willing to drag the entire party down in order to make whatever point he's seeking to make. Assuming that those items are not the case, a Clinton run actually makes more sense than a Bloomberg one, and she'll know that.
November 8, 2019
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Americans today will experience something they haven't since the early 1990s, that being live televised impeachment proceedings. Indeed, they'll actually experience something they've never experienced to the extent these will, which is live electronic media impeachment proceedings.
As noted above, there's now less than one year before the General Election and its difficult to imagine Congress really doing anything rapidly. How long these will go on isn't clear to the author, but we're in the tail end of 2019 now, and even if Congress moves with blistering speed, nothing is really going to get done prior to the end of the year. Assuming that Congress moves forward really quickly, and assuming that there's a party line vote, that would mean that the Senate might have an Impeachment Trial on its plate in very early 2020.
Whether the Senate moves quickly is another matter. Both sets of proceedings risk being turned into circuses of a sort, and the length of them might end up depending upon how long any one body feels that they obtain an advantage by doing that. Any way its looked at, however, it seems the results are basically clear right now. The House will vote to impeach and the Senate will vote not to.
What isn't clear is how this will impact the overall election. If there are real bombshells that come out during the proceedings, it might. Having said that, so far nothing has really changed all that much in basic support in committed camps to date. A real risk for the Democrats may be that the focus on this sort of thing has now run for a full three years and they're exposed to claims of having done nothing else. Irrespective of how a person feels on that sort of claim, it's already starting to circulate and it makes a bad basis for anyone's Presidential campaign.
Those old enough to remember the Nixon impeachment in the 1970s will recall that there was an overall air of collapse at the time. This was less true during the Clinton proceedings, but at that time there was a real feeling of political cynicism. Both atmospheres stand to be much amplified this time. That the country could go for a century between the first and second impeachment efforts, and then end up doing it three times in less than fifty years isn't a good development.
November 13, 2019
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Deval Patrick, formerly the Governor of Massachusetts, has entered the race as a Democratic candidate.
Patrick, age 63, is taking the late entry approach. It'll be interesting to see if this works for him. Coming in now, he will receive attention at this late stage whereas many earlier former stars in the campaign have faded. At age 63, while not young by normal calculations, he is in this race. He's generally a liberal candidate.
It's now strongly rumored that Hilary Clinton is in fact pondering running. I think at this point she's likely decided to in fact run. My guess is that a full Bloomberg announcement and a Clinton one will come shortly.
Clinton is unlikely to be any more successful in 2020 than previously, and I don't believe that she'll secure the nomination. Her mere presence in the race, however, will hurt the Democrats overall. Bloomberg's will do the same.
November 14, 2019
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Not surprisingly, the weekend shows focused on the impeachment hearings.
One did have Deval Patrick on it, however, and the two I listed to both discussed him. He's seen as a middle of the road, centrist, Democrat. In that context, it was noted that the reelection of Louisiana's governor saw the reelection of a Democrat of the nearly extinct social conservative variety. There was quite a bit of speculation that the rank and file is searching for somebody in the middle.
Buttigeg has been rising in the polls in Iowa and there's lots of speculation that may be for the same reason.
Indeed, on the one news show that Patrick was interviewed on he came very close to being examined in a bit of a hostile way on Buttigeg. The suggestion from the while interviewer was, or at least seemed to be, if Patrick was trying to take that position as he realized that he was he was 1) black, and 2) not homosexual, and therefore more electable. Patrick who probably understood that this was the point, nicely sidestepped it, and frankly the question shouldn't have been asked.
Indeed, Patrick interviewed extremely well in general. He's clearly more personable than Buttigeg and frankly, if this interview is any guide, more personable than any other running Democrat. He did miss the ball a bit when asked what the difference was between he and Buttigeg and while he did not that he had a variety of experiences that made him qualified for the Oval Office, he didn't contrast himself directly. If he had, it would have to be noted that he's been the Governor of a major state, where as Buittigeg has only been the mayor of a mid sized city.
On the same general topic, over the weekend President Obama came out in a speech noting that Americans like improvement but they don't like radical overhaul. That's an arrow shot at the hard left of the Democratic Party. It did hit home with at least one weekend show pundit who claimed, basically, that Obama was betraying his own past as he had been the radical candidate. The evidence doesn't support that.
On candidates who don't have a uniformly radical past, Bloomberg, who has been in both parties (like Trump) in his past, disavowed his "stop and frisk" policy from his days as the Mayor of New York. That was controversial, but it was also quite successful, giving us an interesting example of a politician disavowing his own successful actions in the past when they don't fit his current political aims.
November 18, 2019
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I happened to listen (not view) a Democratic debate this season for the first time.
The reason is that Meet The Press had it on their podcast feed and I heard it there while driving somewhere.
It was quite interesting, in part because listening to it gives you a prospective on the prospective of the pundits. Not too surprisingly, my takeaway was different from theirs.
I'll note that listening to a debate is different than viewing it, and that too can have an impact. But the Press also tends to go into these debates with a preconceived narrative to a degree, so they're not that inclined to alter it no matter what's said, except around the margins.
Listening to it, it was frankly Andrew Yang who won the debate. A person doesn't have to agree with everything he believes in order to say that. He's the only one who had fresh views and didn't have difficulty explaining them. His answer on national defense was brilliant. So much so that a later "major" candidate co-opted it for his own later answer.
Compared to Yang, everyone looked pretty anemic. Having said that Buttigieg came across fairly well. An effort to go after his experience by Amy Klobuchar ended up simply embarrassing Klobuchar as Buttigieg dismantled her on that topic and then used his answer to dismantle everyone else. Buttigieg also manged to really disrupt a statement by Kamala Harris on none of the white candidates really being able to understand the position of black voters, even though Harris clearly had a point on that demographic being used repeatedly by the Democratic party. Again, a person doesn't have to agree with Buttigieg on anything in order to see that his debating skills were superior to nearly every other candidate.
Harris came across as a snot and surprisingly relied on her courtroom history as a California district attorney in her closing, noting for most of her professional time she's done that and started off her public addresses with "the people of. . ." That'd be true, but in a debate in which Corey Booker had just complained about how the government has incarcerated a lot of minorities on drug charges, Harris' former role in putting people in jail seems like an odd thing to emphasize.
Harris was big on "recreating the Obama coalition" without explaining it. Indeed, the "Obama coalition" may not have really ever existed in the first place. That emphasizes, however, that the Democratic base isn't anywhere near as left wing as candidates are and that caused hemorrhaging towards Trump in the last election. It's already known that black voters are uncomfortable with Buttigieg and that the "black church" retains a significant role in that demographic which is likely grater than any other religious demographic in the Democratic party.
Indeed, Warren basically stated that there's no room whatsoever for Democrats like recently re-elected John Bel Edwards in the Democratic Party. Edwards is pro life and and Warren made support for abortion a litmus test on the basis that its a human rights matter, an extremely weak argument for supporting a policy that ends human life. Harris leaped on this and indicated that she'd codify Roe v Wade as a matter of Federal law, which isn't a position that many who hold the freedom of state's to craft their own laws will find popular.
While she was able to hardly get a word in, after the debate got rolling, Tulsi Gabbard may have been next to Yang in being clear and blunt. Her post election role as a commentator and her strong animosity towards the Clintons resulted in a debate with Harris and she pretty much took Harris apart. Indeed, Harris may have come across the worst in the debate as her answer for everything seems limited to snark.
In terms of ideas, again, like them or not, Yang's were the freshest and well thought out. Buttigieg's seem thought out. Klobuchar should have done well, as she does in other venues, but she just came across as angry. Warren came across as a person whose ideas are limited to the concept that no matter what the problem is, large or small, she'd sick the Federal government on it with a super expensive program of dubious utility. Indeed, she makes Lyndon Johnson's backing of the Great Society look minor in comparison to what she'd try.
In other news Bloomberg launched a gigantic ad campaign. The This Week pundits made the interesting observation that he's not really a Democrat, and he's been in both parties. His presence in the race this late is likely because Warren and Sanders are sinking and people are losing faith in Biden. It's doubtful that Bloomberg will make a real difference in the race, however, no matter how much money he spends on it.
Bloomberg's entry means that, if we include both parties, there are now no less than three candidates who are old New Yorkers, Bloomberg (who was born in Massachusetts), Sanders (who grew up in New York and retains an extremely thick New York accent) and Trump. It's hard to grasp, for those who live outside of New York how the state and city retain such a grasp on the nation's politics.
November 25, 2019
I've noted here before that a lot of the demographic assumptions that the Democratic Party has made for quite some time are likely based on a set of false assumptions. The past week the degree to which that is true and becoming more true started to play out in the primary, all the detriment of Pete Buttigieg.
I noted above that Buttigieg had taken criticism from Kamala Harris and seemingly effectively parried it during the debate. That perception, however, may not have been shared by black voters at all.
Indeed a poll on Buttigieg's position in the upcoming Iowa primary not only showed him last among black voters, but actually at 0%. That's a stunningly low figure and shows that there's definitely going on in a demographic that the Democrats absolutely depend on. Not only is Buttigieg dead in the water in the campaign if he can't fix that, and that will be hard to fix, but it shows that the party as a whole, may be in really deep trouble in regard to black voters.
We'll get back to that in a moment, but continuing this story on, early in the week a prior statement by Buttigieg surfaced in which he attributed a lack of black economic advancement basically to a lack of role models (I'm really condensing this down). This resulted in an explosive op ed being published in which a black author not only went after him but in no uncertain terms. That op ed was in turn rapidly circulated on the Internet and received widespread black voter applause. Buttigieg reacted by calling the author who credited him with listening, which he said was he could expect a white person to do, showing a real lack of any hope for anyone paying attention to the issues raised.
All that's telling, but a poll that was released coincident with all of this finds that black Democrats are much more conservative, indeed on some issues outright conservative, than their white counterparts. They're also older, showing that the Democrats aren't attracting younger black voters. That no doubt will stun the Democrats and my prediction is that they'll ignore it. In the minds of party leadership black voters are in the hardcore left, and that's a view that tends to have been supported by the fact that black politicians who have risen up in the party have seemed to be of the left.
In reality, however, black voters are largely in the Democratic Party due to events that occurred in the 50s through the 80s. Since that time the GOP has made nearly no effort to recruit black voters even though it knows it needs too. Irrespective of that, what turns out to be the case is that the black demographic in the Democratic party tends to be conservative on social issues and liberal on economic ones. This is the classic position that pertains to immigrants, and in this sense they're effectively internal immigrants in their own country.
Not yet addressed, this same problem exists for the country's growing Hispanic demographic. They're highly socially conservative and are only in the Democratic Party because of economic issues and the party's seeming position on immigration.
Up until now none of this has had an impact in a national election, but now for the first time it is. And this shows a trend that's played out with other voting blocks over time. Once economic conditions are no longer paramount for a voting block, social ones tend to take over. In the case of the black demographic economic conditions are still an extremely large concern, but social issues are now actually playing out. And in addition to that Buttigieg, who is the son of an academic and lead what amounts to a very upper middle class, left wing, sheltered life, is showing a lack of understanding on the situation for American blacks that they are really reacting to.
My guess is that he won't be over to overcome this problem. But beyond that, a person has to wonder if this is a tipping point and the Democratic Party will start to lose black voters. If it does, at least right now they'll end up independents by and large, which is what actually seems to be happening with younger black voters. In some rural regions, the Democrats are losing black voters to the GOP, although they seemingly haven't noticed this. The Democratic Party has three candidates this year who are African Americans, with one being in much too soon to have really been heard from, but those candidates don't seem to be gaining much headway. All of this may suggest that a voting block that the Democrats have depending on since at least the 1970s is being lost to them seemingly without their having noticed it.
November 28, 2019
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Kamala Harris, whose campaign never really took off, in spite of pundit expectation that it would, bowed out of the race yesterday.
Harris never seemed to really get rolling and instead came across as a younger candidate, in the American sense (age 55) who had promise but somehow never delivered. Her most notable moments came when 1) she proposed clearly unconstitutional actions in regards to firearms and was debated down on the topic by Joe Biden; and 2) when she took Buttigieg to task in regard to his statements about his support of the black community. Those latter statements may very well have impacted him as the following week he was the subject of an op ed that was blistering on the topic.
Harris was a prosecutor prior to becoming a politician and frankly, to some degree, that may have hurt her in the Democratic field. She came across as snarky, something that lawyers can easily do if they've spent much time in the courtroom, and its hard to take a candidate very seriously about their support of the downtrodden if they've spent a career in that branch of the law. She was from the hardcore left and her departure leaves the field somewhat more level.
Also departing the race is Montana's governor Steve Bullock (age 53). Bullock was a moderate who should have done well as a candidate from a state where he has to pull from all political spectrum. His campaign, however never took off and he acknowledged that and withdrew in the face of the inevitable.
The Harris departure brought another politician into the Twitter spectrum when Washington Post reporter Matt Viser noted that now the only candidates who have qualified to appear in the next debate are Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Sanders, Steyer and Warren. Qualification is based on funds raised and therefore this doesn't reflect every Democrat running. Yang and Booker, for example, are running.
Anyhow, Viser noted that this meant that while the field was "historically large and diverse" it is now all white.
This is interesting for a number of reasons. For one thing, there's been a press obsession with the ethnicity of candidates that has actually operated to make it less diverse than it actually is. Harris was regarded as black by the press, but that definition really hearkens back to the old Slave States definition of black as "one drop of blood". In reality, her mother was of Tamil heritage and was born in Indian and who had Canadian and American citizenship. Her father was from Jamaica. Both parents had strong careers in academics. Harris regarded herself, quite naturally, as black and Indian, but her ethnic heritage gives her a different ethnic heritage than most African Americans. The press never really looked at this and simply regarded her as African American. Corey Booker, on the other hand, has a more conventional African American heritage.
This none the less brings up a point which pundits seem to dance around. While Harris expressly noted that she was "the only black candidate on the stage" last debate, her support among black voters was just slightly better than Buttigieg's, which is at a stunning 0%. Harris may in fact have suffered i this area by claiming to be "black" when that status doesn't reflect the same sort of experience that the average African American would have. White voters certainly aren't going to bring this up but African American voters have been highly savvy about things in the past. They tend to very strong identify with candidates that they believe appreciate their circumstances and often don't worry about ethnicity when they vote as a result, preferring results over ethnicity. Indeed, even in the segregation era black communities in the South would sometimes vote for white candidates that appeared to support segregation in a race, as they knew that their actual efforts in office would aid them.
This may have played into rock bottom black support for Harris in the race. She was claiming to be black and does have Jamaican black heritage, but she's also half Tamil as well and her personal history diverges significantly from most African Americans. As a former prosecutor, moreover, she has a history that most African Americans would have associated a lot more with problems in the system than with efforts to address them.
Booker's campaign is also faltering and signs exist that he'll be out of the race quite soon. Earlier in the week he was begging for donations so that he could qualify for the next debate and that appears to have failed. So far he is still in. For some reason his campaign also has rock bottom support in his own ethnicity. The reason for that is hard to grasp, but it may simply be because black voters don't regard him as somebody who will likely be effective. It might also be, however, because his credentials haven't really impressed them so far.
An added aspect of this, however, ties into Buttigieg. All three of these candidates, Buttigieg, Book and Harris lacked support not only from black Democrats, but from Hispanic candidates as well. Again, this may simply be because minority voters identify with effectiveness over ethnicity, to their credit, but it may also be because the old reasons for these communities identifying with the Democratic Party are wearing off. Combined with that, these communities contain social views that are much more conservative than the Democrats have been espousing in recent years. This has been wholly ignored by the Democratic Party as a whole and minority Democratic candidates have very carefully aligned themselves with the seeming party platform in order to note loose white Democratic support. But a winnowing process seems to be going on, hardly noticed, in which, in spite of its claims to the contrary, the Democratic Party is becoming the WASP party. It's presently hemorrhaging young black members as a result.
The remaining African American candidate, Deval Patrick, can't qualify for a debate yet as he just started running and hasn't obtained sufficient donations. Of course, another new candidate who is extremely well self funded, Michael Bloomberg, can't qualify either.
Anyhow, Viser noted that while the field started large and diverse, only white candidates will be debating next go around, which isn't implicitly diverse. Perhaps that's true, but it can't be said that Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Sanders, Steyer and Warren are all stamped out of the same mold either in numerous ways. Be that as it may, Liz Cheney took Viser's comments as the opportunity to comment on Twitter, about Warren; "What about Pocahontas"
What exactly would motivate a person to say a thing like we'd have to leave unanswered, but it wasn't a smart thing to do. It drew floods of Twitter protests and it make Cheney look incentive. Her point, no doubt, was to thrown stones at Warren for claiming to be a Native American, something Warren was being patently absurd in doing in the first place, but extreme claims from Warren seem to be her thing. Being as its a storm on Twitter, it probably has already faded, but she should think twice before saying something like that again.
According to the Chicago Tribune Klobuchar is rising in the polls in Iowa. The Democratic field is clearly shifting, if not actually getting smaller given that two have gotten out and two have gotten in, but it seems almost certain that Booker is out of the running and that Patrick and Bloomberg won't be successful in getting into it. Given that, the candidates who will debate next time, Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Sanders, Steyer and Warren, with perhaps also Yang, are those who are going to keep on keeping on until mid race. Steyer's campaign has a lot of money but is not likely to go anywhere, and Yang has a lot of enthusiasm and originality but is not likely to go anywhere. So the really serious contenders appear to be Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Sanders, and Warren. The field has suddenly narrowed.
December 4, 2019
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Since typing the above out a couple of days ago I've now heard analysis on the element of race and the Democratic Party on multiple platforms, one that was recorded before I set out the above, but others after that. It's interesting in part because I'm hearing my own analysis repeated back to me by pundits.
On that, I'm surprised that some pundits are surprised that black voters don't necessarily vote for a black candidate simply because the candidate is black. I'm also surprised that some pundits are surprised that Hispanic voters don't vote for a black candidate on the basis that Hispanics are minorities (although my prediction is that their category as such will cease to be recognized within a generation as they go through the same process that the Italian and Irish "racial" minorities have in the past), and minorities "of color" will of course vote for a candidate of color, even if their ethnicity is considerably different in terms of heritage.
Some Democrats who were backing or running seem to have made those assumptions as well, and Corey Booker, who is of course still in the race, was loud in the press regarding Kamala Harris' departure on the issue, nearly claiming that black voters owed their votes to him or to Harris because they were black. Of interest on Harris, I've since seen one post by an Indian American about how proud Harris made her, which brings up once again that while Harris campaigned as a black candidate, her claim to that status is a bit mixed as none of her ethnic heritage comported with the African American norm. That shouldn't matter, but to some it seems to, and candidates themselves will seem to claim votes based on those claims.
Anyhow, most of the analysis is really close to what I already set out, with pundits rediscovering the really long held truths that: 1) African Americans place their votes with the candidate that they feel best realistically serves their interests, irrespective of that person's race; and 2) African American voters aren't necessarily as loyal to any political party as Democrats have tended to assume in recent years.
On the latter, one commentator, a liberal African American figure who appeared on Meet The Press went further and noted something that I've hinted at, but which he was much more blunt about. Perhaps his status as an African American allowed him to take on a topic that others don't want to address as they don't want to tread the risky waters that accompany it, and I don't blame them. That had to deal with Buttigieg's almost total lack of support among black and Hispanic voters.
That commentator flat out brought up that Buttigieg has trouble with black voters, and Hispanic voters, as they are "conservative morally", by which he meant that the two demographics do not share the WASP acceptance of homosexual conduct as a moral nullity. That fact has been a somewhat loudly whispered truth for awhile, but it probably does take a black liberal to openly state it. He did, and then went on to state that the Republicans are missing a bet as they don't exploit the social conservatism of African Americans and Hispanics.
In stating that he's correct. The GOP has not known how to address this in recent years and has basically done nothing much more than to note that the Democratic Party simply depends upon black voters without actually assisting them much. The recent departure of Harris from the race may be a good example of that as Harris was really pronounced on traditional Democratic hard left issues, but none of those directly address black and Hispanic concerns and one of her open positions, her position in regards to abortion, runs directly contrary to a view held by large numbers of Hispanic voters and isn't really all that popular with black voters. This tends to show that, as previously noted, black and Hispanic support of the Democrats has been for economic reasons and, in regards to Hispanics, because the GOP has been perceived as hostile to Hispanics.
In spite of all of that, the fact that things were beginning to change in this are should have been evident in the 2016 race. During that race the GOP had two Hispanic contenders who remained in the running for a very long time and one black candidate who did fairly well early on. Comparing that to the 2020 race, none of the Democratic minority candidates have done well at all. The one who is likely to remain in the race the longest, Yang, is able to do so due to his unique positions and self funding, but whether fairly or not Asian Americans are regarded as having been more fully assimilated into the nation as a whole than other minorities.
At any rate, the fact that the Republicans did have serious minority candidates who didn't campaign on their ethnicity should be worrying to the Democrats as it signals something going on at the street level. The GOP is beginning to have conservative black candidates at the state level, which means that the Democrats are now hemorrhaging some voters who had been in the GOP over social issues. And the GOP has picked up one entire Hispanic demographic, Cuban Americans, and there are starting to be inroads into other Hispanic demographics. As the Hispanic economic situation improves the social issues will start to rise, and even such notable left wing Hispanic figures of the past have voiced some very conservative social views openly. As Hispanics, moreover, begin to assimilate into Middle America, and they are doing so now, this will accelerate.
The irony this presents is that in this cycle the Democrats are leaping leftward, and they can probably at least safely do so as President Trump has the pretty united opposition of both African Americans and Hispanics. But at the same time Democrats who for years and years have pointed out with glee that the GOP has a demographic problem are now pointing out that the Democratic Party also has a demographic problem.
December 6, 2019
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Yesterday Finland sat a new Prime Minister.
What, you may legitimately ask, does this have to do with the United States and its election?
Well, perhaps this.
All three of the contenders from Finland's major political parties for this position were under 35. The government, formed by Social Democrat Sanna Marin, has five women at its head, as a coalition government, four of whom are under 35 years of age. Marin is 34. She replaces outgoing Social Democrat Anitti Rinne who is 55.
The point?
Well the point isn't that I'm endorsing the Finnish Social Democrats, with whom I have a lot of disagreement. The point isn't even that I'm endorsing any Finnish political party, all of whom I probably have a lot of disagreement with. Indeed, Finland shares the Nordic peculiarity, even though the Finns aren't actually a Scandinavian people (save for the minority Swedish population) of seeming political goofiness in recent years.
Rather, I'm noting the stark contrast in ages that the leaders of some other democracies exhibit in contrast to ours.
Indeed, in the current election, as noted before, we're actually fielding potentially the absolute oldest field of candidates of all time. Donald Trump is the oldest President in his first term ever. If reelected he'll be the oldest President to be reelected and if he's defeated there's an outstanding chance that whoever replaces him, in the current slate, will then become the oldest President to have been elected to the office.
Prior to Donald Trump, no American President was elected to a first term who was in his 70s. Now, three of the Democratic top contenders are in their 70s. Bernie Sanders will actually be 79 years old by the election next year. Trump will be 74. Elizabeth Warren will be 71.
What does this argue or indicate? Probably nothing much more than the first grasp of the Baby Boomer generation on the nation's politics and culture. Of the nation's 45 presidents, only 11 have been over their 50s when they assumed the office. Granted, that's roughly 1/4, but it's also the case that some who assumed the office in real times of crisis were much younger. Franklin Roosevelt was 51. Abraham Lincoln was 52. George Washington was 57.
Is this significant? At least in some senses, it must be.
December 10, 2019
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Bernie Sanders has reacted with outrage to Major League Baseball's proposal to cut 42 minor league teams. Indeed, he wrote the commissioner of baseball about it and posted as much on his twitter feed. On the latter, he took an economic, and social justice, point of view, stating:
This has nothing to do with what's good for baseball and everything to do with greed.
It would destroy thousands of jobs and devastate local economies.
One of the teams slated for the axe, we'd note, is the Vermont Lake Monsters.
Champs, mascot of the Vermont Lake Monsters, a minor league team slated for removal by MLB. From wikipedia commons and listed as public domain.
December 16, 2019
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