Quo Vadis, Martin?

I watched the election returns come in this past Tuesday night looking for clues as to whether former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, who backed numerous state and local candidates all across the country through his Win Back Your State PAC, would run for President in 2020.  With the knowledge that Win Back Your State was as much about building up O'Malley nationwide as it was about building up the Democratic base, my metric was simple; if the Democrats did well, he would run, and if they didn't, he would choose not to run.

The result on Tuesday night was mixed.

While the Democrats did gain 32 seats in the House and are likely to gain more as votes are counted and certified, and while they flipped seven governorships, they were less successful with state legislatures, Win Back Your State's main focus.  They gained about three hundred seats, but Republicans still control about three-fifths of the state legislative chambers.  The bright side?  The Democrats go into 2019 controlling the governorship and both legislative houses in fourteen states, a net gain of six.  But that's still far short of what the Democrats need to produce meaningful change at the state level.  O'Malley didn't concentrate his efforts on the U.S. Senate as much as he concentrated on the state legislatures, the governorships, or U.S. House seats, and with good reason; the Senate map favored Republicans from the start, and the GOP may end up adding at least two additional seats.  And Democratic hopes of retaking the Senate may be a long shot for years to come, given the growing Republican power in the smaller states, as Dylan Matthews of Vox.com explains.

And then there's O'Malley's home state of Maryland.  Democrats retained control of the legislature, called the General Assembly, but Republican governor Larry Hogan won re-election and gets another four years to undo O'Malley's legacy.  O'Malley spent practically zero time in his home state, but then the Democrats didn't need his help to maintain control of both houses of the General Assembly.  But former NAACP president Ben Jealous, Hogan's Democratic opponent, sure could have used his help.  O'Malley's decision to keep his distance from Jealous, whom he did not back for the Maryland Democratic gubernatorial nomination, reflects badly on the former governor.  While I suspect that O'Malley did not back Jealous because he believed he was going to lose, some wags have opined that the real reason O'Malley kept his distance from Maryland is because he's still deeply unpopular as an ex-governor, and that his support for Jealous or other Democrats would have hurt rather than helped them.  And truth be told, O'Malley's failure to secure then-Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown's election as his successor in 2014 despite Brown's consistent lead over Hogan in the polls was likely the first blow against his 2016 presidential hopes.  Democratic leaders looking for an alternative to Hillary only had to see the 2014 election results in Maryland - and O'Malley's plummeting approval rating - to shake their heads and look elsewhere.

O'Malley helped Democrats make great strides in state elections, to be sure, but so did other political action committees. Win Back Your State deserves credit for its efforts at building up the party, but other groups will also take credit, diluting O'Malley's stature. 

Also, there are the unknown variables involving O'Malley's competition. All eyes are on Beto O'Rourke possibly running for President in 2020 after his loss in the U.S. Senate race in Texas to Ted Cruz.  There are several other possible candidates, many of whom have been getting the sort of repeated media exposure that O'Malley can only envy.  Of course, Beto may not run, and some high-profile Democrats considering at presidential run, such as Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand, have embarrassed themselves in the public eye - Harris and Booker with their grandstanding during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings that ended up helping the Supreme Court nominee win confirmation, Gillibrand for her naked power play against Al Franken - while other prospects such as Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are seen as past their prime.

What O'Malley may have going for him this time is something I alluded to in my earlier comments about the 2018 elections.  I noted that progressives who were nominated for office, including Jealous, lost decisively and that the Democrats have been warned not to nominate a progressive presidential candidate.  Except that earlier Democratic efforts at moving to the center - in presidential and down-ballot elections alike - have also fallen short.  O'Malley represents a third alternative, a platform with progressive policies - infrastructure, opposition to the death penalty, expanded homosexual rights, a tough line on guns - with an approach to building consensus and getting things done that centrists can admire.  That third way didn't get any attention when he ran against progressive Bernie Sanders and the centrist Hillary Clinton, but maybe after four years of Donald J. Trump, O'Malley's political philosophy may get another look from rank-and-file Democrats.

In short, O'Malley's chances of running for President in 2020 are, well, 50-50.  My take is that he can still run and he can still win - but it won't be easy. 

So, Governor, are you in, or are you out?  Where are you going? 

I await the answer.

The Mad Bomber

The likely package bomber who terrorized CNN and anti-Trump public figures, one Cesar Sayoc of Florida, was caught after only a few days, but the madman in the White House, Donald Trump, is still at large  - and acting at his rallies (wait - he's still having rallies during a national emergency?) like the bomb scare is an inconvenient joke designed to stop the latest Republican surge of momentum, which it might.  Or it might not; the idea that it's a joke might even make the Republicans septuple down on voting a week from this coming Tuesday.  As evidence of that, Trump supporters in North Carolina were waiting yesterday in the middle of the pouring rain just to see Trump at his rally there.  Does anyone on the Democratic side command that sort of devotion? 

Be that as it may, Trump should be leading and uniting the nation at a time of crisis as the nation's patriarch, just as I'm sure that Hillary Clinton, one of the bomber's intended targets, would have been had she been elected to be the nation's matriarch.  Instead, he's mocking his opponents, dismissing the media, and trying to change the subject back to whatever it was before this bombing story broke.  And while he may not have started the rumors that Cesar Sayoc is a Democratic operative sending these bombs as a hoax to make Republicans look bad, they are spreading so fast and being pushed so relentlessly by Fox News - "Fascinating," says Fox's Martha McCallum speaking of this conspiracy theory as if it were fact - that it's easy to see why Republican momentum hasn't been dampened any.

The Democrats will likely have the vote of every thinking person on November 6, and I hope that means they have a majority.  I hope this bomb scare - or, more appropriately enough, Trump's reaction to it - motivates Democrats as much as the Kavanaugh hearings motivated Republicans.  There's a precedent for that; then-House speaker Newt Gingrich's efforts to keep Republicans motivated in the closing days of the 1998 midterms by playing up Democratic President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky angered Democrats so much that they voted in greater numbers than usual and helped their party gain seats in the House (but not the majority) in a year where the party controlling the executive branch was supposed to lose seats in the legislative branch.  (The Senate remained unchanged that year, 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats.)  As a result, Gingrich  quit his speakership and his House seat.  So, again, I would encourage Democrats to react to Trump's bullying and his insensitivity to the bomb scare (the Cintons and the Obamas shouldn't wait up nights for Trump to call them with words of sympathy for having bombs being sent to them) by voting en masse in the midterms.  Otherwise, the Democrats will look even more irrelevant than they do now.

And Robert Mueller will be out of a job.

The 2010s have been a disastrous decade for Democrats.  More ominously, though, this decade - which started with the Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court - this decade has been a disastrous one for the nation.  Don't blow it this time, Democrats!  

What the Hell Is Wrong With the Democrats?

The Democrats have an 85 percent chance of winning control of the House, at least according to Nate Silver.  They likely won't win back the Senate, but they stand a good chance at keeping the 49-seat caucus that they have now.  And the stand to win at least eight governorships. 

So why does it look like they're going to blow it again?

Democrats have been losing the momentum in the final weeks of the midterm campaign to the Republicans not just because of Judge K, the controversy over whom has died down somewhat since he joined the Supreme Court, but because Donald Trump is throwing out all sorts of non-issues - an immigrant caravan that's trying to get into the U.S. but can't even get though Mexico, Middle Eastern terrorists in the caravan, mom mobs - and they're resonating. Democrats have the high ground on several issues that are real but they're not throwing out anything.

And now it turns out that the majority of early voters are . . . Republicans!

Democrats had been cautioned not to talk about Trump but instead talk about issues that matter.  Many of them apparently were counting on anti-Trump sentiment to carry them over the finish line.  Except that Trump now has a 47 percent approval rating - not great but higher than the 46 percent of the vote in 2016.  And the economy?  Democrats were counting on low wages to help them. Wages are starting to tick up now.  Republican chances of holding the House, which is still statistically unlikely, may be ticking up as well.  The Democrats have talked about health care but have failed to realize that this is not the only issue voters care about.  Trump hasn't talked about infrastructure lately - but neither have the Democrats. And even though no one in their right minds would be for illegal immigration, Democrats can't bring themselves to come out against it while stressing that they only want to expand legal - legal - immigration because they think that co-opting the Republican talking point against illegal immigration will alienate Hispanic interest groups.  This is ironic, because Democrats haven't been reaching out to actual Hispanic voters.

Democrats may have a chance to preserve their prospects for the House of Representatives thanks to Trump's latest lie.  He says that Congress is ready to pass a middle-class tax cut resolution in the coming week, even though taxes are decreed by law and not by resolution and Congress isn't in session right now anyway.  Democrats have an advantage on the middle-class tax issue.  Now's their chance to call Trump out on an issue that they can win on.  But will they do it?  (One candidate who likely will is New Jersey Democratic House candidate Mikie Sherrill, who, running in my district, has made taxes the centerpiece of her campaign.)

Twenty eighteen is not a presidential election year, but the ghost of Winfield Scott, the last Whig presidential candidate, could unexpectedly hover over the Democrats in two weeks and change.  The Democrats, despite Trump, could still . . . Whig out.  

No Jersey Gimme

Since Republican Chris Christie's landslide re-election as governor of New Jersey in November 2013 - buyers' remorse over which set in as early as December 2013 - New Jersey has been a gimme for Democrats in one election after another.  Cory Booker was handily elected to a full U.S. Senate term in 2014.  New Jersey Democrats expanded their majority in the state Assembly midterms in 2015.  Hillary Clinton was guaranteed the state's fourteen electoral votes in 2016, allowing normally reliable Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters to go third-party without handing New Jersey to Donald Trump.  And Phil Murphy's gubernatorial election victory in 2017 was such a foregone conclusion, political pundits wouldn't even talk about the election in advance.

In 2018, it's different.  Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez is up for re-election, and he faces the stigma of corruption charges that a jury couldn't decide on.  Though Menendez wasn't re-tried, he could be tried in the court of public opinion and lose in an upset to Republican challenger Bob Hugin, a pharmaceutical executive running as a Dudley Do-Right whose company has helped saved lives with its cancer-fighting drugs.  National Democrats are so afraid that they could lose this seat that they are helping to shore up Menendez's seat at the expense of help for Democratic Senate candidates and incumbents elsewhere.   

Menendez (above,left, with Hugin) is counting on Hugin's company's own misdeeds, such as price gouging, and the fact that he (Hugin) would be another vote for Trump in the Senate to save his own sorry hide.  Hugin is counting on the lingering stigma of the corruption charges against Menendez as well as, no doubt, the promise of increased leverage for New Jersey in a Senate that will likely stay Republican.  And Menendez is definitely in trouble, not just with all voters but with his own base; he won renomination in June with 60 percent of the vote.  Sixty percent sounds like a landslide, and it is, but considering that his opponent, Lisa McCormick, was a candidate few voters had ever heard of and a candidate who did little if any advertising, it's an embarrassment to get only three out of five votes.  So, yes, New Jersey could send a Republican to the Senate for the first time since the debut of Bob Newhart's sitcom - not the one with Mary Frann, the earlier one with Suzanne Pleshette.  (That is, 1972.)

I'm not saying Hugin will win.  I'm only saying he can win.  Substitute "Trump" for "Hugin," and you will see that I said the same thing in 2016.   

Oh yeah, both Menendez and Hugin are from Union City, a small urban enclave just west of Manhattan.  Both of them were born in 1954, and, according to my computer, both of them have spell-checker-unfriendly surnames.  So, we in New Jersey know that our next U.S. Senator will be an ethically dubious 64-year-old guy from Union City named Bob.  We just don't know yet which one.    

Beto Bet

I was just listening to a conversation on MSNBC about Texas Democratic Senate candidate and U.S. Representative Robert "Beto" O'Rourke (below) and how he's faring in his campaign against the insufferable Ted Cruz.  Despite raising more than $38 million for his campaign from voters all over America, he's behind Cruz by eight percentage points in the polls.

A pair of political strategists, one Republican and one Democrat, agreed that O'Rourke is impressive at inspiring people nationwide but, because Texas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate sine Lloyd Bentsen won his fourth and final term in 1988, always had an uphill battle.  The Republican strategist even said that Democrats wanted their money on a lost cause when their continuations could have gone to held imperiled Democratic Senate incumbents.  That is, Beto has more support outside Texas than in Texas.  He added that O'Rourke made a fatal mistake by nationalizing the race instead of talking about issues primarily concerning Texas, reminding Lone Star State voters that there is something worse than Ted Cruz, the least liked man in the Senate - a Democrat.

Former Democratic U.S. Representative Donna Edwards, responding to the strategists, seemed to concede that O'Rourke will lose (like O'Rourke, Edwards gave up a House seat for a quixotic quest for a Senate seat), but she did say that the enthusiasm he's generated in Texas may help Democratic House candidates there.

As for the polls . . . well, I think there's a chance that Cruz could be upset in Texas, just as his fellow Cuban-American senator Robert Menendez could be upset in New Jersey (more on that later).  The polls don't show first-time voters in their surveys, and the young people in Texas fired up by O'Rourke could end up making the difference.  But if he loses, he is likely politically dead, like so many one-time losers on the Democratic side who have come before, and coming from El Paso and having a rapport with Hispanic voters will only help Beto if a future Democratic President appoints him to a Cabinet position.

Still Marching

I've been keeping up with Martin O'Malley as the 2018 midterm elections approach, following his efforts at helping Democrats win control of more state legislative seats and a few gubernatorial and congressional seats as well, as he marches on from one state to the next and contemplates another presidential run in 2020.

To be honest, there hasn't been much about O'Malley lately, apart from a few articles here and there, and there haven't been all that many interviews with him either.  Maybe that's to be expected - but likely not for reasons you might think.  No, he isn't getting any attention from the media as they drool over Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Joe Biden and other potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.  But that's probably because he doesn't have time for interviews with the press.  While other Democratic presidential candidates bloviate on TV news shows or preen in congressional hearings, O'Malley is out in the middle of the country, campaigning for local Democrats and building the alliances and connections he'll need for a 2020 presidential campaign.  Laying the groundwork for another bid for the White House at the grass-roots level is so much more important than strutting like a peacock on cable TV.

To get an idea of just what O'Malley is up to with his Win Back Your State PAC, I urge you to read this excellent aticle from Mileah Kromer of the Baltimore Sun.  In the meantime, whether news about O'Malley is frequent or scant, I plan to keep talking about him.  Somebody has to.        

People Make the Country Go Round

Although Trump had a bad week that started with a disastrous summit with Putin and ended with a damning tape of Michael Cohen having a conversation with him about paying a Playboy model to keep quiet about her and Trump's affair (made by Cohen himself), Democrats took more steps toward Whig-like extinction.  Despite generic polls showing a preference for Democratic congressional candidates in the midterm elections, there is no sign of a "blue wave" that is going to sweep the Republicans out of control of the House and Senate.  Quite the contrary: Democrats are losing support among constituencies they need for the midterms (such as blue-collar voters), whole states are under the grip of Republican machines (such as Scott Walker's Wisconsin), the economy is doing just well enough to lull people into a false sense of satisfaction with their pathetically low wages (Trump has a 50 percent approval rating on the economy according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll), and the Democrats are presently being torn apart by a rift between moderates and progressives (I can't think of something to write in parentheses this time).    

But the Democratic Party seems to be - seems to be, that's just it - turning the corner.  Their "A Better Deal" slogan having crashed and burned, Democrats offered a new slogan: "For the People."  As in government for the people, the sort Abraham Lincoln envisioned in the Gettysburg Address.  They plan to include this slogan in their comments and stump speeches to remind the voters that all is not well in Trump's America, and that they, the Democrats, will offer action on improving health care, spending more money on infrastructure, and ending Republican corruption.  Note that the name of a certain country that stretches from the Gulf of Finland to the Bering Strait is not being mentioned.  That's because the Democrats uncharacteristically know better.  Not only are Republicans likely to rush to the polls in Trump's defense if Democrats go after the Russia issue, progressives in the Democratic base regard Russia as a red herring.  They wouldn't stand for Russophobia during the Cold War and they still won't tolerate it in the post-Soviet era.   

"We have 110 days from right now until Election Day and we will be spending the month of August in our home districts and we wanted to make sure we are singing from the same song sheet on the three top issues," explained Democratic Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois (above), co-chair of House Democrats' messaging committee. 

In a way, this is a vindication for former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, whose Win Back Your State PAC has been emphasizing the same strategy the geniuses in the Democratic establishment have suddenly embraced (not a bad slogan, "For the People," but what took them so long?).  He's out there, somewhere - probably Florida right now - working under the radar screen and helping state and local Democrats espouse a message the Democrats should have enunciated long ago.  And he's been listening to the same people - the people whom the Democrats should remember were their raison d'être in the first place - that the Democratic establishmentarians have, up to now, only said they are for.

O'Malley (above) has been leading an effort to revitalize the Democratic Party with few followers, having been taken with such little seriousness by Democratic leaders.  If Democrats at least take back the House (the Senate is gone, thanks to staggered terms and Democratic senators up for re-election in Republican states), it may give him greatly needed support for a possible 2020 presidential campaign, assuming Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez doesn't steal the credit for him.  But if the Democratic Party doesn't win any power whatsoever, be it in Washington or state capitals, it won't be O'Malley's fault.  Refusing to acknowledge a party loyalist's best efforts to help the party is far worse than that party loyalist failing after trying his best with little help from anyone.

And if the Democrats blow this election, O'Malley should stop following a Whiggish group that so obviously wants nothing to do with him and start leading . . . a new party.

Overpowering

So why did Trump try to continue to keep immigrant children detained apart from their parents and doubling down on the policy while blaming the Democrats for it, even that the legislation he cited as their responsibility has nothing to do with the policy, which was concocted by his anti-immigrant adviser Stephen Miller?

Very simple: He's been trying to energize his base.  He wants to excite them enough to get them to come out and vote in November to overpower Democratic enthusiasm.

Trump reversed the policy of separating children from parents in an executive order when the negative publicity got too bad, but he will still detain families together in atrocious conditions while trying to get Congress to pass unpopular legislation that won't really solve the problem . . . to allow him to keep deflecting blame to others for his own policy.  Children who have already been separated from their parents are still separates, and many of them are becoming unaccounted for.  Trump's overall objective is to look as if he's securing the border while playing up the concerns of "natives" at the expense of people coming here from Latin America and denying the most basic human rights.  Detaining children apart from their parents was meant to send a message,  and it was part of the strategy of ultra-conservative nationalist Steve Bannon.  He hopes to help Trump in the midterms by pushing the idea that America comes first, we don't need or want the rest of the world, and any form of internationalism - not to mention support of the Democratic Party - is tantamount to treason.  He will push it so hard that the Trump base shows up at the polls to punish the Democrats into total irrelevance, if not outright extinction.

In other words, something that should finally bring Trump down is only going to be used in an attempt to cripple the opposition.

And if this ploy works, God help us.

Win Back Your State - Game Time

Martin O'Malley is serious - dead serious - about helping the Democrats win back power in the midterm elections six months from today, even though the Democratic Party establishment considers him politically dead.  At this point, the national party doesn't have a message, doesn't have a strategy, and doesn't have a clue.  But state and local parties and candidates have all of that, and Martin O'Malley is hell-bent on toughening up for the November elections to come. This is how he explains it in his fundraising e-mail for his political action committee, or PAC:

*

Something really new is happening for the Democratic Party.

From Ohio, to Florida, from New Hampshire to Iowa  -  and beyond -  State Democratic Party Chairs all tell me the same thing. "This year, we have more qualified candidates, Martin, than we have qualified campaign staff."

Say what you will about Donald Trump, he has been the greatest recruitment tool our Party has had in a long time. (Yes, I called him a “tool.”) He has also been a huge help — “HUGE HELP” — when it comes to building crowds for marches and protests. But, good candidates and big demonstrations aren’t enough to win back our states. We need to run campaigns that win elections. So, let’s fill the space between this new grassroots energy and the ability to run winning elections all across our country.

Last weekend in College Park, Maryland, our new Leadership PAC  -  Win Back Your State  - held our first "training camp" for new campaign staff. Many of those who signed up for a full day of training were totally new to electoral politics. Some were recently retired and wanted to make a difference this year when our country needs us most. Kathleen, new to campaigns at the age of fifty, had driven down from Philadelphia. Ian, a college student at George Washington, already had some prior campaign experience in South Africa of all places. We even had a father-daughter team  -  Wesley and Karen from Howard County, Maryland  -  who joined in a full day of lectures, trainings, and simulations on everything from running an effective door-to-door operation to designing effective messages for social media.

This was our first Win Back Your State Training Camp, but with your help, it won’t be our last. Every state matters and every state needs good people who can actually run campaigns. So, please join me in bringing forward a new generation of campaign leadership from the grassroots up.

There is goodness within our country. It’s just waiting to be called forward.

Great nations sometimes make bad mistakes; good nations correct them quickly.

- Martin O'Malley 

*

It's great to see someone take charge like this.  Maybe it will inspire Tom Perez to do something constructive.  If he needs the training, I'm sure I can find a bicycle with two extra wheels to help him get started. :-p

O'Malley knows what the stakes are.  If the Democrats don't win back power at the state or federal level, they'll be crippled even more going into 2019 as Republicans seek to consolidate their power to suppress the vote and prepare to take control of redistricting in advance of the 2020 census.  And it's a pretty safe bet that if the Democrats go down in 2018, they will most likely not only lose the congressional elections in 2020 but the Presidency as well.  And if they lose in 2020, the party is doomed.  That will really be it.

Click here to donate to Win Back Your State.

Paul Is Dead (Politically)

It hasn't been confirmed as I type this, but shout it out loud - noted classic-heavy-metal fan Paul Ryan will not seek another term in the House of Representatives, thus ending his tenure as Speaker.    

First Reince Priebus, now Ryan . . . I hope the last remaining member of the Wisconsin Axis of Evil, Scott Walker, falls next.

Ryan's exit suggests that he knows that the Democrats will likely take back the House in November - unless the Democratic National Committee's Tom Perez blows it, in which case that dimwitted dullard Kevin McCarthy of California will likely be the next Speaker.

Now we fight.  If there was ever a time to get involved in the midterms to stop the GOP, this is it.  Just don't bother to make yourself available to the Democratic National Committee - go to Martin O'Malley's PAC instead.

Win Back Your State.  Because the DNC won't. 

Out Like a Lamb

It took awhile, but the vote in the special election in Pennsylvania's Eighteenth U.S. House District is officially in, and Democrat Conor Lamb (below) has won.  His victory, however narrow, is an embarrassment to Trump, who carried the district by 20 points.

Lamb ran on local concerns and economic issues, meaning that he distanced himself from the national party and its establishment leaders.  In other words, he ran talking about the real concerns of the voters.  No identity politics, no "cultural" issues, none of that stuff, just the basic worries about jobs, the economy, education, infrastructure, and health care.  Martin O'Malley's Win Back Your State PAC, which discourages Democratic candidates for office from talking about Trump, backed him, and Democratic strategist Lis Smith said that Lamb's victory shows that Democrats can win Republican areas by running on local issues and not on the issues of the coastal elites.  Lis Smith, by the way, is a veteran of Martin O'Malley's presidential campaign.

I wonder how much Democrats will learn from this win.  They'll probably keep pushing Trump as an issue to get out the vote for the midterms but miss the point of Lamb's victory - responding to voters.  Even if Democrats don't nationalize the midterms, the Republicans might, and Tom Perez at the Democratic National Committee may not be well-equipped to counter such a strategy.  But the victory of Lamb, who will run for a full House this November in a newly redrawn district thanks to a court-ordered redistricting due to gerrymandering, has been a major wake-up call for the Republicans and a sign that the wave waiting to wash them out of power in November is in fact a tsunami.  The Democrats now know how to win. All they have to do is follow through.             

Like Death

Trump said something about the Democratic response to his State of the Union address that I actually agree with.  No, not the part about them being treasonous, or  the part about them being un-American.  It was the part when he said their response - where they sat on their hands and looked forlorn as he spoke and as Republicans cheered - was "like death."

It was like death.  That's because the Democratic Party is once again dying.  They ended the holidays on the verge of a huge wave in the midterms that would sweep them back into the majority in the House and possibly the Senate. They go into Mardi Gras as the clueless, spineless bench-warmers they've always been.  The Democrats have offered neither a strong rebuttal to the Trump tax law nor an alternative tax program that can appeal to middle-class and working-class voters. So, while the Koch brothers - who are planning to pour millions of dollars in to the 2018 midterms - are making a fortune off the new tax law (on top of the fortune they already have), ordinary people who are only getting a few hundred dollars from the tax system think it's wonderful and are applauding the GOP.  Support for the tax law has almost doubled in the polls.         

And the Democrats - especially Chuck Schumer - thought they could appeal to voters by shutting down the government over an issue like immigration, which they could have used as leverage against Trump while still keeping the government open?  Come on, do you think President Martin O'Malley would have let that happen?

The Democrats can't even come up with a unifying message; while Joe Kennedy III was offering up that lame promise of a "better deal" in an otherwise well-received response to Trump's State of the Union, three other Democrats - and Bernie Sanders - offered up rebuttals based on different perspectives, revealing just how faction ridden the party is.  

The recent volatility in the stock market has caused Trump some embarrassment and has made him look bad after bragging about the record highs of late, but he's hardly been humbled.  And as long as he keeps the investors and Republican donors happy, the GOP will happily tolerate his worst excesses.  Democrats don't tolerate him, but they won't win back either house of Congress in November by saying what they won't do; they have to let people know what they will do.  It's too bad that no one as had a clue of what the Democratic agenda for all of this entire century.  The Democrats should be glad it's only 2018.       

Back OFF the Dock!

This is incredible.

Mere hours after I posted about Robert Menendez being re-tried by the Justice Department on eleven of eighteen bribery, conspiracy and fraud counts against him, the government has now reversed course and decided not to re-try him at all.  So I guess he's off the hook? 

Not quite.  Menendez still has a stigma of corruption to his name,  he till has to carry all of the baggage associated with it, and Republicans smell blood.  They're ready to produce a winning candidate to oppose the New Jersey Democratic senator's re-election bid in November.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from New Jersey, 2018!  

Funky dung remergence! :-D

Back In the Dock

I didn't watch Donald Trump's State of the Union speech last night.  I'm actually more preoccupied with another political disaster.

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) is going to be re-tried on eleven of the eighteen charges of bribery, conspiracy and fraud filed against him.  The judge in the Menendez case, William Walls, acquitted him on the other seven, but the Justice Department is forging ahead with trying Menendez again on the remaining charges after a mistrial in the previous trial - a trial I almost got on as a juror. 

Now, you think that New Jersey Democrats would treat Menendez like kryptonite and be eager to  nominate someone else to run for his seat in November, seeing that control of the Senate hangs very much in balance.  But no, the state party is rallying around him, as Tom Moran reports in the New Jersey Star-Ledger.  (I don't know Governor Murphy's stand on the issue.)  Menendez has vowed to fight against the charges and for re-election, and the New Jersey Democratic Party - legendarily known as the most crooked state party east of Chicago - is circling the wagons around him.  Just like when the Democratic National Committee circled the wagons around Hillary Clinton when she decided she wanted to run for President (that decision was made on January 21, 2001 - don't kid yourself!).  The difference?  There's nothing Hillary did that, despite Michael Flynn's protests to the contrary, would have caused her to be locked up.

But the corruptions against Menendez could lend him in the slammer if the re-trial leads to a conviction.  As Moran noted, the prospect of Menendez being tried and found guilty during the election campaign season would force the Democrats to have to replace him on the ballot, but they'd have to do that before the middle of September.  Even if he isn't found guilty, he'll have to spend as much time in the media spotlight as a defendant as he will as a candidate.  In that environment, the Republicans - who haven't elected a U.S. Senator from New Jersey since 1972 (to give you an idea how far back that was, it was the year of the Eagles' debut record, the premiere of the TV series version of "M*A*S*H," and the opening of the movie The Godfather) - could run a cow against Menendez and defeat him.

A fellow named Michael Starr Hopkins is planning to run against Menendez in the June 6 U.S. Senate Democratic primary.  If there's any grass-roots group out there willing to back Hopkins, I hope it does.  Look, maybe Menendez is innocent.  Maybe he didn't do anything wrong.  Maybe a second jury will agree with that supposition.  It doesn't matter; he's damaged goods.  This seat is too important for Democratas to put at risk.

But if there's one thing we know about the Democrats, they only take risks when they shouldn't. :-O

After everything I've just said here, I doubt that Judge Walls will be summoning me to the courthouse again.

Franken Sense

He - Al Franken - just resigned from the Senate over charges of inappropriate behavior towards women.  

The junior Democratic senator from Minnesota was forced to step down after most of his female Democratic Senate colleagues called for his resignation.  His exit has divided the Democratic Party not over sexual misconduct itself but how to deal with it.  Many progressives are angry that a U.S. Senator with such a strong progressive record, particularly on women's issues, could be forced out for a few relatively harmless incidents of groping that had yet to go through the Senate Ethics Committee - many of which Franken has denied - when  there is clear evidence of far greater indiscretions against Donald Trump and Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore despite their own denials.  To them, this shows that Democratic lawmakers are unwilling to stand by their own colleagues when they are facing issues of sexual misconduct and let them fall because of Republican charges of double standards while the GOP brazenly stands by fellow Republicans who have done worse and are allowed to get away with it.  Like the Republicans say in regard to Moore,  these Democrats say that Franken's fate should be left up to the voters.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who was up front in getting Franken to quit, doesn't think so.  She says that there should be no distinction between groping and assault and that there should be zero tolerance for all forms of sexual impropriety, even an unwanted peck on the cheek.  She hopes that, by purging Democratic ranks of sex offenders of all sorts, Democrats will be able to claim a moral high ground and show that they will stand against any and all such behavior to shame the Republicans.

The pressure on Franken to resign couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time for congressional Democrats; House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi stood by Michigan congressman John Conyers when he was found to have paid out a claim involving a sexual-harassment charge to avoid litigation, only to retreat from her support and urge his resignation once more charges arose.  Pelosi made herself look both insensitive to the women involved and noncommittal in her support of Conyers as a result, satisfying no one with her flip-flopping.  But by attempting to take the moral high ground and stay there once and for all, the Democrats don't appear to realize what a risk they're taking. Because the moral high ground doesn't matter to Republicans, who have won elections by going low and hitting below the belt.  And so far, the Democrats' high-ground game hasn't worked out as they might have liked.  Moore and Trump are shameless to the point that they now have each other's backs, even after Trump unsuccessfully supported Luther Strange in the Republican primary for Alabama's Senate seat.

Franken himself made a resignation speech that was so eerily reminiscent of Gary Hart's bitter presidential-campaign withdrawal speech of May 1987 that I half-expected Hart to write him a commendatory letter for it.  Franken took to the Senate floor defending himself against charges of impropriety with a defiant tone that gave every indication that he was prepared to fight it out, only to bow to peer pressure and step down.  He did so with the same contempt toward the Republicans for supporting Trump and Moore that Hart had displayed toward the press, inevitably earning criticism for his attitude - except that Franken has an actual case against the Republicans.  One could argue that he has a case against Gillibrand for forcing him out for purely political reasons, given that she hopes to use women's issues in a possible candidacy for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.  "Gillibrand's moves against leading figures in her own party," observed CNN's Eric Bradner, "have positioned her to turn her focus to Republicans and make an aggressive case against Trump."    

So what do the Democrats do now?  My advice to them - though I know they'll never listen, since they wouldn't listen when I told them to nominate Martin O'Malley for President - would be to pivot their focus to taxes, health care, Net neutrality, and other pressing issues even as they continue to call the Republicans on the sexual harassment issue.  Because the Republicans are in an even more precarious situation. If Democrat Doug Jones wins Tuesday's U.S. Senate special election in Alabama, the Democrats gain one Senate seat on top of the two Senate seats they picked up in 2016, and in a state in the Deep South at that.  If Roy Moore wins, the GOP becomes the party of sexual predators, which will stay on the back of the voters' minds going into the 2018 midterms.  And the Democrats' high-ground approach to sexual misconduct in their battles with the GOP may have already begun to bear fruit, albeit low-hanging fruit; Representative Trent Franks, a Republican from Arizona has resigned over charges that he tried to persuade a female staffer to serve as a surrogate mother when he and his wife wanted a child, and another Republican, Representative Blake Farenthold of Texas, is under a House ethics investigation for having used $84,000 in taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment claim.  A black congresswoman has called on him to resign - Mia Love, the only black female member of the GOP House caucus, whom you already know about from a previous post.

Somewhere, he - Al Franken - is smiling.

And with allies like Gillibrand, who needs adversaries?  O'Malley in 2020.   

Quo Vadis, Democrats?

The Democrats didn't just resist Trumpism in last week's elections; they overran it.  In Virginia, Democrat Ralph Northam not only held on to win the governorship, he won by nine percentage points - thrice the margin the polls predicted.  And if that weren't enough, Virginia Democrats held the lieutenant governorship (elected on a separate ballot, unlike in New Jersey), held the attorney general's office (New Jersey's attorney general is appointed by the governor), and possibly won enough seats in the lower chamber of the legislature, called the House of Delegates, to get a majority, though that outcome is still uncertain.  What's more certain is that the House of Delegates' new Democratic caucus will have a more diverse membership, including an Asian woman, Hispanics, a transsexual, and an anti-gun advocate who was a news anchor at a Roanoke TV station . . . and saw his fiancée, a reporter at the same station, shot to death on live television. :-(

In New Jersey, Phil Murphy was elected governor easily, despite some nervousness caused by projections of low voter turnout and some closing of the gap by Kim Guadagno, his Republican opponent.  And while Virginia will have its first black lieutenant governor - a man whose last name is (and this is so ironic who knows anything about the history of Virginia's aristocratic families) Fairfax - New Jersey will have a black woman as its lieutenant governor, our second lieutenant governor overall since the office was created in 2009.  (No one with a Y chromosome has held it yet, as Guadagno is the current lieutenant governor.)  The Democrats already have majorities in both houses of the legislature. 

All across the land, Democrats scored big in down-ballot races in 2017 (including a special-election victory for a state Senate seat in Oklahoma on November 14), demonstrating that people are ready to fight back against Trump.  However, there's one thing the party still lacks - a message.  Democratic efforts to craft a message that resonates with the voters have largely fallen flat - the "better deal" biz has been forgotten four months after that silly slogan was unveiled! - and their gains were mostly concessions from the Republicans more than they were earned victories.  That is, it wasn't so much that the Democrats won as it was that the Republicans lost.

Here's one other thing the Democrats lack - a strategy. While the Republicans are trying to keep their raucous caucus together - and stave off the stench of Roy Moore - the Democrats are going into 2018 with the wind at their backs.  Unfortunately, that wind may be their own.  Democrats are looking to win back the House and the Senate, but two factors stand in their way.  First, voter suppression is still very much a problem in many states.  Second, many House seats and most Senate seats up in 2018  - particularly the Senate seats, most of them Democratic seats being in states Trump won - are in constituencies so Republican that the voters wouldn't even elect a Democrat even if the Democrats nominated Mother Teresa for office.  The Democratic Party has so far shown no evidence of any game plan or agenda to counteract this.  And need I mention the 36 governorships up in 2018? Wisconsin's Scott Walker has all but neutralized his opposition, and Republican governors like Larry Hogan in Maryland and Charlie Baker in Massachusetts have governed so much like moderate Republicans of yore that it's hard for Democrats in either state to paint them as Trump manques . . . or even as Scott Walker manques.   And in Ohio and Florida, where Republican governors are term-limited, the Democrats don't have any obvious contenders who could win the general elections. In Ohio, Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine, a former U.S. Senator and a legend in Ohio politics, looks like the favorite, though Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray, who is stepping down from that post to run for governor of Ohio, looks like a promising Democratic candidate.

Centrist Democrats are already talking about moderation as a message - the same losing message that's been costing the party for three decades.  It's time for the party to boldly embrace a liberal - don't say "progressive," we know that's a euphemism for "liberal" like "African-American," or "urban," is a euphemism for "black" - agenda and stick with it.  The template for a liberal agenda and a liberal message can be found in New Jersey, where Phil Murphy won the  governorship running  on a staunchly liberal platform in a moderate, suburban state and won big time after eight years of Chris Christie's boneheaded conservatism.  Murphy still has to deliver as governor, but if he does, it should inspire Democrats in other states running for office in 2018 to pursue an agenda that will be more about the people than about the moneyed interests. 

If the Democrats want to know where they're going, they have to see where they've been - not just with the Clintons but with the Kennedys and with Franklin Roosevelt.  Then maybe they'll remember what they're supposed to stand for.  My reports on the Democrats going the way of the Whigs have turned out to be greatly exaggerated, but they're not out of the woods just yet.      

Can't Find a Better Slogan

I mean, have you seen these guys?

The Democratic Party, having tried out different taglines for the upcoming 2018 midterm elections, finally thinks it has a winning slogan, and, tellingly, it's not one of the slogans the party offered its members to vote on earlier this month.   It's better than those four would-be slogans, so it's appropriate that it uses the word "better" four times.  Here it is: 

"A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages"

So okay, it has a subtle reference to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and the message, as Bill Clinton might have said, focuses on the economy like a laser beam.  So far, so good - or, so better.  Well, what's not to like?

Quite a few things, actually.  For one thing, the slogan doesn't tell us how Democrats are going to provide a better job market.  Doing something about income inequality would be nice, but the Democrats can't say anything that would offend their Wall Street backers, even though they've lost most of them to Donald Trump.  Second, it doesn't tell us what kind of superior jobs the Democrats want to provide.  Maybe jobs building and running a modern national passenger railroad?  Maybe bringing manufacturing jobs back from China?  Who knows?  Thirdly, it doesn't say how they plan to provide the skills; maybe bring Gary Hart's "Strategic Investments" policy proposal from the eighties out of cold storage?  More likely, they expect you to figure out how to get the skills, which sounds like a Republican proposal.  Fourth, the slogan only mentions economic issues and doesn't say diddly-squat about quality-of-life issues - nothing about schools, no mention of climate change, and no stand on gun control.  And oh yeah, no mention of the issue that the Republicans have forced us to face - the fate of the health care system.

But the last and most damning flaw of this slogan is its comparative-degree language.  The slogan doesn't say that the Democrats can provide a superb or an excellent economic program, or even a good one - only a better one.  Better than what?  The Republican economic program?  Well, yes, the Democratic economic program is better, I guess.  Providing hundreds of thousands of dead-end jobs is better than providing tens of thousands of dead-end jobs.  A modest tax increase on the wealthy is better than a tax cut for the wealthy.

And Cleopatra was a better movie than Heaven's Gate.

The simple truth is that while Republicans haven't exactly set the bar very high, neither have the Democrats.  Both the Clinton and Obama administrations improved the economy, but many people were still left out, and the fact that the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives for six of the eight years of each of Clinton's and Obama's two terms in office only goes so far to excuse both men. Clinton was instrumental in repealing the Glass-Steagall Act separating investment and commercial banking, and Obama did nothing to prosecute the bankers who took advantage of the law's repeal and caused the Wall Street financial crisis of 2008.  Simply being better isn't enough.  This slogan was supposed to have been worked out with a Bernie Sanders supporter, but it sounds a lot like the banter of then-Virginia governor and now U.S. Senator (and 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee)  Tim Kaine, below, in his official Democratic response to President George Walker Bush's 2006 State of the Union address.      

Every other sentence of Kaine's remarks seemed to be, "But there's a better way."  Jon Stewart, then the host of "The Daily Show," quite smartly mocked him for never explicitly saying what the better way was. Jay Willis of Gentleman's Quarterly, meanwhile, summed up the problem with the new Democratic tagline better than I ever could:  

"Voters want better skills, and better jobs, and better wages. (And better health care, and a stronger social safety net, and a fairer tax system, and so on and so forth.) But the party desperately needs to decide which policies it plans to support in order [to] effectuate these outcomes, even if some of the more tantalizing possibilities - single-payer health care or a federal minimum wage hike or whatever - are more aspirational at this particular moment in history than anything else."

Incidentally, this new slogan from the Democrats led many folks to compare it (unfavorably) with a similar slogan from Papa John's Pizza:  "Better Ingredients, Better Pizza."  Which is ironic, since Papa John's founder John Schnatter built his empire on paying his employees low wages and used his millions to build himself a mansion in California so colossal that even William Randolph Hearst would have scoffed at its opulence.  The slogan recalled for me the use of comparative-degree words in those old Napier costume jewelry ads, as the Democrats' promises are just as authentic and as serious as costume jewelry.  But at least the comparative-degree adjectives in those old Napier ads had a purpose - to ensure the correct pronunciation of the brand name.

And at least those Napier ads featured hot models like Kelly Emberg (above) and Jane Hitchcock. 

 All the Democrats have to offer are Charles Schumer and Tom Perez.

And they're not exactly GQ material.

The voters are not stupid.  They know that there's something better.  But they don't see anything out there that's good. 

And if the Democrats need another slogan in the near future, perhaps they can consider this one . . . 

Whither the Marty Party?

Recently I wrote that some Democrats have suggested Martin O'Malley as a potential national Democratic Party chairman for the coming four years.  Although I hold out less than zero hope for such a thing to happen - I don't think Hillary took too kindly to his campaign and, for that matter, his existence - such a scenario may prove to be the Democratic Party's last best hope of survival.

The party, having lost five of the last six House midterm elections and four of the last six Senate midterm elections as well as having lost one high-profile governorship after another, is in serious trouble, and O'Malley has, in the past few years, been one of the few Democrats who recognize the problem.  He recently said in a radio interview that he's been warning the national party establishment about the low turnout in midterm and off-year elections that have cost the Democrats power at the state and local levels, but, because he's Martin O'Malley, no one would listen to him.  No one may listen to him even after this election is over; thanks to Donald Trump's gutter talk about women, the Democrats will not only likely win the Presidency, they also have a chance at taking back the Senate and even have a decent shot of overcoming gerrymandered House districts to win control of that chamber.  But Democrats will still have to defend in 2018 whatever power they win in 2016, and they'll have to defend too many Senate seats in the 2018 midterms regardless of what happens this year.  Republicans, likely to be free of Trump's presence in 2018, will be emboldened enough to try and win a large House majority then.  The Democrats will likely revert to their old bad habit of losing in midterm and off-year elections, and the party will be in trouble yet again - maybe more so than before.

Not if O'Malley is running it.  He knows what has to be done to fix the problem, so maybe Hillary should put her obvious hostility toward him aside and let him get the Democrats prepared for 2018 and beyond. The way I see it, O'Malley will not likely be able to run for President again until 2024, as Hillary, if elected President in 2016, will almost certainly be renominated in 2020.  O'Malley will be 61 in 2024, younger than Hillary, Trump or Bernie Sanders is now, but he'll still be Martin O'Malley. As much as I am still angered about this, Democrats have made it clear that they're not interested in him as a presidential possibility.  But the Democratic National Committee chairmanship  would be a nice consolation prize.  He's ready and willing to help turn things around for the Democrats in midterm and off-year races going forward.  

Meanwhile, the Greens, aware that Jill Stein isn't going to win the White House, are aiming to get her and other Green candidates as many votes as possible to build their party up for the long term.  And the Democrats ought to realize that they could be displaced by a new liberal opposition like the Greens or a coalition that hasn't even formed yet if they continue to adhere to their tradition of sucking in midterm and off-year elections.  O'Malley must be aware of all this.  If the Democrats want to save themselves from oblivion, they should give him the chance to get them out of their hole. If he isn't ever going to run the country, he should at least be able to run the party.

And if they don't get him, I'll just stick with the Greens.

O'Malley reminds me of the title protagonist in the Beatles song "The Fool On the Hill," as he, like that character, is scorned as a fool yet is wiser than those who scorn him.

And he never listens to them, he knows that they're the fools . . . they don't like him . . ..  And he sure does see how the world is spinning round through the eyes in his head.