Fight the Matriarchy!

So many progressives want to do away with patriarchy.  Why not do away with matriarchy as well?

We can start with Nancy Pelosi.

As the Democrats, once again as in 2016 faced with the spectre of Donald Trump when they thought they were going to see one of their own become the first female President in history, Pelosi, Capitol Hill's dowager empress, continues to throw sand in in the gears while the House Democratic caucus tries to find a way forward.  

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tried for a bid to become the ranking minority member on the House Oversight Committee, which would have allowed her to stick it to Trump's cronies in hearings and garner a lot of positive attention for the party.   Pelosi, still in Germany while recovering from a fall she sustained in Luxembourg,  put her thumb on the scales and was able to get House Democrats instead to elect Representative Gerry Connelly of Virginia to assume the position instead.  Connolly is 74 and dealing with esophageal cancer.

Now, I've had my disagreements and issues with AOC in the past, but no one can deny that she is an inspiring leader with excellent communication skills and an ability to make Republicans squirm.  The only trouble is, she's able to make Democrats squirm as well.  In addition to having threatened to have moderate House Democrats in other districts primaried, she offended Pelosi first by defeating Joseph Crowley, whom Pelosi was grooming for leadership in the House, for his House seat and then second by camping out in front of her office door.  At 84, Nancy Pelosi appears to suffer from a uniquely Italian strain of Alzheimer's disease; she remembers only vendettas. 

It's more than personal slights Pelosi punishes Democrats for, however.  She is committed to an increasingly outdated seniority system that rewards old folks like Connolly for time well-served and keeps young'uns like AOC patiently and interminably waiting their turn at leadership posts.  Pelosi has famously trusted the counsel of only her generational peers, and she has long frozen out younger members who seek positions of greater power and responsibility; those who actually make a grab for such positions ultimately commit political suicide.  Ask Tim Ryan.  

To respond to the inevitable point that there is new leadership in the House Democratic caucus, ask yourself this - why is Pelosi, not House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, calling the shots on ranking committee memberships?  Why does she hold the title of "Speaker Emerita," when no former Speaker of the House ever before held a title like "Speaker Emeritus" after stepping down from party leadership while retaining his House seat?  Why was she still strategizing House elections in the 2024 cycle and proclaiming that Democrats would retake the House based on her own count?  Why did people take Pelosi seriously about that?  Why do I have a feeling that she shared a beer and a chuckle with Peter Thiel, the maliciously craven Geppetto behind James David Vance, when Vance defeated Tim Ryan for a Senate seat?  I think you know the answer. 

Nancy Pelosi is still, in the wake of Kamala Harris's defeat, the most powerful woman in Washington, and she intends to keep it that way through her influence over Jeffries and his team even if it means shunning newer voices over people who, like Pelosi, have been in Congress too long.  It leaves the party run by a gerontocracy that refuses to acknowledge the younger generation and preserves the status quo even as the Democrats need fresh ideas for taking on Trump.  And Trump is a problem Pelosi is partially responsible for.  Not only did she use her influence to knock President Biden back down when he was still trying to pick himself up after his debate with Trump, she advocated for an open convention because she did not like Harris.  She lost that fight, but Harris's loss has returned Pelosi to the catbird seat.  She is trying to be the power behind the throne on Capitol Hill.  Except that the Democrats have no power to speak of and may not have any recourse if the Democratic old guard sticks around.

AOC hugged Connolly and congratulated him after losing her bid for ranking minority member on the House Oversight Committee, and she will still serve on that committee in the new Congress, where she still promises to be an effective anti-Trump firebrand.  But a party's younger members are only as strong as its leadership allows them to be, and if Pelosi doesn't get out of the way and let the new House Democratic leadership team actually, well, lead, she's going to get the Democrats - and the country - in big trouble.        

Old Days and All that Jazz

That's Chicago.

The first night of the Democratic convention last night was a look back and a passing of the torch.  Hillary Clinton was there to pretty much say to voters that she warned us about Trump in 2016 (without mentioning that other who warned us about Trump In 2016 also warned us that Hillary couldn't defeat him), and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez the Killer slayed Trump with her slashing rhetoric against Trump's alliance with the wealthy and powerful (when in fact, he's neither of those things, but Republicans pretend otherwise).

President Biden's farewell address to the convention wasn't much more than a recapitulation of his record, and the most memorable moment for me was when he said how in no other country could a kid from Scranton could one day sit behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office as his country's leader.  I guess that makes sense; after all, how many countries have oval-shaped presidential or prime ministerial offices with a desk made of timbers from the H.M.S. Resolute?  (The King of England has one, but he was literally born into his job.)  And how many other world leaders would have come from Scranton?  

It was a bittersweet farewell for Biden, which brings to mind the subject of the bitter (not sweet) farewell of New Jersey's senior U.S. Senator.  Robert Menendez serves his long-awaited last day today in the Senate. His replacement, who will hold the seat until the election in November, is former gubernatorial aide George Helmy, whom Governor Phil Murphy appointed to fill out the reminder of Menendez's term.  

Clarifications: July 8, 2022

In my post  "The Other Alex Is Back," I wrote that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's comment about the Democratic Party's need for young and exciting candidates " would have more resonance coming from someone who didn't endorse Democratic U.S. Senator Ed Markey's 2020 re-election bid in Massachusetts, despite the fact that the 75-year-old Markey is about as exciting as straw."  I reworded it to clarify that she did just that, by saying that her comment calling for young and exciting candidates "would have more resonance coming from someone who didn't endorse Democratic U.S. Senator Ed Markey's 2020 re-election bid in Massachusetts, as Alex did, despite the fact that the 75-year-old Markey is about as exciting as straw."  Also, it read that Democrats had to "hand together;" that should have read "hang together." 

Also, in my post "Not Another Heir Apparent," I wrote that Vice President Kamala Harris "recently proved that she can even tough out an interview with that King of France God guy."  I meant to write that she "recently proved that she can't even tough out an interview with that King of France God guy."  And you should know, of course, who that King of France God guy is.

The miswordings have been corrected, and I regret the errors.

The Other Alex Is Back

Oh, Uncle Albert and Admiral Halsey, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is back!

Yesterday on CNN, Dana Bash asked Alex is she'd endorse President Biden for re-election in 2024.  Her response went something like - no, it was - this:

"You know, if the President chooses to run again in 2024 – I mean, first of all, I’m focused on winning this majority right now and preserving a majority this year in 2022. So we will cross that bridge when we get to it. But I think, if the President has a vision, then that’s something certainly we’re all willing to entertain and examine when the time comes."

In other words, she doesn't want to endorse him yet.  Maybe not at all.

Also, Alex is endorsing the primary opponent of Democratic U.S. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York's Eighteenth U.S. House district.  

She finds the 55-year-old Maloney, the openly gay chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a rising star in the Democratic Party - too centrist, too moderate and too "meh," his sexual orientation checking only one of the boxes so-called progressives look for.  Alex is  supporting his opponent - and possibly causing a serious rift in the New York State Democratic Party at a time when Democrats have to hang together or else the coming MAGA dictatorship will have them hanging separately - because his opponent, a young female state senator, would provide more excitement and draw young voters looking for a new generation of lawmakers.

Such a comment would have more resonance coming from someone who didn't endorse Democratic U.S. Senator Ed Markey's 2020 re-election bid in Massachusetts, as Alex did despite the fact that the 75-year-old Markey is about as exciting as straw.

Brian's Song

U.S. Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick lived life to the fullest and loved his job as one of the officers protecting the headquarters of Congress.  Killed during the January 6 insurrection, he was memorialized in the Capitol rotunda when his ashes were brought to lie in honor there.  His remains have been interred in Arlington National Cemetery in recognition of not just his sacrifice at the Capitol but for his service in the Air National Guard.

Officer Sicknick's fate should fire up efforts to punish Donald Trump for inciting a riot against the legislative branch of the federal government, as his impeachment trial begins this coming Tuesday.  But Senate Republicans remain mostly noncommittal to the idea of conviction; an acquittal, now seen as inevitable, will squander Congress's last chance to ensure that Trump can't stand for the Presidency again in 2024.  But more importantly, it means that the Republicans will do nothing in standing up to the extremist, reactionary wing of their party, and the GOP could regain power in the 2022 midterms and the 2024 elections if the vote is close enough, whether Trump runs to get his old job back or not.  And thanks to redistricting and voter suppression, it just might.

Brian Sicknick's memory shouldn't be dishonored like this.  We learn almost every day new facts about how the insurrection came close to mass assassinations of elected officials.  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D_NY), whatever you think of her politics, deserves sympathy for coming close to death on January 6 and having the relive her experience with sexual assault while the mob went about like the madmen they were to kill whoever was in their path. Ocasio-Cortez heard the cries of "Where is she? Where is she?" whiel in hiding and might very well have been convinced they were coming for her, so much has she become a bogeywoman for the Republican right.  The woman the mob was looking for was, more likely, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and that an institutionalist like Pelosi and a staunch progressive like AOC could inspire the same level of rage among these extremists is one of the most horrific ironies of the Trump base's extent of their hatred.

Yes, it makes no sense to acquit Trump, but we are told that this is inevitable.  News flash: So was a Hillary Clinton Presidency in 2016.  Nothing is really "inevitable." And if even if Trump doesn't get convicted in the Senate, he could still get convicted in a criminal court in New York State.  The state Attorney General's office there may very well see to that. 

Bad Power Plays

Nancy Pelosi has long been feared for her power and her ability to use it, but as Speaker of the House, she's on the verge of a power failure. This past week, she had a brownout. 

Pelosi expressed hostility toward U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, the left-wing Democratic minority women who have been raising hell over, well, you name it since the 116th Congress opened when the four women refused to vote for a border security bill that helped migrant children.  The quartet voted against the bill because it funded Trump's immigration policies and did not trust him to spend the money appropriated judiciously.  (To be fair, Pelosi was rightfully irked by an Ocasio-Cortez staffer sending out a tweet comparing moderate Democrats to Southern segregationists; that tweet has since been deleted.)  Pelosi still thought half a loaf was better than none and criticized the group for their stance, dismissing the lack of strength in numbers, as there are four of them, while overlooking the numerical strengths of their supporters . . . and by all accounts, she's not handing it very well.

Whichever side anyone is on regarding the immigration bill is irrelevant.  What matters is Pelosi's clumsiness in handling dissent in her ranks and how intolerant she is of it.  This looks worse than her freeze-out of Tim Ryan, who's now running for President (relax, I'll get to him), because the congresswomen involved here are all freshman women of color, not seasoned white males out for her job.  Both her attitudes toward these four women and toward guys like Ryan are indicative of how she want to hold on to power, yet she doesn't seem to be doing anything productive with it.

Pelosi wants to continue being feared because of her power, but she's undermined herself not just in the instance with these four congresswomen but in her lackadaisical attitude toward an impeachment inquiry of Trump, as she prefers to wait for Trump to self-destruct.  This approach is not unlike when General Motors, faced with the increase of Toyota sales in the American auto market, dismissed its rival as the beneficiary of a passing trend.

And with someone of Pelosi's power and position, that's far more than merely annoying. 

We have a Speaker who won't use her power for what she should be using it for.  Use it or lose it, Nancy.  

Trump Tripped

What did we learn from Michael Cohen's testimony before the House Oversight Committee this past week?  Well, we learned that Donald Trump is a bigot, we learned that Trump personally saw to it that Cohen paid the two women he slept while married to Melania to keep quiet and that Trump reimbursed Cohen personally, and that it turns out that Trump was well aware of the Wikileaks dump of DNC e-mails after all.

In short, we learned nothing new.  But the fact that it all came out of Cohen's mouth made it all the more believable.

Except of course, for the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, who refused to believe Cohen because he had lied to Congress before.  But Representative Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, made it clear why the Republicans had problems with Cohen.  It wasn't that they thought Cohen would lie this time, but rather, that he would tell the truth.  And the GOP committee members bashed Cohen without defending Turmp.

Although I'm disappointed in her for her botched roll-out of the Green New Deal - and although I'm flabbergasted by her threats to run liberals against moderate House Democrats like my own congresswoman, Representative Mikie Sherill (D-NJ), in the 2020 primaries if they vote with Republicans on, well, anything - Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was still impressive in how she got answers from Cohen about the suppressed stories that the National Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Incorporated, have been hiding. Cohen replied that he was no longer certain of where these documents were, and  Ocasio-Cortez was able to get Cohen to tell her and the committee under oath who might know without asking for salacious details about the stories themselves.  He named David Pecker, Barry Levine, and Dylan Howard.

It was kind of entertaining to hear Cohen say that Trump never expected to win the Presidency and only ran to make money off the 2016 campaign, but there's nothing funny about the fact that Trump won and that he's ripping off the country.  It may be, though, the Trump's time is almost up.  Not only is he flailing and flapping like a fish out of water at home, he's bumbling and bungling abroad.  His summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un accomplished nothing, and Kim realized, when asking for a relief from sanctions before giving up his nuclear weapons,. that Trump, while stupid, is by no means insane.  Trump's mature handling of an otherwise regrettable situation, however, doesn't excuse his own ignorance of foreign affairs.

But at least the old draft dodger finally made it to Vietnam. 

If Trump finally falls to scandals of his own making, historians will say that it started here.  If he comes back stronger than ever, the Democrats will be blamed for blowing a golden opportunity to win back power in 2020.  Alas, that may yet happen. 

Green Raw Deal

Four out of five people in a recent survey expressed support for the Green New Deal environmental/economic program  sponsored by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and U.S. Senator Edward Markey (D-MA).  Numerous Democratic presidential candidates have also expressed some level of support for it.  Its goals are quite popular.

So why have the Republicans been able to turn it against the Democrats and use it as an issue to ensure a GOP election victory in 2020?

I'll give you a hint: Six-letter word for the program's sponsors, rhymes with "Cupid."

Not since Franklin Roosevelt's original New Deal had there been a more important program proposal in Congress than the Green New Deal, which seeks to encourage the creation of new middle-class jobs and switching to renewable energy while combating a pattern of climate change that has brought heavy snow to Arizona and may bring a severe windstorm to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  Never has such an important program proposal been so thoroughly botched in its rollout that politicians who should be for it are fleeing it like vampires from a cross.   Ocasio-Cortez and Markey blew a great opportunity to move the debate over the environment and the economy forward and turned the very phrase "Green New Deal" into a punchline.

The trouble started when, as noted earlier on this blog, an early draft of the proposal suggested developing sufficient high-speed passenger rail service to the point where airplanes would no longer be necessary, a condition even high-speed rail advocates know is impossible in America even without having a state out in the middle of the Pacific.  Some Democratic presidential candidates backtracked on their support for the proposal and insisted that they had no problem with air travel - they loved it, in fact.  Left unmentioned was the fact that the airlines want more passenger trains to alleviate congestion in the skies. 

Then there was the provision about working with cattle ranchers to reduce methane emissions in the beef industry, caused by the overpopulation of livestock.  Although this is a serious concern, the emphasis on the cause of methane - the cows themselves - led to talk about "farting cows," which provided more laughs and snickers from the Republicans.  No one who wrote up the Green New Deal was apparently smart enough to deal with the methane issue in ranching in a way that wouldn't produce a surefire set-up for Dennis Miller.

The guts of the proposal place a good deal of planning and regulating in Washington, not in state local governments.  Rather than appearing to be a program designed to encourage an environmentally sustainable economy, the Green New Deal has been cast as a program designed to exert government control over the American people, which jibes nicely with some of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's stands as a Bernie Sanders-type socialist - but not so much with the less extreme liberal pragmatism Americans prefer.

Needless to say, critics have pounced on the Green New Deal, a proposal that has become so disrespected people keep transposing the words in its name ("New Green Deal").  Conservative columnist David Brooks of the New York Times has dismissed it as a centrally-planned economic system that has no chance of working, and Mark Shields - no conservative like his pal David Brooks - called it a classic case of Democratic overreaching.  Others have cited the cost involved in retrofitting existing buildings and infrastructure to make them more environmentally friendly by the Green New Deal's 2030 target date for implementation.  And Senate whip Dick Durbin, the second-most powerful senator of his party, dismissed it with this comment on MSNBC - "At this point, I would be - I can't tell ya, to be honest with you. I've read it, and I've reread it. And I asked Ed Markey what in the - what in the heck is this?"

Durbin is the Senate Democratic, not Republican, whip.

Representative Ocasio-Cortez carries a lot of blame for this foolishness.  She's a freshman congresswoman with no prior experience in government who went to Washington hoping to hit the ground running but ended up hitting the ground - because she forgot to learn the rules of the House first and failed to understand the need for building consensus. And Markey is no genius either, having developed a reputation when he was in the House to rush headlong into something without considering the risks.  In the 1984 elections, Markey encouraged Democrats to campaign on the nuclear freeze issue, a proposal to halt the manufacture and testing of nuclear weapons outright, but he also discouraged them to get into the specifics of the proposal.  "Don't bother with the complicated details," he told them.  "The issue is hot and it's ours."

And, it went nowhere.

I hate to bring up Martin O'Malley again - no, actually, I don't - but when he proposed a similar program in his 2016 presidential campaign, he was more measured and pragmatic about how to support an environmentally friendly economy. For one thing, he proposed that the U.S. economy go completely carbon-free by 2050, a more realistic target date than 2030 (though it still would have made serious inroads by 2030, when climate change is supposed to go full tilt boogie on us), and he presented climate change as a business opportunity rather than a problem only government can solve.  Had O'Malley run for President in 2020 - and dammit, I wish he had - he would have presented a Green New Deal that would have been more politically palatable and more pragmatic than the Green New Deal that's out there now.  He could have sold it.  But without O'Malley's restrained temperament and cool-headed thinking (the sort of qualities you want in a leader), we instead have jokes about banning airplanes and flatulent cows. And we have Mitch McConnell planning a vote on the Green New Deal in the Senate to make Democratic senators running for President choose between voting for it and alienating centrist voters or voting against it and angering their base.

Nice going, Alex and Eddie.

I give up. The planet is dying, we need a strong, workable plan to fight climate change, and Washington Democrats have just poisoned the well of the environmental policy for several election cycles to come with a proposal that was not entirely thought out.  I still support the idea of the Green New Deal - it's "aspirational," we are told - but I no longer have confidence in anyone involved in it.  And to think I believed in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and thought she knew what she was doing. And this is what happens?  And I put her on my beautiful-women picture blog?

Alex, I am as of now withdrawing my marriage proposal.

High-Speed Hijinks - 2019 Edition

When the Green New Deal championed by U.S. House member and hot Democratic property Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mentioned high-speed rail as part of a more environmentally friendly future, I was ecstatic, as it meant that Washington was abuzz with talk of fast trains for the first time in nearly a decade.  Then, on cue, the roof caved in.  Or so it appeared.

A sub-moronic congressional staffer apparently let out a first draft of the Green New Deal that advocates building enough high-speed rail to make air travel in the United States unnecessary, overlooking not just the fact that airliners would still be a preferred transport mode for transcontinental travel but also overlooking the fact that Hawaii - which, last time I checked, is a state - is out in the middle of the Pacific, suggesting the desire to build an ambitious undersea rail line that is the realm of science fiction.  Needless to say, Republicans, who hate passenger trains because it eats into the profitable business of selling cars, pounced and said that this demonstrates what a bunch of twerps high-speed rail advocates are.

But then California's new governor, Gavin Newsom, seemed to have dealt the biggest blow to the hope for high-speed rail in America when he announced that he was scaling back his predecessor Jerry Brown's plan to build a high-speed train line to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles because millions of dollars were spent to get it going and the state isn't one millimeter closer to finishing it than when it started.

California politicians who never wanted a bullet train in the Golden State in the first place - such as U.S. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy - applauded Newsom's announcement.  The project had been wrongheaded from the start. The route chosen bypassed too many cities and towns in between San Francisco and Los Angeles and took a meandering, indirect path so that it would go through the Central Valley and gain gain political support in that region of the state, and the contractors went ahead and started building without securing the entire route, studying the terrain, or making sure the funding was in place.  

It turns out, though, that Newsom's decision does not mean the end of high-speed rail in California.  Newsom still wants to build it, and he first wants to concentrate on connecting Kevin McCarthy's hometown of Bakersfield with Merced - two cow towns in the Central Valley - by way of Fresno, an agricultural center known for its little 5,000-watt radio stations and not much else.  The distance between Bakersfield and Merced is 164 miles - an easily manageable two-hour drive on California State Route 99.  As ludicrous as building such a line sounds, there's a method to Newsom's madness - he wants to get the easiest part of the project done while rethinking and re-configuring the San Francisco-Los Angeles connection by completing an environmental review and seeking new sources of funding.

A Newsom spokesman told a San Francisco news site that the governor hopes to move forward on the link between San Francisco and Los Angeles as "the Central Valley section demonstrates the viability of the broader project" and added that Newsom's comments about the lack of a path for the overall line was meant  merely to convey that "there isn't the funding to do the project from SF to LA under the current funding stream."

I was ready to throw up my hands when Newsom first declared his intention to scale back this rail project and the media made it sound like he was giving up on it completely, and had Newsom not clarified his comments, this blog entry would have turned out differently.  But I can't help but feel the deepest skepticism that high-speed rail will ever take root in These States, just as I've since become skeptical about the Green New Deal and the folks behind it, given the PR disaster that resulted from the aforementioned first-draft statement about getting rid of all air travel (more on my skepticism later).  I've said this once, and I'll say it again: My initial reaction to a policy proposal I'd be inclined to support, like high-speed rail, used to be, "Sounds good, I'm in!"  Now I'm more likely to say in response, "I've heard it all before."

The Ghost Of Martin O'Malley

You knew I was going to bring Martin O'Malley up again eventually.  Because the more I consider the Democrats running for President in 2020 and the Democrats who may be running, the more I miss him.  I happen to think he made a big mistake by choosing not to run for President in 2020 after he was laughed out of the 2016 campaign with no real chance to make his case.  

So far, I haven't seen a single Democratic presidential candidate who's impressed me, at least not among the announced candidates, and I have one misgiving or another about the prospective candidates who haven't entered the campaign yet.  That includes Beto O'Rourke, whom I call Hamlet-on-the-Rio Grande.  It seems that none of them have the right mix of policies and purpose that I saw in Maryland's former governor.

I do see some of what he advocated in 2016 surfacing among Democratic members of Congress.  The Green New Deal that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) proposed sounds a lot like the economic program O'Malley ran for President on.  Point being, when it comes to promoting an environmentally sustainable economy, Ocasio-Cortez, Markey and others are spreading the word.  O'Malley's word.  And I applaud him for letting others take the credit for an idea he championed when it's an idea that must be discussed and debated.  If no one will listen to O'Malley, they'll bloody well listen to Ocasio-Cortez, one of the biggest rising stars in the Democratic Party. 

But what if no one is listening to your ideas because no one is advocating them?  Just as the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, the only thing worse than an idea that gets mentioned and rejected without discussion is an idea that doesn't get brought up at all, and that's where O'Malley's all-payer health care proposal from 2016 comes in.  I mentioned this plan before; it's a system that sets hospital fees to a global standard by having all third parties pay the same for services, which can increase the power of insurance companies to lower health care costs.  While other countries have used this system successfully, Maryland is the only U.S. state that uses it.  Unfortunately, because it's only used in Maryland, no one running for President - okay, except maybe O'Malley's fellow Marylander and fellow Irish homey John Delaney - is talking about it.  Democratic presidential candidates either champion Medicare for all - which may not work all that well - or tweaking the Affordable Care Act, although I don't know how you tweak a tweak.  All-payer sounds like a good step toward a real single-payer plan, yet there's no one out there to advocate for it. There wasn't even anyone to advocate for it in 2016; O'Malley tried to, but when he attempted  to  bring it up in a CBS Democratic presidential primary debate, moderator John Dickerson cut him off and went to a commercial break; when the commercial break was over, Dickerson moved on to another issue, and O'Malley didn't get much of a chance to bring it up in the two debates that followed before he withdrew as a presidential candidate. 

O'Malley's decision not to run for President in 2020 for what were likely trivial reasons involving his lack of pizzazz and his lack of melanin or a pair of X chromosomes still sticks in my craw, and his voice is sorely missed.  Well, I miss it.  O'Malley has become like Marley's ghost, witnessing debates he can't take part in but might have taken part in, had he chosen to walk among the likes of Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.  But maybe, just maybe, Beto O'Rourke - whom O'Malley has been encouraging to run for President - might be the antidote to those of us suffering from O'Malley withdrawal.  At a rally in his hometown of El Paso in which he corrected Donald Trump's lies about immigration and border security - lies Trump told at his own rally in El Paso that same night - O'Rourke came out as a passionate man of conviction who wants to do right by those who come to this country, and that's precisely the reason O'Malley wants him to run. Stay tuned.  Despite my doubts, Beto may be the one after all.

But if Beto doesn't run for President, I would hope that O'Malley reconsiders and reverses his decision. 

It's Not Easy Being Green

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a woman on a mission.  With a brazen effort to seize the moment and hit the ground running, she unveiled a proposal for a Green New Deal - a Roosevelt-style economic policy that emphasizes the creation of jobs and the implementation of policies to benefit the environment and fight climate change while putting people to work.

Her proposal, which she put out with climate hawk and congressional veteran Edward Markey, the junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, would incentivize the creation of jobs to help the poor, underemployed and unemployed - jobs to expand renewable energy, get the United States on track to depend entirely on a 100% renewable, zero-emission energy grid, encourage the development of electric cars and high-speed passenger rail, and promote sustainable farming.

In other words, Ocasio-Cortez wants America to do what other countries have been doing for quite some time now.

Let's get something straight.  This Green New Deal proposal is not going to become law in this Congress, so long as the Republicans, who still control the Senate and the Presidency, scoff at anything that cuts into the profitable businesses of refining oil and selling SUVs.  Even if there is a Democratic sweep in the 2020 elections, we might still have to deal with moderate Democrats who laugh off the idea of going all-renewable and call it a "green dream" (to cop a phrase from Nancy Pelosi's reaction to the Ocasio-Cortez/Markey proposal).  But it does do something Republicans detest - it gets an issue they don't want to talk about in the public discourse.  Ocasio-Cortez is betting on the Green New Deal  to galvanize progressive, millennial and minority voters to become more politically active and demand change to our insane energy and transportation policies, which gave us electric-power plants belching carbon into the sky and an unsustainable overreliance on cars.  Not to mention the incentivization of mechanized farming based on petrochemical fertilizers.  The idea is to get enough voters riled up to the point where they make Washington pursue a path to a cleaner and greener economy.

Of course, some of these ideas have been around for awhile (*cough cough*, high-speed rail, *cough cough*), and the political realities of the present make the Green New Deal a heavy lift.  But it's not impossible to get it done; it's just difficult.  Here are a few other things that were heavy lifts - health care reform, civil rights legislation, old-age pensions, women's suffrage . . . I could go on.  I won't, because we have to start getting the Green New Deal off the ground.  And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the perfect person to instigate it.  This is not unlike the idea of putting a man on the moon within ten years, which, you'll remember, happened.  Ocasio-Cortez's and Markey's plan happens to envision a ten-year transition to an all-renewable energy grid. And Ocasio-Cortez is firing up voters and inspiring the American people to find their can-do spirit and get this thing done.

With a little luck, we can make this whole damn thing work out. A little push, please.  ;-)    

Out Of the Gate

If the opening of the 116th Congress is any indication, the next two years are going to be as unbearable as the previous two.  Maybe more so.

Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York signaled the tone of the new Democratic House of Representatives by officially nominating Nancy Pelosi for Speaker by declaring that he was "down with NDP" - a reference to Pelosi's initials and a hip-hop record from the early nineties that I'm trying to forget.  He tried to cast the Democrats as the with-it, cool, hip-hop party in which classic-rock-lovin' middle-aged white people need not apply.  Let the record show that Pelosi is old enough to remember Elvis Presley.  Anyway, such a pop-culture attitude is why so many people still vote Republican.

Meanwhile, newly minted Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) didn't get the memo from Democratic leadership about waiting for the committees to investigate Trump's dastardly dealings thoroughly before calling for his impeachment, vowing at a rally to say that Democrats would "impeach the mother f--ker" while a smartphone camera caught her every word.  Including that one.  A female Muslim using a vulgarity to call for political jihad against an opponent . . . There's another reason why so many people still vote Republican.

However, there has been reason for not to get too much into despair. . . a video of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), fast becoming America's political sweetheart, dancing to techno music when she was in school has surfaced.  Released by a Republican on Twitter as an attempt to embarrass her, the video instead shows just how adorable and ebullient she really is, and now people love her even more than before.  She then recorded a new video of herself dancing . . . outside her office!  Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the reason many people don't vote Republican! :-D

And my own congresswoman, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, has already shown what a great legislator she'll be going forward.  She is the sort of mature politician House Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi need of they're going to effectively battle Trump.  Ironically, Sherrill voted against Pelosi for Speaker (voting for Illinois congresswoman Cheri Bustos instead).  But then she promised to vote against Pelosi, so now we know she keeps her word.  And, she is now forgoing her pay as a U.S. Representative until the partial government shutdown ends. 

Now that's integrity.

O Alexandria!

I have a new celebrity crush.  I'm in love with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Yes.  I'm hot for the woman soon to become the U.S. Representative for New York State's Fourteenth U.S. House District. Because she's cooler and more exciting than any movie star or top model today.

Yes, I've long had a crush on Olympic swimmer Janet Evans, as you all know, but now she seems a bit too California, too all-American, and besides, unlike Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, she's already married.   Besides, it's hard to resist the appeal of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, easily on her way to becoming Washington's most eligible bachelorette.

For starters, she's hot.  She defines puertoriqueña hotness more than Jennifer Lopez or Joan Smalls, the two previous avatars of Puerto Rican womanhood.  That ravenous black hair, that slender figure, that olive complexion, those smoldering charcoal eyes - ooh,  I just melt! :-D  And of course, there's that inter-ethnic attraction, which adds a little mystery and romance to any relationship.  But looks aren't everything, and in this day and age, that's been made clear in no uncertain terms.  No, I love her especially for her politics. She wants to make Medicare available for everyone!  She wants to mandate a living wage for every American!  She wants free college!  She wants gun control!  She wants Americans to have something like ICE - no, not the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, which she wants to abolish . . . I mean she wants us to have something like the Inter-City Express bullet trains in Germany.  At least I think she does, since progressives like she support more mass transit.  But the biggest reason I love her is she wants to do something about climate change - now! 

How serious is she about climate change?  Enough to storm into the office of Representative Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and urge him to form a panel to figure out what to do about it.  Enough to join protesters in front of House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi's office advocating for a  "Green New Deal" to create jobs in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure.  She's truly a woman after my own heart.  She's got spunk.

Unlike Lou Grant, I love spunk.

I also have a feeling that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez - ooh, I love that double surname, it sounds so classy, so . . . British! - will one day become our first Latina President, and I would love to be her First Gentleman.  Indeed, any male American liberal would consider it an honor to be the husband of the first Hispanic woman in the White House.  Because she'd be a President who only makes men melt - not glaciers!  And while there are many beautiful, intelligent women who can take you to a place where no one's ever been, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is ready to take America to a place it's never been before - a place where everyone can see a doctor and get there without a car.  (Unless they want to use a car, but their cars will be electric subcompacts.)  She made me swoon with her pro-Palestinian stand on the Arab-Israeli conflict before I even noticed how lovely she is.  She's drop-dead gorgeous and against the death penalty!  Wow, how great is that?     

The only drawback here is that she's 24 years younger than I am, meaning that I'm old enough to be her father.  But heck, French President Emmanuel Macron has a wife 25 years older than he is,  so if a First Spouse can be a generation older than the president in France, what would be so bad about me being a generation older than my gorgeous-President wife?

So, Alex - may I call you Alex? - will you marry me? :-)

Now, I'm obviously being tongue-in-cheek here, as I never expect to even meet Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, much less marry her.  But I do love this woman, and mainly because she has the right priorities for this country and I want to see her have a long, successful political career.  And she is hot. ;-)

But I doubt if I could have a successful relationship with any woman too young to remember the Reagan administration.  It all comes down to musical taste.  Women of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's generation are all into Taylor Swift or Rihanna.  Ms. Ocasio-Cortez would probably think that Crosby, Stills and Nash are my lawyers.

Carry on. ;-)         

All Politics Is Local

In case establishment Democrats didn't get the message that their time is up, take a look at what happened in the June 26 primary election in New York's Fourteenth U.S. House District, which encompasses northwestern Queens and the southeastern Bronx (the Whitestone Bridge is the connection between the two parts).  Joseph Crowley, the district's current representative and an Irish urban pol in the old-school tradition of Richard Daley, Tom Pendergast, and the Bronx's own James Farley, just got his Irish butt handed to him in the primary by a political newcomer and self-described democratic socialist named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

She's a supporter of Bernie Sanders who advocates Medicare for all, guaranteed employment, and tuition-free public education. And while not every Democrat will get on board with her agenda, that's not important.  What's important is that voters in her district are on board with Ocasio-Cortez's positions more than they were with those of Crowley, who as Queens County Democratic Committee chairman and as a white guy was a mainstream liberal in a district that is half Hispanic and less than one-fifth non-Hispanic white.  Crowley is someone who has always been accountable the needs of his district, but his constituents (or at least those who voted in the primary) decided that the old way wasn't just working for them anymore.

Although this is already a Democratic district, Ocasio-Cortez's victory in the primary should send a message to Democrats vying to flip Republican House seats in other districts - that is, you have to be able to respond to the concerns of the voters and be more in tune with local issues than with the national party's agenda.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right for her district.  In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill, running to be the first Democrat to be elected to represent my U.S. House district since 1982, is right for my district, even though she's not nearly as liberal as Ocasio-Cortez.  Both women realize that the key to helping their party regain the House is to listen to the voters and focus on what you're for rather than just being against Trump.

In other words, what Martin O'Malley has been saying for months.

O'Malley was pleased with Ocasio-Cortez's June 26 win for all the reasons stated above, even though he had nothing to do with it. Ironically, he came up on the losing end in his home state of Maryland that same day. O'Malley got behind Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker's bid for governor of Maryland but saw former NAACP President Ben Jealous, who's closer to Sanders than O'Malley politically, win the June 26 primary instead.  O'Malley, who's not really part of the establishment but is viewed with suspicion by many progressives for having once been part of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, didn't do himself any favors by supporting a candidate with establishment backing.  Good grief, Baker was backed by Steny Hoyer, the Maryland congressman who is establishment right down to his toenails. 

Quite frankly, I don't know why O'Malley involves himself in primaries when his focus should be on the general elections.  Perhaps he supported Baker because he had the best chance of defeating incumbent Republican Governor Larry Hogan (who's favored to win re-election and would likely win a second term even if the Democratic nominee were Saint Francis of Assisi) in the fall.  Even more perplexing is why O'Malley should involve himself in the politics of his own state.  O'Malley's reputation at home has suffered since he left the governor's office in 2015; Hogan's popularity is partly based on rolling back some of O'Malley's policies.  O'Malley isn't unpopular with everyone in Maryland, but enough Maryland voters hold him in such low regard that the best thing for his political future is to continue his efforts for the Democrats elsewhere.  Conclusion: Martin O'Malley has done a good job with his Win Back Your State PAC so far, but the last state he should help Democrats win back is his own.

And if Ben Jealous is whom Maryland Democrats want, then he's the best candidate for them.