Impeachment: This and That

Former Giuliani associate Lev Parnas made a lot of news last week implicating Trump, Rudolph Giuliani himself, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, possibly someone else named Mike P., William Barr and Devin Nunes in efforts to get dirt on the Bidens from the Ukrainians by all being heavily involved and pretending to be concerned about corruption in Ukraine, but it's hardly going to matter one iota when the impeachment trial begins tomorrow.  Republicans afraid of reprisals from Trump - who, I must add, could still win the 2020 election in November - will refuse to vote for removal, and the Democrats can't even hope for a simple majority (two-thirds majority is needed for removal) that will at least make him look bad.  And Parnas, because he has been indicted for conspiring to violate bans on donations foreign nationals, will be dismissed as a dubious witness given the trouble he's been in. So far, the only people who look to come out of the losing end of all this are the Democratic senators not named Bernard by their mothers who are campaigning for their party's presidential nomination. And no one of these senators will be a greater loser than Michael Bennet.

Bennet has consistently been the most thoughtful and the least hysterical Democrat running for President in this election cycle.  No theatrics, no identity politics, no flashy slogans that say everything and promise nothing . . . all of which, of course, is detrimental enough to anyone running for President of the United States, but now Bennet has an additional burden.  The impeachment trial comes right at the moment the Colorado senator was beginning to gain traction in New Hampshire, so the trial will, more than anyone else . . . put Bennet in traction.

As a senator from Colorado, a left-of-center pragmatist, a politician with chiseled features, and an accomplished record in local urban politics (he's the former school superintendent of Denver), Bennet is sort of a hybrid of Gary Hart (who once held the Senate seat Bennet now holds) and Hart's protégé Martin O'Malley with the latter's inability to win votes.  But Bennet has one thing O'Malley never achieved in his presidential bid - respect from the press.  He's been given the sort of free media O'Malley never got, and he's made the most of it, expressing the reasons for his candidacy and explaining his policy proposals in clear, concise, mannered terms.  And the media love him for it, as his frequent appearances make obvious.  But to many voters, of course, he's just a boring white guy with a forgettable name - and someone even poked fun at him for spelling his surname with only one "t."  He already had a hard enough task at getting the Democratic presidential nomination without this trial intervening.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders seems to be benefiting from the trial's effect of keeping everything before Iowa and New Hampshire frozen in place, allowing him to coast on his lead in Iowa and New Hampshire and possibly win the Democratic nomination, which could lead the Democrats to their fatal doom.  Joe Biden can benefit by having the campaign trail all to himself for the next couple of weeks, but if he's called as a witness in the impeachment trial, that could cause a change of plans.  But then, if Biden and his son are both called as witnesses, all they have to do is comport themselves in the stand and demonstrate their irrelevance to the case at hand . . . by simply answering the questions they're asked and make the Republicans look awfully silly by having called them in the first place, whether John Bolton embarrasses the Republicans or not.

I could make a guess as to how all of this turns out, but, as someone who was mocked for advocating in 2016 for a presidential candidate no one cared about, I just don't give a twit . . ..  

How the West Was Cursed

John Hickenlooper dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination campaign. The former Colorado governor just could not get enough attention in an overcrowded field as this one.

I'll get to the specific reasons for Hickenlooper's departure later.  But for now, I just want to comment on how Hickenlooper is only the latest in a series of Democratic presidential candidates from the West - defined as any state west of the 102nd meridian - who couldn't get the presidential nomination.  Party elders and political experts have been looking at the West as an opportunity for Democratic growth to compensate for their eroding base of support in other regions, and they've made progress there in the past couple of decades, but the parry still doesn't seem to be interested in tapping talent from these twelve states to stand for the highest office in the land or even the Vice Presidency.  No Democrat from the West has ever been on a national ticket.

Gary Hart came the closest.  When he announced his candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, he did so on April 13, 1987, on a big rock in a park outside Denver with his wife and daughter by his side.  The symbolism was twofold - he was making the announcement on the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson, the President who bought Louisiana and promoted westward expansion all the way to the Pacific, and he made it in a landscape that exuded Western culture and values as a way of sending the message that states like his own Colorado were the future.

Alas, the West had as bright a future in presidential politics as Hart did.  Democratic dominance on the West Coast would actually help make the West less relevant in presidential politics; California would become solidly Democratic after 1988, and Washington and Oregon, as well as Hawaii, would go so firmly in the Democratic column as well that no one was going to fight over any of these states in a general election.  Today, Democrats don't seem to be able to communicate with average voters from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada or seem to understand their concerns on the economy or local issues like water rights and the like.  Democratic competitiveness in Arizona and Idaho have been a tough go, and Democratic successes in Montana and New Mexico have been qualified at best.  Alaska, Utah and Wyoming are solidly Republican, redder than the rock Gary Hart stood on while announcing his 1988 presidential bid.  And while Colorado, as well as Nevada, has to some extent, become competitive, no one in the Democratic Party thinks enough of Colorado to nominate someone from Colorado for President.

That includes Michael Bennet (above), who not only holds Gary Hart's old Senate seat and shares a birthday with Hart, he also shares the stigma of being a well-coiffed white guy who seems too perfect for women and people of color to trust.       

But even women of color like California's Kamala Harris (below, left) and Hawaii's Tulsi Gabbard have a problem.  It's not that a lot of bigoted people wouldn't vote for them.  It's that, judging from the Democratic presidential debates, they wouldn't vote for each other.

Man, did some sh-- go down in Detroit! 

Meanwhile, Washington State governor Jay Inslee (below, left) and Montana governor Steve Bullock are trying to be heard with their presidential campaigns, but people are so busy ignoring Tim Ryan that they don't even know they're running.   

Democratic presidential candidates from the West are candidates that members the Washington establishment of the party simply don't take seriously, just as they don't take the ranchers and farmers out there seriously and just as they take for granted that the contiguous Pacific coastal states and Hawaii will always vote Democratic in presidential elections.  The list of Western Democratic presidential also-rans is a list that also includes former Arizona congressman Morris Udall, former Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt, two-time California governor Jerry Brown, and former New Mexico congressman Bill Richardson, as well as non-candidates like former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer.

If the West is the future, Democrats, judging from their obsessions with the Midwest and with demographic voting blocs, seem to be living in their own past.

As for Hickenlooper (and perhaps Bennet later), I come to praise, not bury, which is why I salute his presidential efforts with one of my favorite songs from the first album from Stephen Stills' group Manassas.

I Like Mike

But I'm not sure I love him.

Michael Bennet, the Democratic senior senator from Colorado, is the latest person to announce his candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.  He has an impressive record in Washington, working hard to deliver government services to his state, and he passionately believes in the dignity of public service and government by consensus, as he explained to Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program. Bennet made a name for himself earlier this year when he tore into Texas senator Ted Cruz for pretending to be sincere about re-opening the government during a shutdown to fund first responders to natural disasters after having engineered another government shutdown in 2013 to block funding for the Affordable Care Act. 

"These crocodile tears that the senator from Texas is crying for first responders are too hard for me to take," Bennet declared on the Senate floor. "They're too hard for me to take, because when the senator from Texas shut this government down in 2013, my state was flooded. It was underwater . . ..  People were killed. People's houses were destroyed. Their small businesses were ruined, forever."

Bennet has a interesting background as the son of a diplomat and a Holocaust survivor, having been born in India and raised in Washington, D.C.  His brother James is the New York Times' editorial director.  A former superintendent of the Denver public school system, he has hands-on experience in education.  He's also on the right side of the issues when it comes to solar energy, immigration, and gay rights, concurring with the Democratic Party's liberal wing.  But he voted for the Keystone XL pipeline and he refuses to back "Medicare for all," preferring instead to simply tweak the Affordable Care Act, and neither position is going to put him in good standing with the party's base. 

Bennet would be the first Democratic presidential nominee from a Western state were he to win the nomination, a distinction that ultimately eluded his fellow Coloradan Gary Hart.  Indeed, there are many similarities between Bennet and Hart. Both have represented Colorado in the Senate - Bennet holds Hart's old seat - both have waxed rhapsodic about the virtues of public service, and they even share the same birthday (November 28).  But whereas Hart was charismatic and glamorous, Bennet is about as engaging as your next-door neighbor, and if you live in an exurban subdivision, he may even look like your next-door neighbor.  Hart famously declared his candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination standing on a boulder in Red Rocks Park outside Denver and emulating the very image of the rugged Westerner he was trying to convey.  Bennet doesn't exude Western Americana; he comes across as the prep-school student that he was.  So, yes, I have doubts that Bennet can go all the way in this marathon presidential contest, given his undeniable Middle American blandness. 

Still, such blandness may be just what the Democrats need to get the White House back, and so Bennet has a shot if the party ultimately decides that that's what it wants.  And his uncharacteristically passionate attack on Ted Cruz during the last shutdown fight hints at the possibility of a street brawler beneath that preparatory schoolboy exterior.  But I still have my doubts, and while I wouldn't count him out, I still don't see in Bennet a Democratic presidential candidate that can get me excited enough to join his campaign and vote in the New Jersey primary.  But you can expect me to, should he be the nominee, vote for him in a general election without reservation.

And I can assume he'll get favorable press from the New York Times. ;-) ;-)

Okay, I've covered fourteen Democratic presidential candidates so far? Still a long way to go . . . 

A Dark Future

The economy is doing extremely well in the United States right now, which is why I think the future of this country looks ominous and foreboding.

Why?  Because, with economic growth exceeding expectations and unemployment down to levels we haven't seen since the Beatles released Abbey Road,  Trump looks like a favorite for re-election to the Presidency.  Even though he and his Attorney General, William Barr, are stonewalling and blocking efforts into looking at possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections and the likelihood that Trump may have committed some dastardly deeds not even related to Russia (notice how he's trying to block access to his financial records), none of that matters because, well, it's the economy, stupid.  And Americans are, in fact, a stupid bunch when they vote strictly on their own economic well-being and disregard neglect of problems like climate change, white nationalism, and the undermining of the rule of law.  

It doesn't look good for the Democrats.  They don't want to be seen as going on an Ahab-style pursuit of Trump when they should be demonstrating what they're trying to do for the people.  And they are.  However, an agreement with the White House on an infrastructure program or support for the Untied States (not a typo, I meant "Untied") rejoining the Paris Agreement won't get the ink or the airtime that their investigations of the White House and their demands for the full Mueller report are getting, leading them to defend a presidential investigation that people don't relate to while Republicans get to brag about higher incomes and more jobs.  But if they don't investigate Trump, they let him get away with all sorts of misdeeds.  The Democrats really are in a no-win situation.              

And the Democrats aren't doing themselves any favors.  So hell-bent are liberals on nominating a woman, a person of color or Bernie Sanders that they won't even accept the idea that any white dude not named Bernard by his mother is the best choice to go against Trump.  And I don't necessarily mean Joe Biden.  I saw Michael Bennet, the Democratic senior senator from Colorado who just announced his presidential candidacy, on Rachel Maddow's show, and I found him to be quite impressive.  (More on why later.)  He would be a first for the Democratic Party if he became its 2020 presidential nominee - a candidate from a Western state - but he's running for President in a party where racial and ethnic diversity matters more than geography; hence, California's Kamala Harris is the only Westerner with a real shot at the nomination.  I have a problem, guys, with this obsession with diversity because diversity is all about celebrating differences without setting any common standards for people who differ from each other.  And while I'm not on board with Biden, the petty attacks on his policies and his character coming from Sanders supporters (and, to some extent, Sanders himself) are almost enough to make me volunteer for the Biden campaign.

All of my previous declarations that the Democratic Party was on its way to Whig-like extinction have proven to be premature (a fancy word meaning "dead wrong").  but if the Democrats can't unseat Trump in 2020, they might as well disband before Trump assumes dictatorial powers and has opposition parties outlawed.   

With Opponents Like These . . .

Former Republican senator Mel Martinez of Florida has admitted recently that he would prefer that the Republicans don't win back the Senate this year because, whereas the GOP is expected to take over the House, they would only share blame with the Democrats for an economy that's unlikely to get better any time soon if the Democrats were to keep control of the Senate. If they win everything, Martinez argued, the Republicans would be held accountable for everything. Perhaps that's why Republicans who are in a good position to win key Senate races are either saying stupid things or allowing stupid things they've done to resurface, thus blowing their chances.

Cases in point: West Virginia and Colorado. With a possible victory in his grasp in his bid to win the late Robert Byrd's Senate seat, West Virginia Republican candidate John Raese, vying to become the first Republican senator elected from the Mountain State since the fifties, told ABC News that the minimum wage is an archaic form of government control of the free market and should be abolished.

Joe Manchin, the Democratic governor of West Virginia opposing Raese in the special Senate election, has been given a wonderful gift in this culturally conservative but highly unionized state. Many West Virginia voters have been encouraged to vote for Raese and keep Manchin as governor rather than give President Obama - deeply unpopular in the Mountain State - another vote for his economic agenda. Now they just might want that vote to preserve their jobs and federally guaranteed wages. Rease - who is legally a West Virginia resident but spends much of his time in Florida - is so out of touch he boasts how he made his money the old fashioned way by inheriting it. Well, the wealthy steel and limestone tycoon clearly didn't earn it like Smith Barney. (If the name sounds familiar to some West Virginians, it may be because he ran against Jay Rockefeller for the state's other Senate seat in 1984 but lost to Rockefeller - then the state's governor - despite Ronald Reagan's re-election landslide that year.)

Meanwhile, appointed Democratic senator Michael Bennet in Colorado is fighting for a term in his own right and his political life against Tea Party Republican Ken Buck, and has been slipping badly, but a chapter in Buck's past has come back to haunt him. It appears that when he was the district attorney for Weld County in 2005, Buck refused to look into an allegation of rape because the woman who made the claim did not have proof beyond a reasonable doubt He could have stopped there, but the woman, it turns out, secretly taped a meeting with Buck in which he explained another reason for not pursuing the case. "It appears to me," Buck said, "that you invited him over to have sex with him."

This is redolent of Jeremiah Denton, the one-term Republican senator from Alabama in the 1980s, who objected to prosecuting a man accused of raping his wife because when women get married, they have to expect they're going to get a little sex. In fact, it's just plain redolent. Buck is known for his misogynistic attitude; he once said he'd make a better candidate than his female competitor for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination because he didn't "wear high heels."

Buck leads Bennet by five points overall but trails badly among women. I understand that Michelle Obama is going to campaign for Democrats to help get out the women's vote. She should go to Colorado. She doesn't even have to mention the rape controversy. She just has to go there.