Both Sides of the Channel

Emmanuel Macron was once seen as a wunderkind in French politics who could breathe life into the old Hexagon when he was elected president of France in 2017.  That bloom has long disappeared from the rose.  Last week by-elections that Macron called were held in France to try to shore up his centrist base in the French parliament.  It ended up getting wiped out by extremist factions - mostly right-wing extremists, who were supporters of Popular Front leader Marine Le Pen - due to continuing economic instability in the country.

The elections in France were indicative of the increasing popularity of right-wing politics in continental Europe.  Not the raw American strain - French women don't get fat, and they don't have to worry about losing their reproductive rights either - but still a virulent strain of reactionism that is hostile to immigration, fair trade,  free markets and fearu of the economic realities of the post-COVID fallout.  What's going on in Hungary is only getting more popular in Germany and Italy as well as France.

Meanwhile, the British threw out the Conservatives and their leader, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, sweeping in Labour and their leader Keir Starmer to power with an historic majority in the House of Commons.  Prime Minister Starmer takes office as a technocrat who ran on policy as a message to revive Britain's sluggish economy, suggesting that the Brits are bucking an increasingly global trend and taking a more pragmatic approach to solving problems.

There is one disturbing common trend between Britain and France - in both cases, the incumbents lost.  that trend has dark forebodings for the American elections in November.      

2004 Redux?

He is a U.S. Senator with a record of accomplishment, and when he runs for the Democratic presidential nomination, his party rallies around him to defeat an intensely disliked Republican President who got in without winning the popular vote and bungled his reaction to a national crisis.  Unfortunately, but the Democratic presidential nominee's awkwardness and paper trail of controversial Senate votes hamper him, as do rumors about his past.  Although early polls show him in a strong position against the incumbent President, many fear that he will still lose in November.

No, he isn't Joe Biden; I'm talking about John Kerry in 2004.  But the resemblance between the two is striking.  Biden, like Kerry, seeks to defeat an incumbent Republican President who has all of the advantages of incumbency and an ability to influence the voters that no challenger can match.  And the fear of another outcome like 2004 - Kerry lost - is justified.  George Walker Bush made the argument that you don't change leaders in the middle of a war, and Donald Trump is trying to position himself as a steady leader in the middle of a pandemic . . . while ignoring scientific and medical guidelines.  Polls show that, though Biden has an overall edge over Trump, Trump is solidly beating - yes, beating - Biden on the economy despite its free-fall in the past nine weeks.  Trump knows this, which is why he's pushing the insane, inane idea that the economy will regain a good deal of its mojo by autumn if we reopen immediately - science be damned! This would suggest that enough people in swing states can be taken in to give Trump the necessary swing states to give him the necessary 270 votes  in the Electoral College.

Biden backers have every reason to be worried - especially when people who should be in his column (*cough cough*, Bernie bros, *cough cough*) aren't ready to support him yet and maybe won't be ready at all . . . and he also has to deal with campaigning with only one resource to him - virtual outreach - that is also his greatest weakness.  But there are differences between 2004 and 2020.  The economy was going relatively smoothly in 2004, and Kerry was a less a known quantity than Biden, hence the "Swift Boat" charges against him stuck to him more firmly than sex-assault allegations against Biden have.  Trump can talk up the economy all he wants, but whether states reopen sooner or whether they reopen later, the growth he projects will likely not happen and the economy is likely to  get worse between now and November and erode his standing.  His campaign merrily pledges to destroy Biden, but Biden sees what's coming and is slowly but diligently preparing for that inevitability.  (If he could only get his Internet connections to work flawlessly.)   Biden beats Trump in polling on who would handle the pandemic better; this pandemic could be going on for years, at least until 2023.  And if more states open up, it could give Biden the opportunity to have public events that allow him to engage in retail politics - with previously screened and tested groups of voters, of course - which is is biggest strength.

I am not saying Biden will win in November.  After all, despite the reality of a worsening economy, Trump's effort at exploiting his better polling numbers on the issue over Biden might just work.  I am only saying that the circumstances facing Biden are different from the circumstances failing Kerry in 2004, and they allow more room for Biden to gain an edge on Election Day.  One thing is for certain - even if Trump wins, he will not win a majority of the popular vote.  The election of 2004 is one of only two instances in which the Republican presidential candidate won a popular majority since Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election landslide; the other instance was the election of 1988.

Both of the winners, for the record, were named George Bush.  And unlike Trump, both Bushes took national-security crises seriously.  (The younger Bush started the initiative to have the United States plan for dealing with . . . a pandemic.)

Martin O'Malley's Not-So-Merry Month of May

I used to joke that Gary Hart, who declared his candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination in April 1987 and ended it within a month due to a sex scandal, was the "That's Life" candidate - riding high in April, shot down in May.  But, on a much more serious note, Hart's most famous protégé, Martin O'Malley, had a bummer of a May after he seemed to be on top just a month before, when his Win Back Your State PAC's efforts to help Democrats were showing impressive results.

O'Malley suffered a huge setback when Nate Boulton, an Iowa state senator running for governor of  Iowa and a candidate O'Malley had backed, withdrew from the campaign after he was accused of sexual misconduct, throwing the Democratic gubernatorial primary there in turmoil and losing significant face for Win Back Your State.  It may also re-ignite rumors of O'Malley's own sexual indiscretions (which I've talked about here before but refuse to do more than mention); even though these rumors are ridiculous and there is no proof of their veracity, even false scandal can ruin someone. Regardless, O'Malley couldn't have lost a candidate under more humiliating circumstances.

O'Malley has had to sustain two other blows.  Maryland Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, whom O'Malley was close to, died suddenly.  Meanwhile, with Democratic hopes of regaining the U.S. House of Representatives slowly sinking, Washington Democrats are attempting to link a national economic message with stories about corruption in the Trump White House - even as O'Malley is telling Democratic candidates for state and federal office not to talk about Trump.  It's clear that, despite having been proven right about the 2016 election after Democrats ignored his warnings, Martin O'Malley remains a man no one wants to listen to. 

And if that all weren't enough, people talking about the 2020 presidential election cannot and will not stop talking about Bernie Sanders . . . and none of the alternatives being discussed were named Martin by their mothers.

So now you know why I haven't discussed O'Malley much in the past few weeks.

To be fair, Win Back Your State scored a victory in Pennsylvania in May when Helen Tai, a Bucks County Democrat, won a Republican state House seat. And Win Back Your State-backed candidates have won 42 out of 47 special elections so far.  And so I know I'm gonna change my tune should O'Malley be back on top in June.  But the Democratic Party is losing ground when it can't afford to, and there's little time for it to regain momentum.

And if nothing's shakin' come this here July . . . the Democrats should just roll themselves up . . . in a big ball . . . and die! (My, my!)   

Savage Analysis

Noted gay activist Dan Savage made a rather nonsensical comment about what the Democrats ought to do to recover in 2018 and 2020. He said that they should concentrate on the diverse urban populations in the cities where their base is, instead of white working-class and rural voters.  He opined that even the most Democratic states are predominantly Republican outside the urban areas - including his adopted home state of Washington - and the Republican voters can never be won over.

Savage, as usual, doesn't know what he's talking about.   In no way am I suggesting that Democrats should ignore the multiracial, multi-ethnic urban faithful, and I agree with Savage that they should get more people in urban areas to vote.  However, writing off the white vote in rural and blue-collar communities is political suicide.  Republican policies have screwed these people over so often, they should be voting for someone other than the GOP, and the Democrats will only make the same mistake that Hillary Clinton made in trying to win without them while sticking with a careful, inoffensive centrist posture.  Bear in mind that Barack Obama won many of the white voters of rural and working-class backgrounds in 2008 and 2012, the same voters that Donald Trump won in 2016.  They'll vote Democratic again if they think the party shows concern for their interests, as Trump did during the 2016 presidential campaign.  Trump's performance among those voters helped him  capture three key states - Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin - that got him the White House.  (Trump only needed one or two of these states to win; the Democrats had to get them all.)  Hillary Clinton, who became synonymous with every bad stereotype about white bourgeois liberals, didn't think that a population segment ticked off with the decline of manufacturing jobs and the lack of economic opportunity was worth going after.

And not all of these people voted for Trump.  As many pundits noted, a lot of them simply didn't vote at all.  There was no one who spoke to them; Trump offered nothing but vulgar bluster, and Hillary spent her time cavorting with pop stars.  A progressive message could work with these voters, but they're only getting swayed right and center. 

Democrats have to go after white working-class and rural voters - but not at the expense of their urban, multi-ethnic base.  And truth be told, they have to concentrate on working-class and rural voters of all races, creeds and colors, because a black farmer in Mississippi  and a Latino construction worker in Ohio are left out just as much as their white counterparts by the Democratic Party.  Democrats have scored some impressive victories in down-ballot races, recently, taking two Republican seats in the Oklahoma state legislature, but they have to do more of that going forward - and start talking more to voters left out by the party establishment's centrist wet dreams.    If the Democrats blow key elections coming in the immediate future, it will be the party leaders who end up being all wet.           

From Russia With Love

Okay, all of those Hillary fans blaming Russian hackers for their candidate's loss to Donald Trump may have a case . . . 

The Washington Post just reported that the CIA suspects that agents in the Russian government may have been responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee computer and, for the purpose of getting Vladimir Putin's man Trump in the White House, providing WikiLeaks all those embarrassing e-mails showing a cynical, jaded Democratic establishment trying, ironically, to manipulate the campaign.  I haven't heard anything about voting machines being hacked, but this story of possible manipulation of information designed to implicitly help is a disturbingly new spin on an old story.

Russia also hacked the Republican National Committee computer, according to the CIA, but withheld its embarrassing e-mails so as not to help Hillary.  Julian Assange, meanwhile, says WikiLeaks did not act in concert with the Russians to produce those e-mails.    

Although Trump - now famous for not receiving most intelligence briefings as President-elect - doesn't buy the CIA's charges, two Democratic senators, Charles Schumer of New York and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have called for an investigation into the charges.  McCain has cited past attempts by the Russians to manipulate elections in other Western countries and says that the integrity of our own elections is at stake.  President Obama has launched an investigation as well, which may or may not be completed by January 20.

I only hope that once they do that, someone starts investigation the rigging of the Democratic primaries.    

Some people are already calling for a do-over of the election.  Can we have a do-over of the nominations while we're at it? 

If At First You Don't Succeed . . .

Harry Reid still can't shake noted crazy lady Sharron Angle in his bid for a fifth term in the U.S. Senate representing Nevada, and his wussy performance in their only debate demonstrated why Reid's election in 2010 may be more unthinkable than Angle's.

I once thought the only way Harry Reid would win this election was if Sharron Angle were to say something incredibly vicious, insane or offensive on the campaign trail. But I can't think of anything incredibly vicious, insane or offensive that she hasn't already said. Until today, when a tape of Angle making vicious, insane and offensive comments to Hispanic high school students about her stand on illegal immigration surfaced. Angle insisted that she did not know the men in her TV spots about the issue were Hispanic - she insisted that her ads were misinterpreted as pinpointing Latinos as the source of controversy over immigration - and tried to make case that it can be difficult to pinpoint someone's ethnicity. "You know, I don't know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me. I don't know that," she told the students, who responded with what was described as "a flurry of gasps and whispers."

And she might still win, because Harry Reid is hated that much in Nevada. But you know something? If she loses, you can expect her to try again for a Senate seat. Because if John Ensign, Nevada's other senator, chooses not to seek re-election in 2012 - and, given the marital scandal he's involved in, he just might choose so - Angle, should she lose this year, could conceivably go for Ensign's seat and win it.

Why? Because Republicans don't quit trying for elective office. They just keep trying. Look at John Ensign himself. He lost his own bid to unseat Harry Reid in 1998, so when Nevada's other senator, Richard Bryan, chose not to seek a third term in 2000, Ensign ran for that seat and won. Likewise, Jon Thune in South Dakota tried unsuccessfully to unseat Senator Timothy Johnson in 2002. So he went after Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle in 2004 and defeated him. This year he's running for a second term virtually unopposed. Good grief, look at John Raese in West Virginia. As I noted, he opposed Governor Jay Rockefeller for a Senate seat in 1984, and now he's back to win Robert Byrd's seat in a special election, the most competitive Senate race in the Mountain State since that 1984 election.

Oh yeah, I think noted failed businesswoman Carly Fiorina is going to fall short of her bid to unseat Senator Barbara Boxer in California. But should that happen . . . well, if I were Dianne Feinstein (up for re-election in 2012), I'd watch my back.

Because that's what Republicans do. They keep going back to the voters until they hit pay dirt. And not just would-be senators. Former Indiana Republican senator Dan Coats is running to get his old seat back, now that Senator Evan Bayh is leaving, and he's going to win it easily. And this isn't restricted to Senate elections. Richard Nixon came back in 1968 after having lost the Presidency to John F. Kennedy to win it against Hubert Humphrey. Ronald Reagan and George Bush each made unsuccessful bids for the Republican presidential nomination before winning the nomination (and the Presidency) on their second tries. With few exceptions, Democrats have not been so tenacious. They mostly get one chance for elective office, and one strike is usually out. Second tries for, say, the Presidency, lead nowhere. Ask George McGovern. Ask Richard Gephardt. Ask Albert Gore. On second thought, don't. He actually did win on his second try, but his victory was stolen. And national Democrats were so scared of Hillary Clinton, they were ready to draft him for a presidential run in 2008. So he's an exception to the rule that losing Democrats go away quietly. Actually, he's the exception.

If Angle loses, she'll be back. If Carly Fiorina loses, she'll be back. I wouldn't even rule out Linda McMahon resurfacing to challenge Joe Lieberman in 2012 if she loses her Senate bid in Connecticut. But when Massachusetts Democrats bring up names of possible challengers to Scott Brown in 2012, Martha Coakley's name likely doesn't come up.

Unless they're contemplating intraparty suicide.