Let, Then, the Florida Democratic Party Pass

Insanity is defined by trying the same thing again and expecting the same result.  So, naturally, the Democrats nominated Charlie Crist again for governor . . . and Ron DeSantis wiped the floor with him. 

And despite being an attractive candidate with a solid record in the House, Val Demings could not overcome Marco Rubio in her bid for the Senate.  She was blessed with an opponent who opposed the Medicare prescription-drug price negotiation bill in a state full of retirees, and she still lost badly. 

Oh yeah, can you tell me what Crist and Demings stood for?  I mean, apart from their boilerplate Democratic positions on the issues?  I mean, why did Crist want to be governor a second time after having serve with great undistinction the first time around?  And what made Demings give up her safe House seat, where she could have accrued more seniority and become a member of House leadership, for a Senate seat?  I mean, what motivated her?

These questions will forever remain unanswered,  and another question is why the state's Democrats nominated these two in the first place. 

Oh yeah, Democrats lost the state agricultural commissioner's office to the Republicans in this year's elections, so now they won't have a statewide elected official anywhere, likely never to elect another one.  

I came across this one opinion piece on how the Florida Democratic Party can fix itself,  Quite frankly, it is beyond repair.  And Ron DeSantis will see to it that, even if Florida Democrats should somehow fix themselves, they will never win a statewide election again, thank to DeSantis's voting police to track down, arrest and make an example of (usually black) Florida residents who try to vote illegally ("illegally" meaning purged from the rolls for no good reason and left off because the Democratic Party is too neutered to protect their voting rights).

But no, Florida Democrats will carry on like all of those aging rock stars (that is, all rock stars) that continue touring in the laughable hope that a new generation will re-invigorate rock and roll and allow the Old Guard to retire.  In other words, Florida Democrats are dead.

And they don't even know it.

Charles, The Third

How moribund is the Florida Democratic Party these days?  Let's examine the evidence:

• Florida hasn't elected a Democratic governor since 1994, when the biggest story in America was O.J. Simpson.
• Florida hasn't elected a Democratic U.S. Senator since 2012, and voters last elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate seat in Florida up for election this year in 1998.
• Democrats haven't held a majority of the Florida U.S. House delegation since 1988.
• Florida Democrats haven't controlled the state Senate since 1994 and haven't controlled the state House since 1996.
• Florida Democrats Alan Grayson, Alex Sink, Kendrick Meek, Gwen Graham and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell were all considered Democrats to watch in the 2010s.  Now the FBI couldn't find them even if it did have time to spare while searching Mar-a-Lago. 
• Andrew Gillum, the previous Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Florida, was expected to be a visible voting-rights activist after his loss, like Stacey Abrams.  Instead, he got in trouble when he was found getting high on crystal meth and has since been charged for wire fraud and fraudulent political fundraising. 
• The only current Democratic statewide elected official in Florida is Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, and the state party's queen bee is U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, best known for giving us Donald Trump by rigging the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries for Hillary Clinton as Democratic National Committee chair.

And, in this environment, Florida Democrats have decided to give Charlie Crist, the former Republican governor who became a Democrat and got elected to the U.S. House, a third try at statewide office since leaving the governorship.  Having run for the U.S. Senate as an independent in 2010 and as a Democrat to get his old job back in the governor's office in 2014, Florida Democrats nominated him once again for the governorship of Florida against incumbent governor Ron DeSantis. 

There could hardly be a more dubious opponent for DeSantis than Crist, who defeated Nikki Fried in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.  Unlike Fried, who was strongly pro-choice, Crist's record on abortion is mixed at best, and he once called himself pro-life when he was an independent.  He also supported capital punishment, which is about as popular with Democrats as fast food is with Frenchmen.  He was also against same-sex unions before he was for it.  The anti-Crist ads the DeSantis campaign hopes to run have, apparently, already written themselves.

Maybe the third time to try to win statewide office is going to be the charm for Crist, because DeSantis is such an awful human being who is trying his darnedest to make Florida resemble Fascist Italy, right down to interfering with private businesses like Disney and instituting racist and homophobic education policies designed to indoctrinate children and teenagers into espousing black-shirt values as adults.  The sad truth is many Florida voters love their Duce, and this could be Crist's last stand as a Florida politician.

Right now, I think the best way Crist can become a governor again is if he moves to a Democratic state.

Val Demings? I'll get to her later. 

Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues

Former Florida governor Charlie Crist, not being content with his secure U.S. House seat, is running for Governor of Florida again. 

Can someone give me his address, so I can send him a Harold Stassen bumper sticker?

A lot of people don't remember who Harold Stassen was, so let me tell you - he was a former Minnesota governor who ran for President nine times Not a lot of Floridians don't remember Charlie Crist from his first and only term as Governor of Florida.  Back then he was a Republican, though he's long since become a Democrat.

Trouble is, he ran for Governor of Florida as a Democrat in 2014 and lost to incumbent Rick Scott, a loathsome man who somehow turned fifteen minutes of fame into a fifteen-year political career (he's now the state's junior U.S. Senator).  Crist also ran for the Senate in 2010 as an independent, only splitting the anti-Republican vote and helping to put Marco Rubio in the Senate.

Now he's running for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Florida again against U.S. House member Val Demings Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried - both women, one black the other Jewish, at a time when being Greek, as Crist is, hardly counts for "diversity."  And of course, he has to deal with the fact that he hasn't won a statewide race in Florida since 2006 and Florida Republicans are making sure no Democrat can ever do that again.

I wish Crist good luck, because he's going to need it.

Oh, well, maybe this time Joy Reid won't question his manhood again. 

Politically Incorrect

Right now I'm experiencing big-time schadenfreude as fans of bigmouth rapper Kanye West try to get their jaws off the floor.  As part of his promotion for his latest record, West, long famous for sticking it to the honky by attacking George Walker Bush as a racist on live TV, or declaring rap to be the new rock and roll and sitting back as his fans defended attacks on his musical ability from David Crosby and Michael McDonald by counterattacking them, just praised the honkiest honky of them all.  He actually praised Donald Trump.

For only the second time in my life, I'm applauding West for his actions, this time for defying political correctness and ethnic tribalism.  (The first time I applauded him was when he was on that live-TV telethon for Katrina victims and declared, "George Bush doesn't care about black people.")  He's a black man who digs Trump, and his fans and his politically liberal defenders in the pop press are aghast that he could endorse a man famous for his racially charged rhetoric. Like, how could he do such a thing?  Well, fellow liberals, we're supposed to be for freedom of expression and we're supposed to be resisting assaults on rights to free speech - and now it doesn't feel so good when someone you admire disappoints you and disgusts you by voicing an opinion you don't agree with - especially after you tried to shut up and shut down white guys who think "rap music" is an oxymoron when they had a problem handling Kanye West.

And just remember, I don't like Trump either.  I don't like Kanye, for that matter.  And I still think rap is not music - I happen to be listening to Gordon Lightfoot as I type this - but Mr. West has the freedom to say what he wants as well as the freedom to be a jerk.

Ditto Joy Reid. The MSNBC host, known for shaming and ridiculing anyone who disagrees with her identity-politics-driven world view with a smug stupidity that defines people of her ilk, had been caught having made homophobic insinuations against Democratic U.S. Representative and former Republican Florida governor Charlie Crist (who may or may not be gay) a few months ago, and she apologized. Now some homophobic writings from her blog, written back sometime around 2006, have surfaced and embarrassed her. Reid snapped that the blog posts weren't hers, saying that someone must have hacked into her blog and tampered with it by writing those awful things about gays to make her look bad.  Although she never took responsibility for writing them, many so-called liberals accepted her "apology." MSNBC has stood by her, as have folks like Dan Savage, who would rather play guessing games about Charlie Crist's sexual orientation than address Reid's lies. "I, a known homosexual, would like to offer Reid an olive branch, because the thing is, she's right. Despite his two heterosexual marriages, Charlie Crist could definitely be gay," Savage wrote. "It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see Crist at a Key West drag brunch."  Savage went on to say that people evolve, and he added that whether Joy Reid was a homophobe once before, it doesn't matter now, since she's not a homophobe today.

Uh, Dan, I don't care if Crist is gay.  I don't care if Joy Reid has evolved (her cavalier dismissal of anyone who has an opinion contrary to her own clearly demonstrates that she hasn't evolved enough).  But that is not the issue! She lied about never having been a homophobe and not having written those blog posts!  There is no evidence that her blog was ever hacked!  She's as much a practitioner of fake news as anyone on Fox News, but we can't say that about her because she's so good at making conservatives feel uncomfortable and because she's on our team? 

Ha ha, I'm not on anyone's team.  I'm too hip for the Republicans and too square for the Democrats.  After all, I like Gordon Lightfoot.

I used to like Joy Reid, but her superiority complex and her holier-than-thou attitude wore thin with me.  I'd once put her picture on my beautiful-women picture blog. After this incident, someone went into my blog and replaced Joy Reid's picture with pictures of a model who happens to have the same last name.

That someone was me.   See, I take responsibility for what I write. I express regret for something I put out and have second thoughts about later.  Also, I don't mind or care if something I write on this blog will tick off someone I'm supposed to agree with on everything.  I know that attitude won't make me many friends, but as a Martin O'Malley supporter, I already know what it's like to be an outcast. :-p

Florida Democrats Are Sinking

As noted here on this blog and elsewhere, Democrats have been getting their posteriors kicked - sometimes with the boots wedged in the orifices pretty darn good - in so many down-ballot races that one wonders why it is the Republicans who are marked for extinction.  And nowhere is the Democrats' trouble more obvious than the state of Florida.  Democrats in the Sunshine State are doing so poorly, it's a wonder President Obama won the state twice.  Because a lot of these losers can't even win once.

  

When Marco Rubio ruled out a run for a second term to the U.S. Senate to concentrate on the Presidency, Democratic prospects for a Senate seat pickup seemed assured . . . until Rubio reversed course and decided to run for another term after all after ending his presidential bid.  He's so far ahead of his Democratic opponent, U.S. Representative Patrick Murphy, in the polls that Democrats have stopped throwing money at the Murphy campaign and are throwing in the towel instead.  Which makes sense, considering Murphy's background; he's a former Republican who has received campaign contributions from an admitted felon, and his father and his family's business donated money to a super-PAC supporting him, under ethically dubious circumstances.

Did I happen to mention a bill Murphy co-sponsored in the House to help his family's business?  You can read all about it here.

Then there's that other former Republican, former governor Charlie Crist, who in 2014 proved to be as ineffective in running as a Democrat against Governor Rick Scott to get his old job back as he was when he ran for the Senate in 2010 as an independent.  Having lost the least loseable gubernatorial election in the 2014 midterm cycle, Crist is now running for the U.S. House of Representatives against Republican incumbent David Jolly, who in 2014 whopped Alex Sink in a special election for the seat (four years after Rick Scott whopped Alex Sink for the governorship).   Crist, in his new role as a professional candidate, showed how out of touch he is with his own would-be constituents by defending Hillary Clinton as someone who's honest and trustworthy during a debate with Jolly.  The audience erupted with laughter.

Then there is Representative Alan Grayson, who has been accused of spousal abuse by his ex-wife and recently lost as much as $18 million of his considerable fortune in an investment scam.  He gave up his House seat to run against Patrick Murphy, the Democratic establishment's choice for the U.S. Senate nomination, and, as you obviously have already figured out, lost. His new wife Dena Minning, whom he married this past May, ran in the Democratic primary for the House seat he gave up to run for the Senate.

She lost.

So did Tim Canova, a Bernie Sanders-type reformer, in his bid for the Democratic nomination for the seat of Florida's Twenty-Third U.S. House District.  The person who beat him?  Incumbent congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Who, as I understand it, is responsible for the many problems and disasters Democrats have had in Florida and elsewhere.

Florida Democrats, for all their efforts to stand tall and proud, are going down faster than the state itself, as sea levels rise.  An historical note: Florida was one of the first states in which the Whigs collapsed after that party's 1852 disaster.   

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.