Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick

Republican New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli conceded to Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Friday.  And despite his obvious disappointment about the outcome, Ciattarelli made it clear that he let the vote count play itself out, even though he thought voting rules in New Jersey allows the counting process to go on too long.  He also made it clear that there was no fraud, there were no indications of irregularities, and there was no mathematical way he could win the election even when all of the votes are counted.  One can only hope that Ciattarelli's graciousness will inspire other Republicans to pull away from Trump and his accusations of fraud.  His fellow New Jersey Republican Chris Christie has already made the case that the party put Trump and his rants about the 2020 election behind them.

Christie, a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate, may or may not have a political future, but Ciattarelli just might have one.  He'd hoped to succeed Murphy as governor of New Jersey, and he might yet do that; he's already made it clear that he hopes to run for the governorship again in 2025.  (Murphy will be term-limited.) And given how close he came to winning this time and the goodwill he won with his concession speech, he's very much a favorite.         

Murphy's Law of Reassessment

The past week and change has caused me to look at the aftermath of the 2021 elections again, especially the gubernatorial election in New Jersey.

As you may recall, I mildly criticized Governor Phil Murphy for winning by less than the polls indicated he would.  Well, I was apparently too harsh on him, even if professional pundits continue to be.  As of this writing, Murphy has won 51 percent of the vote, and he leads Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli by 2.8 percentage points. His vote count has only gone up since last Tuesday.  A clear majority of New Jersey voters obviously want him to have another term. The last time a Democratic governor of New Jersey was re-elected, the top song in the country was "You Light Up My Life."  It was that long ago (1977, for the record).  And also, when you remember that there were four key races this year - this, the New York City mayoral election, the California gubernatorial recall election, and the Virginia gubernatorial election - the Democrats won all but one of them. 

Three out of four ain't bad, but you'd never know that from TV commentators not named Rachel by their mothers or named Maddow by their fathers.  You'd also never know how historic it was that Murphy was the first re-elected Democratic governor since Brendan Byrne (who won re-election the same year that Ed Koch was first elected mayor of New York City - again, 1977 was that long ago).  And so the takeaway is that the Democrats got shellacked, largely on the basis of  Republican wins in local races in New York State that no one cares about nationally and on the fact that the Democrats lost control of the Virginia House of Delegates - never mind that they still control both houses of the New Jersey legislature.

In no way am I suggesting that the Democrats don't have to worry about messaging or responding to voters' concerns in 2022; that's still a big deal. So is the presence of "progressives" who want to take money away from police departments when Eric Adams, the biggest winner in the Democratic Part this year, won the mayor's office in New York City by pledging to defend the police rather than defund them.  (He's an ex-cop.)  But the lashes the Democratic Party took last week were more from a wet noodle than a cat of nine tails.

However, the election in New Jersey is still a concern, because Jack Ciattarelli still won't concede to Murphy, despite being behind him by a larger percentage of the vote than Terry McAuliffe ended up behind Republican Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin in Virginia - and McAuliffe has already conceded.  In no other major election this year has a losing Republican refused to concede, mainly because they lost by a lot.  But by losing by only less than three points, Ciattarelli has remained adamant about waiting it out until the last vote is counted - and then he might ask for an expensive recount.  And Ciattarelli supporters are already making charges of fraud and vote rigging, though the candidate has not endorsed these charges.

I was afraid of this.  The first Republican challenge to the results of an election after President Biden's inauguration is taking place not in California or in New York City but in New Jersey.  New Jersey, a state whose residents are known for their hard-handed, hard-edged belligerence.  We have rappers from Essex County who could scare the hell out of South Bronx rappers, and I'm just talking about the sista rappers.  "The Sopranos" played like a documentary about the state, and in some ways, it is.  The unofficial state motto is an expletive.  Our largest city, Newark, is nicknamed Brick City.  We're so tough, we made a state park out of a rail yard.  And a lot of our bad-asses voted Republican in this election.  So, you can imagine how scared we should be if Ciattarelli supporters descend on Trenton to disrupt Governor Murphy's re-inauguration.

Jack should concede now, if he doesn't want a demonstration in Trenton in January 2022 to make January 6 look like a church social.  This is dangerous. 😱   

Election Inspection

The Democrats look like they could go back to going full Whig.  After the election returns this past Tuesday, how could you not come to that conclusion?

Terry McAuliffe's nomination for a second nonconsecutive term to oppose Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin (above) was one of those classic bad ideas that was plausible enough that no one would challenge or question such a preposterous idea.  McAuliffe got the nod to run again not so much for his record as governor from 2014 to 2018 but because of his position in Democratic insider politics and his fundraising ability.  Also, he's a friend of the Clintons.  And he seemed to feel as entitled to the governor's mansion in Virginia as the Clintons did to the White House.   But he screwed up in saying that parents did not have a say in how children were educated - revealing his ignorance of elected school boards - giving Youngkin a perfect issue to run on.  And when Youngkin responded in kind by suggested with a campaign commercial that Toni Morrison's "Beloved" shouldn't be taught in AP literature (though the ad did not mention the book by title), McAuliffe couldn't even use it to his advantage.   President Biden was chastised by some pundits by deflecting blame for the Democrats' loss in Virginia from his inability to get his agenda passed; McAuliffe's foibles as a candidate suggest that Biden was right.  He was such a lousy candidate he took the Virginia Democratic Party down with him; it appears that the party lost control of the lower house of the state legislature.  Two of the new Republican members took part in the January 6 insurrection.

(By the way, if you go back to my post from this past Monday and make a sentence from the first word of each sentence in it, you'll see that I called Virginia right.)

Biden certainly didn't have anything to do with the surprise result in New Jersey, where Phil Murphy won re-election as governor by far less than expected.  Murphy ran on his progressive record and didn't shy away from his policies but he failed to enunciate his accomplishments as much as he should have and he completely ignored the issue his Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli hammered away on repeatedly during the campaign - property taxes.  It turns out a lot of people still care about that!  Murphy, relatively speaking, was one of the big winners among the Democrats this past Tuesday.  He stays in office with most of his agenda in place and he's in a position to secure his legacy, and he is now the first Democrat to win a second term as governor of New Jersey since Brendan Byrne in 1977.  But he should have won by more.

The disappointing results Democrats had in Virginia and New Jersey were local, but nationally they still have a problem.  Republicans blame the Democrats' losses on the Democratic agenda.  Listening to them, you'd think nobody in America wants paid family leave, expanded Medicare coverage, or universal nursery school.  (Hey, I just called Joe Manchin a nobody!)  Well, it makes perfect sense that voters rebelled against the Democratic agenda - because a lot of voters thought the Democrats wanted to rename schools named for Founding Fathers in honor of black nationalists, teach "critical race theory" in those same schools, tear down statues of Jefferson and Washington, and, oh yes, defund the police.  Because even when they talk about paid family leave, Medicare dental coverage and all those other nice things, they still can't articulate their agenda in clear-cut language, and what they do say gets drowned out by so-called "woke" members of the Squad.  So it makes sense the the biggest winner among Democrats, New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams, is an ex-cop who would rather defend the police than defund them.  (Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, hos Republican opponent is a cat lover and has sixteen cats at home; that was the only thing I liked about him.)     

Oh yeah, it's so obvious that woke-ism is so out of place in These States - even in our major-league cities - that Buffalo mayor Byron Brown was re-elected as a write-in candidate after losing the Democratic nomination to a self-described socialist!  

But the muddled message wasn't the only issue - so was the fact that the Democratic Congress was supposed to deliver the goods and spent much of the past year arguing with each other.  In the end, they were the only people who were "woke" on Tuesday.

The Democrats still have a chance to cut their losses in the 2022 midterms, if they prove they can govern and pass legislation that will help the people.  Last night, they got off to a good but troubled start; the House finally passed President Biden's infrastructure bill, which now goes to the White House for the President's signature.  But distrust remains over the reconciliation bill, and there's a long way to go to get that settled.  Moderates, however, have committed themselves to voting on it ,later, so maybe we can still build back better.  And maybe get voting rights legislation passed.  Or, we could end up seeing a Republican Congress in 2023 passing a whole new round of tax cuts.  

And by the way, speaking of voting rights . . . voting rights were expanded in Virginia and New Jersey, and look what happened. 

Oh yeah, congratulations to Michelle Wu for becoming the first elected female mayor and mayor of color of Boston. 

Gubernatorial Unease

In Virginia, former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe, running to get his job back, suddenly finds himself neck and neck with Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin despite the state trending more to the Democrats.  In New Jersey, incumbent Democratic governor Phil Murphy has seen his once-big lead over Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli narrow to six percentage points in one poll.  Some pollsters say the gap could even be narrower.

Neither one of these revolting developments was supposed to happen.  Youngkin is a Trump straw man in a state Trump lost to Biden by ten points in the 2020 presidential election.  New Jersey should be even more of a gimme for the Democrats, yet Ciattarelli is in a position to keep the incumbency curse on New Jersey Democratic governors going - no Democratic New Jersey governor has won a second term since Brendan Byrne in 1977, while three Republican New Jersey governors have.

McAuliffe has been patiently waiting for President Biden to get his infrastructure legislation through Congress and give him an edge over Youngkin, but even if that legislation passes Congress tomorrow, McAuliffe has to answer for his big fumble in a gubernatorial debate in which he said that parents have no right to tell school boards how to educate their kids.  Really, Terry?  Okay, what McAuliffe meant was that parents have no right to threaten school board members who either advocate strict COVID measures or push history courses that include more people of color, but it didn't come out right.  Now that Youngkin has that McAuliffe gaffe on tape, the election may not come out right for McAuliffe no matter how much he tries to correct the record.  

Similarly, Governor Murphy in New Jersey opened a can of worms for himself when he said that New Jersey is "probably not your state" if taxes are your only issue.   Murphy said that back in 2019, but the context was not to dismiss taxes as an issue per se. 

"If your spectrum of inputs as you make decisions as a family or as a business is wide, we’ll compete with anybody. The wider that spectrum of consideration, the better it is for New Jersey," Murphy said at a Rowan University event two years ago.  "So if on that list is taxes, by the way, and I’m not shying away from that. Our job is to make sure whether it’s cracking the back of property taxes or making sure that we get to a good place on incentives and that we have that tool in the toolbox, that’s on that list. It’s on the list. I got it."

Ciattarelli has ignored all that, of course, and he's used the Murphy quote about taxes and new Jersey to pound the governor on the head.  And it's working - Murphy has steadily lost support in each successive poll, and there's still one week left before the election.  Murphy has countered with ads going after Ciattarelli's reactionary stands against abortion and vaccines - all vaccines, not just COVID - but the polls show that the biggest issue concerning New Jersey residents is neither.  The biggest issue? Taxes.

And the undecided voters appear to be breaking for Jack.

Personally, I think McAuliffe may be toast, but Murphy may still hold on.  But even if they both win, anyone who thinks the the Democrats can replicate the resounding victory Gavin Newsom pulled off in the California recall vote is sadly mistaken.  The difficulties Democrats are having in Virginia and New Jersey are likely to reflect the difficulties they'll have in next year's midterms.  

Whiplash

Back around Easter time, Dr. Rochelle Walensky (below), director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was afraid we were on the cusp of another COVID surge.  Then she was criticized for keeping numerous COVID restrictions in place when a surge did not happen.  Now she's gone completely in the opposite direction and announced that people who are fully vaccinated against VOCID can now go anywhere, including public indoor spaces, without wearing a face covering, which I will henceforth refer to in this post as an FC.  (I stopped wearing mine outside long before the CDC said I could, because not needing an FC outside was already common knowledge.)  

At first hearing, Dr. Walensky's announcement was greeted with enthusiasm.  The, almost immediately, we had to curb that enthusiasm.  Too many questions that no one can sufficiently answer ensued.  How can businesses like stores and bars know which customers have been vaccinated?  How do customers prove it?  Also, the new guideline was expected to encourage more unvaccinated people to get the COVID vaccine.  But what about people who lie about getting vaccinated just so they don't have to wear an FC when thy go in the supermarket?  Even Dr. Leana Wen, who had problems with the CDC being too strict with its guidelines after the rate of COVID infections dropped over the early spring, now says that the CDC is now being too lenient, an that the new guidelines could cause that very fourth COVID surge Dr. Walensky feared in early April.

Thanks to decisions made in the private sector and by state and local governments, though, none of the CDC's new guidelines and recommendations matter.  Many chain stores, such as Target and Home Depot, still require FCs at their locations, and while several states are lifting FC mandates, New Jersey is not one of them.  Governor Phil Murphy said that the FC mandate in the state, will continue for several more weeks, despite the fact that the rate of full vaccination in New Jersey is higher than the country at large.  )New York and California are keeping their FC mandates in place as well.)  And in the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made it clear that the FC rule on the House floor will continue because too many Republican House members haven't gotten vaccinated yet.  She'll gladly lift  the rule when enough of them do.  But, of course, even if they do so privately despite all the anti-vaccine rhetoric in the GOP and tell Speaker Pelosi in full confidence, it will become apparent that GOP House members will have gotten vaccinated simply because the FC rule has been lifted.  The Republicans have a large minority caucus in the House, five seats away from taking control, and so a lot of them have to get a COVID shot before the FC rule in the House floor is lifted.  A fully vaccinated Democratic House caucus won't be enough to have the rule lifted.  If House Republicans are seen as having gotten vaccinated against COVID and going against the view of constituents who don't trust the vaccine, they'll get voted out of office for "selling out."  So even if some House Republicans get vaccinated against COVID in private, they will not tell Speaker Pelosi, who, in turn, will not lift the FC rule.  (The rule has been dropped in the Senate, as most Republican senators, more confident in their standings with voters statewide, have been vaccinated, Kentucky's Rand Paul and Wisconsin's Ron Johnson - both having had COVID - being exceptions.) 

Perversely, the joint session of Congress President Biden addressed in April should have been an FC-free zone.  Only vaccinated lawmakers and lawmakers who tested negative within 24 hours of the speech were allowed on the House floor, yet they still had to wear FCs despite it being a COVID-free environment.  (The entire Congress was not in attendance, of course.)  Thus, when we saw two women - Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris - sit behind the President on the House dais for the first time, we couldn't see their faces.  It became an historic moment for all the wrong reasons. Dr. Wen thought that enforcing the FC mandate in the House even for President Biden's speech sent the wrong message when it was already proven that everyone in the room did not have COVID and they could have gone without FCs to show that vaccines work.  Now she thinks the CDC is sending the wrong message by saying that anyone fully vaccinated from COVID can stop wearing FCs everywhere - when the Speaker of the House, many state governors, and a whole bunch of national chains have made it clear that we most certainly can not.

The CDC has gone from downplaying the virus under Trump to being overcautious, then inconsistent, under Biden.  My biggest fear is that the more the CDC tries to clarify its directives on COVID, the more confusion it will cause.

And I'll have to keep writing very long blog posts on the subject.

One more wrinkle: Despite having been fully vaccinated against COVID, several people, including comedian Bill Maher and several members of the New York Yankees baseball team, have tested positive for the disease. At a time of vaccine hesitancy, how is Dr. Walensky going to handle that?

Does Ciattarelli Know Jack?

It looks like New Jersey Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, 59, will win the Republican nomination to run for Governor of New Jersey in the primary election a month from today.  And I'm beginning to wonder if he has a chance against incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy.

Ciattarelli is mainly focusing on Governor Murphy's handling of the COVID pandemic and charging that his policies have put numerous small stores and eateries out of business.  I've seen this firsthand.  In the area where I live, several such places have gone out of business due to COVID - including a couple of restaurants that had only been in business for a couple of years.  In my father's old neighborhood, which has a small business district near the house he used to live in as a teenager, there was a delicatessen that had been in business since 1926.  It survived the Depression, stagflation, and the financial crisis.  I imagine that my father and his brothers must have frequented it and gotten a sandwich there every now and then.  Last year, it closed for good due to the pandemic.  And there's no guarantee that any of these businesses will be replaced.  It would be suicide to try to start any new business these days not just because of COVID but because of pre-COVID trends favoring big-box stores and online shopping.

Ciattarelli rightly points out that such businesses provide a sense of community and continuity, and they provide jobs for the little guy - and the business owners are little guys (and gals) themselves who contribute to the local economy.  The economy and the community, in fact, are one and the same.  Without one, you can't have the other.  Our small towns were already in dire straits before the pandemic, and the ones that were making out better were the towns that focused on "destination economies" - economies that rely on local arts and entertainment attractions, restaurants, specialty shops and the like.  When the COVID pandemic ends, many of these same "destination economy" towns, like Morristown or Red Bank in New Jersey,  won't be a destination for anyone. You'll be able to stand in the downtown areas of one of these "destination" towns on a bright spring Saturday afternoon and see fewer people about than you would standing on the boardwalk in Atlantic City on a Monday morning in January. 

Ciattarelli has three strikes against him, though, and any one of them could tag him out.   First of all, he's running for governor of Democratic New Jersey as a Republican.  Second, his pitch seems to express more concern for business owners than employees, making him sound he cares more about livelihoods than lives in the middle of a pandemic, no matter how focused he is on small businesses as opposed to big business.  (A small-business owner himself, he's known for being hostile toward unions.)  Third, no one blames Murphy for their favorite burger joint or clothes boutique going out of business; his approval rating on handling the pandemic now stands at 80 percent.

Let's see what happens.   

Murphy's Law of Reopening

In New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy has allowed movie theaters to reopen and restaurants to reopen for indoor dining in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic - with restrictions, particularly with reduced capacity.  Restaurants have no fewer than 58 rules for indoor dining.  As Georges Clemenceau would have said, even God Almighty has only ten.

For many restaurants and movie theaters, this news comes too late, as several of them have closed their doors for good.  But I commend Murphy for the way he's handled the COVID-19 shutdown in this state, moving slowly, and cracking down on any "knuckleheads" his word who break the rules.  And some other popular places, including an art museum near where I live, are also opening.  But I'm not ready to go to any of these places just yet.  Not for another year, anyway.  I imagine it will take that long for the pandemic to play out, and I'm just not comfortable going out to places I don't have to go to.  

It;s because I'm still comfortable going to places I have to go to.  Many Americans believe that the worst of pandemic is over and we have less to fear.  Right.  If that's the case, why do we still have to go to supermarkets and hardware stores looking like ninja warriors?  Why do we have to go to a bank looking like we're about to rob the place?  And what if one of the customers in the bank is about to rob the place?

Until we can stop going around looking like we're about to pull guns out on each other, I will continue to keep close to home, no matter how much I hate to.  I had plans for 2020 to do a lot of things and go to a lot of places, and I hadn't ruled out another attempt to travel abroad.  Now I can't even leave my home county.  I only hope it's not too late to go to the places I'd wanted to go to but hadn't visited yet.  But even though Murphy says it's all right, I won't go to the movies (especially when I can see movies, both old and recent, on TV) or eat out for the foreseeable future.

And quite frankly, I can't afford to.   

Murphy's Law of Budgeting - Take Two

Well, I sure got it wrong!

What I thought was a triumph for New Jersey governor Phil Murphy - getting a budget passed and avoiding a shutdown - has actually turned out to be a defeat for him.  Murphy may have gotten increased taxes on the the super-rich and may have gotten more revenue from a tax on corporations, but what he really wanted was a permanent tax on those making more than one million dollars a year, not five million as passed, and he got neither.  If anyone got everything he wanted, it was Stephen Sweeney, the less progressive Democratic Senate president.  Murphy may have to go back to the legislature to ask for more money for his priorities, but his proprieties are not Sweeney's . . . and Sweeney's top priority is cutting public-employee pensions, something Murphy did not campaign on.

Murphy didn't make concessions on the budget because he wanted to avoid state beach closures. He made them because he didn't want to play politics and remain above the political rancor.  In avoiding a fight, he ceded much of his power to Sweeney, who now holds all the cards.  Murphy can propose the most ambitious liberal agenda in New Jersey history and Sweeney can put the brakes on any or all of it without so much as lifting a finger. 

And the taxes that were passed, all of which are temporary and some of which expire before the next gubernatorial election, may hurt Democratic chances not to keep the New Jersey legislature but to win back Congress.  New Jersey Republicans are tying the state tax increases to Democrats running for U.S. House and Senate seats using the old "birds of a feather" argument; if we can expect higher taxes on "hard-working families" and the like from Democrats in Trenton, we can expect New Jersey Democratic candidates for Congress to back the same sort of punitive taxes in Washington.  That argument almost worked for New Jersey Republican Christine Todd Whitman when she ran against Democratic Bill Bradley for U.S. Senate in 1990 and made Governor Jim Florio's unpopular tax agenda an issue.  She came very close to winning Bradley's Senate seat.  Three years later, she was elected governor of New Jersey.  

Whether New Jersey congressional candidates and Trenton Democrats are birds of a feather, Phil Murphy's administration isn't a turkey just yet.  He's already accomplished a good deal of his efforts to roll back the conservative agenda of Chris Christie, and he's still in a good position to get more done.  But he has to take on Sweeney and realize that Sweeney answers to him, not the other way around.  He has to be more political and less diplomatic; the New Jersey governorship isn't a job where you smooth things out with charm and grace, like being ambassador to Germany, Murphy's last (and first) political job (which he was appointed, not elected, to). 

As for me . . . well, I'm obviously not good at getting some things right.  It's obvious that there's more to Phil Murphy - and in some cases, less - than I originally thought.  I haven't been this embarrassed since I thought Al Franken would survive a sex scandal.  I hope Murphy becomes more effective as he grows more into his job.  There's still a lot more for him to do.  But for now, when it comes to power in Trenton, it's Steve Sweeney's world; Murphy is merely signing legislation in it.      

Murphy's Law of Budgeting

After intense negotiations with the leaders of both houses of the Democratic-controlled New Jersey state legislature, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed the state budget for the 2018-19 fiscal year into law, averting at the last minute a shutdown that would have forced state offices and parks to close after June 30.  The deal allows New Jerseyans like myself to breathe a sigh of relief after the state experience a major shutdown a year earlier that disrupted just about everything.

Murphy, who has pushed for many liberal initiatives such as strict gun control and a guarantee of Net neutrality from Internet service providers doing business with the state, wants to spend more to improve education and mass transit going forward, and he'll have the money to do it.  There'll be more than $1 billion in revenue from a four-year surcharge on corporations, a tax on people making an annual income of $5 million or more, and even an Uber tax.

Murphy had to give up a few proposals of his in negotiations with Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney (below, right, with Murphy), such as a sales tax increase from 6 percent to 7 percent and a tax increase on incomes over $1 million.  Sweeney opposed both.

"These long-term commitments require real, reliable, sustainable, long-term revenues," the governor said. "Because of magnanimous concessions on all sides, I am satisfied that the plan we agreed to today, which includes a version of the millionaire's tax as well as a temporary but declining corporation business tax surcharge, will appropriately begin the multi-year process of fixing New Jersey’s fiscal woes in a fair and responsible manner."

Some pundits are already saying that Murphy was the big loser, because he had to give up more.  No, he won.  He secured a plan to put his initiatives and budget priorities in place and got a budget framework for the next three to four years, but more importantly, he avoided a budget shutdown with the Democrats in control of the both houses of the legislature, the Assembly and the Senate, as well as the governorship.  Had there been a shutdown, it would have sent a message that the party is not capable of running New Jersey and lessened chances for the Democrats to retain control of the Assembly in the 2019 midterms more than any tax increase ever could.  Murphy's own ability to govern New Jersey would have been particularly called into question.  And imagine the outrage that would have resulted if the state beaches had been closed this past Sunday in the middle of possibly the worst East Coast heat wave of the decade.  As Governor Murphy noted himself, in recalling the previous shutdown, "A year ago, government shut down and beaches were closed (for most of us, anyway. . .)."

For the record, Murphy didn't follow his predecessor's precedent and go to the beach at Island Beach State Park.  He stayed in and watched the World Cup.

New Jersey Democrats just proved that they can run a state and move it in a progressive direction without Republican obstruction.  That should give Democrats in states where governorships and state legislatures are up for election in 2018 - i.e., most of them - an election campaign boost. 

Pai Creamed

Although a virtual lack of media attention on the Internet neutrality issue these days would have you believe that the Internet deregulation sought and won by Federal Commutations Commission  (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai is a done deal, pushback against Pai is gaining steam . . . even within the FCC itself.   And not just for the FCC's repeal of the neutrality regulation.

It seems that Uncle Charlie's own inspector general is looking into Pai's dealings with Sinclair Broadcasting Group, a conservative media company that owns several local TV stations across the country - many of which are network affiliates, meaning that Sinclair stations in numerous markets can pre-empt any national network program they do not like in favor of, say, a locally produced cooking show.  Or a documentary against single-payer health insurance. According to the New York Times, Pai may have had improper contacts with Sinclair before he became FCC chairman and may have committed improper acts to facilitate Sinclair's takeover of Chicago-based Tribune Media, which owns the Chicago Tribune and several television stations across the country.

FreePress.net reports that Sinclair, already the largest owner of TV stations in the United States, had a close relationship with Donald Trump throughout the 2016 campaign and that that Trump even brokered a deal for favorable news coverage from the company's various newscasts. "Since his appointment as FCC chairman," FreePress.net says, "Pai has worked overtime to clear the decks for Sinclair’s purchase of Tribune: He’s reduced the agency’s longstanding media-ownership limits and overturned rules that required broadcasters to maintain physical studios wherever they broadcast."

Tribune Media, by the way, owns WPIX-TV, broadcasting on Channel 11, in New York.  If Sinclair gets its hands on this station, Yankees home baseball games may be the only New  York-based programming you see on it.  

Meanwhile, thanks to the efforts of Senator Susan Collins of Maine - a Republican - fifty senators have endorsing a resolution that would reverse the FCC's repeal of Net neutrality; if one more senator signs on, and it will pass in that chamber.  Momentum to reverse the repeal is gaining in the House, and even though Trump could easily ignore or block the repeal, the growing hostility against Pai cannot be denied.

And as if that weren't enough, New Jersey's new governor, Phil Murphy, just signed an executive order that requires Internet service providers doing business in New Jersey to recognize Net neutrality principles in order to do business with the state government, making New Jersey the third state that requires Internet service providers "adhere to the principles of net neutrality" if they want a contract to do business with the state.  New Jersey also became the twenty-second state to join a lawsuit against the repeal. 

I'm pleased to report that I have had no Web site access issues with my Internet service provider.  Access to my e-mail, on the other hand, has been a different story - its e-mail server keeps going down.  Maybe I should make my Yahoo e-mail account my primary one . . . 

Okay, I guess I can go back to the Winter Olympics now . . .  

Murphy's Law of Governance

Today Philip Dunton Murphy takes office as the 56th Governor of New Jersey.  And not a moment too soon.

Murphy, a progressive Democrat, has a big agenda, but his policies and programs have one common theme - making New Jersey a fairer and better place.  That's a tall order when you're about to take over a state that has historically played second fiddle to its neighbors - even Delaware :-D - but Murphy knows what needs to be done and is ready to do it.  He's determined to make the state tax code fairer for the middle class and make wealthier New Jerseyans pay their fair share.  He is likely to increase funding for people education and in the process make an effort to lessen the burden of the property taxes that help pay for schools. And Jeff Sessions be damned - we're gonna get legal pot!  

None of this will be easy for our new governor.  He has vowed to improve and possibly expand NJ Transit at a time when more residents drive than ride the train or bus, and he wants to make New Jersey a sanctuary state for undocumented immigrants at a time when that's not so popular in Washington.  And Murphy, despite holding one of the most powerful governorships in the country, won't be able to get anything done without good relations with the Democratic leaders of the legislature.  He may not owe the insiders anything, but he still has to work with them.  And he can't get anything done without the people . . . we have to make him get something done.  Public opinion can be stronger than Trenton politics.

So let's be glad that the Fat Man In the State House is on his way out, and let's hope Phil Murphy can put the Garden State back on the right track.  If he does, he'll make New Jersey a model of progressivism for the nation . . . and for his fellow Democrats.  He has no desire to run for President, but if he is successful, maybe he'll inspire prospective 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to follow his example.     

Feds Trump States

I have to feel sorry for Phil Murphy.  He's about to become governor of New Jersey, he's been looking forward to pursuing a progressive agenda, and Donald Trump has been hell-bent on making sure that that doesn't happen!  Not in New Jersey, not in Virginia,. not anywhere, in fact.

This past week Trump let his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, let the dogs out on pot growers. Federal anti-cannabis laws will now be strictly enforced, even in states that okay legal marijuana use, because Sessions doesn't like it.  Well, that's understandable; having grown up in the South and spent his high school years in the early sixties, Sessions is likely a very straight-laced guy, but that doesn't give him the right to undermine the states and undercut the Tenth Amendment.  Especially when opioids - which marijuana can cure addictions to - are a bigger health crisis than pot smoking.  Republicans, of course, are only big on states' rights when the states want to supersede any form of authority they don't like.

Except, however, Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, whose state legalized pot smoking and who is so livid at Sessions that he's threatened to block future Justice Department appointments, which require Senate confirmation.

This, of course, makes it more difficult for Murphy to legalize and tax recreational pot like he wanted to, and lawyers will probably tell him not to bother, given the inexplicably (until you realize that, now that more states are legalizing recreational cannabis, including California, the marijuana market is growing, well, like a weed) sudden policy change.  Those who resist Trump find a counter-resistance move in their faces.

And if that weren't bad enough, Trump wants to open all of American seaboard to offshore oil and gas drilling, which would ruin the tourist business in any state with oceanfront beaches while inviting more opportunities for spills like the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  Except that Trump's move has generated bipartisan opposition in all of these states, not all of which is Democratic opposition; in Florida, Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Republican Governor Rick Scott - hoping to join Rubio in the Senate come 2019 - oppose it.

Well, well - Scott discovered science and the environment.

So leases on oil and gas drilling offshore aren't going to be issued any time soon.  Neither will arrest warrants for pot smokers - Sessions still has to form a policy, which will likely be challenged in court.  With all that in mind, Phil Murphy may yet have the opportunity to create a liberal paradise in New Jersey.

Let Me Tell You How It Will Be . . .

We're screwed.  

Congress passed the tax bill, and by next week, when it goes to the White House, it will be law, thanks to Donald J. Trump.  Also thanks to Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican senator who switched his vote to yes, which he insists had nothing to do with a provision in the bill that allowed deductions on his real-estate holdings.  

The rich will make out like bandits, of course.  The middle class will only get temporary relief from this bill, and Trump is gambling - perhaps correctly, if we consider just how stupid voters can be - that enough of these rubes will be taken in by the extra money in their pockets in the fall of 2018 to reward the Republicans with continued control of Congress.  And what do the Democrats think of all this?  No one cares.  I watched MSNBC for an hour yesterday and didn't see any Democrats being interviewed on the subject.  MSNBC did, though, cut away to Paul Ryan when he spoke about the tax reform bill.  Perversely, Martin O'Malley got to speak out against it on Fox News.

The biggest takeaway is the taking away of unlimited deductions for state and local taxes, now capped at $10,000.  In New Jersey, this will make it much more difficult for incoming governor Phil Murphy to raise taxes on the rich, because if the rich can't deduct their state taxes, they'll move to a low-tax state . . . and leave everyone else holding the bag.  Unless state taxes are lowered.  That means, no universal pre-kindergarten education, no mass transit improvements, no highway repairs - none of that stuff.  In short, Murphy will not be able to create in New Jersey an American Denmark, a place of the sort of amenities that make any place worth living in.  

Should ten-grand caps appear too small . . . be thankful they won't take it all. 

And to those of you stupid enough to continue to support the GOP once this law goes into effect on January 1, I have another George Harrison lyric I'd like to paraphrase . . ..  Ring out the old, ring in the new, ya ding-dongs! :-p   

Quo Vadis, Democrats?

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

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

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

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

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

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

November Surprise

The gubernatorial race in Virginia is so close, although Democrat Ralph Northam seems to have the edge, that no one can call it and Republican Ed Gillespie can still pull victory from the jaws of defeat.  In the New Jersey gubernatorial election,  Phil Murphy appears to be on course to win but Kim Guadagno is still pegging away and could gain enough last-minute momentum to pull an upset.  You scoff at that suggestion? Well, you remember what they said about the ant who tried to fell a rubber tree.     

Up to now, I've been worried about a surprise development that could cost Murphy the election.  At the height of hurricane season, I feared that a storm would strike New Jersey and Governor Chris Christie would put Guadagno in charge of emergency operations and allow her to prove herself as a leader . . . and overtake Murphy in the polls.  No.  Then I feared that Murphy's lieutenant-gubernatorial running mate Sheila Oliver's vote in the state Assembly against a bill meant to deny state contracts to companies that boycott Israel would cost him the extremely important Jewish vote.  Not quite.  Then came his promise to make New Jersey a sanctuary state for undocumented immigrants, which could cost New Jersey in federal aid (you mean we actually get some??)   It's driven up anti-Murphy enthusiasm among Republican voters but not so much for pro-Murphy voters in the immigrant-heavy Democratic base in the state . . . but no, Murphy's poll numbers are still holding.  But anything could happen, given all of the garbage that Guadagno has dumped on him.  I've even been wondering if the October 31 terrorist attack in Lower Manhattan, given the fact that an Uzbek national living in New Jersey (albeit on a legal visa) perpetrated it, would play into Guadagno's naked immigrant-bashing as well as the line that Democrats are soft on terrorism.  

The most gratifying sight of Murphy advocating sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, apart from the fact that it's the right thing to do, is that Murphy could have talked his way out of his hardline stand with the mealy-mouthed language commonly associated with wimpy Democrats and backpedaled on it to avoid offending centrist independents, but instead he doubled down and stood on his principles.  If he wins, his courageous stand for immigrants will hopefully embolden Democrats in other states as the 2018 midterm elections approach.        

I'm still nervous, if only because the last Republican woman to face a Democrat in a New Jersey governor's election, Christine Todd Whitman, upset the conventional wisdom by winning, something Whitman herself has recently made a point of in advocating for Guadagno.  (Except that Whitman was seven points behind Democrat Jim Florio going into the 1993 election, not fourteen points behind like Guadagno is behind Murphy, and Florio was an unpopular incumbent governor - much like Guadagno's boss, Chris Christie.)  But Murphy, who says he has our backs, has Democrats who have his back.  Including this one.

Yes, that's Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland and 2016 presidential candidate, stumping for Phil Murphy on October 29 in Paterson, near where I live.  (I didn't learn about it until after the fact, of course.)  It was one of four stops O'Malley made in New Jersey on that rainy day.  He didn't attract the number of people that Hillary Clinton might (okay, would), but with each person he meets and interacts with while campaigning for Democratic candidates nationwide, he makes a presidential run in 2020 more doable . . . one voter at a time.

I recall that ant and the rubber tree again . .  .    

Murphy's Law of Optics

Democrat Phil Murphy is comfortably ahead of Republican Kim Guadagno in the polls for the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign, and right now it's a better-than-even bet that he'll win.  But he's chancing it a bit. 

This past weekend Murphy, running as a populist, appeared with noted non-populist Hillary Clinton at an expensive fundraiser in the town of Harrison, just outside Newark.  Being seen with a Democratic presidential nominee who didn't win the White House but still won New Jersey handily may seem to make sense, but no one saw Phil and Hill together, as the fundraiser was closed to the press.  While that was going on, Guadagno was going to fall festivals to talk to voters - i.e., the people, whom the Republicans haven't represented very well in the past few decades.  But who do you think had the better optics?

Note to Murphy:  Don't coast!  Close the sale!  And get a good photographic opportunity while you're closing it!   

Murphy's Law of Polls

Democratic New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy is leading by eighteen points over his Republican opponent, Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, in a recently released poll, and he's benefiting from Guadagno's association with lame-duck incumbent Governor Chris Christie.  So it looks like the Democrats are going to score their first major electoral victory in the age of Trump, right?

Not so fast.  

At the first debate between the two candidates, Murphy may have had his own "basket of deplorables" moment when he said he would declare New Jersey a "sanctuary state" for undocumented immigrants, shielding them from federal authorities.  Guadagno immediately responded by suggesting that Murphy would give sanctuary to undocumented immigrants like a Peruvian national who murdered children in a Newark schoolyard in 2014.  Murphy has come back hard and strong on that charge, saying that no state or city offering sanctuary for undocumented immigrants extends its protections to criminal suspects.  But since Guadagno is a Republican, that hardly matters.  She's been hammering the issue home, misleading potential voters with a deceitful misrepresentation of the truth - that is, a lie - and appealing to same bigoted set of voters Trump won in 2016.

To respond to the inevitable point that Donald Trump lost New Jersey to Hillary Clinton by nine points, it's worth noting that voters in New Jersey have acted differently in the past when choosing a governor.  New Jersey Democrats have lost four out of the last seven gubernatorial elections since the state last went Republican in a presidential election, and no Democrat has served two full terms since Brendan Byrne from 1974 to 1982.  New Jerseyans have been partial to Republicans when it comes to running the state, trying to keep taxes under control, and helping suburban areas (mostly white) over the cities (mainly non-white).  Guadagno's latest trick - in place of her attempt to capitalize on New Jersey's astronomically high property taxes, which hasn't helped - may bring out enough Republican voters in the exurban and rural areas to counter Democratic strength in urban areas and in older, more established suburbs that are in greater proximity to the cities.

In other words, Guadagno could find a way to pull an upset.  If that sounds unthinkable, look at the 1993 gubernatorial election and consider that Christine Todd Whitman was expected to lose to incumbent governor Jim Florio despite his unpopularity over increasing taxes in a recession.  She won by one percentage point.  How far back do you want to go?  Brendan Byrne was just as unpopular in 1977 as Florio was in 1993 over taxes - it was Byrne who imposed New Jersey's income tax, leading Republicans to label him "One-Term Byrne."  His Republican opponent in the 1977 election, Ray Bateman, cam up with a plan to replace the state income tax but, when asked how it would work, Bateman gave an answer that revealed the plan to be more of a fantasy than a workable solution.  He ended up losing what was the one of the least loseable elections for a challenger against an incumbent in New Jersey history.

Oh yeah, Phil Murphy is pushing a very progressive - and very expensive agenda, but he hasn't come up with an explanation of how he's going to pay for it.  Sound familiar?  

Actually, the only reason it does sound familiar is because Guadagno can't explain how she's going to pay for property tax relief.  But Murphy is still leaving himself open to an upset if he doesn't respond more forcefully to his opponent's more aggressive attacks on him.  

I hope Murphy - whom I support and whose agenda I support - comes back harder still.  Maybe he will at tonight's second gubernatorial debate.  Because if he somehow manages to lose, that will effectively put an end to the Democratic Party.  Not just the party in New Jersey - the national party.  Because if the Democratic Party can't even win the governorship of an increasingly Democratic state like New Jersey in the age of Trump, it might as well go full Whig.             

Murphy's Law of Justice

The Democrats hoped to gain one governorship this year by holding the governor's office in Virginia and taking the governor's office in New Jersey, where Republican lame duck Chris Christie is historically unpopular and where Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Murphy leads his GOP opponent, Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, by double digits in the polls.  But even if they do both, the party's net gain will be zero.  That's because West Virginia Governor James Justice, elected as a Democrat in 2016, just became a Republican.

Justice, the governor a of state dependent on coal mining and a coal magnate himself, said he could no longer serve his constituents as a Democrat when the Democratic Party seems hell-bent on destroying the coal industry (actually, market forces are destroying the coal industry, but let that pass).   His defection to the GOP comes after Donald Trump won West Virginia by two to one over Hillary Clinton.

To those who suggest that this could be a foolish move for Justice if Trump doesn't get West Virginia's economy moving again by 2020, when both men are up for re-election, and if Trump's popularity tanks in West Virginia as it already has nationally, you're the fools.  No Democratic presidential candidate has carried West Virginia since 1996.  Republicans have made serious inroads in state and local politics in the past twenty years.  Senator Joe Manchin, the only West Virginia politician of any relevance with a D after his name, could be in trouble when he runs for re-election next year; Shelley Moore Capito, the state's Republican U.S. Senator, faces no apparent difficulty when she, like Trump and Justice, is up for re-election in 2020.  Even if Trump loses his bid for re-election in a landslide, he'll still carry West Virginia.  Justice knows that.  

(Pointless historical aside I couldn't resist: It was a Republican administration - the first, Lincoln's administration - that brought West Virginia into the Union in the first place.  When Virginia, of which it was a part, seceded in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War, the western counties nullified the secession ordinance and remained loyal to the Union.  The Union Army occupied the region almost immediately and helped the locals form the new state of West Virginia, admitted to the Union in 1863.)     

Now it is more crucial than ever for the Democrats to hold the governorship in neighboring Virginia and win back the governorship in New Jersey.  I don't know what's going on with the Virginia campaign, which is for an open gubernatorial seat due to a one-term limit, but in New Jersey, voters are so sour on state politics that they don't think much of either candidate, despite Phil Murphy's huge lead.  And his lead may not be as big as it appears; one of Kim Guadagno's internal polls shows her to be behind by only nine points, meaning that her emphasis on lower property taxes could be paying off.

If the Democrats can't win back the governor's office in New Jersey even after eight years of Christopher James Christie, than the party will likely go full Whig indeed. 

The 2017 New Jersey Gubernatorial Nominees

It's official: Democrat Phil Murphy,a former ambassador to Germany, and Republican Kim Guadagno, the current lieutenant governor of New Jersey, will face each other in the New Jersey general gubernatorial election November 2017.  Yeah, big surprise.

Murphy is selling a set of progressive policy proposals as a change from lame-duck Governor Chris Christie's right-wing policies, while Guadagno is banking on her more moderate Republicanism as a prescription for change in Trenton.  Murphy was a decent if unspectacular ambassador to Berlin, but that's not what distinguishes him; he's a former Goldman Sachs executive at a time when having worked for the Wall Street firm is politically toxic.  To be fair, Murphy quit Goldman Sachs long before the 2008 financial crisis, and the policies he espouses would likely make his old Wall Street buddies cringe.  But not as much as Kim Guadagno might make New Jersey voters cringe for being Christie's right-hand woman.  Bottom line: It's Murphy's race to lose.

Okay, Phil: You have five months to prove that not all ex-Goldman Sachs executives are total creeps!      

New Jersey Politics In a Nutshell

Where do I begin?  I've spent so much time on national politics these past few months that I completely overlooked the political landscape of my home state.  Well, let me try to sum up the state of the state of New Jersey in one mind-numbing post . . .  

Governor Chris Christie let the Transportation Trust Fund, which funds our road and rail projects, expire in July, idling several road construction projects across the state.  I assumed it would be fixed by the governor and the legislature in a couple of weeks.  Nothing could have prepared me for how long it took, a period of several months.  But Christie and the Democratic legislature finally got a bill passed, and everything was taken care of.  We simply have to pay 23 cents a gallon extra for gas now. 

Meanwhile, Democrat and former Ambassador to Germany Phil Murphy, a former Wall Street executive, announced his candidacy for governor in 2017.  It looked for awhile that Murphy, a relative unknown, might end up becoming the Martin O'Malley of New Jersey politics . . . a nice Irish guy overshadowed by two big political stars, in this case two guys named Steve - State Senate President Steve Sweeney and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, both of whom had wanted to run for the New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2017.  But Sweeney and Fulop, noting the size of Murphy's wallet - he's a millionaire who can finance his own campaign - both took themselves out of the running, pretty much clearing the way for Murphy's nomination.  He's so progressive on the issues, you'd never know he used to work for Goldman Sachs.  He'd prefer that you not bring that up, of course . . . :-D  But I still plan to vote for him.              

Also, Christie aides Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly were found guilty in their apparent conspiracy to close traffic lanes on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge in order tie up traffic in the town of Fort Lee, where the bridge links Interstate 95 and U.S. Routes 1 and 9 (that's right, the George Washington Bridge is part of three highways) between New Jersey and Manhattan.  The lane closures were meant as payback against Fort Lee's Democratic mayor because he refused to endorse Christie's re-election bid in 2013.  Both defendants are appealing.

Christie hasn't been charged with anything, but he is reported to have known about the lane closures at a time when he insisted he knew nothing.  He's damaged goods, and Donald Trump knows that he's irrevocably damaged, which is why Christie will likely not be heading for Washington to become the new President's Attorney General or become anything else.  Oh, he's not damaged in Trump's eyes because of the bridge scandal.  It's because Christie prosecuted Ivanka Trump's father-in-law, developer and bank mogul Charles Kushner, for tax evasion and got him sent to the slammer for a year, something Kushner's son Jared - Ivanka's husband - wasn't too happy about, believing his father to be innocent.  Trump used Christie to win, then dropped him like a hot potato.  Christie, who once thought he'd be succeeding Barack Obama in the White House, is likely going back to New Jersey, and with less heat that he had a couple of years ago . . . and even a couple of days ago.