In recent weeks, I’ve found myself increasingly fleeing to The Guardian for clear thinking, fresh writing, writers with whom I have no history, and something different from the New York Times.  For a while I would drift there and, in the flurry of skipping across the surface of the internet, never had time to make connections between consistently good material and that outlet.  It wasn’t until I read Glenn Greenwald’s account of the Snowden leaks, where he favorably talks about his time with The Guardian, that I started to pay attention.

That transition ended with me subscribing (I actually wrote donating money first – how’s that for an internet era insight?) and getting a tote bag.  Twice during a weekend in the country, the tote prompted a conversation about how The Guardian has become a sanctuary, a newsy happy place.  I was reminded of this today, when I noticed how many great pieces are coming out from women and women of color with crisp, intelligent, passionate critiques of US politics.

• A piece from a woman who was a senior Trump executive documenting his shift from being somewhat forward thinking about women (at least at the time) to the raving whatever he is today.  Probably the first piece I’ve read about Trump in months with some texture and insight into the person.
• A terrific piece about Beyonce’s Lemonade, which I should just quote rather than characterize:  “We are the women left behind. We are the women who have cared for other women’s children while ours were taken away. We are the women who work two jobs when companies won’t hire our men. We are the women caring for grandchildren as our sons are taken by the prison industrial complex. We are the women who march in the streets and are never marched for. We are the women expected to never air our grievances in public. We are the women expected to stay loyal to our men by staying silent through abuse and infidelity. We are the women who clean the blood of our men and boys from the streets. We are the women who gather their belongings from the police station.”
• Another great piece about Beyonce and HRC.  By a dude, but it feels fresh, doesn’t have the knowing or “I just noticed there’s more to popular music than we thought” vibe of the NYT (or me).
• Another piece taking HRC, Sanders, and Democrats to task for making any claims to progressivism based on their record on race (correction: also by a man, forgot to flag this one).  The writer ends the piece with the clearest, sharpest, most astute summary of opting out that I’ve read:  “This is not apathy. This is not a threat. This is an acceptance that Hillary Clinton and the rest of these morally challenged politicians will politically value our black lives as much as they value our black votes when, and only when, we courageously cease being electoral accomplices in our own political death and destruction.”
• And one other piece that attempts to unpack the US media’s portrayals of one candidate as having more African-American support (and therefore being better on race) than the other.  In this piece, even the caption is great:  “There’s no reason to doubt that black endorsements are sincere, but they’re not being used as sincerely as they’re being given.”

I can’t quite yet put my finger on the secret sauce – perhaps it’s proximity to to those who have proximity to Orwell’s blue plaque – but there’s so much voice there, I find it refreshing and inspiring.

Carly Fiorina?  That’s all Cruz has left?  This is the stop Trump movement?  It was leaked earlier today that Cruz would be making a “major announcement.”  But, this is to major announcements what the naughty lamp in A Christmas Story was to major awards.  Cruz-Fiorina is like a B-list WWE tag-team that has just enough juice to be interesting, but is clearly just there to put the big stars over.

Cruz is many things, but I thought he was a smart politician. I can’t imagine what the strategy sessions where like that resulted in this decision.  Cruz is toast, but what possible argument is there that Carly will improve his chances?  Does anyone in Indiana even know who she is? They know who she is in California, and they didn’t vote for her when she ran for senate. Perhaps the reasoning was that the only way to make Cruz more likeable was to put someone even more unlikeable on the ticket with him. She’s a terrible campaigner.  Unsmiling. Angry. A multi-millionaire, failed CEO who was trying to run on a populist economic message.

This is such a non-event that I almost feel bad to blog about it.  Except that the hathos appeal is too much to resist.  So, on that level, I’m happy to have her back in the campaign.

She is utterly loathsome.  When she left Lucent to become CEO of HP—and this was at the peak of the ‘90s bull market, when CEOs were treated like celebrities—it was obvious her only objective was to be governor of California or one of its senators.  On the way to becoming the first woman president.

Hey, we all have our career goals.

But, she was a disaster at HP. At a time when rival IBM was transforming itself from a hardware company to a software and services company, Carly had HP buy Compaq, doubling down on PCs and commodity servers.

Lots of people are referring back to when Reagan, in 1976, picked Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate before the convention. Schweiker was at least a sitting senator. And from a state where Reagan was trying to peel delegates away from Ford.  This makes no sense. She brings nothing other than anger and a bad resume.

Just watched most of Trump’s foreign policy address in Washington.  He was ill at ease with a teleprompter, but otherwise it was a strong presentation.  Or strong enough.  Someone wrote him a pretty decent speech and he delivered it o.k., without veering off into crazy land.  Folks, that’s all the average voter needs to hear.  He can win this whole thing.

Early this morning, Laska posted about possible Trump meltdown scenarios.  I’ll add to his analysis that Mr. Trump’s instinctive misogyny could be part of his undoing. I don’t think he can help himself.  This morning on Morning Joe, while phoning in his interview from his bedroom, he was asked about Hillary’s remarks in her victory speech.  He proceeded to talk about how she was screaming and that he couldn’t stand the screaming.  He all but said that the former Secretary of State and U.S. senator from New York was giving him a head ache with all her shrill nagging and screaming.

He started his campaign by calling Megyn Kelly a menstruating bitch.  I don’t think he can help himself, and when he’s losing to Hillary, or, she’s running circles around him on policy, he could go way over the top.  On the other hand, I thought his campaign was over when he was mean to Kelly in the first debate, but nobody cared.  Think Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtain on Point-Counter Point.  “Jane, you ignorant slut.”  That’s his debate prep.

 

Along with a few words . . .

I’ve gotten used to seeing Tolstoy, Flaubert, Ibsen, Woolf, and other literary greats’ book covers bearing “Now a major motion picture”, but this one caught me up short. (UPDATE:  I just remembered the previously strangest one:  seeing Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell on the cover of a collection of Auden poems, with the banner:  “Includes “Funeral Train Blues” from Four Weddings and a Funeral””)

First, I should be clear, I love the music and the musical, and I think Miranda is an amazing talent and human being.  I should admit I listened to it not knowing anything more about Hamilton than what I learned in a two-semester American history class that touched on him.  Worse still, I totally bought the premise that his life, seen from 10,000 feet (or through musical verse), has a rising up from a ghetto to greatness through brains and pluck vibe – with all the consequences that come from going it alone.

So, having raised the issue of whether TV has cheapened the office of the President to the point where people are voting against a dangerous fantasy version of the job, I’m curious of whether I’m a hypocrite being not horrified by this?

(I also want to see how poorly you think of me, knowing that both of you have read Chernow, have intelligent thoughts about it and I just downloaded it based on the musical and am waiting for whispersync to come out before I make the commitment.)

 

 

Tacking to the “center” for November is almost as well-understood a ritual as the balloon drop, dissing urban culture, and eating cheese steak in Philadelphia.  We’re all waiting for it. Sanders supporters are waiting to see whether HRC tacks to the comfortable center-right of her political career.  And Trump . . .

Well, Trump has been doing something since Florida, when he first talked about being a “uniter” and told us he’ll soon be “so presidential” “we won’t believe it”, in fact “be bored” by his statesmanship.

What’s interesting to me is how public the makeover has become.  Think back to the 90s when reporters discovered conversations and memos about Hillary changing her hair, figuring out her name, and deciding what kind of adoring looks to give her husband.  Or when Dukakis played catch in front of his house with a Red Sox player. It was all supposed to be quiet, private, and unconsidered.  We were mildly scandalized when we discovered there were strategic conversations about such things.

Today, we have Trump’s makeover consultant, Paul Manafort, not simply being visible in the campaign organization, but publicly describing how he plans to make Trump unrecognizable and eschew “the part he’s been playing.”  (A few days later, Trump indicated that he wasn’t planning to tone down anything.  So there’s that extra layer to watch.)

My personal prediction, buried in a comment here, I think, is that Trump will have a meltdown at some point between debates with HRC.  It unfolds like this:

1. Debate prep:  Trump accepts that he needs it and he tolerates a room full of people suggesting things that his own mind doesn’t.  Blood pressure rises.
2. Campaigning:  Days on end of answering hard follow-up questions from people who give endorsements rather than boost ratings.  Stress levels rise, Trump has moments of not seeing straight.
3. More debate prep: for the first time in his life, things don’t come easily to him, and people tell him so.  He considers firing everybody and resuming private consults with his own mind.  Then he realizes, for the first time in his life, that not everything he needs comes from his real estate persona and just leaves the room.
4. Loop  2 + 3, until…
5. Trump is in an editorial room, feeling the heat, having no easy outs for questions he avoid during debates and rallies. An annoying editor in an off-the-shelf suit and with ink on his fingers keeps pushing him.
6. Trump explodes and punches a staff person or an editor.

I don’t think it’s fanciful.  He seems exactly the right temperament for a meltdown and hasn’t developed the rhinoceros hide any politician who’s been in more than a few battles has.  I admit, though, that it’s more likely that 6 transpires as a series of unfortunate outbursts on a rope line, or an epically bad moment in a “rigged” debate – either of which runs endlessly on the news for a week and forever and re-mixed ever on the internet.

This is all a rambling way of saying I’m intrigued by the upcoming psychic makeover show. “Watch as a wealthy celebrity jumps into politics as a lark and … starts winning!  Playing catch-up, he teams up the best shrink to help him grow, and quickly!  Tune in and watch the mogul in his quest to learn self-restraint, form a million opinions on things he doesn’t care about, find a way to talk to people in small groups, and remake himself into  something “boring”, Presidential, and terrific at the same time.  Will this 21st century Odd Couple end up together at the inauguration or in a lawsuit?  Find out Thursday night.”

 

A few times in the last month, I’ve been asked who I think Hillary will select for a running mate. Normally, I’m just waiting for some poor fool to ask me this question because I’ve always got a short list in my head, with pros and cons for each.  But, this time, I had nothing.  I actually had to do Google searches of Democratic governors.  Because, the Democratic party’s bench is really thin these days at almost every level. The Democrats won literally everything in 2006 and 2008 and then gave almost all of it back in 2010 and some more in 2014.   As important as the presidency is, the Democrats really, really need a strong showing down-ballot in as many states as possible in November.

The Republicans are careening toward catastrophe at the top of the ticket, but it’s easy to rattle off attractive potential vice presidents.  They are teeming with people like Nikki Haley, Rob Portman, and Jeff Flake who would be attractive candidates.  Except with Trump likely at the top of the ticket, no serious Republican is going to want the number two slot, and my guess is that Trump will have to find some latter-day Sargent Shriver who has nothing else to lose.  Time to start scouring the list of former Republican mid-western governors.  Or Carly Fiorina.  Yeah, she’d take it in a heartbeat.

Also, Trump knows that he’s likely to be impeached, and so would be foolish to put anyone on the ticket with him who would obviously be a better president.

So, back to the Democrats. They’d give anything to put a Latino on the ticket, but despite being the party of diversity, they don’t really have a Latino office holder of suitable stature or charisma.  It’s so bad that insiders are floating the name of Tom Perez, the Secretary of Labor, who has never held elective office.  Julian Castro has serious political talent, but Mayor of San Antonio and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for under two years is hardly a compelling resume to be a heart-beat away from the presidency.

The Republicans have, or had, a surfeit of Latino options just in one state.  Current and former New Mexico governors Susana Martinez and Brian Sandoval would have a lot to offer to the ticket.  Except that Martinez apparently got absolutely plastered on December 14 at a party with her staff and friends at a hotel in Santa Fe and started throwing empty bottles out of the hotel window.  Sandoval has immense political talent and is a serious guy—Obama floated his name as a replacement for Scalia on the Supreme Court—but his problems are even worse than Martinez’s.  He’s pro-choice, pro-Obamacare, and pro-immigration reform.  This guy’s a Republican?  He’s my pick for Hillary’s running mate.

At the end of the day, the vice presidential pick is all about chemistry with the person at the head of the ticket.  The first time we all saw Clinton and Gore together, it was obvious how formidable they would be. And then, their first day on the campaign bus, the bus got stuck in some soft earth where it was parked.  And Bill and Al in shirt sleeves jumped out of the bus and helped push it out.  Two broad-shouldered young men from the South leaning into the future.

So, my top three picks for Hillary in no particular order:

Deval Patrick:  Former two-term governor.  Very good on the stump. The black vote has been huge for Hillary in the primaries.  Was actually surprised he didn’t run for President this time.

Elizabeth Warren:  A month ago, I didn’t think that Hillary would pick a woman because, like, we thought that Hillary would bring the excitement of a possible woman president.  But, somehow, she’s carved out a persona that combines the ineluctability of Nixon with the stolidity of Walter Mondale.  So, Warren would add excitement to the ticket and expand the gender gap. She’s been on the attack against Cruz lately so maybe she’s auditioning for the part.

Tim Kaine:  The safe choice.  Great resume.  Very good on television and a great campaigner. Could help make a difference in Virginia. But, he would open up a senate seat in that state that the Democrats could ill afford to lose.

Trump will pick Carly.  .. Or some end-of-the-line conservative like Mike Pence of Indiana.  Or Lee Iacocca or whatever.  And burn the Republican Party to the ground.

Who are your picks?

“…like any political system, it can be gamed,” rightly notes Laska in a comment on “Getting Nominated in America,” listing that fact as among sources of growing public frustrations with the current system. The system is designed to create a winning outcome, he notes there too, and again I think rightly points out that “designed to win” isn’t the same as “designed to achieve certain goals.”

I’ve found the issue a big point of interest this election year, and my superficial studies of older primaries and conventions suggest that public frustration may arise less from the fact that the system  can be gamed than from unhappy situations that arise when it’s not gamed to go our way. Like: do we want a clean, fair fight and will accept loss with a good will under those circumstances? Or do we just want our candidate to win (leaving aside the question of what goals may thereby be achieved) and can more or less handle the gaming that goes on to make that happen?

Short of rank criminality, I mean. I’m not talking about outright election fraud, lawbreaking (although Dems probably tolerate some of that, too, when remembering JFK’s victory in 1960); this is more about the trickiness that seems like a lot of what politics fundamentally is, in situations where competition for public support is the mode, as in a democratic republic. The hardass pols of the past were just great at the game, loved it as such, didn’t think of it any other way. I find that creepily fascinating and weird,  and only sometimes related to achieving goals, but I also think none of those who ever did achieve good goals ever looked at the process any other way. I’m glad Lincoln won the 1860 election, for example, and I find it really doesn’t bother me–within the available contexts–to have read somewhere (I’m too lazy to look it up right now) how Lincoln’s people used a favorite-son tactic at the convention to deny Seward a first-ballot victory, getting Seward’s people seated far from their allies, printing fake tickets to pack the floor with hundreds of loud people to yell for Lincoln, offering positions to bosses in order to swing delegations, etc.

Or maybe it does bother me. But the way it bothers me opens up questions about society and human nature that run deeper than anything elections, democracy, parties, or reforming them can ever address. If we survive, there will be better ways to do things. Or at least it’s the right thing to believe that’s possible. For now, though, maybe gaming the system is the system we’ve believed in, and actually kind of liked, for a long time.

The presidential races are the top draw for today’s primaries in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island.  But, 2016 also features a full slate of House races and a third of the senate up for reelection.  For serious political junkies, congressional and gubernatorial elections are where the real action is.

Today features two important primaries, one in my former home state of Pennsylvania, where former representative Joe Sestak faces off against Katie McGinty.  Sestak lost a very winnable senate race to Pat Toomey in 2010 and is looking for a rematch. The White House and the Democratic establishment is supporting McGinty.  Media coverage suggests that Sestak is not getting establishment support because he’s an “outsider”, but the reality is, he was a terrible candidate in 2010 and would almost surely lose to Toomey in 2016.  Democratic pols who I know in Pennsylvania are all supporting McGinty.

The other hotly contested Democratic senate primary is in Maryland where two respected members of congress, Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards, vie for the Senate seat of the retiring Barbara Mikulski.  The seat is likely to remain Democratic so this one could decide who is the next Senator from Maryland. The elections to Van Hollen’s and Edward’s House seats feature scrums of Maryland Democrats spending enormous sums of money for a House primary race.