Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Bernie Sanders When in 1992 Queen Elizabeth had been asked how she felt after Windsor Castle had suffered a severe fire gutting 100 rooms, she responded, “Awkward.” Moderate Democrats and recovering progressives likely consider Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders’ primary losses to former Vice President Joe Biden a propitious sign. Many Democrats are silently wishing Sanders will have the good grace to slink off silently into obscurity after he had been decisively rejected by voters. The association of the party of President John Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt with Sanders’ batty socialist ideas has been awkward. And why, friends of the Democrat Party are now asking, should Sanders cast a shadow over Biden’s presidential prospects when every Democrat’s nightmare, President Donald Trump, is waiting in the wings for four more years?

At the beginning of April, Connecticut’s State Board of Education, by de-linking student evaluations and teacher performance, dismantled the last remnant of Governor Dannel Malloy’s valiant attempt to reform public school education. For a long, long while it was touch and go. In most businesses – and public education is one of the state’s biggest Big Businesses -- the free market acts as a check on inferior products and services. If the widget or service produced by business A does not perform up to expectations, the purchaser will turn to A’s competitor, business B, and in due course business A will either be driven from the field or improve its product or service. This process, which insures improvement, does not apply to public education – a state monopoly that draws its financing from tax receipts. Only a governor or a legislature can deny public funds to inferior schools, and doing so – if you are a Democrat reliant on state employee unions for sustenance -- is a hazardous ...

Tom Foley, who according to some polls will be Governor Dannel Malloy’s likely opponent in the upcoming gubernatorial race, ran into a string of barbed wire when he made an appearance at a recent AFL-CIO gathering, a watering hole for progressives seeking political office. Mr. Foley appeared unarmed with empty hands – largely because there is as yet no “there” in his campaign – and he was, as expected, rudely rebuffed. To approval and titters from the floor, Lee Saunders ,  president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees , warned, just before Mr. Foley stepped to the lectern, “ He will tell you anything and then he will try to kill you ... We are smarter than that, aren’t we Connecticut?”

The ins, of course, are incumbents; the outs are everyone else. How difficult is it for the outs to get in? The short answer is – nearly impossible. Campaign finance reform was supposed to make it easier for the outs to break into the magic political circle. This has not happened, partly because of the influence of Super PACs. A PAC is a Political Action Committee; a Super PAC is a very large and wealthy PAC operating outside the precincts of political parties. McCain-Feingold – and its equivalent in the U.S. House, Shays-Meehan – more or less illegalized large “soft money” contributions to political parties. The U.S. Supreme Court, reviewing the campaign finance bill, determined that a legislative directive outlawing “soft money” contributions to PACs not directly connected to political parties was an unconstitutional prohibition that violated the First Amendment. The court’s ruling opened a Pandora’s Box that now allows outliers, persons and groups not formally attached to...

In the good old days, before the advent of campaign finance reform, a stretch in prison was no bar to election. Mayor Michael Curley of Boston, a colorful mob-connected figure in Massachusetts politics who made good on his campaign pledge to get the washerwomen of the city off their knees, ran the city from prison. Mr. Curley later rigged out all the washerwomen of Boston with long handled mops. It may well be the case that a stretch in jail was the booster that rocketed Mr. Curley into a long and eventful career in politics. Mr. Curley received news that he had been elected to Boston’s Board of Alderman in 1904 while cooling his heels in prison on a fraud conviction: He had fraudulently taken a civil service exam for two men applying for postmen in his district, and the stint in prison helped to burnish his reputation among the poor Irish of Boston as someone who was willing to go to the mat for those in need. During his career in politics, both as Boston Mayor and a U.S. Sena...

During the Abe Lincoln canvass, candidates for the presidency were much interested in bonding emotionally with the working class. They were even more interested in displaying their military badges and ribbons. At one point, Lincoln became so put-off by the imposture that he openly ridiculed, as only Lincoln could do, the grand military hustle of the Democrats. Lincoln’s own military service in the Black Hawk War, three enlistments of about 30 days each, was refreshingly free of heroism. Following the hostilities, Lincoln’s horse was stolen. He and his companion, George Harrison, were compelled to walk and canoe back to New Salem. Lincoln, of course, was born in a log cabin, though he managed to ease his way into a comfortable middle class berth as a fairly prosperous lawyer. George Washington -- net worth: $525 million, a cool, half billion in in today’s mostly worthless currency – rates as America’s most wealthy president.   Next in line is President Thomas Jefferson, n...

The New Year has finally arrived, and with it old things have or soon will be put away. Among them are former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, now comfortably ensconced in Hollywood as the chief lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America and, within the year, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, once a Democrat and now an Independent. It may be worth mentioning that Mr. Dodd’s last vow in leaving office is that he would not – no, never – become a lobbyist. This sweeping out of the old is what is called in politics a “sea change.” Some things, of course, will not change. Connecticut will remain a blue state even if by some stroke of Divine Providence a Republican is able to wrest Mr. Lieberman’s soon to be vacant seat from progressive or liberal Democrats. Connecticut’s congressional delegation has for a long while been the private preserve of the Democratic Party and presently is home to three millionaires: U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal and U.S. Reps Rosa Delauro and Jim Himes ,...

In a campaign stump speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, the site of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous 1910 “new nationalism” speech, President Barack Obama threw a few flowers in the direction of the “roughrider,” the father of the modern progressive movement. And then the president bestowed on the Bull Moose president the ultimate compliment: He compared himself – slyly, indirectly – to Teddy. Mark Twain, who thought Roosevelt a shameless fraud, was not so kind. Here is Twain erupting in a letter to the New York Times, written in 1908: “Astronomers assure us that the attraction of gravitation on the surface of the sun is twenty-eight times as powerful as is the force at the earth's surface, and that the object which weights 217 pounds elsewhere would weight 6,000 pounds there. “For seven years this country has lain smothering under a burden like that, the incubus representing, in the person of President Roosevelt, the difference between 217 pounds and 6,000. Thanks be we got rid of this...

The Senator from Central Casting The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Thomas Dodd By David E. Koskoff Publisher: New American Political Press Price: $29.95/hardcover “ If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country .” E. M. Forster Lacking such scruples, it was the other way around for the close associates of Senator Thomas Dodd, the subject of David Koskoff’s book, appropriately titled, perhaps with a wink in the direction of Mr. Dodd’s son, Chris Dodd, “The Senator from Central Casting: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Thomas J. Dodd.” There are some important differences between father and son. When Dodd the younger retired from the US Senate, he was almost immediately scooped up by Hollywood as the chief lobbyist for Tinseltown. After Dodd the elder had been censured by the senate for having used public funds for his personal benefit, in addition to having accepted from both the governme...

Gov. Dannel Malloy appeared recently at the editorial offices of the New London Day, where he unburdened himself cautiously on matters involving taxing and spending: “’We have people who for political reasons are inserting uncertainty into the bond market, and we’re seeing the bond market reflect that,’ Malloy said. He went on to criticize some of [New Jersey Gov. Chris] Christie’s other recent exhortations to fellow Republicans to hang tough against established interests and to eliminate tenure for schoolteachers. “’Hopefully I take a slightly more intellectual approach to this discussion than Governor Christie has demonstrated,’ Malloy said, adding that his counterpart ‘certainly understands the nuts and bolts portion of it.’ “’There are proven economic theories about sustaining economic growth, and we ignore those theories that have proven themselves at our own peril,’ Malloy said. “’We’re going to see large-scale additional unemployment caused by governmental entities: loc...

There is no log cabin in Lieutenant Governor Mike Fedele’s biography, but it’s an interesting read anyway: Born in Italy, Fedele came to the United States as a tot, worked hard and made good. He was plucked by Jodi Rell from the State House of Representatives to run as her Lieutenant Governor following the dark days of the John Rowland administration. Fedele now is running for governor on the Republican Party ticket, and there are some perilous cliffs he must negotiate along the way. The position of Lieutenant Governor is not the brightest spot in the political heavens. It is comparable on a state level to the Vice Presidential office, famously defined by John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s Vice President, as being (a clean translation follows) “not worth a warm bucket of spit.” Garner ran for the presidency and lost to Roosevelt but was chosen by the Democratic convention to share the ticket after he had released his pledged delegates to FDR. Garner later opposed Roosevel...

The Statist urges Americans to view themselves through the lenses of those who resent and even hate them. He needs Americans to become less confident, . . . and to accept the status assigned to them by outsiders—as isolationists, invaders, occupiers, oppressors, and exploiters. The Statist wants Americans to see themselves as backward, foolishly holding to their quaint notions of individual liberty, private property, family, and faith, long diminished or jettisoned in other countries. . . . -- Mark R. Levin Mark Levin in his book, " Liberty and Tyranny, A Conservative Manifesto ," demonstrates the tyranny of Statists by their positions on current issues. According to Levin on his radio show, he wrote 98 percent of the book before Barack Obama became President. Obama’s name appears only twice, but his positions are apparent on many of the issues discussed. How does the Statist operate? He attacks the Founding Fathers as slaveholders, and he favors revolutions because they cle...

Prior to and after President Barack Obama’s inauguration, the president had been compared to Abe Lincoln: Both were from Illinois; both had a rough start in life; the Great Emancipator – a Republican, by the way – has done his best to make possible the election to the presidency of the nation’s first African American; so Lincoln and Obama were, some in the press said, bookends of a kind, one opening the struggle against slavery and the other closing it. All this is true. And we all should be glad whenever the nation is able to shuck off the tattered remnants of a debilitating Jim-Crow politics. It has been a long time coming. Lincoln, had he been alive in our day, would have rejoiced. At this point – so it seems to some of us – it only remains for the president now to decide whether he wishes to be Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt, with whom he’s also been compared. Some have also seen in Obama a likeness to President Jack Kennedy. I have no doubt that someone will come along in the near ...

The entrée of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s J. Edgar Hoover, into the Countrywide scandal has caused several conspiracy theories to arise. Conspiracy theory 1: Blumenthal really, really, really wants to be senator. But there is a problem. One of Connecticut’s senatorial chairs is occupied by Sen. Joe Lieberman, formerly a Democrat, now a Democrat leaning Independent. Lieberman, unhorsed by Ned Lamont in a Democrat primary, ran in the general election as an Independent and cleaned the clock of former Governor and Senator Lowell Weicker ’s favorite politician, fellow Greenwich millionaire Lamont. The other chair is held by Sen. Chris Dodd. As a general rule in Connecticut politics, opportunities for senatorial slots do not become available until the grim reaper hauls off the reigning incumbent across the Styx. Weicker, torpedoed by Lieberman, was the exception that proves the rule. The Countrywide scandal presents a rare opportunity for Blumenthal. Hoover, the ambit...

“ You can go to live in Turkey but you can’t become a Turk. You can’t go to live in Japan and become Japanese. But . . . anyone from any corner of the world can come to America and be an American.” -- Ronald Reagan Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race and ancestry. A good American is one who is loyal to this country and to our creed of liberty and democracy .” -- Franklin D. Roosevelt In 1776, we declared ourselves independent and committed ourselves to certain principles and ideals. Our ideals, set forth in the Declaration of Independence, implemented in the Constitution, go back to the Magna Carta, common law, Athenian democracy, and the Hebrew covenant. What does it mean to be an American? Opportunity , reward for hard work, respect for talent, entrepreneurship, leader in productivity, respect for education; the chance to get ahead, to name a few characteristics. What makes us a nation is our heritage, but we ar...

Always gracious in victory, Sen. Hillary Clinton has hinted that she might be willing to offer phenom Sen. Barack Obama the coveted second spot on her ticket. "That may be where this is headed,” Clinton said on CBS’s “The Early Show after winning primaries in Rhode Island, Ohio and Texas, “but of course we have to decide who is on the top of ticket. I think the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me." It was John “Cactus Jack” Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s VP, who once said of the office that it “wasn’t worth a warm bucket of spit.” Clinton’s primary and caucus haul after Second Super Tuesday is a piddling 13; Obama has won 28, giving him an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates. These numbers have led some number crunchers to determine that it would be more or less impossible for Clinton to win a sufficient number of delegates to cinch the nomination before the Democrat nominating convention. And has anyone seen Bill lately? It had been widely speculated be...

On the political stump in Dover, New Hampshire, US Sen. Chris Dodd , running for the presidency, declined to give a stump speech and instead took questions from the crowd. Concerning President Bush’s terms in office, Dodd said, “"We've been on six years of on-the-job training and look where we are." And later he asked rhetorically, “How are we losing a public relations battle with Hugo Chavez?" Dodd gave no hint to the largely admiring crowd what he would do as president to win the public relations battle with Venezuela’s increasingly leftist dictator. Following a path well worn by the ailing Fidel Castro, Chavez recently warned his opposition in Venezuela that he plans to nationalize the oil industry. While Bush slept, Daniel Ortega, running on a non-progressive pro-Catholic platform, became president of Nicaragua. As previously noted here and elsewhere , Dodd has had valuable experience negotiating with the Ortega brothers in that war swept country. When a voter a...

Dodd’s speech , a little outdated since he has modified his opinions several times since, was titled, “Moral Authority in the 21st Century: Lessons from Nuremberg.” During the past few weeks, Dodd's position on Iraq has evolved to meet changes in president Bush's strategy. He has, variously, agreed to increases in troop levels, and most recently proposed a bill that would restrict the president from increasing troop levels in Iraq. “In a time of war, I have come to our Council today to speak about peace. “Not the kind of peace that is merely the absence of armed conflict. “Not the uneasy and uncertain peace of adversaries warily eying each other over material and philosophical barricades. “Certainly not the false peace of slogans emblazoned on naval warships.” NB But it was precisely the naval warships of World War II, some of which were emblazoned with slogans, and aircraft also emblazoned with war-talk that brought a lasting peace to Europe. “Rather, I speak of a peace th...