Tag: Hillary Clinton

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Editorial Opinion

Shelby County Democrats Need to Open Up

Among other significant matters that may go largely unnoticed by the general public this week will be a Thursday night meeting of the Shelby County Democratic Committee. The chief order of business will be the selection of a new chairman for a party that in theory should be the dominant political organization of Shelby County but, on the basis of actual election results for the last several years, manifestly isn’t.

Oh, the Democratic Party may come to look like the dominant local party for at least a week this November, when the county’s voters turn out to elect a president. If tradition holds, a majority of the vote in Shelby County will go for the Democratic nominee, who at this writing would seem to be almost surely former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Of course, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders might somehow still be the beneficiary of a miracle. That would be partly the result of his own impressively over-achieving primary-season campaign and partly the consequence of as yet unforeseen external events — e.g., possible legal complications stemming from the zombie-like email controversy bedeviling frontrunner Clinton. If so, Sanders, too, could probably count on a majority out of Shelby County. The demographics of Shelby County, so largely African-American and working class, favor Democrats (though the Republicans will apparently have a presidential nominee this year whose unpredictable appeal could, er, Trump expectations).

But, if Democrats usually prevail locally in presidential elections, they have fallen into a rut in the quadrennial elections for countywide political office, losing most or all such races and losing them badly. Such has been the case in every county election since the institution of local party primaries in the mid-1990s. In recent years, Democrats have at least managed, by dint of fielding clearly qualified candidates with crossover potential, to win the offices of Shelby County Assessor and General Sessions Clerk in off-year elections. (For what it’s worth, legislative changes in the election cycle leave that clerkship as the only county position on this year’s August 4th ballot.)

What accounts for the discrepancy between the outcomes of local races and those for president? One explanation — and, to be sure, it is controversial — is that, in an age of transformative and fluid political loyalties, local Democrats (or those who have prevailed in the party’s executive committee) have adopted a “closed-shop” view of party membership and have adopted rigid bylaws and policies that make it virtually impossible to attract converts of mixed political backgrounds or to license them to run for office under the party banner. Local Republicans have adopted, by contrast, a relatively “open door” policy, and their ranks teem with former Democrats — one possible explanation for their consistent primacy in races for local political offices.

When the Shelby County Democratic Committee meets to hold its ad hoc reorganization meeting, and beyond that point, for that matter, its members would be well advised to keep this thought in mind. While they’re jibing at Republican presidential candidate Trump for his infamous proposal to build an exclusionary wall, they should be on guard against self-defeating tendencies within their own party in favor of building one.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Haslam, Corker, and Trump

The news out of Nashville last week was mostly about Governor Bill Haslam’s unique “leadership” style, in which he furrows his brow and expresses concern about the validity or constitutionality of the cockamamie bills that the legislature sends to his desk, then allows them to pass without his signature. He’s really more of a hall monitor than a governor, at this point. In fact, if Draymond Green kicked Haslam in the groin, odds are good that the governor wouldn’t even notice.

I am, however, hearing from informed sources that Haslam will probably sign into law this week a bill making “the waffle” the official state pastry. Unless someone objects, of course.

In other state news, Senator Bob Corker met with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in Trump Tower to discuss foreign relations or … something. Speculation was that Corker was being vetted as a possible vice presidential candidate, though Corker downplayed that possibility after the meeting. As well he should, if he has any sense at all.

A Trump-Corker ticket would be similar to the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket of 2008: a respected senator paired with a lunatic, only this time the lunatic will be at the top of the ticket. McCain’s reputation was permanently damaged by his association with Caribou Barbie. He went from being perceived as a relatively reasonable and honorable man to someone who sold his integrity to attract the Tea Party fringe — someone who was willing to put a mentally unstable moron a heartbeat away from the presidency for political expediency. Now, McCain will be hard-pressed to retain his Senate seat, if the latest polling from Arizona is to be believed.

Corker is probably savvy enough to realize that it’s one thing to voice pro forma support for the GOP ticket in the name of party unity, but quite another to become one of the two primary party standard-bearers with a nominee as volatile and flawed as Trump.

Whoever signs on to lift hands with The Donald at the convention will be indelibly linked to what will no doubt become the sleaziest, ugliest, and most ignorant presidential campaign in modern U.S. history. The person who agrees to be Trump’s running mate must commit to supporting whatever impulsive and contradictory nonsense comes out of Trump’s mouth — or appears on his Twitter account.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie may be the leading candidate, having already sold his soul a few weeks back. This week, Trump repaid his puffy sidekick by joking that they would begin denying him tacos. Others on the Trump short bus include Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, and Ben Carson. Vice President Gingrich, anyone?

Trump did gain the endorsement of the National Rifle Association this week, so he’s got that going for him. In announcing his organization’s support for Trump, NRA president Wayne LaPierre warned that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would abolish the Second Amendment and take away everybody’s guns. Which is what he said about President Obama in 2008 and 2012. Obama, of course, being the cagey trickster he is, has saved this part of his agenda for the very end of his presidency. (In case you hadn’t heard, the Second Amendment will be officially abolished by executive order on June 1st, and all guns must be turned in to the FBI by June 15th.)

Hillary must be so ticked.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About the Flyer editorial, “Tubman vs. Jackson: The Change Will Do Us Good” …

You could probably start a good business by withdrawing a load of the current $20 bills that you plan to turn around and sell for $25 a pop to the rednecks and racists of the world that don’t want to spend Tubman $20 bills.

GroveReb84

I dunno, my confederate dollars have gotten pretty dusty. But it’s worth a try.

Nick R.

I hope they use the photo of her smiling.

Smitty1961

About Toby Sells’ story, “Council Readies for Greensward Mediation Deadline” …

Life isn’t going back to normal for the Memphis Zoo after this. They have really pissed off people enough this time that they are going to have to actually solve the problem. Because, regardless of what the council does, there are people who are going to go after the zoo with legal action and boycotts of their donors. This isn’t going to get better if the council fails to do its job. It will get worse.

OakTree

About Sam Cicci’s story “Goal!” …

It’s a pity that no one remembers the very successful Memphis-based soccer teams: Memphis Express and Memphis Mercury. Both teams won their divisions, both played in the very competive PDL leagues, and both drew very large crowds when they played at Mike Rose Soccer Complex.

The Memphis City FC owners didn’t bother to consult with any of those former players, coaches and owners … some of whom still live here in Memphis. Food for thought!

Mark Franklin

About Jackson Baker’s story, “Can a Wild Card Trump the Opposition?” …

I was surprised to read Terry Roland’s claim that Steve Mulroy voted in 2011 to support the CCHC contract because Roland “called his priest,” who “came down in smoke” on the issue. This is not accurate.  Neither Commissioner Roland, nor anyone acting on his behalf, ever called me about that or any other issue. Steve made his decision independent of any pressure from me. And, as anyone who knows me can tell you, “coming down in smoke” is not my style. 

Fr. Jim Martell, Holy Rosary Catholic Church

About Old Navy’s ad …

I read where an ad run by Old Navy which featured an interracial family caused the company to see an explosion of racist trolls in their Twitter mentions. Old Navy was accused of promoting miscegenation, of ramming interracial marriages down people’s throats, of running a disgusting ad, and so forth. There was also calls for a boycott of Old Navy stores.

I cannot understand the hate of people who would condemn an ad that shows that love knows no color. Racism is clearly not dead, but I pray that the racists who made their hate-filled comments about a beautiful ad are from a group of citizens that is shrinking and that will one day disappear.

I will be shopping at Old Navy soon.

Philip Williams

Time for “Madam President?” …

America has had over 200 years of “Mr. President.” Isn’t it about time for “Madam President,” seeing that the population of America is 50 percent female? Let’s put biases and partisanship aside and look at what the country needs. 

First, Hillary Clinton is simply a better choice for president than Donald Trump. Clinton has experience and leadership skills developed over her years in federal and state positions. Making Trump president of the United States of America would be the same as giving him a powerful race car and saying he is competent to drive in a NASCAR contest.

This is not the time for divisive politics-as-usual; the economy is thriving, and returning to Republican supply-side economics would put a serious damper on the next four years. Not to mention, Trump would be leading the same gridlock-driven GOP legislators that have caused such havoc for the past seven years.

Chip Green

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Onward to the Past

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after. — Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

While many of you were at Beale Street Music Fest or at the movies or drinking yourselves silly with craft beer last Saturday night, I spent the evening watching “Nerd Prom,” otherwise known as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Yes, I know, I need to get out more.

The WHCD is an incestuous affair, one in which the Beltway elite dress up and endure polite jabs from the president, and then, after the the leader of the free world’s remarks, get skewered more forcefully by a comedian. This year’s dinner went pretty much true to form, except that comedian Larry Wilmore of The Nightly Show had the bad fortune to follow a president who had funnier material and a better stage presence.

Obama took shots at Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Reince Priebus, Ted Cruz, and, of course, Donald Trump. He was in rare form, obviously feeling some relief that this would be the last such dinner he would ever have to attend. “Next year at this time,” he said, “someone else will be standing here in this very spot, and it’s anyone’s guess who she will be.” Ow.

The president even poked fun at himself in a video in which he received “advice” on retirement from former Speaker John Boehner, who offered Obama a cigarette and suggested that having a beer in the morning wasn’t the worst idea ever. Which is true.

At the end of his speech, when Obama literally dropped the mic, I thought about how much I’ll miss having a president with a sense of humor and an ability to be self-deferential, a national leader who can be joyful and use Snapchat and charm children and shoot hoops with Stephen Curry — and bear with grace and humor the most vitriolic and coordinated attacks on a president’s character in my memory.

I can’t imagine Donald Trump, for instance, ever making fun of himself. To do so requires genuine self-confidence, not the insecure macho bluster that is Trump’s stock in trade. As we trundle toward what now appears inevitable — a presidential contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton — I cannot help but feel the country is taking a step backward, with two candidates in their late 60s, neither of whom seems in touch with the nation’s current zeitgeist.

Even so, the choice between Trump and Clinton will be not a difficult one for me, nor will it be for the majority of Americans, if current polling is to be believed. In 2012, Obama beat Mitt Romney in an Electoral College landslide, and it’s unlikely many Democratic voters will switch to Trump in 2016. There simply aren’t enough angry, xenophobic white people to swing a national election to the GOP. Nor are there enough Democratic voters who “feel the Bern” of Sanders’ efforts to tackle the country’s increasingly troubling income disparity.

But there is an overlap there between Trump’s frustrated blue-collar followers and Sanders’ underpaid and over-leveraged young folks. The candidate who can reach both groups and show them their common interests — and their common enemies — will have a shot at creating genuine change. It’s not happening this year, but I get the sense that we are only waiting for this moment to arrive.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Appeasing the Bern

What does Bernie Sanders want in exchange for endorsing Hillary Clinton?
And what can Clinton and the Democratic Party give Sanders to get him to campaign aggressively for her in the fall, harnessing the voting power of the passionate, mostly young, white, left-wing voters who favor him?

Obviously, Sanders expects a prime-time speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention. Neither the Clinton camp nor the party’s leadership will have a problem with that demand. But wh

at if he wants to be the vice presidential candidate on a Clinton-led ticket? That’s a reach.

Sanders’ “socialist” label is a liability in a general election. The Vermonter will hurt Clinton’s effort to win support from political moderates, especially older voters. Sanders would also be a bridge too far for Republicans disenchanted by their party’s wild primary season and the prospect of either Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz as the GOP’s presidential candidate.

But if Sanders is not to be made the prospective veep, Democrats will have to find something else to give him. He has exceeded all expectations during the primary season. The depth of his support was underlined by his three strong victories in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington. And Democrats fear him mounting a third-party run along the lines of the populist campaign run by Ralph Nader in 2000 that arguably gave the White House to George W. Bush.

The heart of this troublesome political puzzle for Democrats is how to get Sanders’ passionate supporters to line up behind Clinton. In early March, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found a third of the people voting for Sanders saying they “cannot see themselves voting for Hillary Clinton in November.” The Nation magazine reported recently that “nearly 60,000 people have signed the ‘Bernie or Bust’ pledge,” vowing to remain loyal to him even if Clinton wins the nomination.

President Obama is now getting involved in this escalating debate. According to The New York Times, the president privately told Texas Democrats that Sanders’ continuing campaign against Clinton stalls party organizers, donors, and activists from getting started on beating the GOP in the fall campaign.

The president and leading Democrats in Congress are all but calling for Sanders to get out of the race now. The Democrats’ unstated anxiety is that Clinton, while a clear winner among primary voters, does not set the campaign trail on fire. Sanders and Trump, the leading candidate for the GOP nomination, are arsonists by comparison. Sanders has continued to condemn a “corrupt campaign finance system which is undermining American democracy.” Clinton’s campaign is taking money from political action committees while Sanders’ is not.
Sanders is also casting an unfavorable light on Clinton by celebrating the “energy and excitement” of his crowds and claiming that it is because “we are telling the truth.” He does not mention Clinton, but the comparison is obvious, if implicit.

Sanders’ big issue is income inequality. He continues to accuse Clinton of being too close to Wall Street, further arguing that this makes it implausible that she will rein in wealthy bankers and hedge-fund managers. It is easy to see how his followers might be convinced Clinton is the no-change, establishment candidate and become permanently turned off to her.

Sanders’ lack of formal connection to the Democratic Party is another part of the problem. At an Ohio town hall meeting, he admitted having considered running for president as an independent but decided to run as a Democrat because “in terms of media coverage, you have to run within the Democratic Party.”

Last year, former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner (D), whose wife Huma Abedin is a top Clinton aide, publicly expressed the reservations Democratic insiders still have about Sanders.

“What exactly does he think he’s doing in a Democratic presidential primary?” Weiner wrote in Business Insider last July. “Why is he asking for the nomination of a party he always avoided joining? Now he wants to not only be a member of the party but its standard bearer?”

To bring Sanders inside the camp, Democrats will have to do more than make him a TV star at the convention. They will also have to put Clinton, union organizers, and money behind his issues, creating a permanent movement inside the party for a living wage, for lower-cost college education, and a sharper critique of Wall Street.

The party is going to have to buy into Sanders if they want him to buy into them.

Juan Williams is an author and political analyst for Fox News Channel. His latest book is We the People.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Medium Cool

We’re reading and hearing a lot about “electability” these days, which is broadly defined as “fitness or ability to get elected to public office.” That covers a lot of Tarmac, to say the least. For example, ingrained party affiliations, gerrymandering, and family or religious affiliations can make a candidate electable for state or local office, but he or she may have little electability in a national contest.

Witness Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Anyone with a minimal ability to read character can see that he’s, well, just creepy. He has a base of right-wing, evangelical voters and not much else. His chances of winning 51 percent of the voters in a national contest are nil. Cruz could easily be president of Utah and the Confederacy, but unfortunately for him, the rest of the country still exists.

The bottom line is, Cruz lacks “cool,” and cool wins elections. And by cool, I mean, basically, being comfortable in your own skin. President Obama has been the coolest president of my lifetime. He smiles and laughs a lot. He doesn’t get flustered in public. He doesn’t gratuitously insult or flatter. His speaking pattern is masterful, full of seemingly thoughtful pauses that lead to complete sentences. You may not like what he says, but he says it well. Our next president will not be as cool.

Oh, sure, other factors are important — competency, experience — but I’m convinced that cool, or its corollary, “likability,” is how we most often elect our president. In a national election, you need to win across a broad landscape, millions of people of all ethnicities and political persuasions, a large percentage of whom, unfortunately, are not particularly well-versed on the issues. It’s been said, ad nauseum, that voters are drawn to someone they could “sit down and have a beer with.” And it’s true, especially in this era of 24-hour media coverage, where candidates are exposed to public scrutiny as never before. If you’re not cool, you can’t hide it.

Reagan was cooler than Carter and Mondale. George H.W. Bush was cooler than Dukakis (though there was something of a coolness deficit in that contest). Bill Clinton was cooler than the elder Bush and Dole. Like it or not, George W. Bush was cooler than Gore or Kerry, who were smart, but stiffs. And, it goes without saying, John McCain and Mitt Romney were no match for Obama’s cool.

Bernie Sanders is the coolest of the remaining candidates. It’s a crotchety cool, but he comes off as authentic. Hillary Clinton is not cool. She is, by her own admission, “not a good politician,” and her speaking style, while substantive, can be abrasive and mannered. Fortunately, if she gets the nomination, she’ll probably be going up against the uncoolest candidate of my lifetime — Donald Trump.

Trump is a siding salesman, full of bluster and insults, with no coherent national or foreign policy positions that anyone’s been able to discern, unless you consider, “We never win. When I’m president, we’re going to win” some sort of policy.

Non-doctrinaire swing voters look for likability, certainly, but if they can’t have that, they look for competence and sanity. And they don’t want an uncool jerk as president. As Jeb(!) Bush said to Trump, “You can’t insult your way to the presidency.” Trump has basically insulted himself out of the presidency, turning vast constituencies against himself and his party. The last poll I saw had Trump’s unfavorability rating among likely voters at 67 percent! If the Republicans nominate Trump (or Cruz), they’re looking at a Goldwater-level wipeout election, no matter who the Democrats select.

Hopefully, such a result would make Trump go away for good — which would be cool with me.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GOP Tilt Holds in Tennessee

According to the Tennessee secretary of state’s office in Nashville, a total of 385,653 Tennesseans, 43,000 of whom were Shelby Countians, cast ballots in the early-voting period that ran from February 10th to February 23rd.  

That’s an early-voting record for the state and a 17.1 percent increase over the 2008 primaries in Tennessee, the last time that both parties had contested primaries on Super Tuesday.  

Some 257,209 early votes were cast statewide in the Republican primary, as against 128,374 in the Democratic primary. That’s roughly a two-thirds tilt toward Republicans, a piece of math that would seem to coincide with the statewide shift of voter sentiment to the GOP in recent years — a trend that accelerated with the 2008 general election, when Republicans won a majority in the state House of Representatives to go with one already achieved in the Senate. 

Two years later, with then-Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam as their nominee, the Republicans won the governorship over Mike McWherter of Jackson.

The GOP edge in early-voting stats would also seem to reflect the disproportionate amount of time that Republican presidential candidates spent in Tennessee or adjacent areas. All five remaining Republican hopefuls — businessman Donald Trump, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Ohio Governor John Kasich, and retired surgeon/author Dr. Ben Carson — made appearances in the state in the run-up to this week’s primary.

Kasich, Trump, and Carson were all in Memphis on get-out-the-vote business this past weekend — Kasich for a well-attended town hall at the Central Avenue Holiday Inn on Friday, Trump for one of his patented monster rallies at the Millington Jetport hangar on Saturday, and Carson for a round of visits to churches and a local veterans’ service center on Sunday.

Active headquarters operations are up and running — within a block of each other on Poplar in Midtown — for the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. 

But only Clinton visited Memphis in the course of her campaign, appearing at LeMoyne-Owen College for a rally last November and speaking at two local churches — Greater Imani Church and Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church — this past Sunday. Husband Bill Clinton, the former president, addressed a large crowd at Whitehaven High School last month on his wife’s behalf.

Sanders has been rumored as coming to Memphis once or twice but has not yet shown. The senator had also been scheduled for a visit to Tennessee State University in Nashville in January but evidently changed his plans and was represented there by campaign aide Matt Kuhn of Memphis, among others.

• As expected, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell has thrown his hat into the ring as a candidate for the soon-to-be-vacant 8th District congressional seat. The mayor’s bid, which was not unexpected, was announced at a Reagan Day dinner of Madison County Republicans in Jackson on Monday night.

Luttrell instantly becomes one of the favorites in the GOP primary field, which also includes state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, Shelby County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood, Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar, former county commissioner and radiologist/broadcast executive George Flinn, and former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff.

While the field of Republican contenders proliferates for the seat now held by Stephen Fincher of Crockett County, who has chosen not to run for reelection, the field of  Democrats has not developed in kind.

Shelby County assistant District Attorney Michael McCusker had indicated an interest in running as a Democrat but late last week bowed out, saying, “Simply put, I do not believe I can properly balance both the demands of my career and my family life with a campaign of this magnitude.”

Luttrell’s race is good news for Shelby County Commission chairman Terry Roland, who, in something of a ripple effect, would become interim County Mayor should Roland still be chairman if Luttrell wins the congressional race and has to resign his mayoralty in January 2017. That circumstance would require that Roland’s colleagues elect him to a second straight term as chairman this September, a real possibility for someone with his deal-making and arm-twisting skills.

Whoever gets to be interim mayor (for a charter-mandated 45 days) would have a leg up when the County Commission then chooses someone to serve out the balance of Luttrell’s term.

There is an irony in that fact, in that the mayor and the chairman have been seriously at odds for months over issues relating to which branch of county government should have priority over the other. Conflicts have raged over matters ranging from the reliability of the administration’s accounting statistics to the issue of whether the commission is entitled to have its own attorney.

But there has clearly been a thaw in their relations of late. Luttrell told the Flyer last week that Roland was one of the people he consulted in advance of his decision to make the congressional race. 

And at the Shelby County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day banquet the weekend before last, the mayor, speaking from the dais, threw a verbal bouquet Roland’s way, calling him a “great chairman.” The mayor coupled that with a similar grace note for GOP Commissioner Heidi Shafer, Roland’s ally in the procedural wars with Luttrell.

Just as Roland, who has planned a race for County Mayor in 2018, might profit from a Luttrell victory in the congressional race, so would Shafer’s ambitions gain from a win by another congressional candidate, state Senator Kelsey.

Shafer, who served two consecutive terms as Commission budget chair, raised eyebrows last fall when she opted to shift to the chairmanship of the legislative affairs committee. But the change, she confided, was in line with her intent to run for the legislature at the soonest feasible opportunity. A Kelsey win for Congress, and his subsequent departure from his Senate seat, would occasion a special election and give her that opportunity.

Roland, incidentally, is in line for a possible serendipity in yet another political lottery. He has become West Tennessee chairman of the Trump campaign and was principal organizer of Trump’s giant rally in Millington last weekend. Whatever the local dividends might be from a Trump victory, either in the nomination process or for the presidency itself, Roland would likely be first in line to receive them.

• Bills relating to criminal justice are getting good play during the current legislative session in Nashville. Students from Soulsville in Memphis were on Tuesday’s schedule to testify in a hearing before the house Criminal Justice subcommittee on a bill — HB 2483, sponsored by Representative Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis) — that would reduce fees  to have criminal records expunged after successful completion of a pretrial diversion program.

Also to be heard by the subcommittee were HB2370, which would increase penalties for assaults against correctional officers, and HB2043, which would eliminate penalties for persons substituting prayer for a child’s medical or surgical treatment.

“There have to be ramifications for what people do and say, or else they’re going to continue to do whatever they want. It’s very hard for us, like I’m sure [for] Memphis and Nashville, because we make decisions worried about whether the state is going to come in and overrule them. It’s hard to run a city that way. … Look at Nashville; for better or worse, the voters adopted an amendment about local hire, and, like it or hate it, two weeks later the state overrules it. …We’ve got to change the people.” — Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, at a reception at the Henry Turley Company in Memphis, on the need to overhaul the membership of the current legislature.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Post-Super Tuesday Thoughts

As longtime Flyer readers know, we don’t endorse candidates at election time, and didn’t on the occasion of this week’s presidential primary in Tennessee. But we do have some opinions. By now Super Tuesday is over, you’ve already voted, and we invite you to join us for a little bit of post-election armchair-quarterbacking:

On the Republican side, is there an alternative to Donald Trump?

There are things we find attractive about Ohio Governor John Kasich, who seems unique among the GOP contenders in that he appears to be both an experienced administrator and a pragmatic centrist, not a trash talker, a negativist, or a partisan demagogue. But maybe the punditocracy has it right: Only the Mambo Brothers, right-wing Senator Ted Cruz or former Tea Party darling and now ad hoc establishmentarian Senator Marco Rubio are serious alternatives to Trump.

The trouble with Trump, when you get down to it, is that he has no fixed principles. Like a hypocritical preacher, he can preach the world round or he can preach it flat. He can be free-trade or protectionist, pro-choice or pro-life, “liberal” or “conservative.” In one campaign, he can rebuke Mitt Romney for advocating self-deportation of illegal immigrants; in another campaign, his own, he can advocate forced deportation on a massive scale. He is what you want him to be, and he wants everybody to want him to be something, namely, president of the United States. That, we hazard, is why he had so much trouble repudiating David Duke to Jake Tapper on CNN once he’d heard that Duke had endorsed him. He’d want the Miley Cyrus vote, too, if he thought he could get it.

Trump is all over the map. That said, we wonder if that gives Rubio and Cruz, who restrict themselves more or less to one side of the map, the reactionary one, any claim to superiority over Trump. The Donald tries to go along to get along. He will, for example, give lip service to the GOP shibboleth that “Obamacare” should be abolished, but he hints that he might replace it with something amorphous that sounds like universal health care. There is no such ambivalence on the part of Rubio and Cruz; they would insist on a full return to the Darwinian system of health-to-the-highest-bidder medical rationing.

And on the Democratic side, is there any alternative to Hillary Clinton? 

We find much to admire in Secretary Clinton. She is strong, determined, and resourceful (all adjectives that she earned all over again in her redoubtable 11-hour standoff of a GOP lynching party at last fall’s Benghazi hearing). A little too calculating sometimes, and almost clam-like in her self-containment, but she’s smart and vetted, and her heart is in the right place — or near it — on numerous humanitarian and social issues. 

In fact, she seems right on so many things that we find it frustrating that she can’t be as simple and direct and, as they say, proactive on the issue of economic inequality as Bernie Sanders can. And because he can, frankly, we’d just as soon the Democratic contest went on long enough for the right kind of osmosis to occur between her point of view and his. Regardless of which one wins.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Carson, Clinton Make Sunday Morning Visits to Memphis

CREDIT: Jeremy Pierre

Apparently finishing out a pre-Super Tuesday weekend that had seen full-bore presentations locally by Republican presidential candidates John Kasich and Donald Trump, Democrat Hillary Clinton and GOP hopeful Dr. Ben Carson each made brief visits to Memphis on Sunday morning.

No doubt mindful of the importance on Tuesday of the African-American vote, so central to her landslide victory in South Carolina on Saturday. Clinton dropped in on at least two predominantly black churches — Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church and Great Imani Church — on her way to a noontime address at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, an historic African-American institution.

Her brief address at Mississippi Boulevard constituted a virtual mini-sermon on the importance of Americans “working together” to solve problems across racial lines. At times conflating that theme with stern words about “the gun lobby,” she recapitulated numerous recent occasions in which African Americans were victims, including the violent deaths of Trayvon Martin, Erick Garner, and the elderly members of a South Carolina bible study class.

Her ultimate message was upbeat, as she called for the rejection of “prejudice and paranoia,” and ventured that America’s “best days” were still ahead.

Jeremy Pierre

Hillary at Mississippi Boulevard

 
Carson, who had also apparently visited some early church services in Memphis, made a late-morning stop at Alpha Omega Veterans Services, Inc., a privately run facility in the Airport area that function s on behalf of returned veterans. Carson evoked D-Day during World War Two and other memorable battles in which American servicemen took horrendous losses but “didn’t turn back,” and said America owed its veterans a return favor./X

In particular, Carson, mindful of various recent controversies involving Veterans Administration services, said that returning vets should be provided opportunities for compensated treatment at a variety of institutions other than those associated directly with the government, citing Alpha Omega as one such alternative.

Carson at Alpha and Omega

Carson’s visit on Sunday was as noticeably low-key as his address to a turnaway crowd in West Memphis last year was conspicuously high profile, and reporters in a brief press conference with the candidate wondered out loud about the chances that Carson, whose poll numbers and primary outcomes have been low, might drop out of the presidential race.

He responded that numerous people have begged him not to do that and that he remained disinclined to do so and would continue. Carson contrasted his dignified approach to the contest with last Thursday’s rowdy and rancorous GOP debate in Houston, which, he said, reminded him of a “W.W.E.” event and was “like being at the [Roman] Coliseum.”

“Guess what? I’m still here,” he insisted, urging “special interests” to “go jump in the lake.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Backpfeifengesicht!

For Lent this year, I’ve given up paying attention to election coverage. Just kidding! Instead of staying engaged, I’m hate-watching “Decision 2016” like it’s the last season of How I Met Your Mother. Hopefully I won’t hate the ending as much.

The story lines haven’t changed much since last summer. Ted Cruz is still the poster child for backpfeifengesicht. Seriously. Google “punchable face.” There is actual science behind this. Donald Trump hasn’t run out offensive things to say, nor has he suffered any consequences for saying them. Hillary Clinton hasn’t worn the same pantsuit twice. Jeb Bush? Pretty sure he’s the inspiration for Arrested Development‘s Buster Bluth. I’m still waiting for Marco Rubio’s alleged charisma to make its debut. Oh, and Ben Carson’s still out there giving hope to aspiring brain surgeons who are, um, not smart.

Somebody call me when someone manages to hold Bernie Sanders down long enough to get a comb through his hair. Or when the primaries are over. Whichever comes first.

Election Day is more than eight months away, and I am already over it. It’s going to be a long year, and not because there is an extra day in February.

I’m over the constant emails with the ambiguous subject lines, always asking me for a dollar, or $27, like the world’s most persistent panhandlers. I have opened exactly one of these messages, from James Carville, titled “whackadoodles.” Spoiler alert, it wasn’t actually from the Ragin’ Cajun. I only opened it because I wanted to reward the copywriter for capturing my attention. Game recognize game, or something.

Then there are the debates. Surely after nine episodes of the GOP Clown Car Hour, the candidates must be weary of trying to think of new and innovative ways to express how much they hate Obama, Muslims, women, minorities, immigrants, taxes, and poor people, and love guns, Jesus, corporations, and Reagan. We get it. Yet there are three more scheduled. Might I suggest a Thunderdome format? Or the Eliminator from American Gladiators? Let’s just get this thing over with already.

Of course the Democratic debates are more substantial in terms of policy discussion — there are only two candidates. They still have to talk it out a dozen times, though, so every network gets a piece. And the debates are no more illuminating or informative unless you consider the number of millennials who probably had to Google “Henry Kissinger” during the last one. Because he’s relevant in 2016. Thanks for reminding us how old you are, Bern and Hillz! Your Snapchats and emoji tweets are bae and so on fleek, it’s easy to mistake you for fellow youths.

Thanks to the internet, social media, and TV news, we have rapid access to just about everything there is to know about every candidate. Why is it that, when technological advancements have streamlined and simplified every other facet of life, national elections take longer and longer? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. It’s money. It’s always money. Ted Cruz was the first to declare his candidacy last March, and it wasn’t to give us extra time to learn to like him. No, he needed to start raising money. Because running for president is really, really expensive. Which contradicts the whole idea of government being “by the people” and “for the people.” Good thing that line is from the Gettysburg Address, not the Constitution, or we’d be in big trouble.

Candidates spent more than $70 million on advertisements in Iowa, a state that is 90 percent white and one that has little impact on the outcome of the general election. It derives its “importance” from the fact that its caucus system is so complex and convoluted it has to go first. Local businesses — restaurants, hotels, coffee shops and the like — reap economic benefits.

All together, the candidates spent $27,000 on pizza. That’s a lot of pepperonis.

Jeb Bush spent $15 million in Iowa and placed sixth. If I were him, I would have bought fewer ads and more pizza. Instead he went and spent more than $30 million in New Hampshire. He placed fourth! These are supposed to be the “fiscal responsibility” guys! Think of all the problems $30 million would solve. The amount losing candidates spent in that tiny state could have bought new pipes for the entire city of Flint, Michigan.

The longer the election takes, the more it costs. That’s why everyone who runs for president is either a millionaire or a corporate puppet, or is constantly in your email begging for money. Or all of the above. It’s the American way, until it’s no longer profitable.

Jen Clarke is an unapologetic Memphian and digital marketing strategist.