Month: October 2015

Whom Do You Trust?

I can’t decide whether it’s a problem that Bernie Sanders is branded as a socialist or if it’s not a problem because people look on him so favorably despite knowing that he’s a socialist.

Asked for a single word that describes each contender, the most frequent response for Clinton was “liar/dishonest,” followed by “untrustworthy/fake.” For Sanders, the most frequent response was “socialist” and the second most frequent “favorable/good.”

Honestly, if you asked me to describe Hillary Clinton with one word, I don’t think that would be a positive word. I don’t think she’s particularly dishonest or untrustworthy, but “fake” is a decent stand-in for how she comes across to me. It’s been that way since the first time I saw her interviewed back in 1991 or 1992. I think she gets beat up enough, often unfairly, so I don’t generally offer up my visceral reaction to her since it’s unflattering.

In the end, I think she’d be a decent president, but she’d also bring a mentality that, while in no way unique to her, just isn’t going to serve the nation or the party well. The way I look at it, she brings the worst of Obama plus a lot of stuff that is worse than Obama. The biggest problem is obviously how she instinctively thinks about foreign policy. On this issue alone, I’ll be looking for other options as long as other options are even remotely available.

In the end, I simply don’t trust her, but it’s not because I think she’s a liar or in any way uniquely dishonest. I don’t trust too many people on foreign policy, actually. There’s the president and maybe his vice-president. Then there’s folks who I worry are too inexperienced or weak to stand up to the warmongers or steer the ship of state without causing a full-on revolt. I’d put Sanders and Chafee in this category.

To keep us off the shoals of foreign policy disaster, you have to be smart, correct, a little ruthless, quite clever, and probably a little lucky. President Obama has been these things in a very tough foreign policy environment. Clinton won’t even try, and the others don’t have the same talent or in-party support.

I don’t know. I think we’re fucked, honestly.

Cop Shoots Man for Packing Chapstick

Oh, Baltimore. Home of what must be one of the worst police departments in the United States. Once again you are in the news, this time for a cop shooting an unarmed man – this time a white man – after stopping him for who the hell knows why? The same cop, a decorated veteran of the force and a “Major” (whatever that means) then threatened to shoot the wounded man’s brother for daring to want to stop his sibling’s bleeding.

All this occurred to 40 year old, John Rau, a resident of Southwest Baltimore, on Monday night in front of the his nephew and other witnesses.

John Rau was with his brother Monday night when he was stopped by police Major Byron Conaway, although the police department has not said why, reported WJZ-TV.

“All the guy said was, ‘What’s your name, sir?’ and I was like, ‘For what?’ and then he jumped out of the car with his gun and told me to put my hands up,” Rau said. “(The officer asked), ‘What you got in your hand?’ I had a cigarette in one hand, and I just put my hand in my pocket, because I was just putting chapstick on, and I said 10 times, ‘It’s chapstick, only chapstick, officer.”

Witnesses said the officer, who is black, shot the 40-year-old Rau, who is white, in the thigh when he reached into his pocket.

Black Lives Matters has been warning us for a while now that our police forces are out of control. Unfortunately not enough white people think this is a big concern. Perhaps what happened to Mr. Rau and his family might help them change their minds. Or not.

Ronald Birmingham, Rau’s brother, said Conaway threatened to shoot him, too, when he tried to assist his wounded brother.

“The officer clearly stated to me, ‘I got a bullet for you too,’” Birmingham said. “I said, ‘My brother’s bleeding,’ (but) he said, ‘Back up,’ and he kept pointing the gun and me and pointed the gun at my brother.”

Rau is lucky to be alive. If the bullet fired into his leg had pierced a major artery he likely would have bled out on the street. Although the official police story is that Major Conaway immediately rendered aid to Mr. Rau, his family and other witnesses dispute that claim. To date, the Baltimore police have refused to state why Rau was stopped in the first place. As of today, Conaway is on paid leave and has ten days to provide a statement to the “police department’s Special Investigation Response team.” Whether he will be charged for this shooting is anyone’s guess, but I suspect not. After all, the victim/suspect(?) admits he reached into his pants to pull out a – chapstick. Sounds justified to me. As we all know, people have been killed for less by your friendly neighborhood police officers.

Let Biden Decide

I don’t know whether or not Joe Biden is going to run for president, but at least I know now that he won’t be appearing in the first debate:

Vice President Joe Biden has extended his window for deciding whether to jump into the 2016 presidential campaign, several Democrats say, allowing the contest to play out even longer before he answers one of the biggest questions hanging over the race for the White House.

He is not preparing for the first Democratic debate on October 13 in Las Vegas and is not expected to participate, people close to him say, because he feels no pressure to reach a decision by then. He is likely to reveal his plans in the second half of October.

According to Jeff Zeleny’s reporting for CNN, Team Biden is better prepared than you might think:

Campaign managers in key early-voting states have already been identified. Dozens of major donors have stepped forward. Domestic and foreign policy advisers are waiting in the wings.

Ed Kilgore is highly skeptical that “the campaign is right there at the failsafe point, loaded with money and volunteers and just awaiting word from The Chief.”

I’m not really all that skeptical about it, actually. And I think the First Look folks are overwrought and basically ridiculous:

…as Biden appears to stretch his timeframe (remember when we were supposed to get a decision at the end of summer?), here’s an honest truth: The Biden waiting game is no longer doing him or his party any favors. With Clinton and Sanders having already raised a combined $115 million (more on that below), waiting to start raising money isn’t going to help him compete financially with Clinton, let alone Sanders. The waiting game has paralyzed parts of the non-Hillary wing of the Democratic establishment. And as our NBC/WSJ poll shows, Biden disproportionally takes away support from Clinton when the vice president is included in the polling. As we’ve said before, if Biden wants to run and win (and start preparing to build a $1 billion enterprise for the general election in our Super PAC/501c4 Era), he has to get in ASAP. He doesn’t have until late October or early November. Sure, we get that Biden seems to be waiting to see how October fares for Hillary (see above). But that waiting game comes at a cost.

Here’s the deal. I don’t think Joe Biden needs to worry about having enough money to compete with either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. If he gets in, he’ll have a decent enough donor network to begin with. He doesn’t need to raise his name recognition and he can get free press any time he wants it. There are lots of Obama loyalists who will want to protect his legacy, others who will want to hedge their bets, and Biden has a pretty healthy network he developed over his career in the Senate. I guess the way to put it is that he doesn’t need as much money as the others and he’ll be able to compete in the early states even with a money disadvantage.

What he needs more than money is an organization. He needs field troops. It’s here where he’ll have the hardest time competing because the Clintons have a huge headstart, there’s two of them, and they did this in a big way just eight years ago. Meanwhile, Sanders has a growing army of progressive true-believers who will outwork anything Biden or Clinton can come up with.

But I don’t see how this disadvantage is all that time-sensitive. It’d be better to have a couple extra weeks to identify and mobilize your shock troops, but that’s more about mitigating a structural weakness than crafting a winning strategy. It’s better for Biden to get in at a moment when it makes sense to the voters than a moment when it makes sense to Chuck Todd. So, if Clinton doesn’t do great in the first debate, or she looks bad at the Benghazi! hearing, or Sanders continues to dominate her in Iowa and New Hampshire and catches up in the national polls, then Biden coming in will be seen less as stepping on Clinton’s toes than rescuing the party from a dud of a nominee.

Biden the Savior!

It’ll look a lot better than Biden the “Not Sure if I’ve Got the Fire in the Belly” guy we’re seeing right now.

You know, his son Beau just died. Reportedly, Beau asked him to run for president. I can’t really imagine what that’s like, can you?

If Biden’s Hamlet routine is a little inconvenient for “the party” and some people who are trying to game this out, well, too goddamned bad.

He’s got time to make a decision, and we have time to wait for it.

I hear his friends say that he won’t run and other friends say that he will run.

All I know is that if he runs he’ll be a little more formidable that Carly Freaking Fiorina or Ben Carson.

I hope he does run. And I hope we waits until he’s good and ready to tell us his decision.

Lastly, I find the whole narrative that he’ll only do it to save us from Bernie to be a load of manure. If he does it, he’ll do it because he thinks he can win. Perhaps he’ll do it to honor his son’s dying wish. He won’t do it just to spite progressives.