Democrats

Tubman Triumphant

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Yesterday, the Treasury Department announced that, among other changes, Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill.

I support this. Tubman was a great figure in American history who worked to advance the cause of human liberty. I’ve been pleased to see that many people I respect on the Right have also praised the change. And, you know, we used to change the people on bills all the time. Hamilton was on it once, as was a more obscure Treasury Secretary, Daniel Manning. So, yes, let’s shake things up.

Even though I’ve never been especially a Jackson fan, I feel like he’s getting slammed a little too much these days. I mean, he was a proponent of slavery and Indian removal, so those are major strikes against him, but he was also the first president to suggest that poor and landless people (if they were white and male) deserved an equal say in this country’s governance as the rich and landed. Jackson and his followers expanded full participation in the republic to a lot of people in a fairly short time, and in a way no other nation was really doing.

That didn’t amount to much if you were one of his slaves or one of the Indians he forced to walk a thousand miles away from their homes (and possibly die on the way,) but it meant something positive to a great many people, the sort of folk who had no voice in any other country at the time. His monetary policy was kind of bizarre, but he did whip the redcoats at New Orleans, so that’s something.

So, let’s be glad to see him go, but not Vox-ify the nuanced character that founded the Democratic Party and did some good along with all the bad.

Thanks but no Thanks

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Thanksgiving is the most inclusive, and most American of holidays. You don’t have to belong to any particular race or religion to celebrate it. You don’t even have to believe anything one way or the other about the first Thanksgiving, on which this holiday is loosely based. It’s just a time to gather with family and be thankful for all our blessings and for each other. Then we watch sports and eat too much. It’s perfect!

Naturally, the Democratic National Committee wants to turn it into a progressive indoctrination session.

We saw the same thing last year, when they pushed young lefties to proselytize about Obamacare in between bites of candied yams. It’s part of a disturbing trend of making every event in human life about politics. It’s not completely new: the “personal is political” cliche from the ’60s is the beginning of such a theme on the American left, and extremists of right and left in Europe have long sought to view every facet of existence through a political lens. But it is new for a major American political party to seek to invade non-political spaces with as much vigor and persistence as the Obama-era Democratic party.

I think this goes too far even for most Democrats. My own family has people of all different political views, and some who don’t much care about politics either way. None of them ever tried to indoctrinate me, and I never tried to indoctrinate them. It just doesn’t feel natural or respectful to do it.

With some relatives, I’ll have political banter, but only with the kind of folks who just like to talk and think about interesting ideas. None of us is really seeking to change minds or to upbraid someone for their thoughtcrimes.

Instead of a list of counter-arguments, I suggest this: enjoy your family, enjoy your turkey, enjoy your football, and don’t bait relatives who disagree with you into turning Thanksgiving into a real-life version of Twitter. Be cool! Give thanks! Have fun!

The Debate Nobody Watched

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There has been a strange divide between the two major parties this year. The Republicans have seen record numbers watch their primary debates, while the Democrats have tried their best to make sure no one witnesses theirs. Even Vox, the notorious apologists for the Democrats in general and the Clintons in particular, admits that scheduling a debate in Iowa on a Saturday night when Iowa football is on is sketchy. But it’s not the result of bad planning, it’s the result of a bad candidate, Hillary Clinton, and the party machine’s desire to protect her from scrutiny. And it is lost on no one that Clinton’s own party thinks the best way to help her win is to never let anyone see her.

This debate was on CBS, and moderated by John Dickerson, to general acclaim:

The debate began with opening statements. In hers, Clinton sought once more to assure the American people that she is not a robot:

The people remain skeptical:

Once the debates started, the questions naturally turned to the ISIS murders in Paris and the wider question of war on Islamic fundamentalist terror. Clinton tried to sound tough, tougher than President Obama, just as she did when she ran against him in 2008:

Bernie Sanders turned, as all old Bolshies do, to the past, highlighting the various misdeeds of the nation he seeks to lead:

Martin O’Malley said some things:

Generally, the output was underwhelming:

The candidates next turned to their tax plans, which no one believed:

They talked about reform of the financial industry, which let to the first interesting question of the night: is Hillary Clinton owned by Wall Street? Sanders says yes:

Clinton offered an unusual counterargument: 9/11?

O’Malley joined Sanders’s criticism, then touted his his own bona fides:

Sanders and O’Malley called for the forward-thinking innovation of re-enacting laws from 1933:

This was difficult for Clinton to agree with, since her husband had worked to repeal the act in question in 1999. Plus, you know, she’s owned by Wall Street:

In closing, the candidates reminded the viewer of their strengths.

Sanders called for more “free” stuff:

Clinton emphasized her age and her proximity to important things:

O’Malley said something, but even he wasn’t paying attention:

There was not much said here, and not many people watched it. The only real take-away was in the most ridiculous item of the night:

Fortunately, Democrats will have a chance to revisit the issue in their next two debates, to be held on the Saturday before Christmas and on a Sunday in January, opposite an NFL playoff game.

Who Lost Appalachia, Part II

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Last night, the Democrats’ retreat from Appalachia turned into a rout as Matt Bevin was elected governor of Kentucky. The state had elected a Democrat to the office four years ago with a large majority, and mainstream opinion this time was that Bevin (who unsuccessfully challenged Mitch McConnell from the right in a primary in 2014) had no chance. He won by 9 percentage points.

This was a real test in Republican strength, and two points show that strength to be quite real. The first we knew for months: GOP voters outnumbered Democrats in the primary for the first time ever. That’s not always dispositive, but it shows a core party strength of numbers that conveys at least some advantage.

Second, the success carried down the ballot to some of the fairly anonymous row offices. These are as good a test as any for a parties’ statewide base, since it involves choosing a candidate that you know little or nothing about for an office you might not have known even existed. All you have to go on is the person’s name and party. The Republicans took most of these, with the Democrats holding only those in which their candidates had famous names (both are the children of Democratic politicians).

Kentucky has been Republican in presidential politics for a while now, but after last night we can say that it is well and truly a red state.

Clinton and the banks

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Yesterday, Hillary Clinton appeared on the Late Show with Steven Colbert, hoping to highlight that fun-loving side of her personality we are constantly assured actually exists.

Clinton was asked about the role of government in protecting the banking industry from financial crises (discussion begins at 26:08). Focusing on the bailouts that polarized the country in 2008, the host asked: “If you’re president and the banks are failing, do we let them fail?” Without hesitation, Clinton responded emphatically: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

She didn’t stop there. Clinton promised a new tax on banks (a “risk fee”) and stricter enforcement of the Volcker Rule, which separates banks’ speculative activities from their retail banking.

These are grand promises sure to inspire her fans on the far left. But will she follow through? Unlike most candidates, we need not take Clinton at her word about bank bailouts. We have evidence: in 2008, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, authorizing the government bailout that became known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, came before the Senate. It passed the Senate by a vote of 74 to 25. Did the Senator from New York side with her Wall Street backers?

The answer will not surprise you: she did. Along with then-Senator Barack Obama, Clinton voted to authorize the bailout. Speaking on behalf of the bill, Clinton was enthusiastic in her endorsement of government action:

This is a sink or swim moment for our country. We cannot merely catch our breath. We must swim for the shores and we must do so together…. There is so much work to be done in America, so many investments that make us richer and stronger and safer and smarter that will enable us to look in the eyes of our children and grandchildren and tell them we are leaving our country in as good, in fact, better shape than when we found it.

That is quite an endorsement for a bill that did the exact thing she now inveighs against. Is this more Clintonian mendacity, or has she truly had a change of heart and embraced the Occupy Wall Street mindset? Again, we need not speculate. Let’s look at the evidence in her list of campaign donors. Who’s on the list? Morgan Stanley. J.P. Morgan Chase. Bank of America.

Either these bankers decided to enable a candidate who promises to leave them high and dry, or they know that this is all just hot air. I’ll bet on the latter.

Lesser Son

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In Thursday’s post, I mentioned posting on all of the Presidential candidates and said “I should write up my thoughts on Chafee before it’s too late.”

It’s too late.

During the Democratic debate, Lincoln Chafee seemed unimpressive, even among a field of candidates I was not planning on voting for. I summed up my thoughts on him in a tweet:

But Chafee’s confusion goes beyond the bewilderment he displayed on stage that night. Why did he even run? Molly Ball at the Atlantic has a very nice article on the question, but I don’t think she has an answer to the enigma. I don’t even think Chafee does.

Chafee’s father, John Chafee, seems like an impressive individual. Yale and Harvard Law, two tours in the Marines, a succession of elective and appointive offices as a Republican in a state that was even then heavily Democratic. This was a man who, had he run, could have attracted some support for President.

Chafee the younger shows more clearly than other candidates the problem with dynastic politics. Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Rand Paul all benefited from family connections. But each of them shows the individual qualities that, absent the dynasty, might still have allowed them to be successful in some profession. With Lincoln Chafee, it’s hard to make that argument.