The Aftermath of Citizens United: No Longer About the Presidency It's All About the Benjamins

If you notice the title of this article, there's an irony in that Benjamin Franklin who graces our hundred-dollar bill is one of the primary Founders who never served as U.S. President.

I'm writing this because a few things happened this weekend: first, the GOP decided to kill off the much-worshiped but horribly-skewed Iowa Straw Poll after 40 years of making the Beltway media foam at the mouth over the horse race that is our Presidential campaign system.

Via the FiveThirtyEight site:

It consists of a tiny and unrepresentative sample of voters in a small, overwhelmingly white state. Its importance depends almost entirely on the perceptions of the political elites and the news media. The spin after the vote often matters as much as the vote itself. Its rules can be surprisingly informal, to the point that baked goods are sometimes exchanged for the promise of a vote. And it has a terrible track record at predicting the GOP’s presidential nominee...

...From the standpoint of the parties, the purpose of the Iowa Straw Poll is not necessarily to pick winners but to narrow (or “winnow”) the field. (In some years, this applies to the Iowa caucus too...) In that sense, the biggest danger from the straw poll is not a “false positive” — an insurgent candidate like Michele Bachmann winning when she has little shot at the nomination — but rather a “false negative,” meaning an establishment candidate like Tim Pawlenty making a big bet on the straw poll and coming up with a disappointing performance, as happened four years ago...

What was happening was that the big-name guys - not just the Establishment candidate like Jeb but also headliners like Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee (who oddly enough did well in the Iowa straw poll and caucus back in 2008 to mark his near-successful foray back then) - were opting out to focus on a more broad national campaign and better positioning for the more-important televised debates.  The other big name in the race - Scott Walker - was hesitating, because he stood to benefit the most from the poll and from winning Iowa early but was worried if the results weren't positive enough.

There was something else at play as well: The Sugar Daddy.

The results of the Citizens United ruling - that fund-raising for political campaigns can pretty much be unregulated as "free speech" - outside fund-raisers can plug in as much money to their hearts' content into a campaign and nobody can stop it.  As long as those outside groups (once called Political Action Committees but once billions are poured in they're now SuperPACs) didn't directly co-ordinate with the specific campaign(s) - say with me now, HA HA - they are untouchable.

What this means is that a campaigner for the White House can run all year long with a SuperPAC footing most of the bill and make him/herself a national figure able to get easy speaking gigs at $100,000 guest lectures and a permanent invite to the Sunday Talk Show green rooms.  And that's the legal stuff, God knows how much of this money is flowing into people's pockets (hi, Rubio!) and not, you know, actual GOTV efforts.

As the National Journal put it last year:

Forget Des Moines. The epicenter of the 2016 Republican presidential campaign last week was in Dallas.

Harlan Crow, the real estate magnate and conservative financier who calls the city home, arrived there fresh from watching the Super Bowl in New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's private box. On Tuesday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker flew into town for a reelection fundraiser at Crow's $24 million mansion. Later in the week, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky shared a flight from D.C. to Dallas—and then bumped into each other outside the office of one of the city's GOP donors whom they were both wooing...

...Two years before any primary votes will be cast and long before any official campaign launches, Cruz, Paul, and others are already crisscrossing the country to win the hearts and wallets of the wealthiest Americans.

The race for a 2016 super-PAC sugar daddy is on...

...The rise of SuperPACs has amplified and accelerated the quadrennial donor chase. Candidates now know a single billionaire can make or break their fortunes—as they saw in 2012, when mega-donors Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess propped up the candidacies of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum...

Playing to the base voters for primaries has gotten to be the easy part of a campaign: just stick to the basic messaging of "Blame Obama, Blame Librul Fascists, Blame Feminists, Blame Satan, Blame Minorities, Blame Obama Some More" and let the hate flow through the crowds.  All that matters now is getting money.  Always the dollars.  Always the dollars.

(I'm not even able to fit in a scathing put-down of Ted Cruz's whining for more money here, well maybe I can as an aside...)

And the deep-pocket fund-raisers know it.  And the party leadership itself is starting to catch on because the Republicans themselves are suddenly realizing they're getting their jobs outsourced.  Via Salon.com (with a hat-tip to Yahoo! News): 

The party started to lose its bearings as long ago, as in the ’90s when it took on the self-righteousness of a religious crusade with its unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of a Democratic president. The undisciplined behavior that characterized that time was sanctioned by Party officials and led by long standing movement figures and conservative media stars. They apparently didn’t realize that they were creating a monster of a grassroots base that would someday call itself the Tea Party. In fact, it seemed to come as complete surprise when the monster turned on them in recent years and took the Party into its own hands. Republicans who had spent half a century deriding their opposition for being “appeasers” suddenly found themselves walking on eggshells, scared to death to cross their own voters who took all their messaging seriously and expected results. Even with a congressional majority, Republican elected leaders found they no longer had the power to negotiate or make a deal on the party’s behalf.

They also did not seem to realize that this monster is extremely wealthy and very, very powerful. And it is taking control...

The RNC is now openly arguing … that the Kochs’ political operation is trying to control the Republican Party’s master voter file, and to gain influence over — some even say control of — the GOP.

“I think it’s very dangerous and wrong to allow a group of very strong, well-financed individuals who have no accountability to anyone to have control over who gets access to the data when, why and how,” said Katie Walsh, the RNC’s chief of staff.

The Republican base has exerted its strength at the ballot box the last few cycles by challenging and beating incumbents, even some in the leadership like former House majority leader Eric Cantor. Now the Koch Brothers, the wealthy patrons of the Tea Party cause, are taking over the voter data files. You can certainly see why the party establishment might be alarmed...

Like it or hate it, the United States political system thrives on a two-party system: One party stood for something on the issues, One party stood for conflicting position on those issues, the American people tried to decide between them which would solve those issues best.  For the most part it's worked since the days of Adams and Jefferson's transition of power, with the glaring exception of the fall into Civil War because one party - the Democrats of the 1800s - fell under the control of extremist oligarchs (rich Southern slaveowners) who denied the sins of slavery and drove to either rule or ruin the nation.

We're facing the same situation today.  Rich and powerful elites - in the form of corporate overlords who can and do profit from unregulated industries - are pretty much buying ownership control of one party: the Republicans (and they're putting enough money into the other party - the Democrats - to cover their bets).

...Let’s just say that in the Kochs’ minds, taking over the Republican Party and benefiting their massive multinational corporation are the same thing. (If you would like to see what it might mean in practical terms if the Koch party were to politically dominate the nation this Rolling Stone article about their business practices will give you nightmares.) And considering that the Kochs have openly worked at taking over the party since the 1980s, this is not exactly a secret.

This is the end result of Citizens United: not a lot of Free Speech, but basically the rich people Buying political control and Selling to the nation a false bill of goods.

The only good thing we Americans can hope for is Caveat Emptor: that a majority of us voters are savvy enough customers to recognize the lemon that the Kochs' SuperPAC Republican candidate is going to be, and avoid voting for that train-wreck of a candidate.  What happened last election kind of gives me some hope: for all the money the GOP threw at the election, it didn't translate into GOTV ground efforts (100 million yard signs do not equal eager voters) nor make Mitt likable enough to win.

Still, voters need to remember this one rule: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.

Marco Rubio's Debts

From the great state of rip-off artistry - uh, sunshine - comes this champion of fiscal prudence and restrained personal habits Marco Rubio.  And yes, I'm being sarcastic, let this link to Business Insider show you why:

The New York Times reports that while the senator was juggling multiple loans and mortgages, he bought a speedboat, a luxury SUV, and made questionable investment decisions.
Rubio has a history of accruing massive debts and then spending big when money comes his way.
According to The Times, Rubio faced huge debts in 2012. Then a miracle appeared: He got an $800,000 advance on a book deal. But instead of using all of the money responsibly, Rubio went out and bought a $80,000 speedboat.
The Times notes that despite the senator's financial woes, Rubio also leased a $50,000 Audi Q7 SUV...

...Rubio's troubling spending habits are well known within Republican political circles. According to The Times, when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's team vetted Rubio as a potential vice presidential candidate, they found that the Florida senator's financial decisions were bad enough that they could damage the campaign...

This is something, by the way, that's raised a red flag as far back as 2006 (dear God, where do the years of political headdesking get to?) as this 2010 article from the St. Pete Tampa Bay Times attests to:

...On the campaign trail, Rubio likes to say "politicians don't create jobs." But politics, directly and indirectly, has generated Rubio's sizeable income, even as he has accumulated substantial debt and saw one of his homes nearly go into foreclosure...
...When Rubio joined the Florida House of Representatives in 2000, he did not own a home, had few possessions and made $72,000 as a lawyer.
But he had $30,000 in "assorted credit and retail debt" (as described on his financial disclosure form) and in 2001 listed $165,000 in loans from the University of Florida and University of Miami Law School.
As Rubio climbed the ranks, he began to use little-noticed political committees to fund his travel and other expenses and later had a Republican Party of Florida credit card.
What emerged, records show, is a pattern of blending personal and political spending. Over and over again Rubio proved sloppy, at best, in complying with disclosure requirements...

I've written before about the Florida Republicans - and it's looking like Republicans in general - have these bad personal AND political habits of spending like drunken teenagers in possession of their parents' credit cards.   Rubio's name came up often during these reports from 2010 and onward, and now that's he running for the Presidency the national media outlets are starting to dig into his past.

It's troubling how a politician from a party that hypes itself as fiscally responsible is himself a debt-riding hypocrite.  It's troubling because it's been made clear how Rubio plans on clearing that debt: using other's people money.  Feeding off deep-pocket sugar daddies whose money he can use to keep living the high life despite the weak regulations in place.  This is a man who received an $800,000 book advance and still went out and wasted the money on personal indulgences instead of taking care of his debts.

How the hell can we trust this man - trust anyone from the Republican ranks who view these political campaigns as money-making schemes - with our nation's economy?

Other Ways of Keeping Track of the 2016 Race To The White House

I've gotten to the point where I'm bored giving the major Presidential candidates a review of character traits to predict how they'd act in office.

I'm now at the point where I've pretty much confirmed the entire Republican field of potentials are all Active-Negatives and in the worst way.  And that they'll get worse because of their need to pander to the hardcore primary voting base, a voting base that will demand utter fealty to their issues of God, Guns, and Nuke Obamacare.

I'm tempted to go the way David Graham has done in the Atlantic: adding each name to an ongoing list with some updated reports on how bad they're doing.

I've decided to try this: listing each candidate by party, by how well they're doing and how they're supposed to be doing, comparing them to previous campaign figures, and which opposing candidate is their biggest threat - and who they threaten - and why.

And if anyone gets Graham's joke about Harold Stassen, congratulations!

The Republicans

Scott Walker - Governor, Wisconsin
How well he's doing: Currently at-top or near-top of most polls. However, is still the focus of the John Doe investigation, and his home state is starting to show signs of bad governance.
Compares with: Robert A. Taft, a hard-campaigning and hard-nosed GOP candidate from the Midwest for the Presidency back in the 1940s and 1950s.
His Biggest Threat: Jeb Bush.  The Establishment candidate is tied with him in most polls, and Jeb threatens to control the deep pockets running the primaries that Walker also covets.
He's a Threat To: Most other governor candidates on the list, especially Christie.  He's got the two-fer of re-election wins in an otherwise Democratic Blue state, which the campaigners think equals moderate appeal.  He's also a threat to Jeb, because Walker is the most coherent opponent who can actually campaign well among the Establishment fund-raisers and still appeal to Far Right voters wanting a "Populist" approach.
Odds to win: Currently the favorite not-Jeb candidate on the list, making him one of the three likeliest ones to win the nomination.  Winning the whole show, however, is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Jeb Bush - Governor, Florida
How well he's doing: Currently at-top or near-top of most polls. .
Compares with: George W. Bush.  Which should be repeated and reminded to the voters early and often.
His Biggest Threat: Scott Walker.  Walker leads him in some polls, and can well appeal to the deep pockets funding the SuperPACs now running the elections.
He's a Threat To: The field.  He's starting with the deepest war chest and one of the better-known names on the ballot.
Odds to win: Near-lock.  He's got the money, he's got the Establishment, he's got the name.  The only thing he doesn't have are the primary voters, who might either view him as a "soft" moderate or might recoil from the possibility of Yet Another Bush in the White House.  Winning the whole show, however, is still tricky even for the likes of Jeb because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.  And that there's no guarantee moderates will want Yet Another Bush come November.

Marco Rubio - Senator, Florida
How well he's doing: Currently at-top or near-top of most polls. His polls are genuinely surprising considering his competition, and he's pretty much the consensus "number two" guy - that is, the one candidate most voters would have as a second choice if their first choice guy flames out - across the board.  The party leadership is cottoning to the idea - which is still an illusion - that Rubio can appeal to needed Hispanic voters.
Compares with: John McCain in 2008, the "number two" guy back then who ended up winning because Romney turned out to be too plastic even for the GOP.
His Biggest Threat: Jeb Bush.  Jeb has most of the fund-raisers, and is also from Florida.
He's a Threat To: Ted Cruz, as a Hispanic candidate who actually takes issues serious.  Also a threat to most of the field as the "fresh" minority candidate, overturning decades of Republican habits to honor and nominated guys who made their bones.
Odds to win: Is the other favorite not-Jeb candidate on the list, making him one of the three likeliest ones to win the nomination.  Winning the whole show, however, is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Ben Carson - Doctor, Maryland or Michigan
How well he's doing: Currently near-top of most polls. However, his organization just got hit with bad news and what seems like serious mismanagement.
Compares with: Pat Robertson.  A non-politician who ran on religious issues.
His Biggest Threat: Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, both of whom are coming from the religious-conservative, anti-Obamacare side of the field.
He's a Threat To: Nobody.  His lack of campaign experience is already starting to show.
Odds to win: He's only this high because his name has been touted by the Far Right media ever since Carson derided Obamacare right in Obama's face.  Even if he turns it around and wins the nomination, winning the whole show is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Rand Paul - Senator, Kentucky
How well he's doing: Immaterial as long as he can keep his dad's Libertarian voting base energized for his campaign.  However, he's not doing so well finding deep pocket financiers.
Compares with: his own father Ron Paul, running on a pro-Gold Standard interventionist platform.
His Biggest Threat: Lindsey Graham, who is going to campaign on a Bomb Everyone foreign policy stance and make Paul look bad for the mostly Bomb Everyone voting base.
He's a Threat To: To be honest, almost nobody.  He's still something of a fringe candidate with a fringe faction.  His best chance is to impress primary voters that his non-interventionist stance is valid and that he's a serious small government politico.
Odds to win: It's unlikely.  Paul's best chance is that the rest of the ballot names flame out except for Jeb, which would make him the not-Jeb candidate the Far Right could embrace.  Past that, winning the whole show is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE LIBERTARIAN PLATFORM - banning government, banning fluid currency exchanges, banning sanity - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Ted Cruz - Senator, Texas
How well he's doing: Polling well but has fallen off the radar save for a bad insult aimed at Joe Biden during a death in Joe's famly.
Compares with: Strom Thurmond, a hypocritical obstructionist with a habit of calling for secession.
His Biggest Threat: Mike Huckabee.  Cruz wants to campaign on a strict pro-Christian social conservative message, but Huckabee owns that section of the market, and Huckabee is a good enough campaigner to give Cruz fits.
He's a Threat To: Everybody.  He's the one true Wild Card in this race, mostly because he can afford to throw bombs at everyone as an anti-government radical and get away with it.
Odds to win: Not that good, but Cruz is in a position to run the whole year and stick hard on the issues to where whoever does win will do so on the harshest Far Right platform ever.  Winning the whole show, however, is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Mike Huckabee - Governor, Arkansas
How well he's doing: He's in a troubled situation at the moment and maybe imploding.
Compares with: William Jennings Bryan, a Bible-thumping almost-ran.
His Biggest Threat: The top three names of Walker, Bush and Rubio.
He's a Threat To: Every religious-social conservative name on the ballot, especially Santorum who can not impress crowds the way Huck can.
Odds to win: Used to be a dark horse potential as a not-Jeb name with a solid audience.  His biggest problem is finding deep pockets to back him.  Siding with the Duggars over sexual abuse might lose him "values" voters who can't reconcile "forgiving" a sexual predator.  Even then, winning the whole show is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Chris Christie - Governor, New Jersey
How well he's doing: What day is it?  We're about due for another scandal in five days... no wait, four.
Compares with: Newt Gingrich, in terms of being an egotistic blowhard with a penchant for self-implosion.
His Biggest Threat: Everybody.
He's a Threat To: Right now, nobody.  If Christie had kept his nose clean and toned down on the bullying tactics, he'd be a serious threat on the ballot and making both Walker and Bush nervous.
Odds to win: Dropping down an ocean trench.  The Bridgegate scandal is sticking around, and more scandals are piling up.  He won't even have to worry about winning the whole show because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Donald Trump - CEO, New York
How well he's doing: All he has are his own deep pockets and the fact he's polling over two percent simply because of name recognition.
Compares with: Steve Forbes.
His Biggest Threat: Ted Cruz.
He's a Threat To: Nobody.  Of the clowns on the GOP stage, he's the one with the most makeup and the biggest shoes.  He's mostly been a blowhard against Obama and liberals in general, and doesn't have anything new to bring to the table in terms of leadership.
Odds to win: Laughable.  If there are any media types taking him serious outside of his friends on Fox Not News, I haven't seen it.  He's nowhere near winning the whole show, especially because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Rick Perry - Governor, Texas
How well he's doing: He's actually going to make another try?
Compares with: Andrew Johnson, the least intelligent man ever in the White House.
His Biggest Threat: Keeping track of more than two things at a time.
He's a Threat To: Have another meltdown during a live debate.
Odds to win: Yeah, it's like that.  Even coming from a major state like Texas isn't gonna help, and it's still gonna be tricky if he even lucks into the nomination because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

John Kasich - Governor, Ohio
How well he's doing: Hasn't really gotten in yet, and it's not looking good despite his solid conservative resume.
Compares with: Scott Walker, which isn't good for Kasich since Walker is running this year.
His Biggest Threat: Walker, obviously.  Pretty much all the other big names who are crowding the stage.
He's a Threat To: Nearly every other Governor - former or sitting - in this race.  His leadership record, while intolerable to Democrats, hits every item on the GOP checklist while showing few signs of bad performance that the likes of Christie and Jindal show.  Only Walker has no reason to fear him, except that Ohio is a more key state for the GOP to win than Wisconsin (which is more likely to again go Blue in 2016).  If he finds a sugar daddy, performs well in any debates that invite him, and makes a serious go during the primaries, he might sneak up on people.
Odds to win: Incredibly low, but only because none of the real powers in the GOP - Fox Not News and the SuperPACs - take him serious.  Winning the whole show, however, is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Rick Santorum - Senator, Pennsylvania
How well he's doing: He's still not a name you should Google.
Compares with: Harold Stassen.  Yes, by sheer fact that this is Santorum's third go at the big chair.
His Biggest Threat: Huckabee.
He's a Threat To: Nobody.  His best chance was 2012 when he emerged as the last-standing not-Mitt candidate.  This year, Huckabee and Cruz have all his mojo.
Odds to win: His chances are/were/remain long gone.  His only advantage is that he's got one deep pocket backing him.  Winning the whole show, however, is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Carly Fiorina - CEO, California
How well she's doing: Well, she hasn't dropped out yet.
Compares with: Steve Forbes.  I can't compare her to Wendell Willkie because Willkie actually had a chance.
Her Biggest Threat: Any other female Republican - other than Sarah Palin (headdesk) - who decides to make a run.
She's a Threat To: In theory, Hillary Clinton, as the only other female candidate.  Thing is, Fiorina won't even make it to second round.
Odds to win: Laughable.  Winning the whole show, however, is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Lindsey Graham - Senator, South Carolina
How well he's doing: He just started fear-mongering this week.  Give it time.
Compares with: John McCain as the Foreign Policy Senator expert.
His Biggest Threat: All of them.  He's not polling very high.
He's a Threat To: Rand Paul.  He's a direct counter to Paul's anti-interventionist stance.
Odds to win: Unlikely despite the long political career and paying of dues.  Winning the whole show, however, is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

Bobby Jindal - Governor, Louisiana
How well he's doing: Poorly.  His name's been out there for seven years as a potential and he's not even polling over two percent.
Compares with: Tim Pawlenty, a campaigner from 2012 who made no in-roads or impressed anybody.
His Biggest Threat: Everybody.
He's a Threat To: Nobody.  Rubio has the non-white cred, Cruz the crazy wingnut cred, Huckabee the religious voters, Jeb the money, Walker the reputation.
Odds to win: Long gone.  Even Republicans in his own state are bad-mouthing him every chance they get.  He's nowhere near pushing the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - THAT IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

George Pataki - Governor, New York
How well he's doing: Hasn't officially announced yet.  And when he does, he's not expected to poll over one percent.
Compares with: Thomas Dewey.  You know, the one who beat Truman in an alternate universe.
His Biggest Threat: All of them.
He's a Threat To: Nobody.  Despite a solid political career, no-one is expecting him to make much of a difference in this primary season.  How bad is it for him?  I forgot what his first name is, had to look it up.
Odds to win: He's barely even in contention for the Vice-President spot. He's a possibility if Jeb or Rubio or Cruz - from Southern states - need to balance out the geography on the ticket.  Winning the whole show, however, is gonna be tricky because the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM - banning abortion, banning immigrants, banning diplomacy, banning free will - IS REPELLENT TO MOST VOTERS.

The Democrats

Hillary Clinton - Senator, New York
How well she's doing: Despite the concern-trolling of the mainstream media, Hillary remains the frontrunner across the entire board.
Compares with: LBJ in 1964.
Her Biggest Threat: In theory, any of the candidates that can appeal most to the Far Left voters in the primary.  In practice, the only one that even looked like potential - Elizabeth Warren - refuses to run, and even she wasn't that serious a threat.  There isn't a solid Obama-esque candidate of charisma and destiny that can top her.
She's a Threat To: The entire field.  She can bitch-slap - maybe I should rephrase that - every single candidate in BOTH parties right now and get home in time to watch Orphan Black.
Odds to win: There are no certainties, obviously.  It was hers to lose in 2008, as well.  If she falters somehow, or if a genuine scandal rolls up that isn't manufactured by the Vast Right Wing Noise Machine, then maybe...

Bernie Sanders - Senator, Vermont
How well he's doing: Surprisingly well as a fund-raiser, despite the lack of respect from the major news sources.
Compares With: Dennis Kucinich, except that Sanders is serious about the issues in a way Kucinich never was.
Biggest Threat: Hillary.  There is no-one that's a threat from the Left because Bernie's THE Left.
He's a Threat To: Hillary, as her most vocal opponent on the issues involving Wall Street and the pro-business forces that make up the Centrist Democratic faction.  He's a threat to everyone else in the Democratic ballot because he's got a head start as the major not-Hillary name.
Odds to win: It's good, but Hillary is honestly the Juggernaut of candidates this election cycle, something that hasn't been seen in decades.  Sanders is mostly in this race to make certain that key issues for Democrats - good jobs, ending inequality, regulating banks, fixing broken government - are discussed and that Hillary is on board with most of that.

Joe Biden - Vice-President, Delaware
How well he's doing: Hasn't announced, but is known to be keen on running as he's finally got a big enough platform - running on the legacy of the Obama administration - to give him a chance.
Compares with: Bush the Elder, a dues-paying guy who ran as Veep on the legacy of his boss Reagan.
Biggest Threat: Hillary.  She can run on the legacy of her husband Bill... AND run on the legacy of Obama's administration having served as Sec of State.
He's a Threat To: Most of the second-tier names on the ballot.  He can be a threat to Hillary if Obama goes public to back him (which is unlikely as Obama will want a unified party to rally quickly to one name and one cause).
Odds to Win: Not really there, even if he decides to run.  Previous campaigns fell flat because while his resume looks good he's not that impressive a campaigner.  It's not even looking like he could run, and he's been coping with recent personal tragedy that might hurt his focus.

Martin O'Malley - Governor, Maryland
How Well He's Doing: Started off slow, and is lagging behind Sanders at the moment.
Compares With: John Edwards in 2004.  Not the 2008 Edwards, who... oh God, what a mess that was.
Biggest Threat: Hillary.
He's a Threat To: Most of the field as the early name given to run as the not-Hillary choice as far back as 2012 (post-Obama win). He's almost a threat to Hillary in that he's the one candidate the media will likely take serious - unlike Sanders, who's been deemed to radical to win - except that O'Malley hasn't shown he can be an Obama-esque opponent.
Odds to Win: At the moment O'Malley doesn't have anything to crow about.  It depends on how fast he can get his national campaign set up and if he can impress early enough in the primaries to prove he can go all the way.

Jim Webb - Governor, Virginia
How Well He's Doing: Hasn't officially announced yet, but could get there.
Compares with: Eugene McCarthy of 1968, a harsh critic of an unpopular war (Vietnam for McCarthy, Iraq for Webb).
Biggest Threat: Hillary
He's a Threat To: On paper, he's a respectable enough candidate to put everyone on edge.  He has military experience no other candidate has, and some electoral experience that shows campaign skills.  What Webb doesn't have is a national identity, and an early history dismissive of women in the military still haunts him (against Hillary as a solid Presidential candidate, it can ruin his run).
Odds to Win: Not good.  As noted, Webb doesn't have a strong campaign background and can well flame out over a blunt exchange of views.  He might get consideration as a Veep candidate, but only if it's Hillary and he comes public regretting his earlier anti-women statement.

Lincoln Chafee - Governor, Rhode Island
How Well He's Doing: Why even ask?
Compares with: Nelson Rockefeller.  A liberal Republican.  ...Yes, they did exist, once...
Biggest Threat: Both O'Malley can trump him with a better governorship record, and Sanders trumping him with a better Leftist standing with the base.
He's a Threat To: Nobody.  He thinks he can campaign against Hillary on her Iraq war vote, but past that there's nothing else he brings to the table that Sanders and O'Malley already do.
Odds to Win: Why even ask?

The Unaffiliated

Paul Wartenberg - Librarian, Florida
How well I'm doing: I've got maybe 7, 10 people tops saying they'll vote for me.
Compares with: That guy, no that other guy, you know, the one without any SuperPAC paying for the petition registrations and ad campaigns.  Yeah.  I'm just like that guy.
My Biggest Threat: Someone with enough money to pay their own way.
I'm a Threat To: Fictional characters in my head.  In some of my stories, I gotta kill off certain characters to show how serious and deadly the situation is and why the hero has to save the day.  It's a sad truth of writers in the scifi/fantasy/political thriller/cookery genres.
Odds to Win: You never know, I could get lucky...

So, how's your campaign efforts going?

Anniversary: Longest Day, Aftermath

Just to note, the size and scope of the Normandy landings on June 6 1944 was the largest amphibious landing of troops to that time.  We committed 156,000 troops to the beach, going against 50,000 German troops in hardened fortifications.  Allies - American, British, Canadian, Free French forces, others - gained a fragile foothold by day's end at the cost of 4,000-plus dead and thousands more wounded.

After all that, the Allies left memorials in the form of statues, maps (the beaches were un-named before the war: now every location is based on the operation's code names), and cemeteries... some of the most haunting cemeteries you would ever see.

The rows of crosses, and Stars of David, at the Normandy American Cemetery... there are no words.  When people visit to pay respects to the fallen, there is hushed reverence at the loudest and stunned silence often.

The graves sit within view of the Channel, of the very beaches those men stormed to save the world.

I'm really not joking about the "save the world" line.  When you look back at how evil the Nazis were, how dark a place our whole world was falling into, World War II comes across as a high fantasy epic struggle between GOOD and EVIL.  To quote the Encyclopedia of Fantasy:

...WWII, on the other hand, has been remembered as a melodrama, full of strange and uncanny ups and downs, with terrifying new weapons galore, feats of derring-do on a daily basis, and (an)tagonists who were not only Monsters in real life but also, in fictional terms, highly effective Icons of villainy. Despite the attempts of propagandists on both sides, no wholly evil figure emerges from WWI to occupy the world's imagination, no one of a viciousness so unmitigated that it seems almost supernatural: Hitler, on the other hand, has all the lineaments of a Dark Lord, and the Reich he hoped to found was a Parody of the true Land...

George R.R. Martin referred to how that war warped our perceptions of how unjust wars can be, as WWII was proven one of the few "just" wars Western civilization can accept.  Today, we have politicians who keep railing against their opposition in terms of how much like Hitler their enemies are, because of the moral clarity of opposing Hitler then still carries meaning now.

And still, as in all wars, men died.  Remember this.

Anniversary: Still Waiting In Tiananmen

June 5th.

Tank Guy.

This man is my brother.

I want to know that he's all right.  It may be 26 years later.  It may be the government did something to him as punishment for his defiance and nobility.  He's still my brother.  He's OUR brother in the name of democracy and peace and simple decent humanity.  We need to know that he's all right.

This is my 750th post on this blog.  I wanted it to have some meaning, and there is nothing more meaningful than making a stand in the names of justice and peace.

Predicting Character: Should I Even TRY To Keep Up?

It's at the point we've gotten campaign roll-outs on a daily basis around here.  I haven't even gotten to a full review of Lindsey "THERE'S A DRAGON UNDER YOUR BED BOOGA BOOGA" Graham - I still have only a basic review from when he first made noise about throwing his hat in the ring - and now there's Lincoln Chafee for the Democrats and Rick "The Third Thing I'd Shut Down Is Pie" Perry from the Republican side.

Best thing I can tell you is that the current roster of Republicans are all made up of Active-Negative types and the Democrats are balancing along with a couple of Active-Negatives and maybe a couple of Active-Positives (although I have no idea just exactly what Lincoln Chafee is gonna be because... well, he's off his rocker).

I do not see a single potential Republican candidate who will demonstrate enough wisdom and independence from a worn-out Reagan-Era dogma of tax-cuts, wage-war, crush-social-services, blame-immigrants, kill-jobs ideas.  I do not see any Democratic candidates that can genuinely threaten Hillary Clinton's dominance atop the primaries.

I could go into more details, but from this point on, it's turtles all the way down.  We got what we got.

For the Love of GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.  That's all I can say for now.

I'm close to a milestone blog post: the number 750.  I'll see if I can make it a special one.

This Just In From Florida: Governor, State House Are Still A-Holes

In case people forgot, Florida had to summon a Special Session to finalize a budget deal between House and Senate, with the House being a bunch of preening psychopaths just like during the regular session.  Via the Tampa Trib:

House sponsor Mia Jones, a Jacksonville Democrat, was cross-examined for nearly three hours by successive members of the Republican majority, who mostly teased out what they see as the plan’s flaws...
...Still other Republicans decided not to bother: At one point, the entire front row of the chamber’s top GOP members was empty. Several remaining Republican legislators appeared to be checking their mobile phones or taking photos of each other, among other things.
Senate Republicans are pushing the proposal; House Republicans and Gov. Rick Scott are opposed, virtually dooming the plan, which would draw down nearly $50 billion in Affordable Care Act money over eight years. They say the feds can’t be trusted to follow through on their funding promises...

The FEDS can't be trusted?  House Republicans and Scott CAN'T BE TRUSTED.

The Federal government has been funding state-level shit for YEARS, decades even, and NOW they can't be trusted?!

/headdesk

I'm now convinced this is one of two things: a game of chicken or a game of death.  Scott and the wingnuts either want to extort massive concessions out of Obama's administration by using Medicaid funding as a hostage - figuring the Democrats would not risk a massive health-care shutdown in a state in dire need of it - or they really want the whole thing to collapse to fulfill their anti-government dogma.

With a SCOTUS decision due in the next few weeks about state exchanges in the Obamacare system that could well take away health care for millions...  Sigh.  This is gonna be a sucky month.

Huckabee Fails At Congeniality

Remember, my earlier chats about Mike Huckabee was how, out of all the other Republican candidates for 2016, he alone has the skills to fake Congeniality similar to Reagan to pull off a campaign in a Passive-Positive character style.  A style that would attract voters turned off by the Active-Negative types dominating the party.

Well, change that "has" in that first paragraph into a "had".

Huckabee just blew up his Congenial persona with bad timing, worse instincts, and horrific views on rape and gender roles.

This originally came out in February of this year, only now hitting the airwaves (from Raw Story):

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee joked that he wished he was young again — so he could pretend to be transgender and watch girls shower in locker rooms.

During his speech at the 2015 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in February, Huckabee attacked laws to allow transgender students to use facilities that correspond to their gender identity...

“...For those who do not think that we are under threat, simply recognize that the fact that we are now in city after city watching ordinances say that your seven-year-old daughter, if she goes into the restroom cannot be offended and you can’t be offended if she’s greeted there by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man,” the former Arkansas governor said.

“Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE,” Huckabee continued. “I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’ You’re laughing because it sounds so ridiculous doesn’t it?...”

It is not the first time that Huckabee has joked about pretending to be transgender to shower with girls. He made similar comments after California enacted a law to allow transgender students to use school facilities consistent with their gender identity...

Transgender or gender identity issues are in the news right now because of former Olympian Bruce Jenner changing body and identity to Caitlyn.  But it's interesting to note how Huckabee has been like this - insensitive to gender identity as an issue - for months now (and that his Republican audience seems to find it funny).

The response to Huckabee's joke hasn't been happy or laughing.  Part of the problem is the setup: he's talking about being a perv wanting to watch girls shower.  This is supposed to be a guy preaching - literally - about sin and naughty thoughts, and he's indulging in that stuff.

Even if he's trying to phrase it as "oh if I were back in high school," he's saying it today as a man in his fifties.  He's coming across as a dirty old man lusting - yes, lusting - after school girls.  Even "free-minded" libruls have a few problems with that scenario.

His joke is made as an attempt to fear-monger as well: "Oh no watch out, guys claiming to be women are gonna sneak into your women's bathrooms and abuse your girls."  As fear-mongering goes, it shows lack of understanding:  transgender identities are not a joke, and there's been states with active transgender laws in place that have NOT reported the things Huckabee rails against.  That lack of understanding undermines Huckabee's own attempts at Congeniality.  It's a trait that requires some level of empathy for others, and it's a trait that requires self-deprecation rather than judgmental attitude.

This is one-half of the problem.  The other half doesn't involve his lackwit sense of humor but his poor judge of character involving the Duggars.

It's come out recently that the "reality" stars of a television show - 19 Kids and Counting - preaching "family values" were covering up for one of their older son Josh who as a teenager sexually molested younger girls.  Including his own sisters.  With lingering questions about how long he's really been at it...

The Duggars were major figures in the "pro-family" movement known as Quiverfull.  The movement has been documented as an ideology that imposes a nasty patriarchal mindset on entire families, the kind of environment that would encourage this type of abuse.

This scandal became a quick embarrassment to the Republican Party because Josh Duggar was a rising political figure in the Religious Right groups.  Not a lot of GOP politicos wanted to discuss the matter much... except for Huckabee, who has been a close ally of the Duggars and their ilk for years.  From Olivia Nuzzi at the Daily Beast:

...Nevertheless, Huckabee was prepared to forgive Duggar’s sins. “No purpose whatsoever is served by those who are now trying to discredit Josh or his family by sensationalizing the story,” he wrote. “Good people make mistakes and do regrettable and even disgusting things...”

...Given Huckabee’s evidently low bar for what constitutes forgivable behavior, it’s somewhat perplexing that, as a public figure, he has chosen to attack lots of people who have not admitted to or been accused of sex crimes of any nature—like President Obama: guilty of “stomping on Christians”; gays who are trying to “criminalize Christianity”; Beyoncé and Jay Z for morally bankrupting our society with their sexy music and dancing...

Nuzzi's article also mentions how as governor of Arkansas Huckabee went to bat for a convicted rapist to get paroled despite the protests of the victims, only to have said rapist go on to rape (and this time KILL) once freed.

This points to a world-view, a set of consistent actions, where Huckabee showed little interest or gave much value to the words, rights, or safety of victimized women.  This is not a happy, fuzzy world-view.  There is nothing Congenial about ignoring rape or sexual assault.

Because here's the problem with Huckabee and the other defenders of Josh Duggar's crimes, and of the crimes his parents committed through inaction and then intentional coverup: they are protecting the sexual predator - that is exactly what Josh is - at the expense of the true victims - his own sisters and other young girls - of his crimes.  They have valued the life of the man - this molester, this monster - over that of his own sisters (dear Mr. and Mrs. Duggar: YOUR OWN DAUGHTERS!  This the value you place upon them?!).

And Huckabee still acts that way: the man is more important than the victims of that man.

I've been making parody bumper stickers for 2016 campaigns this week.  Tonight I've made one that is NO LAUGHING MATTER:

Honest Bumper Stickers 2016 Part II: The Quickening

Following up from yesterday's attempt at disaster, I had a few more ideas for bumper stickers, including ones for the candidates - Cruz, Rand Paul, Carson - I missed.  Hold on, I'm about to get into more trouble now:

I hope to have some made for Graham, Santorum... and... um... who else is on the list?  Fiorina?  Trump?  Oh, heh, Trump, THAT should be easy...

Honest Bumper Stickers 2016

A while back, when Hillary made her official announcement her campaign also came out with a marketing logo

meant to inspire folks I guess.  It ended up bringing out the jokesters - myself included - who thought it was stolen from a health care provider or a hospital.

In response, I drew up a couple of Hillary '16 bumper stickers and shared them on Facebook with the Horde, if I can load them up here lemme show you:

I know the H2O one is a little obscure as a thing - Hillary is water? - but putting the letter "h" near 20 in the 2016 was impossible to resist.  Some of the fellow Horde liked the H2O one.

For some reason during today, with announcements here and there and all over the place the past month, I got to musing over bumper stickers.  In particular, what kind of crazy bumper sticker ideas each of the candidates could come up with.  It was O'Malley that I was thinking of, and so far a check of his official campaign site doesn't show much, just his last name in a chat balloon.

I had an idea for an O'Malley logo, went like this:

I know I'm pushing it, mixing the number 0 in 2016 with the O in O'Malley, but I like to think this is eye-catching.

Most of the real-world logos/sticker designs so far are pretty placid, standard works.  Some already have some pretty bad logos and designs, such as Hillary's and, well take a look:

I was personally upset because this looks like

Cruz went and stole the Unitarian Flame design...

This is less a flame and more a teardrop.

I look at this and think "German Engineering Firm, right?"

What got into my head today was "Oh hey let's come up with REALLY bad, VERY brutal bumper stickers that would embarrass the hell out of any self-respecting campaign manager."

So, in the interest of fairness, here are the really bad bumper stickers we can expect from our 2016 doom-bringers.

Okay, so I'm kinda rushing the last couple bumper stickers, but hey it's a loooooooonnnnggggggggg f-cking campaign season and I've got months to come up with better ones, ya think? :)

Predicting Character: O'Malley By The Numbers

Perking up the Democratic side of the 2016 Slogfest, the expected announcement by former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley came... and went with about as much buzz/excitement as a new album release by (Insert Obscure Grunge Band That Nobody Knew Was Still Together And Touring).  Well, that's not entirely true: O'Malley's rally did get a response, just not the one he'd hoped.  Per the Daily Beast:

...O’Malley, 52, is a former Baltimore councilman, mayor, and, for two terms, the governor of Maryland. He is a proud liberal—under his watch, Maryland ended the death penalty, legalized same-sex marriage and passed the Dream Act. But despite his record and his sociopathically charming demeanor (he plays in an Irish band, too), he is not a star in the Democratic Party, for whom Hillary Clinton remains the obvious favorite for the nomination. O’Malley, who was a fervent supporter of Clinton’s 2008 campaign, has been publicly “considering” running for president for two years, traveling the country and fundraising for other Democrats, and is still barely at 3 percent.

...Jake Polce and Mallory Donaghue, both 18, told me they came because “it has to do with Maryland pride.” Donaghue said she liked what O’Malley stands for, but when asked to elaborate said, “I don’t know,” and asked Polce to intervene. Polce said ending the death penalty and passing the Dream Act were his main reasons for supporting O’Malley, but he admitted he knew little about the other Democratic candidates... 

...But as O’Malley delivered his remarks, a small group of others made their voices heard, too—and called to mind the criticisms of O’Malley’s record on crime and police brutality which came under scrutiny during the Baltimore riots earlier this month. 

A woman charged through the crowd holding a sign reading “Stop killer cops” and “say her name.” She shouted, “Black lives matter!” Someone else yelled, “We don’t need zero tolerance policies, O’Malley!” and “What about police brutality?” The protesters blew whistles, which drowned out O’Malley. 

Police and press surrounded them, and O’Malley just carried on as if it was not happening...

Most of the passion at the turnout was with the protestors, which is not a good sign.

By basic metrics, O'Malley would be the perfect candidate for the Democrats: experience as a popular governor, coming from a major Mid-Atlantic state, Catholic yet Liberal, who signed on for key social issues - immigration rights, gay marriage - that would hearten leftist Progressives.  Compared to the front-runner Hillary Clinton, O'Malley has few scandals dogging him that the Republicans could viably use against him (which won't stop the lying by Fox Not News and their ilk, of course).  Compared to the other official candidate Bernie Sanders, O'Malley is not as radicalized to where the pro-business Democrats would be terrified of his winning the nomination.

But the protests are a harbinger of O'Malley's greatest weakness: his failures as Baltimore Mayor (which he used as a stepping stone to the Governor's office) with regards to crime and race relations.

"The Numbers".  From The Wire (YouTube link won't play on this blog due to copyright block):

The stat games... that lie, it’s what ruined this department. Shining up shit and calling it gold, so that Majors become Colonels and Mayors become Governors; pretending to do police work while one generation fucking trains the next how not to do the job... - Daniels

People may forget that The Wire was not just a television show: it was based on real-life incidents and the ongoing national disaster that is urban blight.  Producer/Writer David Simon worked as a journalist in Baltimore during part of O'Malley's tenure as Mayor, and everything about the internal corruption in government - the obsession over crime statistics - was based on what he covered.

From the Marshall Project blog interviewing Simon:

Simon: It happened in stages, but even in the time that I was a police reporter, which would have been the early 80s to the early 90s, the need for police officers to address the basic rights of the people they were policing in Baltimore was minimized. It was done almost as a plan by the local government, by police commissioners and mayors, and it not only made everybody in these poor communities vulnerable to the most arbitrary behavior on the part of the police officers, it taught police officers how not to distinguish in ways that they once did...
S: The drug war began it, certainly, but the stake through the heart of police procedure in Baltimore was (O'Malley). He destroyed police work in some real respects. Whatever was left of it when he took over the police department, if there were two bricks together that were the suggestion of an edifice that you could have called meaningful police work, he found a way to pull them apart. Everyone thinks I’ve got a hard-on for Marty because we battled over “The Wire,” whether it was bad for the city, whether we’d be filming it in Baltimore. But it’s been years, and I mean, that’s over. I shook hands with him on the train last year and we buried it. And, hey, if he's the Democratic nominee, I’m going to end up voting for him. It’s not personal and I admire some of his other stances on the death penalty and gay rights. But to be honest, what happened under his watch as Baltimore’s mayor was that he wanted to be governor. And at a certain point, with the crime rate high and with his promises of a reduced crime rate on the line, he put no faith in real policing...
S: Originally, early in his tenure, O’Malley brought Ed Norris in as commissioner and Ed knew his business. He’d been a criminal investigator and commander in New York and he knew police work. And so, for a time, real crime suppression and good retroactive investigation was emphasized, and for the Baltimore department, it was kind of like a fat man going on a diet. Just leave the French fries on the plate and you lose the first ten pounds. The initial crime reductions in Baltimore under O’Malley were legit and O’Malley deserved some credit.  But that wasn’t enough. O’Malley needed to show crime reduction stats that were not only improbable, but unsustainable without manipulation. And so there were people from City Hall who walked over Norris and made it clear to the district commanders that crime was going to fall by some astonishing rates. Eventually, Norris got fed up with the interference from City Hall and walked, and then more malleable police commissioners followed, until indeed, the crime rate fell dramatically. On paper...

You need to read that article.  What happened in Baltimore pretty much well happened in St. Louis and Cleveland and Miami and New York City and everywhere else as politicians obsessed over making the numbers look good for them and to hell with civil liberties and actual policing that needed doing.

S: The second thing Marty did, in order to be governor, involves the stats themselves. In the beginning, under Norris, he did get a better brand of police work and we can credit a legitimate 12 to 15 percent decline in homicides. Again, that was a restoration of an investigative deterrent in the early years of that administration. But it wasn’t enough to declare a Baltimore Miracle, by any means. What can you do? You can’t artificially lower the murder rate – how do you hide the bodies when it’s the state health department that controls the medical examiner’s office? But the other felony categories? Robbery, aggravated assault, rape? Christ, what they did with that stuff was jaw-dropping.
Interviewer: So they cooked the books.
S: Oh yeah. If you hit somebody with a bullet, that had to count. If they went to the hospital with a bullet in them, it probably had to count as an aggravated assault. But if someone just took a gun out and emptied the clip and didn't hit anything or they didn't know if you hit anything, suddenly that was a common assault or even an unfounded report. Armed robberies became larcenies if you only had a victim’s description of a gun, but not a recovered weapon. And it only gets worse as some district commanders began to curry favor with the mayoral aides who were sitting on the Comstat data...
S: They cooked their own books in remarkable ways. Guns disappeared from reports and armed robberies became larcenies. Deadly weapons were omitted from reports and aggravated assaults became common assaults. The Baltimore Sun did a fine job looking into the dramatic drop in rapes in the city. Turned out that regardless of how insistent the victims were that they had been raped, the incidents were being quietly unfounded...

Christ.  All so O'Malley could run for Governor...

S: So Martin O’Malley proclaims a Baltimore Miracle and moves to Annapolis. And tellingly, when his successor as mayor allows a new police commissioner to finally de-emphasize street sweeps and mass arrests and instead focus on gun crime, that’s when the murder rate really dives. That’s when violence really goes down. When a drug arrest or a street sweep is suddenly not the standard for police work, when violence itself is directly addressed, that’s when Baltimore makes some progress...

But by then it was too late.  And you get excessive force and questionable arrests similar to what happened to Freddie Gray and so many others...

What happened to O'Malley has been happening - is happening - to politicians all over.  In order to prove effectiveness in office, you have to present evidence.  Statistics can be the best evidence to present as "factual," so if you have to said politicians will twist those statistics to favor them at the expense of reality.  It's not just crime reports, the obsession with numbers for politicians reach into job figures, education test results, anything with numbers...

What the politicians like O'Malley overlook is that each number is a life.  Someone being arrested for no honest reason just to boost a stat count.  Someone made a victim whose crime was under-reported to where no justice prevails.  Someone turned into zero.

And here's a sad thing David Simon himself notes in that interview if he had to, he'd vote for O'Malley: "It’s not personal and I admire some of his other stances on the death penalty and gay rights."

In short, better the devil you know than the devil likely getting nominated for the Republicans in 2016 (Because the Republicans have made it consistently clear that on race relations and crime and urban policing they will be worse).

The other thing about O'Malley is that - aside from the crime stats scandal - he's done good work as governor, and publicly appears level-headed and competent.  From The Atlantic:

In two terms as the governor of Maryland, he’s ushered in a sweeping liberal agenda that includes gay marriage, gun control, an end to the death penalty, and in-state college tuition for undocumented immigrants. He’s trim and handsome; he plays in an Irish rock band... He shows great zeal for improving things both large and small: during a recent visit to the Light House, a homelessness-prevention center in Annapolis that provides job training and other assistance, he said that he had, as governor, taken the state’s traditional Day to Serve and made it 17 days long. “I really enjoy progress, and making progress, and my joy comes from understanding that it happens one life at a time,” he told me, reflecting on the center’s work...

During his governorship, he was aggressive in pushing a package of tax hikes and budget fixes, via the Washington Post:

The new governor immediately set out to strengthen the middle class, boost public safety and education, and improve health care and the environment. He froze public university tuition and dramatically increased funding for school construction...

Legislative leaders cautioned against holding such an ambitious special session — particularly with no guarantee of success. But O’Malley pushed through his entire package, with some bills squeaking by after debates that stretched into the wee hours. He had established himself as a force to be reckoned with, even though some efforts — such as repealing the death penalty — didn’t succeed right away.

In the end, there was no major O’Malley initiative that didn’t make it across the finish line. In some cases, he showed a willingness to compromise that frustrated his allies — like slowing the pace of pay increases in a minimum wage bill...

It's still a question mark if his policies will work - his aggressive tax hikes created electoral backlash this past election cycle, and despite his efforts he left office with the state budget still facing shortages - but by some measures he kept Maryland afloat at a time most other states were collapsing during the Great Recession.

But those entries help paint the world-view - the potential Character - that O'Malley would bring if he follows through on his pursuit of the Presidency.  A further look into his formative years - per Professor Barber's review process - shows a child and young man involved with politics since his birth.  From Jill Lawrence's National Journal article printed June 2013:

...O'Malley's story is not like any of those. He's a smart, good-looking, white guy who grew up with two parents, two older sisters, and three younger brothers outside Washington in the affluent Maryland suburbs of Bethesda and Rockville. His political pedigree goes back generations. His grandparents were active in Democratic politics in Indiana and Pittsburgh. His parents met doing work for the Democratic National Committee. His father, who died in 2006, was a lawyer whom O'Malley says was an "Atticus Finch-type figure" to his four sons, all of whom became lawyers. His mother has been a receptionist for Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Maryland's Democratic senior senator, for more than 25 years.

O'Malley attended the Jesuits' Gonzaga High School in a checkered neighborhood near the U.S. Capitol, and then Catholic University a couple of miles away. The choice of Gonzaga in a sense foreshadowed the turn his life took later when he attended the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, then stayed in the city to work as an assistant state's attorney, marry a top state official's daughter, and run for a series of political offices...

...By (age 14), O'Malley was already an Irish history aficionado, a musician, and a budding politico. As a child, he followed election returns when his godfather ran for office, and he handed out leaflets for a family friend in another race. As a college student, he worked for Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign, including spending a few weeks in Iowa. As a law student, he ran the field operation for then-Rep. Mikulski's 1986 Senate campaign. It was a fateful job, in part because it afforded him his first glimpse of Katie Curran, his future wife...

...The year 1990 was seminal for O'Malley in two ways. He married Katie, and he made his first run for office--a primary challenge to state Sen. John Pica of Baltimore. O'Malley's brother Peter, seven years younger and a student at Catholic University, ran the campaign with help from Patrick, another brother, and Enright. They did their own opposition research. Peter O'Malley says he and Patrick combed Pica's voting records to discover that he had missed more votes than any other member of the state Senate. They also did their own polling, he says. Martin wrote the questions, and they all made the calls, using lists they bought to achieve a scientific result. (note: the early sign of stat obsession)

O'Malley spent less than $35,000 on the campaign and ended up losing by 44 votes, so close that his friends and family were elated. He says he realized belatedly, "I was the only dope on the campaign" who had expected to win. He was stung, but also encouraged. By the next year, he was working at a law firm by day and campaigning by night for a Baltimore City Council seat. He'd pick up his infant daughter Grace from Katie, who was taking an evening bar-review course, and go door-to-door as long as Grace would stand for it. He won the seat, and his course was set.

What was it about Baltimore that drew O'Malley? "There's probably a biography in the answer to that question," he responds. It started with what he calls his "immersion" into Mikulski's world of friends, family, and supporters. "I felt more at home in Baltimore after one year of law school and Barbara Mikulski's campaign than I ever felt in the Maryland suburbs of Washington," he says. "It is a city with a very unpretentious blue-collar work ethic. I just found something about it very attractive when I moved there for law school, and wanted to stay."

Baltimore has much going for it: top-notch sports teams, cozy neighborhoods, a burgeoning restaurant scene, a renowned symphony and university, and one of the nation's largest ports. Still, 25 years ago, beset by drugs, crime, and racial tensions, it was an odd place for a white Democrat to start building a life in politics. O'Malley says Baltimore's problems were compelling to him. In his 20 months at the state's attorney's office, he handled more than 70 cases and saw a lot of pain and addiction. He was frustrated with the criminal-justice system and wanted to try to make things better "at a higher level."

In short, he was a politician in search of a challenge.  The rest of his story plays out as Mayor, as Governor, and now as Presidential hopeful.

So how does this all translate into Character?  How would I list him on my charts, for his Positives and Negatives and on what he's likely going to be as a President?

Martin O'Malley - Governor, Maryland
Positives: Served two terms as governor in a politically powerful mid-Atlantic state.  Can govern, and campaign in tight, messy elections.  Fought hard on key liberal issues - school funding, ending the death penalty, supporting gay marriage, supporting immigration reform - that would appeal to the progressive base.  His raising taxes on higher incomes in-state - and campaigning on that issue nationally - can play as a welcome populist move as income inequality becomes a big issue.  Presents himself as a "better" liberal than Hillary can, yet isn't as left-leaning as the other candidate Bernie Sanders, which means O'Malley can have better appeal to the moderates by the general election.
Negatives: Suffering backlash from the stat-obsession tenure as Baltimore mayor that has left deep scars in that city.  His defense for higher taxes may play well with the progressive base but unless changes in Maryland show they worked - via improved social services and educational standards - he may lose middle-class voters worried that high taxation would hurt small businesses.  Despite the obviousness of him being a potential candidate - and anti-Hillary alternative - for the White House ever since 2010, still hasn't made a strong impression nation-wide.  In terms of fund-raising, Sanders is already well ahead and is currently higher in the polling.
Chances: He's got a solid chance due to outside factors - not enough challengers that can steal his thunder vs. Hillary - and may appeal to fund-raisers in the party wary of another Clinton era and worried that Sanders is a candidate too far Left.  But he's got way too much work ahead of him, and until the police brutality issue goes away - or he campaigns for legitimate reforms - he's got one hell of an albatross around his neck.
Character Chart: His actions as an elected figure shows an aggressive, constant persona with public (and private) agendas.  His work as Governor - pushing through bills against a reluctant legislature - hints at an Uncompromising world-view, along with the obsession over statistics and results that overlooks genuine empathy for the people he serves.  On the other hand, the issues and results he took - abolishing the death penalty, supporting gay marriage, supporting immigration - display a level of political courage that most Adaptive and out-going character types did in their lives.  The stat-obsession worries me that he can be an Active-Negative type: however, O'Malley has displayed enough Adaptive and Conciliatory traits to make me think he can serve as an Active-Positive.  Compared to his potential opponents in Hillary or ANYBODY from the Republicans, O'Malley is a clear A-P.

In this campaign run, O'Malley has one big weakness and many small advantages.  Whether he can turn those advantages into big ones is the big question.

Personal Note: Local Authors' Event May 30

Just to shill to the seven readers of this blog, I'll be at the Barnes & Noble in Wesley Chapel FL this Saturday May 30th from 2 pm to 4 pm selling my works.

Location is 28152 Paseo Dr
(southwest corner facing the intersection of
Bruce B. Downs and SR 56)
Wesley Chapel, FL 33543
p: 813-907-7739




Just as a reminder, this is my stuff (available online through most book retailers, especially Amazon and BN.com).

My collection of short stories, published 2003.

E-published, available as download.
I'm currently working on other stories
based in that superhero 'verse.

Contains my short "I Must Be Your First",
which has received great reviews!

Contains my short "Why The Mask".

Contains my short "The Dread Secret of
The Battle Of Los Angeles," based on a
Real Life incident in L.A. at the start of WWII.

E-published, available for download

E-published, sequel to "Welcome to Florida".

I would LOVE to have people show up and support local/independent authors. (hint: buy my books!)  We need to encourage more adult reading (buy my books) and we need to support our bookstores as fun gathering places (buy my books).

So I hope to see all seven of you blog readers in Wesley Chapel this Saturday.  Right?
(p.s. buy my books)