Category Archives: Presidency

“Obama Wins the Future?” Stop Dreaming, Says Frank Rich

[In an early version of this piece, I mistakenly called Frank Rich "Frank Church." My thanks to an alert reader. How do these things happen? Surely, this isn't the age thing. Is it?]

I find this fascinating: two respected liberal commentators, having studied Tuesday’s election, arrive at wholly different conclusions about the balloting’s long range effect on American politics. It’s worth reading both and seeing with whom you agree.

The utopian blue view comes from the American Prospect’s Bob Moser, who says a new liberal majority has been born (Obama Wins The Future, 11/7/12). In the other corner, New York magazine’s Frank Rich, a liberal with impeccable credentials, sees red and says, The Tea Party Will Win in the End.)

I’ll be fascinated to know what you think!

When you’ve studied the articles, leave a critiquing comment. It’ll be interested to see which scenario readers most agree with.


They Wouldn’t Know ‘Socialism’ if it Walked Up & Spit in Their Face

“Defined for a couple of centuries as state control of the means of mass production, socialism has come to be considered, since the moment Obama stepped foot into the White House, as any government involvement in the economy whatsoever, which [then is to say] we’ve been a socialist country since:

  • “1791 when Hamilton created a national bank,
  • “Since the federal government’s foray into the real estate business in the early 1800s when President Jefferson raided the treasury to make a killing on the Louisiana territories, 
  • “President Andrew Jackson used the government to break up the same bank that Hamilton used the government to make, 
  • “Republican President Lincoln used the government to build a railroad and,
  • “Republican President Theodore Roosevelt used the power of the federal government to break up big business.

“The question is whether any of this historical miscellany matters to those who call Obama a radical any more than does information having to do with the world’s weather …”

~ Steve Erickson, The Atlantic Monthly, November 5, 2012.


Can They Postpone this Election?

Yes, they can. Any state could that’s effected by a disaster like Superstorm Sandy.

I’m not kidding.

“Can,” of course, isn’t “Will.” I make no prediction. But it may surprise some to know that a lot of states are empowered to postpone even a presidential election, based on their own constitutional provisions and emergency laws to act in such a manner in case of an emergency like “Sandy.” According to Slate, even governors in states lacking such laws may “reasonably use his or her emergency powers to suspend the election during a state of emergency.”

Okay, okay. This election has already threatened many of us with a nervous breakdown. Another macabre twist of fate is the last thing we might need to consider.

Just know, however, that it is theoretically possible for, let’s say, Republican Governor John Kasich, to postpone the vote in Ohio based on storm damage in eastern Ohio along the border of snowbound West Virginia.

In such an event, surely the $uperPacs of the world would not aim their missiles on über swing state Ohio in the interregnum, right?

But, hell, let’s leave nightmare scenarios for Halloween. It’s not like “Sandy” hit Florida or anything …


Barack & Hillary in 2012!

Now Bob Reich thinks so too. I first heard this idea last summer from my brother-in-law, Will Swearingen, and it stopped me in my tracks. I endorsed it–fancifully, I thought at first–but then I endorsed it, thinking it’s a game changer when, despite the weak Republican field, the environment points to trouble in keeping the White House Democratic. On that last point, check this.

This scenaro also sets Hillary up for the nomination in 2016 if she wants. Biden can move to Secretary of State; as a former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he’d love it.


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