Weld For Veep....

He once wanted to be Governor of Massachusetts (til he got bored with it) or a US Senator or a US Ambassador to Mexico or maybe Governor of New York...but as of this weekend Bill Weld has settled on running for Veep on the Libertarian Ticket as His Next Big Thing.
Almost immediately humiliation piled atop excruciating embarrassment, he had to repeatedly promise in the most craven and abject terms total lifelong fealty to the Libertarian Partei....he was boo'd at their convention (a chintzy looking affair from the looks of it), a candidate for Party Chair performed a striptease.
AND still it took two ballots to get Bill on that meshugginah ticket....

I don't care how chipper Weld pretends to be for his undying apologists at the Boston Globe he has to realize he has hit rock goddamn bottom and stone sober as well.
I was saying last week that that Bill won't hang in there until Labor Day, I'd like to revise that, I say he bails by July 4th.  Weld's downfall is that he is a Boomer Avatar, Snarky Insolent, Gloriously Sloppy and Selfish....but like all boomers he cannot stand embarrassment or humiliation...."looking like a fool" is a mortal blow to the Welds of this World. And Bill looked like a fool this weekend, watch for it is all I can say six weeks of answering questions about John Galt from spectrumy libertarian fanatics and Bill will decamp for Cape Anne or wherever he holes up when he is thirty.

Jeff Jacoby's Column in Today's Globe

is a nigh perfect primer in Bill Weld's Particular Power of Boomer Mesmerism.  Jeff lists in excruciating detail all the different ways Weld fell short of the Conservative Eschaton when he was Governor (including his bromance with His Infernal Majesty, Senate President Billy Bulger) and then sighs flops over on his back and breathily endorses Weld's Vice Presidential Candidacy on the Libertarian Ticket.
I just don't get it....but in there in an inexplicable power in Bill Weld's mixture of ready ennui, sloppiness and insolence and it makes Boston Globe Columnists of  all genders and persuasions just plotz.
Or else Trump really has Jacoby in a Box....but geez if your last hope is an inconstant jobber like Bill Weld you have reached rock bottom indeed.

Oh and It's Bill Weld's Big Clever Plan

To throw the November General Election into the US House of Representatives assuming a spirited & "successful" campaign from the 2016 Libertarian Ticket.
There is a lot of reasons that this is really a very stupid idea....
Notably the election hasn't been determined in the US House since 1876, 2000 notwithstanding since the issue was never remanded to Congress as stipulated by The Constitution. Thanks to the Late Judge Scalia I'm not sure another close election will ever be referred to the US House ever again, someday movement conservatives will realize why that is a very very bad innovation indeed.
But lets just say, that the Libertarians do somehow run a close enough race to throw the election into the US House for Resolution. Does Weld really think he can somehow persuade the worst and lowest of the South's Notorious Rotten Boroughs to break with their party and vote fer Gary & Bill? At best this scenario only compromises the integrity of the consequent President...which will likely be Trump...Because I have no doubt they'll pass right over Hilary Clinton even if she wins the majority at the polls and in the electoral college.
No this whole bizarro scenario is nothing but a passive aggressive endorsement of Donald Trump courtesy that Boomer Hero, Bill Weld.
Realistically speaking, third parties have a poor history for forcing elections into the US House even if that is their only real chance at Glory. No...normally they skew the vote enough to deform the outcome for one of the major parties. George Wallace nearly got Humprey in circa 1968 and Ralph Nader's influence in 2000 need not be recounted here.
So maybe Weld might do the democrats some unintentional good...assuming he stays on the ticket and doesn't get sick of begging off earnest chats about Ayn Rand by Labor Day.

Apparently....

Bill Weld is seriously about running for Vice President on the Libertarian Ticket this year....at least he is, for now.
I doubt he'll last til Labor Day though, Weld is is nothing if not noted for his whimsical cupidity....ergo he gets bored easily.
And at the moment he must be almightily bored to willingly enroll himself in the ranks of Fielding Wright, Glenn Taylor, Curtis LeMay, Pat Lucey, James Stockdale and the jobbers that cluttered up Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan's respective tickets.
An obscure bunch with a zombie embrace just waitin' for Bill Weld.

My Ghod but...

The Boston Globe will report most credulously any whimsical notion that features Bill Weld in a New Political Role.
Today they repeat the current rumor that Gary Johnson wants Weld to run as his Libertarian Vice Presidential candidate this fall.
Conveniently Weld is unavailable for comment (bad hangover? Who Can Say?)....but it's just the sort of slightly demented move from Weld(US Senator, Ambassador to Mexico, Governor of New York) that Globe buys into every damn time.
That guy is literally Shakespeare's Proverbial "Imp of Fortune" the aging boomers holding the last ditch in the Globe's newsroom, just love Bill Weld...they just do. Something about the ex governor's snarky sloppy indolence speaks to them on a weird nonverbal level.
I doubt Weld will take the bait from the Libertarians when push comes to shove for some very practical reasons I don't think he can stand up to the peculiar rigors of a third party vice presidential candidacy without embarrassing himself.
I can't put it more bluntly than that.
I'm idly curious though how credible a ticket Johnson can assemble under the circumstances given all the hot air the Anti Trumps like Mitt Romney have emitted these last two weeks....

The World's First "Hoo-Hah Transplant"

is relegated to the Metro Section of the Boston Globe and described therein as "Cutting Edge Reconstructive Surgery"......No Irony Intended Assuredly.

Meanwhile the epic event skipped the Front Page of the allegedly lowbrow "Boston Herald", buncha slackers over in One Herald Square Fur Shurrr.

Hey it can't all be AntiTrump Snarkage.....

We are gettin' close to...

"Fish or Cut Bait Time" for Bernie Sanders. The numbers don't favor an upset at the democratic national convention this summer to say the least.  Granted he has a fervid voter base and he clearly wants to influence the party platform....but at the end of the day he won't be nominated and the irony behind that is, the impetus for party unity has to come from the disappointed party.
Just sayin....staying in the race just prolongs the agony and complicates the necessity of party unity.
At this point it makes more sense to "bid out" for certain platform planks and maybe a say in the Vice Presidential Nomination in return for a campaign suspension.
An outright endorsement would have to wait for the convention itself if not later.
Will any of this happen?
Likely not, as I said Sanders has a devoted aggressive following, the worst of them are slandering Hillary Clinton up and down social media even as I write this...that makes it hard to cut a deal and withdraw with honor. Moreover, from what I can see Sanders has a touch of Eugene McCarthy about him, in that he may not be able to deliver his followers en masse when push comes to shove.
Senator Sanders is an Honorable Man and I hope he can prepare for an Honorable Exit from the race, one that does not advantage Donald Trump.

Speaking of Trump, anyone else hearing any bleating about a brokered convention or a bolt from the GOP? Assuredly that noise is all fading into the background, Trump has his enemies but they are prepared to generate as good a hologram of unity at the GOP convention as possible.
Just remember these are movement conservatives they are good at talking tough and selling out....which means we democrats have to start getting our sh*t together.

Current Polling Indicates

that Charlie Baker is The Most Popular Governor in the USA.
Despite pussyfooting on transgender rights, despite being a blustery do nothing on public transportation and regardless of his unhealthy fixation on Charter Schools.
But lets face facts, the public is prone to liking the moderate republican pose because its soooo low maintenance, one can comfortably enter a trance without paying any attention to the Administration At All.
And that basically is the source of Charlie's popularity he can safely be ignored.
Granted no one in the Lege can get the guy on the phone and given his lack of any imprint anywhere else we can deduce that his current high approval ratings are designed to re-election his ass in 2018 and nothing else.
What happens after that no one can say, but if I was the democratic state committee I'd keep a weather eye on Ed Markey's seat in the US Senate.
You heard it here first yo....

According to the Wall Street Journal

There is a Motorcycle Gang in Moscow called "The Night Wolves" fully colonized with Great Russian Chauvinism and given to an excess of devotion to the Nationalist Cause that is President Vladimir Putin.
And they tear around the streets of Moscow on Harley Davidson Motorcycles.
So my only note is, if you can do something like that with a straight face then Nationalism as the Opiate of the People is NOTHING compared to the numbing effects of Cognitive Dissonance.

Let Me Be Blunt...

Mitt Romney IS NOT running for President in 2016 on a "Save the GOP" third partei ticket. He hasn't the guts and something like that locks him out of any future consideration in the Republican Party Going Forward.
The rumors of "discussions" with William Kristol etc is likely nothing more than chin music with scared and aggrieved parties nothing. The Romneys, Bushes, Ryans, McConnells etc of the GOP lack the intestinal fortitude for such a move. They will likely simply withold their support for the Trump Ticket (Here, The Donald has made it easy on all of them by personally insulting almost every notable personality in the GOP in the past year) and bleed their hearts dry for the poor unfortunates that are running down ticket.
Indeed what else can any of them do?
The game plan now comes down to making sure Trump runs up an awesome smash this Fall, pose and posture as the friend of the endangered GOP down ticketers then rebuild after the dust settles. Its what worked for Richard Nixon in 1964 and seems the only play left to any of them.
Keep in mind the primary goal of this lot is retention of control over both the money supply and the ideological tone of the National GOP (they don't however as of this year seem to control the actual nomination however). They've take any setback this November as long as they can set terms over the party's revival.
They key problem here however is simple, in no ways does it recognize a historic shift within the GOP Base, the white working class southerners that deserted George Wallace for Richard Nixon and then marched for Ronald Reagan have been bought off every four years for short money when it came time to assemble a Presidential Coalition.  Now they are demanding more and things at variance with Movement Conservative Orthodoxy. Its a belligerent cohort and Trump has made them his own....Ryan-Romney et al, don't seem to understand this at all.
On the other hand if the same old same old stays in power in the GOP I'm not sure where that cohort goes, they can't backtrack to the democrats and the GOP has openly proclaimed its intentions to ignore all their issues.  This is prime breeding ground for another Trump going forward assuming the original does indeed go to smash and HRC's 13 point lead gives me scant comfort even now.

Was talkin' to some Well Known Spartans with

some insight on Beacon Hill and apparently everyone therein is talking about LBGT right, public transportation issues, revenue issues etc, meanwhile the one big issue that the Governor is talking about is....."charter schools".
This confirms my suspicion that having purged his own ranks this year with the State Committee Elections and having been dealt out of the RNC, that Charlie Baker's big political project this year is the Ballot Initiative that potentially lifts the Charter School Cap.
From Charlie's perspective it's a perfect GOP issue, it beats up on teacher unions and allows him to posture as a friend of education all on behalf of four percent of the student body in Massachusetts. The Charter School funding mechanism also malignly affects local school budgets and ruinously blurs the "chain of command" within and without said schools.
So look for that as we go forward this year, remember Charlie's definition of "progress" is always whatever allows him the maximum opportunity To Pose, Without Having to Risk Any Resources or Public Money or His Own Credibility.....

Today It Gets Real...

Last time I checked, HRC is up over Donald Trump, by Thirteen Points Nationally, and as far as I am concerned that is WAY TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT.
Granted the electoral college map is likely way more comforting, but we must not leave anything to chance. We lose this one and we may well all end up behind barbed wire, don't gimme any of that "speed the revolution" shit when the very survival of the American Experiment is at Stake.
Elections like this are won on three axes, Money, Volunteers and Time, we need all three to march in relative lockstep to win.
Trust me, Donald Trump is NOT gonna hand this one too us, he has been consistently underestimated all along, we will have fight to the last ballot, to the Last American.
As democrats, as liberals and most importantly as citizens, we have been the inheritors of a tremendous  heritage of freedom and democracy, in 2016 we must prove ourselves worthy defenders of our Cherished Legacy.
Said Legacy comes to Us by an unbroken line of heroes and heroines, now we are summoned to our own rites of heroism, we must not be slack in any way.
Bombastic yes, not my usual snark again yes, but the times demand nothing less than the truth as I know it.
Get to work
Time is wasting....

Cruz Caves In...

and withdraws from the GOP Presidential Sweeps, allegedly Kasich is soon to follow...
Um this was inevitable, Cruz and sixteen other republican aspirants underestimated Trump from the git-go, refused to coordinate until far too late and thought the answer (all but invalidated in the aftermath of the NH Primary) was to outflank Trump on the right.
It didn't work because Trump seized on the "myth of conservative grievance" and literally redefined conservatism as as a sort of one-stop shop for personal vengeance.
Audiences have been eating it up while experienced pols like Jeb Bush have been blathering on about abortion and social security privatization.
Its not that the Right Wing couldn't stop Donald Trump, it is rather that Trump reconfigured the very concept of "right wingedness" and sold it to a toxically alienated and aggrieved base.
And that aggrieved base has a point (up to a point), they are the likeliest to have their jobs abruptly outsourced, asking them to not respond as xenophobes to the perceived issues of illegal immigration seems a terrific stretch. To be sure, Trump has no answers to these issues that can work in the real world, but these people have at least been promised vengeance by The Donald and they will take that, if nothing else is on offer.
And that is what has brought a dangerously impetuous inexperienced authoritarian minded individual to the Brink of the US Presidency, the sheer mendacity of movement conservative politics and a cohort abused and sold out for far too long.
***
I also think, at the risk of a lot of criticism that it is getting time for Senator Sanders to take a good long look at the costs imposed on the Republic by prolonging his Campaign. Secretary Clinton on the other hand had best figure out a good and honest way to bring Senator Sander's base into her coalition....she is gonna need it, nothing is a lock this fall.
NOTHING.....

I was the Unwilling but Patient Recipient of a Telephone Push Poll

which all but promised me free hookers and gratis heroin if I just applauded loudly for lifting the charter school cap this November. There is as you may recall, a question on the ballot this November.
I made my indifference to the institution and my dislike of the funding mechanism plain but the whole turgid exercise staggered on for twenty minutes before petering out.
Disheartening I wonder who paid for this exercise in ideological warfare? Moreover aren't "push polls" antique weapons since they target land line telephones owners? Unless the plan is to get everyone fifty and over exercised about Dreaded Long Arm of the Teacher's Union.
I'm guessing its a little early spadework by the Governor whose lavish love for Charter Schools is a known fact, he is pretty much shut of of the RNC at this point so I wonder if Charter Schools aren't his big political project this year?
I could be wrong, again I have no evidence to back up these speculations....anyone who has some hard data feel free to comment.

Well Charlie Bakers appetite for Funny Money

continues unabated, the Globe reports he is indulging out of state donations from PACs representing interests with connections to State Government...some reformer eh?
Money is an intimidation tactic, pile enough if it up and you scare off rivals within and without your own party.
I suspect Baker is running his own private "money primary" he wants a big pile for re-election in 2018 and after that a fat rolodex to draw from should he set his sights on the US Senate.
Remember Bill Weld was Baker's chief sponsor and mentor back in the day, he tried to hand off an incumbent Governorship to his Running Mate Paul Cellucci in 1996 via a Senate Challenge to John Kerry....who can say if something similar isn't Charlie Baker's plan in 2020?
There is no other way to explain this save to note that "Charlie Baker Loves Money The Way a Hog Loves Slop" and nobody collections cashola like this unless they are either personally corrupt or else Have Big Electoral Plans, I myself tend to the later view.