Charlie Piles In...

Governor Baker finally put some skin in the game this week appearing in a "Yes on Question Two" TV Commercial, charter schools are pretty much his sole Big Political Project this year.  It'd be precious and lovely if Q2 went down to defeat, it's faddish education policy (which is always a bad thing) and a No Vote might put a little dent in Mister Seventy Percent's shiny chrome ass.

Alas though, the Globe endorsed "Yes on Question Two" today, but then Morrissey Boulevard has never been immune to the lure of trendy utopian educational schemes. Last time I checked, Q2 was trending towards No these developments might move the needle in the opposite direction.

By the way those "No On Question Four" commercials are uniformly appalling and reprehensible a new low in Massachusetts Politics and that is saying something. I'm no great fan of pot smoking but we've been locking up potheads with extreme prejudice for decades and none of it has damaged marijuana's appeal in the slightest. Maybe a regulatory approach is the answer....and if we pick up a few sin tax shekels in the process so much the better.
And while we are on the subject, why is Donald Trump buying adverts in the Boston Market? He has a better chance of carrying The Tenth Circle of Hell at this point, the short answer seems to indicate he wants some penetration in New Hampshire...but then again he is down ten points there the last time anyone checked.  Maybe he is hoping for a slender loss something he can spin into a recount lawsuit but Occam's Razor suggests sheer spite might be the real reason at the end of the day.
Kelly Ayotte who has been on or off the Trump bandwagon all year long must be tearing her hair out about this play by the GOP nominee.

As I predicted

Bill Weld has thrown in the towel on his fling with the Libertarian Party obliquely urging his constituents not to vote for someone on the basis of their entertainment value. A Dig at Trump yes, but pretty much a epitaph for the appalling ignorant and maladriot Libertarian Presidential Nominee Gary Johnson.
Basically Johnson is a dumber less belligerent version of Donald Trump if such a thing can be imagined.
Weld's downfall is that he is a Boomer's Boomer at the end of the day, he lets his whims and his easily bored nature make critical decisions for him. Its why he ran for the US Senate, Left the Governorship and ran for Veep as a Libertarian. These were all bad decisions and they were taken for very frivolous reasons every time.
His natural constituents are his fellow boomers people who deeply covet Weld's vices....and at the end of the day his vices have undone Bill Weld yet again.  Except now he doesn't even have a party platform anymore he's deserted the GOP the Libertarians are a spent electoral force....but beware his whims all the same he might become a democrat. THAT is good reason alone to keep the door locked and barred!!

HRC in a Granite State of Mind....

Dateline Goffstown New Hampshire.


Hillary Clinton did not do half bad attracting herself a crowd yesterday on the quad of Saint Anselm College, of course it was a beautiful day and seemingly endless waves of families with young daughters rolled up in Hybrids parked in Battalion Formation to see a Woman On The Brink of Becoming U.S. President.
Lots of mothers with daughters that was a potent motif in that crowd believe me.  Over five thousand in attendance by my rough estimate.
My Ghod Security was STRICT at this event, metal detectors and the TSA screened everyone and everything and the Hilltop was seething with Secret Service Agents in Kevlar Vests and Aviator Sunglassses.
Gone are the days when The Reverend Jesse Jackson (That Protestant Prince of Controversy) could idly wander the Campus with three Secret Service Agents in Tow & spontaneously harangue the students.
Citizen Clinton was introduced by the redoubtable Senator Elizabeth Warren who has a passionate rhetorical style and a voice that fairly throbs with indignation. Our Senior Senator has had a profitable autumn making Donald Trump's life perfectly miserable ginnin' up her own name stating out some nice political turf as well and if all and sundry get HRC elected so much the better.
It bears some watching because while HRC and EW are on the same page about corporate criminality etc, Warren is a lot more definite and detailed in her views. Again she is staking out some territory and hopes to secure herself a place at the table when and if any of this is getting read into law.  But then as we soar thru the modern liberal litany, Warren tends to be more detailed and definite in her views about a lot of issues. This is something to watch down the line, if HRC wins a chunk of her legislative probably depends on keeping EW in her coalition.
And then Citizen Clinton took the stage and crowd roared like starvelings invited to a barbeque....the Lady seems to have at last found her constituency and in NH having the battlements manned by suburban women is no small thing believe me.
Her mantra was that 2016 represents a "consequential election" and indeed it is.....but HRC's response to the challenge was to hype hype the independence and integrity of the NH downticket, Senatorial Hopeful Maggie Hassan (locked into a tight race with Kelly Ayotte) in particular came in for a very weighty load of praiseful praise.
Ditto Carol Shea-Porter (who has been elected to the US House and never yet Re-Elected)....the big competitive races in NH are in part tailor made to HRC's suddenly blatant appeal to women voters across the board.
Clearly Clinton wants very badly a "Downticket Mandate" a bigger US House Contingent (who knows maybe the democrats can pull off the hat trick and take the House Rotten Boroughs and all)....if she can take the US Senate and Roll Up a Big Turnout next month she can obliterate Trump's claims of a rigged election and demonstrate her nice long coat-tails to all and sundry. Just remember, even Obama wasn't really able to shift the balance of power in Congress much past 2010. In HRC's mind legitimacy and her own ability to govern are clearly linked to grabbing off a democratic majority somewhere on The Hill.
One of the consequences of Trump's "skeezer tapes" is that it has allowed Citizen Clinton a priceless opportunity to reintroduce herself to women and to move left on a lot of "women's issues". Saint Anselm College is a famously conservative catholic school and never has Planned Parenthood come in for such fulsome praise on that Campus...The Monks must've been hiding under their sparse beds and covering their ears with their equally sparse pillow.
Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton are not pulpit virtuosas by any stretch neither of them will make anyone forget Aimee Semple McPherson....but they have a similar style, some snark, a few digs at the opposition, a few statistics, some fulsome praise, endorsements and a Bright Future If We All But Work Together.
Its a sort of "Hubert Humphrey" approach, if delivered in a less manic fashion than the Late Vice Presiden, of the two, Warren seems to be better at it, but that is simply because she is willing to risk more in terms of specifics.
Take student debt, Warren talked about making college "free", Clinton prefers the term "affordable", now affordable gives her a lot more room to manuever when it comes time to submit legislature to congress but "free college" resonates better with the electorate and its easier to remember as well.
Meanwhile Clinton offers free public college tuition for incomes under 125k, indexing student debt to income along with restoring technical Education in the High Schools (hey Hillary PLEASE throw "Civics" in there while you are at it!)
So its all reasonably specific but its not quite "Free"...
On thother hand she does seem to want to raise the minimum wage and you set your watch by her desire to rebuilt our infrastructure with Union Labor, in these reaches of the Liberal Litany she wand Warren are very simpatico.
More and more I get a weird Truman style vibe from HRC closet moderate or not like Harry Hillary's Mind Seems Made Up on a Host of Issues "A Little Touch of Harriet in the Night" in other words. Keep in mind plenty of people dismissed Truman as a squish in the lead up to 1948 its not always indicative of indecision it comes from a desire to preserve the maximum freedom of action.
If HRC has a Big Rhetorical Moment its her invocation of "America is Great Because America is Good" but thats a sort of final rebuke to Trump and his Apocalyptic Narrative its also something straight out her Husband's Detailed Playbook.  Its not a specifically Liberal Notion its mostly promulgated to remind everyone she is a reliable negotiating partner and neither utopian nor declinist.

Ya Know....

The Bar is Set Pretty Low at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner....groaners so straight out of Amateur Night in Dixie are greeted as the Very Font of Comedy by all concerned.
Hell, Mike Dukakis KILLED at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in 1988....a man with all the mirthmaking potential of a Bag of Hammers!
So of course Yesterday, Trump STILL goes completely berserk and collects a lusty chorus of boos as he staggered thru a graceless stack of insults in the course of said event.
At this point I would be profoundly embarrassed to have a graceless lack witted oaf like Donald Trump as my Nation's Tyrant!! The guy is literally a comedy killer a mirthless psychic arsonist.
So I am taking this opportunity in this increasingly obscure reach of the internet to Loudly Endorse Hillary Clinton for President....because at the end of the day At Least She Knows How to Laugh....because humor to her is something else other than the malign goadings of psychological goblins.
Dear Ghos if you can't get thru the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner without triggering revulsion and disgust...its' time to board up shop and decamp for a cave somewhere.

SAVE THE LAUGHTER VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON IN 2016!

"Your Two Minutes are Up"

I hate it when I am right sometimes...because as predicted last night's debate was a rock bottom experience in every way including the mere existence of Our Constitution has become an irritant to a would be demagogue.
On the other hand THAT demagogue is Donald Trump who clearly hasn't got the common sense Ghod gave a bag of hammers.
In a word a degrading spectacle, I could tell Citizen Clinton was getting visibly bored by Donald Trump's weird pidgin English and mind numbingly repetitive lexicon of threats.
I give the Lady Credit, she kept her cool for the most part as her opponent angrily dismissed those cozy constitutional notions of legitimacy & the orderly transfer of power.
Trump on the other hand fumed for ninety minutes snarled and harassed and accomplished nothing, I suspect this is what he does when he is baffled by events that run outside his control.
I struggle with the right literary metaphor for Donald Trump, the line of least resistance suggests Willie Stark or perhaps Buzz Windrip Sinclair Lewis' dictator from "It Can't Happen Here".
But last night was a veritable "primal scream" pathetically desperate to confront and affront...suggests Performance Art, less Yoko Ono and much more Andy Kaufman perhaps.
Kaufman & Trump share a similar disconnect, Andy thought he was being funny (even when he was being willfully weird and obscure) and Donald thinks last night's prolonged tirade was a species of persuasion.
Kaufman had a character he loved playing, an temperamental lounge singer "Tony Clifton" whose whole stage act would degenerate into insulting and baiting his audience with a abandon that would give Don Rickles' pause.  At this point Tony could well be a sort of grim prophecy of Donald Trump....if any of you have a better metaphor feel free to share, I for one still feel dirty from last night and need a shower.

Curt Schilling ain't Running for Sh*t in 2018

The LAST THING IN THE WORLD Charlie Baker wants in 2018 is some dumbass miniTrump running against Elizabeth Warren in the General Election, the very race that The Governor longs to cast as a replay of 1994 with a nice bankrupt no-name democrat as his key opponent.
Who the hell is Curt Schilling kidding anyway I promise you the necessary money will never materialize, Charlie will make sure of that!
Moreover Schilling supposedly claims he'll make the race if his wife agrees (!!!)....I guarantee Charlie Baker will pay that good woman a princessly sum in off da books funny money to kibosh the whole dealio.

I Hope I am Wrong but

I suspect that tomorrow night's debate is gonna hit a new low for rhetorical crapulence.  I make this prediction as I am weary "agreeance" with Josh Marshall that Donald Trump's answer to all electoral adversity is to treble down on belligerence .... And tomorrow night is his last time to primally scream at Citizen Clinton in Real Time.
Because that is Donald Trump's real breakthrough, he is first NSFW candidate ever nominated by a major party.
So as such, I recommending that all parents of small children make sure they do not watch said debate, if need be, put on "The Iron Giant" or "The Incredibles" or "Frozen" in the playroom....in fact stay in the playroom and watch it with the kids..

There is wild talk out there

of post election violence and or insurrection should Citizen Clinton Clear the Boards on Election Night.
I'm skeptical quite frankly.
I don't see Donald Trump as a sufficiently motivated and ruthless revolutionary leader to attempt such a foolish thing.  I for one believe that at a lot of his alt right rhetoric is cynical dabbling on his part but in some ways that's a more dangerous path.
Moreover I suspect Trump just doesn't have the guts to see something like that through to it's natural conclusion, billionaires have "way too much to lose" when push comes to shove.
His base simply isn't organized for insurrection anyway blustery threats aside.....
Occam's Razor however suggests that Trump will simply go on inciting others to violence sometimes casually and sometimes quite deliberately just to see how far he can push things.
And yes that is a bad precedent to set in every way.

By the Way

I just wanna humbly and politely retract all those trepidations I had about Bernie Sanders' "electability", cleared if faced with Donald Trump as the GOP Candidate the Vermont Senator would have Cleaned the Donald's Clock.
But then I suspect the democrats could have nominated Earl K. Long or the James Michael Curley and beaten Trump like a red headed stepchild....

Tons of News

All of it though mystically the same....the news cycle is stuck on a repeat loop.

Every day the GOP Candidates educates a new "Tantrump" and wallows in bellicose nonsense and self pity while the GOP just tries it best to avoid what is the world's first NSFW republican presidential contender.

Meanwhile here in Massachusetts funny money floods the airwaves on behalf of abolishing the charter school cap, whether  the ballot measure passes or not, funny money will become the New Normal in Massachusetts Politics.

And up in NH the Presidential Campaign replicates itself in miniature in what is, up to now, a tight tight race.  Boston's TV stations are making a fortune running those goddawful adverts on behalf of Trump, Ayotte and bellicose bloated Frank Giunta.....ishhh....it's no fun to be perceived as a swing state is it?

The GOP Base is Living It's Own Nightmare

Normally the hardcore of the GOP Base is compelled to "Make a Bad Deal for Short Money" during a Presidential Election. This is how a gender/ethnic/theological exclusionist electoral cohort has to come around to vote for a more outwardly moderate candidate like George Bush Jr, John McCain or Mitt Romney.
Normally the rejectionists don't have the numbers or the money to dictate a "sugar high candidate" entirely to their satisfaction. This is nothing new, it's coalition politics and it's been par for the course since Thomas Jefferson was branding John Adams a Kulak Landlord.
But in Donald Trump the GOP Base has At Last the Very Embodiment of Their Iron Dream....Christian politics, oppressive gender norms, ethnic exclusion etc etc....the whole menu in one enormous serving.  So of course it's just hilarious that at the end of the day they've traded making a bad deal with a goo-goo squish like Mitt Romney for an even worse deal with an unelectable perv who hasn't the religious sensibility God Gave a Cotton Poodle.
And the lesson here is, to get their sacred agenda broken over the head of the republic, ideologically colonized voters will vote for almost anyone down to the aforementioned cotton poodle as long as their candidate doesn't deviate.
So literally, deviation is the only real sin, not philandering, sexual assault or borrowing mad path cashola from dubious Russian Oligarchs.
Remember that as we go forward here....

From a purely technical perspective....

One of the things I find so interesting about this election is the sheer situational distaste projected at both candidates.  Granted Donald Trump seems to crave "negative reinforcement" in a crude tweener kind of a way....but it's no joke to assert both nominees are viscerally disliked.
Granted a good chunk of this is pundit fodder, and there is a naturally tendency to fallaciously assume that the opinions on the Op-Ed Pages somehow embody the larger thinking of the electorate.
My point is, that unpopular candidates aren't the exception they are sort of the norm as presidential contests go. I mean look at the succession of presidential elections from 1868 thru 1912 it's a gruesome recitation of second rate men versus third rate men all in a downward race to see who could promise to do LESS as the US President.
This is when those race weren't loaded up with outright weirdos (Horace Greeley...who died of shame a few weeks after losing in 1872) or preposterously corrupt schemers (James G. Blaine I am looking at you Boyo).
In the modern era "Humphrey Versus Nixon" was a close race between two very unpopular candidates as well as "Reagan versus Carter" in 1980 (look at the polling if you don't believe me, Saint Ron was not running away with that one up to that debate)....
To me, the system with it's Newtonian checks and balances seems to mutely assume that for the most part "regression to the mean" even sometimes "regression to the mean spirited" is gonna be the norm in presidential contests.
We have a culture and a system with so many venues and means to persuasion we tend to assume (dangerously so) that those designated are automatically gonna be of a pleasant persuasive disposition.
In everyday life as in politics, this is not always the case.
This does leave us at the doorstep of the "lesser of the two evils" but I think that is just where the Framers of the US Constitution Intended Us to Be and indeed in some sense that is where our liberties are best safeguarded sometimes.

A Line Got Crossed Last Night in the Second Presidential Debate

Donald Trump basically threatened to throw Hillary Clinton in jail should he be elected President of  the United States next month.
That is a new low in US Politics, degrading a proud republic to the level of The Philippines or Nigeria..."primal scream politics" at it's worst and a boast one associates with a second rate third world tyrant.
If I could give you all one simple stark reason not to vote for Trump that'd be the one...."no tyranny in 2016".

Another thing....

these "skeezer tapes" from Donald Trump pretty much ruin any hope of attacking Hilary Clinton by way of her marriage in the next debate.  I can only imagine the rejoinders that her team is drilling into her even as I write this doggerel.
Granted some of her "Wall Street Speeches" have come to light, but full & reliable transcripts have not yet been made available...so pretty much she has plenty of room to maneuver should that be Trump's line of attack.
Just sayin'....

Kelly Ayotte had to....

walk back comments to the effect that Donald Trump was a "Role Model" for her children in the wake of these comments from the GOP Nominee.
Ayotte just has the worst luck imaginable in politics, she marked out hard for Romney in 2012 and was largely relegated to the role of warm up act for the Former Viceroy, her dreamy dreams of a cush VP nomination on a ticket with Bush or Cruz or Rubio this year got "Trumped"....now she has a nominee who hates her, one she can't really endorse or denounce...bad karma indeed.
And yet she is up in the polls in her Senate Race, mostly due to those vicious lying commercials she deployed wherein Ayotte claims she is working hard on behalf of every junkie in the Granite State.
Ah but phony moderates always prosper don't they?

Polls are tight up there but that is an October Phenom common to every Presidential Election Year in NH...The Spartans are up there in force and ground game still counts for something in NH. So stay frosty one and all...

Mike Pence...

the GOP's VP Nominee this year, exuded a weary fatalistic air last night, he clearly cannot wait for Trump to Go for the Terminal Electoral Nap so he can switch sides and cozy up to the party's "restorationists" (ergo Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, The Bush Family, Mitt Romney, John McCain et al).
Pence hardly defended Trump at all last night, Kaine's prosecutorial zeal clearly overwhelmed the Indiana Governor, one would almost suspect Mike was doing this deliberately.
But then this is Mike "Dense" we are talking about here, not known for his high IQ when push comes to shove.
If I was Trump I'd keep an eye on Mike Pence he clearly has a stake in an Epic GOP Fail come November something that'll jump start his own presidential prospects in 2020.

How The Hell Does Anyone...

Lose a Capital-B Billion Dollars on a Casino Deal?

How?

The only people who ever lost money on a casino were either twitchy weird like Howard Hughes or the Toxically Inept say....Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.
Trump however lost a billion in Atlantic City on his famed Casino and rolled the loss over into what is likely a twenty one year long exemption from income taxes.
Seldom has ineptitude and hubris been so lucratively rewarded....otherwise there isn't a shred of "business acumen" in this sordid story, the right lawyers and CPOs worked overtime and BOOM the debt disintegrated and entirely to Trump's advantage.

This is not "smarts" to paraphrase, Citizen Trump...it is a logical consequence of thirty six years of wealth worship within and without the public sector in the USA. If you can hire enough attorneys you can skate past any malign consequences in this country THAT is the lesson here.
Our laws and our mores currently favor financials and financial speculation, they set few limits and  those are routinely ignored.
Maybe Donald Trump might've been held accountable IF we had real equality before the law, if the tax burden was truly fairly apportioned and if if if the system couldn't be gamed....but it can and so Trump lives to smirk another day.

There is an opportunity here for the democrats and sundry independents, but they must be bold and draw a line...debt has to mean the same thing for rich as it does for the poor is a very good start as far as I am concerned.

The New Hampshire State Legislature...

serves sans compensation save a paltry travel allowance.  And the result has been at least one former state representative supplemented his income by selling pot to his colleagues.
And he was a republican as well and it went down while he was In Office....and he had customers in the legislature's leadership!
Damn the Spirit of Free Enterprise LIVES in the Granite State!

"Facts are Stupid Things"

or so Ronald Reagan once allegedly opined on the road to sainthood & senescence....

But for sheer overwhelming stupidity, you can't beat last week's presidential debate, and you have to likely go back to 1980 to find a pairing two more unpopular presidential candidates.
That debate has entered Reagan Mythology as a defining moment in Saint Ron's meandering Path to Power, people forget though that the polls up to the beginning of October described a tenuous lead for then President Carter. Reagan needed that debate badly to disperse however temporarily his well earned rep as a low info politician who was quick on the trigger.
Accordingly his campaign caved in to almost all President Carter's pre-debate demands all in a desperate effort to get the incumbent in the room in time to make an impact on the election. Carter for his part agreed to the debate fatally late in the campaign so when Reagan vaulted that low bar set for him that was a signal for the late-deciders to desert the democrats in epic droves.
Carter made the mistake of thinking he could tease Reagan into saying something stupid , Reagan could always do that on his own he proved however remarkably difficult to bait when push  came to shove.
Gerald Pomper's seminal election summary indicated that the subsequent GOP Landslide was no validation of conservative ideology, rather it was a desperate search for a President who could take control of events.

Back in 1980 It took about a week for that to happen, just as it has taken a week for Trump's terrible first debate performance to sink in with the electorate and wipe out all the gains he made in September.
If you are a democrat, do not rejoice in this there are more debates to come and like Reagan, the bar is set lower for Trump than it is for Clinton.
And based on what happened in 1980, voters can change their minds twice in a short period of time....with no ill effects.
Remember it is All About Leadership, focus on that and you win.