Food Fight

Hunger Games, Part Two:  Part two of the Democrat’s first debate installment was raucous.  California Senator Kamala Harris took control early, landing the night’s first zinger when she broke up one of the evening’s many shouting matches by saying “America does not want a food fight. They want to know how we're going to put food on their table.” The former prosecutor then went after Joe Biden, who as expected, was the target of the night, in the crosshairs almost as much as Trump who the crowd also slammed.  Harris did that by challenging Biden’s civil rights record, ironic since Biden’s record isn’t so bad it’s just appears quaint by today’s standards.  Specifically she hit him for not supporting federal government involvement in school busing back when busing was the hot button issue of the  day.  Not coincidentally while the debate was raging her campaign released an old but endearing picture of a pig-tailed young Kamala waiting for the bus that took her to a better school outside of her neighborhood.  For his part, Biden seemed out of step, he kept harkening back to his and President Obama’s past accomplishments with answers that were too prepared and in some cases hesitantly delivered. Still we’ll have to wait for the polls to see whether or not the African American voters who until now have remained largely in Biden’s court are ready to throw him aside for Harris, Booker or anyone else.  California Congressman Eric Swalwell, one of the younger guys on the stage glared at Biden while saying that it was time for older politicians to “pass the torch” to the new generation, then he went on to hammer home his anti-gun message for the rest of the night, the gun part was great but he needed more and didn’t seem to have it.  Biden responded to the torch crack by saying that he wasn’t ready to hand it over just yet, while Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders, the other septuagenarian in the room, hit harder saying he wasn’t for any kind of discrimination, making it clear that as far as he was concerned ageism ranks right up there with racial bigotry and anti-migrant xenophobia.  Bernie was Bernie, he was articulate, accept for a weird suggestion that he would solve the too conservative Supreme Court problem by rotating judges, but he was too loud and also seemed very frustrated that others were running with “his” vision.  Not surprisingly, he pushed back on any suggestions that his “socialist” policies, particularly his plan to kill the private health insurance industry on day one would freak out the electorate, paving the way for a Trump victory.   Those concerns were expressed most pointedly by the twosome from Colorado, former Governor John Hickenlooper and current Senator Michael Bennet.  Of the two, the more charismatic Bennet had the better night, his recounting of how his own recent cancer scare and mother’s experience as a Holocaust refugee helps him appreciate even more the value of affordable heath insurance and the importance of the US being open to refugees fleeing dire circumstances was a good touch.  NY’s Senator Kirsten Gillibrand tried very hard to interject herself into almost every conversation by pulling out her women’s advocacy card and citing all of her legislative initiatives, unfortunately for her, despite her earnestness, she had a hard time breaking through, literally, despite trying to speak over others she kept getting shut out of the discourse.  South Bend Mayor Buttigieg, the only Spanish speaker of the night, and also the only  veteran of the Afghanistan war, was his usual articulate self but seemed a little muted, not surprising given that he’s been dealing with a local police shooting situation, something that Eric Swalwell threw in his face when he shouted that the Mayor should just fire his police chief and be done with it.  Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang explained his $1000 a month universal basic income concept well enough saying that it would provide workers displaced by technological advances with the cushion they need to get their lives back in order but otherwise seemed out of place and nerdy, nevertheless he was clearly far more qualified than author Marianne Williamson, whose wackadoodle, holistic, love pitch was outer worldly and not in a good way.  Of course Trump weighed in from Japan, attacking all the Democrats as migrant loving socialists.  He did that while playfully reminding Putin that he shouldn’t interfere in the upcoming election, wink, wink.  And though NY Mayor’s Bill De Blasio wasn’t on the stage last night, he did manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yesterday while further feeding Trump’s socialist scare tactics.  Instead of just basking in the glow of the kudos that he received for his Wednesday night debate performance he attended a Miami Airport union rally where he urged the workers on with a quote from Che Guevara, the Argentine Cuban Marxist revolutionary who is despised by Miami’s Cuban population.  Como se dice “oops” en Espanol?

The Supremes:  The Court’s much awaited decisions on partisan gerrymandering and the census questionnaire citizenship question were announced yesterday and the results were somewhat good and very bad.  First the bad, by a 5 to 4 decision the court ruled that partisan gerrymandering, while not necessarily a good thing, was perfectly legal.  Chief Justice Roberts who wrote the majority opinion acknowledged that “excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,” but concluded that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts,” his way of saying that the court won’t be hearing anymore of these cases, that going forward it’s up to the states and legislators to solve their own problems.  Justice Roberts switched sides on the citizenship question.  Though he didn’t say that a citizenship question could never be justified, he joined with the liberal wing by saying that the administration had to “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public, accepting contrived reasons would defeat the purpose of the enterprise. If judicial review is to be more than an empty ritual, it must demand something better than the explanation offered for the action taken in this case.”  In other words, he slammed the Trump administration for lying about their rationale for adding the question.  It’s not clear what happens next.  Theoretically, the administration could come back to the court with a better explanation for wanting the question in the census form but the clock is running out, the census forms take a very, very long time to print.  Trump of course has an answer for that, he’s now threatening to hold up the constitutionally mandated census until he gets the court to rule his way.      

That Rape Thing:  The NY Times has made up for the failure to give front page coverage to columnist E Jean Carroll’s allegation that Trump attacked her.  The paper’s intrepid reporters managed to track down and convince the two unnamed women who E Jean confided in “contemporaneously” to come forward. One of those women is Lisa Birnbach, a well-known popular journalist who wrote the bestselling “The Official Preppy Handbook” and the other is Carol Martin, a former local NY news anchor.  Both women confirm E Jean’s harrowing account.  Birnbach, who E Jean called as she was running from Bergdorf Goodman, is the one who encouraged her to report her attack to the police; Martin is the one who told her to keep quiet, that Trump and his coterie of expensive attack lawyers would make her life miserable. If only anyone cared.