I'm a big fan of Aaron Sorkin, who writes some smart crisp dialogue, and often adds a nice pragmatic edge to conventional liberalism while being funny (sound like anyone we know?), but every once in awhile he displays some world class political ignorance.
He's especially clueless about vacancies in Congress.
In Season One of The West Wing, Sorkin did a show where a black Ohio member of the House had been appointed to his seat after the incumbent, his wife, had died–this was, of course, constitutionally impossible.
In Sunday night's episode of The Newsroom, which took place in 2011, the Executive Producer's boyfriend, one Wade Campbell, is revealed to have exploited their relationship to get appearances on the show while at the same time being in talks with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee about running for Anthony Weiner's seat in the event Weiner is elected Mayor.
Let me count the problems.
1) While the 2010 election, in which Weiner got 59% in his district, along with the 2008 Presidential, where Obama got 55% (the only place in the State he did worse than John Kerry), should have revealed to the DCCC that this was not a safe seat, their subsequent conduct, when it actually did become vacant, reveals the DCCC thought it was safely Democratic, and therefore they would not have been involved in choosing a candidate in what was perceived as a party sinecure.
2) On opinion and belief, Wade Campbell is not Jewish, and while Weiner's district could (and did) choose a non-Jew in a general election; it was highly unlikely to do so in a Democratic primary.
3) On opinion and belief, Wade Campbell has never been to Brooklyn or Queens, and was thus unlikely to be saleable there, even after a few TV appearances.
4) As this was a NYS special election in a multi-county NYS district, the nominee was going to be chosen by the Party’s County Leaders casting their county's proportion of the district's Democratic vote in the last gubernatorial election, which mean it was going to be chosen by Joe Crowley, a Democratic member of Congress thisclose with Nancy Pelosi who was not going to be dictated to by people from outside of Queens; especially people who Crowley saw as underlings of the Democratic Conference of which Crowley was a leading member:
“Hey, I don’t work for you—you work for me.”
5) The election, if it took place, would take place in 2013, after a reapportionment, in a state losing seats, in a seat next to that of a County Leader who himself would be protected. No one in 2011 would know where this seat would be, if it would be at all.
I could go on and on and on, but it is clear that Wade Campbell could never have been in talks with the DCCC in 2011 about Anthony Weiner's seat.
The Times says Republican efforts to disenfranchise duly enrolled voters = Democratic efforts to educate the oppositions base with facts about the President's opponent.
So, of course one can instantly see the moral equivalence. The Politics of Anything Goes campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com
Scalia v McConnell & Romney. Mitt Romney and the Republican Party do not want to disclose basic truths for fear that someone will www.slate.com
As a hack myself, I love this article; money quote:
"If I hear one more person accuse the Obama campaign of practicing “Chicago-style politics,” I'm gonna kick all his nephews off the park-district payroll. I’m gonna send some precinct captains over to straighten him out. Mitt Romney and his surrogates don’t understand what Chicago-style politics means. No one seems to have told them that it’s been gone for 25 years. And they don’t get that Barack Obama, in his Chicago days, never had anything to do with it." Mitt Romney’s campaign is attempting to link Barack Obama to the corruption of Chicago-style politic www.slate.com
Putting the D back in IDC? Klein Won't Back GOPer for Majority Leader www.nydailynews.com
He may daven at the Bialystocker schul, but back in the day, Shelly Silver's real Rabbi was a non-Orthodox Jewish City Marshall and District Leader out of the Truman Club named Harold Warnitsky, whose nicknamed explains the Speaker's affinity with Boston pol Billy Bulger.
As a friend told me, "They both owe their careers to guys named Whitey." A fitting award for Speaker Silver? www.nypost.com Boston
Whatever you think of Kevin Parker, one has to admit he dresses sharp–but now he may have met his match.
This girl puts the RAD in Haredi!
In further news, GOP Congressional candidate Rabbi Schmuely Boteach is going to fix her up with one of the Tischler Brothers:
ABE: I’m so grateful to Hashem; I’m going off to lay Teffilin
MO: But, I thought her name was Mindy; Oy! Better put on a phylactery.
It is one thing to be a more preposterous candidate than Wade Campbell; it is quite another to be more preposterous than Kevin Parker. State Senate Candidate Mindy Meyer Proclaims Herself ‘DIVA OF THE DISTRICT’ politicker.com
It's a strong word, but I'm gonna have to use it–this Rabbi is a liar.
Informed consent does not limit religious free exercise; informed consent is the only way to facilitate this religious free exercise with a clear conscience.
In this way, no one will be stopped from practicing their religion, but they will be doing so with open eyes.
The alternative to informed consent is to impede free exercise in the service of a compelling government interest to protect helpless children by banning the practice altogether.
Rabbi, for thousands of years our people practiced their religion in the face of torture and death.
We survived.
Surely we can survive the truth as well. Rabbis Defend Controversial Circumcision Practice to City Health Officials www.cityandstateny.com