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On Tuesday, I had lunch with a consultant, who I’ll call Wiseman, and yes, he’s actually a composite, but all dialogue is guaranteed verbatim.
Lunch was pretty uneventful til we got to the topic of the State Senate Dems.
WISEMAN: Everyone wanted them to lose, and when I say everyone, I mean every one. Except for the Senate Dems themselves, and even a few of them.
Give Jeff Klein credit; in the battle between him and John Sampson to see who can most quickly surrender every last vestige of the moral high ground, Klein, against all odds, has managed to keep pace.
My ambivalence about Lieberman is reflected in my extremely reluctant endorsement of him in his 2006 primary, followed by my even less enthusiastic endorsement of primary winner Ned Lamont in the general
Back in 72, shortly after when Sarge Shriver agreed to undertake the thankless job (not his first) of being the replacement bottom half of the worst landslide losing ticket of the 20th century (and becoming the centerpiece of a nasty National Lampoon parody for his troubles) he was campaigning in Youngstown, Ohio, the buckle of the Rust Belt, with
"They say it's a government takeover of health care – a big lie, just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing.
Just when you think the Mayor may have been chastened by his recent run of luck, he proves he didn't assimilate the lesson that the problem wasn't the accumulation of precipitation, but rather the uncleaned accumulations of arrogance and cluelessness.
As I think I've already made clear, I've little problem with the spending (more accurately “cutting”) side of the Governor's agenda.
We don't have the money, and last year's elections make clear there is no mandate (and probably the opposite) for any tax increases. Though the economy is a great part of our revenue shortfalls, there are also structural problems with the way our state does its business.
The crisis will be a great opportunity to address a few of them.
Let us not forget that when Dr. King began his career, America was in many of its component parts a de jure apartheid state. By the time King died, though his work was not complete (and is not yet now) America was no longer so.