I have refrained from commenting on the slow-motion car crash that has been Anthony Weiner’s campaign to be the next mayor of New York City, partly because it has been hard to keep up with each new lurid detail or revelation that has emerged with every passing day, but also because the story is just very profoundly sad. Here is a very gifted politician, someone who clearly and viscerally cares about New Yorkers, undone by bizarre and foolish decisions made in his personal life.
Rachel Maddow did a good, and fairly humorous, breakdown of the story on one of her recent shows:
It is hard to disagree with her analysis. But with the latest polling data showing Weiner slipping into fourth place, it is also disappointing, because of the various Democratic mayoral candidates, he is the only one who possesses anything approaching real charisma or political astuteness. Were it not for his personal demons and indiscretions, he would likely make a very decent mayor, and a great ambassador for the city.
But since this is now almost certainly not going to transpire, rather than laughing at the man any further, it might be good to look back at some of the political waves that he made, and the highlights from his congressional career:
The man is a good politician, you have to hand it to him. As regular readers will know, I am scrupulously Semi-Partisan. But nonetheless I must admit it is quite cathartic to watch a Democrat who can deliver a line and give as good as so many Republicans are able to do. Lord knows the Democratic Party needs more public figures like Anthony Weiner. Just with less sexting on the side.
CNN has announced that its highly anticipated debate show “Crossfire” will relaunch on Sept. 16 at 6:30 p.m.
“Crossfire… will resemble the show’s original format with passionate conversation and focus on topical events of the day,” the network announced in a press release. “The daily, 30-minute program will feature two hosts and guests each night, discussing a range of issues from all sides of the political and cultural spectrum. In addition to the weekday show, the Crossfire co-hosts will appear across the network’s programming.”
So continues the revamp of CNN as it seeks to find its own niche between the partisan rivalries of MSNBC and Fox News.
Unfortunately, the hosts of the show include Newt Gingrich (the philandering Pilsbury doughboy) and a slew of ex-Obama administration alumni. Based on the line-up, I don’t think we can expect very much.
A normal, rational response when a constituent asks a question about how to stop the “foreign born, America-hating communist despot” illegally occupying the White House might be to correct him on the basic factual errors in his statement, and to move on to a saner question.
But not if you are US Representative Martha Roby from Alabama (where else). She thanks the gentleman for his question, makes a light-hearted joke about the volume at which he made his point…and then pivots and actually responds to his question, emphasising how important the congressional oversight aspect of her job is when it comes to keeping Obama’s evil Marxist plans in check.
This is a big part of the reason why Pres. Obama trounced Mitt Romney in 2012, and why the Republican Party continues to push away moderates, minorities, young Americans, students, and the like. Instead of shining a spotlight on the ugliest and most extreme elements lurking and growing within their party, they are happy to look the other way as bigotry and xenophobia slowly capture their base.
It seems like anything is fair game as long as it is directed at Pres. Obama. The Republican Party has worked night and day to cleverly define him as the “other”, and their chickens have come home to roost.
Their shameless and opportunistically ploy to arouse suspicion of Pres. Obama’s goals and policies has backfired, creating an increasingly paranoid and bigoted base.
Absolutely right. You can’t be a serious national party and keep close ties to people like the town hall questioner in this video. While many Americans may disapprove of President Obama’s policies, a majority do understand that he was American-born and legally elected, and regard this fringe right-wing hysteria as silly, if not downright contemptible. And we see this time and again, with deranged anti-Obama loons asking their Republican representatives questions dripping with ignorance, racism or both, only to have those same representatives take the question and run with it rather than correcting the record.
Until the Republican Party grows a pair and stops being fearful of alienating these fringe lunatics by publicly correcting them and disassociating themselves from some of the more hyperbolic Tea Party nonsense, they won’t be taken seriously by enough Americans to win another national election. And as long as they tacitly endorse the idea – or rely on the support of those who believe – that the president of the United States secretly hates the country that he leads, they will continue to be a laughing stock and a source of shame to anyone with an average or higher IQ.
Romney’s huge, resounding, calamitous election defeat will soon be one year in the past. Time to grow up, now.
A walking, talking advertisement for the benefits of separation between church and state
In their latest editorial on the subject, The Guardian appears to have given up on the one-step, transformative reform of the House of Lords that was set in motion by the last Labour government and the next steps enshrined in the coalition agreement (before the Tories and LibDems blew the plan to bits in a fit of politically childish pique). Instead, they now advocate a slower (if that were possible), multi-step process of gradual and incremental reforms before we arrive at the cherished goal of having a working bicameral legislature where both houses hold democratic legitimacy.
We begin with the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth at the current state of affairs, and lamentation that the yearly spectacle of undeserving people being honoured with the privilege of sitting in the upper house has taken place yet again:
What an embarrassment to the so-called mother of parliaments. Thirty more cronies and party donors, leavened by a handful of the genuinely worthy and the downright eccentric (what’s an active journalist like Danny Finkelstein doing on the list?), appointed to the democratic world’s largest legislative chamber. It’s hard to imagine where they’ll find room to sit, never mind a job to do, in a chamber where in some debates there’s a 90-second limit on speeches. Yet proposals for reform are discarded. Even a modest suggestion of voluntary retirement founders. And prime ministerial patronage continues more or less unchecked.
The whole exercise is, in the widest sense of the word, corrupt: a system where individuals who make huge party political donations and – however sound their judgment and broad their experience – are awarded a place in the legislature as a gift from the leader of the party is just as much a scandal waiting to happen now as it was when Maundy Gregory was operating the system in the interests of Lloyd George.
But after this strident denunciation of the way things work, The Guardian goes turncoat on us:
Yet despite its Ruritanian appointments process, the Lords is generally acknowledged to be working unexpectedly effectively. Peers do take seriously their duty to scrutinise legislation, they have a good record for improving it, and some have been doughty defenders of individual freedoms. And look closely at who actually sits in the Lords: since the hereditaries were largely ejected in 1999, it’s become a more representative cross-section of the electorate – and the share of the votes cast – than the Commons, and more ethnically diverse. Even the gender balance is at least no worse. The danger is that the more useful it is, the harder it will become to reform.
Well, yes. This is why bicameral legislatures are a good thing. A more ruminative upper house will generally act as a brake (if not a stop) on the more reckless or short-term politically calculating moves of the lower house (and Lord knows that countries like Britain and America need such a check). This fact holds true even when the upper house in question has no real democratic legitimacy. But the fact that the House of Lords is doing okay-ish at the moment (if we choose to ignore the recent lobbying scandal and the fact that 26 lords spiritual continue to exert the not-always-benign influence of the Church of England over our lawmaking) is insufficient reason to reduce the pressure for comprehensive reform.
Most of the hereditary peers are now gone, so Britain is at least spared the indignity of having nascent laws scrutinised by the inbred landed gentry of the realm. We are just left to tackle the political appointees, the favoured party fundraisers and other beneficiaries of prime ministerial patronage who continue to occupy the place. We must also end the ridiculous, anachronistic idea that it is in any way appropriate to reward a person for their deeds (no matter how worthy or altruistic) by giving them a seat in our legislature. The honours system must be divorced from the political system as a matter of great urgency.
The Guardian concludes:
No one supposed, in 1999, that removing the hereditary peers was where reform would end. But since then, the next step has invariably been too much for some and not enough for others. So without abandoning the ambition for an elected upper chamber, perhaps it is time to make progress in smaller steps.
I would rather abandon any expectation of further changes in the next two years in the hope that more comprehensive reform can be achieved following the 2015 general election. This is not an unrealistic goal. True reform was part of the coalition agreement and very much on the cards until the Tories and Liberal Democrats decided to have a mutually destructive bust-up over linking the policy to changing electoral boundaries. Assuming the parties can find it within themselves to grow up slightly, Lords reform can be part of a future coalition agreement (or single party manifesto) too.
Semi Partisan Sam says no to any more slow, incremental reform of the House of Lords. The nation would be better off suffering through another two years with the upper house stuffed full of bewigged, enrobed anachronisms and political patronage beneficiaries before finally kicking the lot of them out after 2015 rather than enduring another decade or more of hand-wringing and glacial progress.
We all know that Redistribution Is Bad. That is, except when it comes to the National Football League and it’s allocation of television revenues and draft picks.
Republicans vs Democrats, freedom-lovers vs evil socialists, explained to us by Bill Maher through the prism of American sports.
Semi-Partisan Politics 