USA Politics (redux)

[greg]

Glenn Loury, a black economist at Brown university, had this interesting response when his minority students complained that there aren't enough professors or other students that "look like them." He said, "they're human beings. They DO look like you."

Lol! I want to give this guy a high five.

That reminds me of one of the things I read in a list of what is regarded as "white privilege," some white guy saying that he acknowledges the "privilege that movies/tv represents his race as the majority." But why would this matter? Is it an inability to empathize with people that don't look like themselves? (stuff like this makes me suspect a lot of woke people are just closeted racists)

I seriously cannot understand caring so much to be around people that look just like you, wanting to fit in so much. So much that they can't even watch a movie without feeling out of place. 

[Spotted Horses]

I seriously cannot understand caring so much to be around people that look just like you, wanting to fit in so much. So much that they can't even watch a movie without feeling out of place. 

Obviously you can't imagine the challenges faced by people other than yourself.

[Karl Henning]

Opinion: Panicked Democrats are ready to shove Biden aside. Again.

By Matt Bai
Contributing columnist

Yesterday at 8:00 a.m. EST

Ten months into President Biden's term, panicky Democrats have already begun to speculate on who might take his place on the ticket in 2024, despite Biden's assurances that he intends to stand for reelection.

A Post story last weekend contained this remarkable nugget: "One Democrat involved in campaigns said they couldn't think of a single person they had spoken to in the last month who considers the possibility of Biden running again to be a real one."

Maybe so. But if there's one Democrat in Washington who isn't feeling panicky right now, I'm betting it's the president himself.

For Biden, being written off as too old and out of his depth isn't exactly a gut punch. It's more like another day in the last 30 years.

In 1987, Biden's first presidential campaign came crashing down in a matter of days amid charges of plagiarism. At that moment, Biden was not quite 45 and had just emerged as one of the brightest hopes of his generation. Almost overnight, he became a casualty of the brand-new character wars, his national ambitions declared dead by the entire media-political class.

If there was any doubt that Biden's career had been wiped away, the following year he almost literally died from a sudden brain aneurysm. Biden recovered and kept at it.

In 2007, when Biden again decided to seek the presidency, the consensus was that his time had passed — and that Biden must be the only Democrat in Washington who didn't know it.

Biden heard the laughter of all the insiders and pundits who said he was over the hill, out of step, comically long-winded. He ended up with the vice presidency.

Eight years later, when Biden — now 73 — considered a third presidential run, the overwhelming sentiment within the party was that Hillary Clinton, and not Biden, was Barack Obama's best and likeliest successor.

For the third time in his career, all the smart Democrats praised Biden's service and sent him off into the political sunset. Even most of his closest advisers assumed he was through.

Four years later, he was back, paddling headlong against the ideological current in his party. And again, after he got blasted in Iowa and New Hampshire, everyone who knew anything dismissed Biden as too old and too centrist, not to mention too White and male.

We were wrong. Ploddingly, haltingly, serenely, Biden persevered and won.

So you can imagine how Biden feels now, when he sees these polls that show his approval ratings bobbing around the 40 percent mark and when he hears about all these Democrats — including a few in his own administration — angling to fill the vacuum once he finally realizes he must get out of the way.

You can see him chuckling to himself, the way he sometimes does when a reporter asks some shallow question he's answered 2,000 times in his life. Keep declaring me finished, Biden must be thinking. Time will decide.

There's a danger in this, of course. Just because you've always defied the groupthink doesn't mean you'll do it again — especially if all that perspective fills you with a kind of unexamined confidence.

Whatever his comfort as a No. 2, Biden hasn't yet adjusted to being the guy who sets the agenda. One hopes that his unsteady performance in trying to pass a social spending bill — adrift and indecisive, too deferential toward the same left flank of his party that he soundly defeated in last year's primaries — will serve as a turning point rather than a template for the rest of his presidency.

Biden's age is a legitimate problem [he might have said point, instead, but let it go—kh] too. He can shrug it off if he wants (and he was lucky to get away with it during a campaign that was largely conducted by Zoom), but running for reelection at 81 would be asking a lot of voters, and his party deserves to see a little more assertiveness in the face of mounting crises.

But what Biden knows, after three-plus decades of being politically left for dead, is that nothing's over just because a bunch of unnamed staffers who spend too much time reading polls say it's over. He knows from experience that the more monolithic and reflexive the popular wisdom, the more likely it will be proved wrong.

Does Biden run again? Personally, I've always thought he was most likely a one-term, stabilizing president, and I don't really believe he has made up his mind to seek another term.

But it's early yet, and I'm pretty sure Biden won't be spooked into accepting everybody else's idea of political reality. If there's any one lesson of his political life, it's that realities usually change.

[Karl Henning]

Obviously you can't imagine the challenges faced by people other than yourself.

Add to that his lack of interest in them.

[Karl Henning]

Former Trump aide Mark Meadows cooperating with House Jan. 6 panel

[greg]

Obviously you can't imagine the challenges faced by people other than yourself.

I've not once thought when watching an Asian movie, for example, "oh, they should be more inclusive of white people because I'm white." The only demographic I'm glad to see on screen are pretty ladies.

Mostly I watch anime, and they aren't any race. It wouldn't change at all if the majority of Hollywood movies consisted of some other race, RACE IS NOT THAT IMPORTANT, and if you consider it that important, then I have bad news for you.

Anyone who has that sort of problem must be suffering from crippling loneliness or something. Seriously, at that point people should get psychological help, regardless which race they are, it's kind of pathetic tbh.

Add to that his lack of interest in them.

Going against your ideology is not an excuse for these types comments.

edit:
What you're doing is expanding the scope of my comment and then aiming it at me as a personal attack, in order to trying to discredit what I'm saying. Like I must have some sort of personal defect, so what I'm saying is invalid.

For one, although it's prefaced with "I think," it doesn't mean mean the post is about me, it's about what I'm talking about. But with this post you make it about me. Making me have to defend myself yet again.

So where the hell were you during the times in my life when I had a friend that reported to me instances of being verbally harassed for the color of their skin, and I supported them in their actions of standing up for themselves?

So "lack of interest," huh?

Let's proceed back to the topic, as mentioned before, instead of making it about me.

[milk]

Add to that his lack of interest in them.

this works both ways. In the privilege olympics, you DO have to disregard the pain of others. Fat ugly white dudes aren't worth much. Ugly people in general. Old white women are Karen-s and anyone named Karen, young or old, can live as pariahs. You're making an accusation but are you boasting about your own empathy in comparison? Or should we not take it that way? I do agree that inclusion is important. I can imagine what it's like to be an outsider though I can't imagine what it's like to be in Auschwitz in 1943. I can try. But Loury has a point for us white liberals. He doesn't want patronizing liberal virtue. He says he's arguing for the soul of his country and the dignity of his people. It's his country too and he makes the argument that the fact that the human experience is universal can get lost in all this, especially if we're talking about an ideology that specifically says it isn't.

[Karl Henning]

this works both ways. In the privilege olympics, you DO have to disregard the pain of others. Fat ugly white dudes aren't worth much. Ugly people in general. Old white women are Karen-s and anyone named Karen, young or old, can live as pariahs. You're making an accusation but are you boasting about your own empathy in comparison? Or should we not take it that way? I do agree that inclusion is important. I can imagine what it's like to be an outsider though I can't imagine what it's like to be in Auschwitz in 1943. I can try. But Loury has a point for us white liberals. He doesn't want patronizing liberal virtue. He says he's arguing for the soul of his country and the dignity of his people. It's his country too and he makes the argument that the fact that the human experience is universal can get lost in all this, especially if we're talking about an ideology that specifically says it isn't.

I'm talking straightforward compassion. I've no interest in politicizing that.

[Karl Henning]

Someone who can only feel compassion for those like himself, has no compassion.

[milk]

Someone who can only feel compassion for those like himself, has no compassion.

so it sounds like you agree with Loury.

[Karl Henning]

If my hopes on that score were not by now worn down, I might say: Is an end to the bullshittery in sight?

Opinion: Trump's stonewalling on the Jan. 6 investigation is crumbling

[greg]

This sums up everything politics 100%, concisely articulating my thoughts better than I ever could have.

[Karl Henning]

Not a whack-job, mind you:

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker will not seek reelection

By Emma Platoff and Matt Stout Globe Staff, Updated December 1, 2021, 1 hour ago

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, the Republican who maintained the enduring support of his blue-state constituents through boom times, the Trump presidency, and the COVID-19 pandemic, will not seek a third term in 2022, he said Wednesday.

A moderate who has kept his distance from the controversies of the national Republican Party and cast himself as a thrifty and thoughtful manager, Baker, 65, would have entered the race as its front-runner. With less than a year before Election Day, Baker's choice leaves the race wide open. And it means he will forgo a shot at history: No Massachusetts governor has served three consecutive four-year terms.

Another campaign would have been "a distraction" at a time when he's focused on steering the state through the pandemic, Baker said Wednesday in a joint statement with Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito.

"We want to focus on recovery, not on the grudge matches political campaigns can devolve into," Baker and Polito said.

Polito also will not seek reelection, they said in the statement, and an adviser said she will not run for governor in 2022.

For months, the question of whether Baker would seek reelection has been Massachusetts' political elephant in the room, with some donors and potential candidates waiting to see what he'd do before making their own intentions clear. Baker, who could not avoid the question in media interviews and at unrelated appearances, towed a careful, consistent line: He was discussing the matter with his family and would share his decision soon — just as soon as he'd made it.

That wasn't just politicking: Baker was actively grappling with whether to run again, and his decision was made only recently, people close to the governor said. At times, advisers even began to sketch out how they would approach a reelection announcement. As recently as last Tuesday, Baker held a fundraiser at Davio's restaurant in the Seaport, pulling in campaign cash ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

But over the weekend, Baker huddled with his family, and it was then that he decided not to pursue another campaign, according to two people familiar with Baker's thinking.

His family was a driving factor, not any fear that he couldn't win another term, said someone familiar with Baker's thinking.

"He put his family first," said another person with knowledge of the discussions.

Baker told a small circle of close aides on Monday that he would not seek another term; two days later, he announced it publicly.

In their statement Wednesday, the two Republicans nodded to the importance of spending time with family and friends, a priority they said the pandemic has highlighted.

"Done right, these jobs require an extraordinary amount of time and attention, and we love doing them," Baker and Polito said. "But we both want to be there with Lauren and Steve and our children for the moments, big and small, that our families will experience going forward."

With less than a year before Election Day, Baker's choice leaves the race wide open, and it may make way for more major candidates than the three Democrats and one Republican who already have jumped into the gubernatorial race. The state's political klieg lights will shine most brightly on Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat.

Baker allies frame his tenure as a success that would have earned him another term. They praise him for his responsiveness to local needs and willingness to compromise with Democrats, who dominate the Legislature.

While he has led the state to great economic heights, longstanding racial inequities persist, disparities that the announced Democratic contenders — state Senator Sonia Chang-Díaz, former state senator Ben Downing, and Harvard professor Danielle Allen — have highlighted.

Critics cast Baker as an incrementalist who has lacked a vision equal to the gnawing problems in the state, a plodding bureaucrat without the will to harness Massachusetts' vast resources — and, worst of all, a leader whose management failures have led to preventable death. They cite a tragedy at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home — where a COVID-19 outbreak killed 76 veterans, one of the highest death tolls of any senior-care facility in the country — as evidence that a governor who pitches himself as an able manager has at times mismanaged, with devastating results.

They also point to the scandal at the state Registry of Motor Vehicles, where officials had ignored tens of thousands of alerts that Massachusetts drivers had broken driving laws, including by driving drunk, in other states. Baker said he had not known about the problem before a deadly 2019 crash in New Hampshire pushed it into public view.

For his part, the governor has long projected a steady, even keel, avoiding partisan spitting matches and distancing himself from controversial members of his party, including former president Donald Trump. A baseball cap spotted in his office over the years, which reads "JUST FIX IT," seems to neatly sum up his pragmatic approach.

Veto-proof Democratic majorities in both chambers of the Legislature have forced him to reach across the aisle, his politics often hewing closer to the centrist Democratic leanings of the Massachusetts House than the conservative planks of his own state party's platform.

Baker would have been a formidable opponent for the major contenders who have so far declared their candidacies. Polls during his tenure have found that Baker is more popular with Massachusetts Democrats and independents than with Republicans, and his overall approval ratings make him the envy of most of his 49 colleagues across the United States.

Under Baker, polling has consistently shown residents believe Massachusetts is headed in the right direction. Before the pandemic, the state economy was in good shape, with unemployment under 3 percent. And Baker has been credited with improving some of the state's most beleaguered agencies, including reducing wait times at the RMV and lowering caseloads at the Department of Children and Families, which nonetheless has struggled this year to quickly find enough foster homes for children in its care.

Baker's second term has been upended by the pandemic, which hit Massachusetts earlier than much of the rest of the country, spreading rapidly after such events as a late February 2020 Biogen conference[emphasis mine, the Biogen conference at the Long Wharf Marriott was of course COVID Ground Zero here in the states—kh]. After Baker declared a state of emergency that spring, the state's unemployment rate shot above 16 percent. It has declined significantly in the last few months, though it remains above its pre-pandemic low. Now, though the state is a national leader in vaccination rates, Massachusetts still has one of the country's higher death rates from COVID.

Baker has been attacked from all sides for his handling of the pandemic — those on the right who said he did too much to lock the state down, those on the left who said he did too little — and there have been occasional bristly moments with Democratic legislative leaders, notably earlier this year, when limited doses of the vaccine and a flubbed website earned Baker perhaps his most biting criticism since taking office.

But he has for the most part maintained his good standing in the eyes of the vast majority of voters, and after some early hiccups, the state improved its vaccine rollout, quieting some of the governor's harshest critics.

"You're doing a hell of a job," President Biden told Baker in May.

A graduate of Harvard College and Northwestern's business school, Baker was a wunderkind secretary of health and human services and later budget chief in the William F. Weld Cabinet, where Weld called him the administration's "heart and soul."

He left state government after eight years and joined Harvard Pilgrim Health Care as president and CEO in 1999. Soon after he took charge, the insurer was in such a catastrophic financial situation it was put into state receivership. But Baker helped nurse it back to fiscal health and made it the top-rated insurer in the country.

He left the private sector to seek the governor's office for the first time in 2010, the same year the stick-it-to-the-establishment Tea Party movement helped Republicans take control of the US House of Representatives. In that gubernatorial race, he struck a now-unfamiliar angry tone, asking voters whether they'd "had enough" of incumbent Deval Patrick.

They hadn't; Patrick won.

But Baker rebounded from the loss, rebranding himself as a cheerier candidate who showed up to listen. In 2014, pitching the campaign slogan, "Let's be Great, Massachusetts!" he squeaked into office with 40,000 more votes than Democrat Martha Coakley, the slimmest margin in decades.

Shortly after taking office in 2015, Baker led the state through a historic series of snowstorms, making himself a consistent presence in the news and scoring early political points. His approval ratings rose, reaching 70 percent that April, and have rarely flagged since.

He sailed to reelection in 2018, easily beating Democrat Jay Gonzalez, who unsuccessfully tried to tie Baker to Trump. Gonzalez, like the 2022 Democratic hopefuls, called Baker a "status quo governor" who lacked the vision to push the state to its full potential. But voters, overwhelmingly approving of the state's direction, delivered Baker and Polito a decisive mandate, with 67 percent of the vote.

During his two terms, Baker has had opportunities and enjoyed success previous governors did not. Baker has reshaped the state's Supreme Judicial Court, having had the chance to appoint all seven of its justices. In making selections, Baker prioritized diversity and life experience, molding what legal experts have described as a centrist court reflective of his own pragmatic approach.

He has made it a priority to address the opioid epidemic and pushed to bring the nation's first large-scale offshore wind farm to federal waters south of Martha's Vineyard. Baker also made major changes lauded by advocates at Bridgewater State Hospital, where prison guards had used seclusion and restraints at more than 100 times the rate of other state mental health facilities.

Another achievement was a law that created one of the nation's most far-reaching efforts to reduce the planet-warming carbon emissions that cause climate change. Earlier this year, after vetoing an initial bill, Baker signed a law that requires Massachusetts to reduce its carbon emissions by at least 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, 75 percent below those levels by 2040, and achieve "net zero" emissions by 2050.

Under Baker's tenure, the state also has seen horrific failures, including during the pandemic.

A Boston Globe Spotlight Team investigation found that Baker and a top deputy played crucial roles in the lead-up to the tragedy at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home, where 76 veterans died. Bennett Walsh, who the Globe found was an unqualified, politically connected hire to head the facility, was indicted on criminal neglect charges for his role in the deadly outbreak, as was former medical director David Clinton. Both pleaded not guilty and in November, a Hampden County judge dismissed all criminal charges. Baker has downplayed his role in hiring Walsh, saying initially that he never interviewed him for the position, and then reversing himself: "I forgot," he said.

Baker came into office at a particularly challenging time for the state's child welfare agency, which was reeling from the case of Jeremiah Oliver, a toddler who was found dead on the side of a highway, months after state workers who were monitoring his parents had lost track of him. During Baker's second term, the agency's budget had grown by hundreds of millions of dollars and caseloads had dropped. Still, especially as caseworkers emerge from the pandemic, the agency is stressed as perhaps never before, struggling to find placements for at-risk kids.

Before he made his gubernatorial decision, Baker already had several people hoping to succeed him.

Each of the three Democrats who have declared for governor has their strengths — Allen, the Harvard professor, sterling academic credentials; Downing, the former lawmaker, a base in Western Massachusetts; Chang-Díaz, who serves in the Massachusetts Senate, the boisterous support of hyper-engaged progressive activists — but none enjoys the name recognition of another potential entrant.

Healey, who was first elected attorney general in 2014, has a nearly $3.3 million war chest and a national reputation that would make her a formidable candidate.

Healey has said "we'll know more in the fall" about her future political moves, but has yet to publicly detail her plans.

Polito, 55, had been widely seen as a successor to Baker, though she has a more conservative bent than the incumbent. Over the past few months, she and Baker had held numerous fund-raisers across the state. As of the end of October, she had $2.3 million in her political campaign account.

On the Republican side, conservative Geoff Diehl, a former state lawmaker who lost a Senate bid to Elizabeth Warren in 2018 and has been critical of the governor, declared well before Baker's decision.

Diehl has support in more conservative pockets of the party, and the endorsement of Trump[Overall, in Mass. Trump's endorsement is a liability—kh], but even if he secures the GOP nomination, he faces longshot odds in blue Massachusetts. Trump has had harsh words for Baker in the past, calling him a "RINO" — Republican in name only — and some in the GOP anticipated he might even travel to Massachusetts to campaign against Baker in the primary.

In the end, the moderate throughline that vaulted Baker to power in a state dominated by Democrats — and earned him the former president's ire — may be his most lasting legacy. In their joint statement, Baker and Polito listed off numerous accomplishments of their two terms, but also preached the power of their "bipartisan approach, where we listen as much as we talk, where we focus our energies on finding areas of agreement and not disagreement, and where we avoid the public sniping and grandstanding that defines much of our political discourse."

It's a strategy for which Baker hopes to be remembered.

In December of 2018, as he was finishing his first term, the governor was asked what he hoped his political exit story would say, to fill in the blank of a sentence that began, "Charles Duane Baker Jr., who . . ."

Baker listed several key efforts including fighting the opioid epidemic and investing in energy and transportation.

He also reflected on a broader success. "And who demonstrated time and time again that it's possible in politics and in public life to find common ground and to avoid the cheap nitpicking that so dominates partisan politics."

Baker paused for a moment, then asked: "How's that?"

[T. D.]

If my hopes on that score were not by now worn down, I might say: Is an end to the bullshittery in sight?

Opinion: Trump's stonewalling on the Jan. 6 investigation is crumbling

No way. It's patently obvious that Cheeto Mussolini merely has to stall until the 2022 midterms, after which GOP-controlled Congress will shitcan the probe. And that'll be easy.

I'm serious. Not happy about it, but it's inevitable IMO.

[Karl Henning]

No way. It's patently obvious that Cheeto Mussolini merely has to stall until the 2022 midterms, after which GOP-controlled Congress will shitcan the probe. And that'll be easy.

I'm serious. Not happy about it, but it's inevitable IMO.

Sad to relate, I cannot say you're wrong.

[milk]

No way. It's patently obvious that Cheeto Mussolini merely has to stall until the 2022 midterms, after which GOP-controlled Congress will shitcan the probe. And that'll be easy.

I'm serious. Not happy about it, but it's inevitable IMO.

this is coming and it's infuriating. They'd better get something done before they're kicked out. How about a SCOTUS too? What are Dems waiting for?
But I can even imagine someone worse than Trum in 2024. Yikes.

[Karl Henning]

But I can even imagine someone worse than Trum in 2024. Yikes.

I know it's possible, but I shrink from considering it.

[milk]

I know it's possible, but I shrink from considering it.

Trump is such a big sideshow. You know why Anne Coulter turned on him? Because she said he was too stupid to fulfill his promises. Imagine if she gets her way. Imagine a savvier more disciplined politician with the same general agenda as trump's crowd? I don't have the link now, but David Brooks recently wrote about a scarier more nationalistic right wing. Yikes!

[T. D.]

this is coming and it's infuriating. They'd better get something done before they're kicked out. How about a SCOTUS too? What are Dems waiting for?
But I can even imagine someone worse than Trum[p] in 2024. Yikes.

If you followed the Steve Bannon indictment, he laughed at that s**t, believing full well in the scenario I referred to.

[JBS]

this is coming and it's infuriating. They'd better get something done before they're kicked out. How about a SCOTUS too? What are Dems waiting for?
But I can even imagine someone worse than Trum in 2024. Yikes.

They would need to kill the filibuster. Which they can't do, since it and Biden's vetos may be the only blocking weapons they have after the midterms.
(Yes I realize the Turtle may well do that if/when he's back as Majority Leader. But there's no need to disarm oneself just because the enemy will try to disarm you.)