Will Hillary Drag Down The Ds?
BY BUDDY NEVINS
My Mom used to always remind me: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
It is good advice for investing, the future and politics.
Apparently it is advice that the Democrats are ignoring.
The Ds have no choice.
In a stunning piece illustrating the decline of the Democratic Party over the Obama years, the New York Times (Yes, the New York Times!) bemoaned the state of the Ds.
The D’s have “a weak bench, a long-term House minority and a white middle class defecting to the Republican Party faster than the Democrats’ hoped-for demographic future is expected to arrive,” wrote The Times on Thursday.
You know how bad it is in Florida. Well, now the Ds are facing the same fate everywhere.
The Times’ report is very quietly echoed by Florida Democrats, who believe the Ds have a dismal future.
Republicans “quietly recruited young, attractive conservative men and women and elected them to state legislatures. These people controlled the the 2012 redistricting process leaving state Democrat caucuses in most states to become dominated by women and minorities. Essentially giving up on white males. We saw the evidence of that in the Crist/Scott election. The R’s correctly predicted that blacks and minorities would under perform for a white candidate and they were right. The party that is now marginalized are the Democrats,” one longtime Florida Democrat opined to Browardbeat.com.
Since 2008 under Obama, state Legislatures have “wiped out an entire generation of Democratic office holders costing the Democrats more than 900 state legislative seats and 11 governorships,” according to the Times.
The Democrats’ top four congressmen are all over 70 years old, the Times wrote.
This has left them with nobody to run for president except Hillary Clinton.
Hillary’s daytime news conference earlier in the week was a disaster. She looked bad — defensive.
What’s worse, she looked old, old, old.
Clearly, she is a figure from the past.
I got a hair cut this week. The stylist, unsolicited, said that he was sick of the Clintons, sick of the Bush’s, and hoping for someone new who would represent the future.
A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that many voters agree with my stylist. More than half the voters surveyed stated that she is a return to the past.
Democrats are jumping aboard the Good Ship Hillary because they have no place else to go.
Even Broward County Commissioner Stacy Ritter, an early Obama supporter over Hillary in 2007, has become a Clinton supporter.
The Florida Democratic source had a dismal prediction for Ds:
“As for Hillary, she looked (at the news conference) old, hostile and no one who would survive a 14 month campaign. She reminds me of John McCain. In my opinion, she will lose the race, further alienate Democrats from the Party. Young people, blacks, hispanics, will stay home and not vote. A lot of the fault for that rests with a dis-interested president,” the source wrote in an e-mail.
The presidential race is starting to mirror the Florida governor’s race last year. The Ds had such a shallow field of candidates that they had no realistic nominee except former Republican Charlie Crist.
(Let’s not refight Crist’s battle against Nan Rich. Rich couldn’t win, she couldn’t win, she couldn’t win.)
And we saw how that turned out against the very flawed candidate, Gov. Rick Scott.
This country is split pretty much 50-50.
To get to 51 percent, the Democrats and Hillary have to hope that the Republicans will shoot themselves in the foot – contentious primaries followed by the nomination of a wacky candidate.
XXXXX
Find the New York Times article through this link here.
March 12th, 2015 at 11:10 am
Buddy, you forget the Dem’s secret weapon. Their cronies – who previously held staff positions in Dem administrations – control news operations in most of the major TV and cable outlets. That revolving door from Congress and the White House is constantly flowing to the media.
The NYT can whine and complain all they want about Hillary but they and the old line print media like AP and various online news outlets will be the first to attack any plausible Republican candidate.
And then there is the Democratic advantage with the “new media”. It is quite sad to read how many millenials actually get their primary news from the likes of John Stewart and Colbert and whoever will be their replacements.
Lastly, Obama knows what he is doing in pushing through his amnesty. The key is not that these folks will be able to legally work and pay taxes – THEY WILL BE ABLE TO REGISTER TO VOTE in many states. So that demographic shift the Republicans fear is only a judge’s order away from happening.
I wish my optimism for a Republican future was a strong as your belief about the decline of the Democratic machine.
But if the Reps nominate a fresh, young, proven face on their ticket, they have a chance to carry the independent vote which is always crucial AND get the Republicans to show up at the polls which they failed to fully do for Romney.
Jeb is not the guy for that job. One of the current Republican governors like Walker, Kasich, or even Nikki Haley have a better chance of hitting that mark.
March 12th, 2015 at 11:12 am
The Democrats gave the Presidency to Obama, stealing it from Hillary. They played by their own rules. Now they have to live by them.
March 12th, 2015 at 3:37 pm
The democratic activists r in fact a generation or two younger than the Republicans outside of Hispanics but are so minority oriented they turn off the white middle class except Jews gays academic or media types. The Republicans go for emotions not policy like the dems, and emotion seems to be winning. Hilary saying she has to be president because she is a women will not get her into the white house without a more universal argument
March 12th, 2015 at 6:24 pm
Hilary looks and sounds too much like Nancy Pelosi for many voters to take her as a competent Presidential candidate able to be a Commander in Chief. Two similar comments from two similar women, “It wasn’t convenient for me to carry two devices so I could have 2 email accounts” and “Just sign it (Obamacare), we’ll find out what is in it after you sign it” show complete ignorance on the part of the women.
In fact, both statements insult the intelligence of many 10 year olds who know how to use multiple email accounts on one device and most adults who know to read a contract before signing it.
Yes, a female President would be a great event if one with a brain and leadership abilities were the choice. This latest litany of lies from Hilary shows she is not what America needs.
No more retreads, please. There is a time to retire and that time is now for Hilary.
March 12th, 2015 at 6:33 pm
The republicans are terrified of Hillary. Newt Gingrich once made the comment that if Hillary were to run she would be formidable. I hope everyone will remember that during the Clinton reign we were all better off financially. Put that blue dress aside – we all lived better & had money to spend. Everything changed when the next president took office & has only gone down hill since then. Then when Obama took office the Kentucky clown, McConnell, had the audacity to publicly say that the intent of the republican party was to make sure he was a one term president- a very colorful comment, I think. Corporations & greed have taken control of our great country. I fear so much, what kind of world my great-grandchildren will be coming into as they reach their adult years. We need our next president to be one for the people, not one for big business. I hope it will be Hillary.
March 12th, 2015 at 10:03 pm
Hillary will win Florida handily. She is ahead of every GOP contender in the polls and the usual “run to the crazy right” has just begun for Republicans. It will only accelerate once the primaries begin.
FROM BUDDY:
It’s a little early for predictions. We have no idea who will become the Republican nominee. A lot can happen between now and November 2016.
March 13th, 2015 at 9:55 am
The (D) are the party of recycling…Broward county is a great example. What new face is in politics? The are about to recycle Nan instead of introducing a new younger candidate who can be groomed. Charlie Crist is being recruited for a run at Senate if Rubio runs. The (D) can not come up with another candidate? The (D) can not find a new face to run for property appraiser? Broward County should be called the recycle County or the good ole boy county.
FROM BUDDY:
Much of this problem statewide stems from the Ds loss of many local office holder positions to the Rs, as the post indicated.
In Broward, there have been more new Demo candidates in the past few years than in the past. Maybe that’s because the older pols were holding on to office for so long. I do know that the Democratic Party organization had nothing to do with recruiting these candidates to enter politics.
County Commissioner Mark Bogan is a new face to politics, although he is not young. Beam Furr, who had 12 years on the Hollywood commission, is new to most of the county. Sheriff Scott Israel is just completing his first term.
State Reps Katie Edwards of Plantation, Jared Moskowitz of Coral Springs, Evan Jenne of Hollywood and, Shevrin Jones of West Park, are youngish Ds holding office. Sharon Pritchett of Miramar and Richard Stark of Weston could have futures here, too. Joe Geller of Dania Beach had a long political career in Miami-Dade and could transfer those skills to another office in Broward someday.
Marty Kiar is not a new face running for property appraiser, but he’s a young face who now has a lot of experience. He could run for just about anything in Broward.
March 13th, 2015 at 11:19 pm
The Democrats actually do have a good alternative to Clinton (in addition to Elizabeth Warren, who isn’t entering the race). Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is in the race, and he could well become the winner.
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/13/a_lot_of_us_are_disappointed_and_angry_martin_o%E2%80%99malley_makes_his_case_to_salon/
http://martinomalley.com/
March 14th, 2015 at 3:56 pm
@Ha Ha Ha
O’Malley? Really? the only reason he is not MD guv anymore is he raised taxes so many times that they elected a repub – the first repub guv in MD in 45 years.
But you knew that.
March 14th, 2015 at 7:57 pm
Martin O’Malley did not run for re-election in 2014 due to term limits. He was re-elected as Governor in 2010 after having to raise taxes in 2008-2009 (as well as cutting expenses) to close a $1.7 billion dollar state budget deficit [as revenues dropped and expenses increased due to the arrival of the Great Recession caused, of course, by Republican unwillingness to properly regulate the banking and finance sector)]. O’Malley beat his Republican opponent in 2010 by over 14 percentage points (56.2% to 41.8%).
The Baltimore Sun endorsed Martin O’Malley for Governor in 2006, saying: “When he was first elected mayor in 1999, the former two-term city councilman inherited a city of rising crime, failing schools, and shrinking economic prospects. He was able to reverse course in all of these areas.” O’Malley’s innovative CitiStat statistical management system saved an estimated $350 million and helped generate the city’s first budget surplus in years. In 2004, the CitiStat accountability tool won Harvard University’s “Innovations in American Government” award.
One of O’Malley’s first actions as Governor was to implement the same CitiStat system he used to manage Baltimore City on a statewide level. Maryland StateStat began in 2007 with a few public safety and human services agencies. By 2014, over 20 agencies were engaged in the StateStat process through monthly individual agency meetings and quarterly cross-agency Stats including BayStat, StudentStat, VetStat and ReEntryStat. (The EPA would later base their ChesapeakeStat program on O’Malley’s innovative BayStat program.)
In 2012, Governor O’Malley launched Maryland’s Open Data Portal- StateStat uses the data in the Portal to track progress towards the Governor’s 16 strategic goals. As one of the few states at the time linking progress directly to open data, Maryland led the nation in government transparency and accountability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_O'Malley
Under O’Malley [as Governor], Maryland was ranked first nationwide in public-school achievement by Education Week for five years in a row and twice designated the top state for innovation and entrepreneurship by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-long-shot/382238/?single_page=true
Martin [O’Malley, a Catholic] attended the Our Lady of Lourdes School in Bethesda and Gonzaga College High School. He went on to The Catholic University of America, graduating in 1985. Later that year he enrolled at the University of Maryland School of Law, earning his Juris Doctor in 1988 and passing the bar that same year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_O'Malley
March 15th, 2015 at 5:06 pm
Thank you Mr begins for showing us once again what a professional journalist you are
March 17th, 2015 at 3:22 pm
Hillary clinton can’t win. She has too much in her past with the e-mails being just the most recent.
March 17th, 2015 at 9:32 pm
And Jeb Bush is any better???