Good Queen Bess

Atlanta, GA – Elisabeth Warren is a Senator whose recent political life has been filled with controversy, blaming, and Interest to the general public. She is, perhaps, the most liberal person who has been put forward for the 2016 Presidential Election.

The Senior Senator from Massachusetts, she defeated Scott Brown in a hotly contested race in 2012. Brown claimed she had lied when she had said that she was of Indian Descent. Apparently, it was the reason she got her professorship at Harvard. However, attempts to find proof she was of Native American Descent promptly turned up nothing.

But this time, she is not in the news because of whether or not her ancestors were members of the Cherokee and Delaware tribes. She has said constantly she is not running. But the emphases may be put on the word “is.” Or, in the actual statement, “am.”

The woman is to the left of Hillary Clinton, which is saying a lot, as everybody knows Some have even suggested that she should run to solidify the youngest parts of the Democratic Party, where some think Hillary Clinton is too far towards the center for comfort. (Doesn’t everybody that is in politics too long seem to drift to the center?)

She is the first woman ever elected to the US Senate from her state, and so you might say she is already a progressive.

Her first bill would have allowed students to borrow money from the federal government at the same rate as the banks do, saying that students should get the same deal. She had run on a platform that included attacks on Wall Street CEOs, saying they had wrecked the economy.

According to the Washington Times, she seemed to suggest at one hearing that, due to the rise of worker’s productivity over the years, the minimum wage should be at least $22 per hour. (By that logic, taken far enough back, it could be over $100, but Warren is not ready to take it that far.) Enough said on Warren. As one last note, the media is swooning over her, and the Unltra Liberals would love nothing more than having her in the White House, and Hillary Clinton, like I said, has been in politics a long time. These are not predictions, but they are facts.

Andrew C. Abbott

The Supreme Debate

Atlanta, GA – As everyone knows by now, the election of 2016 is within a few days. (Plus or minus about five hundred, but anyway, its closer than the one in 2020, which is why we are not talking about that one yet, but don’t worry, its coming.) And the issues that are expected to be on the table then are already being aired out.

But a new one is emerging that is rather intriguing. The Supreme Debate. The Supreme Court, that is. Now the Supreme Court has been the focal point of much political jockeying, satire, and hatred in years past. Jackson tried to overrule it, Roosevelt (FDR) tried to stack it and put more justices in, and people are always “hating on” it for this or that. 

But be that as it may, the Supreme Court is here, has been since the constitution was written, and is not going anywhere anytime soon. So the issue remains for 2016, for whoever it is that takes the Oval Office then, (Hillary Clinton, or someone who is currently a state dog-catcher) wil have the privilege of being the one who gets to make the appointments as the vacancies, which are certainly coming, emerge.

It may be to some a minor issue who sits on the court, and indeed, in most election years the argument takes a back seat. No presidential election has ever hinged on who the candidate is planning to appoint, if and when one or more of the justices vacate their seats. And this coming race probably will not be much different, either.

But the issue should have some preeminence in the conversation, not least of all because of what the courts have done in recent years. Overturning Roe v. Wade is only part of it. There are all sorts of debates that will be or can be ultimately decided by the Court, and some of them are quite pressing. Is same-sex marriage constitutional? Should private citizens be allowed to give as much money as they want to elections? Should we have to have a license to get a handgun in the city? What about immigration? There are things there that are up for debate in the Court.

There are many issues that could be mentioned, but perhaps one of the most talked about ones will be The Affordable Care Act. (Obamacare.) They ruled before that it was constitutional, but that was basically on a technicality, and while there are cases now in the docket, and soon to come up, it is a well-known fact that often more than one case is often needed to air out all the issues, and it is very possible that if the makeup of the court changes after 2016, they could revisit this and other issues, and possibly overturn previous decisions, which can always lead to exiting headlines.

And the idea of the court being shaken up is not farfetched. It is an aging institution, none of the judges are under sixty, while some have reached their seventies or even eighties. And even if the will is there to carry on, the strength may soon not be.

Yes, it is still a little while until Election, 2016, the winners from 2014 have not even taken their seats yet. But it is not too early to talk about the oncoming Supreme Debate.

Andrew C. Abbott

Tide or Typhoon: Are the Republicans Hip, or just an Anomaly?

Atlanta, GA – The Republicans are still riding high on the fact that they just did was statistically likely: beat up the lame duck president’s party during the midterms. And some are calling it a Republican wave.

It was. But what kind? Was it just like the running in of the tide, where different waves are always coming in and going out just as quickly, or more like the typhoon, which hits the beaches, and might, for a moment, look like any other wave, except for the fact that it keeps on coming. Marching up the beach in a surge of white water, it overruns everything in front of it, and keeps on going, far inland.

In Louisiana, we might get some clues. There, Democratic Senator Landrieu won a plurality (more votes than anyone else, but less than 51%) on election night, over a month ago. But the laws of her state demand that, if no candidate gets a majority, then there is a runoff. That will happen tomorrow.

In the state, there were no primaries, so Landrieu was facing a slew of opponents, many of them conservative, keeping the Republican Frontrunner down, she did come out ahead. But not for long.

Without everyone else to take votes from him, Cassidy, her main opponent, began to rise swiftly in the polls as the election runoff, scheduled for Saturday, came closer.

Landrieu became in miniature, a picture of the Democratic Party themselves. Abandoning her party’s hardline principles, she ran to offer a bill in the senate that would allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built. Cassidy, over in the house where he currently works, rushed to do the same thing. Cassidy’s bill passed, Landrieu’s did not.

Her apparent last hope running out, everyone has now abandoned her. The Democrats from across the country that were so eager to help in November have disappeared here in December. She is left to run out this final race alone.

The numbers against her are telling. The last of the Democrat White Voters in the Deep South are dwindling. The last hope of the Democrats is that Landrieu win, and prove they have still “got it.”

But it is not likely. If she were to, it would be a harbinger that the Republican win in November was just an anomaly. A statistical blip, a bit like when country wide internet usage goes down over the weekend. But instead everything points to a Landrieu loss, and, for now at least, the Republicans are on top. The numbers we saw before were accurate. The white support for the Democrats is still falling apart. Even if 95% of blacks in Louisiana were to vote Democrat on Saturday, Landrieu would still not be put over the top.

Admittedly, it is a bit early to say that the Democrats are out. Landrieu has not lost yet. The Republicans are not yet at 54 seats in the senate. But the odds for her are certainly going downhill right now. She trails Cassidy now by around 24% in the polls. And there is a 95% chance, by the numbers, that she will lose.

That is bad news for the Liberals. If Landrieu loses, from the Carolinas to Texas, not a single legislative chamber, US Senate seat, or governor’s mansion will be theirs. Merry Christmas Democrats.

Andrew C. Abbott

Why the Ferguson Protests Are Going To Die

In Ferguson, the unrest continues. And the flames are still being fanned. Al Sharpton continues to call for justice, saying the prosecutor may have won the first round, but “don’t take your gloves off.”

Yet amidst all of shouting, burning, marching, demands for justice and the up cropping, suddenly, of many different groups, with all sorts of names like “Voices for Justice” the protests are still dying. The reasons of course, include the usual reasons protests die. People get bored. People have jobs and lives. But as the protests continue to splinter and become further and further from what the original issues were, there is another reason that the Ferguson Protests, and the other protests around the country coming out of them, are not going to survive: They are too small.

The fact that thousands of people are in on the protests doesn’t matter. What does is the message. And it is that the black are fighting the whites again. Whatever may have been the original story, it is now being portrayed as a larger debate about black v. white. It shouldn’t be. It should be good vs. bad. And the whole country would be running to join them. (Not the violent ones, the mentally sane ones.)

Americans hate injustice. We have fought wars over it. And Americans would be more than happy to fight this war too. Nobody likes it when people get shot unjustly by police officers, or anybody else for that matter. No matter what the color of the victim. But the moment you say that this is a “black issue” you just lost the majority of the nation. Not only the whites, but also the Asians and Latinos.

But it is not a black issue. It is an American issue. Whatever the truth about Mike Brown, there are problems with the system, as in every system, and this could have started a larger debate that could have begun to fix some of them. But instead these protests are going to fizzle out and die, and another excellent chance to reform and renew will be lost.

In America, on the streets, from New York to California, in many places, the cities are already quiet again. It flamed up and died down and is now nearly over. There may be some that hang on for weeks, maybe even months now, but the majority of it, at least for right now, is all over.

A great chance to fix things was just wasted. The main lesson of the Mike Brown Debate was this: black vs. white is never going to hack it. Good vs. bad will. Because good doesn’t have a color. Everyone will sign up to be on the good side.

Andrew C. Abbott