Tag Archives: democratic party

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My “Morning Joe” week & my monthly call for civility in politics

I write posts like this often enough that I feel a bit like a broken record but I am not going to be deterred.

This morning, someone sent me an article that lambasted Bruce Springsteen’s “41 Shots” and said he supports the killing of cops.  He continued to say “IF YOU LIKE KILLING COPS, YOU ARE A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT.”  (Emphasis HIS)  As a liberal Democrat, who does not support cop killing but lived in NYC at the time of the incident that inspired that song I think the writer has really misunderstood the situation (in the interest of full disclosure, I will blog about my thoughts about that sometime this week).

If we are going to succeed at turning things in this country around, both parties need to stop seeing each other as adversaries and more like partners.  If our economy tanks this summer, for example, it won’t be only blue or red states that are hurt; it be all of us.

While this is not solely the media’s fault, it isn’t helping.  Shows where people yell over each other or merely wait for their turn to talk without listening – these are not discussions, they are debates.  And no one really learns anything.  That was my problem with “Crossfire.”  I knew where each person stood on each issue and it became a huge waste of my time.

One thing about the popularity of some shows now that baffles me is that I hate being yelled at.   I don’t want other people’s opinions screamed at me (after admitting my political affiliation, it should be a given that I am not a big fan of FOX News) but I don’t need to have my own yelled at me either.  I am pretty clear on where I stand; I don’t need Ed Schultz to holler it at me.  And for the record; Keith Olbermann makes my ears bleed.  When my TV yells at me, I end up yelling back and I really don’t need my neighbors to think I have lost it.

Joe Scarborough

And now we come to the “Morning Joe” portion of my point.  I love this show.  LOVE IT.  It has even eclipsed “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” (love that, too but I don’t watch it for three hours a day, five days a week.)  This is something that I never thought I would write.

The show’s creator, Joe Scarborough, is a former politician.  He was elected in 1994 to represent Florida’s first congressional district and was part of the “Republican Revolution” that year.  This was not a freshman class of moderate and liberal Republicans.  It was a bunch of fire breathing conservatives.  My first job was for Senator Feinstein (D-CA) and that’s where I was working when he took office.  From my side of the aisle, he looked a bit fringy.   I am not alone in this theory – he has said it, too.  One of my friend – a former Congressman himself, one who was the only member of the Conservative Party when he was in the House asked me, “How can YOU like Joe Scarborough he was a right-wing nut job in Congress!”

One belief that I will surrender only upon my death is one of the reasons I like Scarborough.  When I meet someone who is active politically, either on a professional or volunteer basis, I assume (until/unless I am given reason to think otherwise) that they are in this business for the same reason I am – to make the country and world a better place.  If you start conversations with people who disagree with you assuming that makes them Hitler, you are never going to get anywhere.  If you start from the position that your disagreements are more akin to having differing opinions about the route you should take to the same destination, you can have a real discussion.  Have you ever heard of someone thinking someone else was evil because you thought you should take one road to the grocery store and they thought you should go another way?  No?  Right, because it is a ridiculous thought.

Mika Brzezinski

“Morning Joe” provides these kinds of discussions.  From the hosts themselves – Scarborough, Mike Brzezinski and Willie Geist – to the guests they bring on, the topics they discuss and the atmosphere they provide, real ideas can be exchanged and I learn something every morning.  I have not been keeping track of how often I agree with Scarborough on his politics but it’s not often but then again, agreeing with me has never been a prerequisite for me liking someone.  I have no patience for that sort of thing.

Willie Geist

So why was this week more of a “Morning Joe” week?  Well, I’ll tell you.  (My job does require me to keep up on the news but even if it did not, I am a total political/news junkie and all around nerd, I know this already, no need to tweet me about it.)

On Wednesday, I went to a Politico event on Capitol Hill.  Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough were doing a book signing for her new book, “Knowing your value.”  I have never recommended a book as much as I recommend this one.  At first, I thought that I wanted to buy it for all the women I have ever – or will ever – meet but now I just want to buy it for the entire planet.  I was able to talk to both and it was really fun.  So when I was thinking about writing my monthly plea for people to remember we are all really on the same side, “Morning Joe” seemed like a good example of a way we can communicate and not just yell.   You can download part of the book from iTunes here.  You can also buy it from Amazon here.

As cheesy as this feels to end with, I often think about President Clinton’s line that “There’s nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what’s right with America.”  I think we can say the same about our political system.

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My post mortem on the Trump candidacy

Donald Trump was never in the 2012 presidential campaign for the long haul.  I am not saying he had no interest in being president, I think he did.  He probably still does.  But this is my take of how this all went down.

 The 2012 campaign began almost the day after the election in 2008 but it really started up after the 2010 campaign.  Speculation about who was going to run on the GOP side seemed to be everywhere.  If there is anyone who understand the adage that “no press is bad press,” it’s Mr. Trump.  I grew up on Long Island where we seemed to get a ring side seat to the Trump Show.  I think he had been asked to do this and thought his campaign would be credible; a credible stunt.    Now, because he has a considerable ego, had been considering this, maybe his real interest was at 10 percent.  Anyone who has worked on a presidential campaign has seen the cottage industry that springs up when someone looks like they are running for president.  Would be candidates end up surrounded by a growing chorus of people telling him to run.  I used to wonder about candidates who have no chance, do they have no one in their life who can tell them this is a bad idea?  No, no there is not.

 So after a bit of this, Mr. Trump’s seriousness may have grown but I can guarantee that he did some checking into this – before he announced he was looking into it – and one of the very first things he would have learned,  was that he would have to release his financials and anyone who has ever really followed his career understands that this was never going past the summer.  Add to that his discomfort at shaking hands (a campaign must-do) and hatred of being seriously questioned (another campaign must-do) and you’ve got your three strikes.

 I think Mr. Trump started this thinking it would get decent press and raise ratings (can they ever be too high?  Not to him).  He starts out talking about the issues that he thinks makes him a credible candidate – the economy and our relationship with China.  He makes progress in the polls but the progression is more of a stable growing of support (good for politics, not so much for TV ratings) but not the meteoric rise he was looking for (bad for a campaign of a year and a half but good for TV ratings).  What’s been the hottest topic for many on the right?  President Obama’s birth certificate.  Mr. Trump takes a hard turn right and into loonie land, his polls numbers soar and the media eats this up like crazy.

 Note to the news media:  you have what, 17 months left of this campaign to cover?  Ask yourselves if you took his candidacy more seriously – or claimed to – to give you an excuse to cover something interesting.  If your answer is that he repeated (over and over and over) how serious he was – his stunt would not have worked without that.  If you really believed this, you would take Chris Christie at his word when he tries to make that same claim the other way.  Oh, and I also have a bridge in Brooklyn that you might be interested in.

 With his poll & ratings numbers soaring (not sure about his actual show but he dominated the 24 hour news cycle), the White House sees some of the crazy rhetoric is having an effect on what average people were starting to think about the President’s place of birth.  They release the long form certificate.  Mr. Trump is a allowed a small victory lap before his Icarus (thank you Chris Cillizza) candidacy crashes to earth.  We all know what happened next, Mr. Trump is eviscerated a few days later at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and to add that last nail, his NBC show is interrupted by the announcement that President Obama caught and killed Osama bin Laden.  Done.

 I would like to draw a clear comparison between this media type candidacy and that of Mike Huckabee.  Governor Huckabee was the clear front runner, which means as much as that can in 1.5 years out.  He also wanted to be president but this is a long grueling process.  One thing I always try to remind people about campaigns is that there are two things that you always run out of.  While you can theoretically make more money (as hard as that is), you can’t get more time.  Once the race starts, you get a finite amount and that’s all you get.  I think he looked at his life and weighed the real chances – even locking in the GOP nod would not guarantee him the prize, and it probably just seemed to be too much.  I am only laying all that out to show just how genuine his reasons for ending his campaign were.  No, Cenk Uygur, he did not “get too fat and happy to run.”  That’s just petty and mean.

 PS.  Dear Mr. Trump, this might be a good time to revisit that plan you had to save the Mets.  That’s a financial/sad situation that really might need you.

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I hate Arianna

Everybody loves Arianna Huffington.  Except for me.  For some reason, writing that makes me think of the Flanders song on The Simpsons:

“Hens love roosters.  Geese love ganders.  Everyone else loves Ned Flanders.

Not me. (Homer)

Everyone who counts loves Ned Flanders.”

I don’t like Arianna, and have a really hard time reading the insufferable Huffington Post, because I don’t trust her.  Sure, she seems like a good liberal/progressive today.  Today, on September 20th, 2010, Arianna was on Hardball dutifully playing a reasonable person.  One might totally forget her history – most seem to have – but I am not in that group.  I remember her history.

My personal history with her is long.  No, I have never met her but she was a big part of the start of my career.  And yes, I apparently hold grudges.  My experience with her started in 1994 but to get a full picture you need to go back further than that.

Arianna Huffington (née Stassinopoulos) was born in Greece.  In 1960, she moved to the United States.  One of the first things she was known for (here, she hosted a show in Britain before moving here) was dating Jerry Brown.  You know, the liberal.

Mrs. Huffington later married Michael Huffington, a Republican.  The couple moved to Santa Barbara in 1992 so that he could run for the House of Representatives.  He won.  She not only campaigned for her husband but she debated his opponent in his place.  In 1994, the duo ran one of the most expensive campaigns in US history (at the time) to unseat Senator Dianne Feinstein.  Almost $32 million later ($28 million of his own), Michael Huffington almost became a Senator.  That was the year I got my first job in politics.  I was  a press intern for Senator Feinstein.  Most of the time I love elections because they have outcomes that are pretty quick and decisive.  You know (usually, the country learned the lesson I learned that year in 2000 when hanging chads entered our collective vernacular) on election night if you won or lost.  Not in 1994, that election was so close that it was determined by absentee ballots.  This was a painful time for Senator Feinstein because she lost the California gubernatorial race in 1990 because of the same thing.

This was also a painful month for Senator Feinstein’s staff.  The Huffingtons made this worse.  I do not fault either of them for fighting the election night outcome; that’s normal.  I fault them for the incredibly poor sportsmanship they showed in the months between that night and when they finally gave up –I believe it was January when they did.  I could look it up but I want this account to be as much from memory as possible.  Congressman Huffington positioned himself in the path between where Senator Feinstein was sworn in to her office; he was giving a press interview (I was there, I saw it).  He was seen riding the “Senators Only” elevators (not as elitist as they seem, it’s to allow them to get to the Capitol in time for votes).  Arianna was seen measuring offices and picking out furniture.  At least once (when I was there anyway), they walked by our office and waved.  Classy.

The Huffingtons split up because he is gay.  There is nothing wrong with being gay.  Arianna is an immigrant.  There is nothing wrong with being an immigrant.  It is, however, incredibly hypocritical to run a campaign based on discriminating against homosexuals and immigrants when you are both.  It is pretty inexcusable if you aren’t but there I cannot forgive Arianna for supporting Proposition 187 (the anti immigration ballot initiative that would have prevented the children of immigrants from attending public schools).  Yes, Arianna, I kind of wished that had passed.  If only we could have made it retroactive to the day before you got here.  Do I sound bitter?  Kind of.

Once she was on her own, Arianna went on a crusade against the media.  She became a conservative columnist/panelist.  She wanted to start a show Beat the Press.  She hosted a show with Al Franken where she was the conservative and he was the liberal.  I think it was called Strange Bedfellows.  I still haven’t forgiven Franken for that.

And then it gets interesting.  Arianna started the Huffington Post. To whom did she turn for help?  Andrew Breitbart.  You may remember him.  He’s the rabid, Tea Bagger whose web site ‘broke’ the Acorn scandal last year.  He’s a peach.  And yet, I have fewer problems with him than Arianna.  Say what you want about Breitbart; he’s honest about his agenda and position.

So I don’t like Arianna.  It bothers me to no end that her web site is given so much weight and influence. I don’t trust the liberal turned conservative turned liberal.  No self-respecting progressive should.

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Make. It. STOP.

There are some people who think this ad by John McCain compares Barack Obama to the antichrist.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mopkn0lPzM8  Personally I don’t see this connection but apparently that is because I have not read  the Christian series on life after the apocalypse, “Left Behind.” 

From the Wall Street Journal:

“The spot, called "The One," opens with the line: "It shall be known that in 2008 the world will be blessed." Images follow of Moses parting the Red Sea and Sen. Obama telling a crowd, "We are the change we've been waiting for."

The McCain called the ad ‘lighthearted,’  I call it nauseating.  Even without the link to evil, it is truly annoying.  What’s worse, intellectually I know that it speaks to a number of people.  So, if I am correct, the McCain people are playing up the fact that Obama makes very broad statements during speeches, as if he invented the platitude.  Whatever.  Wake me up when November ends.

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