Campaign 2020 – President – Page 4

Radio days volume 21

Think of it as the first stop of a radio book tour. (Well, let’s hope anyway.)

It’s been a long, long time since I did a radio show (March of 2016 to be exact, thanks to my erstwhile cohort Marita Tedder) and even longer since it was live – for that I have to go back to 2013. That was a less-than-desirable experience because I was the lone conservative on a panel of four left-of-center guests.

In this case, though, I got a nice 20-minute segment that was only interrupted once by traffic and weather. And I got to hear how Mike Bradley did a great job of setting up the segment: since I called in a few minutes beforehand I got to hear the intro. It was also nice to hear that I was a wanted commodity – I guess I had to do something more or less newsworthy and releasing a book was just the thing. I certainly have no objection to being an occasional recurring guest.

Initially I thought it would be a little disarming to begin off topic given that Mike wanted my opinion on Joe Biden’s entry into the race, but it turned out to be pretty good – not just because I could break out the line, “if it weren’t for double standards, the Democrats would have no standards at all,” but because it established some of my bonafides to an audience that probably isn’t familiar with my generally Maryland-centric website. I’m sure it also worked with the station’s morning theme of following Fox and Friends as they broadcast from Rehoboth.

But I really liked getting to explain some of my thinking behind the book. I thought I did reasonably well with that, considering how my morning went.

If I can let you in on a secret: last night I sat down and wrote out a list of talking points about my book that I would use for these occasions. I printed it up, set it on the table with a quote I wanted to use if I got time – and realized halfway to work (since that’s where I called from) that I left it sitting on my table. So I was a little freaked out, but realized the act of writing it was enough to jog my memory in most of the cases. So I didn’t give perfect explanations, but I think I got the point across.

However, the one point I wish I had brought up and had more time for was soliciting and getting the input from the early TEA Party leaders like Mark Williams, Joan Fabiano, and others to use in Rise and Fall. I sort of missed my chance when I talked about the corporate TEA Party and the difference from the early days. If this becomes recurring I may bring it up, although I suspect Mike would be more interested in more topical input.

As a whole, though, I think I would give it a solid B. I was told Mike was a great interviewer (not that I hadn’t heard him do a fair number in the past when I commuted to Delaware for work) and they were right. Considering I was doing this off the cuff and was way out of practice it went really well and hopefully will pique the interest of people in Rise and Fall.

So I appreciate Mike Bradley and WGMD giving me the chance to speak and look forward to doing it some more. Maybe I can get back to the same routine I had with Bill Reddish a decade ago.

A real March madness

With the field now set for the big college basketball dance, it’s time for the annual riffs on that theme – and what better style of madness than to determine seedings for the Democratic presidential field?

I’m going to go from #16 to #1, but feel free to handicap the bracket yourself.

#16: Marianne Williamson, 66. She’s a non-traditional candidate who’s best known as an author and motivational speaker; however, she has one recent (unsuccessful) run for Congress under her belt.

#15: Andrew Yang, 44. The other non-traditional major candidate in the field, he’s an entrepreneur who founded a non-profit called Venture for America. His key issue: a universal basic income for Americans.

#14: Tulsi Gabbard, 37. A member of Congress from Hawaii since 2013, Gabbard also served two tours of duty with the Army National Guard in Iraq, a deployment that cut short her initial political office in Hawaii’s House of Representatives, where she was elected at age 21.

#13: Pete Buttigieg, 37. He was elected mayor of South Bend, Indiana in 2011, and prior to winning a second term in 2015 served for seven months as a Naval reservist in Afghanistan. Shortly after returning from that deployment, Buttigieg announced he was gay. He is the only candidate in the field who still has an exploratory committee.

#12: Julian Castro, 44. Castro was Ben Carson’s predecessor as HUD Secretary, serving from 2014-17 after five years as mayor of San Antonio as well as a city councilman.

#11: Jay Inslee, 68. The governor of Washington state since 2013, he previously served seven non-consecutive terms in Congress – one as a representative of a more rural area and the last six in a Seattle-area district after he moved there. His main issue: climate change.

#10: John Delaney, 55. The founder of a business lending institution, Delaney served three terms in Congress before declining re-election in 2018 to focus on his Presidential run. He was the first candidate in the race, announcing a year and a half before the Iowa caucuses.

#9: John Hickenlooper, 67. He served most of two terms as mayor of Denver before leaving that post as the elected governor of Colorado in 2011. He recently concluded his second and final term in that post.

#8: Kirsten Gillibrand, 52. The most recent candidate to make it official, as she took the exploratory committee training wheels off over the weekend, Kirsten was Hillary Clinton’s replacement in the Senate, moving up from the House barely two years after her arrival there in 2007. She won election in 2010 to finish Clinton’s term and re-election twice since, 2012 and this previous November.

#7: Cory Booker, 49. He’s been New Jersey’s junior Senator since being elected in a 2013 special election, moving up after serving for over seven years as the mayor of Newark. He won that job in his second try, four years after concluding his one term on their city council with a defeat in his initial mayoral bid.

#6: Amy Klobuchar, 58. She has served as a Senator from Minnesota since being elected in 2006; previously she was the county attorney for Hennepin County, which is essentially Minneapolis and its suburbs, for eight years before moving up to the Senate. She announced her bid outside in a Minnesota snowstorm.

#5: Beto O’Rourke, 46. He’s perhaps most famous for a race he lost, falling short of replacing Ted Cruz in the Senate last year. By running for Senate, he abandoned a three-term House incumbency that followed six years on El Paso’s city council as well as a colorful past that included computer hacking and touring the country as bassist in a punk rock band.

#4: Elizabeth Warren, 69. She was elected to the Senate in 2012 after serving as the initial administrator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but being passed over for formal nomination to be the CFPB’s director in favor of Richard Cordray. A longtime law professor, her other claim to fame is being known as “Fauxcahontas” for claiming American Indian ancestry, perhaps even getting professional benefit from that claim. Ironically, she makes no secret about once being a Republican but switching parties in the 1990’s.

#3: Kamala Harris, 54. Stop me if you heard this one before: young black lawyer runs for President based on a few years in state office and barely two years in the Senate. Indeed, this is the case with Harris, who spent seven years as the District Attorney in San Francisco before going statewide in 2010. Six years later, she won her Senate seat and now she’s running for President.

#2: Bernie Sanders, 77. The only current aspirant to have run for President before, if you count several unsuccessful campaigns before he finally won a race (for mayor of Burlington, where he served for eight years) you would find his political career is older than five of his fellow candidates – he first tried for office in a special January, 1972 Senate election to a seat he would eventually win 34 years later, in 2006. That followed a 16-year stint as Vermont’s lone House member. While Sanders has always officially been an “independent,” he’s caucused with the Democrats since joining Congress.

#1: Joe Biden, 76. Yes, I know, he’s not formally in the race. But I’m going to give him the top seed because all these folks to his left, not to mention his association with a still-popular President, make him the most popular candidate – even more so than the ones in the race. The RCP average has Biden up seven points on the rest of the field.

So that’s the way the seeding goes. I see exactly zero chance of a 16 over 1 upset, but that 15 vs. 2 matchup may be more interesting than people think. 3 vs. 14 is pretty much a walkover, as the Gabbard campaign is having several issues, but I wouldn’t sleep on 4 vs. 13 – I think that may be your first upset special.

Oftentimes 12 vs. 5 is a trap game for the higher seed, but I think the more popular Texan takes it. 11 vs. 6 is probably not much of a contest, but 10 vs. 7 may be a close call, too. I think 9 wins over 8 in the mild upset.

Of course, all that does is put the 9 seed out in the second round as the 1 seed advances to the Final Four. The 2 seed will crush the weakened 7 seed in a contest that isn’t as good as the intriguing 2-15 matchup was.

In a thrilling 6 vs. 3 contest, I think the lower seed takes it in a big upset. And it sets up another crazy matchup of 13 vs. 5 that nearly becomes a second huge shock to the system.

Because the 5 seed had so much taken out of him in the prior game, he’s no match for the #1 seed. But the 6 seed moves on, ousting the #2 seed as his game runs out.

So in my final I would have Klobuchar vs. Biden. If Biden ran into foul trouble (i.e. an ill-timed inappropriate remark, which he’s quite prone to do) this could be Klobuchar’s to win. But she has a little baggage of her own, and people are pretty much immune to the things Joe says, so I think he would hang on in a very close contest.

Obviously a lot can change in the coming months, but I think that’s the state of play for the moment.

Why $15 is the wrong fight

I have seen reports all over social media and the “real” media that the Maryland House of Delegates has passed an increase in the minimum wage that will eventually lead it to $15 per hour by 2025. I’m not up on just who is who in the House these days but I presume a 96-44 vote is pretty much party line – there may have been a Democrat who voted against it, but I don’t know and it likely doesn’t matter in the scheme of things because it’s a vetoproof majority and the way Democrats are ramming this through it will be passed at a time when the veto can be overridden in session. (With Larry Hogan’s record, I can no longer say “inevitable veto.”)

It should be pointed out first of all that the “fight for $15” is sort of a misnomer because the raise from the current $10.10 per hour – a rate established last July – to $15 an hour would not be complete until January, 2025. This is a significant change from the original bill, which mandated the raise be in place by July, 2023. (The House bill has been amended while the cross-filed Senate bill remains as it was originally intended, so it works well for comparison.) But since the state began regularly raising its minimum wage in January, 2015, workers have already received a 26.3% bump in four years – well beyond the rate of inflation and a far cry from the normal 2-3% annual raises many workers receive if they are lucky. Whether it takes eight years or ten years, a salary increase of 87.5% for gaining absolutely no skills is far more than the market would naturally allow.

I’ll circle back to that point in a moment, but it’s also worth considering that union workers who have their wage rates tied to a point above the minimum wage will also get a raise. And when workers get a raise, guess who else does?

In today’s climate of dramatic minimum wage increases of 50% or more, unions — predominantly in the service sector — can also directly benefit from minimum wage increases because their members’ pay is less than the new minimum. Take California, for instance, which passed a $15 minimum wage last year. The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) usedCensus Bureau data to estimate that roughly 223,000 union members in the state will receive a direct pay increase by the time the law is fully implemented.
It’s bad news for taxpayers, but a solid investment for unions. A powerful California-based SEIU local spent about $1.6 million to collect the signatures needed to qualify the $15 ballot measure that forced Gov. Jerry Brown to back such a mandate. EPI estimated that California unions can expect a return on investment of roughly $9 million in additional dues per year.
“Why Do Unions Fund The Fight For $15 Minimum Wage? Because They Gain A Financial Windfall In Return,” Ed Rensi, Forbes, January 19, 2017.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Big Labor here in Maryland has similar deals with business owners held hostage to these union contracts.

Now circle back with me if you would and think about who earns minimum wage from a job. Generally they are people just entering the job market or those who don’t develop their skills beyond the point of being barely hireable. My first “real” W-2 job was working in the on-campus dining halls at college, and it was a minimum wage job – just as my roommate who snagged a cushy library job made. Since I was essentially a temporary worker, it didn’t matter to the school that I was making $3.35 an hour to run a dishwasher. And since most of my money went to the local sub shop or to buy the occasional 12-pack when I became legal, I didn’t much worry about it, either. In fact, my first job out of college at a department store was minimum wage – but this college graduate quickly parlayed his degree into a 49% raise when the architectural firm I interviewed with a few weeks earlier offered me a position less than a month after I started working at the store. More skills and a little bit of work experience = higher wages. I created more potential value from my labor.

This is the problem with minimum wage as I see it. Do you think Maryland workers are going to instantly create another 75 cents to a dollar’s worth of value to their employers each hour just because the calendar flipped from 2020 to 2021 or 2024 to 2025? Of course they won’t – but if a business owner had 20 minimum-wage employees who worked an average of 20 hours a week, it’s an extra $300 or $400 they need to clear.

I’ll grant there’s a bit of merit to the argument that raising the wage creates people with more money to spend, but what are the chances enough people will take their extra money and spend it at the business in question? When the percentage of workers who make minimum wage hovers in the low single-digits, there’s not enough of an impetus for that so-called “extra” money to make much of an impact on the economy at large but, at the same time, it can be devastating to a business that requires a lot of unskilled labor.

There’s also the impact on workers who make slightly to significantly more than minimum wage to consider. They won’t get an automatic raise, but their standard of living declines by the amount that businesses have to raise their prices to cover costs. It may only be an extra percent or two in scattered businesses, but eventually that adds up. Note that amendments to Maryland’s most recent minimum wage bill not only slowed down the increase by 18 months but also scrapped the automatic increase based on inflation – probably to make it an issue for the 2024 or 2026 elections.

I have often said, and will continue to say because it’s true, that the real minimum wage is zero – the amount you make when the job you may have secured when the minimum wage was $8 an hour and you weren’t a significant risk to the employer if you didn’t work out is the job that’s no longer available at $10.10 an hour.

Regardless, it’s all but certain that a minimum wage increase will pass in Maryland this year. The Left needs that victory and many others in order to try and tank the state and national economy for the 2020 election. (Notice the lack of enthusiasm over the 2.9% GDP increase despite the fact it’s our best since 2015 – losing by a fractional .0009% – and close to the first 3% annual calendar year growth rate since 2005. One could argue the Schumer-Pelosi-Trump shutdown may have cost us that 0.1 percent.) Apologists for the Obama economic record (“Analysts have called into question just how much a particular president actually impacts the economy during his tenure”) now expect a recession to hit by the next election (“While the fourth-quarter cooling isn’t quite as extreme as some economists feared, the metric does little to placate existing concerns about a global economic slowdown.”)

But someone believes in magic, as in that people will magically produce more value through an arbitrary wage increase. Cue the pixie dust and unicorns.

I suppose this is proof of his statement…

Those who have followed me for many years know that I’ve put up an election widget to link to campaign sites, and now their social media pages. Since the 2020 campaign is underway I did the same for the Presidential race – it’s just not very prominent quite yet. (I’ll move it up as the year progresses and we get closer to the debates and Iowa caucus this time next year.)

So today I was reading a USA Today story on the candidates who are in and out, noting that Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar was entering the race today in an outdoor rally in the Minnesota snow. But it also noted that one of those candidates on my original widget, West Virginia’s Richard Ojeda, had already withdrawn, which I was unaware of.

Granted, out of those who were on my widget I would have rated him as the longest shot, down there with Pete Buttigieg (the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana) and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney as a second tier of candidates behind the more nationally prominent Senators and others pursuing the chance to oppose President Trump. But it could have been argued that Barack Obama and Donald Trump were longshots in their respective races – Obama because he had been in the Senate for just 25 months when he announced in February, 2007, despite the conventional wisdom that the 2008 race was supposed to be Hillary Clinton’s to win, and Trump because no one took a businessman running for President seriously when the field was deep, talented, and brimming with a number of politically experienced candidates. Maybe they weren’t the longshots like a state senator who lost his only federal election (a 2018 run for Congress) would be, but he was still in the race and stating his case.

So when Richard Ojeda withdrew from the race, it wasn’t much noticed – hence his parting shot.

Today I want to thank from the bottom of my heart all the people who have supported and believed in this campaign. The indications were very positive from an overwhelming response to our videos, to thousands of volunteers, and a level of grassroots fundraising support that grew every day. However, the last thing I want to do is accept money from people who are struggling for a campaign that does not have the ability to compete. So today I am announcing that I am suspending this campaign.
When I was a child my grade school teachers told us all that anyone in America could grow up and become President. I now realize that this is not the case. Unless someone has extreme wealth or holds influence and power it just isn’t true. Especially if you dare to step out of line and challenge the powers that be. The big donors won’t take your calls, the media won’t say your name, and the establishment will do everything they can to crush you.
I want you to know though that my fight does not end! I may not have the money to make the media pay attention but I will continue raising my voice and highlighting the issues the working class, the sick and the elderly face in this nation. I expect to have an announcement very soon about what my next steps will be. But know this, this campaign was never about me but about the issues we care about, checking big pharma, ending corruption and elevating the working class citizen. Nothing and no one can stop me from fighting for what’s right.
Sappers clear the way. Airborne all the way.
Richard Ojeda withdrawal announcement, January 25, 2019. (Emphasis mine.)

Setting aside the desire of his supporters for Ojeda to run for either Governor or U.S. Senate from West Virginia, both of which have elections in 2020 and are held by Republicans, let’s take what Ojeda had to say about running for President and break it down.

Until President Trump came along and bolstered the “extreme wealth” argument, all of the Presidents who have served us in my lifetime (I was born in 1964) were products of one (or more) of three separate offices: Vice President (Johnson, Nixon, Ford – under the special circumstance of being appointed under the 25th Amendment – and Bush 41), governor of a state (Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43), or Senator (Obama, but previous to being vice president also Johnson – who succeeded a former Senator in John F. Kennedy – and Nixon.) Gerald Ford was previously a member of Congress, but only represented a Michigan district in the House before being appointed to succeed former Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew after Agnew resigned in 1973.

Yet think of the money it takes now to win a Senate seat or run for governor, particularly from a major state. Obviously it takes a type of talent and attitude to be able to “smile and dial” in order to raise the money and the charisma to charm people into voting for you, knowing that the higher up in the food chain one goes, the fewer people can grab the brass ring. (A case in point: Klobuchar is the fourth sitting U.S. Senator to seek the Democratic nomination so far but only one – or none – will succeed.)

By that same token, the nation’s capital is ruled by political conventional wisdom that states either someone with a connection to Washington or with a statewide base that’s significant (i.e. a state with large population like California, Florida, or Texas) will succeed in running for President. That was the case with most of the Presidents in my lifetime, although one can argue that perhaps Jimmy Carter and certainly Bill Clinton did not come from high-profile states. In the 1970’s Georgia was still considered a sleepy, backwater state as Arkansas is to this day. Donald Trump turned that conventional wisdom on its ear to some extent; however, it can be theorized that his “significant base” were the millions who bought his books, watched The Apprentice, and so forth, and that they were a proxy for a medium-sized state.

[This phenomenon is similar to the fact that no one from the Eastern Shore has been elected to statewide office here in Maryland since the days of ~~J. Millard Tawes~~. (I left out Harry Hughes, as I was reminded on his passing.) Those who have a base in populated areas have a definite leg up in gathering financing and supporters.]

So it’s sad but true: not that I would have been an Ojeda backer, but the media and establishment basically dictated his campaign would be short-lived. Ojeda wasn’t part of the “in” crowd and he didn’t have a name that attracted eyeballs based on previous reputation, so he would have never made the debate stage – perhaps not even the so-called “kiddie table debate” purgatory before campaign suspension.

Maybe this is why the Swamp can’t seem to be drained.

The safe harbor is receding

Whether it’s a reaction to the perceived unpopularity of President Trump or the desire to get out in front of what promises to be a crowded field, the 2020 Presidential race is getting underway even as we finish packing the Christmas stuff and shatter any remaining New Year’s resolutions.

2020 will be the fourth Presidential race to occur since I began this website, and it seems the two parties handle things differently. We didn’t get the first formal announcement on the opposition GOP side in 2016 until March of 2015, when Texas Senator Ted Cruz was first to move. Four years earlier, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson was first in when he declared in April of 2011. (Some might count political consultant and gay rights activist Fred Karger as the first in; if so, he came online in March of 2011.)

On the other hand, when the Democrats were the opposition party they have started way early. Since I’ve been of the Republican persuasion for most of the nearly four decades I’ve been a registered voter, I had forgotten that the 2008 Democratic field was well into taking shape by this dawning stage of 2007, nearly a year out from the Iowa caucuses. If you believe Wikipedia, before January of that year was through we already had a number of Democrat candidates who had announced, with some having already formed exploratory committees:

Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (April, 2006)
outgoing Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack (November, 2006)
2004 VP nominee John Edwards (December, 2006)
Delaware Senator Joe Biden (January, 2007)
Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd (January, 2007)
Illinois Senator Barack Obama (January, 2007)
New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton (January, 2007)
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (January, 2007)

Note that 2008 was an “open-seat” race, not one where there was a Republican incumbent. Also note that Biden and Clinton are considering yet another run but haven’t made a final decision yet.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised 18 months ago when Rep. John Delaney made it known he was skipping a fourth Congressional term (and a potential race for Maryland governor) to make a bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination. We hadn’t made the new year yet when Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren jumped in and now we have a couple others: Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and former HUD Secretary Julian Castro. Another candidate who declared last fall after losing a Congressional bid and could be taken as a second-tier hopeful is Maj. Richard Ojeda, an Army veteran and former West Virginia state senator best known as a passionate supporter of his state’s teachers unions – and for being called “stone cold crazy” by President Trump – who is running a populist campaign.

The upshot of all this is that I decided it was time to put together a widget for my Democrat friends – and of course, for the Republicans it will include Donald Trump as well since he has declared for re-election. Also included are some of the Libertarians who are also running. I did a soft opening for it yesterday afternoon, but it’s placed down the page a bit so you may not have noticed. Now you should, as I did it in the style of my 2018 widgets with social media links included.

Indivisible by zero: a local “Day of Action” in pictures and text

I decided that downtown was a good place to go for lunch today. So I popped into Maya Bella’s, got a slice of pepperoni, chips, and a drink, and strolled down the Plaza because I knew there was a show going on at the other end. At least that’s what I told the three SPD officers who were obviously detailed with the security.

This is what I found:

I took this from about the same general location as the TEA Party shot to follow. For a group claiming 2018 was their “first big victory” I expected more than this.

It’s a nice little crowd, but if you want to model yourself after the TEA Party you may want to step up your protest game. I found my shots of the 2009 Salisbury Tax Day TEA Party awhile back (this one also graces my book website) and it so happens I took it from about the same perspective as the shot above, give or take.

This is a shot from the Salisbury Tax Day TEA Party, April 15, 2009.

For good measure, even though it’s not quite from the same angle, I also have one from the No Ban No Wall Rally in February, 2017.

This came from the No Ban No Wall No Registry Rally held in front of the Government Office Building on February 18, 2017. That was when the anti-Trump movement was still white-hot. (Pun not initially intended, but I decided to keep it.)

In terms of caveats, the TEA Party was held late on a Wednesday afternoon (as opposed to lunchtime) and the No Ban rally was on a Saturday, so the crowd was naturally going to be larger. It also had a counter-protest, which is actually in the foreground of my photo of the event.

So suffice to say today’s group was just a portion of what I like to call the “traveling roadshow.” These are the same folks who go to give Andy Harris a hard time at his town hall meetings – in fact, one speaker today led the group in one of their many chants, “Andy, we’re watching you.”

Addressing the Congressman, that same speaker intoned, “we’re very interested in what you’re doing.” Well, I’m interested in what you are doing, too. Why do you think I showed up?

I moved a little closer so I could make out what the speakers had to say. It wasn’t the best setup. Look closely on the left side and you may notice the lady with the rainbow bag has a genuine “p” hat.

This shot was taken just before I left. I spent about 20-25 minutes listening to a litany of complaints about our “democracy.” “This is what democracy looks like,” said a speaker previous to this one – I think that’s Jared Schablein speaking in the photo, way back by the building.

I thought it was interesting that Indivisible was described by one of the local organizers as run by attorneys in D.C. who used to work for the Obama administration. That’s a point I’m planning on returning to, but the same lady also noted that “we are on offense,” which has been an Indivisible talking point since the election. In fact, they have several of them:

As always, Indivisible has you covered. In this toolkit, you will find a planning meeting agenda, sample roles, a press kit, and more to make your event as successful as possible. Because whose House? Our House! (Emphasis in original.)
The online Indivisible “January 3 Day of Action Organizing Toolkit.”

That, by the way, was another chant they serenaded downtown with at least a couple times: “Whose House? Our House!” Just remember, you only have a 2-year lease.

Another key talking point was the Democrats’ H.R. 1 bill, which was slated to be introduced today (along with articles of impeachment, to no one’s surprise, but that’s a different story.) Redistricting was on Jared Schablein’s mind, but as I brought up on social media with him, the Eastern Shore is going to have to share with someone. And if they feel unrepresented, bear in mind that the last Democrat nominee for Congress from our district also came from across the bridge (and he carried Wicomico in the primary.)

But it wasn’t all talk about H.R. 1. Just like the TEA Party got off on other tangents, the Indivisible rally strayed at times, too. As a prime example, there was some lady speaking on gun control. One thing I found interesting in her remarks was the disparity in concealed carry permits between Maryland (20,000) and Pennsylvania (1.3 million) – all in the difference between being a “may” issue state like Maryland and a “shall” issue state like Pennsylvania. She thought it was a good thing, I beg to differ.

I have one more photo to use from the event.

You know, if the TEA Party used preprinted signs it would be called “Astroturf.” So is this really grassroots or just manipulation of a group of malcontents?

They actually hadn’t handed out many of these signs; in fact, there really weren’t that many signs there. Maybe the threat of rain made the participants decide to keep them at home. So it wasn’t a media-friendly event – I believe the only media person I saw there was Don Rush from Delmarva Public Radio (naturally.) He was taping some “man-on-the-street” interviews with various participants and bystanders, and I was taking photos and notes on my phone.

But the signs bring up a final point. Do a Google search on “indivisible astroturf” and you get about 28,400 results – many of them left-leaning sites denying the claim. On the other hand – and yes, this could be from a much longer history – the search “tea party astroturf” gathers 513,000 results. You can easily find claims about billionaires funding the TEA Party in the New York Times but it takes digging into the far more obscure Capital Research Center website to get an idea of where Indivisible gets its funding. Indivisible is the brainchild of Beltway insiders using standard sources of left-wing funding to try and appear to be a “grassroots” movement. This wasn’t nearly as spontaneous as the TEA Party was, and you can see the proof right here.

My pizza was pretty good. But if you were looking for a day of action today in downtown Salisbury, frankly, there wasn’t much to see. Sorry.

The GOP after 2020

It’s doubtful many people saw this with everything from a blue blood moon eclipse to the State of the Union address to the runup to the Super Bowl going on, but my first choice for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination weighed in at the Wall Street Journal (alas, behind a paywall) with his thoughts on the post-Trump GOP.

The reason I put 2020 in the title, despite the fact the Trump presidency could last until January of 2025, is that the moment the 2020 election is over Donald Trump is a lame duck. At that time we will either see the jockeying for position in case Vice-President Mike Pence doesn’t want the top job, like the last GOP veep Dick Cheney who didn’t run in 2008 (nor has he since.) So the new direction of the Republican Party will be determined after 2020. (This is in contrast to the Democratic Party, which is now having the fight they should have had in 2013-14 after Barack Obama was re-elected. Even had Joe Biden decided to run, there was going to be a battle between generations and philosophies on the Democratic side.

But Bobby Jindal sees the upcoming fight and wants to avoid it. His contention, though, is that the Trump philosophy is no bigger and has no more lasting effect than his direct participation in the presidency. In Jindal’s view, the new GOP should remember:

The Trump movement should and can be bigger than him. Now that elite Democrats have renounced the blue-collar working-class voters who supported them as recently as 2012, Republicans must learn to consolidate and build on that base. The next Republican presidential nominee after Mr. Trump will have a fighting shot at bringing home the people who like lower taxes and dead terrorists but bristle at his crude behavior.

(snip)

The moment immediately after Trump is the one that counts. It is possible that it took him to broaden us and that our subsequent existence will depend on his disappearance.

Where does all this leave us? We need to take over and reinvent the GOP. Mr. Trump won’t be the man to do it. We should create a more populist – Trumpian – bottom-up GOP that loves freedom and flies the biggest American flag in history, shouting that American values and institutions are better than everybody else’s and essential to the future.

It sounds to me like Jindal is looking for a Republican Party that takes a page from the Constitution Party. The problem is that too many people equate populist policy (hardline immigration but a willingness to compromise, and big government done more efficiently) with Republicans now. Despite the fact that President Trump is governing in many respects as conservatively (if not moreso) than Ronald Reagan, he shares the commonality with Reagan that his predecessor put in an unpopular big government program that he promised to kill – but in time wasn’t done. Reagan vowed to abolish the Department of Education but never had the Congress to do so, Trump evolved from “repeal” Obamacare to “repeal and replace” to “okay, we got rid of the penalty for not carrying insurance.” Trump, though, has Congress in his favor.

Unfortunately, we had a party like Jindal advocates once upon a time. Back when politics stopped at the water’s edge, the Great Society Democrats were fine with waving the flag but were also happy as clams promoting a bigger (and they thought a better) government. Absent the evidence Republicans (aside from Paul Ryan) want to significantly cut spending, I’m beginning to think we have a two-headed monster on our hands.

The first to step forward

We have barely made it six months into President Donald Trump’s term. And while Democrats were ready to oppose him from day one – Trump’s Presidential honeymoon lasted less than a nanosecond after he was sworn in – no one really expected the 2020 race to begin shaping up until we made it through the 2018 midterm elections.

But as further proof we now have a continuous campaign, the first somewhat serious candidate to enter the race on the Democrat side made his intention known Friday by foregoing another term in the House. Rep. John Delaney put an op-ed in the Washington Post on Friday that claimed he would be the candidate to “have an original approach to governing and an economic policy that can put us on a different course.”

Yet while the incumbent President is a businessman, Delaney thinks he’s not cut out to be a leader. “I think Trump, to some extent, is a punctuation of everything that has broken down with our politics,” said the Congressman in a separate WaPo interview.

So he’s going to do things a little differently.

As a progressive businessman, I’ve made it a priority to be solutions-oriented and have been consistently recognized as one of the most innovative and bipartisan members of Congress. I’ve done this by simultaneously celebrating the power of our free-market economy while insisting that there is a role for government to set goals and rules of the road and take care of those who are left behind.

And let me grab one more excerpt to illustrate his approach:

We need to be smarter, fueled by more investment in science, education and research. We need new ideas on the future of jobs and work, one where we build a stronger and more vibrant middle class. We need to encourage a more just and inclusive form of capitalism and reduce barriers to small-business formation, start-ups, job creation, investment and growth. We need to strengthen our safety-net programs and create a new social contract. We need to reform the systems of education, health care and immigration, and encourage more volunteerism, impact investing and public service. And we need to take affirmative steps to reduce our security, fiscal and climate risks. This is what my campaign will be about.

Let me begin at the top. Would it not be fair to say that, in order to have a truly free-market economy, there should be a minimum of government-set rules and goals and a maximum of market-set ones? I’m sure John didn’t wake up every day when he was building his businesses and say to himself, “Gee, how can I meet the specifications and expectations laid out for me by the federal government today?” I know I don’t say that when I consider what to write in my little space.

And the problem with the government taking care of those being left behind is that they become overly comfortable in that lifestyle and create generations that don’t aspire to anything more than living off the state.

As a Democrat, Delaney has to include the old canards about “investment” (read: more unnecessary spending) in science, education, and research. But what really reveals the game is the idea of a “more just and inclusive form of capitalism.” Capital is as just and as inclusive as the market participants, which I will agree goes in with reducing barriers. But those barriers should be reduced in such as way that no one gets an advantage for themselves – the problem is, as we all know, Democrats will rig the game for certain constituencies in order to buy their votes.

All in all, I’ve figured out just what Delaney’s campaign will be about: he will be the arbiter of everything. I mean, he already has a website for his campaign where he has the catchy “D” logo with a highway disappearing into the horizon, and in the video he has there he goes over just how wonderful and peachy everything will be if he’s in charge and in control of everything, because that’s what “progressive” policies entail – government calls the shots and you get what they grudgingly give you. One of the women on the video talks about what a great progressive businessman Delaney is to his employees, and that’s outstanding. But let that be his choice, not forced on every business whether they can afford it or not.

Yet there’s another point to be made here as well. Think back to this time on the calendar in 2009, when Barack Obama was perceived as popular – even if many of his policy ideas were not. On the other hand, there’s been little discussion about Trump’s policy ideas (aside from the GOP’s failed attempt to rid us of Obamacare, which Trump was more or less ambivalent about, in all honesty – after all, he was the one who introduced Republicans to the “repeal and replace” concept.) But if you transport yourself to the end of July 2009, the GOP presidential contest was thought to be Sarah Palin’s to lose – but she was months away from announcing her intentions, as were other 2008 and possible 2012 contenders. So Delaney’s entry into the race, well over 2 1/2 years before we deal with the snowy Iowa caucuses, either means Democrats are just chomping at the bit because they think they have 2020 in the bag or they are just trying to extend the perception of Donald Trump’s unpopularity. And who knows? The 2020 field for the Democrats may make the 2016 GOP field look small in comparison because EVERYONE who thinks they can be President will give it a shot. Maxine Waters, anyone?

There’s only been one President who was elected from being a sitting House member, and that’s James Garfield. (Technically, Delaney won’t be a sitting House member when elected since he’s dropping out of Congress after three terms.) Even so, I think that 140 year streak will be safe. But in any battle someone has to charge forward and take the arrows, and it looks like John Delaney is that guy. The only question is whether he will be first in, first out.

And somewhere Larry Hogan is breathing a sigh of relief. I’ve thought all along Hogan was most vulnerable to a Delaney challenge given their similar backgrounds, but it appears John has more ambition than to just be governor.