I was never a big fan of Kamala Harris when she was running for President. Yet I am surprisingly pleased by her selection to be Joe Biden's rnning mate. The former California Attorney General and San Francisco district attorney, she was a tough-on-crime prosecutor (too tough, say some), and is a seasoned campaigner. As US …
Continue reading Biden chooses Harris, an unexpectedly pleasing choice
It's time to play my role in Super Tuesday. I've joked that in November I'd vote for a ham sandwich over Donald Trump. Any of the remaining candidates could do a better job than the incumbent. Nevertheless, I have twisted and turned. I used to scoff at voters who were still undecided days before an …
Continue reading Super Tuesday: resolving the struggle between head and heart
Will Rogers famously said, "I'm not a member of any organized political party; I'm a Democrat." That boisterous, fractious, messy, irritating group was on full display in last night's debate. Despite reminders that "there's more that unites us than divides us," all six candidates at some point attacked and drew blood in a way most …
Continue reading Shrieks, howls, fur flying, blood drawn: meet the Democrats
"I'm a capitalist to my bones," Senator Elizabeth Warren this week told a New England Council audience of business leaders, adding, "We have to make markets strong so everyone can do better." Addressing an arcane and often dry subject, she made an impassioned pitch that good bankruptcy laws are essential to well-functioning markets. She was …
Continue reading Elizabeth Warren: tribune for the downtrodden or capitalist to the bones?
It's hard not to feel good about last Tuesday's election results. Winning beats losing. Trying to tout losing by special congressional elections by ever-narrower margins doesn't cut it. Never mind that Virginia trends blue anyway and voted Democratic the last three Presidential elections and four of the last five gubernatorial races. Tuesday's special election victory …
President Obama's proposed trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), has me in a quandary. I've long held that free trade benefits everyone in the long run. It's what happens in the short run that can be daunting. Reduce or eliminate barriers to other nations' products and we get the benefit of lower prices and greater selection …
Continue reading Secrecy tips the case of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
I long ago gave up my belief in the Easter bunny. (The rabbits who regularly destroy my garden took care of that.) Santa Claus is a relic of a decades-past childhood. But now, harsh reality demands that I can no longer cling to the idea of Tom Brady, man god. Mr. Perfect. The National Football …
Tip O'Neill famously said all politics is local. Yesterday, Republicans won big by turning that adage on its head. They nationalized state races and turned President Obama's unpopularity and his administration's failures into anvils around the necks of Democratic candidates. Even states that Obama carried turned against him. A happy exception to that trend was …
Continue reading Election 2014 – is consensus as remote as ever?
Southie's traditional St. Patrick's Day breakfast was anything but traditional yesterday. A testament to the new Boston, a majority-minority city, the breakfast was hosted for the first time ever by a woman, a person of color, a Haitian-American, and a resident of Dorchester...all wrapped up in the energetic and charismatic persona of State Senator Linda Dorcena Forry. …
Continue reading St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast: more love-in, less roast
Elizabeth Warren insists she is not running for President, most recently this past Sunday on Channel 5's On the Record program. This is a good thing. There's been too much bandwagon buzz about a possible Warren presidential candidacy, with even estimable Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi quick to portray Warren as a contender. Such effusiveness is getting …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 