As you may or may not know, I am member of the local Democratic Town Committee (DTC).   We have a listserv.  People periodically share things of interest on the listserv.  (I’m a regular contributor.)  Earlier this week a member shared a column by the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza:

FWIW  —   Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza’s take on Clinton’s position as the Dem candidate:

 

[It’s too late for Democrats to start rethinking Clinton’s 2016 viability]

Cillizza’s first paragraph:

Dear Democrats: It’s too late to start over.

As in, there’s no replacing Hillary Rodham Clinton as your party’s front-runner for the presidential nomination. Not with Vice President Biden — even if he runs. Not with former vice president Al Gore. (I mean, come on.) Not with your ideal rich-person-with-no-record-and-a-fresh-faced-appeal.

He goes on.  I won’t quote him but you should read it purely for the spectacle of his inside-the-Beltway view of the world.   I read it in its entirety.  It hit a nerve so, since the piece was shared in the spirit of “for what it’s worth”, I decided to share with the DTC my assessment of it’s worth.   My contribution to the listserv:

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From the New York Times Magazine last weekend, Ana Marie Cox interviews Bernie Sanders:

Cox:  Do you think it’s fair that Hillary’s hair gets a lot more scrutiny than yours does?
Sanders:  Hillary’s hair gets more scrutiny than my hair?
Cox:  Yeah.
Sanders:  Is that what you’re asking?
Cox:  Yeah.
Sanders:  O.K., Ana, I don’t mean to be rude here. I am running for president of the United States on serious issues, O.K.? Do you have serious questions?
Cox:  I can defend that as a serious question. There is a gendered reason —
Sanders:  When the media worries about what Hillary’s hair looks like or what my hair looks like, that’s a real problem. We have millions of people who are struggling to keep their heads above water, who want to know what candidates can do to improve their lives, and the media will very often spend more time worrying about hair than the fact that we’re the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people.
Cox:  It’s also true that the media pays more attention to what female candidates look like than it does to what male candidates look like.
Sanders:  That may be. That may be, and it’s absolutely wrong.

Unfortunately, by virtue of her question and follow-up Cox becomes part of the problem, i.e., part of the media that’s giving undue attention to things that shouldn’t matter.  Sanders’ response to her hair question was spot on.  If I could have one wish granted to me it would be that people stop paying attention to things that don’t matter and pay more attention to things that do.  (Say bye to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  Oh, no worries though.  You can have them back after you eat your vegetables.) The way to switch the conversation from frivolous things to substance is not to remark to one another “Gee, isn’t it awful how the media and a large fraction of the electorate don’t pay attention to things that matter.”;   the way to switch the conversation is to start talking about things that do matter.    Please have at it.

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I did not watch the GOP candidates debate last night but driftglass did:

[So] far, the number of lies-per-minute has exceeded what physicists have long believed was bullshit’s theoretical upper limit.

To state the obvious, I won’t be voting for any of those fuckers.   That begs the question – actually, it doesn’t, but anyway – are there any Republicans that I’d seriously consider voting for in a head-to-head with Hillary?   To my surprise, I actually thought of a hypothetical GOP ticket that I’d consider.  No, seriously, I did.  Andrew Bacevich and Bruce Bartlett.  I have no idea if Bacevich is a Republican or if Bartlett still is one but they’re both conservatives.  More significantly, they’re both thoughtful, smart people.  (And, when he’s not busy commenting on economic policy, Bartlett can be pretty funny.)   We need more of those running for national office.

Matt Taibbi (emphasis mine):

When the Democrats had a legitimate electoral threat in the Republicans to wave in front of their voters, they used that as currency to buy their voters’ indulgence as they deregulated Wall Street, widened the drug war, abandoned unions in favor of free-trade deals and other horrors, and vastly increased the prison population, among innumerable other things.

But now that the rival electoral threat is mostly gone, they want permission to take the whole primary season off so they can hoard their money for massive ad buys targeting swing votes in Tennessee or whatever. In other words, even though the road ahead is easier for them, they want increased latitude to take their core voters for granted.

The Democrats could take this godsend of a Trump situation and use it as an opportunity to finally have a healthy primary season debate about what they want to stand for in the future. But nah to that. They’ll probably just hoover donor cash and use press surrogates to bash progressives the way they always have. Trump or no Trump, if politicians don’t have to work for your vote, they won’t.