The Evolutionary Political Tree

 

With all the money and people the Democrats can tap for professional wordsmithing, why is it that their top candidates, and now President, can’t stop pissing off the very people they need to vote for them? Between Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (who have a combined cumulative public speaking experience you could measure not in years but geologic eras), these leaders of their party have given Republicans verbal fodder to last a generation or, in more familiar terms, as long as the Neanderthals were our ancestors.

Just yesterday President Joe accused the governors of Texas and Mississippi of “Neanderthal thinking” when they announced lifting almost all Covid restrictions in their states. Not since Hillary’s line about Trump supporters being a “basket of deplorables” have the Democrats given the opposition the gift that keeps on giving. To this day conservative media uses “deplorables” as shorthand for elites who look down on working class masses with only high school educations. The very people who used to vote for Democrats. The same people Hillary mocked were all too happy to put that deplorable name on t-shirts and parade around in their own form of mockery all the way to the 2016 voting booths. Even in 2020 it was a cry at the Trump rallies, and short of 50,000 votes (legal and otherwise) across three states it would have propelled the Donald to another four years in the White House.

More importantly, Joe’s words reinforce, at many levels, the difference between elites and deplorables/Neanderthals. Not two weeks ago Texas went very Middle Ages electric, which is to say the power grid went off for a variety of reasons. After the lights went back on, Texas Governor Abbott could have pulled an Andrew Cuomo—that is deny, call it politics, and then go back to business as usual. But Abbott was front and center: the system failed and the legislature will come up with a remedy. There was no blaming green energy, shared power grids, or other DC salon discussion points—just plain talk that here is what happened and here is how we are going to fix it.

A bigger question for Joe is, do you really want to give Texas Republicans more ammunition? The state is poised to gain several congressional seats, all of which are redistricted by the Republican-controlled state legislature. I’m sure somebody in an Austin conference room already has a map out with labels “Neanderthal District-1, Neanderthal District-2, Neanderthal District-3…” And let’s not forget Florida, who I guess would be merely prehistoric on Joe’s Covid fighting scale. They will gain congressional seats from failed states such as New York, and I’m guessing they aren’t inclined to hand out goodies to the Democrats either. But in Texas, where Democrats have made significant inroads during recent statewide elections, do you really need to start off every campaign stop by distancing yourself from the leader of your party? When you are measuring victory by thin slices of the electoral college, I wouldn’t start by insulting the very places where you are trying to flip votes. Even Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday said he disagreed with opening up states, but didn’t go down the route of evolutionary name calling.

There are no perfect, or even very good, answers about what restrictions have worked, especially in light of destroying “non-essential” livelihoods, wiping out a year and a half of schooling, and, as the courts keep ruling, breaking the limits of governmental authority. It’s been a fairly poor experiment, and now some states are taking bold action, especially in light of the vaccine rollout. It’s the philosophy, right down party lines, as Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves put it, “’It was never to prevent all possible spread of Covid-19, it was always about protecting the integrity of our healthcare system.’” That question will not get answered here.

Say what you will about Neanderthals, but they weren’t too shabby making and using tools and their cave drawings could hang in any modern gallery wall, especially compared to some of today’s art. And maybe Joe was just having a grumpy old man day that people weren’t staying off his mask wearing front lawn. But what distinguishes our species from others is our large brain compared to our body size, a brain that remembers things on election day. And a brain that can create some great t-shirts, t-shirts I can’t wait to see on the campaign trail.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Excelsior, Ever Lower

 

As a side hustle over the years, I’ve been a photographer at many philanthropic and political galas. It’s not my favorite work, but the pay is usually OK and if you do a good enough job, they invite you back the next year—a little like a work annuity. So it was in the early 2000’s when I was covering the annual fundraiser for a prominent local environmental group. It’s a gig I had done before, and many of the same folks were there from previous years. There’s a kind of code at these events when it comes to pictures, with photographers keeping an eye out for celebs willing to have their photos taken with civilians (those who pay to go to these things). With a subtle nod of the head, the celeb smiles and extends their arm around the civilian, and I click away.

Thus I thought nothing of it when I saw a politician, who not-so-secretly was about to launch a statewide campaign, talking with a civilian. They seemed to know each other in a vague way, so I naturally asked if they wanted a picture. The civilian, we’ll call him Bob, stood up straight, adjusted his tie, and flashed a grin across his face, and the politician…looked at me. It wasn’t a blank look, but a highly unresponsive one. He turned to the civilian and simply deadpanned, “Oh Bob wouldn’t want a picture with me” and then calmly walked away. It was hardly the usual behavior of a an out-of-office politician gearing up for a major campaign, and both Bob and I were just plain confused by the whole thing. Then again, the politician in question was Andrew Cuomo.

In the Donald Trump model of life, any news, meaning any mention of your name, is good news. Accusations of obstructing justice and illicit female relationships were swatted away like contestants on an Apprentice episode. For Andrew Cuomo, the same accusations these past few weeks have been a political nightmare, and there has been nowhere for him to simply walk away.

Perhaps it’s all genetic. Cuomo’s dad Mario, the former New York Governor, was known to be just as thin-skinned and as much of a bully to the Albany press as Andrew. He’d call a reporter at eight in the morning to complain about some petty umbrage he took to a recent article. Now complaining to, and about, reporters is an ancient political art, but calling them only a few hours after they got to bed was considered a hostile act. But even Mario had to compromise, given that Republicans controlled the State Senate and significant parts of upstate and Long Island. For Andrew, political opposition has been wiped out across the state and he has steamrolled his way to absolute control. Of course the last steamroller in Albany, Governor Eliot Spitzer, had his own control issues, namely with prostitutes, and it cost him his job.

Perhaps Andrew Cuomo thinks this will all blow over. This is the same Governor who managed to shut down the state’s Moreland commission on government corruption when the investigation started to knock on his door and that of his supporters. A few minor characters went to jail, but somehow Cuomo managed to bully and bluster his way out of the whole affair.

But then there are the women.

First was senior aide Melissa DeRosa admitting, like John Dean at the Watergate hearings, that the Cuomo administration had deliberately obstructed a Department of Justice investigation into the deaths of thousands of nursing home residents. And while Biden’s DOJ announced they would open their own investigation, nobody can figure out why it will be in the Eastern District of New York, some 150 miles away from Albany, when staff from the Northern District of New York could walk two blocks to Cuomo’s office at the state Capitol building. One gets the sense this will be as successful as a 2019 health inspection at the Wuhan wet market.

But now there are more women kissing (albeit non-consensually) and telling. Two former staffers have accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, and just as I am typing this sentence a third woman has come forward recounting Cuomo copping and unwanted feel. At first Cuomo forcefully denied anything happened, sounding much like Trump in his own, weird Cuomo-esque accent. But a funny thing happened—all of a sudden Cuomo’s story is now one of being playful, adding a little humor to the serious business of government work, lightening the mood. Denials now have a different storyline, which is to say it’s not a denial.

Yet Cuomo still is grasping to whatever power he has. Instead of acquiescing to the obvious, Cuomo suggested that he appoint his own special investigator about these allegations. As a sign of his diminished standing, the entire Capital laughed that idea away and the State Attorney General will grant a private attorney, with full subpoena power, authority to investigate the matter.

There are two things I’m sure about. First, Cuomo will fight all of this to the bitter, bitter, end. His chances of higher office, heck a fourth and final term as Governor, have melted away like the winter’s snow. He has nothing to lose and may just try to run out the clock, hoping his well-practiced skills of obstruction and deceit will work one more time. We’ll see how that all goes. And the second thing—just don’t ask to take a picture with him.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.