Having an Israeli government, as bad as some have been, would be of help . (See 1 below.)
And:
Are we back to ground zero? https://www.israpundit.org/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I you believe in Socialism you can go to Venezuela and experience it first hand or you should read Hayek's: "The Road To Serfdom" and remain in America. Your choice.
Remember it the next time Bernie or Liz tell you how wonderful "Socialism is..
And If you know any, send it to the "millenial airheads" who think Socialism is great."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
McCarthy has a bad last name but he is fair and objective. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Zito writes about challenges. (See 3 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We all know the expression about money corrupts etc.
I have also said we have the best government money can buy and now, I believe, we have plenty of evidence .Money and corruption is something that we find on both aisles. It is not exclusive to one.
Perhaps Biden and his son broke no laws by enriching themselves as the allegedly did but if appearances mean anything what they allegedly did stinks to high heaven.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Off to Orlando to complete Jewish Holiday with our kids and returning Thursday.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
DickZito writes about challenges. (See 3 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We all know the expression about money corrupts etc.
I have also said we have the best government money can buy and now, I believe, we have plenty of evidence .Money and corruption is something that we find on both aisles. It is not exclusive to one.
Perhaps Biden and his son broke no laws by enriching themselves as the allegedly did but if appearances mean anything what they allegedly did stinks to high heaven.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Off to Orlando to complete Jewish Holiday with our kids and returning Thursday.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)
Rivlin: Israel is in crisis, needs government now
By LAHAV HARKOV,GIL HOFFMAN
Israeli democracy is in a state of emergency, and a government must be formed as soon as possible, President Reuven Rivlin said at the 22nd Knesset’s inaugural meeting on Thursday.
Rivlin and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein addressed the long period of political uncertainty, which saw the 21st Knesset be inaugurated in April and dissolved less than two months later. They both said the solution is a unity government.
“We are facing a time of crisis for the House of Jacob, an emergency for Israel’s security and for Israeli society, an emergency for Israeli democracy,” Rivlin said. “Forming a government is not only the wish of the people. More than ever, in times like these, it is an economic and security need the likes of which we have not known for many years.”
Rivlin said a broad governing coalition would allow Israelis “to put the disagreements between us to one side and work on finding areas of agreement... to give us all an opportunity to breathe a little, to heal.”
The president listed a number of “real life” areas that the government must address, from combating the Iranian threat to making day-care cheaper to tackling rising crime in Arab communities.
Rivlin also asked Israelis for forgiveness if he did anything that hurt them, as is customary before Yom Kippur, which begins Tuesday evening.
Edelstein was practical in his speech, addressing remarks to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz: “My office is a few meters away. Sit. Talk. Turn over every stone until you find a formula. We can bridge the gaps. We can repair the tears. We certainly can reach unity.”
The Knesset speaker said Israelis will not forgive the MKs if a third election is held within a year.
“Let’s not fool ourselves that we can place blame on each other,” he warned. “We will all carry it.”
Eight of the lawmakers sworn in on Thursday were new to the Knesset. The 22nd Knesset will have 28 female MKs, one less than the Knesset sworn in April. The 20th Knesset (2015-2019) reached a record of 35 women, but had only 28 immediately after the election.
The Knesset will have four members of the LGBTQ community, one less than in April. This may be the first Knesset in which no member has a mustache without a beard, after Labor-Gesher leader Amir Peretz shaved off his in an election campaign stunt, and Joint List MK Ahmed Tibi did as well to much less fanfare.
Edelstein remained Knesset speaker in the interim, though his future in that capacity depends on the coalition. He told KAN Bet on Thursday that he would be would be willing to take part in a rotation in the role if need be.
On Thursday, the Knesset authorized Likud MK Miki Zohar – as chairman of the Knesset Arrangements Committee, which serves as an interim House Committee – to determine when the Knesset meets until there are permanent committees. The Knesset also authorized Blue and White MK Gabi Ashkenazi to be interim Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman. UTJ MK Moshe Gafni remains Finance Committee chairman, a position he has held consecutively since 2015, as well as many years before that.
In a meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office earlier in the day, Netanyahu invited Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman to join the coalition he is trying to form.
Netanyahu told his former ally and current political nemesis that he should join as soon as possible, in order to contribute to the formation of a unity government.
However, Netanyahu’s spokesman said the meeting did not result in a breakthrough.
Liberman released a statement after the meeting saying that he urged Netanyahu to have Likud, Blue and White, and Yisrael Beytenu meet to decide the next government’s guidelines on policy, and only then deal with distributing portfolios as well as who should go first in a rotation in the Prime Minister’s Office.
If no progress is made toward building a coalition in upcoming days, Netanyahu is expected to return his mandate to form a government to Rivlin.
The Joint List’s 13 MKs did not attend the Knesset inauguration, as they were taking part in the High Follow-Up Council for Arab Citizens of Israel’s general strike, in protest over what they called police apathy in the face of rising crime and violence in Arab communities that includes more than 70 murders this year.
Rivlin and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein addressed the long period of political uncertainty, which saw the 21st Knesset be inaugurated in April and dissolved less than two months later. They both said the solution is a unity government.
“We are facing a time of crisis for the House of Jacob, an emergency for Israel’s security and for Israeli society, an emergency for Israeli democracy,” Rivlin said. “Forming a government is not only the wish of the people. More than ever, in times like these, it is an economic and security need the likes of which we have not known for many years.”
Rivlin said a broad governing coalition would allow Israelis “to put the disagreements between us to one side and work on finding areas of agreement... to give us all an opportunity to breathe a little, to heal.”
The president listed a number of “real life” areas that the government must address, from combating the Iranian threat to making day-care cheaper to tackling rising crime in Arab communities.
Rivlin also asked Israelis for forgiveness if he did anything that hurt them, as is customary before Yom Kippur, which begins Tuesday evening.
Edelstein was practical in his speech, addressing remarks to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz: “My office is a few meters away. Sit. Talk. Turn over every stone until you find a formula. We can bridge the gaps. We can repair the tears. We certainly can reach unity.”
The Knesset speaker said Israelis will not forgive the MKs if a third election is held within a year.
“Let’s not fool ourselves that we can place blame on each other,” he warned. “We will all carry it.”
Eight of the lawmakers sworn in on Thursday were new to the Knesset. The 22nd Knesset will have 28 female MKs, one less than the Knesset sworn in April. The 20th Knesset (2015-2019) reached a record of 35 women, but had only 28 immediately after the election.
The Knesset will have four members of the LGBTQ community, one less than in April. This may be the first Knesset in which no member has a mustache without a beard, after Labor-Gesher leader Amir Peretz shaved off his in an election campaign stunt, and Joint List MK Ahmed Tibi did as well to much less fanfare.
Edelstein remained Knesset speaker in the interim, though his future in that capacity depends on the coalition. He told KAN Bet on Thursday that he would be would be willing to take part in a rotation in the role if need be.
On Thursday, the Knesset authorized Likud MK Miki Zohar – as chairman of the Knesset Arrangements Committee, which serves as an interim House Committee – to determine when the Knesset meets until there are permanent committees. The Knesset also authorized Blue and White MK Gabi Ashkenazi to be interim Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman. UTJ MK Moshe Gafni remains Finance Committee chairman, a position he has held consecutively since 2015, as well as many years before that.
In a meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office earlier in the day, Netanyahu invited Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman to join the coalition he is trying to form.
Netanyahu told his former ally and current political nemesis that he should join as soon as possible, in order to contribute to the formation of a unity government.
However, Netanyahu’s spokesman said the meeting did not result in a breakthrough.
Liberman released a statement after the meeting saying that he urged Netanyahu to have Likud, Blue and White, and Yisrael Beytenu meet to decide the next government’s guidelines on policy, and only then deal with distributing portfolios as well as who should go first in a rotation in the Prime Minister’s Office.
If no progress is made toward building a coalition in upcoming days, Netanyahu is expected to return his mandate to form a government to Rivlin.
The Joint List’s 13 MKs did not attend the Knesset inauguration, as they were taking part in the High Follow-Up Council for Arab Citizens of Israel’s general strike, in protest over what they called police apathy in the face of rising crime and violence in Arab communities that includes more than 70 murders this year.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) Ignore the hype — this is
not an impeachment
inquiry
BY ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - The VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
There is no impeachment inquiry. There are no subpoenas.
You are not to be faulted if you think a formal inquest is under way and that legal process has been issued. The misimpression is completely understandable if you have been taking in media coverage — in particular, reporting on a haughty Sept. 27 letter from House Democrats, presuming to direct Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on pain of citation for obstruction, to cooperate in their demands to depose State Department officials and review various records.
The letter is signed by not one but three committee chairmen. Remember your elementary math, though: Zero is still zero even when multiplied by three.
What is portrayed as an “impeachment inquiry” is actually just a made-for-cable-TV political soap opera. The House of Representatives is not conducting a formal impeachment inquiry. To the contrary, congressional Democrats are conducting the 2020 political campaign.
The House has not voted as a body to authorize an impeachment inquiry. What we have are partisan theatrics, proceeding under the ipse dixit of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). It raises the profile, but not the legitimacy, of the same “impeachment inquiry” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) previously tried to abracadabra into being without a committee vote.
Moreover, there are no subpoenas. As Secretary Pompeo observed in his fittingly tart response on Tuesday, what the committee chairmen issued was merely a letter. Its huffing and puffing notwithstanding, the letter is nothing more than an informal request for voluntary cooperation. Legally, it has no compulsive power. If anything, it is rife with legal deficiencies.
The Democrats, of course, hope you don’t notice that the House is not conducting a formal impeachment inquiry. They are using the guise of frenetic activity by several standing committees — Intelligence, Judiciary, Foreign Affairs, Oversight and Reform, Financial Services, and Ways and Means — whose normal oversight functions are being gussied up to look like serious impeachment business.
But standing committees do have subpoena power, so why not use it? Well, because subpoenas get litigated in court when the people or agencies on the receiving end object. Democrats want to have an impeachment show — um, inquiry — on television; they do not want to defend its bona fides in court.
They certainly do not want to defend their letter. The Democrats’ media scribes note the chairmen’s admonition that any failure by Pompeo to comply “shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry.” What a crock.
In criminal proceedings, prosecutors demand information all the time and witnesses often resist — just as congressional Democrats encouraged the Justice Department and FBI to resist when Republican-controlled committees were trying to investigate such matters as Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse. Presumptively, resisting an information request is not evidence of obstruction. It is evidence that the recipient of the demand believes he or she has a legal privilege that excuses compliance. The recipient can be wrong about that without being guilty of obstruction.
Congressional Democrats know this, of course — many of them are lawyers. They are issuing partisan letters that pose legally offensive threats, rather than subpoenas, because this is a show, not an impeachment inquiry. Subpoenas don’t require chest-beating about obstruction. Everyone knows they are compulsory, but everyone also knows they may be challenged in court. Such challenges take time, though, and Democrats are in a hurry to close this show after a short run.
To be sure, the Constitution vests the House alone with the power of impeachment (as opposed to impeachment trials, which are the sole responsibility of the Senate). The judiciary has no authority to tell the House how to conduct impeachment proceedings. And the House is a “majority rules” institution, so if Speaker Pelosi and her partisans want to ipse dixit their way to impeachment articles, no one can stop them.
That said, the courts maintain their authority to protect the legal rights of persons and institutions ensnared in kangaroo tribunals. The fact that House Democrats invite you to their circus does not require you to beclown yourself.
Any competent court asked to evaluate a demand for information under the rubric of impeachment will observe that the process has a history. When the Framers debated whether to include an impeachment clause in the Constitution, they had serious concerns. They were designing a separation-of-powers system that endowed the coordinate branches with checks and balances to police each other. They understood that impeachment authority was necessary, but feared it would give the legislature too much power over the executive.
They also worried that impeachment could be politicized. If it were too easy to do procedurally, or it could be resorted to for trifling acts of maladministration, factions opposed to the president would be tempted to try to overturn elections and grind the government to a halt.
To address these concerns, the Framers adopted a burdensome standard — high crimes and misdemeanors (in addition to treason and bribery) — that would restrict impeachable offenses to truly egregious abuses of power. Then they erected an even higher bar: a two-thirds supermajority requirement for conviction in the Senate.
All this was to ensure that the electoral will of the people must never be overturned in the absence of misconduct so severe that it results in a broad consensus that the nation’s well-being requires removing the president from power.
Although the House has the raw power to file articles of impeachment based on frivolous allegations and minor abuses, the Senate supermajority requirement for removal is designed to have a sobering effect on the lower chamber. Impeachment should not be sought out of partisanship. There must be misconduct that would convince objective Americans, regardless of their politics, that the president must be ousted — not merely criticized or censured, but stripped of authority.
In defending against any congressional demand for information, the president has various privileges against disclosure. Executive components such as the State Department are also repositories of highly sensitive information involving national security and foreign relations — conduct of the latter being a nearly plenary executive authority. The judiciary is generally deferential toward the executive’s claims of privilege. But Congress is given wider latitude to probe in a real impeachment inquiry. When the House, as an institution, endorses such an inquiry in a formal vote, the courts must presume the inquiry is based on a reasonable suspicion of grievous misconduct.
By contrast, any reasonable judge asked to weigh the demands for information presented to Pompeo would not give them the time of day. They do not reflect the judgment of the House. They are reflective, instead, of partisan House leadership that realizes it does not have impeachable offenses — so much so that Pelosi & Co. fear the wrath of voters if Democrats in districts friendly to President Trump are put to the test of voting to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry.
Every presidential impeachment inquiry, from Andrew Johnson through Bill Clinton, has been the subject of bipartisan consultation and debate. The House has recognized that its legitimacy, and the legitimacy of its most solemn actions, must be based on the consideration of the whole body, not the diktat of a few partisan bosses.
Not this one. This one is a misadventure in exactly the bare-knuckles partisanship the Framers feared. To be sure, no one has the power to prevent willful House leadership from misbehaving this way. But we’re not required to pretend the charade is real.
Democrats are mulishly determined to ram through an article of impeachment or two, regardless of whether the State Department and other agencies cooperate in the farce. Their base wants the scarlet-letter “I” attached to Trump. The party hopes to rally the troops for the 2020 campaign against Trump (although smarter Democrats know it could boomerang on them).
If Democrats truly thought they had a case, they wouldn’t be in such a rush — they’d want everyone to have time to study it. But they don’t have a case, so instead they’re giving us a show.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, a contributing editor at National Review, and a Fox News contributor. His latest book is “Ball of Collusion.”
2a)
If the latest impeachment push continues to backfire, Democrats can thank their duplicitous House Intelligence chairman, Adam Schiff.
Mr. Schiff on Sept. 13, a Friday night, issued the explosive news that he had been alerted a few days earlier by the intelligence community’s inspector general of an “urgent” yet unspecified whistleblower complaint. But the complaint is dated Aug. 12, and news reports now say the whistleblower interacted with Mr. Schiff’s staff prior to then. So Mr. Schiff knew about the topic of the complaint for more than a month—while the public did not. It is now clear why the intelligence chairman in that month suddenly developed an interest in all things Ukrainian, and began aggressively previewing his impeachment mantra.
On Aug. 23, for instance, Mr. Schiff tweeted that Mr. Trump tried to “get dirt on a political opponent” via personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s interaction with the office of the Ukrainian president. On Aug. 28, the chairman tweeted his newfound concern that Mr. Trump was “withholding vital military aid to Ukraine.” And on Sept. 9, Mr. Schiff suddenly announced his committee would launch a full-fledged investigation into whether Mr. Trump was trying to “pressure Ukraine to help the President’s re-election campaign.” All this was priming the public and the media for what was to come—the better to take full advantage of the whistle blower “news.”
2a)
Schiff’s Shifty Timeline
What did the House Intel Committee chairman know and when did he know it?
If the latest impeachment push continues to backfire, Democrats can thank their duplicitous House Intelligence chairman, Adam Schiff.
The New York Times reported this week that the “whistle blower” who set off the latest inquisition provided an “early warning” to Mr. Schiff’s committee that he or she was filing a complaint over Donald Trump’s July 25 call to Ukraine’s president. The media is now at pains to stress that whistle blowers do sometimes reach out to Congress, that all “procedures” were followed, and that what really matters is the accusation that Mr. Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
Actually, it matters a great deal that Mr. Schiff knew about this early and withheld it deliberately from both the public and his House colleagues. He used his advance information to lay the groundwork steadily for later exploitation of the issue. He went so far as to charge the White House with a cover up—of a complaint he already knew about. The timeline of this orchestrated campaign is another knock to the legitimacy of the so-called impeachment inquiry. If the public can’t trust Mr. Schiff to be honest about the origins of his information, why should they trust his claim that the information itself is serious?
On Aug. 23, for instance, Mr. Schiff tweeted that Mr. Trump tried to “get dirt on a political opponent” via personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s interaction with the office of the Ukrainian president. On Aug. 28, the chairman tweeted his newfound concern that Mr. Trump was “withholding vital military aid to Ukraine.” And on Sept. 9, Mr. Schiff suddenly announced his committee would launch a full-fledged investigation into whether Mr. Trump was trying to “pressure Ukraine to help the President’s re-election campaign.” All this was priming the public and the media for what was to come—the better to take full advantage of the whistle blower “news.”
Yet even after news broke of the complaint, Mr. Schiff played dumb. On Sept. 17, he flatly (and falsely) stated on MSNBC: “We have not spoken directly with the whistle blower.” Two days later, he thanked the inspector general, Michael Atkinson, without whom “we might not have even known there was a whistle blower complaint.” Really? Mr. Schiff wanted to make it sound as if the Trump administration was muzzling the complainant, when in fact the process was working and Mr. Schiff knew all about it.
The chairman also actively kept his information secret from Republicans on his committee. GOP members confirm that Mr. Schiff had multiple opportunities to acknowledge his awareness of the coming complaint, but kept mum about his side’s early involvement. That included even during the committee’s closed-door Sept. 19 briefing with Mr. Atkinson.
The whistle blower's early communication with the committee also bears on the complaint’s credibility. The Times story explains that the whistle blowing Central Intelligence Agency officer initially alerted the CIA’s top lawyer to concerns. Yet before even waiting for this procedure to play out, the officer went to Mr. Schiff’s staff. This act has to be measured in light of Mr. Atkinson’s acknowledgment that the source demonstrated an “arguable political bias . . . in favor of a rival candidate.” It has become urgent that Republicans demand more information about the whistle blower's history and motivations—questions that are central to any whistle blower complaint, but particularly one being used as a basis for impeachment.
If all this has a somewhat familiar feel of subterfuge and ambush, it should. The episode is redolent of the sneak attack on Brett Kavanaugh. An unknown person levels nasty allegations; a Democratic lawmaker (in that case, Sen. Dianne Feinstein) conceals the claim before springing it at an opportune moment; the media jumps on board to distort and inflame the story. Lost in the carnage are little things like fairness, standards and due process.
Mr. Schiff’s staff is suggesting its interaction with the whistle blower was limited. Maybe, but given Mr. Schiff’s recent deceptions, it’s reasonable to ask more questions about how involved his committee was with the creation of this complaint. The Democratic claim that Mr. Trump’s Ukraine call rose to the level of impeachment was always absurd. But Americans have even more reason to doubt the legitimacy of this push in light of Mr. Schiff’s scheming exploitation of the whistle blower charge.
2b) Democrats Lost in Ukrainia
The impeachment case Trump was supposed to be ‘understandable.’ In two weeks, it has become incomprehensible.
By Daniel Henninger
As the Trump impeachment narrative descends into the familiar bog of incomprehensibility, some guidance: Do not confuse Ukraine with Ukrainia.
Ukraine is a real country. Ukrainia is an imaginary place created by the national Democratic Party and the Washington press corps.
It was probably inevitable that after 2½ years of the Trump presidency, the Democrats and the press would end up in Ukrainia. For years, they have accused Mr. Trump, with some justification, of creating his own reality. Last week, they decided to create their own.
This story began two weeks ago, on a Thursday, with reports of a whistle blower filing a complaint to the intelligence community’s inspector general about Mr. Trump’s July 25 phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the real president of the real Ukraine. For about 48 hours, the issue was simple: Had Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter?
That Sunday, Mr. Trump said he did bring up Mr. Biden during a conversation about corruption. On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she had approved a formal inquiry into Mr. Trump’s impeachment. Then, in what became the working headline for everything else last week, “the dam broke.”
If you live in Peoria, most likely you can’t fully understand the meaning of “the dam broke.” It’s not that people in Peoria don’t know what’s going on. But like virtually everyone today, they get most of their news from screens—on cellphones, PCs or television. That isn’t how Washington gets the news.
Besides the inevitable screens, people working in Washington still get their news as they did during the Watergate scandal—from the front pages of the print editions of national newspapers.
Those front pages were once the political world’s official dam, releasing information into the world at a rate appropriate to the news of the day. Last week, that dam collapsed in an indiscriminate torrent.
It’s hard to recall the paint-by-numbers story line that presumably caused Nancy Pelosi to pull the trigger on impeachment—the notion that Mr. Trump’s raising the investigation of a political opponent in a national-security conversation with a foreign leader was an abuse of presidential power and an impeachable offense.
At long last, the Democrats believed, they had a violative Trump act the public could understand, as opposed to what the New York Times described—with an utter absence of irony—as “months of murky messaging around a confusing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.”
It is barely a fortnight since this “understandable” impeachment charge emerged and already the story line is descending, again, into deep insider minutiae and ultimately something incomprehensible to the general public.
Adam Schiff—who admitted Wednesday that the sainted whistle blower touched base with the House Intelligence Committee days before unloading the complaint against Mr. Trump—is as always carpet-bombing the administration with subpoenas. He wants Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to testify. He wants to depose a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and various others in the U.S. diplomatic corps no one’s ever heard of. George Papadopoulos must be in there somewhere.
Meanwhile, the real Ukrainians look like they don’t want to pursue the matter further, and that includes Mr. Trump’s predictable exhortation to investigate Joe Biden.
The Democrats will fall back on the media to keep the impeachment game going, which it will. For much of the media, its primary activity has become feeding a voracious internet, which means the most minimally relevant anti-Trump stories are reported in microscopic detail whose purpose is to hold on to eyeballs with a permanent and presumably addictive sense of dread.
Politicians like Nancy Pelosi used to be better at assessing the political importance of events, but their judgment is now being overwhelmed by the ideological frenzies of modern media, culminating in the past two wild weeks.
For more than two years, the Democrats have asked the American people to buy into a succession of Trump take downs—Russian collusion, Mueller obstruction, tax abuse and Stormy Daniels. Now they expect voters to spend the next year living with them in Ukrainia. There has to be a limit, and this may be it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)
Old-school Democrat faces primary challenge from young progressive
PITTSBURGH — Jerry Dickinson isn’t just the Democrats’ perfect House candidate on paper. Yes, he’s young, accomplished, academic, a charismatic liberal outsider who supports the ideals of the Green New Deal, the impeachment of the president, and can self-raise an impressive amount of cash for his candidacy. He is all of those things and then more.
His only handicap is that he’s running against a Democratic incumbent. That, however, is far less of an obstacle in this new era, when incumbency may not hold the weight among Democratic primary voters that it used to. Once Rep. Joe Crowley fell to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, primary season became incumbent-hunting season for eager liberals who had enough ambition and confidence and who could run in safe Democratic districts.
Dickinson is that guy. Mike Doyle, the veteran congressman from Pittsburgh, is his target.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment