We applaud President Obama for engaging in serious, reasonable conversation about gun violence. He is doing this on the heels of issuing an Executive Order to expand background checks for gun sales, something that Americans overwhelmingly support. However, his Executive Order only goes so far and there is more that needs to be done. The next steps require soul searching and honest conversation.

The President’s “Town Hall” meeting approach opens up the conversation in needed ways. Clearly, no one is advocating that the rights of Americans to possess a firearm be rescinded. Indeed, not all concerns will be solved with regulation. Smart gun or smart lock technology might be a better way to keep guns safely away from children. However, restricting access to guns for people with mental health issues and for criminals requires regulation.

Most Rhode Islanders are not gun owners and many of us do not know some of the nuances of gun ownership and gun safety. For example, we may not know that 82 percent of teenage suicide by firearms involve guns left poorly secured or foolishly unprotected by members of their own families. On average someone being shot by a child, often a toddler, occurs twice weekly in America. Reasonable people believe that there is a solution to this problem.

As religious leaders, we know the carnage and the heartbreak that accompanies gun violence. We do the funerals. We provide the pastoral care to families during their moments of anguish. We want this needless and senseless violence to stop. We know of no religious tradition that defines freedom as unfettered license to do as one pleases. We join with the President and call upon all people of good will, particularly gun owners, to engage in serious, sensible conversation about gun safety.

None of what the President ordered adversely affects the rights of Americans to firearms except for criminals or people with mental health issues that are prohibited from possession of a gun.  Private gun dealers and online firearms dealers who presently refuse to obtain a firearm dealer’s license will be required to do so and will now have to perform background checks for every gun they sell.  There will be an improved National Instant Criminal Background System (NCIS) greatly expanding the inclusion of mental health records of prohibited firearms buyers.  Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF&E) agents will be added to perform the increased demand for NCIS Background checks.   Firearms purchases by Federal Agencies will be directed to gun manufacturers who invest in “smart gun” technologies and who market their products in an ethical manner.

While the Gun Lobby will undoubtedly issue bombastic claims that the President’s actions violate our 2^nd Amendment rights and are a slippery slope to gun confiscation none of that is true.  Over 90% of Americans and a large majority of gun owners support expanding Background Checks for every single gun sale.  Hopefully, these common sense measures will encourage a national debate that will lead to reforms that result in a reduction in the nearly 90 daily gun deaths each day in America.

We thank President Obama for standing up to the Gun Lobby and call on Congress to take meaningful action to protect American lives.

(From a press release)

You can watch the President Obama’s announcement Here:

RIAC notes that President Barack Obama has the singular honor of being the first Nobel Peace laureate to bomb another Nobel Peace laureate. The protest is being held on the same day as the announcement of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, and is aligned with other protests on the hospital bombing nationwide organized by Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

According to their press release, “RIAC calls for an end to bombing in Afghanistan and notes that the bombing of the hospital is probably a war crime.  Obama, who was elected president in 2008 as the beneficiary of calls to stop these needless war deaths, bears command responsibility as commander-in-chief for the procedures in place that allowed this to happen even though he wasn’t personally the one who called for the airstrike.

“This protest is not directed against Rhode Island Hospital. The point is that bombing a functioning hospital, destroying it and killing patients and doctors, is obviously the wrong thing to do.  Military strikes in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia should be ended immediately.”

RIAC further notes that, “After the hospital bombing, Rhode Island’s Senator Jack Reed tentatively suggested changing the war plans so that more troops would continue fighting in Afghanistan.”

Passersby were generally favorable to RIACs message, honking horns in solidarity or making comments from their cars.

[Parts of this report is from a RIAC press release.]

U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez came out in strong support for both raising the minimum wage and for eliminating the tipped minimum wage during a press Q&A at the end of his visit to Gold International Machinery with state Senator Gayle Goldin and US Representative David Cicilline on Friday afternoon. The Secretary was enthusiastic about the economic benefits of raising the minimum wage for both workers and the economy.

“I was recently in Seattle on the first day of the effective date of the new minimum wage in Seattle,” said Perez, “the person who stood right next to me, in addition to the mayor that day, was the head of the Seattle Restaurant Association.”

According to Perez, Seattle “has had the highest minimum wage in the country over the last twelve years, and they have no tipped credit.” He added, “If the opponents were correct, then every time you fly to Seattle, you ought to bring a bagged lunch, because all the restaurants should be going out of business.”

Perez also talked about raising the regular minimum wage, saying that while he and President Obama, “don’t pretend to know what the best wage is for the city of Seattle or the state of Rhode Island… we applaud efforts to go as high as possible.”

The secretary added that “as a result of the low minimum wages across the country we’ve seen a consumption deprived recovery in many circles.”

“When you raise the minimum wage, guess what happens?” asked Perez, “If you’re a restaurant, people have more money to spend. When you raise wages, guess what happens? The economy gets better. We consume more things from manufacturers so places like Gold [International Machinery], they see their business go up.”

Here in Rhode Island there are General Assembly bills currently before the Senate and the House to gradually eliminate the tipped minimum wage. There are also bills to raise the regular minimum wage from $9 to $10.10. At hearings held to discuss the bills, representatives from the Rhode Island Hospitality Association, including Chairman Bob Bacon, have opposed any increases in the minimum wage with questionable economics and threats of robots.

Governor Gina Raimondo, who Labor Secretary Perez seemed to like quite a bit based on comments he made earlier in the day, has called on the General Assembly to raise the minimum wage to $10.10. She has yet to publicly support the elimination of the tipped minimum wage.

When this quote appeared ahead of Mitt Romney’s disastrous foreign policy outing, it was rightly maligned for being the sort of ethnocentric comment a well-off WASP would make to the British press. While Mr. Romney himself didn’t make it, and later the campaign denied anyone in fact saying it, it wasn’t hard for people to believe it. While there’s been plenty of talk about the sort of assumptions it reveals about how Mr. Romney and his team view the President’s foreign policy, I’d say the major strategic assumption here went unchallenged.

America’s “special relationship” with Britain is a relic of a bygone era; one in which we relied on British military might to nominally enforce our own Monroe Doctrine. Yes, the relationship is without a doubt one based on cultural closeness; but it no longer makes much strategic sense. Furthermore, it’s helped the British more than it’s ever helped America.

Consider that under the special relationship, Britain (along with France) was free to routinely violate the Monroe Doctrine, for example, going into Argentina to attempt to overthrow Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas or creating the Mosquito Kingdom as a protectorate. Consider that during the Civil War, the British (who had abolished slavery in 1833) seriously considered supporting the slave-owning illegal insurrection of the Southern states. It was only following the Civil War and the Indian Wars, as the American military turned towards areas across the ocean, rather than our own territory, that Britain began to pay attention to American strength in a serious manner.

While Britain was the largest naval power and world empire of the 19th and 20th centuries, World War One effectively signaled the decline of the British Empire. And it’s a war which started to create the “we saved your ass in World War…” mindset of Americans towards our European allies. Yet, World War One made no sense for the British to be in, and less for the United States to get involved in, except as a way to ensure that our debtors kept paying off their war debts. The peace that came out of WW1, the disastrous Treaty of Versailles, is directly responsible for nearly all the wars of the so-called “Short Twentieth Century”. The lines that the British and French drew within the defeated German and Ottoman Empires have caused in inordinate amount of death and destruction, and directly led World War Two.

In that war, there’s no disputing that Britain got its teeth kicked in by both the Germans and the Japanese, and in the aftermath, was financially ruined to the point where the sun finally set on their empire, with the “Commonwealth of Nations” taking its place. Britain benefited the most from the nation-building exercise of the post-war era; $3.297 billion were spent on Britain, a nation whose in the only fighting that involved its home soil was a Nazi bombing campaign that was nothing compared to the one that Britain and the United States had launched against Germany in the final years of the war. The next closest up: France (occupied for most of the war, invaded twice) received $2.296 billion. The money was well spent, it was largely successful in rebuilding the European economies and preventing takeovers by European communist parties; especially those tied to Moscow (which had sacrificed millions of lives fighting the Germans, and led Eastern European powers in rejecting Marshall Plan money).

Today, the United Kingdom is the fourth largest military spender. It is perhaps the sixth or seventh largest economy. It is a nuclear power. But in terms of importance to America, it should be no more than France, which is a comparable world power. In fact, in diplomatic terms, it really should be less important than France. France at least is part of the duopoly of leadership with Germany in the European Union. Britain holds itself at arm’s distance from Europe (“we’re with them, but we’re not really with them”).

Our relationship with Japan is one of far more potent strategic importance: Japan occupies a geographic position close to China, which really is the most important player in the American foreign policy sphere. Europe, even, isn’t entirely that important. They’re under our cultural hegemony. There is no realistic scenario where a military conflict could break out between Europe and America. With the end of large-scale European wars, Britain needn’t be that special.

We should resent them more than anything. After all, it’s the messes of the British Empire that America has been dealing with for the past seventy or so years. Even some of our own foreign policy seems to be the result of Anglophilia; the antagonism towards France or the terrible approach towards Africa; as examples (give President George W. Bush credit, he was great towards Africa). On the latter, China is making great in-roads by simply being a less awful exploiter.

Neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama are offering to shift away from the Anglophile foreign policy of the past. Mr. Romney’s foreign policy team seems to believe that they truly have the secret to the “special relationship”. Mr. Obama seems content to maintain the status quo (“that’s not change, that’s more of the same”). Which is a shame, because if there’s one thing nearly two and half centuries of British-style foreign policy has taught us, it’s that it doesn’t really work. It’s just bloody special.

Just over a week ago, the British and American governments announced the largest fine in history levied against Barclays PLC, just under half a billion dollars. The fine agreed to ignore criminal charges against Barclays itself, but current and past employees were not exempt. Well, after a letter from Democratic lawmakers (including Rhode Island’s Sen. Jack Reed) to the U.S. Justice Department and regulatory agencies urging criminal charges, that may well be in the works. According to The New York Times, Barclays traders may be among those slapped with criminal charges. Bloomberg reports that those charges could come as soon as September.

The City of Baltimore already filed a lawsuit back when this rate-rigging scandal broke. Now it comes to light that the attorney generals of New York and Connecticut are working together to investigate Wall Street banks over the scandal.

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman was considered the most high-profile crusader against Wall Street excess until he was co-opted by the pro-Wall Street administration of Barack Obama. That resulted in the $25 billion settlement with America’s largest loan servicers, who were utilizing automated robo-signing to fraudulently foreclose on American homes. Prior, Mr. Schneiderman led a group of dissenting attorney generals who refused to accept the Dept. of Justice’s settlement, believing the banks deserved greater punishment. When he folded, the virtually all of the attorney generals fell into line with the Justice Department (Rhode Island’s attorney general Peter Kilmartin was with the Justice Department from the get-go).

Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) is an average of the interest of borrowing for London’s banks. It is set by all of the banks submitting to their trade organization (the British Bankers’ Association) the rate they are borrowing at. These rates are then averaged and the average is declared. That is used to set interest on roughly $500 trillion in securities, and 45% of all U.S. mortgages. In the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Libor became a measure of banks’ health as other standard measures became suspect and unreliable. In this case, Barclays has admitted to artificially manipulating rates downward.

This means while the interest the average consumer paid on their mortgage was lower, a state or municipal treasury or a large charity that had savings linked to Libor also saw lower returns. As did lenders who sold mortgages bundled into “residential backed mortgage securities”. So while the average person on the street might feel slightly good about the banks’ malfeasance working out for them, states and lenders are certain to feel quite angry.

Is It Time for the White House to Fight the Banks?

The common impetus behind both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street appear to have been that Wall Street got away with collapsing the world economy and over a trillion dollars in taxpayer money. And they never faced a single criminal charge.

The Libor scandal seems to be changing that. The British government announced plans to make it the government with the toughest regulations out of any economic center; the City of London (separate from Greater London) is the epicenter of Western capitalism.

Americans already despise Wall Street for its part in the collapse (Wall Street remains the institution most blamed for the bad economy). Wall Street banks, who strongly backed President Barack Obama in 2008, have shifted their financial support almost entirely to Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Barack Obama has mostly played as the banks’ best friend, his bipartisan so-called JOBS Act passed earlier this year further deregulated Wall Street (Rhode Island’s Senators voted against the act, whereas our Representatives voted for it).

But the Libor scandal may be a chance to put right the wrongs done by the administration and the U.S. government in not punishing the banks following the Global Financial Crisis. One hopes that President Obama would do so because it is the right thing to do. However, since the moral calculus has not appealed to this president in the past, perhaps the political calculus will. This is a rare case of good politics and good policy aligning.

With the big banks having cut the President loose, he does not need to worry about angering potential donors; indeed, charging bankers for the very real crimes they have committed seems likely to energize those who have long feared the President is a stooge of Big Banks. Furthermore, the Libor scandal (and the money-laundering over at HSBC) has proven beyond a doubt that the financial system cannot be allowed to police itself. When given the choice between theft and honesty, banking culture is so toxic they will praise theft before they stoop to honesty.

Unfortunately, Republican obstructionism is undoubtedly assured to block any chance of enacting tough new rules through legislation. And conservative litigation as regulators write new rules is also likely to prevent any real strengthening of the oversight under the flawed Dodd-Frank reform. This means all the government can do is press charges. Indeed, this very public action may be preferable from a political stance; the sight of bankers in court is likely to please many of the hundreds of American families who have wound up in foreclosure proceedings at the hands of such reckless prophets of our financial system.

One of the great things about intellectual honesty is that you don’t take positions without multiple sources of support. It helps you see through the dust, too.

A week ago I wrote about how spending under Obama has not been nearly as profligate as is widely thought. Marc Comtois, one of the dedicated soldiers of the right who daily lays waste to armies of straw men over at Anchor Rising, thinks he’s found a nut, and complains that an article I used in support of that essay had been amply refuted. (You can find his links in the comments over there.)

What he doesn’t get is that those refutations are just dust. One can go into the weeds of the refutations to show that they are just as tendentious as the original article they critique, but why bother? Even if you pretend the article I cited was all wet, there is ample other support for the assertion that if you really care about responsible spending, you shouldn’t vote for people who promise cheaper government.

So, for example, if you don’t like Mr. Nutting and marketwatch.com, how about the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities?  Here’s what they say:

“By themselves, in fact, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will account for almost half of the $20 trillion in debt that, under current policies, the nation will owe by 2019. The stimulus law and financial rescues will account for less than 10 percent of the debt at that time. “

Oh, wait. You say CBPP is a partisan organization. Well then how about the Cato Institute?  Its director, the late Bill Niskanen had a reputation for unyielding libertarianism, and also a reputation for intellectual honesty, part of what has made Cato a source of actually useful data over the years. He wrote an article some years ago pointing out that the “Starve the Beast” strategy of cutting taxes to force spending cuts did not work. In short, Republicans made deficits bigger and Democrats made them smaller. (Original article, recent follow-up.)   I wrote a follow-up to Niskanen’s original article pointing out that the situation was even worse than he wrote (page 2 at the link).

In other words, pretty much any way you turn, evidence says that if you care about responsible spending, vote for the people who don’t focus on spending. Vote for the people who are talking about what government should do — they’re the ones who care enough about the enterprise to do it responsibly. And yes, any given article or set of numbers can be showered with dust, obscuring its meaning. But dust is for brushing aside.

Now, all that said, what do I think about this?  In basic economics classes, we’re taught that the Great Depression was ended by demand-side spending — the spending necessary to fight a World War was of the scale necessary to bring our nation out of the economic funk of the 1930s. I believe that 50 years from now, students in basic economics classes will ask impertinent questions of their professors when they wonder why, with that example to go by, the world acted in precisely the opposite way when faced with the challenges of the Bush depression. The fact is that the last three years have seen ample confirmation of the theory behind Keynesian stimulus, but it’s all been in the wrong direction. We’re doing the opposite of stimulus, so we get the opposite of prosperity.

Which is all to say that I’m not defending the Obama austerity. I’m simply stating the fact that if you want responsible spending, the record — stretching over decades — says that voting for people who simply promise to make government cheaper is the wrong way to get it.

Someone I don’t know wrote me a nice note about some things I have written and some banking issues I’m working on (more on this someday). In the process of the note, he described himself as moderate Republican, “fiscally conservative and socially liberal.”  This, it turns out, is one of my buttons because it implies that usually liberals aren’t fiscally conservative.

The idea that liberals are spendthrift is little more than an insult that has stuck over time due to incessant repetition rather than evidence. It wasn’t liberals who brought our nation to the brink of financial ruin in 2008. It wasn’t liberals who doubled Rhode Island’s debt 2003-2009 for no good reason. It wasn’t liberals who created the fiscal crisis that has bankrupted one Rhode Island city and threatens several more. In all of these cases, it was either soi-disant fiscal conservatives or crony insiders who did all of it and I, for one, am completely sick of having to feel apologetic about my policy preferences. Medicaid is a money-saving program, as is welfare, early childhood education programs, environmental protection, and a lot more like those. The fact is that every progressive I’ve ever had a policy conversation with should be described as fiscally conservative, and yet the stereotypes persist, due to lazy reporters and politicians who benefit by perpetuating it.

So I was pleased to notice this article yesterday that pointed out the grim reality.  You know that Obama spending binge you read about, when he came charging into office with a mandate and a Democratic Congress?  Never happened. The article points out that on an annualized basis, spending under Obama is up about 0.4% per year. Of course it’s true that the 2009 fiscal year included Obama’s stimulus package, even though he took office part way through that year, with the budget already passed. But even if you count the stimulus, spending is up 1.4% per year under this president. Compare that to 7.3% per year in Bush’s first term, and 8.1% per year in his second.

The article has a great bar chart comparing the fiscal records of the last few Presidents. Because I think he’s unjustly maligned, I checked out Carter’s numbers, too, and after adjusting for inflation, spending increased less under his administration than under Reagan’s.

Why is the federal deficit such a huge problem?  Because of tax and spending decisions made under George W. Bush. Why are cities and towns in Rhode Island either bankrupt or flirting with it?  Because of spending decisions made under Don Carcieri. Obviously Congress and the General Assembly have had a lot to do with this, too, but it wasn’t liberals in Congress who voted for the Bush tax cuts, the Medicare drug benefit, or even the Iraq War resolution. And it wasn’t liberals who doubled the state’s debt (mostly without voter approval), loaned $75 million to Curt Schilling, and came up with all the different tax cuts for rich people passed over the past 15 years. Some liberal members of the General Assembly cast votes for budgets containing those tax cuts, but that’s the way this Assembly is run, and many have supported floor amendments to the budget to overcome those cuts. (Of course the current Speaker of the House has been known to describe himself as liberal, but the public record hardly supports that, and I notice he’s stopped doing that, at least to the reporters whose work I read.)

Is there spending I support that isn’t getting done?  Of course there is. I support actually doing maintenance on our assets — because it’s cheaper than not doing it. I support health care reform — because it’s cheaper. I support early childhood education — because it’s cheaper. I support a cleaner environment — because it’s cheaper. I support taxing enough so our governments don’t require short-term borrowing — because it’s cheaper. Get the picture?

Obviously this isn’t the only reason to spend money. Helping support the poor and disabled is not necessarily cheaper than letting them die on the streets, but bodies lying about would damage the feng shui of our cities. Government has a role in counter-cyclical spending, to keep the economy moving during a downturn. You actually can make cost-benefit arguments about both of these, but they rest on shakier numbers, so why not just go with the alleviating human suffering angle?  Parks and beaches are cool, historically the arts have never thrived without government patronage, and I wouldn’t try to justify the Smithsonian on cost/benefit grounds, either. But overall the picture of spendthrift liberals is little more than a libel, perpetuated because fulfills some rough conceptual framework, and because some people imagine that being fiscally conservative means you don’t have to pay for stuff.

Which is all to say that I apologize to my correspondent for snapping at him for what was otherwise a perfectly pleasant note.

Words are fine, and can both inform us and lift us up, but they aren’t reliable. I find I learn a lot less from what people say than from what they do. Everyone wants to be the hero of their own story and so words are generally self-serving. There’s nothing unusual about that. That’s why I enjoy reading budgets more than I like going to press conferences. You learn more, and what you learn is more reliable.

This is never so true as when you’re learning something pleasant. The temptation is never to probe, but just to accept, good news. And of course this is exactly when it’s the most important to do exactly that. Self-deception is the most effective kind of deception, isn’t it?

That’s why it was a pleasure to stumble across a list like this, via Balloon Juice, that provides a list of the things that are within the President’s control on sexuality civil rights and that Obama has already acted on. It’s a fairly long list of hate crime legislation passed, military policies repealed, anti-discrimination clauses adopted, spousal benefits provided, visitation rights granted, family and medical leave act provisions extended, openly gay appointees named, and anti-DOMA arguments made.  The content varies, but many represent actual achievements.  Several of those undo damage done by previous Presidents who vocally supported equal rights, but gave us some pretty damaging policies anyway.

The conflict between those who want the prize now and those who are content to be on the right path will always be with us. Important changes take work, work takes time, and in the long run we’re all dead. These are the realities of political change. There is little reason not to harass those in office about important policies. The office holders who disagree with you need to hear that there are dissenters, and those who agree need your support, and often, a push. But on the issue of civil rights, I believe it’s important to see Obama’s statement about marriage equality not as a beginning, nor even as a bone tossed to an important constituency, but as item number 41 on the third list down.  Call it putting your mouth where your money is.

Thousands of Rhode Islanders went to work today (or looked for work) instead of to the polls. Maybe they were going to vote, but then decided they just wanted to go home. Or maybe they didn’t like the candidates. Or maybe they just didn’t know where their local polling place was. They’ll all be counted as people who didn’t vote.

I didn’t go to my local polling place either, even though it’s a short walk (or even shorter bike ride) from where I live. It wasn’t that I don’t think that the delegate candidates don’t deserve to go Charlotte (or Tampa, if that’s your preference). It’s that I don’t want who they’re voting for. Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich; not matter who a delegate is pledged to, what’s the point?

France held its first round of presidential elections on the weekended. U.S. media was keen to tell us how the process works. And buried in this Slate article about Socialist candidate Francois Hollande’s use of an Obama-style get-out-the-vote operation was the idea that the 30% of people who didn’t vote are termed “les abstentionnistes” which I think translates into “the abstainers.” The article makes the point that in France, not voting is constructed as a conscious choice, versus the American idea that not voting is a sign of laziness or inability or apathy.

So I abstained. I made a conscious choice. And, believe it or not, plenty of people made this choice too. When we think about why people don’t turn out, there are certainly plenty of reforms we can make to lower the bar to participation (a week long celebratory holiday for voting was suggested by a teacher once and is my favorite idea). But we also need to focus on why should I turn out for Candidate X. And that’s on Candidate X.

In this case, it’s on President Obama. I voted for President Obama twice, once against Hillary Clinton and once again against John McCain. In 2008, there were a lot of reasons to go to the polls and vote. Sarah Palin as vice president, the traditional idea of Democrats as the solution to economic depressions, the worst stock market crash since 1929, etc. September 2008 had unleashed the idea that Democrats would attempt a second New Deal in many people my age. We had hope, and we voted for change. And we really thought things were going to change.

The President betrayed that hope, and he didn’t bring change. He expanded the scope of the War on Terror to include American citizens, doubled down on the War on Drugs, continues to issue signing statements, failed to push for a strong enough stimulus, fails to forcefully push for LGBT rights; and surrounds himself with Wall Street hacks largely responsible for the crisis (Larry Summers isn’t “change you can believe in”); Mr. Obama has proved over and over that he is a Third Way Democrat; Bill Clinton without the panache or economic rebound. Is it any wonder large portions of Mr. Obama’s voters stayed home in 2010? He hadn’t given them anything to believe in since inauguration day. And his party got shellacked for it.

Occupy Wall Street contains plenty of youth who are angry with the President. The ability of a largely disenchanted and unemployed youth to turn the nation conversation on economics away from the national debt and towards economic inequality proves just how important they are to politics. Even Republicans picked up on this.

OWS’ major flaw is their antipathy towards electoral politics, but understandable, given that their faith in Barack Obama was rewarded with the half-measures and inept political maneuvering that define his presidency. The healthcare plan enacted, while having some great upsides, is emblematic of this. One of its defenses has been “but the Heritage Foundation originated it!” This neither eases conservative anger nor does it rally progressives and liberals.

President Obama should be a lesson for all Democrats and anyone who uses progressives as part of their electoral coalition. David Cicilline is facing the toughest election of his political career. Turning to a populist, energized campaign based on strong, deliverable ideological issues would move the campaign beyond Providence’s finances. It would also pick up dedicated support from inventing young people. Allowing his campaign to become a referendum on the Democratic Party makes his general election prospects dim, as well as his primary ones. Both Mr. Cicilline and challenger Anthony Gemma are going to use the following phrases: “grassroots support” “protect Social Security” “failed Republican policies”. The only thing that will distinguish them are their stances on abortion, unless Mr. Gemma flips.

Governor Lincoln Chafee was largely elected on a progressive coalition that saw Frank Caprio and John Robataille as symptomatic of the Republicrat-Democan system (for more of that, see our editor Bob Plain’s reporting on ALEC). Unfortunately, he’s largely fallen into that dynamic, and has essentially abandoned his progressive followers. If he runs in a three-way race again in 2014 (assuming he doesn’t change parties once again), energizing those progressives will be important.

So, given that candidates are well-versed in not delivering anything, is it any wonder so many people abstained rather than vote for a delegate to go “aye” for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?