Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Mamdani The Trinity of American Socialism – Father Bernie Sanders, a Vermont socialist; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and gang, the second persona of the Trinity; and Mayor of New York City in waiting Zohran Mamdani – it is intimated by a breathless, neo-progressive Eastern Seaboard media, are together the new face of the born-again Democrat Party. Mamdani has been regarded by some as the indispensable spirit completing the leftist Trinity.   The new face of the Democrat Party in New York City recently met at the White House with arch nemesis, President Donald Trump, who was cordial enough to forbear calling Mamdani a communist.   There is nothing strange in all this. Trump has met cordially with President of Russian Vladimir Putin, a communist proto-Stalinist. Putin began his military barrage of Ukraine by asserting that Ukraine was not even a country, and he has been for years attempting to reduce the non-country, inoffensive to Russia, to rubble. President Xi Jinping of China --...

Tong No one – least of all Connecticut Attorney General Willim Tong – should be surprised at Superior Court Judge Matthew Budzik’s ruling in a long-delayed case before his court. In his ruling, according to the Hartford Courant, “Superior Court Judge Matthew Budzik upheld every allegation two Avangrid gas subsidiaries made in lawsuits seeking to overturn year-old PURA rate decisions that not only denied the companies rate increases, but slashed then existing rates.”   Budzik’s ruling, tight and unequivocal, should be taught to prospective lawyers as a pristine example of what good lawyers may and may not do in defense of their clients. Hint: Remember, you are an officer of the court. At all costs, avoid misleading the court. If you fail to do so, you will do your client, your boss and your case irreparable harm on those occasions when the case is presented to a judge uncorrupted by political considerations.   Not only did Budzik decide the case rightly on its merits, h...

Lamont The title of a recent newspaper story reads, “Lamont’s bid for a third term could make him the longest serving governor since colonial era . ”   The colonial era, readers who have a nodding acquaintance with US history need not be reminded, was Connecticut’s pre-democracy era, a time when kings were kings and subjects were subject to the whimsey of monarchs.   The distinguishing characteristic of a monarchy, anyone associated with the “No Kings” movement would doubtless agree, is rule by a single executive – the king, his political court, and his political praetorian guard.   Thomas Jefferson, following in the intellectual footsteps of Voltaire, boldly declared himself an enemy of “every tyranny over the mind of man.” Jefferson kept a bust of Voltaire on his writing desk at Monticello. Modern journalists would do well to adopt Jefferson’s brash boast as their operative principle.   It is very much in doubt these days whether Jefferson’s offspring, the modern D...

Practical politics in Connecticut – that is, a politics of political action – is reserved only for in-office Democrat politicians. All others, including marginalized Republican political actors, are spectators of the sport, not participants. The entire Connecticut state Republican Party has been effectively benched for decades.   Democrats know that permitting Republicans in the state General Assembly to ventilate is harmless because, in a state in which a massive Democrat Party caucus determines political action, words alone do not give rise to political action.   Is this state of things a problem for our democracy?   The answer to that question is an unqualified “Yes!”   Partisan caucus politics is the opposite of democratic or republican politics.  In a vibrant two-party system, words that lead to political action are politically convincing because political action produces public consequences that cannot be distorted by otherwise convincing partisan politica...

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont has finally declared he will run for a third term, a “feat that has been accomplished by only one other Connecticut politician during the past 200 years,” the Hartford Courant reminds us. Former Governor John Rowland was on his way to completing his third term in office when fate and corruption intervened.   The good news is that Lamont is not Zorhan Mamdani , the newly elected Mayor of New York City. Most Connecticut political commentators may agree that the state is not yet prepared for a socialist/communist putsch.   The not so good news, from Lamont’s perspective, is that the governor likely will be challenged in a Democrat Party gubernatorial primary by former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin among others.   “Lamont,” the Courant notes, “has been asked constantly by reporters when he will make the formal announcement, and he has repeatedly stated that he wanted to postpone the decision for as long as possible so that he could f...

Lamont Progressivism, socialism and communism historically have run progressively forward on the same ideological track. Here in the United States, progressivism was, among turn of the 20 th century Democrats, a moderate to liberal answer to socialism.   Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, the father of fascism, were at the beginning of their political careers energetic socialists. Progressive President Woodrow Wilson, students of history will recall, was responsible for tossing Eugene Debs in jail when the avowed socialist was impudent enough to run for president. In his acceptance speech as the Democrat Party’s primary choice for mayor of the Big Apple, socialist Zohran Mamdani quoted Debs approvingly and swore eternal enmity against President Donald Trump, successfully painted by Democrats as a menacing authoritarian, though decidedly not a socialist.   Anti-Trumpism has been a useful foil for state and national Democrats in off-year presidential elections, but the foil...