Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Following the 2026 midterm non-presidential election wipe-outs in Connecticut, some think this is not new news.   In Connecticut, the Democrat Party wipe-out is old news. The Democrat Party ascendency began eighteen years ago during former President Barack Obama’s first term in office and has continued on its merry way ever since.   No one in Connecticut should expect Democrats to abandon their, so far, successful uninterrupted social campaign. Cultural progressives have held the governor’s office since 2011; registered Democrat voters in Connecticut outnumber registered Republicans by a two to one margin; all the state’s constitutional offices belong to Democrats; Democrats in the state’s General Assembly enjoy a nearly veto proof majority; and in Connecticut’s larger cities Democrats have ruled the roost for fifty years and more, an eternity in politics. There is no pressing need for Democrats to change a thing.   Post-election reports in all media outlets ind...

Shortly after the so called Homeschooling Bill was introduced in Connecticut’s Democrat dominated General Assembly, homeschooling parents arrived in mass at the state Capitol building to testify against it. The parents, accompanied in some instances with their children – all patient and well behaved – protested that the bill was poorly conceived, unnecessary, created rather than solved problems, and short circuited both parental rights and the hitherto uncontested authority of municipalities over school matters.   The proposed bill required, according to a Hartford Courant report, that home schooling parents previously unmolested by state regulations register with the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) “to gain clearance to educate their kids. There were thousands of written testimonies against the bill, endless phone calls and emails to legislators and the governor, and when the bill passed two weeks later, there was a lot of bitterness.”     The...

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard” — H. L. Mencken   President Donald Trump, who made himself available during the off-presidential elections in various states, maintained his distance from Connecticut. Some political commentators regard the state as an   east coast extension of Gavin Newsome’s California, increasingly left wing and impervious to right reason. One homegrown poll published shortly before final votes were tallied showed Trump with a disapproval rating of 70%, not at all surprising. A count of citations unfavorable to Trump in Connecticut’s media likely may be closer to 90%.   Like Governor Ned Lamont, no fan of the president, Trump is a lame duck chief executive. In the most recent polls, Lamont is shown beating Republican challenger Ryan Fazio by 20 percentage points. The governor, as previously mentioned , enjoyed insuperable advantages. Lamont is embarking on his third term i...

Everyone in Connecticut knows that our state’s Democrat Party has become an ungainly hegemon concerned principally with denying Republicans a place at the state’s political table. That is one of the reasons there has been to date only two brief and inconclusive gubernatorial debates between Governor Ned Lamont and his Republican challenger Ryan Fazio. The Connecticut debates were not political contests in the fashion of the Lincoln Douglas debates. They were largely media shows. Lincoln and Douglas, pretty evenly matched, debated six times in is strategic areas of Illinois, during which the media served as stenographic reporters.   The Democrat Party hegemon in Connecticut may remind some of the giant in the fairy tale who, in hot pursuit of the princess, finds himself with one step far beyond her. Giantism in politics has invariably pointed the way to tyranny. Following the advent of the Stalin era in the Union of Soviet Socialist (emphasis mine) Republics, there was the unit...

Fazio and Lamont The off-year presidential elections will soon be over. Few expect breathtaking surprises. It is traditional in national off-year presidential elections for the party out of power, in this case Democrats, to gain seats in the U.S. Congress. In Connecticut, Democrats are expected to hold back an anticipated Republican eddy. Republicans have been telling us recent polling is defective. Nationally, Republicans are expected to lose some seats in the U S Congress. Statewide, Democrats are expected to maintain their margins. The obvious question at this point is: What comes next?   The tradition mentioned above concerning off-year presidential elections may be the only tradition that, for the time being, the rebels without a cause among American Democratic Socialist (ADS) are willing to tolerate. Their revolutionary movement calls for a unitary national legislature – no more U.S. Senate -- additional seats as socialist ballast to be added to the U.S. Supreme Court, a ...

Connecticut Dems Connecticut Democrats have little to worry about for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is:  political problems become worrisome only when the opposition party or an independent media has the political resources and the inclination to exploit the problem.   We know that Connecticut’s Democrat Party has been for 30 years and more the unquestioned dominant party in our state.   This dominance is longer-lived in the state’s cities, now dependent on majority Democrats for funding. Hartford’s last Republican mayor was Ann Uccello who presided as mayor from 1967-1971.   Political dominance, once attained, is relatively easy to maintain – particularly in a state like Connecticut in which the media, far less independent than it had been during the golden age of bipartisan government in Connecticut, partly for business reasons favors the hegemonic party in power.     One of the reasons “power corrupts, and absolute power...