Gov. Dannel Malloy, WFSB reported,
“called the decision historic and had a LGBT pride flag flying at the
Governor's Residence in Hartford on Friday. ‘This is a historic moment, and we
should recognize and celebrate its significance. Equality, freedom, justice and
liberty – all recognized by the Supreme Court in this ruling that moves our
nation forward,’ Mr. Malloy said.” His administration, Mr. Malloy has said
previously, is the gayest in state history and has been full of historic
moments.
“Well, Scott Walker,
if you believe the next president’s job is to encourage bigotry and to treat
some families better than others, then I believe it’s our job to make sure you
aren’t president. That’s just a taste of the ugly picture of
Republican leadership,” said progressive flamethrower U.S. Senator
Elizabeth Warren during the Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson, Jackson,
Bailey dinner at the Connecticut Convention Center.
Ms. Warren
disappointed progressives when she refused to enter the primaries as an
alternative candidate to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Some
progressives, Connecticut’s own Bill Curry among them, think Mrs. Clinton is a
middle of the road Democrat of no strong principles who, once in office, will
surrender to the blandishments of non-progressive Democrats. In addition, she
seems pox-marked with various scandals she may not be able to overcome. The
loss of the bully pulpit after eight years of autocratic rule by progressive
President Barack Obama would amount to a revision of values that would put a
serious dent in the good humor of progressives as displayed by Ms. Warren in
what might have been a thumping presidential stump speech. Scott Walker, twice
elected Governor of Wisconsin, is a bigot; Jeb Bush wants to privatize Social
Security; Ted Cruz wants to repeal Obamacare and provide tax breaks for Big
Business; and former President Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics was
“nothing more than political cover for helping the rich and helping the rich
become more powerful.”
That sort of bumper-sticker
thought went smoothly down the throats of the 1,300 Democrats in attendance who
purchased tickets beginning at the non-proletarian price of $185 to hear Ms.
Warren spank the behinds of Republican presidential candidates. Not a serious
candidate for President herself, Ms. Warren is under no compunction to lay out
a domestic and foreign policy program that might garner a sufficient number of
votes to propel her into the White House; this is the unhappy lot of Mrs.
Clinton, whose candidacy Mrs. Warren has not yet fulsomely endorsed. However,
progressive Friends Of Warren (FOWs) here in Connecticut, among them
uber-progressive Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, have thrown in their lot with Mrs.
Clinton and her scallywag but loveable husband.
Ms. Warren’s
appearance at Connecticut’s Jefferson, Jackson, Bailey fundraising dinner was
rich in irony. The event itself is named after two slavers and an Indian killer;
Andrew Jackson, the founder of the modern Democratic Party, was both a slaver
and an Indian killer. John Bailey, the last Democratic Party boss in
Connecticut, was innocent of these crimes against humanity, and he was an
upstanding Democrat too, though politically he was not as ferocious a
progressive as Ms. Warren.
On the matter of
slavery, Jefferson was somewhat torn. Unlike George Washington, he did not
liberate his slaves in his will; he thought blacks were primitive and therefore
unworthy of full manumission. Both Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Jackson breeded slaves
for private gain. Of the two, Mr. Jackson was less conscience stricken by what
the founders called our “peculiar institution.” Not only did Mr. Jackson own
hundreds of slaves, he vigorously prohibited abolitionists from distributing
tracts condemning slavery, tabled abolitionist activity in Congress and was
himself a slave trader, according to a piece in Salon.
But it was as an
Indian killer That Mr. Jackson excelled. T.D. Allman argues in “Finding
Florida: The True History of the Sunshine State” that brutality was a habit of
mind for Mr. Jackson long before he prepared the ground as President for the
Trail of Tears, the forced death march that killed 4,000 Cherokees in 1838-39.
Slaving and Indian
resettlement were not unrelated in that brutal mind. As early as 1816, then-U.S.
Army Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson displaced Spanish-speaking black and Choctaw
Indian in Florida because he feared that a free black community nearby might
serve as a magnet for runaway slaves. Mr. Jackson convinced his subordinates
that the blacks and Indians, free under Spanish rule, were bent on “rapine and
plunder,” when in fact they were small farmers raising crops.
The news that there
is a move underfoot across the nation to re-title all Jefferson Jackson dinners
trickled down late to Connecticut. Blue Virginia may already have gone
Jacksonless by the time this column appears in print. As a progressive, Ms.
Warren’s conscience is exquisitely tender, which is why she called the
inoffensive Mr. Walker a bigot. How a woman of such refined feelings could
bring herself to participate in a function that honors both herself and Mr. Jackson, a slaver and Indian killer, is a deep puzzlement. Following Ms. Warren’s
appearance, The Democratic Party in Connecticut belatedly scrubbed the names of
both Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Jackson from their annual fund appeal dinner.
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