Blumenthal the Hare

Blumenthal, Biden

In the campaign season now upon us, money is, more than ever, the mother’s milk of politics.

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, we all know, is rich in every sense of the word. He is a multi-millionaire who lives in splendor in Greenwich, Connecticut, a billionaire’s Eden. And he, as well as other Democrat U.S. Congresspersons, also redundantly rich – such as 3^rd District U.S. Representatives Rosa DeLauro, first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives more than three decades ago in 1990, and 4^th District U.S. Representative Jim Himes, now enjoying his seventh term in office – is able at the drop of a hat to assemble a formidable campaign war chest that will serve to discourage primary opponents and assure an effortless glide path to victory.

In addition to personal wealth, Blumenthal is also rich in mostly flattering news reports, many of which he or his staff had a hand in creating through carefully crafted news releases not always critically examined by Connecticut’s left of center media. His campaign opponents, on the other hand, must rely on “the kindness of strangers,” as was the case with Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche was not well rewarded with the merciful favors she had expected.

It is true that money alone is no surety for election to office. Blumenthal easily withstood a well-financed assault from Linda McMahon in the 2010 election. McMahon, new to the ways of politics, spent an obscene $40 million unsuccessfully attempting to wrest the senate seat from Blumenthal. CBS News noted at the close of the election that McMahon “spent more than any other Senate candidate this year. Yet as other wealthy self-funding candidates this year in Connecticut (see Ned Lamont) and in other states (see Meg Whitman and Jeff Greene) found out, money could buy them name recognition but not necessarily love.

“Although this is the year of the ‘outsider’, it was Blumenthal's years of experience that probably saved him from the attacks by the McMahon campaign. Moreover, McMahon's lack of political experience contributed to her failure to overtake Blumenthal after closing in on him after trailing by a wide margin early in the campaign.”

Perhaps more important than electioneering money or prior political experience is Saint Blumenthal’s status within Connecticut's uncritical media and his penchant for escaping critical debates as election day approaches by limiting his Connecticut appearances.

Blumenthal once joked that he has been known to make political appearances at “garage door openings,” and jokesters in Connecticut’s media have often good-naturedly noted that there is no more dangerous spot in Connecticut than the space between Blumenthal and a television camera.

To put it briefly, Blumenthal knows how to “work” the media in Connecticut, not a difficult chore since many left of center reporters and commentators in the state share a somewhat narrow space on Connecticut’s progressive political spectrum. The print media in Connecticut offers little opposition to progressive Democrat politicians in editorial and commentary sections. Instate talk radio, which tends to list right, is the exception that proves the rule – the rule being there is no enemy to the left represented within Connecticut’s legacy print media.

Blumenthal generally has vastly outspent his Republican opponents both in Congress and as Connecticut’s “consumer protection” Attorney General, a post he held for more than 20 years. Shoehorning Blumenthal from his Attorney General’s aerie to run for a more challenging office was no easy task for Connecticut’s Democrat Party.

Registered Democrats outnumber their counterparts in Connecticut by a two to one margin, and unaffiliateds in the state, lately disappointed with the Biden Administration, according to recent polling, slightly outnumber Democrats. Democrat Party strength is strongest in cities and within a supportive media.

A Quinnipiac poll released last January shows Biden with a dismal approval rating of 35 percent. “Wednesday’s tough poll numbers,” The Hill remarked, “are attributed largely to poor marks from independent voters, 57 percent of whom said they disapproved of Biden’s job performance compared to 25 percent who approved.” In an April poll, the percentages were disappointingly similar. The approval rating among independents was 26 percent, while the disapproval rating was 56 percent.

In any contest for the U.S. Congress the members of Connecticut’s all Democrat U.S. Congressional Delegation will have the hare’s advantage in a race against slower moving turtles.

There are, however, a few black spots on the political horizon. The U.S. southern border is still disgorging illegal migrants, some of whom are permitted by receiving states to vote in municipal elections. Crimes of opportunity are still being committed by the underprivileged on the underprivileged in poor urban areas. In Connecticut, urban education, by which most people mean a rigorous curricula and an educational program at the conclusion of which students are functionally literate and able to earn money in an economy thirsty for workers, is little more than a pedagogical joke. And a majority of elected progressives in Connecticut appear to be unfamiliar with the doctrine of subsidiarity, which holds that that unit of governance that is the smallest and nearest to the political problem to be solved should solve the problem.

The reader may wish to fill in his own blank here. But voters increasingly sense that our politics has retreated further and further from certain imprescriptible rights, among which are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and nothing short of a restoration of fundamental rights will satisfy their unquenchable hunger for liberty and prosperity.