Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Someone – not a fan of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s political redoubt – has given us a brief preview of DSA’s political and cultural platform.   And here it is: An oxymoron is an impossible combination of terms, such as “square circle” or “democrat socialist.”   We know from history that socialism, once matured, is both anti-democratic and anti-republican. The official title of the Soviet Union was “the union of soviet socialistic republics.” In fact, the union was a political construct that demanded at the point of a sword or a grueling stretch in Joseph Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago absolute and unquestioned compliance with an overbearing command state. The central command was Stalin and his Pretorian Guard, or Hitler and his black shirts, ruthlessly anti-democratic and anti-republican by nature.   The official shortened title of Germany’s post Weimar Republic under Adolf Hitler was the Nazi Party, the Nationa...

Roger Sherman -- a Connecticut delegate to The Constitutional Convention and the only founding father who signed all four key U.S. founding documents: the Continental Association, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution -- proposed on July 16, 1787 a plan of governance that solved a seemingly intractable problem. The larger and smaller states had been engaging in a representational debate that had brought the national Convention to a standstill. The solution to the problem, called at the time The Great Compromise or the Connecticut Compromise, was one of those solutions that really did solve a pressing problem.   The proposal by Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, also a delegate to the national convention, answered the question: How should representation in the new Constitutional national Senate be apportioned among large and small states?   The large states believed that representation should be based proportionally on the contribution ...

In the age of Google, it is becoming increasingly impossible to plead ignorance, especially when the prospective dunce is a U.S. Senator.   Connecticut’s Junior U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, not up for reelection until January 3, 2031 -- plenty of time for “misspeaks” to be flushed down the memory hole of the average Connecticut voter -- has been denounced by Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, neither of whom are ardent supporters of proto-fascist, according to left-leaning Democrats and media outlets, President Donald Trump.   The always entertaining New York Post puts it this way: “MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski blasted Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) for not denouncing a controversial Mamdani-endorsed democratic socialist – urging Dems to ‘call out crazy’ within their own party … During MS NOW’s ‘Meet the Press’ Sunday, Murphy feigned ignorance when he was asked about Darializa Avila Chevalier, the contentious House candidate who called forme...

A fifteen minute conversation with any free-market economist would uncover plans to reduce the cost of everything. Below, the attentive reader will find the essence of such a discussion.   Everywhere in the United States, the law of supply and demand continues to hold sway, although we find here and there performance politicians who pretend never to have heard of it.   The Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is one of the more persuasive pretenders.   The law of supply and demand holds that the cost of goods and services is directly related to the supply of goods and services. Energy, to choose one product, becomes more expensive as its supply diminishes. The same is true of housing. If the demand for housing is constant and the supply diminishes, housing becomes more expensive, further diminishing supply.   Here in Connecticut, new housing is becoming too expensive to produce. The expense may be mitigated in one of two ways. State government must pro...

 Mamdani For those unfamiliar with politics in the good old USA, it may be necessary to point out the difference between a primary and a general election.   A general election is a cross party struggle, and a primary is an interior party struggle.   Democrat Party partisans in New York City are still celebrating their victories in the New York City primary race, and they hope to extend their forward momentum beyond New York. It has been rumored that socialist squad leader Alexandria Cassio Cortez (AOC) has her eye on Chuck Schumer’s U.S. Senate seat. AOC has yet to issue a categorical denial that Schumer may be the next target of ambitious New York socialists and Schumer, for his part, has most recently dressed himself up in the usual socialist rhetorical apparel. Hey Schumer, Pelosi, Blumenthal – you’re next.   The same is true in Connecticut, where long-serving U.S. House member John Larson finds himself under primary assault from young anti-establishment D...

Governor Ned Lamont, primed for a third term, now finds himself between a rock, conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Fazio, and a hard place, Democrat primary opponent state Rep. Josh Elliott. Other politicians have survived the squeeze.   Lamont was nursed early in his political career by former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker, widely regarded as a “moderate” Republican until it became impossible for Republicans in Connecticut to regard him as such. Towards the end of his Senate career, Weicker had brashly identified as a liberal Democrat, long before the term “Republican In Name Only (RINO)” had become a fashionable tag for politicians who straddled both party political sawhorses in their highly misleading political campaigns. Finally, and at long last, Connecticut Republicans gave Weicker the boot, shortly after Weicker had presented himself in his last campaign for the Senate as a “turd in the Republican Party punchbowl.” During his last year in C...

 In a Library of Congress blog, Ellen Terrell tells us that a quote often attributed to President Calvin Coolidge – “The business of America is business” – is an abbreviation.   What Coolidge actually said to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington D.C. on January 17, 1925 was this: “After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.”   Terrell adds a codicil to her correction: “Given that the speech was before a news trade group, Coolidge was talking about the role of the press in a modern, democratic America and included warnings about the evils of propaganda.   But more specifically, he was talking about the role of the press in free-market America.”   For conservatives in the U.S. squaring up against their opposite number, neo-progressives and socialists, the correction may be a distinction without a difference. “W...

“The difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between a lightning bolt and a lightning bug” -- Mark Twain   Everyone in Connecticut, perhaps including political writers, should know by this time nearly everything they were afraid to ask about Maine Democrat U.S. Senatorial prospect Graham Platner .   Thomas Feeney in the Washington Examiner has provided us with a shortened version of Platner’s resume. Leveling a criticism at what is still amusingly called The Mainstream Media, Feeney writes: “There is also no excuse for not looking at the candidate’s social media profile. Clearly, the Democrats missed what one news outlet characterized as “a slew of horrifying posts made on Reddit [in which he disparaged] women, rape victims, minorities, veterans, cops and working-class voters. Moreover, might it not have seemed off-putting to voters that the candidate sent sexual text messages to numerous women while he was married, as reported nationall...

As a general rule, incumbent politicians do not like audits. An audit is a scrupulous examination, political and economic, of a politician’s record in office. If the audited politician’s career in office is at an end, an audit, usually performed by the opposition party, may seem redundant. What is the point of beating a dead political horse? These strictures would seem to apply to former New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart’s career-ending audit about which much reportorial and commentary ink has been spilled. At this point, it seems safe to say that Stewart’s political reputation has suffered irremediable damage. Stewart’s withdrawal from her race for Governor of Connecticut on the Republican ticket was occasioned by the publication of an audit’s findings. The audit was commissioned by the incoming Democrat Mayor of New Britain, Robert (Bobby) Sanchez, and conducted by a putative “non-partisan” law firm, Crumbie Law Group. In recent days, we find another audit has tickled the interest o...

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so” – misattributed to Mark Twain   The statements made by Jadon MacCormack on a Facebook posting were not unattributed.   MacCormack wrote, “This ideology” – the transgender and LGBT movement, according to the Hartford Courant – “promotes confusion over clarity, prioritizes feelings over biological reality, and seeks to redefine the natural order of marriage, family, and human identity in ways that directly contradict God-given rights and common sense.”   MacCormack was not called upon to clarify his propositions because those condemning him needed no clarification. He was, unsurprisingly, roundly denounced and asked by all and sundry to resign from his position as the Republican Party nominee for House District 50, currently held by “Patrick S. Boyd of Pomfret, a well-known conservative Democrat who has served in the legislature since 2017 and currently co...

A CliffNotes version of the case against Graham Platner, Maine’s Democrat Senate frontrunner, may be found in the Connecticut Centinal under the byline Reese On the Radio.   Revelation followed revelation, most of them debilitating: “The most recent revelation: Platner exchanged sexually explicit text messages with multiple women early in his 2023 marriage. His wife discovered them, reported the matter to campaign leadership last year, and the issue was handled privately—reportedly with counseling. When the New York Times and Wall Street Journal published the story days before the primary, Platner dismissed it as ‘gossip’ and ‘journalistic malpractice.’ His wife called the coverage ‘shameful’ and urged focus on ‘the issues.’ Some Democrats muttered about ‘questions to answer,’ but the campaign and base largely treated it as a distraction.”   Connecticut’s U.S. Senator Chris Murphy recently was given the opportunity by Margret Brennan of CBS News to defend the indefen...

  PURA loses   The title of the Hartford Courant story was worth a thousand words:   PURA agrees to settle suit . And the subtitle -- “Authority [PURA] admits improper decision making by ex-chair [Mellissa Gillett]” – could not have gone down the gullet of Governor Lamont, an early Gillett enthusiast, easily. Crow is nearly always indigestible.   Lamont robustly defended his choice of Gillett as chairwoman of PURA almost to its inglorious conclusion.   Gillett was appointed to her position with great fanfare. Finally, PURA was to have at its chair a woman who did not flinch in a fight with Connecticut’s energy distributors. Following an interview with   David Roberts in 2024, Connecticut Commentary noted that in the interview Gillett had forcefully summarized her regulatory philosophy:   “What is the point in constructing a regulatory regime that never or rarely says ‘no’ to Big Business monopolies that can by their very weight and po...