Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post is not among the ardent defenders of prospective Democratic Party Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The good news, Mr. Cillizza writes in “The Fix,” is that Mrs. Clinton will not be wearing an orange jumpsuit anytime soon: “The FBI has recommended that no charges be brought following its investigation of the former Secretary of State's private email server.” “Here’s the bad news,” Mr. Cillizza added, “Just about everything else.  It’s hard to read Comey’s statement  as anything other than a wholesale rebuke of the story Clinton and her campaign team have been telling ever since the existence of her private email server came to light in spring 2015. She  did  send and receive classified emails. The setup  did leave her — and the classified information on the server — subject to a possible foreign hack. She and her team  did  delete emails as personal that contained professional inform...

ABC News is reporting that President Barack Obama intends to raise from “bundlers” $1 billion for his presidential campaign. As yet, no one who vigorously supports campaign finance regulation has suggested that a confiscatory progressive tax should be levied against the millionaire bundlers, proceeds from the tax to be deposited in accounts supporting public financing. Among the eager bundlers who showed up in Washington to lend a hand to Mr. Obama was Ned Lamont, the progressive heartthrob and anti Iraq war warrior who, drawing upon his own considerable resources, successfully challenged present Sen. Joe Lieberman in a primary a few years ago. Mr. Lamont lost to Mr. Lieberman, who is retiring at the end of his term, in a rancorous general election. Within the Democratic Party, U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, who styles himself as a progressive in some political ads, has rounded up a good deal of support within his party in a bid for Mr. Lieberman’s seat in the U.S. Senate. No one ye...

Thursday’s Hartford Courant shows a picture of US Sen. Chris Dodd above the fold looking for all the world like a man who has seen the beginning of the end, and over his head there is a bothersome headline in three quarter inch caps proclaiming DODD’S FLIP-FLOP. What to make of all this? A senator has flip-flopped? Oh my! What is the country coming to? The headline, the picture and the story follow a stunning interview with Wolf Blitzer in which Wolf pins Dodd’s ears back, slams him to the floor and dances on his chest? But Wolf Blitzer is a jerk; always was, always will be. Some will say he is doing his job. Possibly -- if it is the job of a jackal to lunge into the side of a wounded wilderbeast. Jackal? Wilderbeast? What the…. There should be something in us that recoils whenever we see jackals advancing on a corpse. Dodd, who all his political life had shown some mastery of the legislative sausage machine, got caught up in it this time. The organ has swallowed the organ master. The...

So, we have a business meltdown. Who does it help or hurt, Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain? This is a devilish question, but we are in the midst of a presidential campaign. Horns and cloven feet are everywhere. In American politics, who fashions the best narrative wins. We all like a good yarn. A yarn is a story that sells, one that nestles nicely in our frame of reference, a story that confirms what we have always suspected. Others, most effectively the Financial Times of London, have suggested that Alan Greenspan is responsible for both the tech bubble and the housing bubble that has now broken over our heads. But the current controversy undoubtedly helps Obama, because he has successfully presented himself to the voting public as an agent of change and, if we are in the pickle jar, we want to get out of it by the quickest possible route. Obama has managed to position himself on the side of the angels. He wants to overthrow the old order, the ancient regime that has brought on...