Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Governor Dannel Malloy uncorked himself when talking recently with BuzzFeed . “The only middle-aged white men who voted for me were myself and my brothers,” Mr. Malloy told BuzzFeed News. “So if we’re going to rely on middle-aged white men to win Democratic races again — you know, I mean I think we need to speak to a broader audience than middle-aged white men.” This is a page taken directly from the President Barrack Obama campaign playbook. Perceiving that the Democratic Party had been steadily losing votes among working class whites, Mr. Obama, during his first campaign, managed to form a new epicentric coalition that relied on “support among communities of color, educated whites, Millennials, single women, and seculars,” according to a review in the New York Times  of a report written by Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin .

Governor Dannel Malloy has been chosen by his gubernatorial peers to head the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) as Chairman in 2016. Did they choose wisely? Though he claims – as most governors would -- that he has no national ambitions, Mr. Malloy’s slip, so to speak, is showing. Even as governor of the state, large ambitions course through his veins. He is very comfortable appearing on national programs with a pencil in hand that he gleefully sticks in the eye of one promising Republican politician after another. Governor of New Jersey Chris Christy is a favorite target, and recently Mr. Malloy has been throwing porcupine quills in the direction of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Mr. Malloy appears to enjoy the rough and tumble of politics, though his own skin is painfully thin.

Governor Dannel Malloy has more or less appointed himself as a national progressive Democratic attack dog, according to an interview with Time magazine : “Seizing an opportunity in a party depleted of household names not Clinton or Obama, Malloy is rising to the occasion, positioning himself as one of the party’s top attack dogs as the 2016 cycle approaches.” Hailing from Connecticut, where much of the media has placidly accepted Mr. Malloy’s progressive tax and spend program, there are no attack dogs on the left, and so Mr. Malloy has been permitted to range freely, biting whomever he chooses.

“Regressive,” as any practicing progressive knows, is the opposite of “progressive.” Theoretically, a progressive income tax is levied on those who, in the words most often used to defend the tax, can well afford to “pay their fair share,” the fairness of their share to be determined, naturally, by progressives. The sole purpose of the progressive income tax is to shift the burden of tax payments from the poor to the rich. During the war years, Franklin Roosevelt, spurred on by progressives, signed into law the “Revenue Act of 1935,” a “wealth tax” that raised the federal income tax to 75 percent on incomes over 5 million. The 5 million, as it turned out, was but a foot in the door. Under the administrations of President Barrack Obama and Governor Dannel Malloy, millionaires have come down in the world, and anyone who makes a quarter of a million per year is considered, for progressive tax purposes, a millionaire.