Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Newsweek was over confident. The magazine set up its front page showing Democratic Presidential nominee defeating real estate mogul Donald Trump – two days before Election Day. Scrap that. Prior to Mr. Trump’s victory, a Hartford Courant political writer instructed a Talk of Connecticut Election Luncheon audience that “The Donald” was sub-human , and Bill Curry, whose support of socialist Bernie Sanders quickly shifted to Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton once Mrs. Clinton had bumped off Mr. Sanders, declared that Mr. Trump was “emotionally unbalanced, a fascist, and a fraud” . Perhaps after Mr. Trump has been in office a couple of years, Mr. Curry will readjust his depreciation of President Elect Trump, even as he has frequently adjusted his politics between the now abandoned Mr. Sanders and the re-embraced Mrs. Clinton.

President Barack Obama’s critics have a point when they say that Mr. Obama is having some difficulty defending the practical consequences of his policies. An unemployment rate of 7.8 percent four years after Mr. Obama said his progressive policies would result in an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent is certainly an economic bummer. We are very far from normalcy. To date, Mr. Obama has shucked off the non-performing economy on former President George Bush, but the dodge of responsibility for an economy in cardiac arrest is beginning to annoy the unemployed. Such laggard numbers suggests the opposite of progress and gives weight to the charge made by Mr. Obama’s critics that, at least in economic matters, the president for his entire term has been marching to the wrong drummer. The right course, Republican Vice President Nominee Paul Ryan attempted to suggest in his first and only debate with Vice President Joe Biden, was outlined by President John Kennedy in a 1963 speech to th...