Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Our national Coronavirus plague, which some dour, unscientific critics insist is no more deadly than the flu, has deposited in the hands of governors here in the Northeast an administrative power that might well bring a blush to the cheek of Gore Vidal’s Caligula. Asked by a reporter whether he objected to the seemingly endless senatorial reign of Edward Kennedy in Massachusetts, Vidal quipped – no, not at all, because every state should have in it at least one Caligula. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is the most visible and outspoken Vidalian Caligula in a compact of similarly endowed governors that includes Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Blumenthal and Murphy U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has been roughly cuffed by some news outlets, but not by Vox, which published on April 16 a worshipful article on Connecticut’s Junior Senator, “ The Senator of State : How Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, a rising Democratic star, would run the world.” On April 15, The Federalist mentioned Murphy in an article entitled “ Sen. Chris Murphy: China And The World Health Organization Did Nothing Wrong . The lede was a blow to Murphy’s solar plexus: “Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy exonerated China of any wrongdoing over the global pandemic stemming from the novel Wuhan coronavirus on Tuesday. “’The reason that we’re in the crisis that we are today is not because of anything that China did, is not because of anything the WHO [World Health Organization] did,’ said Murphy during a prime-time interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.”