ANOTHER POLITICAL OPERATIVE PUTS THUMB ON SCALE TO INTERFERE WITH OBJECTIVE JUSTICE.
Our guests today are Glenn Smith, political consultant from Texas, who managed Ann Richards’s (successful) 1990 campaign for governor; and “Dr. Politics,” Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science at Iowa State University.
We begin with a bit of historical context. Trump’s mini-me Attorney General William Barr has just put his thumb on the scale to withdraw the recommended sentence that DOJ career prosecutors had filed in court to punish Roger Stone for his dirty tricks and lies to help get Pres Trump elected. And four career prosecutors resigned from the case (one from the Department altogether) in protest.
Pundits are talking about how this is virtually unprecedented but, in fact, it’s a problem that rears its head more often than one would think. Ken describes a very similar pattern of meddling by the Reagan White House and AG, when Pres Reagan pursued his pre-Trump efforts to turn back the clock on civil rights and other progressive gov’t enforcement programs (like EPA, OSHA, & the Depts of Interior, Education and Energy).
BLOOMBERG, BILLIONS, AND BIGOTRY
Turning to the presidential race, Glenn explains why NY Mayor Bloomberg has been so successful in gaining support in Texas (and across the nation), even though he hasn’t won a single vote. In a word, big bucks are remarkably persuasive. Even before Bloomberg declared his candidacy for president, he spent a great deal of money helping other mayors, local officials, and non-profit groups to pursue their own projects. (E.g., he has funded the “mayors’ school” at Harvard.)
In addition, a number of African-Americans — including the mayor of Houston who will be endorsing Bloomberg tonight — are willing to overlook Bloomberg’s more racially-biased policies and comments because they’d rather have a partial racist as president than the incumbent vicious racist. It’s not clear why people think that Bloomberg is the only Democrat who will be able to defeat Trump (or the most likely Democrat). But that’s what folks are saying, and again, perhaps Bloomberg’s money is part of their reasoning.
GENDER AND THE PRESIDENCY
We also discuss the differences between the Iowa caucuses and the NH primary; why Elizabeth Warren seemed to fade in the last few weeks and whether she can resurrect her campaign; and the differences between how woman and men are treated in the political world.
