Two parties, two conventions

Which one looks as if it’s led by a competent CEO and ready to run the country?

The Obama team is making Will Rogers’s great line - “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat” - obsolete.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

5 thoughts on “Two parties, two conventions”

    1. moving the speech when it became clear the larger venue would not be filled? Having Elizabeth Warren come thus giving the Herald a chance to trumpet her failure to meet with Indian Democrats?

      No, I think Will Rogers is looking pretty good, still.

  2. I’m with Ebenezer. Goldberg calls this a “meaningless” “unforced error,” and at one level he’s right. The planks in question are pandering, bs inserted who knows when or why or by whom. But, of course, by the same token REMOVING them was also pandering bs.

    And the persons who did it had to have understood that. And the persons who put them on whatever subcommittees of the platform committee had purview had to have known their views. And whoever vetted the results had to have known what they meant.

    Unless they were just political idiots. So that’s the choice: political idiots or people who knew that they were acting out some piece of symbolic bs that was sure to cause trouble. Villaraigosa’s stumble of course was not just saying, yup, 2/3’s, after the very first voice vote. Quicker thinking would have saved the party (and him) some grief.

    I will give Obama and the Democrats this: Unlike Romney, who thinks it’s ok to have a platform that he disagrees with, the President fixed this. Really fixing it of course means finding the people who were directly responsible and removing them from whatever positions of authority they have in whatever state party apparatus they inhabit. I expect that’ll happen in due course.

    Bill Clinton reminded me why I’m a Democrat despite having to put up with the bullshit of pseudo-liberals leftists.

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