Tag: democratic

Hey, I guessed wrong on where the Democratic convention was going to be!

Turns out that they’re having it in Philly after all.  Personally, I would have picked somewhere that wasn’t a day trip from NYC, but they didn’t ask me, either? …Seriously, though: security is going to be a really big issue for both conventions this cycle.  The Republican party is going to have to worry about crazy blackshirt progressive lunatics who want to disrupt the proceedings, and the Democratic party is going to have to worry about…  crazy blackshirt progressive lunatics who want to disrupt the proceedings.  The really major difference is that the Democrats probably have to worry a little bit less about the aforementioned crazy blackshirt progressive lunatics trying to kill them some delegates*.

Hey, maybe that’s why they picked Philly: the cops there have a certain reputation…

Moe Lane

*That’s not a joke.

National 2016 Convention dates set.

So, the convention schedule is firming up:

A few thoughts on this: first off, yes, that’s significantly earlier than from the previous two election cycles (as Dan McLaughlin is noting here). In 2008 the Democratic convention was held from August 25th to the 28th, and the Republican convention was held from September 1st to 3rd. In 2012 the GOP held ours from August 27th to the 30th, and the Democrats had theirs from September 4th to 6th. I’m noting the dates because at first I was under the very mistaken impression that the distance between the two conventions was usually longer; but it’s not, really. Presumably neither party wants to give the other one any kind of extended convention bounce.

Second: the Democrats are going to have an interesting time picking their venue.  The AP reports that the choices for them are NYC, Philadelphia, and/or Columbus.  I don’t really think that picking any of those will actually give the Democrats more votes, but I also think that the Democrats have pretty much already decided on Columbus for other reasons. It’s an open question whether NYC is going to be in any kind of shape to hold a convention after another year of Bill de Blasio – imagine how the city might look if the Mayor/NYPD feud goes on for another year – and Philadelphia is… not what it was. A very historically significant city with a proud civic history, but… well, at least they’re not Detroit*. It also is an easy train ride from NYC for any screaming protesters native to Gotham, while Columbus is not.  And yes, that’s a consideration.

Lastly: if anybody next year complains about how strange this election season feels to him or her, this would be why. It’s been a while since we had conventions this early. It may be long overdue, but it’s still out of the ordinary. I wonder how the election cycle will look with an extra month of full-bore campaigning by both candidates?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Yes, I know that since Cleveland is where we’re having our convention, this is a somewhat ironic video to use.  However, it’s good to have a bit of a laugh, no?

2012 primary reorganization feature, not bug.

Not to contradict Glenn Reynolds, but this report of the Democrats going ahead with plans to make it impossible for an upstart into do in 2012 what Senator Obama did to Senator Clinton in 2008 won’t offend President Obama at all.  The President is the incumbent now, after all: he doesn’t want superdelegates and spaced-out primaries (and probably caucuses, soon enough) interfering with his inexorable progression through the nomination process.  That’s what I concluded back in June, and I see nothing here that would encourage me to change my opinion.

Shorter Moe Lane:  Hi, I’d like you to meet the new boss.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

More on the Democratic party’s War on Breasts.

Via Instapundit, HHS Secretary Sebelius is trying to do some damage control on the recent ‘suggestion’ that women stop getting routine mammograms before they’re 50:

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, meanwhile, told women to ignore the new advisory recommendations for now.

“The U.S. Preventive Task Force is an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who make recommendations. They do not set federal policy and they don’t determine what services are covered by the federal government,” said Sebelius in a written statement.

“Our policies remain unchanged,” she said of the federal government. ” Indeed, I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action.”

A statement that is very comforting… until you remember that the Democratic party’s goal is to establish governmental control over the health care insurance industry.  Who here thinks that an insurance company already grimly aware that they exist on governmental sufferance might feel the need to ‘change its mammography coverage decisions’ to reflect current state medical policy?  Particularly if there are consequences for not being in compliance with all the laws, regulations, rulings, and opinions that bureaucracies generate more or less automatically.  And if the government doesn’t like the idea that people are going to instinctively assume that said bureaucracy is willing to ‘encourage’ ostensibly-private entities to follow bureaucratic dictates, then perhaps the government might like to consider reining in its bureaucrats.  As publicly as it can manage.

I’ll end by noting that this is all an inevitable by-product of the health care rationing bill; it is, in fact, why I call it that.  More people covered, better service, lower costs: in the best-case scenario, pick any two.  In the scenario that we’re going to get, if this passes?  We’ll get the first one, and the current ruling party will muck up the second while flagrantly ignoring the third.  That’s because the first one is easy, and can be done by lazy people.  The other two require work to accomplish.

Moe Lane

PS: Ed Morrissey reports that there are no oncologists on the task force that made the ‘recommendations.’  I really, really hope that this isn’t actually true.

Crossposted to RedState.

Moe Lane gets something wrong.

Hey, I’m honest enough to admit when I’m wrong about something – and although I could weasel out of this, I won’t: it is clear from context here that my expectations were that the Democratic party would redesign their Presidential primary system (to prevent someone doing unto the President as he did unto Clinton) at some point in 2010.  Well, that was flat-out wrong of me, and I’m sorry that I called it so badly.  It wasn’t going to start within a year at all.

It was actually going to start within three days. Continue reading Moe Lane gets something wrong.