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Today, Jeb Bush formally entered the race for the Republican nomination for president. I should point out, as a bit of personal trivia, that his new campaign logo ("Jeb!") has allowed me to create what I believe is the shortest headline I have ever written (in over 2,000 blog posts).
I have to pity the poor mainstream media reporters covering Hillary Clinton's campaign, a tiny bit. No, no, I really do -- at least a smidgeon. They know full well that, barring any large and unforeseen events, they'll be covering Clinton's campaign for at least the next eight or nine months without having much of any "horserace" story to tell. If Clinton does as expected (again, barring a tremendous surge by Bernie Sanders or a sudden health problem for Hillary), she's going to become the Democratic nominee for president without much problem. This presents a deep quandary for the mainstream Clinton reporters, since all pundits (and I definitely include myself in this) absolutely love writing horserace stories. They're easy, they're poll-driven, and much like their namesake horseraces, it's always fun to see a dark horse pull into the lead or a frontrunner stumble or any other thrilling racetrack development that gets the heart pumping and the juices flowing. To put it another way: horserace stories are easy to write, which is why we get so many of them during each election.
Yesterday, Senator Rand Paul stood firmly for his beliefs on the floor of the Senate. As a result, portions of the USA PATRIOT Act have been allowed to lapse today. Whether you think this is a tragedy, a victory, or even an absolute farce depends on your feelings for (or against) both the National Security Agency's metadata surveillance program and Senator Paul himself. But while others are debating the finer points of government surveillance, I'd instead prefer to focus on Paul's political tactics. Because, from where I'm sitting, Paul is to be admired and commended for both standing on principle and for using his position in the Senate to show the other candidates what actual (as opposed to rhetorical) leadership truly means.
There's a crass and cynical formula for any given political candidate to follow, when any political issue is being discussed. It goes something like this (yes, I made up all this terminology, so please bear with me):
Last week, the field of officially-announced Democratic presidential candidates doubled in size, from one person to two. This week, the Republican presidential field is likewise going to double, from three candidates to six. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio have all previously officially announced their candidacies, and this week they will be joined by Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson (who announced today), and Mike Huckabee (scheduled to announce tomorrow).
Sorry, I do not mean to make light of the historic nature of today's case, far from it in fact. I have to admit being personally stunned at how fast events have developed. Almost exactly two years ago I wrote a column predicting that America had reached the tipping point on marriage equality. I've re-run this column a few times, and last October I pointed out that when I wrote the original article, the following was true:
We'll get to other political news in a moment, but since last week contained the date 4/20, we're going to first run down all the marijuana news. Coincidentally or not, there was a lot of it this week. So let's just begin by "getting into the weeds" of politics, as it were (the ponies come along later, never fear).
A few words of introduction are necessary today. I spent most of the day dealing with email (cleaning out my mailbox and fishing for quotes for tomorrow's article), so instead of a fresh column today, I'm re-running a speech from Hillary Clinton from November of 2007.
I write today to challenge what is fast becoming conventional wisdom in the political world. In particular, the notion that Hillary Clinton really needs a strong primary challenge to "toughen her up" for the upcoming race with whomever the Republicans decide upon. When you deconstruct the logic behind this idea, however, it falls apart.
There are very few political issues today which have not already become firmly entrenched along the same basic party lines that all our other political issues hew towards. In most cases, it's a matter of "Democrats believe X, while Republicans insist on Y." On one issue, though, there is a sizeable (and growing) bloc of voters who are not only cross-partisan but also so committed they could be called "single-issue voters." I'm speaking of the marijuana vote. And it could be up for grabs next year.