Oh, Please Tell Us Why

I had to do it. The situation demanded it.

I called the keeper of my 403(b) yesterday. I had to find out how much money I've lost so far. The economy is tanking, as you might expect, since most stores are now closed due to the coronavirus epidemic.

He said about 13 percent or so, since February 25. I've checked around: Others have lost similar amounts.

Now, let me say: 13 percent of what I had wasn't all that much. It wasn't six figures. In fact, nowhere near it.

And so I had to ask: Is it time to bail it out, take the tax hit, and bite the bullet? At least there would be some money there, and its value probably wouldn't diminish all that much, what with the Fed dropping its prime rate to 1.25%. That's like, well, nearly nothing.

He said no, which I think is what they've been trained to say. The market will recover, they say. It just won't be tomorrow, or next week, or next month. But it will come back, he said.

Yeah, okay, but that 13 percent or so has been lost before the main rush of coronavirus has hit us, It is yet to arrive, but it's just around the corner. Governors in six states are still not worried enough to close businesses or schools. But that will show up pretty soon.

Most of us who have anything invested are going to take a pretty big hit. Most of us.

A few U.S. Senators won't. They were briefed at the end of January, and were told that the virus was coming. They took their investments and traded them, while their values hadn't yet dropped.

The phrase for that is insider trading. You aren't supposed to do that. You aren't supposed to take information that is guarded and prioritized and not publicly shared, and act as if you just decided to sell a whole bunch of securities 'just because.'

That is theft in another phrase. If their transactions hadn't already been started--they can't always be done all at once--they cheated the rest of us. That is a crime.

Raw Story says four U.S. Senators did exactly that: Richard Burr (R-NC), Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), James Inhofe (R-OK), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The story didn't specify exactly how much money the four of them saved, but with Burr and Loeffler, we know that they saved several hundred thousand dollars.

Four of them isn't a whole bunch, but it's enough to raise eyebrows. One of them is too much. And for people like me, who have already lost 13 percent of what I had, this looks pretty lousy.

Because I left that money alone for eleven years, believing that I could gain from it. My gamble--and that's what it is, after all--was starting to pay off. It was starting to look like that original financial investment, done by contract through my school district, was paying off, I could reasonably look ahead to the time when the money would be doubled, and I could use it for, well, stuff I'd always looked forward to.

But you see, I hadn't had the information that these U.S. Senators had. And though my financial advisor might be right about getting it back, I'm no longer as young as I was when the investment was first made. Allowing for survival--and with heart disease, I'd better watch my step--I will be over 70 when I get that money back.

Maybe Jim Inhofe thought about that, too. He's 75. Dianne Feinstein will be 77 in June. But that doesn't mean they can utilize information the rest of us don't have.

So of course, we have to float this question: What the hell were they thinking? That they could get away with it?

Well, we have just had a president get away with bribery. There was no quid pro quo stated, but that doesn't matter and we know it doesn't. His party voted in near-lockstep to acquit him. The evidence didn't matter. The information didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

If that happens to the person who's supposed to be the prime example of what's good and right and true in our country, why the hell wouldn't someone else try to get away with actual theft? If they were thinking that if the president can get away with his nonsense, so can they, well. then, who's to stop them? If we didn't care enough to stop that crime, what's a couple thousand bucks to you and me?

Oh, I want to hear them walk this back. Because you know they will try. They'll justify it somehow. They'll raise enough doubts to fudge over what they did--or try to.

Inhofe, by the way, is up for re-election this year. Oklahoma hasn't had a Democratic Senator since 1994. It has most recently elected a Democratic member of the House, so there's hope there.

For the rest of them, well--I can't hope they get sick with the virus. That would be cruel.

I hope they go to jail. That would be fitting.

The only way they can get out of this clean is to sell the securities in question and donate the proceeds to something reasonably charitable. Sell it all. Then there are no profits worth investigating.

Or, resign. But if the president didn't, crook that he is, why should they? This is what happens when corruption infests the system; it can't be isolated. You can't just say, well, that's the exception. Someone else will try it.

Otherwise, this should be good. I want to hear why they suddenly ditched their securities. I want to hear them discuss how it was just a matter of circumstance.

Please, tell us why. Tell us why you suddenly made a profit the rest of us couldn't. Tell us why you couldn't absorb losing 13%, at least, of what you've earned over time.

Because the market's coming back, right? It always does. That's what they say. You could have waited. Couldn't you?

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

The Immediate Future--Bleak, and Empty

I saw the immediate future, though in a place one might not have expected.

Sunday morning last, March 8: 8th Street, Geneva, Nebraska, the main drag. You'll have to look carefully to find it, though it's the seat of Fillmore County. I was there doing a little research, and responding to a kind of invitation to attend a pancake breakfast in nearby Grafton.

If you're new to this blog, the fact that it's Grafton already had my attention. I'm writing a book on all the Graftons I can find. I had already found this one, It was my second time through.

I didn't know there were any places to stay in Geneva, a bit southeast of Grafton, maybe 15 minutes away. But someone at Jill's Sweet Shop and Catering, located mid-block along the west side, told me about the Hotel Geneva, a little nook at the far end of the street. She even ginned up the proprietor to expect my phone call, which I happened to deliver after I finished my formal, library-based research just five minute before she was to leave.

The rooms were jammed with all the accoutrements you could ask for--frig, stove, easy chair, table, and TV (though mine had a sound that faded in and out, which I discovered far after anything could have been done about it)--and was plenty comfortable enough.

I stayed Friday and Saturday evenings, with no one around. The proprietor took off after checking me in and told me to call her if there was anything she could do for me. It didn't sound irresponsible; it was just the way things were done around there.

8th Street had a couple of banks, Jill's Catering, and a Mexican restaurant as part of the business end of the town, all along the west side of the street. The street itself was made of cobblestone, which made one go slower as you moved through it. The east side was dominated by the grounds of the county seat, though the VFW Post was a bit north of it.

But it was the lack of commerce that was a bit spooky. There was a grocery store at the far end of the west side of the street, but after 11 a.m. on Saturday, that and the VFW Post seemed to be all that were open--all that anyone had time for. They had prime rib at the VFW Saturday night, and I bought one: Not bad. But there weren't ten people in there.

Maybe some had gone drinking at the bar located to the south, across the street. Maybe some went to the Mexican place. But there weren't many out there.

Where were everyone? The coronavirus hadn't hit this part of Nebraska yet. The weather was nice, really nice: close to 70 degrees. But in this own of 2200 residents (as of 2010, granted, but the trends were downward countywide), people weren't out and about on a Saturday night.

So, too, it was even emptier Sunday morning. The wind blew hard. Dust came up and slammed against the empty storefronts. It was 9:30 a.m. Nobody around.

And I thought: Why would anybody want to live here, with nobody around and nothing to do?

I ran up against the immediate future. All streets will be like this, and soon. And anyone roaming 'just to have fun' will be a fool.

We're about two weeks out now. The numbers will begin to be noticeable. You'll have to do some real planning to limit your time outdoors, if in fact you want to minimize your exposure.

At least one member of my family thinks this is an overreaction. I think he's wrong. We have to take a hard look at each other now. The federal government wants people not to be critical. Too bad. The situation is critical. We are about to be subsumed by it.

And for Geneva, Nebraska? Well, there's a clinic nearby. They're lucky. At least 120 rural hospitals have been shut down in the last decade, said the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel back in January.

Be well. Be careful (and I really, really mean it this time). I'll see you down the road (hopefully, if I don't get sick).


Mister Mark

Despite the Sickness, A Reason To Vote April 7: Get A Walker Stooge Out of There

Yes, we have to take the coronavirus seriously. Yes, we also have to take the state Supreme Court race seriously.

Get a mask. Get some Purell. Go and vote for Jill Karofsky.

The total numbers in the primary: state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly, stooge of the Republicans, 352,876. Everybody else, 352,262.

614 votes. Split pretty much right down the middle. A surge one way or another carries it.

Not exactly a stirring consensus for Daniel Kelly, huh? Especially after four years since the most recent former governor of Wisconsin, Mr. F. Gow, appointed this obviously political hack to the highest court in the state.

His appointment would seem to make crude sense, given his background. He's a graduate of the Regent School of Law, a Christian, private university, founded by that great legal philosopher, Pat Robertson. Kelly was the head of the law review that he helped found himself, which makes it easier to be the leader of anything.

He defended the 2010 gerrymandering, representing the Republicans. His judicial philosophy makes it sound like he has a unique talent--just read the words of the law and apply them as read: No interpretation, just read it and be very simple about it. Actually, that sounds like anybody off the street with a reading skill above 8th grade could be on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

His Wikipedia site also says that he believes that slavery and affirmative action are, under the law, morally the same, since "neither can exist without the foundational principle that it is acceptable to force someone into an unwanted economic relationship." Which, technically, is true. if you want to equalize slavery and affirmative action. But that makes slavery a largely "economic relationship," which is very definitely isn't. You can dislike the way affirmative action is applied so as to completely discount its relevance, but to make it equivalent to slavery is, well, more than a bit of a stretch.

It means, too, that if you didn't like slavery, you won't like affirmative action, either. That's kind of like saying that the effects of ice fishing and surfing are pretty much the same, seeing as how both have to do with movement over water. Well, yes, in one sense and a very big no in the way that actually makes sense.

Where in the world did he get that poppycock? Who knows? But someone like this doesn't belong on the state Supreme Court. Period.

Jill Karofsky does. She was educated at the private, but still normal, Duke University, and got her law degree at UW-Madison. She's a former trial court judge, which she says makes her better suited to serve on the state Supreme Court since she saw what effect its rulings had on normal people (and I would agree). She was an Assistant Attorney General. She is an adjunct professor at the UW-Madison law school. Daniel Kelly was never any of these.

He was a political appointee of our last, awful governor. The present conservative leadership of the state Supreme Court is trying to protect Kelly by claiming that he is somehow immune to attacks of political influence--this after two of its current, conservative members refused to recuse themselves in a case in which associations which contributed to their electoral victories were involved (and won).

Sorry, won't wash. Let's wash this a little bit cleaner on April 7. Early voting begins Monday. Lisa Neubauer just missed last time, when a sudden surge of 45ian money suddenly arrived in the form of non-sensical but effective ads that allowed her opponent, Brian Hagedorn, to overcome a nearly insurmountable deficit; let's put Jill Karofsky in there instead.

Again, I refer you to the above numbers; it's likely to be close. Don't stay home. Keep yourselves germless but get out there and vote. It won't turn the court around all at once, but it'll be an important step. At the very least, we'll have a stooge of the last governor out of there.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

It'll Be A Republican, or Serendipity. Here's Why.

Elizabeth Warren's exit from the presidential race has brought with it big chucks of angst. She's so intelligent. She had a plan for everything. She stood up to men. She had it all.

It doesn't matter. She's not gonna get the presidency. The reasons have (almost) nothing to do with her.

They have to do with how at least 40 percent of the electorate views leadership, and can bring along with it another seven or eight percent to make a coalition that accomplishes what it set out to do: elect a president. They have to do with things she can't control and doesn't want to control.

Take a good look at her. She has glasses on. She's a law professor. She speaks clearly, no nonsense. All those are good attributes for being president.

Except for one thing: She's a she. We have had a professor as president before. His name was Woodrow Wilson. He spoke with no nonsense. Wrote a book, too: His own words, not like Kennedy (who, understandably, was recovering from a plane crash), just like she did. He wore glasses.

Same deal. But women couldn't even vote for president when he ran. Now they can, and a whole bunch of them don't want to put a woman in the White House. They still think that's only a man's job.

Yeah, I know: And Nancy Pelosi is third in line. But that, to them, is third. And she shouldn't even be there in the first place: too liberal.

That's the problem. Democrats are considered too mushy for big jobs, too weak. What bothered Republicans about Obama, among other things, was that he was too equivocal, too willing to find the center of everything, not willing to say, 'Damn it, this is what we going to do. This is where we're going.'

Like Reagan. Or Bush-43. Or 45. But you see, Reagan had some notion of statecraft. He didn't do everything headlong. He held back a little. But he did implore Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall,' and down it came, three years later. Not bad. (Except Gorbachev had little to do with it)

Bush-43 felt he had to try to find Osama bin Laden after he blew up the World Trade Center. He had to take out those rascally terrorists. They just had to be there in Afghanistan. We're still chasing them, 19 years later. But didn't he look tough?

That's the thing. That's why this election will even be close. There's something inside of us that demands toughness, or at least the appearance of it. It has to get pretty bad out there to think of a leader as having something else than that quality.

That's why the Democrats have a tough time getting someone in the White House, as incompetent the last two Republican presidents have been: Because they don't sound tough or mean, or not mean enough. At least, the ongoing mentality believes it, the mentality that hardly fits any decent scenario anymore, but persists nonetheless. Whatever Democrat wins the presidency has to sound as if he'd be nasty to take on if the going got tough. Never mind the stakes and never mind the capability of the USA, which has been well-established for some time now; the candidate has to sound tough, as if he'd almost be waiting to get at an adversary.

A woman must pass this muster. There's no Democratic woman who sounds like it now--at least, no Democratic woman who has had the opportunity to sound that tough. She has to sound like Maggie Thatcher urging her troops on in the Falkland Islands. No way of knowing that scenario until it happens.

Which is why the first woman president will probably be a Republican. It'll be a woman who's the best Republican politician, making the same tough-guy comments than a man would. The best Democratic women don't make such comments, which belies their competencies. Never mind that they're way, way out ahead of the Republican women right now--women who have been largely muzzled by Republican men. That has little to do with it.

The timing must be right. Remember, a whole bunch of Republican men got shunted aside by 45 last time. A couple of women got in there, but were barely noticed. That's why, barring an utter surprise, it'll take another three or four presidential campaigns to realize.

Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris: Each clearly better than the fool we have in the White House, but each of whom really never had a chance. That's too bad. It's an indication that the longest-running democracy going is showing signs of decay, instead of signs of moving forward. This should have happened by now. But we knew that, didn't we?

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Milwaukee Strong? Let's Think of Another Word

I know what the word's for: A good cause. But there must be another one.

In the wake of last week's shootings, the phraseology "Milwaukee Strong" is popping up all over the community. This has become the norm after a tragedy takes place.

But is it the most appropriate word to use? I wonder.

Does "strong" signify what we should now be? "Strong" relates to 'tough'. Should we be "tough" right now? Or should we be something else?

Shouldn't we be mindful? Shouldn't we be just happy to be alive?

Because those who were shot and lost their lives would certainly be happy, happy to be around to say whether they were happy or not. I know, I know: They wouldn't have taken that into consideration, most likely, because nobody could have imagined such violence to have taken place. So existential thoughts would not have been uppermost on their minds.

But the word "strong" isn't necessarily what those of us left need. It's something else.

It's compassionate, first of all. Compassionate for those who lost loved ones.

It's reflective, too. Reflective of how quickly life can end for each one of us.

It's reflective of how someone with a gun can end the lives of people he barely knew, if at all, without reflecting himself about how their loved ones would react. There are a lot of unhappy people out there, some of them with guns. They won't turn their guns in any time soon.

Determination is a strong word. Shall we use that one?

But there's where a conversation can break out. I can say, quite definitively,  that we should be determined to stop this nonsense. Everyone can nod their heads at that.

It's where I begin with the stoppage that'll bring some people up short. I think all handguns should be licensed. I think they should never be used outside of one's property, not even with target practice. If you have to stop someone from entering your premises, they'll be close enough for you to hit them when you have to fire shots. In fact, the issue will probably be whether you'll have time to get the handgun to use on that person. The only issue, then, will be whether you'll have the wherewithal to use it--and there's no way to know that until it happens.

Does "strong" fit that description? Is that the same kind of "strong" that "Milwaukee Strong" connotes?

I doubt it. I'm sitting in a coffee shop as I write this. There's nothing to stop someone from entering with a gun and shooting up the whole place. He/she could easily shoot a dozen people, since there's only one way out. I don't think "strong" is the right way to deal with that.

And if we were "strong", what good would it do? Would being "strong" stop that person?

No. We have to find another word. "Determined" might be it, but I'd be open to another one. In any event, it has to be something that means we have to find a way that this never happens again.

If that means "strong", then okay. But "strong" is wearing out, too. It's wearing out because this kind of event is continuing to happen, and we just throw "strong" at it because we don't know what else to do.

And that's the saddest part of all.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Originalism: Another Republican Effort at Gaslighting--This Time on the Supreme Court

Think about the things that are accepted quite widely as Republican and therefore "More American":

• NASCAR
• Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA"
• Displaying the flag in places not normally done
• Clint Eastwood films

I'm sure there are more. All these claims are nonsense. I'm just guessing here, but all who have ever  attended NASCAR races (though I'd rather spend my time at different sports venues, thanks so much) haven't been Republicans. It's not only Republicans who have sung along with Lee Greenwood. The movie houses playing "Flags of Our Fathers" were not closed to Democrats (and if they had been, I guess I was allowed to sneak in). I can fly the flag from my front porch, 24/7/365, and be a Democrat, just as proud of my country, its history, and its meaning. 

I can do all these things and not have to explain my presence as being the least bit odd or even hypocritical. I can also research the meaning of a particular law or legal issue, go back to the origins of the Constitution to read about it, and be a Democrat. But Republicans, or conservatives (they're much the same), have claimed that bailiwick now, too.

The concept is called "originalism," or "textualism": The idea that all legally-binding decisions should be based on what was expressed about it on paper back then. Now that conservatives, even the more radical ones, have assaulted our legal system and co-opted it, talk about it is all the rage. It is as if nobody else has given serious consideration to looking up what the Founding Fathers wrote about what they were doing, when they were doing it. It's as if conservatives got there first, claiming it as their own territory and thus being smarter than liberals or progressives in the most haughty sense possible: Yeah, we know what the real guys said, not modern stuff that's, you know, fly-by-night. We have what's constant and forever. We have what's permanent, rock-solid, undeniable.

This alone is the height of arrogance. These records are open to all and always have been. And lots and lots of people have looked up this stuff, and come to different conclusions.

A group called the Federalist Society leads the way in considering originalism or its close cousin, textualism, in justifying conservative, sometimes ultra-conservative, interpretations of the Constitution. It's a claim that's based on smoke and mirrors, on laziness of the opposition in doing its own homework, and its attempt to establish prestige for itself by cloaking such claims in the additionally very vague concepts of "tradition" and other notions of stuffiness, surrounded by bowties.

In the Sunday New York Times Magazine, Emily Bazelon rips the disguise off this pretense. She exposes originalism for the double-talk that it is: Just a way to end conversations about what laws should be passed and what they should mean, as long as those adherents have the last and dominant word (and they love, love, love domination and expressions of power). It is an ambushing of rhetoric in the name of preserving the one thing they've always wanted: Power. It is gaslighting at its highest level, bringing what should be the ultimate venue for discussion down to a level of car salesmen. Instead of raising the meaning of law, it accompanies a president who is perfectly comfortable in believing he's above it. In their claims of dominant and superior meaning, originalist legal scholars make the same claims.

Why is this nonsense? Because, first and foremost, there is no consensus about what the Constitutional Convention concluded other than settling the idea that we should remain one country with a certain governmental structure. All else was, and still is, arguable.

How do we know? Because every single state which sent delegates, including Rhode Island which did not, eventually ratified it the same way that every single state which later joined the union had to do, too. They, too, accepted the compromises (oh, that word again) that the Convention needed to get to a conclusion which did not end in national suicide. Nothing else was "settled" in the sense that the delegates understood that what they were doing had decided matters for all time.

That's why:

• The three most important states at the time--Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia--all had contentious ratification debates, resulting in close votes to ratify the document;
• The country quickly divided into two major political parties, each of which derived its first positions from the ongoing debates that the Federalists and Anti-Federalists had at the Convention and subsequently afterwards;
• The very idea that an amendment process was written into the original document means that the Convention had no idea whether it was making ironclad, non-discussable legal meanings for a country that they could foresee would be growing and changing very soon afterwards; and, probably and most importantly,
• Anybody going back into the writings of that time, as Bazelon explained, can see that the originalist defenses that their positions were supported by the documentation of the general writings by observers of that era are flatly and decisively (depending on the issue being discussed) wrong.

The latter idea already has significant scholarly analysis. Jack Rakove, and constitutional theorist from Stanford, made sure to note the latter idea above in his book Original Meanings, which is quoted by Bazelon in her article. To wit: How can be base today's legal decisions on what was written in the era of 1787, when in fact nothing had been actually decided about it except to reach reasonable compromises and proceed?

Bazelon uses the much-debated gun control issue to make her point. The ongoing determination of the meaning of the Second Amendment has been claimed by originalists as having been derived from self-defense, not the existence of a local militia; they get it from the simple supposition that it was self-defense in a country endlessly establishing new frontiers and new, relatively lawless territories that motivated legal defenses of individual gun ownership. Surely, they say, this had to cause those creating the Bill of Rights to include it in a separate amendment to the Constitution.

Bazelon and Rakove dismiss that argument. They say that the writings of that era, the thing that the originalists are demonstrably relying upon to base their claims and decisions, show those conclusions to be not only filled with discussions to the contrary but overwhelmingly so--again, the data denying the convenient bromides that assertive people don't want to look at--but also that very little about self-defense was discussed back then.

So: With that established, how can originalists stand by their claims? They can't, of course. All they can do is keep ruling as they rule because they are now in the majority. That includes the Supreme Court, which broke with decades of precedent and ruled against handgun controls in the District of Columbia in 2013. They did it because all those more interested in wielding power care little about law and precedent. They did it because they could, because they had power and only because of that.

Back in that day, that included Antonin Scalia, who instructed those protesting the judicial coup d'erat (as John Kenneth Galbraith, the famous economist, called it back then) that awarded the disputed 2000 presidency to Bush-43 and not Al Gore, to "get over it." (Did you notice that those are the precise words that Mick Mulvaney told the press to do when discussing the now-proven quid pro quo of which 45 was accused in the impeachment proceedings? Funny thing about catchy phrases, huh?) Scalia, an ardent hunter (indeed, he was on a hunting trip when he succumbed to a heart attack), who hunted with Vice-President Dick Cheney--no stranger to wielding power with a broad brush--wanted to establish the individual right to gun ownership in decisive terms. He used originalism, poorly and inaccurately though with his typical smugness, in its justification. 

He was wrong, but he was in power. Get over it, I guess.

I wonder if get over it will be yet another phraseology that conservatives will lean upon to end conversations about what they don't want to debate any longer. Beyond the irritating aspect of that obnoxious tendency, liberals need to respond by asserting their own phrases like, The data suggest otherwise. Get over it.

How about: Fly your flag over that, Jack. Or: God bless my USA, too. It won't settle all arguments, but it will put liberals on equal footing, at least, with people who continue to deny truth and its proof and try to own it by claiming higher patriotic ground. Those small conversations have their place in establishing the momentum of whose narrative gains significant attention. 

Time to call all this what it is: Gaslighting and diversion, something Republicans in all places are becoming very good at. Once unleashed, it has a way of moving itself into more noticeable places.

It's time to start calling out originalism as an illusion of legend and lazy intellectual commentary. It's time this concoction of conservative incredulity is challenged and thwarted. It's time we considered the Constitution--perhaps reconsidered it, because that's how we'd been doing it for decades before this insidious concept oozed its way into our legal analysis--as a far more living document, that must by its very nature adjust to changing times and circumstances. Instead of diminishing its meaning, we will allow it to gain meaning in our laws and in our lives.

A little bit of that would go a long way right now. But then, so would a victorious national election.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Dear Tom: Thanks for Trying. Don't Be A Stranger.

Tom Steyer is gone from the presidential sweepstakes, and it's too tempting to look upon it as another way of saying that having endless money, alone, won't get you the political stature you crave.

But it never seemed to be that way with him. He was too humble by half, as opposed to nearly everybody else who seeks high position. He couldn't even criticize fellow candidates and pivot to add some self-aggrandizing phraseology himself; he always stopped short of it. He missed one of the primary attributes of a big-time candidate: A well-applied, but not excessive, amount of ego, 45 notwithstanding to his minions.

It was as if, instead of buying the presidency, he was putting in his riches for a worthy cause. It never had that 'stolen' feeling about it. Yes, he was rich. Yes, that gave him opportunities. But no, he wouldn't--seemed like he couldn't--use that as a podium to say anything he wanted to say. He was a classic liberal who jumped into the fray because he saw, as well as others, the existential threat to our democracy that 45 represents and unfortunately leads.

Steyer had the good will but not the mechanics nor the savvy. If it's early-on for someone like him, the latter can't be gained except by wading into the river and either fighting the current or drifting with it. He tried both. Neither worked as well as he thought it would.

Even so, he made contributions. He was the first to call 45 "a fraud and a failure," which is, of course,  absolutely true. Except he added it at the conclusion of one of his campaign ads, with a scrunched-up face that reminded me of a neighborhood scold. I don't know who was advising him, if anyone, but to start such ads with that phrase and then proceed, within 30 seconds or a minute, to demonstrate it, would have been so much more effective. Someone missed that connection.

His raising of awareness of the dangers of climate change will be one of the best memories of his candidacy. He could still promote this through his support of the eventual nominee through an attempt to gain influence. That nominee should pay attention.

He absolutely poured himself into the South Carolina primary, a Joe Biden stronghold, believing that getting on the ground with the folks would be superior strategy to soliciting support from the operative pols. Again, whatever political advice he was receiving failed him. Biden got the needed endorsement from House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, with whom Biden worked in consecutive Congresses from both his seat in the Senate and Vice-President. When things look challenging, pols often rely on what they know. Sincerity alone, from someone like Steyer, is admirable but inadequate to fill the vessel of a candidate's qualifications.

He's right: There's no path to the White House from here. There never was for someone without the kinds of political experiences that nearly all others have steeled themselves to have lived through and survived (Mayor Pete being the notable exception; he falls in-between Steyer and the rest).

Steyer is a good man and a businessman with soul. He's shown us that the combination of the two are possible. But the nice-guyness of his basic approach, instead of the darkness that 45 projects, served to hold him back from the confrontations and the ultimate win-lose situations that all politicians must ultimately face to either come away with positive glows or lose and then need to rebuild confidence and support in comebacks. Everyone in that realm has been through it.

He seemed like the bowl of Goldilocks porridge that was always too cold and too bland; not to be automatically rejected like the hot one and certainly approachable, but neither to be willfully ingested, either, like the one that was just right. Maybe he can manage that someday.

That he has gambled and lost at the country's highest level of political competition may sour him from re-entering a fray at a different level, or sharpen his instincts when he returns. Here's hoping it's the latter. This writer, for one, has appreciated Steyer's clear, honest if slightly naive approaches to the fundamental challenges we now have; they provided a modicum of clarity through all the noise and nonsense and a reminder of what's really at stake. For that, he gets a tip of the hat for trying.

The Spanish have two ways of saying good-bye: adios (with the implication of forever) and hasta la vista (see you later). Let's hope it's the latter, with the concomitant wish: Don't be a stranger.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark