A House on Gault Drive

If I may beg your indulgence, I would like to spend a few moments on a personal matter.

My Grandparent’s brick ranch house was where I whiled away many a pleasant hour in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.  It was a home full of warmth and poodles (the latter to be replaced in later years by many, many birds…not notably cockatiels I recall).  When I was quite young, in second or third grade, I would call Grandma and we would create stories…a radio show conducted via telephone.  Not remembering the details of the plots, I can’t imagine it was high art, but she was patient with me and quite a character actor.

Before our family moved in the summer of ’82, before I began the 6^th grade, I was only a 15-minute walk (or 12-minute Big Wheel ride) away from her house.  During the summer, I visited a couple of times each week.  She would be grooming dogs, which was her gig, in the other half of the finished basement while I would peruse the World Book Encyclopedias and Year Books in the adjacent room.  It was in the latter space where our family would gather for the Holidays. While the ceiling was perilously low for the tallest among us, with one particularly height-gifted uncle having to angle his head sharply so as not to bump his cranium against the stucco paneling, I nonetheless remember the room as spacious.  Lions football on the TV each Thanksgiving Day and an ornately festooned tree each Christmas. No matter what else was going on in life, these were reliable and eagerly awaited delights.

She would often prepare lunches and we would sit and listen to the radio.  One local station would ask trivia questions and the first caller with the correct answer would win a small prize.  One day, they posed the predictable question involving Grover Cleveland.  I told her I knew it, and she allowed me to use the phone to call in to the station.  I recall being annoyed at the DJ’s question if someone told me the answer, I believe my response was a curt and mildly haughty “No” but the haze of time blurs such moments.  The important point is that she encouraged my love of reading. I am very grateful to her for that.

We moved away, and then I went off to college, and then moved out of state to strike my fortune in Washington DC.  I’ve seen her only a handful of times since 1989, and most of our correspondence was limited to Holiday cards and short notes. 

I will always remember her with her wry smile, that more-often-than-not would turn into a full, wide, and infectious grin. She adored her animals, her garden (which was impressive), and above all, her family.  Grandma Wallace, you will be missed.  Requiescat in pace.   

Ball In

Yesterday was a rather challenging day for reasons which I will not disclose here (not wanting to bore you, dear reader, with my trials and tribulations). 

Before I delve into Dr. Calvin Ball’s double-plus-un-shocking announcement, allow me a moment to talk about Lisa Kim’s cheap and snide comments about “the character of the community” as posted in a Howard County Facebook group.  Personally, I found her Trump-esque jeremiad against rental properties to be off-putting.  I am not precisely certain why she chose to inveigh against those who aren’t seeking to purchase homes, which include many young adults as well as working class families, but the underlying tone is ugly. I hardly believe that rhetoric calling for the functional equivalent of a wall around Columbia is representative of Howard County values.  She, in her capacity as a candidate for County Council, needs to explain her stance and, in probability, apologize.  We in the Fightin’ Fourth deserve better.

Turning now to Dr. Ball’s launch of his campaign for County Executive, it was a rather subdued event.  With hundreds of friends, family members, colleagues, acquaintances, hangers-on, politicos, neighbors, and others gathered in the grand room at Kahler Hall, I expected the energy level to be more pronounced.  For those anticipating red meat, it was mostly pescatarian fare. 

There were some individually solid lines and turns-of-phrases in his speech, including his thoughts on Howard County as a “beacon of love” and this being a “people’s campaign.”  His reminder that we must think about, and advocate for, those among us who are struggling, those who have not yet secured their “slice of utopia” (to borrow a phrase he employed last night) was precisely what this lefty wanted to hear, and rightfully so. 

Dr. Ball’s speaking style is mellow/cerebral.  I wasn’t expecting a fist-pounding, rafter-shaking oration.  That said, as someone who constantly scanned the room, I could not help but feel as though the assembled wanted to be stirred, charged, “fired up and ready to go,” if I must use that phrase, more than they were.  I didn’t get a sense that people were ready to charge through a brick wall following his summation.  Optimistic? Sure.  Intellectually inspired? More likely than not. Emotionally energized?  Time will tell.   

One of the major applause lines centered on running a positive campaign.  Consistent with the candidate, I can visualize a Ball-for-County Executive campaign adhering to the “Choose Civility” precept.  That said, when the crunch time comes and Team Kittleman and their allies decide to start throwing elbows (and some already have), I hope that Team Ball’s orientation towards “the nice” won’t impede their ability to embrace “the tough.”  In the fight for progressive values, sometimes it takes more than hugging it out.

In solidarity.

Psychic Recompense

November 8, 2017 – Merry Electoral Boxing Day.

It is challenging to not succumb to the baser instincts and gloat in the face of the formerly hubris-filled yet now cowed Trumpists.  Of course, that would itself be a manifestation of hubris.  Not today irony, not today.

I will readily admit, earlier yesterday afternoon, I was wagering that Gillespie would somehow pull it off – by hook or (more likely) by crook – by half a percentage point.  Upon arriving back in my Wilde Lake Election 2017 HQ a few short hours later, the networks had already called it for Northam.  The 8.6% margin for the eventual winner was clearly above the prevailing polling trend line (sorry, Brothers and Sisters) which was showing something closer to a three-point spread.  Note: credit where credit is earned: Quinnipiac nailed it with their final pre-election poll, released on the 6^th, showing Northam +9.

May the name “Harris Wofford” be echoed across the land (see: 1991 U.S. Senate special election, see also: harbinger).

The (at minimum) 14 seat pick-up for the Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates is yet another (and probably far more ominous) sign for any Republican in a Congressional, state legislative, or other electoral district that is anything less than a safe GOP seat.    

Of course, hard work and a massive popular rejection of Trump Republicanism helped carry the day.  But looking to 2018, it will take more than that.  A Democratic Party that can produce, adhere to, and articulate a coherent and compelling set of principles will be essential if we wish to build upon yesterday’s victories.  This involves getting entirely past the 2016 battles and deciding the party of the people needs to focus more on engaging with…you guessed it…the people, and stopping with the internecine foolishness.  

In solidarity.

On Donna Brazile and "the Deal"

Of course, the downside of being an essayist of exceedingly moderate and highly localized renown is that I am oft beseeched to lend my Waterman pen in support or in opposition to one Howard County issue or another (without even the slightest hint of a promise of remuneration!).  So, my mailbox is jam-packed with entreaties to comment upon the wretched petit fascists swarming about in HoCo.  There will, rest assured, be time to discuss them and their ilk. But once again, this author feels compelled to offer thoughts on the national scene.

Of late, Donna Brazile has been excoriated (in many cases, rather ruthlessly and unfairly) for her book where she shared her thoughts on, amongst other issues, the Clinton 2016 presidential campaign and the DNC (insofar as those entities were “distinct”).  As a political operator and strategist, there is no disputing that she is top-flight.  Having enjoyed one of her earlier works, Cooking with Grease, I will most likely purchase her latest tome, Hacks.   

Frankly, I can’t fault the DNC for the arrangement they made with the Clinton campaign in 2015.  No matter how many Democrats supported Bernie (the current author being one of them), the good Senator from Vermont was not a Democrat.  That left the watery gruel that was O’Malley (clearly eyeing a Cabinet post or 2020), Chafee (clearly viewing Earth from Mars via Providence), Webb (clearly out of touch), and Lessig (clearly engaging in some form of performance art).  When you have a candidate who in 2015 (essentially) was the clear front-runner and likely eventual nominee, and who actually belonged to the party, that person is…well… primus inter pares comes to mind.

But, some may sputter, what about the supposed precious neutrality of the DNC?  While the image of the DNC as some sort of disinterested referee is quaint, it doesn’t square with the mission of electing Democrats to public office.  I still maintain that Senator Sanders would have been absolutely savaged by Trump and the Republicans in the General Election.  Possibly enough to lose the White House, and probably enough to burn the electoral dreams of many down-ticket Democrats.  Secretary Clinton, neoliberal that she is, and the Clinton campaign, as bland as it turned out to be, was the far safer bet for Democrats nationwide. 

So, arrangements were made; nothing illegal (unlike the allegations swirling around Trump, his family, and some of his top aides) and frankly, I am not having a ton of ethical issues with the deal, as I understand it.  I find it helpful to learn the rules of the game before playing it (a lesson forgotten by Clinton ’08 when it came to delegate math) and clearly, Clinton ’16 had the primary campaign rules all sorted out. 

With so much “righteous” indignation coming from the Republicans over this tempest in a Diet Coke can, I wonder if those Democrats offended by the deal are wondering why they have all of these new-found allies on the right…and who really stands to benefit from stoking the ashes of this “controversy.”

In solidarity.