Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
The recent Supreme Court rulings were pretty shocking. It just goes to show how far “Originalism” goes in defending political parties where subscription to decency, sanity, and the existence of reality itself are optional membership requirements.
Sammy “Ding-Dong” Bell and his “People’s Republic of Providence” Pwogwessive Demoquacks have never impressed me, but that prejudice goes back to the days when my father worked on College Hill dealing with Brown University Bolsheviks. The spectacle of Aaron Regunberg trying to get Biden to “Pass the Torch” is a glory to behold, as grandiose as Cecil B DeMille’s TEN COMMANDMENTS and as ridiculous as PT Barnum. We can only hope that they will knock off the juvenile theatrics before it backfires in ways that the College Comintern has not contemplated thoroughly.
My ultimate fear is a massive protest vote against Biden or replacement Democrat promoted not by Sammy Ding-Dong but by Ken Block. As soon as they get the Orange Oaf to say “Washington Bridge” at a RI GOP campaign stop, you have a serious opportunity for the East Bay to vote for Trump purely in the name of federal intervention for a new bridge.
And since the president of the Teamsters has made the idiotic decision to speak at both conventions, that means that Trump could promise the entire Building and Trades a federal job program to replace the Washington Bridge.
Just imagine it, Trump running to left of Biden on Southern New England infrastructure. Hell, throw in the “school building renovations” bit (even though he will conveniently leave out the part where renovation funds are contingent upon privatization of the school building, aka charter school expansion promoted with direct federal funding). The RI Building and Trades, not to mention contractors and firms that compose the private element of our glorious public sector construction industry, would be rabidly foaming at the mouth in a manner reminiscent of Cujo.
Let’s be clear, Ken Block is a very conservative opportunist who seems like he cut a dirty back-room deal with the RI GOP and Mike Stenhouse’s Center for Economic Freedom and Prosperity (and whatever else Koch-financed Nazi bullshit comes into Sten’s goblin brain). Block has played the intermediary role mandated by the Citizens United decision. Legally, the scenario laid out in that inglorious SCOTUS ruling requires a non-party member who is not running for office to operate in the manner akin to a 501-c-3 or 501-c-4 organization, dedicated solely to public education without endorsement or coordination with a political party, in order for the non-party member to take boat-loads of dark money from the Koch brothers and other Super PACs (of Nazi werewolves).
(Does anyone honestly believe anyone with a personality and face like Ken Block is actually capable of self-financing this media blitz around the Washington Bridge he has been operating since last year?)
The fact Block has all the charisma of a Bazooka Joe comic and a scowl matching a chewed piece of that pink goo doesn’t change the fact that the Ocean State construction unions have been infamous in the last decade for endorsing any project, no matter how fiscally regressive or harmful to surrounding communities, as soon as they were given the job number projections.
So Block is basically the warm-up act for Trump and his candidates, who are all straight out of Mordor and rolling with Project 2025 platinum. Nobody imagines that a Chaffee is going to make a stand against the state GOP. (The liberal element of the GOP officially resigned last fall when former Warwick Mayor Scott Avedesian’s drunk ass rear ended a woman transporting an infant in the vehicle.) The RI Democratic Party, meanwhile, shambles around this fall like Baby Huey. Gov. McKee absolutely bungled the RfP for the Washington Bridge reconstruction. (For those just tuning in, the Washington Bridge was a central artery for commuters on our highway system, servicing thousands of drivers per hour, that has to be completely demolished and replaced owing to jaw-dropping incompetence and lack of proper oversight during its extremely recent construction because of that gorgeous nexus between the unions and the utterly corrupt private sector construction industry, the only reliable permanent public sector employer for those lacking a high school diploma). That project is going to be a gargantuan mess because of environmental remediation mandates and the delays are going to drag this out longer than the I-Way project, which spanned nearly a decade.
Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg is a holy disciple of McKinsey & Company, a neoliberal mega-consulting and policy firm that specializes in helping foreign governments privatize public assets, with a Greatest Hits album that included the magnificent post-Saddam administration of Baghdad following the US invasion (for those who forget, which admittedly means 99% of my fellow countrymen, the privatization of the Iraqi state and infrastructure meant thousands upon thousands of public sector workers were instantly fired by the largest employer in the country, causing a massive civil war that inadvertently created Daesh, aka the “Islamic” State). Washington is not coming to save the day via the Transportation Department, instead people are going to be sitting in Washington Bridge traffic for at least two more Christmas seasons.
That isn’t an arbitrary calendar marker laced with my own stunning wit, instead it’s the highest-grossing season for retailers in a state economy whose non-union jobs primarily exist in the sales, services, food, and education sectors. The detrimental impact of the Washington Bridge during the Holiday Season 2024 is still difficult to gauge. But considering how many retailers are still trying to extra themselves from the COVID recession, it is not impossible to imagine a large chorus of small business owners, properly arranged like a grade school chorus on stage at a Christmas pageant by the Chamber of Commerce, singing the solemn song of how the Washington Bridge was the kiss of death for their “mom and pop” shop.
So there’s the construction industry and the nonunion service industries.
Then there’s the religious vote. Don’t doubt how hard the Catholic Diocese and the various Evangelical/Pentecostal churches will bang on the reproductive rights, gender, and sexuality drum. The Pwogwessive Demoquacks claimed the state-level legalization of abortion under Governor Raimon as a victory with a certain justification…but the reality is that liberals truly overestimate the security of their victories and their security, case-and-point that loopy belief within the third party movement that Roe v Wade was a permanent ruling that could never be overturned. It’s just a matter of time before RI outlaws abortion rights.
Like would be the case if Mike Stenhouse’s goblins finally get away with their long-standing scheme to force a State Constitutional Convention. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity has been pushing that mad scheme for years and it would be simply a matter of the GOP swaying the right municipalities toward Trump, a two-sided sword linking a federal infrastructure package with false promises to revise the state Constitution in order to promote fiscal transparency in a State General Fund that is notorious black hole of taxpayer money. “The Trump administration is demanding that the General Fund is made more accountable and transparent via State Constitutional mandate before we can initiate a fede reconstruction plan for the Wash Bridge.” Oh golly gee, how many State Pensioners can sing you a song about those accountability and transparency?
Which of course leads to the absolute possibility that Regunberg might inadvertently cause, a fabulous bungle that would stand forever in the dictionary as the picture example of “blow-back.” Look, Aaron and his ilk are all Berniecrats and the purpose of this stunt absolutely has to include a Draft Bernie campaign, at least in the wildest fantasies of the organizers.
Meanwhile on Planet Earth, it’s all but confirmed by the local and national media that one serious contender for replacing Biden is Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
Does anyone imagine Raimondo winning Rhode Island in a contest against Donald Trump? My sources indicated years ago that it basically was a massive relief for the RI Dems to be able to unload Gina onto the Biden administration and wash their hands of her after a solid decade of little more than gaslighting and political blackmailing by the most bothersome of Clintonite wunderkinds hatched by the hedge fund industry. Raimondo was elected to Treasury and proceeded to force the General Assembly to invest the pension into hedge funds owned by her campaign financiers, with refusal to comply being valid reason to refer all former State Treasurers and half the Democratic Party to the Attorney General’s office for colossal fiduciary irresponsibility and corruption in a period perhaps spanning back to the Jurassic period. Sure, let’s run her against Trump!
And by the way, I did the survey with Wikipedia in 2012, no one has won the Presidency while losing their home state in more than a century. It’s as reliable a predictor as any other.
Frankly I see things in terms that focus on reducing Trump vote totals as opposed to reducing third party vote totals. The Green Party is a mess. There are a few socialists running for office but it’s possible to say that their vote tally, distributed across the state voting district map, makes it easy to say confidently that the neo-Communist Party of Socialism and Liberation will not, in fact, be the reason either Providence or Coventry swing to Trump. I might be wrong, especially because they have been very visible in the Palestine solidarity movement, but the true foil for this and any other political forecaster is the very tangible and understandable decision to simply stay home rather than going to the polls. How many Muslim voters just going to stay home in November? It could significantly affect the outcome in Michigan but not in Rhode Island.
The real task, therefore, is to get labor solidified with political education so that they are certainly inoculated against whatever phony promises Trump will throw at the crowd from the campaign stage. We all know Darth Cheeto literally will say ANYTHING, he is a like a carnival barker version of Scrooge McDuck after downing a pint of tequila while watching Leni Riefenstahl’s favorite clips.
It’s not saying “Vote for Biden,” it’s “Don’t Believe Trump’s Lies about Construction Jobs.”
Bigly difference.
