Category Archives: 2024 election

Last Call at the Moderate Republican Saloon

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They say the room was packed and the crowd enthusiastic for Nikki Haley’s whistlestop visit to Vermont. The import of the former depends on the size of the room. Depending on configuration, the DoubleTree’s meeting rooms hold somewhere between 300 (not impressive) and 1,300 (respectable). As for enthusiasm, I watched her speech on YouTube. To me it was an ambivalent audience. The only time they were unified is when they were shouting down anti-war protesters. They didn’t seem to know exactly how to react to her very conservative talking points or her numerous attacks on Donald Trump.

I have two big takeaways from Sunday’s event. First, none of it matters because Donald Trump is winning the nomination. The GOP rigged the primary system in 2016 to favor the front-runner. The system allowed Trump to cruise to victory after taking an early lead, and it will do the same again this year. Even if Haley wins Vermont, and by all accounts she’s trailing badly here, the game is rigged against her.

And even if it wasn’t, well, the Republican primary electorate is overwhelmingly MAGA. She’s trying to sell a niche product in a mass market.

Second takeaway: The concept of “moderate Republicanism” is dead, dead, dead.

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In Milton, Bigotry Wins a Round

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Checking out candidates’ statements on community access TV is usually a formality. You expect to see people reading bland generalities from a script. You don’t expect to see something you’ve never seen before. But that’s just what happened the other day when I watched Lake Champlain Community Access TV’s offering of statements from candidates for the Milton Town School District Board.

And there, second in the rundown, was Ember Nova Quinn, who identifies as queer and uses “they/them” pronouns, pouring their heart out in despair over being made to feel unwelcome — unsafe, even — in their own community, and announcing their withdrawal from public life.

Wow. Just wow.

This is one person’s point of view and shouldn’t be taken as gospel. But it does reflect a very real and very deep divide in Milton politics. Each side accuses the other of bullying, threats, even vandalism. It’s gotten intense in the runup to Town Meeting Day elections, which effectively feature competing “slates” of conservative and liberal candidates.

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Nikki Haley Organizes Vermont Team

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A few days ago, the Nikki Haley campaign announced the formation of a Vermont State Leadership Team. I didn’t take much notice at the time because it’s not going to make the least bit of difference. Donald Trump is going to steamroll his way to probably all of Vermont’s 17 delegates as he grinds along to his inevitable nomination.

The only things that can stop him are (a) a quick and decisive criminal conviction or (b) a clear and obvious slide into dementia. Haley’s not going to do it, and her newly formed Vermont committee doesn’t have a prayer of carrying her to a primary win.

I wasn’t going to bother covering it at all until a Haley supporter took to The Formerly Robust Platform Formerly Known as Twitter to complain that there had been no coverage of the Vermont announcement. “Shameful that press has not covered this news in Vermont — it’s a big deal,” wrote Court Mattison. “Haley would help win down ballot and bring balance to #montp.”

Well, okay, your wish is my command. But be careful what you wish for.

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Hey, Let’s Take an Early Check on the Republican Ticket and… Oh.

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The Vermont Republican Party has a long record of losing statewide races except when the name “Phil Scott” is on the ballot. Scott is still undefeated for the entirety of his political career going all the way back to 2000, when he rode the anti-civil union wave* into the state Senate. Otherwise, it’s been solid goose eggs for the VTGOP in statewide contests since the Jim Douglas era, if memory serves.

*Seems unbelievable now, but the Republicans nearly swept Washington County’s three Senate seats that year. The late Bill Doyle** finished first, Scott second, and Republican J. Paul Giuliani almost ousted two-term incumbent Democrat Ann Cummings. But we were all much older then, we’re younger than that now.

**Correction: “The late Bill Doyle” is still with us at age 97. My apologies.

Otherwise, the top of the Republican ticket has featured tons of fringey no-hopers with a sprinkling of old-fashioned conservatives. Lately it’s been more of the former, as the far right has seized control of the VTGOP apparatus. And it’s looking like 2024 will be no exception. Not only do we have the soundly defeated Gerald Malloy making another bid for the U.S. Senate, but the even more soundly defeated Gregory Thayer has staked his claim to another bid for lieutenant governor. (The Vegas wise guys have set the over/under on joint campaign appearances featuring Thayer and Scott at… zero.)

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Here She Comes Again, Again

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The good people of Milton, whether they want it or not, are getting a third chance to snap back at the extremism of Allison Duquette, who seems intent on entering the fabled territory of such luminaries as H. Brooke Paige, Cris Ericson, and Emily Peyton — fringe candidates who simply won’t take “Hell, No” for an answer.

Duquette, last seen in early 2023 running for school board in MIlton, and before that in 2022 running for State House, has tossed her battered fedora into the ring once again, making her second consecutive bid for school board. She announced her third candidacy with one heck of a letter to the editor of the MIlton Independent in which she tried to paint herself as a down-the-middle, “listening to all sides” sort of person who just wants good schools at a reasonable cost. Nothing to see here, folks, keep moving along.

Too bad there are people like me to fill in the details.

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Phil Scott Sacrifices a Pinch of His Credibility at the Tomb of Republicanism

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So, our putatively moderate governor went and endorsed the very conservative Nikki Haley for president.

Well, kinda, but not really.

VTDigger reported it as an endorsement; Seven Days cast it as a rebuke of Donald Trump. I have to say Seven Days got it right here. He didn’t say he’d vote for Haley. All he said was that New Hampshire primary voters should choose Haley as the only viable alternative to Trump, in hopes that the November election would offer two candidates “with character and integrity, who respect the rule of law, the rights of all people, and the Constitution.”

That’s a depressingly low bar, but Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party has left Scott in the position of endorsing an ardent anti-choicer, an advocate of building the border wall, cutting taxes for the rich, increasing the age for receiving Social Security, and imposing something stronger than Ron DeSantis’ “don’t say gay” bill, among other things. Not to mention that whole playing footsie with the cause of the Civil War thing.

In short, Haley may be more presentable and less aggressively anti-democratic than Trump, but policy-wise there’s not much distance between her and her former boss. She’s no Phil Scott, that’s for sure.

But Scott, who clings to his partisan identity like a toddler with its favorite plushie, desperately wants the Republican Party to offer something, anything, of value to the American electorate.

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Scary Bird Man Returns to Clutter Our Rights-of-Way, Haunt Our Children’s Dreams, and Suffer Another Lopsided Defeat

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Gerald Malloy, fresh off his razor-thin defeat at the hands of Peter Welch in 2022, is ready for another go. Having lost to Welch by a mere [checks notes] FORTY PERCENTAGE POINTS, Malloy thinks he can do far better against [checks notes again] the most popular Vermont politician of our century, Bernie Sanders.

Yep, Scary Bird Man is running for Senate. Again. Optimistic or deluded? You make the call.

I hope you’re ready for a return of the most bizarre yard signs in Vermont history: an eagle staring you directly in the eye, accompanied by the cryptic legend “Deploy Malloy.” You know, the signs described by VTDigger as “simple yet arguably menacing”? Now available in a wide variety of merch, including some high-test nightmare fuel for the kiddies.

Yikes.

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Burlington Democrats Yearn for a Golden Age That Probably Never Existed and Definitely Never Will

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The suspense evaporated quickly. Democratic City Councilor Joan Shannon, a realtor who represents an affluent section of Burlington, eked out a first-ballot victory in the party caucus Sunday afternoon.

Her win is a disappointment for those who think Burlington is some kind of small-p progressive hotbed, but it’s not a surprise. Not when the media are banging the drum for the city’s alleged crime wave and when many residents feel a new sense of insecurity that’s not borne out in the crime statistics but does reflect Burlington’s shabbier feel of late — more a result of petty vandalism, littering, and out-of-control social ills than of actual crime.

But that’s a hard thing to look at and promises no easy solutions. Instead, let’s throw our hands on the Shannon deck, whose leader promises “to restore” the Queen City of hallowed memory.

Ah, the good old days. As Otto Bettmann would say, “they were terrible,” but our memories turn toward the past when present reality is too much to bear.

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Phil Scott Popularity Challenge Accepted

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Yep, it seems impossible, but the latest Morning Consult poll of gubernatorial popularity (Mississippi’s Tate Reeves bringing up the rear) shows that our very own Phil Scott actually improved his top-of-the-nation standing from his customary perch in the high 70s to… 84 percent. In a state where Democrats have a nearly 30-point edge over Republicans.

The poll was received with applause from Scott fans and many of those who draw paychecks from him. One of the gov’s top Democratic boosters, Ed Adrian, suggested I try to blog my way through this. Because, as what Dorothy Parker would call my Tonstant Weaders are aware, I’m not exactly on Team Phil.

For many reasons I find him an underwhelming leader. He’s not a creative thinker. He’s been in office for nearly seven years, and I can’t think of a single bold policy idea he’s put his weight behind. Well, he used to claim that he could reinvent state government and save tens of millions a year, but that was a complete bust. He took strong action that one time on gun legislation, following a credible threat of a mass shooting at a Vermont high school (which inspired one of the best columns I ever wrote, so don’t say I won’t give him credit where it’s due).

Otherwise his tenure has seen Vermont’s most intractable problems get worse: Housing, opioid addiction, workforce, demographics, climate instability, and more. He himself cites these issues at every turn. And yet his proposed solutions tend to be lukewarm. He nibbles at the margins instead of sinking his teeth into the issues.

So why is he so overwhelmingly popular?

Well, let’s start with this: Popularity is not a measure of quality. Bud Light is popular. Potato chips are popular. “The Macarena” was popular in its day. Indeed, I will argue that broad popularity requires a fundamental inoffensiveness. A song or foodstuff or bestselling book can’t be difficult or challenging. It has to be accessible, first and foremost. And boy oh boy, from an ideological perspective, Phil Scott is nothing but accessible.

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Once Again, Phil Scott Ducks Accountability for Being a Republican

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The Vermont Republican Party held its biannual, or possibly biennual, convention on Saturday. (Above screenshot from the VTGOP’s own website, although they might get around to fixing it after they read this post.) They actually had kind of an impressive speaker lineup, including Reagan-era anti-tax activist Grover Norquist (who must have been wondering how the hell his career descended to the point where he was sharing breakfast with a few dozen graybeards in frickin’ Burlington), Scott Brown, who’s gotten an incredible amount of mileage out of one lucky victory thirteen years ago, and Georgia state Rep. Mesha Mainor, who switched her affiliation from Democratic to Republican after differing with her former party’s caucus on some high-profile issues.

All of which makes me think that there are some conservative deep pockets underwriting the travel schedules of far-right figures, because ain’t no way the VTGOP could have pulled this level of “star” power in the past. But anyway…

Speakers also included professional troll Scott Presler, a gay conservative dudebro who was touted as a get-out-the-vote activist. Not mentioned in your convention program: His stint as a lead organizer for an anti-Muslim hate group, his description of the January 6 “Stop the Steal” election denial gathering as “a civil rights protest,” and his promotion of false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Oh, and his version of GOTV includes the all-out promotion of “ballot harvesting,” a common conservative complaint about Democrats collecting and delivering ballots en masse. If you’re unfortunately enough to remember the film “2,000 Mules,” which focused on unsubstantiated claims that liberal activists were harvesting huge numbers of questionable ballots, well, Presler wants to take that idea up to 11: “”I don’t want 2,000 mules. I want 2 million mules,” he told a GOP voter training session in Pennsylvania.

I can’t tell you whether he brought the same message to the Waterfront Hilton, but it seems likely.

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