So I went looking for an image of Howard Dean for this post, and I came across the absolutely perfect specimen: A seven-year-old segment of “Morning Joe” entitled “Howard Dean: Baby Boomers Need To Get Out Of Way Of Young Leaders.” And wearing a Grandpa sweater as he said it:
The baby boomers have got to get out of the way. It’s my generation. I’m happy to advise. I don’t think that we need to be in the forefront anymore.
Maybe the 75-year-old Dean should listen to his 68-year-old self. Or maybe not, I have mixed feelings. But he needs to make a move one way or the other, because the days until filing deadline are flying by and as long as Dean keeps up his Hamlet act, he’s an obstacle to other potential Democratic candidates.
Besides, of course, Poa Mutino.Correction: Mutino is running as an independent, not a Democrat.
Howard Dean floated onto his balcony this afternoon, favored the adoring crowd below with a regal wave, turned his back, and disappeared into the billowing curtains.
Okay, not really. What he did was issue a lengthy, self-indulgent statement about his dalliance with running for governor that didn’t actually make a commitment either way. In other words, stay tuned!
Methinks he’s getting a kick out of having #vtpoli-land hanging on his every word for the first time since he ran for president nearly a generation ago.
All he said about running was that he would hold “a press event when and if I file.” Curiously, he then sent a text to VTDigger declining its interview request because he is “not doing interviews until I file.”
Until, eh? Not “Until or unless”? Freudian slip? Intentional foreshadowing? Misdirection for the sake of drama? Only Dean knows for sure.
The Senate Appropriations Committee is a distillation of everything I don’t like about the Senate as a whole. It’s heavily weighted toward seniority. The senior solons get near-total deference from any junior colleague who manages to wedge their way onto the committee. Those veteran members are a knowledgeable lot — but they think they’re smarter, wiser and more knowledgeable than they actually are, and they sometimes reflect antediluvian opinions on current political issues. And they frequently express disdain, if not contempt, for the work of the House.
But the worst of the lot is Sen. Bobby Starr. He’s really been on one this week, as Appropriations considers whether to extend emergency housing programs for the well over 2,000 Vermonters who face unsheltering within the next two months. When it comes to homelessness, he crosses the line from “roguish bumpkin” to “hateful bigot.” Repeatedly.
Starr is allegedly a Democrat, and he does cast some useful votes. But the things that come out of his mouth are a stain on the Senate and on the Vermont Democratic Party, and both institutions would be better off without him. Even if his Northeast Kingdom district were to choose a conservative Republican to replace him, I’d prefer that. At least it’d be honest, and at least we wouldn’t have to deal with a Democrat displaying rank ignorance and prejudice in high office.
So what has he been up to this week? Well, let me tell you.
My previous post concerning the party reorganization process could have been written a couple weeks earlier. That’s when the information became available. I just plain didn’t get around to it immediately because (1) other stuff got in the way and (2) I was pretty confident that no other media outlet would bother with it.
And I was right. Nobody in Vermont covered it. In fact, nobody in Vermont is covering the nuts-and-bolts of politics anymore. Party reorgs, hirings, departures, leadership changes, party finances: they’re off the agenda. No one routinely (well, really, ever) attends state party committee meetings, conventions, or big fundraising events.
You also see a lot less reporting on individual politicians’ campaign finances. Filing deadlines used to be big occasions. Back when reports were filed in person, political reporters would gather at the Secretary of State’s office to grab the reports and file stories. Everything’s digital now, so all you have to do is open up the SoS campaign finance website and hit “refresh.”
It’s a lot easier. And yet, little to no attention is paid.
Note: This post has been updated with comment from the Progressive Party, see below.
This fall, Vermont’s political parties have undertaken their biennial obligation to reorganize themselves. It’s quite the task. The parties have to encourage members across the state to take part in town caucuses and establish town committees.
The process Is now over and the results are in. The Vermont Democratic Party had the biggest success, organizing town committees in more than 170 communities (they’re still totting up a few stragglers). The same process two years ago resulted in 150 Democratic town committees. That’s a nice bump, considering (a) they had less room to grow than the Republicans or Progressives, and (b) given the flood and all, it wasn’t the best year for encouraging turnout at political meetings.
The Vermont Republican Party lost a bit of ground, falling from 132 town committees in the 2021 reorg to 120 this time around. The Progs saw a modest increase from 44 towns in 2021 to 48 this year.
Well, in case you were wondering where Vermont Democrats’ heads were at regarding the unsheltering of thousands of Vermonters, now we know: Still firmly lodged up a windowless orifice. Instead of trying to resolve a humanitarian crisis of their own creation, not to mention heal a divide in their beloved legislative caucus, they’ve been trying to find a way to deflect the blame onto the governor. While, at the same time, begging him to solve a huge political problem for them.
Right.
Admittedly I’m somewhat burying the lead, because the most impactful thing is that Democratic leadership remains bound and determined to end the motel voucher program even though it currently provides shelter for 80% of Vermont’s unhoused.
This is [checks notes] the party of compassion, right? The party that fights for the metaphorical Little Guy? Yeah, gee, I wonder what the hell happened to that party.
That’s the real lead — the Vermont Democratic Party has lost its way — but the thing that grates on my nerves as a Vermont Political Observer is how profoundly stupid the politics of this maneuver are.
In fairness to legislative Democrats, at least for a moment, they did accomplish quite a lot this session. They went much farther than they have before in standing up to Gov. Phil Scott and daring him to [obligatory journalism phrase] wield his veto pen over and over again. In that sense, they lived up to the promise made to voters that, if given a bigger supermajority, they would enact a progressive agenda over the governor’s objections.
Too bad they pulled up short on the most urgent humanitarian imperative of 2023. And too bad that their many legitimate accomplishments will be overshadowed by their willingness to unshelter some 2,500 Vermonters.
It’s as though they got a custom-tailored tuxedo and got all spiffed up and then, just as they were heading out the door, they shit their pants.
And then went to the prom anyway, thinking that no one would notice the stink and the stain.
But wait, this post was supposed to be “in fairness to legislative Democrats.” Okay, then. Let’s look at what they accomplished.
The timing was juuuuust a bit unfortunate. Unseemly, you might say.
At the same hour that the House Democratic caucus was shooting down a last-ditch effort to restore the motel voucher program to the new state budget, the Vermont Democratic Party was celebrating itself at the annual Curtis-Hoff Awards event.
Celebrating itself as a beacon of “hope.”
Not for the 2,500-plus Vermonters about to be unhoused thanks to Democratic officeholders who couldn’t be bothered to find the money to keep the program going. Forgive those voucher clients for failing to appreciate the “better and brighter Vermont” that cannot make provision for its most vulnerable.
The contrast is sickening. What happened under the Golden Dome was an absolute betrayal of the values celebrated at Curtis-Hoff. For shame, Vermont Democratic Party.
Apologies for the mixed metaphors, but I’m so mad I can’t write straight.
The House-Senate budget conference committee has yet again refused to extend the motel voucher program that’s currently sheltering 80% of Vermont’s unhoused. In so doing, they ignored the pleadings of a small group of determined small- and capital-P progressives who say they won’t vote to override a gubernatorial veto of any budget that fails to address our crisis of homelessness.
And in so doing, they worked hand-in-glove with the Scott administration. I can say so because conference committee member and, God help us all, chair of the House Human Services Committee, Theresa Wood, said so: “This has been a collaborative process with the Agency of Human Services and the governor’s office.”
Great. No collaboration with housing advocates, then? No contact with the lawmakers threatening to withhold support for a budget plan that manages to combine the cruelty of Ebenezer Scrooge with the unctuousness of Uriah Heep? Nope, they confined themselves to working with an administration that has been adamant about its intent to kill the voucher program and damn the consequences.
And at almost the precise moment when this “collaborative process” came to fruition in the discussion-free approval of the new housing budget, I got a fundraising text from Vermont Democratic Party chair David Glidden urging me to support their fight against “Phil Scott and extremist Republicans [who] ae determined to sabotage us at every turn.”
Well, at every turn except when the Democrats eagerly collaborate with “Phil Scott and extremist Republicans.” If I harbored any notion of opening up my wallet to the VDP, it vanished instantly. I hope anyone else who was thinking about a donation will instead make a gift to their local homeless shelter. Fuck the Democrats.
When last we saw nominally Democratic Sen. Bobby Starr, he was pontificating about all the supposedly “able-bodied” homeless folk livin’ it up in state-funded motel rooms when they oughta be goin’ out and gettin’ a job. Or, as he put it, “The able-bodied, it’s time to go to work and have a place for them to work and earn and provide for their own, as far as I’m concerned.”
That was his argument for ending the motel voucher program on schedule this summer. He didn’t say we’re coddling the ungrateful lazy poors, but that was the umistakable message he was sending. Shades of the Welfare Queen.
But wait, there’s more!
Starr reportedly expanded on his asshattery in a conversation after the hearing with Brenda Siegel, housing advocate and 2022 Democratic candidate for governor. We’ve only got Siegel’s word for this, although she says there were other witnesses. But there are good reasons to believe her; she’s still lobbying for a voucher extension in the FY24 budget, and has no motivation at all to slander a lawmaker, not even Bobby Starr.
The Vermont Political Observer. 