Isaac Laquedem

Bernie Sanders has no more chance of winning the Democratic nomination in 2016 than Barack Obama did in 2008

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders reportedly will announce tomorrow that he will seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.  He will start the race with several handicaps.  First is his age: he is 73 now, and will be 75 on Inauguration Day, older than any first-term president.  Second is his affiliation: though he votes with the Democrats he is actually an independent and has never (I think) run for office as a Democrat.  Third is his political bent: he is unashamedly liberal and is known for his rants against Wall Street.  Fourth is his home state: Vermont ranks 49th in population among the states and has only 3 electoral votes.  Fifth is his strong opponent: the only other announced candidate, Hillary Clinton, has a large campaign organization already, has more than 60% support among Democrats, and may raise more than $1 billion for the campaign.

He can't do anything about his age, but he can turn the other four points into positives.  Not having been part of the Democratic political machinery, he can portray himself as a populist candidate, which Mrs. Clinton, because of her strong corporate backing, can't.  He can also point to his having been mostly right about the expensive Iraq war, which Mrs. Clinton can't.  (Democrats may find it difficult to reconcile an attempt by Mrs. Clinton to claim common ground with the rank and file with the financial operations of the Clinton Foundation.)  Wall Street is out of favor politically; it's a good time to be a populist.  His home state is tiny and offers no meaningful electoral support -- but it's next door to New Hampshire, where the first primary will be held, making Sen. Sanders the nearest thing to a hometown candidate, and which will give him a strong boost in the primary.  And Mrs. Clinton's broad support is partly because she's been the only candidate and has been seen as the inevitable nominee for the past four years.

His biggest challenge will be to raise enough money to get his message across to the voters in the primaries and to establish a ground organization in the caucus states.  Mrs. Clinton is still the most likely nominee, but she's no longer a sure bet. 

 

A reading for Income Tax Day

Today's reading for Income Tax Day comes, as is my custom, from the works of A.P. Herbert, the British lawyer, playwright, humorist, and legislator who devoted much of his adult life to protesting the absurdities of the law and the demands of the Inland Revenue.  This bit is from his 1944 verse, entitled "Oh, no, John (The Budget)," directed at Sir John Anderson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Mr. Herbert complained that certain things, necessaries of life, were heavily taxed -- but not horse racing:

We earn a pound, but in the end
Ten shillings is the sum we spend.
We go about in tattered coats,
Because the nation needs our notes,
The fruits of art, research, and skill,
The scholar's book, the poet's quill,
The old man's pipe, the widow's cheese --
The Chancellor spares none of these.
* * *
All this we cheerfully forgive
That England - and the World - may live.
But if I put a reckless pound
On someone else's horse or hound
(Not surely, quite the thing to do
When careless spending is taboo?)
On such transactions, great or small
I do not pay a tax at all --
Not even if the creature wins!
They tax our virtues, not our sins.

Our jovial support of the welfare state will resume tomorrow.

The Laquedem Plan to honor Anatole France with low-income housing

Tokyo is so dense a city that commercial spaces are even squeezed into the arches that support commuter trains.  As I read yet another story about how Portland's pro-density policy encourages property owners to tear down older houses (often rentals) and replace them with newer (owner-occupied) townhouses, I pondered what the city and TriMet will do with the space underneath the new rail/bike bridge that connects the South Waterfront to OMSI.  At that point Anatole France's famous line came to mind: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."  (That last bit is not often enforced against people who run hedge funds.)

Hence the Laquedem Plan to honor Anatole France.  It occurs to me that the Tillikum Crossing project gives us a striking opportunity to achieve several goals at once, if we construct affordable housing underneath -- not next to, but underneath -- its western approach.  We can meet a need with housing that is convenient to transit and walking distance from downtown and the inner east side.  We can give that part of the city a more international flavor.  We can provide an opportunity for the city and the South Waterfront developers to keep their broken promises to provide affordable, working-class housing in the area.  The land is cheap -- free, really -- and services are all available.  A wag with Isaac's sense of humor might name the housing project "Anatolia."  The literary among us could take that as a reference to the Anatole France quotation about living under bridges.  The commercially minded might take the name to refer to an area that is part of a larger turkey.