National

Xpostfactoid, after considering the approach from Bernie and Hillary:

As Democrats mull how change works, consider Obama. Bernie Sanders' light sketch of single-payer healthcare Utopia has got Democrats debating their theory of change. Generate mass support for fundamental restructurings -- of healthcare, banking, wage law --or take any step you can, by legislative compromise or executive order, to make current institutions more progressive? Obama is often held up these days as a proto-Bernie who stoked the thirst for swift transformation in 2007-8 and then disappointed. But if Hope and Change was the Obama trumpet call, his bass note was always slow, hard, pragmatic step-by-step progress. Even at his most apparently messianic, Obama has always stressed the incremental nature of change for the better… The biggest flaw in Obama's theory of change was born of arrogance rooted in past personal success. He plainly thought he could win Republicans over by moving toward them. I don't think he fully corrected on that until the sequester took its first bite and he realized that Republicans wouldn't compromise to shut it off. That quirk aside, though, I don't think that Democrats ruminating over how change works can find a more nuanced or effective perspective than Obama's.

Progressives really need to get over this Green Latern Theory of Change. That if we just elect one person the revolution will come and all will be well, simply because President Sanders has the bully pulpit. Did you all learn nothing from Obama? You need to elect more than one person. In 2006, and 2008, we elected a shit ton of Progressive Democrats, and that still was not enough to get all that we wanted. Politics and policy enactment is a long never ending struggle that takes decades. And you have to do two things at once: defend the progress you have made while at the same time trying to take the next step. It's like walking in a Blizzard.

Here is your clearinghouse for all Delaware Blizzard information. We are officially under a Blizzard Warning and it will be in effect until Sunday morning. We can expect 16 to 25 inches of snow in New Castle County, 8-16 inches in Kent County and parts of Sussex County, and under 8 at the coast. And those are low end numbers. If this storms bombs out or stalls over us, as some models suggest, well then, see you in April. The main problem with this blizzard is the wind and the heavy snow. There will be power outages, in places that are not used to power outages. So be prepared. Due to the blizzard, El Somnambulo will post his Political Weekly and Post Game/Pre Game columns tomorrow rather than yesterday and today. I will have our normal political open thread later today as well as a post on some fundraising this morning as well.

You can get Celia's take on these numbers here. As for me... Governor Elect Carney is the Governor Elect. Park City vs. BHL looks like it could turn into a donnybrook. Bonini vs Lafferty looks to be over before it started. Except maybe Lafferty doesn't need money? Maybe she has something more valuable than money? Scoff away unbelieving heathens. Townsend laps the competition... except,

***Townsend announced his contributions in a press release but has not filed a report

What's that about? Allow Del Dem to explain in the comments.

E.J. Dionne: “After Obama won, the main goal of Republican leaders of all stripes was to take back Congress as a prelude to defeating the president in 2012. The angry grass-roots right — it has been there for decades but cleverly rebranded itself as the tea party in 2009 — would be central in driving the midterm voters the GOP would need to the polls. Since no one was better at rousing them than Palin, old-line Republican leaders embraced and legitimized her even if they snickered privately about who she was and how she said things.” “Today’s Republican crisis was thus engineered by the party leadership’s step-by-step capitulation to a politics of unreason, a policy of silence toward the most extreme and wild charges against Obama, and a lifting up of resentment and anger over policy and ideas as the party’s lodestars.”

House Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Larry Mitchell announced today that he has taken action to release the bill to repeal the death penalty (Senate Bill 40) from the House Judiciary Committee, and allegedly, House Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf has committed to placing Senate Bill 40 on the House agenda for Thursday, January 28. I say allegedly only because, given actions to date, I will believe it when it happens, and if it happens, than a hearty thank you is due to the Speaker. But the cynic in me wonders if the Speaker is only doing this because he knows the bill is going to be defeated, and in fact, given his agreement to do this, I must say that that is the likeliest outcome here. As you may know, SB 40 was debated in the House Judiciary Committee last year, but it failed to secure enough votes to be released from the committee. Rep. Sean Lynn, a prime sponsor of the bill along with Senator Karen Peterson, had stated that he would petition the bill out of committee at the start of the new session. To do that, he would need the signatures or votes of the majority of the chamber (or 21 votes). That he did not do that, and instead it was Committee Chair Larry Mitchell released it on his own accord with an unfavorable endorsement, tells me that maybe there are not enough yes votes for this to pass. So we will see how this goes. If you want the death penalty repealed and you want your Democratic or Republican legislators to vote that way, you better contact them between now and next Thursday.

The word establishment above is enclosed in quotes, because like so-called "narwhals" I don't know if the "DEGOP establishment" is a real thing. In the past I've used, "Charlie Copeland, Dave Burris, and Ken Simpler" to personify the term establishment, but who knows? Rather than a rhetorical device, I may have accidentally hit the bulls-eye and actually named the DEGOP establishment's last remaining members? That would be weird. But questions of cryptozoology aside, supposing "the DEGOP establishment" is a real thing, and that there are more than three remaining members, I can't help wondering how they will react when Donald Trump becomes their party's presidential candidate. My sense is that they will meekly fall in line and discover that Trump is actually pretty good. It will take some rationalizing, and McGyver like defusing of some cognitive dissonance, but Republicans are well practiced at living with the nonsensical as if it was sensical. How else can they still be in favor of tax cuts as an economic policy, right?

Governor Markell will deliver his 2016 State of the State Address today in the House Chamber in Legislative Hall at 2 pm. It will be his final address. Come inside to watch the address.

The Complexities of Color Coalition, the NAACP Delaware State Conference, the Interdenominational Ministers Action Council of Delaware, the Delaware Latino Restorative Justice Project, along with other organizations, will be holding a news conference on Wednesday January 27th at 12 pm in the House Chamber at Legislative Hall to address the racial inequities in Delaware’s criminal justice system.