Divided We Stand
Divided We Stand
As promised, I am sharing my
votes (and the general reasoning behind them) for Governor and U.S. Senator. I’ll
address down-ballot and amendments separately.
U.S. Senator: Bill Nelson
While I can look at the
tenure of Rick Scott as governor as generally “not bad,” he happened to come in
at a time when the economy could only get better. Florida grew at a little bit
faster pace than the U.S. economy as a whole, but we had significant tailwinds—thousands
of miles of coastline, beautiful year-round weather, low taxes, and a richly
diverse population—that make Florida already-prosperous in many ways. So, I
don’t credit Scott for more than not screwing things up. The negatives are
pretty overwhelming, not the least of which is his alignment with the feckless
Trump agenda. We still question his ethics; his general disregard for
environmental issues—our greatest state asset is our geography, after all—has
left the shorelines littered and endangered at the very time he could have made
a difference.
Bill Nelson is a national
hero of unarguable integrity. He has served the nation as a
slightly-better-than-mediocre, but nonetheless-principled Senator. Right now,
more than ever before, we need men of integrity in Washington. More
importantly, we need to maintain divided government as a check on the more
extreme parts of the Trump agenda. If our goal is to continue growing the
economy, we know that Democrats will continue to support Trump’s borrow-and-spend policies that have fueled our
current economic growth (I doubt Scott would stand up to it any more than
Nelson would). We need Democrats in Washington as a check on Trump’s more
ridiculous actions. We’ve already sufficiently stacked the courts with
conservatives and a divided government will force Trump (who, really, is more
interested in “winning” than any guiding ideology) to behave in a way less
panderingly to our Party’s extremes. I am in no way aligned to Trump and if
this means that he remains under investigation for the next two years, so be
it. Hopefully it will lead to a 2020 primary and the nomination of a Republican
I can be proud of.
Florida Governor: Rick
DeSantis
A few weeks ago, I published
my lament over the lack of a center in our choices for governor. I don’t think
either of our candidates is qualified. One is unqualified because he’s a brash
and ill-tempered political opportunist more beholden to Washington than he is
to Tallahassee. The other is unqualified because he’s likely-corrupt,
slick-talking, and more beholden to what he wants Washington to look like than
he is to his own town of Tallahassee. Gillum is no Obama or Bob Graham.
DeSantis is no W or Jeb!.
Both DeSantis and Gillum
represent everything I despise about the current Populist incursion into our
national politics. Call me old-fashioned.
I still believe that many of
the issues that Gillum has latched onto can be addressed by policies that
support a growing economy. Upward wage pressures will continue to increase as
the unemployment rate continues to be low. Competitive taxes will continue to
invite investment. Economic pressure from core constituencies will force the
next governor—pressured by an active legislature—to address rising sea levels
and fish kills. Gillum’s proposed solutions to these issues are flat backward
from how I think effective policies would work.
DeSantis will screw things up
the less of the two. He, at least, knows how to sound like a conservative even
if we know he is a feckless Trumper. An active legislature will force further
innovations in how we provide healthcare to Floridians. I am not worried that
DeSantis would single-handedly roll back any of the identity-group-right-protections
that have already been baked into our state’s socially-forward-thinking
culture.
Gillum has a fundamental
misunderstanding of economics and would create significant headwinds against our
economic base. Gillum, I’m equally afraid, will do nothing to raise the ethical
quality of our highest profile elected officials. DeSantis may not be squeaky
clean, but is not on the fringes (at best) of FBI investigations.
I will vote for Dems for the
state legislature and hope, just like in the Federal election, that divided
government will slow the Trumpist—nationalist, un-principled, centrally
authoritarian—roll over the state.
The best long play we have is
the slow and methodical, difficult and wrought work that divided government
will ensure until we can turn the page on this terrible, national political
moment.
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