By CHRIS POWELL
Is the Democratic Party in Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District really as nuts as it seems from the primary campaign between U.S. Rep. John B. Larson and former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin?
Yale’s new mission statement may be a little too pedestrian
School finance study committee is rigged in favor of educators
Democrats howl at enforcement of 20-year-old deportation order
Bronin’s only issue is Larson’s age, 77. Bronin doesn’t seem to be bothered by the ages of some other members of the Connecticut delegation in Congress who would be his colleagues if he is elected, two of whom are in their 80s, one in his 70s, all fellow Democrats. Bronin may get away with this omission because news organizations don’t press him about it.
Bronin says Democrats in Congress have to try something different to succeed against the narrow Republican majorities and President Trump. But different how exactly? If Bronin means only that Democrats should be more energetic, the Democratic minority in Congress, including Larson, already clamors and screeches against the Trumpeters to ever-greater extremes every day to little avail. Does Bronin think that more clamoring and screeching will help, or that trying to make nice with the Trumpeters will help?
Might adjusting the Democratic Party’s issues help instead? If Bronin thinks reducing the party’s support for open borders, abortion, and transgenderism might make it more effective in Washington, he hasn’t said so. In any case he and Larson don’t disagree on any substantial policy issue.
Connecticut’s current members of Congress have never lost a congressional election. Whatever their faults, unelectability is not one of them. Indeed, if Larson wins the primary, he is sure to win what would be his 15th term, the 1st District being overwhelmingly Democratic, just as Bronin would be sure to win the election if he wins the primary.
That leaves Bronin with little going for him against Larson apart from his raw ambition.
As for Larson, his sense of the party’s likely primary voters in the 1st District grows less flattering every day. Figuring that most primary voters will be from the far left, Larson has taken to denouncing Bronin as a “centrist,” as if Congress needs more extremism.
Emphasizing his support for and from unions, Larson is condemning Bronin for having sought concessions from Hartford’s city employee unions when he was mayor. But back then the city was bankrupt and ended up being rescued only by a spectacular bailout from state government, which assumed the city’s bonded debt, approving city government’s longstanding recklessness.
By contrast, in Washington money is no object, since the federal government can create or borrow infinite amounts, relying on inflation to tax the public’s prosperity away largely surreptitiously. States and municipalities can’t do that; they have to get real about their costs, the largest being that of government employees.
So instead of trying to economize with Hartford city government’s biggest expense, should Bronin have insisted on raising the city’s already insanely high property tax rate to keep the city employee unions happy? Are government employees the only members of the working class worth the Democratic Party’s represention? That’s Larson’s implication and the longstanding implication of the party in Connecticut generally.
But when the trivia and nonsense are swept away, Larson’s best claim to another term is the flip side of the age issue: his seniority in Congress and the pull this gives him with federal patronage for the 1st District and the state, as well as his leadership of the campaign for legislation to strengthen Social Security, guarantee its financing by eliminating the cap on Social Security taxes so the wealthy pay more, and increasing benefits for lower-income workers. If, as seems likely, the Democrats gain a majority in the House, Larson’s legislation will have the party leadership’s support.
That legislation is real liberalism, the old sort of liberalism — not identity politics, crazy social engineering, and politically correct posturing but the improvement of living conditions for the great majority, a reward for working people, a better earned pension, and better insurance for people against being unable to work.
Doing the right thing is more important than the age at which one does it.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 