GREAT SERIES WITH ONE CRITICAL OMISSION
The Republican recently printed a three-part series on the Springfield police that was “fair and balanced” to the credit of the writer. But it contained one small mistake. When referencing the battle between Mayor Domenic Sarno and the Springfield City Council over the establishment of an independent police commission, he wrote that the council passed an ordinance for a police commission and the mayor vetoed it after which the council took him to court. What the writer failed to mention is that the council overrode the mayor’s veto and because the mayor ignored the override, the council took him to court. It’s a critical omission because without the override the court action would be without merit and frivolous. With the override, the council has a reasonably strong case against the mayor for violating the law, which clearly states that when the mayor vetoes a council ordinance and the council votes to override it, it automatically becomes law. Maybe the distinction is without a difference for some people, especially some non-lawyers, but, nevertheless, the “override” and not the “veto” is the strength of the council’s legal case, the contrary legal arguments of the mayor’s attorney notwithstanding.

OBAMA IS MAKING TRUMP MORE DEPRESSED
Trump must be pulling his hair out over the news that the first day sales of the first volume of former President Barack Obama’s memoirs, “A Promised Land,” reached 887,000 copies on Tuesday, November 17th. And when he reads that the first day sales were the highest ever for any book the book company had ever published, I’ll bet Trump’s screams of despair were heard throughout the White House.

“DEFUND” MAY HAVE BEEN A STRATEGIC ERROR
I certainly sympathize with the people calling for defunding of local police departments but I don’t agree with them. Besides being impractical and unattainable, the timing of the calls for defunding just before elections turned out to be a strategic error that many believe cost the Democrats many down ballot elections, including many U.S. Senate races that may otherwise have been flipped from Republican to Democrat and 8-10 U.S. House races that significantly narrowed the Democrats’ house seat margin. And many state house races expected to turn from red to blue remained the same or became redder and many of the blue state houses shrunk their numbers. Republicans are still financing a sea of defund ads in the two Georgia Senate runoffs in which a win by the two Democratic candidates could shift the balance of power in the U.S. Senate and defang McConnell. Those of us who watched Richard Nixon defeat Hubert Humphrey back in 1968 with calls for law and order that were so appealing to White voters understood that calls to defund the police could have had a similar impact and cringed listening to Trump, who understood this, imitate Nixon’s law and order politics. It was especially frustrating knowing the impracticality of defunding the police which could and should never happen and knowing how much more effective it would have been to emphasize “reform” rather than “defunding.” One can only conclude that not doing so was an unforced strategic error.

LET’S ALL TAKE THE COVID VACCINATION
I recently wrote that I wouldn’t take the Coronavirus vaccination because I had some serious concerns about the involvement of politicians (especially Trump) in the development process. Since then, I have read and heard about some things that have changed my mind. One thing is that all of the major producers have publicly pledged to follow all of the proper development procedures and to ignore political pressure. The other is that the media, through many medical professionals, have worked effectively to educate the public on the scientific procedures that make damaging developmental short cuts almost impossible. And Donald Trump lost the election and will no longer be able to impose his will on the federal agencies authorized to approve vaccines. But, finally, and most important, Dr. Fauci has vouched for the process, the preliminary results and the projected timing of the distribution. I look forward to my turn to take the vaccination and so should we all.

THROW THE ROCK AND HIDE THE HAND
It’s not so much that Congressman Richie Neal spent millions to defeat a relatively unknown mayor from Holyoke, Massachusetts who ended up posing a more significant threat to Neal than he had ever faced in his lengthy political career. The real story is how Neal eventually crushed Alex Morse in a race in which he would have lost face if Morse came even as close as many thought he would before the homophobic controversy that forced Morse on the defensive as voting time approached. When the story first broke, it was obvious to anyone who was reading more than one newspaper or listening to more than just local television or, for that matter, following social media (which I don’t do) that the controversy was nothing more than a political hit that apparently started with the student head of the UMass Student Democratic Committee who had plans to work as an intern for Richie Neal. Before doing anything, the student went to the head of the State Democratic Committee, Gus Bickford, for assistance and was advised to send an accusatory letter to Morse just before the September primary and to leak it to the press after the letter was reviewed by the State Committee’s unpaid attorney, James Roosevelt. There was no real substance even in the letter but there were sufficient inferences to generate news stories, many of which deliberately generated more inferences, although a reading of multiple media outputs always made it clear that the attack on Morse was a dirty political hit with suspect merit as a post-election independent investigation confirmed. An editorial in The Boston Globe based upon an independent investigative report on the matter stated: “The primary fight between Neal and Morse was supposed to be about the party’s future – would it stay in the center or shift to the left? That’s a legitimate debate that Democrats needed to have, as well as the question of whether to unseat an influential congressman like Neal. But instead of a debate over party identity, it turned into a complicated takedown of the progressive candidate based on allegations that were intended to appeal to voters’ homophobia. How it played out raises serious questions about the competence and ethics of the current state party leadership and raises the question of whether they can be trusted to conduct fair play in future primary seasons.” (November 11, 2020) Of course, since the article was written, Gus Bickford has been re-elected as head of the State Democratic Party. The only thing the report said about Richie Neal is that he denied involvement. But more significantly, he was never interviewed for the report, which seemed a bit strange to me. There is a lesson to be learned here. The saying that politics is hardball is no joke, especially when you are running against a seasoned incumbent who is an expert at playing the game. It doesn’t matter how good or innocent you are. When the big game is on the line, they pitch for your head and you better know how to duck.

A BULLY IS A BULLY IS A BULLY
Donald Trump is a bully. And he is acting like one who has been taken down. And it ain’t pretty. But it won’t do him any good. The same people who propped him up and from whom he now begs for support in his struggle to stay on top will slowly fade away and he will find himself truly alone abandoned by folks who no longer fear him and who won’t waste any time on him one way or another. When it is all said and done, he will have become brutally aware of the fact that he is a discounted man and that even the negative forces he unleashed will fade away because he can no longer feed and defend them and lift them up to levels they yearned for but had not earned. He never could have. But he knew how to make them believe he would have. But even as we observe him consuming his own in frustration and throwing up obstacles to President-Elect Joe Biden’s transition, we know and his followers know it’s over for him and that’s all his followers needed to see to know that the false hopes that he held out to them was always a mirage.

“DEAR JOHN” POSTSCRIPT
“This was not about petty partisan differences. This was a fight to save our country….and there were many times during the past four years when I thought the battle would be lost….It was enough to make me despair – to wonder if the United States was no longer the country that I had loved ever since arriving here as a 7-year-old immigrant from the Soviet Union in 1976. The rise of Trump jolted me out of the conservative and the Republican Party, caused me to question many of the shibboleths I advocated throughout my adult life, and even called into doubt the faith in America that had always been my secular religion.” (By Max Boot, Washington Post as reprinted in The Republican, November 10, 2020) Dear John, it’s good to know that my own fears were not uncommon. (See my article on p. 24 of November’s issue of Point of View)

I SUPPOSE WE’RE EXPECTED TO APPLAUD UPS
Headline: “UPS to allow natural Black hairstyles.” (The Boston Globe, November 12, 2020) “What!” That was my exact response the instant I fixed eyes on this most insulting headline that I might have expected to see 40 or 50 years ago but not today in 2020! I was shocked and angry. What took so long? According to the Globe: “UPS will allow workers to have facial hair and natural Black hairstyles like Afros and braids as it becomes the latest company to shed policies widely criticized as discriminatory amid nationwide demands for racial justice.” I suppose Black folks are expected to applaud this more-than-tardy gesture but all I can think of to say is “About damn time!” ■