Marcal Blaze Reminiscent of Famous Sponge Rubber Products Fire 44 Years Ago in Shelton

The spectacular eight-alarm fire at the 45,000 sq. ft, Marcal paper plant in Elmwood Park, NJ, Wednesday night illuminated not just the sky but also memories of a similar conflagration 44 years ago. 

Gilda and I had just gone to bed about half an hour before midnight on Saturday, March 1, 1975, when the phone rang in our Seymour, Conn., apartment. We were living in the small town about 13 miles northwest of New Haven because I was a reporter for The New Haven Register. My initial beat had been the towns of Seymour and Derby. After a year, I was reassigned to cover another town in the economically depressed Lower Naugatuck Valley: Shelton (side note: in my new beat I succeeded Dan Collins, husband of Gail Collins—yes, that Gail Collins). 

My bureau chief, Don Anderson, called asking what I was doing in bed while downtown Shelton was in danger of being wiped off the map, consumed by fire. From nearby Ansonia Don had been rocked out of bed by an explosion several miles away in Shelton. 

I hastily dressed and sped south in my Chevy Vega. The sky became redder the nearer I approached Shelton. The largest structure dominating the downtown, the 475,000-square-foot Sponge Rubber Products Plant 4 perched along the Housatonic River was ablaze. Hundreds of volunteer and paid firemen from dozens of fire departments in southern Connecticut were attempting not so much to extinguish the inferno in freezing weather but rather to keep it from spreading to Main Street. 

Stretched out along 2-1/2 blocks, the plant had once been owned by the B.F. Goodrich company. Foam mattresses were it main product. Declining sales promoted Goodrich to sell the plant to Charles Moeller, an Ohio businessman who renamed it the Sponge Rubber Products Company. 

The fire had broken out shortly after 11:30 pm. As I talked with the police chief the reason it had spread so quickly and devastatingly became known. It was deliberately set. Arson. 

More astounding, the suspects were said to be members of the Weather Underground. They had tied up the night watchmen, strategically distributed 500 pounds of dynamite and 24 55-gallon drums of gasoline throughout the plant, and told the watchmen who they left unharmed in a nearby woods they were Weathermen. 

It didn’t make sense. Of all places, why would a radical group target the Sponge Rubber plant in Shelton in what turned out to be the most costly case of arson in the nation’s history?

Well, it turned out the Weathermen were not responsible. Moeller had a spiritual guru, the Rev. David N. Bubar of Memphis, Tenn., a Baptist minister and self-proclaimed psychic, who sought to relieve him of the financial mistake he made in buying the factory in 1974. Bubar recruited men from Ohio. They rented a Ryder truck to convey their explosive materiel. It was through the Ryder rental that they were nabbed. 

Moeller, as well, was charged but found not guilty. The others were convicted. 

Watching a fire can be exhilarating. But for a reporter, more emotional may well be the followup interviews with workers who no longer had jobs and whose prospects in Shelton and the other river towns of the Lower Naugatuck Valley were dim at best. Some 4,000 workers lost their jobs.

Several months after the fire I was promoted to bureau chief of West Haven, Bethany, Orange and Woodbridge. We moved to New Haven. Within two years I had taken a job in New York City. We moved to White Plains. 

Shelton slowly, ever so slowly, recovered. It converted the plant site “into open, public space with a veterans memorial, a pavilion, an annual farmers market and a riverwalk” (https://www.ctpost.com/news/amp/40-years-ago-fire-marked-turning-point-for-6106842.php). With the completion of a multi-lane Route 8 Shelton became a hub of clean, light manufacturing and an affordable bedroom community to Fairfield County Fortune 500 company executives. 

A little more than a year after moving to New York and writing for Chain Store Age I was assigned an article on a new trend in supermarkets—generic products. To understand the economics of these non branded alternatives I talked with a marketing executive from a then-family owned paper goods company: Marcal. 

Marcal was sold to an investment firm several years ago. The workers who saw their livelihood flame out Wednesday night face the same tough future as those who witnessed arson most foul 44 years ago. 

Trump's Next Constitutional Crisis?

Buried amid all the sordid revelations of backbiting, incompetency and corruption in “Team of Vipers,” Cliff Sims’ first person account of life within the Trump campaign and White House, is the nation’s next and potentially most catastrophic constitutional crisis. 

According to Sims, former director of White House message strategy and a special assistant to the president, as returns were coming in election night 2016 Trump was ready to declare via Twitter the results a fraud if he did not win. 

We were saved from this crisis, Sims relates, by Steve Bannon, of all people, and the failure of Hillary Clinton to win sufficient votes in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida. Had he lost, Trump would have gone on a Twitter tear, but no amount of tweeting or fulminating in public or in the courts would have ensconced him in the Oval Office.

But with 2020 looming and his polling numbers down, Trump is now in a position to do real damage to the republic should he lose reelection. He would continue, after all, to be president for more than two months until January 20, 2021, a lame duck in name but not in power to respond to emergencies. 

It is not a far reach to think Trump would invoke executive powers to declare a rigged election created a national emergency. Consider the border wall contretemps a potential test case before the Supreme Court of his authority to enact executive rule. 

The orderly transition of authority has been a hallmark of the United States since George Washington voluntarily stepped down after two terms of office. The Trump presidency, however, has been anything but an affirmation of political norms. 

To be fair, almost all administrations are populated by competing personalities and interests. Abraham Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals,” as portrayed by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, united in their combat to defeat the South. Trump’s cadre of conspirators, on the other hand, seem particularly vile, ineffectual, dumb, vengeful and venal. 

Sims is but the latest to reveal the innerds of a dysfunctional organism. With each expose the question of how long Republicans can abide a Trump presidency becomes more focused. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6642039/Trump-p-ed-ex-aides-tell-book-lifts-lid-White-House-chaos.html

If I am right about Trump’s post-election-emergency-powers-executive-action it would be up to Vice President Pence and the Cabinet to remove him from office, that is, if they are not first removed from their positions by Trump. Then it would be up to the military to enforce the Constitution. Maybe Putin would send private Russian military contractors to protect Trump as has been rumored he has done recently in Venezuela to bolster security for embattled President Nicolas Maduro.

Sounds like a geopolitical thriller novel, doesn’t it?

My My Fair Lady for 46 Years

To celebrate our 46th wedding anniversary Monday, I took my fair lady Gilda to Lincoln Center Sunday to see the revival production of My Fair Lady. I am in no way implying that under my tutelage Gilda transformed into the accomplished women she is today. But I will say that I have been there all along as she grew from a young woman who barely knew her way around the kitchen to as close to a gourmet cook you can be without certification. 

But cooking is in many ways a minor accomplishment compared to her professional development. I’m a fairly accomplished person in my own right. Despite my parents’ trepidation at my career choice as a journalist, I achieved some success as a newspaper reporter and then a business magazine editor and publisher. In terms of intellectual development and immeasurable contributions to public welfare and health, however, my story pales compared to Gilda’s.

When we first married in 1973 Gilda had a degree in political science from Brooklyn College, our joint alma mater. After moving to Seymour, Conn., part of my beat as a reporter for The New Haven Register, her degree qualified her for a job with a budding new industry: selling cable television hookups. It was a no-brainer. Cable offered some 20 station options versus the one to three most people in Seymour and the other towns of the Lower Naugatuck Valley could receive in their homes.

Not surprisingly, after a few months Gilda sought a higher calling. She fulfilled a decade old ambition to become a nurse. After two years she graduated at the top of her class at the University of Bridgeport and immediately was hired by Yale-New Haven Hospital. 

Offered a position on any patient floor, Gilda chose the newborn intensive care unit, a pioneering discipline that treated distressed babies born in a region roughly 100 to 150 miles around New Haven. She and a doctor would travel by ambulance to stabilize and then transport a newborn, often the size of an adult male’s hand, back to the NICU in New Haven. She worked there for two years.

What I didn’t mention was taking that job in the NICU was the start of a pattern of healthcare employment that has been central to her career. Prior to working in the NICU, Gilda had no experience with newborns, let alone those with complications so debilitating that she would come home semi-traumatized and in need of withdrawal through discussion over dinner. Of course, hearing about babies with unformed intestines, heart related issues or some other defect usually related to their premature birth was not the kind of dinner conversation I wanted to hear, so I stifled her release outlet. 

After we moved to Westchester Gilda again took a position without prior experience, this time as a step-down nurse in the Intensive Care-Cardio Care Unit at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville. She left that job for the most important one any person can have, as a mother to her (our) children. 

During those next seven years she supplemented her mothering with part-time work as a pre-natal and post-partum instructor and as a nursery school teacher. In one area, she helped expectant and successful mothers understand and adapt to the changes their bodies were undergoing. In the other she helped shape their progeny.

Seeking a full-time position after Ellie started school, in early 1987 Gilda went for an interview for a post she admitted she was not qualified for. She went, she would tell you, because I suggested it would provide experience sitting through an interview. She got the job, serving for the next nine years as the research coordinator for the infectious disease department of New York Medical College and Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla. 

The ID department studied three of the most volatile illnesses of the time—hepatitis, Lyme Disease and HIV. From knowing virtually nothing about any of those diseases Gilda became expert in each of them. For example, she was part of the team that discovered HIV could not be transmitted through body sweat. She coordinated the Lyme clinic at the medical center. And, during those professionally challenging years she found time to serve two years as co-president of our children’s school PTA and also earned her Family Nurse Practitioner’s license.

Her next major job placement came in another area for which she lacked experience. Three spine surgeons at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan hired her in June 1998 to do pre- and post-operative patient assessments. In time, Gilda learned how to read MRIs, X-Rays and other diagnostic tests better than most doctors. Her skills were so appreciated by the surgeons that the transfer of their practice to Mount Sinai Medical Center was contingent upon their ability to bring Gilda with them.

Nearly 21 years after beginning as a neophyte in spine-related medicine Gilda retired as an expert earlier this month. For almost five decades she counseled the infirm and those who needed assistance. On numerous occasions she saved lives, mostly for friends and their families unrelated to her expertise in spine or infectious diseases. She became a “go-to” healthcare resource. She is now free to carve out new challenges, for I am sure she will not idly let her energies go unstructured. 

Forty-six years ago there was no way either of us could foresee how Gilda would spend her life. I have been blessed to have accompanied her ride. I am so proud of My Fair Lady.  

Walled In: What Emergency Powers Could Bring

In my living room and on a plaque on the wall next to my home office desk are two large chunks from the Berlin Wall. I would like to say I chiseled them out from the notorious reinforced concrete edifice, but that would be a lie. My meager efforts February 16, 1990, produced paltry chips the size, perhaps, of dominoes pieces. I came by those two impressive rocks courtesy of a much more adept chiseler who shared his excavation work with me that fateful afternoon just three months after East Germany opened the floodgates on its repressive regime. 

The fearmonger-in-chief prophesied what would happen absent a similar concrete wall spanning our southern border with Mexico. “You’ll have crime in Iowa, you’ll have crime in New Hampshire, you’ll have crime in New York” without a wall, Trump warned during a trip to McAllen, Texas, Thursday. 

ABC News asked the mayor of McAllen what the murder rate in his city with no wall was. Zero, he said, asserting McAllen was among the safest in America. Statistics corroborate his belief. 

Why are Democrats so stridently against funding a wall? After all, friends have asked, $5.7 billion is sooooo small compared to the trillion dollar-plus federal budget fattened by the billions wasted on military and social aid programs every year. 

My response is that the debate over the wall far transcends the dollar amount. The wall, the barrier, the what-have-you, represents a good old-fashioned horse trading negotiation. 

Regardless of its efficacy, Trump wants to show his base he can fulfill a campaign pledge to build a wall, though he has admitted the second part of his pledge to have Mexico pay for it is not going to happen as promised. His dissembling on how the wall will be funded and by whom just adds to Trump’s portrait as a grifter and con artist. 

What Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer want is a commitment from Trump to extend safety to DACA children brought to America by their parents. Every time Trump seems ready to commit to shielding the so-called Dreamers, he turns into the reneger-in-chief when he hears howls from Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and their compatriots on the right. 

Behind the scenes efforts to parlay DACA safety for wall funding have been rejected by Trump. It would take a revolt by Senate Republicans to force Trump’s hand to accept a quid pro quo.

Instead, before the weekend is out our would-be king might invoke national emergency powers to funnel funds into wall construction. Should such a move survive a court challenge, Republicans might rue the precedent. 

Imagine the next time a Democrat is president and a mass shooting occurs. Considering that firearms are used in tens of thousands of homicides every year, far greater than the number of deaths perpetrated by undocumented immigrants, a president could declare a national emergency to ban gun sales and confiscate all assault rifles. 

Now that is an extreme hypothetical (and I doubt any president would do it) but for years the National Rifle Association has fearmongered such a possibility every time a Democrat won the presidency. 

If Trump opens the Pandora’s Box of emergency powers, there is no telling what a president could try to implement.

To stem a measles or flu epidemic turning into a pandemic, a president could declare a national emergency and order the vaccination of all residents. If anyone refuses, he could isolate them in internment camps so they would not spread any infection. To reduce damage and deaths from coastal flooding, a president could order the permanent evacuation of the shoreline. 

Too far-fetched? Perhaps. But it all hinges on how the Supreme Court views presidential power. Given that the Republican majority on the court is believed to endorse almost unlimited presidential power, Trump could win a challenge to the emergency powers question. But such a win could plunge the country into uncharted waters for all subsequent presidents, not to mention Trump’ own crazed view of what a president may do with unchecked power.

Trump said Friday afternoon he wasn’t ready to pull the emergency powers lever. Which to me signals he is about to this weekend, as he constantly contradicts himself.

As I’m writing this a friend related an irony—his community in Palm Beach County, Florida, has many wealthy retired New York City teachers who “want immigration laws enforced.” 

To which I replied, “Maybe the sun fried their brains and they forgot the immigrant history of their families. Sure, they would tell you they came legally but how many of them thought the quota system from 1920 on was a good thing, how many of them thought restricting access to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution was acceptable, how many of them see any comparability to those Hondurans seeking safety from violence in their homeland, how many of them think a wall is a better symbol of America than the Statue of Liberty?”

Walls can and do serve a purpose. The Berlin Wall kept East Germans inside their living hell. Many who tried to seek freedom lost their lives trying to pierce their enclosure. But some succeeded. No wall is impenetrable. 

All objective evidence affirms that most illegal drugs enter the United States at ports of entry, not by human “mules” infiltrating illegally across the border. Most undocumented aliens enter legally, arriving here by plane and overstaying their visas. Though Trump trumpets their egregious murders, rapes and other violent deeds in his bid to instill fear, statistics show the undocumented commit far fewer crimes than the American population at large. 

Bottom line: Some type of restraint along the border will be built. Dreamers will have their dreams fulfilled. Some federal workers will lose their homes, have their credit ratings marred, have their trust in government employment shattered by the partial government shutdown now entering its fourth week because of the inability of the artless-negotiator-in-chief to reach an agreement with the newly emboldened Democrats who control the House and who still maintain sufficient numbers in the Senate to withstand cloture calls on most legislation.

It won’t be pretty, but it will happen. As Trump says, trust me.

Old Names in the News: Sears, Zakheim, Saporito

Did you get all the presents you wished for during this holiday season? I purposely chose the word “wish” as it conjures up the image of the Sears Wish Book, the once-giant retailer’s annual encyclopedia of gifts for all ages. “In 1968,” according to Sears Archives, “the Wish Book totaled 605 pages, with 225 pages devoted to toys and 380 pages to gifts for adults.”

During this all important shopping season, when merchants often garner most of their sales and profits,  several articles have surfaced about the fall of Sears (and sister company, Kmart) from iconic to catatonic (https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/12/19/sears-plans-more-store-closures-as-challenges-mount-for-lampert-bid-.html and https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-20/layoffs-loom-large-as-banks-weigh-funding-lampert-s-sears-bid). 

Today, Friday, CNBC reported Sears will shutter 80 more Sears and Kmart stores on top of the 182 closings it announced after it filed for bankruptcy protection October 15 (https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/12/28/sears-closing-80-more-stores-in-march-faces-possible-liquidation.html). 

Amazon and other Internet retailers are being blamed for the truncation and potential demise of the once largest retailer in the world. Amazon et al might be hammering the nail into Sears’ coffin, but the truth is Sears was fading into obscurity years before Jeff Bezos conceptualized Amazon in 1994. 

Consider the January 1980 edition of Chain Store Age. The cover story: “Why America Is Not Shopping Sears.” In 15 pages backed by extensive consumer research, articles detailed the troubles Sears faced, some of its own making, some because of newer, more focused competition, some the result of new market conditions including the proliferation of large shopping centers and the elimination of retail price maintenance laws that allowed brand name goods to be sold at discount prices. Shoppers no longer had to wait for sales of major appliances, consumer electronics, sporting goods, tools and other desired merchandise. They were available every day at the discount store located closer to their homes. 

Though still the largest retailer in the world back in 1980, Sears could not maintain that position as more nimble, more focused retailers took bites out of its market share. Best Buy. Circuit City. Home Depot. Lowe’s. Toys “R” Us. Sports Authority. Target. Wal-Mart. Even Kmart snatched sales from Sears. 

Sears reacted by turning commissioned sales people into hourly workers. Bad decision. They lacked incentive to sell. 

Apparel never was a Sears strong point. Baby boomers wouldn’t be caught dead wearing Sears clothing, not when the mall had dozens, even a hundred, specialty stores offered fashion right styles. 

Besides, walking into most Sears stores was like entering a mausoleum. Whereas department store mannequins were freshly dressed and lifelike, Sears mannequins appeared lifeless. Store decor and lighting were old fashioned and stark. There was no drama inside. It was as if Sears executives had never heard of the concept of retailtainment. 

When Sears filed for bankruptcy protection I posed the following: “Will Sears and Kmart be salvaged or scuttled? Ask yourself these questions: When was the last time you shopped Sears or Kmart? If one or both stores disappeared, would you notice? Would you miss them?”

(https://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/search?q=sears)

Nothing has transpired to make me change my opinion.

Designer Prices: I have always eschewed clothing that outwardly displays a designer’s name or brand logo. I am okay with wearing Adolpho blazers or Givenchy suits with the labels discreetly sewn onto inside breast pockets (though since my retirement I rarely wear suits). 

Outward chauvinism is not my style. In fact, I have long advocated a reversal of the standard bill of fare. Rather than charging more for a polo shirt or pair of jeans that shout out the designer’s or brand’s name, I believe such walking billboards should be sold at a discount as payment for the publicity they provide.   

Two of my cousins are optometrists. As their practices are in Philadelphia and Jacksonville it was not convenient for me to patronize them when I needed new eyeglasses. 

But I did pick their brains about the differences between designer and generic frames you might find in a mass market optical store such as Lenscrafters or Visionworks. 

Their responses: If you are concerned about the quality of a generic frame, don’t be. If you find a generic frame you like, buy it. Designer frames may provide a design that intrigues you, but the cost will be much higher. 

Their bottom line—find a lower priced generic frame. 

Which brings us to the recent scam Payless ShoeSource performed on fashionistas in Los Angeles. Payless tricked them into believing its $19.99 man-made women’s shoes were leather, designed by Bruno Palessi and worth hundreds of dollars. Here’s a Washington Post article to click on in case you missed the charade: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/30/they-had-us-fooled-inside-paylesss-elaborate-prank-dupe-people-into-paying-shoes/?utm_term=.46128e293bcc

Degrees of Separation: Many of my blog postings are generated by current events that bring up incidents or people/companies from my past (the Sears piece above is an example). 

So I was doubly stimulated when reading The New York Times on line in the middle of the night earlier this week.

The first article, a profile of acting secretary of defense Patrick Shanahan, referenced “Dov Zakheim, a former top Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration” (https://nyti.ms/2Rbn95i).

Dov and I were elementary school classmates at Yeshiva Rambam in Brooklyn some 60 years ago. He, and I, were considered Talmudic scholars by our teachers. Apart from his service in the Pentagon, Dov went on to become a rabbi. 

The second article was an Op-Ed piece entitled “Trump’s King Minus Touch,” by Bill Saporito, a contributor to The Times editorial board (https://nyti.ms/2Rfxj4Q). Bill and I worked together on Chain Store Age Supermarkets 40 years ago. He left to become a photographer for a Pittsburgh paper, if memory serves me right, and afterward began a long association with various Time Inc. magazines including Fortune and Time. 

Seeing their names in print is a nice way to keep up with old acquaintances. 

Blogging as an Exercise in Writing

Non use of muscles impairs them. Causes them to atrophy. Singers who don’t practice their chords every day risk losing vocal strength. Professional athletes, be they baseball or basketball players or from any sport, rely on repetitive exercise to instill muscle memory so they can perform at a superior level even under extreme pressure. 

Writers—bloggers—are no different. Writing requires more than a haphazard dedication. I can’t believe it has been two weeks since my last posting. Lots of things have happened since then. I’ve started to write several blogs but laziness, sometimes abetted by real reasons, stifled my creative juices. So, here’s a jumble of thoughts on a variety of topics:

Evening News: Gilda and I eat most dinners while watching the evening news, usually recorded so we can fast forward through commercials. When Dan and Ellie were young we restricted their TV viewing to limit their exposure to violent shows. Yet we justified their watching the most violent broadcast of all, the evening news. 

Perhaps as a carryover from my parents’ home, CBS News was our preferred outlet. From anchors Walter Cronkite through Dan Rather, Connie Chung, Bob Schieffer, Katie Couric, Scott Pelley and Jeff Glor we remained loyal to the Tiffany Network’s newscast. Until recently. I like the CBS correspondents, but Jeff Glor as an anchor just does not measure up. So we switched, mostly to ABC World News with David Muir. 

After several months of viewing I noticed that compared to CBS and NBC, ABC has a different way of presenting female correspondents when they appear in conversation with the anchor at his glass desk. They sit across from him, closer to the camera, wearing short skirts with their legs crossed to the right, directly at the camera. Am I suggesting this is a woke moment during this #MeToo time? You betcha!

Another Genocide in the Making? Its denials of an Armenian genocide 100 years ago notwithstanding, Turkey seems poised to undertake another fateful exercise in ethnic eradication. Emboldened by Donald Trump’s capricious decision to withdraw 2,000 American troops from Syrian territory near the Turkish border where Kurdish forces have been fighting ISIS, Turkey has signaled it will launch an assault against the Kurds (https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/turkey-masses-troops-kurdish-held-syrian-town-59984033). 

It is to the everlasting embarrassment, shame and dysfunction of America’s political standing in the world that Trump cares more about the wishes of foreign tyrants than the counsel of American politicians and experts. Trump ordered the troop withdrawal after conversation with Turkey’s despotic leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan despite his own advisors’ strong recommendation to maintain a military presence in Syria.

Vigilance for the Truth: I was reminded again of the need to be forever vigilant in pursuit of the truth during this era of instant mass communications. A friend sent an email suggesting the alleged disrespect for the American flag and the national anthem can be traced to Barack Obama. So I checked its veracity by googling “Snopes: Obama Explains National Anthem Stance?” Of course the claim proved to be false.

“Disinformation campaigns, whether inspired by Russia or any extremist entity, succeed only when recipients of such emails fail to research their authenticity. Any democracy demands vigilance and a healthy skepticism. John McCain provided the best (now viral) demonstration of what we all must do when confronted with salacious untruths. During a campaign town hall meeting in 2008 he respectfully disagreed with a woman who claimed Obama was a Muslim and unAmerican. He corrected her misinformation. Maybe it cost him some votes. But he stood up for the truth,” I wrote my friend.  

Is It Christmas Yet? CBS Sunday Morning reported a survey that found 51% of Americans said they have sent a letter to Santa Claus. I chuckled when I saw that, but truly snorted when I read a Facebook post shared by my sister Lee: “Before you mock children who believe in Santa Claus, remember that there are still adults who believe in Donald Trump.”

Over a picture of takeout Chinese food, my cousin Stan posted on Facebook: “Ok......Hanukkah is over, time to start planning a traditional Jewish Christmas Eve !!!!”

Why do many Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas Eve? Here’s a defining reason from an article in Tablet:

“Whether they have fully thought it through or not, Jews who eat Chinese food on Christmas are proclaiming that, for them, Jewishness is what philosophers call a second-order value. In contrast to valuing Judaism on the first order—enjoying the rituals themselves, sincerely adhering to the tenets themselves—they value the fact of their Jewishness. They go out of their way to do it. They may or may not enjoy General Tso’s Chicken, but if they are eating it on Christmas, their prime motivation is not the general’s sweet, spicy deliciousness, but rather the knowledge that they are doing something that in some adapted way reinforces their Jewishness. They are moved by their hearts, not their tastebuds.” (https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/53569/jewish-christmas?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=3b46bc98d0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_21_12_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-3b46bc98d0-207614241)

Gilda and I will be eating Chinese food Christmas Eve.

Want To Get People Talking? Ask Them for Their Opinion on Joe Biden for President

The conversation during Friday night’s dinner started to take on an edge when the discussion turned to potential Democratic presidential candidates. Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick just dropped out, someone lamented, adding that former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu also withdrew his hat from the ring. As should Senator Elizabeth Warren, a third voice chimed in.   

At the mention of Joe Biden a chorus of “god forbids” or words to that effect cascaded across the room. I disagreed. Loudly (I was, after all, the host, so raising my voice was within the bounds of master of the house). 

While I have not jumped on the Biden bandwagon I reject arguments that he is too old or that his admittedly lapsed leadership as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill confrontation during the former’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing utterly disqualified him from seeking the presidency. These were among the arguments Frank Bruni laid out in The New York Times the next day (https://nyti.ms/2G7OLUr). 

God has yet to create the perfect candidate. All politicians make compromises. All have skeletons, some visible, some not, that inhabit their closets. Has Biden atoned through his work over the last quarter century for his failure to believe and protect Anita Hill in 1991? I’d like to think so. 

As for the age factor, absent examples of dementia, Biden’s age should not disqualify him. As a society we have come a long way in recognizing the contributions senior citizens can make. Keep in mind, Biden’s learning curve for what a president has to master would be much lower than any other candidate, including the current occupant of the White House.  

The main obstacle Biden must overcome to secure his party’s nomination is the primary and caucus system. He doesn’t generate rabid enthusiasm, the type of momentum needed, especially now that the power of superdelegates has been diminished. Primary/caucus voters often are looking for a fresh face. 

Short of nominating a total disaster, however, Democrats should be able to count on winning at least the same states Hillary Clinton did in 2016, I believe. To garner at least 270 Electoral College votes the nominee needs to win some combination of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida. 

Those are older, working class population states with voters who align well with Biden’s core constituencies. Biden might not carry those or any state in a primary where young zealous advocates often opt for the fresh face, but against Trump in a national election he would present solid Democratic values. 

On the other hand, most of the other possible nominees lack the working class credibility Middle Western voters seek. And Biden exudes an aura of accessibility, even a vulnerability given the tragedies that have befallen his family. Down on their luck voters may find it easier to identify with him. 

Coupled with a qualified ticket-balancing vice presidential candidate, someone like Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, or Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Biden could defeat Trump and restore dignity to the Oval Office and our standing in the world. 

I am not endorsing Biden. I just do not believe he should be dismissed out of hand.