Curry declares Democrats are motivated to oust President Trump

By Scott Benjamin

“I have not seen the Democratic Party more united in my lifetime.”

This from Bill Curry. . . who met former Democratic President Lyndon Johnson as a youth . . . became friends in high school with U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney (D-2) of Vernon. . . worked on former U.S. Rep. Toby Moffett’s first congressional campaign after graduating from Georgetown. . . won a state Senate seat at age 27 and became friends with New York Times columnist Gail Collins . . nearly won a congressional seat at age 31. . . became state Comptroller 30 years ago . . . received the Democratic gubernatorial nomination 26 years ago, lost, and then two days later accepted a job in the Bill Clinton White House . . . captured the Democratic gubernatorial nod again 18 years ago . . . wrote columns for the Hartford Courant, including through the 2006 U.S. Senate race when Ned Lamont became a household name . . . discussed policy on WTIC Radio with Colin McEnroe. . . and is now writing a book on Barack Obama.

Remarked Curry, “The unity is even greater than it was in the 1960s when you had the Great Society and there were northern liberals and white southern segregationists working together on issues.”

“I’ve never seen Democrats so motivated,” he added. “They want to get rid of Trump.”

In February a CBS poll indicated that 65 percent of the voters surveyed thought that Republican President Donald Trump would capture a second term.

Unemployment was at its lowest rate since the late 1960s and America was not waging any wars.

However, since the pandemic his poll numbers have declined to where a consensus of the surveys indicate that Democratic nominee Joe Biden, the former vice president, has a double-digit lead.

In the Wall Street Journal former W. Bush White House political director Karl Rove stated, “Betting markets that favored Mr. Trump in February have flipped.”

Curry said that the wide Democratic unity also is a result of Biden making astute campaign decisions.

“He recognized that after the primaries are over the winner reaches out to the vanquished,” he said in a phone interview.

“Biden has included major planks from Sanders and from Warren,” he said, making reference to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who also had sought the Democratic nomination and are considered to be more progressive than Biden.

Curry, who lives in Farmington, said he would have preferred that Biden had selected Warren, who has underscored the need to reform America’s financial sector, as his vice-presidential running mate, but he indicated that Harris brings knowledge and excitement to the ticket. He added that it would be historic to elect the first female vice president.

Can the Biden-Harris ticket prevail in the swing states that cost Hillary Clinton-Tim Kaine the 2016 election?

Curry said that according to the polls they are leading in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Florida. Not only that, they are tied with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in North Carolina and Georgia, which months ago would seemed unlikely. They are only down by seven points in Louisiana, which the Clinton-Kaine ticket lost by 20 points.

Curry contends the Republicans are on a dangerous path.

He said only a small number of the 4.5 million new 18-year-olds being added to the voting population each year agree with Trump’s platform. He added that if the president loses in November there will be a fracture in the Republican Party since the lingering Trump faction won’t accept a candidate like “Romney, McCain, Bush or Bob Dole.”

“The Republican Party will become like the Whig Party of 1856 [which collapsed],” he said.

Curry, who was a domestic affairs advisor to Bill Clinton for two years, said the former president’s August 18 speech at the virtual Democratic National Convention “touched” him.

Times have changed since eight years ago when U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Hartford) couldn’t find enough seats for everyone who wanted to hear the former president speak on his behalf at Waterbury’s Palace Theater just nine days before the election.

Clinton’s affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and alleged affairs with other women during his tenure as governor of Arkansas have become a more sensitive issue in recent years as they have been compared to Trump’s personal transgressions.

Said Curry, “When I watch a Woody Allen movie, I think about his personal life. I think for some people, they watch a Bill Clinton speech and have that same reaction.”

Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz wrote that Clinton’s five minute address didn’t match the excitement he generated in 2012 when he almost upstaged former Democratic President Barack Obama during his re-election campaign.

Kurtz stated, “Those who liked the Clinton presidency and those who despised it have always agreed that the man from Hope was a great communicator, even when he went on and on, as he did with so many State of the Union addresses. But that man didn’t show up Tuesday night.”

Curry noted, “He is now a thin man. He never before was a thin man.”

“However, apart from that [the personal misdeeds], he did do some good things,” he said.

A 2017 C-SPAN poll of dozens of journalists, presidential scholars and college professors ranked Clinton third out of the 44 presidents in economic management and Obama ranked eighth.

In the last 50 years, Clinton is the only president to submit a federal budget with a surplus, and he did it in each of the last four years that he was in office.

However, Curry said Clinton thought that all he had to do was “glide the country into a globalized economy and everything would take care of itself.”

“He relied too much on the global economy,” he said. “It was about free trade and information technology and deregulation.”

“In a globalized economy, we lost millions of service jobs,” remarked Curry. “Almost instantly, a company could move thousands of jobs across the world.”

“President Kennedy said that a strong economy lifts all boats,” he declared. “That didn’t happen under Clinton or Obama.”

In his 1999 book, “The Lexus And The Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization” (Picador, 512 pages), New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman praised Clinton’s call for free trade and strong social safety net.

Said Curry, “Neither Clinton nor Friedman ever explained how you actually do that.”

Curry continued, “Teddy Roosevelt led the United States into the manufacturing society, but he addressed the problems associated with it. “Clinton and Obama took us to the information society with no sense of how to address the loss of jobs.”

Biden has proposed increasing the corporate tax rate from the current 21 percent to 28 percent. It has been at 35 percent before the 2017 Trump tax reform.

Curry said, “I support going to the higher corporate tax rate. Actually, it doesn’t matter much since there are so many loopholes that businesses can utilize. As a result of that, the United States never really had a high corporate tax rate even when it was at 35 percent.”

In an editorial last month, The Wall Street Journal wrote, “Mr. Biden has said he won’t raise taxes on anybody making under $400,000 a year. In 2016 Hillary Clinton made that pledge at $250,000. Either way, it’s a mirage. Higher corporate taxes are inevitably paid by workers in lower wages, or by shareholders (including pension funds) in lower returns on their investments.”

Biden, the former Democratic vice president, also has called on increasing the top individual rate from 37 to 39.6 percent, where it stood under Clinton.

Curry said, “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for the tax rates that Clinton had. Clinton increased taxes and the economy expanded for years. We are going to need money to pay off the trillions of dollars in stimulus,”

The $2.2 trillion Cares Act was approved on March 27.

Congressional and White House negotiators are apparently at an impasse on a second stimulus package.

The Democrats $3 trillion Heroes plan was approved on a mostly party-time vote on May 15 in the U.S. House. The U.S. Senate did not consider it.

Republicans offered a $1 trillion counterproposal in July.

“I don’t have high hopes for an agreement,” said Curry.

He said perhaps if the Republicans feel a need to boost their prospects for the election they will compromise and reach an agreement in September or there might be activity after the election.

Democrats have complained that many Americans are suffering after their unemployment benefits expired at the end of July.

Through executive order, Trump has enacted a payroll tax suspension.

“I’m not a fan of it,” Curry remarked.

Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson wrote earlier this month that, “ It must be clear to almost everyone by now that the sudden and sharp economic downturn that began in late March is something more than a severe recession.”

Curry exclaimed, “I walked through a town in Maine while on vacation and 25 percent of the stores in the central business district had ‘for sale’ signs. It is going to be a challenge to get the economy re-started.”