Blue Shadows

The Democrats want a shadow government, or something:

POLITICO shares an idea first proposed by Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin and decided to go one better: create a "shadow cabinet," as is often done in parliamentary systems. The idea behind a shadow cabinet is to have one figure who speaks for the opposition on a particular issue. A shadow Secretary of State, a shadow Secretary of Defense, and so on. Instead of having many voices drowning each other out, pick one for each issue--presumably your best. It is a stupid idea--it's one virtue being that transnationalists love the idea of committees, parliaments, and copying European ways of doing things. Even the average European on the street doesn't think that way, and Americans would be hard-pressed to name more than two or three cabinet members, but people who admire technocracies gravitate to just this sort of thing. Slotkin suggested ranking members on Congressional committees for the role (the ranking member is the lead person from the opposition party on any committee; in this case, they are all Democrats because they are in the minority), which is an even more stupid idea. Nobody has a clue who they are and couldn't care less, so Bill Scher came up with his own list. It's a winner, for many reasons. Democrats will probably like it because it includes celebrities and pseudo-intellectuals, and Republicans would love to see it implemented because it is yet another stupid idea that will move the needle not at all. Not one of these individuals could possibly fix what ails the Democrats, which is less any one particular policy idea than an unmistakable contempt for the ordinary American. See Ed's piece from this morning on the real problem Democrats have, and it ain't that they haven't communicated well enough on the importance of investing in electric vehicles or transit in Blue cities.

Bad ideas are still bad ideas...