The race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination got another entrant today, which makes 12 major candidates, with more to come. John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado, announced today that he’ll be running, and while in a different year he might have been a strong contender — reasonably successful and well-liked governor, middle-aged white guy — he has a bit of a timing problem.

It isn’t just that Hickenlooper isn’t nationally known and may be more moderate than what Democratic primary voters are looking for right now. It goes to what sort of president he says he’d be. To hear him talk, it’s as though he parachuted in from a few decades ago and has no idea how politics works in 2019 or what sorts of impediments the next Democratic president is going to face. Let’s look at the way he summed up his candidacy in an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos this morning:

“I’m running for president because I believe that not only can I beat Donald Trump but that I am the person that can bring people together on the other side and actually get stuff done.”

Hickenlooper talked about the importance of going out and listening to people, about how when he was mayor of Denver and ran for governor he connected with voters all over the state whose concerns weren’t partisan. Which is surely true, but unfortunately it shows that while being out in the “real” America (i.e. not Washington) can help you understand how policy decisions affect people’s lives, it can also obscure the real challenges of federal policymaking the next president will face.

...Here’s the problem for a Democratic president: Today’s Republican Party isn’t just committed to a particular set of policy preferences, it’s also committed to a style of politics in which 1) any compromise with Democrats on a controversial issue is an unconscionable betrayal, and 2) literally any tactics, no matter how morally reprehensible, are justified in the pursuit of their goals.

More at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/04/john-hickenloopers-entry-reveals-how-moderates-fatally-misunderstand-todays-gop/?utm_term=.6b39623de3c3

GLOVERSVILLE N.Y. (WRGB) - The Ambulance Service of Fulton County shut down on Friday night.

The Ambulance Service of Fulton County is literally boarded up. Its fleet of emergency vehicles idle. Its employees done with what turned out to be their final shift. “The business model is not sustainable,” said Alan Mendelsohn, the service's vice president.

Mendelsohn says the money problem centers on Medicaid calls, which make up a large amount of their work. Mendelshon says the money they get from it just isn’t enough. “We figure it cost us $550 every time one of our ambulances leaves the building. And when you’re only being reimbursed $220 on a large percentage of our calls, and then many other calls we don’t get anything,” he said.

Mendelsohn says the low payout for these calls, coupled with no financial support from towns or the state, just couldn’t be sustained.

...In New York state, police and fire departments are considered essential services, but EMS isn’t.

...The service responded to more than 8,400 hundred calls in 2017.

https://cbs6albany.com/news/local/ambulance-service-of-fulton-county-shutting-down

Closer Mariano Rivera, designated hitter Edgar Martinez and starting pitchers Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina will be the newest members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Rivera became the first player to be unanimously voted into the Hall.

The four were voted into the hall by the Baseball Writers Association of America on Tuesday. Of the four, Halladay and Mussina were first-round picks, though only Mussina was touted for stardom from the start of his career.

Before Rivera, the highest vote percentage belonged to Ken Griffey Jr. in 2016, when he received 99.3 percent (named on 437 of 440) ballots. Martinez, in his final year on the ballot, received 85.4 percent, culminating a late surge of support. He received just 27 percent four years ago, when his election felt like a futile possibility. Halladay, who died in 2017 when the plane he was piloting crashed into the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast, also received 85.4 percent of the vote, joining Rivera as a first-ballot inductee. Mussina received 76.7 percent of the vote, clearing the 75 percent threshold by seven votes.

"Amazing. ... It was a beautiful, long career," Rivera told MLB Network.

More at http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/25826814/mariano-rivera-edgar-martinez-roy-halladay-mike-mussina-elected-baseball-hall-fame

The line to get into the final event of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s weekend tour of Iowa began forming 2½ hours in advance. Standing at the very front were Kristin Wesner and her daughter Alaina. Arriving for the Sunday morning forum extra-early was Alaina’s idea. Despite the January chill, the 9-year-old wanted to be absolutely sure she would get a prime spot to see the all-but-announced Democratic presidential candidate.

Her mom, Kristin, a psychology professor, is hoping Warren can do what Hillary Clinton, whom she supported in 2016, could not: be the first woman to make it all the way to the White House. Though there may be upward of two dozen presidential contenders coming through Iowa over the 13 months between now and its first-in-the-nation caucuses, “she’s at the top of my list right now,” Kristin said.

The political-insider chatter is already suggesting that Warren might have a “likability” problem, just like the one that supposedly was Clinton’s downfall. And if two or three other women join the race, which appears likely, they will no doubt hear that as well. As a headline on the humorous McSweeney’s website put it: “I Don’t Hate Women Candidates — I Just Hated Hillary and Coincidentally I’m Starting to Hate Elizabeth Warren.”

Judging by the packed houses at Warren’s events over the weekend, however, insiders may be selling Democratic voters short. “People decided 20 years ago whether they liked Hillary Clinton, back when her husband was president,” Kristin said. On the other hand, she sees Warren offering a fresher appeal: “Her message is consistent, and she’s looking out for the middle class.”

...Warren represents a stark contrast from Clinton in a more fundamental way. While Clinton had a 20-point plan ready for every question, she failed to weave it all together into anything that resembled a coherent rationale for her candidacy. At one point, her campaign, floundering to articulate what she stood for, put together a document of 84 ideas for slogans. By the end, her message seemed to be only that Trump was not fit to be president.

Warren, on the other hand, diagnoses virtually every issue — from student debt to climate change, gun control to retirement security — with the same blunt prescription. “The answer is corruption, pure and simple. We have a government that works for those at the top,” she says. “When we get organized, when we push back, we can make some real change.” It is noticeable that Trump’s name rarely crosses her lips, a sign she believes this message can connect with some of the same frustrated middle-class voters who flocked to him in 2016.

More at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/elizabeth-warren-is-no-hillary-clinton/2019/01/07/f15f9f70-11f7-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html?utm_term=.e181c86371c5

A black 9-year-old girl in Alabama allegedly took her own life after facing relentless bullying and racism in class, according to reports.

McKenzie Adams’ relatives said she hanged herself Dec. 3 in her home in Linden, about 100 miles west of Montgomery, and was discovered by her grandmother, according to the Tuscaloosa News.

Since the start of the school year, the fourth-grader had been the target of bullying at US Jones Elementary School, where she was teased over her friendship with a white male classmate, according to her family.

Her aunt, Eddwina Harris, said the group of students taunted McKenzie by telling her to commit suicide.

“She was being bullied the entire school year, with words such as ‘kill yourself,’ ‘you think you’re white because you ride with that white boy,’ ‘you ugly,’ ‘black bitch,’ ‘just die,’” Harris told the newspaper.

Harris said she’s speaking out about her niece’s death because she wants to promote anti-bullying...

https://nypost.com/2018/12/10/9-year-old-committed-suicide-after-classmates-taunted-kill-yourself-family/