The field that just won’t shrink
Just when it looked as if the Democratic field was slowly narrowing toward single digits, along come Deval Patrick and Michael Bloomberg presuming to be the Great Centrist Hope to rescue the party in 2020.
It isn’t as if the field is bereft of candidates positioning themselves to capture moderate voters if former Vice President Joe Biden’s candidacy were to falter. In the October debate, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, in particular, sharpened their contrast with progressive stalwarts Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker have been trying to appeal across ideological lines.
But egos and illusions know no bounds for those who look in the mirror and see an American president.
It will be up to the voters to decide whether these two sprinters fill a void that is lacking in the 17 or so other candidates who have been flying all over the country, meeting with folks in Iowa living rooms, enduring the exhausting debates and televised town halls and raising money the hard way.
John Diaz, editorial page editor
Songanddance man
Week after week, Sean Spicer debased himself performing awkward gyrations in an illfitting getup for a tawdry travesty of a reality show. And then he went on “Dancing with the Stars.” This week put a period on the strange second act of President Trump’s inaugural mouthpiece — third counting his haunting turn as a White House Easter bunny — on the show that takes liberties with every word in its title besides “with” and “the.” Spicer had repeatedly escaped elimination despite a glaring lack of ability, but unlike his former boss, he had the popular vote to thank. Some vindictive faction of the audience, cheered on by no less than the commander in chief, kept returning Spicer to the show to the judges’ evident dismay.
The former press secretary’s exit was in that respect more than a clumsy coda to his service as a White House songanddance man. As the president acknowledged by cravenly deleting his last tweet urging a vote for Spicer, it was also a signal of Trump’s waning powers even in his native medium.
Josh Gohlke, deputy opinion editor