Elijah Cummings dead at 68
RIP.
Cummings was 68 and apparently had serious cardiovascular problems, although I believe his death was a surprise. It certainly was a surprise to me.
From the article:
Cummings had represented Maryland’s 7th Congressional District for 23 years before ascending in January to his perch atop the Oversight panel, from which he oversaw several investigations into the administration. Along with House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), he was one of three committee leaders guiding House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.
The headline of the Politico article calls Cummings a “Trump target.” I would say it would be just as correct and perhaps more so to call Trump a Cummings target. And since everything is about Trump these days and everything Trump does is bad, apparently Trump was criticized for writing a gracious tweet in response to Cummings’ demise after being hard on him for the long-standing awful conditions in his Baltimore district.
That district will almost undoubtedly send another liberal Democrat to the House, so I don’t see any major political repercussions to Cummings’ death.
Trump nice. Criticize.
Trump mean. Criticize.
Trump say nothing. Criticize.
About a month age the Baltimore Sun reported that Cummings was in the hospital for an unidentified medical procedure. Today we learn he has died from unidentified complications. I never knew that complications was a cause of death. It is rather amusing that the journalists are praising Cummings but can’t point to anything significant that he did in 23 years in congress.
According to Limbaugh on the radio today, Cummings had been, before this final hospitalization, getting around in Congress with a walker and a motorized scooter of some kind. No publicity about it, though.
Leftists don’t even want a polite RIP from Trump. How dare he! Cummings’ district will surely send another leftist, but that person will not be a prominent leader of the Impeachment charade.
“send another LIBERAL Democrat”
We cannot let the Left hijack our language. Cummings was not a liberal. He was a radical leftist scum.
By the true meaning of the word, I am a liberal and I daresay so are you Neo.
Along the same vein, it is the Democrat party, not the Democratic party. They are anything but believers in democracy.
What’s next Neo? Are you going to call illegal aliens “undocumented”?
My mother always said, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.” So, here’s my comment on Cummings..
” …………….. [crickets] ”
However, he was a year YOUNGER than I am. So I guess it isn’t true that only the good die young.
Trey Gowdy @TGowdySC:
68 isn’t THAT old but I think it is fair to say that one of the problems confronting us is that our ruling elite is old as dirt, a great many of them are medicated to the gills, plenty more are a bit past their peak mentally, but few appear willing to voluntarily turn over the reins to younger generations.
Elizabeth Warren is 70 and she’s the spring chicken among Democratic contenders! Trump’s old too and at least he and Warren still seem relatively sharp but there’s a real “Prince Charles” situation here where generations are being kept waiting decades before getting a chance to take the wheel.
Mike
Bob:
I think most people know what I mean here by “liberal.” I mean at the very least it will be a liberal, and more likely (considering the trends these days) a leftist of the “progressive” (another misused word) wing.
I have written many posts on the distinction between liberal and leftist.
Thanks for Gowdy’s comments, Ann. That’s what I had read elsewhere — that Cummings had good personal relationships with political opponents. We used to be able to disagree without personal hatred.
According to what I read on (I think) Fox News, Cummings had an aortic valve replaced in 2017 and got an infection leading to complications. RIP.
Enemy of the Republic. Buh-bye.
May he have the rest in death that he certainly never had in life…
I couldn’t place the name for a moment, then thought of e.e. cummings, whose writing I liked when I was 16.
A nice tribute from Trey Gowdy. We can disagree about issues, but still see the humanity in each other. I didn’t know much about Cummings. Only what I saw on TV in various committee hearings. He was a typical Democrat that I disagreed with on most every issue. But I’m sorry to hear that his heart valve replacement became infected and probably caused his death.
May he RIP.
He knowingly and repeatedly lied to the American public. So insecure as to the legitimacy of the goals he sought that he had to continually resort to deceit. His legacy; presiding over his district in Baltimore as it descended into “shithole” conditions.
And, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything” applies to private citizens not public figures. The price of status is to face history’s judgement.
I hope there is more focus on his district, Baltimore, and what the Democrats have done to it.
Trump’s question to blacks might become more key in 2020, as he asks for blacks to support Reps – “What have you got to lose?”
Well, they’ve got welfare dependency and an easy excuse for irresponsible and lazy behavior — whenever their behavior gives bad outcomes, blame racism. On the other hand, lots of blacks who work, which is most of them (really!), have noticed bigger paychecks, and more job offers.
Cummings against Trump brought Trump’s usual counter-attacks; but his death also brought Trump’s usual gracefulness. Trump often says good things about those who are opposing him, as well as attacks against them.
Not so different from the Democrats on McCain’s death.
}}} That district will almost undoubtedly send another liberal Democrat to the House, so I don’t see any major political repercussions to Cummings’ death.
The obvious thing, though, is that the leadership will change. Leadership positions are granted based on party in power and seniority. Whoever replaces him won’t have EC’s seniority, so another Dem will get the head position nod.
Neo writes:
“I have written many posts on the distinction between liberal and leftist.”
Then why do you cede the definition of the honorable word “liberal” to the Left and apply it to someone who history of his district says will be another racist, Leftist thug like Cummings? The replacement will NOT a liberal by my and perhaps your definition of the word.
This may seem trivial. After all, it is your blog and you get to write what you want. But the reason that good and commonsense people have lost the culture war to the Left is that we do not even engage with them. I guarantee that if by some totally unexpected chance a non-Leftist thug should win in Cummings’ district, Leftist blogs will not refer to him with anything but epithets.
Bob:
I think I already made my answer clear. But I’ll repeat it here one more time with even more clarity.
This post was about Cummings, and it’s short. It’s not a political post analyzing the left vs. liberals and the Democratic Party. “Liberal” in that sentence in the post above was shorthand for “at best a liberal and at worst something far more to the left.” Not everything is going to be spelled out in every post, particularly subjects that are tangential to the focus of that post. Posts can become tantamount to legal documents, defining each term within them in an attempt to remove any and all ambiguity. But it’s not only an impossible task a la Popper (“It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood”), it can make writing and reading very tedious. So not every term is going to be fully explained, and misunderstandings will happen.
If you would like to see some of my discussions of the leftists vs. liberals, please see this, this, and this, for example.
Well, they’ve got welfare dependency and an easy excuse for irresponsible and lazy behavior — whenever their behavior gives bad outcomes, blame racism. On the other hand, lots of blacks who work, which is most of them (really!), have noticed bigger paychecks, and more job offers.
As has been noted before, the TANF census is one-third that of the old AFDC census. The population of the United States has increased by a quarter in the last 25 years. The share of the population collecting cash welfare has thus declined by 75% since 1994. In addition the racial composition of the TANF census diverges from that of the old AFDC census as well; about half of those on the AFDC rolls back then were black. As we speak, about 1/3 of the TANF census is black. In 1994, about 20% of the black population lived in households collecting AFDC or general relief. As we speak about 3% do. There are other subsidies for the non-elderly and non-disabled population, but they don’t incorporate perverse incentives in the manner of the old AFDC program. Housing subsidies benefit perhaps 1/3 of the impecunious population; SNAP and allied programs are income supplements, not income replacements; Medicaid benefits are quite illiquid; the services of the public defender and legal aid society are even more illiquid (and contingent on circumstances most people avoid); and the child-protective and foster care services are even more dreaded. Impecunious people have a berth in a public school, of course, but that doesn’t differentiate their household economy from anyone else’s.
The problem in Baltimore is that the police force is understaffed, is suboptimally deployed, and has a troubled institutional culture induced in large measure because politicians have it in for them and their strategy is to avoid incidents by disengaging from conflict with local hoodlums. Going Ayn Rand on Medicaid beneficiaries isn’t going to address these problems.
Neo, as I said, it is your blog. As for me, I never use the word liberal to refer to Leftists of any stripe.
Bob
Wasn’t this the guy who believed so much in the Left Hand path that his reality said somebody spit on him?
Well, the spirits killed him, so I guess we are even now? Haha
Anyways, EC is going to have an interesting debrief. He’s free to choose which faction in the war to fight for though. He can choose the Left hand path of demonic conquest and service to self, or he can choose the Right hand path of harmony and service to others.
“Wasn’t this the guy who believed so much in the Left Hand path that his reality said somebody spit on him?”
Nope. Different guy.