Madame Timex

I catch a lot of flak from Democratic Party insiders who say I'm way too nice to Susan Bysiewicz. They accuse me of giving a dysfunctional politician a platform, repeatedly, to rehabilitate herself and pursue her apparently boundless ambitions.

I also catch a certain amount of hell from people who think I'm too tough on her. During today's interview, that included her and at least one caller.

Here's what I think. The people who think that 2010 dashed all her hopes for the future are wrong. Some politicians are naturally resilient. We had an unusually high call volume on the show today. I suppose some of them may have been plants. Even so, there wasn't one truly negative call. And she has a peculiar kind of star quality. People like to follow her storyline.

Twice, she has blinked and dropped out of gubernatorial races. In 2010, the videos of her Superior Court depositions in her eligibility case suggest a bit of a glass jaw, which makes you wonder if she could have hung in against Malloy. (On the other hand, Malloy's pugnacity in debates, against a woman, might have been a problem for him)

We in the press should acknowledge that she's good for business. And she's the Timex watch of Connecticut politics. Consider 2010: the sudden switch of candidacies from gubernatorial to attorney general, the forsaking of public financing, the eligibility case, the investigation of her data base, the investigation of her thank-you parties, the miscue regarding WWE apparel at the polls, the announcement of election results before they were official and the chaos of the election itself. This was a bad year. But she's still ticking.

 Cross-posted from McEnroe's Blog.