Paul Bass Photo
Marcus with “Legal Eagle” host Marcia Chambers in the WNHH studio.
Ed Marcus has been a keen observer of all things political on the local, state and national level for many decades. Even so, he said, he has never seen anything quite like the run-up to the presidential election of 2016.
Marcus, the founder of the Marcus Law Firm, long a New Haven fixture now located in North Branford, appeared on the WNHH radio’s “Legal Eagle” program last week where he voiced his views on the evolving campaign. He called Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side and Donald Trump on the Republican side “Cult Leaders,” each attracting a specific brand of dissatisfied voter. He discussed the role of social media, polls and why Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump seem to have unexpected staying power.
Marcus, now 89, was a former chairman of Democrat State Central Committee and a formidable State Senate majority leader in Connecticut. In 1968 he served as the chairman of the Democratic rules committee for the national presidential convention held in Chicago. His close ally, the late John Bailey, was the Democratic national chairman that year.
It was a convention that made history.
In 1968 Marcus found himself in Chicago at a convention that became synonymous with turbulent political activity along with violence between police and protestors. That was the year that Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic candidate. Humphrey later lost the presidential election to Republican Richard Nixon. The behind-the-scenes at that convention, Marcus said, is a book he should probably write.
He said this year for the first time in his life he found himself watching the Republican debates, along with Donald Trump’s emergence as a leading candidate. “I have never ever seen anything like it. It is best entertainment show around.” He said Trump gets away with awful language: “He is crude.”]
Bottom line? Trump “is really an entertainer.” But he has caught onto the anger “some in the nation are feeling,” Marcus said. “And that anger has propelled him to the top…Think back to the early ‘30s; I won’t compare Trump with Hitler, but with Mussolini. The crowds are looking for raw meat. … He asks them to raise their hand and they do.”
He said he doesn’t think Trump has a ghost of a chance of winning the presidency. “I think people will vote for Hillary [Clinton] or stay home. This is a unique situation.”
Marcus On Hillary
Marcus has long been committed to Hillary Clinton’s quest for the White House, including back in 2008. He never thought Barak Obama had the experience to be president, he said. He argued that Clinton’s Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, is not unlike Trump. Both, he said, are “cult leaders,” Sanders on the left, Trump on the right.
“I don’t think there is any question that Hillary will be the candidate,” he said on the morning before she won five states in the last Super Tuesday primaries. But he added, she has had to go through “hell and back to get there,” all the while spending millions.
Marcus said he is still can’t understand why Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, allowed Sanders to run as a Democrat. “He is a socialist. He has never run as a Democrat,” Marcus observed. “I am not a Bernie Sanders’s fan. I don’t like people who yell and scream. Ideas are great but there is a price for them. You promise kids free tuition but how are you going to pay for it?”
Marcus said he would attend the Democratic convention in Philadelphia this July. “Hillary will be the nominee.” He said he thinks she will have to offer Sanders “some peace token” or perhaps some positon. Maybe “a handshake on a cabinet member position,” he said.
“What has surprised me the most is that Sanders and Trump are still around. I wrote an article recently that said by [last] August or September, ‘The circus will leave town. The entertainers will move on.’ I never thought they would be around so long. Trump is a buffoon. Sanders is a loud speaker but not a good speaker. I never thought he would get crowds. But young people like the word revolution.
“The far left and the far right are two groups I have never agreed with. I don’t believe in a revolution in the real sense of the word because that is very dangerous. We are a great country. Trump says we are biggest and the greatest and like Sanders gives you these things for nothing.”
At the same time he agrees with Sanders that the tax code needs changing. Marcus said. “It’s too complicated. It has too many loopholes.”
Looking back at his long career in law and politics, the Eagle asked Marcus what is the greatest lesson he has learned.
“The greatest lesson I have learned is not everything happens at once. And sometimes you have to be patient. You have to wait. Even if somebody has done something that you consider absolutely terrible, you have to say to yourself, ‘Revenge is best eaten cold.’ This is an old Chinese proverb.
“It doesn’t have to be that moment or the next. It can be years later. And that is one of the lessons that I have learned all the years I have been involved in politics. You can wait. Things change. It doesn’t have to be done the next day ….You learn that today’s enemy maybe tomorrow’s supporter and friend. That is probably the overall lesson.”
Click on or download the above sound file to hear the full WNHH interview with Ed Marcus.
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