The Commentariat -- Feb. 27, 2016

Presidential Race

** Michael Barbaro, et al., of the New York Times: "In a rollicking day of spectacle, spite and scorn, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey declared his allegiance to Donald J. Trump and war on Marco Rubio, describing the senator on Friday as desperate and unfit for the presidency. The endorsement interrupted a 48-hour assault from an emboldened Mr. Rubio, who is adopting many of the real estate mogul's crude tactics and colorful insults as he urgently tries to arrest Mr. Trump's march to the Republican nomination.... Aghast party elders expressed dismay over the alliance, calling it a political marriage of expedience. 'Good Lord almighty,' said Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania and secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, who is backing Gov. John Kasich. Now it's the walls and bridges team.'..." ...

... Sean Sullivan, et al., of the Washington Post: "Marco Rubio and Donald Trump emerged Friday as the principal antagonists in an all-out brawl for the future of the Republican Party, as establishment opposition to the front-runner's candidacy started to crumble with a high-profile endorsement by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie." ...

... Claude Brodesser-Akner of the New Jersey Star-Ledger: "Gov. Chris Christie is endorsing Donald Trump for president. Appearing next to Trump in Fort Worth, Texas, Christie said Trump would 'do what needs to be done to protect the American people. The one person Bill and Hillary Clinton do not want to see on that stage is Donald Trump,' said Christie." Thanks to MAG for the lead. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... He Said He Was a Whiney-Baby Before He Said He Was a "Strong Leader." Nolan McCaskill of Politico: "Here are eight of Christie's biggest knocks, slams and putdowns" of Donald Trump." ...

... Jonathan Chait weighs in on the alliance between a deal-maker & an old-fashioned machine pol: "Trump and Christie are both figures whose self-interest aligned, and whose most important worldviews aligned as well. The deal-makers made a deal." ...

... Nate Silver: "It probably also won't be the last major endorsement for Trump. Even if most 'party elites' continue to resist Trump, a lot of Republican elected officials will be looking after their own best interests instead of the collective good of the party. Some will back Trump because he's popular in their states. Some will be looking for opportunities within a Trump administration. Some will agree with Trump's views on immigration or his critique of the political establishment. So there will be more of these endorsements, probably. But it isn't surprising that Christie is one of the first." ...

... Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg: "As a twice-elected governor of a blue state and former chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Christie could also serve as Trump's ambassador to establishment donors, lawmakers and behind-the-scenes operators across the nation.... Meanwhile, senior Republican operatives reacted with a mix of surprise and horror. 'Unforgivable,' said one. 'I'm just in shock,' said another. 'What a nightmare,' said a third." ...

... Nolan McCaskill: "Maine's Gov. Paul LePage "became the second governor to endorse Donald Trump on Friday.... 'I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular. So I think I should support him because we're one of the same cloth,' the governor said...." CW: High praise indeed. ...

... Lauren Fox of TPM: "Donald Trump has an inkling Mitt Romney will endorse his competitor Marco Rubio for the Republican nomination, but Trump says he does not want Romney's endorsement anyway. 'Number one, when you walk into a state you cannot walk like a penguin. He walked like a penguin. I said this is a problem,' Trump said. 'Somebody tell him take some steps. Romney turned out to be a disaster.'"

For those of us who judged the GOP Official Debate & Food Fight Night to be "Animal House"-worthy, if among slightly less mature participants, we were ever so wrong. These guys are class acts. Eliza Collins of Politico: "Marco Rubio relentlessly mocked Donald Trump on Friday, escalating the attacks he unleashed during Thursday night's debate and even suggesting the Republican frontrunner may have wet his pants on the stage." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Mighty presidential. ...

...Scott Lemieux: "Let us dispel with the idea that the Rubibot cannot be programmed to imitate the frontrunner.' ...

... Steve Benen: "Had [Marco Rubio] actually won those primaries [in New Hampshire & South Carolina], the media's adulation might have been easier to understand, but ... Rubio made 10 appearances over two Sundays [on the morning talk shows] after embarrassing defeats. The reason for this special treatment is one of those things the political world tends not to talk about, though Slate's Jamelle Bouie recently acknowledged what usually goes unsaid: '[T]he media has a huge crush' on Marco Rubio. With this in mind, it came as something of a surprise to see Rubio on CBS this morning, complaining about an elaborate media conspiracy -- to help Donald Trump.... From Rubio's perspective, the same news organizations that have shown him levels of affection that border on creepy are actually conspiring in secret against him.... Such paranoia says something unsettling about the presidential hopeful's perspective." ...

     ... CW: What it probably really says is that Marco is strategically distancing himself from media adulation. GOP voters have learned to hate the "lamestream media, (TM Sarah Palin) for occasionally slipping unflattering facts into their coverage of the candidates. The guys pulling Marcobot's strings know enough to tell him to pretend the mainstream media is out to get him. ...

... ** Gail Collins: "This is perhaps the first instance of a presidential campaign running on dialogue more normally overheard in a junior high bathroom when the mean girls are doing their hair. The debate itself more closely resembled a Quentin Tarantino movie, in which a group of men are stuck together for what seems like eternity, and try to break the monotony by yelling a lot."

Brian Beutler: "To absolutely no effect, the Republican Party and its conservative movement allies have spent months and months -- and a fair amount of advertising money -- spreading the message that Trump is actually a liberal.... What Rubio and Cruz demonstrated [Thursday] night (and what Rubio continued demonstrating, somewhat haltingly, [Friday]) is that the secret to getting under Trump's skin isn't to call him a liberal but to mock him, or call him a crook, and to not stop (as Jeb Bush did so frequently) after a single pop to the nose. The downside of this revelation, though, is that it leaves open the question of how a crooked, risible demagogue managed to commandeer the Republican Party, almost without trying." ...

Ken Vogel of Politico: "A handful of Republican big-money groups on Friday launched hard-hitting ad campaigns targeting Donald Trump that echoed Marco Rubio's Thursday night debate smack-down of the GOP presidential front-runner. The group behind what's expected to be the most expensive and sustained assault ― a super PAC dedicated to Rubio called Conservative Solutions PAC ― has raised about $20 million in the past week alone, sources tell Politico. They say the cash will power a full-frontal assault on Trump in the delegate-rich states that vote in March, starting with Tuesday's 14 Super Tuesday contests."

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) in the Huffington Post: "If you watched the Republican debate on Thursday, you probably noticed the candidates agreeing that insurance companies should be allowed to sell policies across state lines.... This is often presented as the Republicans' Big Idea on health care -- in fact, as with Trump, it's often the only idea they can come up with. But ... it's absolute nonsense. For starters..., nothing in federal law prohibits states from allowing out-of-state insurance companies to sell policies to their citizens. In fact, six states have already tried it. And guess what? It doesn't work.... Eighteen [states] looked into allowing out-of-state insurance sales before Obamacare became law, and 13 have considered it since. But very few have actually decided to do so. And the ones that have report unanimously that it has accomplished nothing.... Smaller insurance companies based in a single state have found again and again that ... it simply isn't worth the hassle." Thanks to P. D. Pepe for the link. ...

... CW BTW: Hey, single-payer insurance would eliminate of this problem, wouldn't it?

Amendment I, U.S. Constitution. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances....

... Hadas Gold of Politico: "Donald Trump said on Friday he plans to change libel laws in the United States so that he can have an easier time suing news organizations. 'One of the things I'm going to do if I win..., I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We're going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they're totally protected,' Trump said." ...

... Naomi Jagoda of the Hill: Donald Trump "said during Thursday's debate that he can't release his tax returns because he is the subject of an audit. At a press conference on Friday, he reiterated that he would not make his returns publicly available until the audit is complete.... Trump is not prohibited from releasing his tax returns because he is being audited, according to the Internal Revenue Service. 'Nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information,' the IRS said in a statement." ...

... Alexander Burns & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "With his enormous online platform, Mr. Trump has badgered and humiliated those who have dared to cross him during the presidential race. He has latched onto their vulnerabilities, mocking their physical characteristics, personality quirks and, sometimes, their professional setbacks. He has made statements ... that have later been exposed as false or deceptive -- only after they have ricocheted across the Internet. Many recipients of Mr. Trump's hectoring are fellow politicians, with paid staff members to help them defend themselves. But for others, the experience of being targeted by Mr. Trump is nightmarish and a form of public degradation that they believe is intended to scare off adversaries by making an example of them.... Others say Mr. Trump's actions go beyond the outlandish and cross into more sinister territory. Parry Aftab, a lawyer who leads the Internet safety group WiredSafety, said Mr. Trump's behavior was a textbook example of cyberbullying." ...

... Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "A pair of homophobic Trump supporters gave CNN's Carol Costello more than she bargained for when they cited bizarre online rumors to suggest Marco Rubio had engaged in gay sex. Lynette 'Diamond' Hardaway and Rochelle 'Silk' Richardson -- known as the 'Stump for Trump Girls' -- have gained fame for their series of online videos supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump...." ...

... "Il Trumpo." Annalisa Merelli, an Italian, in Quartz, compares Donald Trump to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, & compares the media coverage of the two. "There's nothing funny about it." CW: I've thought the same thing for some time, but Merelli takes a deep dive into how Berlusconi succeeded in, well, trumping the Italian media, & how Trump is doing the same thing here. Via Paul Waldman.

Scott Bland of Politico: "Conservative donors have engaged a major GOP consulting firm in Florida to research the feasibility of mounting a late, independent run for president amid growing fears that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination."

Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post: "If Donald Trump speaks for disenfranchised whites, Hillary Clinton speaks mostly to blacks who feel the same.... Leading up to the South Carolina primary, Clinton kept a breathlessly demanding schedule in the state, shuttling between cocktail parties and black churches, but spending most of her time trying to remind African Americans that she's always been there for them. (Unspoken: Even though they ditched her for Barack Obama.)... Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, the least empathic human to gaze across the Rio Grande, Donald Trump, continued preaching his own liturgy, lately distilled to a few repeat-after-me slogans.... Those who play to [our] divisions while knowing better -- mining anger and resentment instead of appealing to our better angels -- have made a Faustian bargain for which there should be no forgiveness. Nor, needless to say, votes."

Anne Gearan & John Wagner of the Washington Post: "The Democratic presidential contest moves to South Carolina on Saturday, a primary that serves as two starkly different milestones for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Clinton is looking to her expected victory here to prove her strong support among African American voters -- and to cement her status as the presumptive front-runner heading toward Super Tuesday three days later, when six of 11 Democratic contests will take place in Southern states with large populations of black voters. Sanders spent much of the past week campaigning in other states -- and attacking Clinton on an array of issues with new gusto. He is looking to contests that come after Tuesday, where he has more chance of winning -- and a chance, he says, to hang onto the momentum and enthusiasm that his strong liberal message has generated in this unusual election year."

Steven Myers of the New York Times: "Even admirers of Mrs. Clinton's record as secretary of state acknowledge that the use of the [private e-mail] server had consequences for her select circle of confidants.... The emails -- as well as Mrs. Clinton's initial decision to set up the server -- are now the focus of investigations by the F.B.I., the inspector generals of the State Department and the intelligence agencies and by the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security.... The question facing investigators ... is whether enough evidence exists to warrant criminal charges for improperly handling or in any way exposing highly classified secrets to potential disclosure."

... German Lopez of Vox has a helpful post on how Sanders & Clinton have differed on "tough-on-crime" legislation. Sanders has voted for a few "tough-on-crime" bills because they contained other provisions he liked, & he has voted against other "tough-on-crime" legislation. "Historically, Clinton has been much tougher and more punitive on crime."

Robert Reich: "I endorse Bernie Sanders for President of the United States. He's leading a movement to reclaim America for the many, not the few. And such a political mobilization -- a 'political revolution,' as he puts it -- is the only means by which we can get the nation back from the moneyed interests that now control so much of our economy and democracy." ...

     ... CW: Reich was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor & very briefly dated Hillary Rodham when they were undergrads. ...

... Charles Pierce: "I went over to City Hall and voted for Bernie Sanders Friday morning.... I believe that the movement exemplified by the Sanders campaign ... is an important one, not least because it is a hedge against forgetting what happened to the country in 2008 -- and, more important, what might have happened in 2008 and 2009 had the country not had the good sense to elect this president.... I think [Clinton] is going to be the nominee -- and the more states Sanders wins, and the more votes he piles up, and the more delegates come to Philadelphia pledged to support him, then the more tightly she can be fastened to the positions she adopted to beat him." ...

... CW: I too will be voting for Bernie for the reasons Pierce cites & for another one that one is apt to hear from Republican voters: "he represents my values."

Other News & Commentary

Karen DeYoung & Hugh Naylor of the Washington Post: "Guns fell silent for the first time in years in parts of civil-war-racked Syria early Saturday morning, as a cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia went into effect at midnight, Damascus time." ...

... Somini Sengupta of the New York Times: "Against the backdrop of relentless airstrikes on rebel-held positions inside Syria, the United Nations Security Council on Friday unanimously endorsed a deal negotiated between the United States and Russia for a 'cessation of hostilities.'"

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Joshua Partlow & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "In recent years, a tide of used batteries has swept into northern Mexico as metal recyclers seek to profit from the country's relatively lax controls on lead exposure in the workplace and the environment.... While U.S. politicians express outrage over elevated lead levels in drinking water in Flint, Mich., they have done little to stem the flow of car batteries -- each containing about 20 pounds of lead -- south of the border. Officials estimate that the number of old batteries shipped to Mexico has grown by more than 400 percent in the past decade, spurred in part by tougher U.S. laws.... As many as one in five lead-acid batteries from American vehicles -- from suburban minivans to fleet buses and trucks operated by government agencies -- end up nowadays in Mexican recycling plants, to be broken down by workers under conditions that range from adequate to abysmal...."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. John Koblin of the New York Times: "In an unusually public flare-up, [Melissa Harris-Perry,] one of MSNBC's television personalities clashed with the network on Friday in a dispute about airtime and editorial freedom and said she was refusing to host the show that bears her name this weekend."

Beyond the Beltway

Officially Favorite Killing Machines. Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "The Barrett .50 caliber rifle is a powerful gun. Widely used in the military, its rounds can 'penetrate light armor, down helicopters, destroy commercial aircraft, and blast through rail cars,' according to a report from the Violence Policy Center, a gun safety group. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence describes .50 caliber rifles like the Barrett as 'among the most destructive weapons legally available to civilians in the United States.' And as of Wednesday, the Barrett .50 caliber is now the official state rifle of Tennessee.... Tennessee is the seventh state to declare an official state firearm of some sort.... There weren't any state firearms until 2011...."

Comments

[PD Pepe]

Yesterday I mentioned the frustration felt by many that Trump's blather wasn't being investigated, that he could continue to throw things on the table and people would just gobble them up. Rubio and Cruz have started their assaults, but they have to be careful they don't get run over in the process, plus their own policies are pretty puny.

One of Trump's grand gestures during the last debate was his embracing, with open arm gestures, the idea of allowing Insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. Whoa, Nellie, I said, this has been a dead horse for a long time now. Evidently Trump is ignorant of the facts, yet NO one called him on it. So today I am delighted to give you a link to someone who has. Al Franken has written a clear and concise report–––"Big Health Care "Idea" is complete nonsense." And doggone it, I love him for it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-franken/the-republicans-big-healt_b_9332508.html

[Marie Burns]

@PD Pepe: Thanks for the link, which I've posted above. The insurance companies' big problem, as I understand it, is two-fold: (1) state laws are quite parochial, so companies have to jump thru hoops to make their policies conform to particular state insurance mandates; (2) insurance companies negotiate rates with individual hospitals & doctors' groups, which is time- and effort-consuming.

Even if some states cooperated in coordinating their laws in an effort to get out-of-state companies to sell insurance within their individual states, the companies would still have to negotiate with a whole buncha new medical-provider "partners" in the states they wanted to go into. In other words, it's a really, really flawed system that disincentivizes competition. (This is true for other types of insurance, too, like homeowner & auto insurance.)

Probably the best solution, given the current system, would be a humungous new federal bureaucracy that would determine "fair" rates based on different costs-of-living (and perhaps some other factors); that is, doctors in NYC would get more for their services than doctors in rural Alabama. I can hear the shrieks & scandals from every corner of the nation.

Marie

[PD Pepe]

We need to heed Merelli's (see link above) warning seriously––something Trump's followers better wake up to.

"Like Trump, Berlusconi consistently seemed too absurd to be true. And yet he was. He won elections again, and again, and again, thriving off any and all attention. People didn’t take him or what he said seriously. Then one day we woke up to find our government overrun by criminals, our economy destroyed, and our cultural mores perverted to the extent that the objectification of women was commonplace. There was no more laughing left to do."

The thing I remember about Berlusconi is his story about how the Communist Chinese were boiling babies in order to use them as fertilizer; how he shouted obscenities at protesters; said anyone who voted for the center-left was a "coglione"which is a vulgar term meaning something like asshole but I think translates as "testicle." Later he denied saying that even though there was a video of him saying exactly that. Center left voters began carrying signs saying, "I am a coglione." Then there was the issue of young girls who were servicing him.

So perhaps we have finally found a leader––I use that term loosely––that we can compare Trump with––a pretty snug fit, I'd say and as Merelli warns us––this ain't no laughing matter.

@MArie: thanks for your take on the Insurance business––oh, for simple solutions!

[Ken Winkes]

Thanks PD. On the chance that others don't have the time to follow your link to the Franken piece, let me bring forward his conclusion, which I loved equally, doggone it!

"So the next time you hear it in a Republican debate, remember that it (selling insurance across state lines) isn't an example of them taking a rare break from insulting women, immigrants, Muslim-Americans, and each other to focus on substance. It's just further proof that, when it comes to health care, Republicans still have absolutely nothing to offer the American people."

Brings to mind the many mental lists I create attempting to find something of value in today's conservatism, contrasting that increasingly short list with my rosy vision of progressivism, which is illuminated by such admittedly quaint (and apparently more French than American) notions as liberty, equality and fraternity.

And for the life of me, I can't come up with much good that conservatives want to conserve. Yeah, I get it: the status quo.

But that quo is a a racially and ethnically divided society. In the face of ineluctable arithmetic, conservatives want to maintain those divisions despite the fact that even they must have noticed the arithmetic is pushing them over the edge into the land of crazy.

More fundamentally the quo is also an economic system designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many, which is why so much money from the rich flows to the support of conservative educators, thinkers and opinion makers, and to judges and politicians whose sole purpose is to shore up another wall, this one against anything that might question or upset their privileged status.

And they surely don't want to conserve the environment.

Naming what conservatives do wish to preserve explains why the Republican debates are mostly limited to ethnic and gender slurs, playground tough-guy talk, childish insults and name-calling, and almost wholly devoid of policy discussion. Policy doesn't take center stage because conservative policies are essentially anti-democratic, and obviously so. The passing references to policies that do occur tout policies that would either preserve or exacerbate economic inequality (loony tax plans among my favorites) or exaggerate the social divisions that strike at the roots of the American Dream by labeling the opposition, what- and whoever it is, not as a potential ally by as an enemy that must be crushed.

One would expect that the jerry-built structure of today's Republican party, a distinctly anti-democratic institution that persists in saying it is all about freee-dom, to collapse of its own internal contradictions.

We may be seeing that now. The high pitched shouting exhibited by the party's so called leaders might be the last hurrah of a dying breed.

If so, the all fall down moment can't come soon enough for me.

As an American who still thinks democracy is a good idea, these folks embarrass the hell out of me.

[Ken Winkes]

Marie,

Sounds like another solid argument for a national single payer health insurance system...

And reading over my hurried but lengthy note to PD above, I'd offer this summary: Today's conservatives want to preserve and expand the worst of our social, political and economic arrangements and give us even more freedom to act on our worst impulses.

What a plan!

[MAG]

Mes amies et têtes des choux -- Trump is sure racking up those high profile endorsements! (Mad, wild laughter and hysterical giggling here)... yesterday's from Monsieur LePage, Maine's matching bookend to Chris Christie ("...businessman Trump and I are very much alike"), et aujourd'hui, Jean-Marie Monsieur LePen. Ooolalal...

[Kate Madison]

CW: I too will be voting for Bernie for the reasons Pierce cites & for another one that one is apt to hear from Republican voters: "he represents my values."

Yes, Marie. I also will be voting for Bernie for all the reasons you have stated above--although, like Charlie Pierce, I am sure Hillary will prevail. If a good showing by Sanders can help keep her more true to her progressive campaign promises, I will be satisfied.

As for the health insurance boondoggle. Eeeeerk! I cannot understand why Bernie has not come up with facts and figures to back up his Medicare for All proposal. He just keeps repeating ad nauseum that other countries consider healthcare a right (as do I) and that even with the ACA in force, many millions of Americans are not covered.

Paul Krugman (and many others) have said that Bernie's plan would bankrupt our economy. I am not a "math person," and I cannot do the numbers. But, IMHO, Bernie owes it to us to have some specific numbers from reliable sources to back up his claims. That, by the way, is not the reason I am voting for Bernie. As you so simply said, Marie: "He best represents my values."