;)
The Commentariat -- May 4, 2016
Afternoon Update:
Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "Gov. John Kasich f Ohio ... is ending his long-shot quest for the presidency on Wednesday, cementing Donald J. Trump's grip on the presidential nomination. Mr. Kasich was planning to announce his decision at a 5 p.m. news conference in Columbus, Ohio, according to three people briefed on Mr. Kasich's decision." -- CW
Patrick Healy of the New York Times: In a series of interviews, Donald Trump "has sketched out" his plans for the first 100 days of his presidency.
Meanwhile, back in the real world... Timothy Cama of The Hill: President Obama took a drink of filtered tap water from Flint, Mich., Wednesday while visiting the city to address its lead contamination. Obama drank the water in a show of solidarity with the city of 100,000 and to demonstrate his faith in the treatment and filtering. The sip came after he met for about 90 minutes with local, state and federal officials about the water crisis, according to a pool report from the meeting. 'Filtered water is safe and it works,' he said at the event.... 'Generally I haven't been doing stunts, but here you go,' before taking a sip." -- Akhilleus
London's First Muslim Mayor? Matt Ford in The Atlantic: "Britain is holding local elections this week on what some have dubbed 'Super Thursday,' but only one contest is worthy of the moniker: the race to succeed Boris Johnson as London's mayor...Labour's Sadiq Khan, a 45-year-old son of working-class Pakistani immigrants who fled the chaos of the partition of the Indian subcontinent in the 1940s, is poised to claim victory Thursday.... It would also usher in the first Muslim mayor of the European Union's largest city"
...Akhilleus: One can only imagine the visit by a President Trump to London. He'd have to ask if there were any non-terrorist officials he could visit the strip clubs with.
Wingers for Garland. Leigh Ann Caldwell of NBC News: "Hours after Donald Trump became the likely GOP nominee, the conservative website RedState urged the Senate to confirm President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Site managing editor Leon Wolf argued that Trump can't beat likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton -- and warned that she would chose somebody more liberal than Garland. 'Republicans must know that there is absolutely no chance that we will win the White House in 2016 now. They must also know that we are likely to lose the Senate as well. So the choices, essentially, are to confirm Garland and have another bite at the apple in a decade, or watch as President Clinton nominates someone who is radically more leftist and 10-15 years younger, and we are in no position to stop it.'" -- Akhilleus
Eric Levitz of New York, adumbrates Confederates' Garland Conundrum: "...down-ballot Republicans face a pair of bad options: embrace Trump and pray that high turnout among Hillary-hating conservatives compensates for the backlash that six months of Trump's misogynistic ravings are bound to produce, or run away from him and pray that moderates turn out to vote for divided government. Thanks to Merrick Garland, Senate Republicans will have little time to choose." -- Akhilleus
North Carolina Discrimination Bill Deemed Illegal: Jim Morrill of the Charlotte Observer: "U.S. Justice Department officials rebuked North Carolina's House Bill 2 on Wednesday, telling Gov. Pat McCrory that the law violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act and [suggested] that it could jeopardize the state's federal education funding. The department gave state officials until Monday to address the situation 'by confirming that the State will not comply with or implement HB2'...North Carolina could lose millions in federal school funding. During the current school year, state public schools received $861 million in federal funding." --Akhilleus
******
Presidential Race
Nate Cohn of the New York Times: "A general election matchup between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton became all but certain on Tuesday after Mr. Trump's decisive victory in Indiana. He would begin that matchup at a significant disadvantage. Yes, it's still a long way until Election Day.... But this is when early horse-race polls start to give a rough sense of the November election, and Mr. Trump trails Mrs. Clinton by around 10 percentage points in early general election surveys, both nationally and in key battleground states. He even trails in some polls of several states where Mitt Romney won in 2012, like North Carolina, Arizona, Missouri and Utah." -- CW
Dan Roberts & Ben Jacobs of the Guardian: "Bernie Sanders threw a last-minute hurdle in front of Hillary Clinton's march toward the Democratic party nomination on Tuesday by clinching a surprise victory in the Indiana primary. Despite trailing by an average of seven points in opinion polls and losing a string of bigger, more diverse states on the east coast, Sanders once again proved his appeal to disaffected midwest voters by pulling off his 18th victory of 2016, according to Associated Press projections.... He is well placed to pull off similar wins in West Virginia on 10 May and Oregon on 17 May, before a final showdown next month in California, whose 546 delegates present the biggest prize of the contest." -- CW ...
... Jeet Heer of the New Republic: "Sanders has been making a dubious argument for why he should stay in the race: that the Clinton-pledged superdelegates in states he's won should flip to him.... In truth, Sanders has a better argument for the staying in the race, one that was made by Clinton and her followers in 2008: When you have a mass movement, you owe it to your supporters to fight as long as possible to fight, in the words of Bill Clinton, 'until the last dog dies.'... He owes it to his supporters in California and other late states to give them a chance to vote." -- CW
With 33 percent of the Democratic primary vote counted in Indiana, Bernie Sanders leads with 51.6 percent to Hillary Clinton's 48.4 percent. With 64 percent counted, Sanders is leading Clinton 53.2-46.8. The race is too close to call. NBC News declared Sanders the winner at about 9:13 pm ET. With 73 percent reporting, the AP called the race for Sanders. Polls this past week had put Clinton out in front, one or two by quite a hefty margin.
With a heavy heart, but with boundless optimism for the long-term future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign. -- Ted Cruz
Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times: "Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is ending his presidential campaign, according to his campaign manager, bowing to the reality that his crushing loss in Indiana all but assured the nomination of Donald J. Trump." -- CW: It was all about the "basketball ring." Now Cruz can go back to his day-job, which requires shutting down the federal government, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work & costing the economy billions. ...
... Claire Landsbaum of New York: "... the last memorable moment of his campaign will forever be that time he accidentally elbowed his wife in the face not once -- but twice":
... CW: Totally unfair to Heidi. Ted should have shoved Carly Fiorina off the podium.
... Dave Weigel, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump became the Republican party's presumptive presidential nominee on Tuesday night, after Trump's closest rival -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) -- withdrew from the race, following a crushing victory by Trump in the Indiana primary. The GOP's chairman, Reince Priebus, called Trump the 'presumtive [sic] GOP nominee' in a Twitter message about 9 p.m., and added a plea that 'we all need to unite and focus on defeating' Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton." CW ...
... Jonathan Martin & Patrick Healy of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump won Indiana's Republican primary on Tuesday, moving him closer to claiming the party's presidential nomination and delivering a devastating blow to Senator Ted Cruz and other Republicans hoping to stop him." -- CW ...
Gregor Aisch, et al., of the New York Times: "If Donald J. Trump maintains his current level of support in the remaining races, he will win a delegate majority before the convention." -- CW ...
... Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast: "On the night he got everything he said he wanted, Donald Trump looked miserable...No longer the insurgent outsider, he's now faced with a choice. He can continue to be himself, peddling conspiracy theories and insulting every foe with the sophistication of a preteen mean girl. Or he can start acting like a statesman and risk losing the people who love him the way he is." --safari ...
... Jonathan Chait: "It is fitting that Donald Trump has essentially locked up the Republican presidential nomination on the same day he made yet another bizarre and senseless (that is, lacking any discernible purpose) comment by accusing Ted Cruz's father of having conspired to kill President Kennedy.... [Trump] is, as his rivals have described him, a charlatan, a con artist, a congenital liar, a man self-evidently unfit for office at any level, and especially the presidency.... Virtually the entire Republican apparatus will follow Trump sooner or later, because without the voters, they have no power. And those voters have revealed things about the nature of the party that many Republicans prefer to deny." -- CW ...
... Steve M.: In the general election, "We know that Trump will spread the most absurd gossip [about Hillary & Bill Clinton] on the campaign trail because he's spreading this story about Ted Cruz's father [& Lee Harvey Oswald] now." -- CW ...
... The Crazy Uncle Who Would Be President. Benjy Sarlin of MSNBC: "... whether by choice or by nature, [Trump] appears fundamentally unable to distinguish between credible sources and chain e-mails.... Many of the most egregious examples of Trump's false claims have a strong racial and ethnic component. Tuesday's JFK story was a perfect example: A smear whose effect was to make Ted Cruz and his Cuban-born father appear strange, foreign, and untrustworthy.... Underlying Trump's position [on immigration] ... is a fact-free conspiracy theory that charges the Mexican government with deliberately sending 'rapists' and other criminals to the United States."
... CW: If we assume that Trump actually believes these conspiracy theories, then it's also safe to assume that these beliefs are a sign of creeping senile dementia. I am not kidding about this. I think it entirely possible that Trump is less "pathological liar," as Cruz claims, & more a pathetic lunatic.
... Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "The general election, [Donald Trump] suggested in an interview, will not find him dialing back his scorched-earth approach to winning. 'Her past is really the thing, rather than what she plans to do in the future,' Trump said. 'Her past has a lot of problems, to put it bluntly.'" -- CW
Molly Ball of The Atlantic: "Where were you the night Donald Trump killed the Republican Party as we knew it?...But the party was broken before Trump came along, and Cruz helped to break it." --safari
John Avalon in The Daily Beast: "The Republican Party woke up in Trump Tower after Election Day, lying in a marble bathtub full of ice. Its back hurt and a kidney was missing. Hitting rock bottom hadn't come overnight. The troubles had been brewing for years, well before it sealed the deal with Donald Trump one night in Indiana." --safari
Daily Beast: "After Donald Trump’s Indiana victory and Ted Cruz’s subsequent campaign dropout, Sen. Elizabeth Warren posted a series of tweets criticizing the presumptive nominee. 'There's more enthusiasm for [Trump] among leaders of the KKK than leaders of the political part he now controls,' she wrote, adding that the controversial real-estate mogul 'built his campaign on racism, sexism, and xenophobia.'" --safari
Eric Levitz of New York: "The most revealing debate of the 2016 primary was held on the side of a road in Marion, Indiana, on Monday. In a widely circulated video, Ted Cruz asks a Trump supporter wearing dark sunglasses and a contemptuous grin to kindly explain what he finds so appealing about the Donald. 'Everything,' the man replies.... With patience and courtesy, the Texas senator tries to engage his interlocutor in a fact-based discussion of Trump's merits as a candidate, only to be rebuffed and then humiliated by the ecstatic epistemological closure of the Trumpen proletariat....Cruz didn't lose the Republican primary because of his commitment to principle and reason; he lost because he is the second-most-talented liar his party has to offer." -- CW
With 29 percent of the voted counted, the AP has called the Indiana primary race for Donald Trump, who leads with 53.5 percent of the voted, followed by Ted Cruz with 35.7 percent & John Kasich with 8.1 percent.
The New York Times has Indiana results here.
The New York Times' Indiana primary liveblog is here.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Isaac Chotiner of Slate: "On Tuesday night, one of our two major political parties was captured -- or rather consumed -- by a bigoted quasi-fascist and fraud, a dangerously unstable demagogue.... The Republican Party is now a white nationalist party, or at least a party with a white nationalist as its figurehead.... And yet ... our larger cultural response -- at least as seen through our television media -- will seem incomprehensible. On TV Tuesday night, there was hardly a whimper.... Large chunks of the media have spent so long domesticating Trump that his victory no longer appeared momentous. He is the new normal.... It was as if CNN had decided to cover 9/11 as a story about real estate in Lower Manhattan...." -- CW
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton ... fired back at one high-profile [protester] who had stood outside her West Virginia event on Monday. 'I heard Mr. Blankenship was outside my event yesterday protesting me,' Mrs. Clinton said on Tuesday, referring to Donald L. Blankenship, the former chairman and chief executive of the Massey Energy Company. Mr. Blankenship, one of the wealthiest men in Appalachia, was sentenced in April to a year in prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards after an explosion killed 29 men in 2010.... 'If Donald Trump wants the support of someone like that, he can have it,' Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, said at a rally here on Tuesday, pointing to legislation she supported that would put into effect additional workplace safety measures and attempt to hold executives accountable." -- CW
It Depends on the Meaning of "Working Class." Nate Silver: "It's been extremely common for news accounts to portray Donald Trump's candidacy as a 'working-class' rebellion against Republican elites. There are elements of truth in this perspective.... [But] As compared with most Americans, Trump's voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data.... It's well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It's also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both." CW: So Trump supporters are actually just selfish, aggrieved bigots, or as Paul Waldman labels them, jerks. ...
... Paul Waldman in the Week: "... America's worst people, who were terrible before this election began and will be terrible after it's over, have found their champion.... Trump's success so far is proof that we have more than our share of jerks here in America, and they're coming out for him in force." -- CW
Alex Roarty of Roll Call: A study shows that anti-Trump ads can dissuade some women from voting for him, but the ads have no effect on men. Via Paul Waldman.
Dana Milbank: In my Chevy Chase neighborhood, "a heavyset white woman shouting at, and then pouring a bottle of liquid onto, a woman in a Muslim headscarf seated outside a Starbucks on a recent weeknight. Police are investigating a possible hate crime. The victim said the attacker called her a 'worthless piece of Muslim trash' and a 'terrorist.' And the attacker said she was supporting Trump because he would send the Muslims 'back to where you came from.'" CW: That would be to Minneapolis, where the victim was born.
Alex Seitz-Wald of MSNBC: "Mark Salter was for years [John] McCain's closest aide, serving as strategist, speechwriter, Senate chief of staff and biographer to the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. But now, Salter says he'll break with the Republican Party if it nominates Trump and vote for Clinton instead. 'Basically, I think she's the more conservative choice and the least reckless one,' Salter told MSNBC in an email. '[Trump's] policy views are like some drunk's rant. If he tried to do anything like he says he will, we'd have no allies, a lot more enemies, and more of them with nukes. Finally, he's unfit for the office, too, temperamentally and morally, a narcissistic bigot.'" -- CW ...
... Eli Stokols of Politico: "Steve Schmidt, the GOP strategist who ran McCain's 2008 campaign..., predicted that 'a substantial amount of Republican officials who have worked in Republican administrations, especially on issues of defense and national security, will endorse Hillary Clinton in the campaign.'" -- CW
Matt Flegenheimer: "Senator Ted Cruz, who for months last year embraced Donald J. Trump as a force for good in the Republican presidential race, unburdened himself as never before on Tuesday in a searing, personal barrage hours before the Indiana primary. 'I'm going to do something I haven't done for the entire campaign,' he told reporters in Evansville, Ind. 'I'm going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump.'" -- CW ...
This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying. -- Ted Cruz, on Donald Trump ...
This is going to make things awkward when Cruz endorses Trump. -- Paul Waldman
Presidential? Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Ted Cruz hurled every slight in the book at Donald Trump on Tuesday, but it might not be enough to stave off a debilitating defeat in Indiana. The Texas senator is bracing for a loss that could cripple his chances to block Trump's ascent to the Republican presidential nomination. He spent his morning skewering the New York billionaire -- 'utterly amoral,' 'a serial philanderer,' 'a pathological liar' and even ridden with venereal disease. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Akhilleus: Liar? Check. Amoral? Check. Philanderer? Check. Venereal disease? Wow. Ted's hackers must be working overtime. Melania may want to visit the doctor. Is this the sort of temperament we need in a president? Cruz is a whiny, bullying, holier than thou hypocrite. But calling Trump a pathological liar is rich coming from a guy whose greeting "Nice morning, isn't it?" would have to be fact checked.
... ** Robert Schlesinger of US News: "Perhaps the most unexpected twist of the campaign season is that I just watched an extended rant by Ted Cruz on television and agreed with just about every word he said. I didn't think it was possible for me to agree with Ted Cruz for any period of time, whether on philosophy or substance (where he often, ahem, seems to reside in his own special reality) -- this is through-the-looking-glass, end-of-days-type stuff. The topic, of course, was Donald Trump." -- CW
Senate Races
Nora Kelly of The Atlantic: "As battleground-state Republican senators glad-hand their way through recess this week, Democrats and conservative groups alike are working to make sure constituents bug members about Merrick Garland, the Obama administration Supreme Court pick whose nomination has stalled in the upper chamber.... In recent days, the Washington-centric battle has moved firmly to senators' home turf." --safari
Other News & Views
Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "President Obama will travel to Flint, Mich., on Wednesday to hear firsthand from residents about the public health crisis caused by contaminated water and to learn more about the highly criticized government response to the problem. The president is traveling there after an appeal from an 8-year-old girl, Mari Copeny, who asked to meet with the president when she went to Washington for a Flint hearing on Capitol Hill in March. Instead, the president will travel to Flint and meet with her there." -- CW
Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "President Obama is poised to declare the first-ever national monument recognizing the struggle for gay rights, singling out a sliver of green space and part of the surrounding Greenwich Village neighborhood as the birthplace of America's modern gay liberation movement.... Protests at the site, which lasted for six days, began in the early morning of June 28, 1969 after police raided the Stonewall Inn, which was frequented by gay men. While patrons of the bar, which is still in operation today in half of its original space, had complied in the past with these crackdowns, that time it sparked a spontaneous riot by bystanders and those who had been detained." -- CW
"The Best Healthcare System in the World." Ariana Cha of the Washington Post: A new study, "published in the BMJ [CW: whatever that is] on Tuesday, shows that 'medical errors' in hospitals and other health care facilities are incredibly common and may now be the third leading cause of death in the United States -- claiming 251,000 lives every year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer's." -- CW
Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "Citizens United let rich people buy candidates; now they may be able to purchase office-holders, too. That's the message from the Court's argument last week in the appeal of Bob McDonnell, the former governor of Virginia.... The same concept is at the heart of both the Citizens United and McDonnell cases.... In both cases..., the Court seems determined to define quid pro quo so narrowly that it's practically impossible to find." -- CW
Campbell Robertson & Timothy Williams of the New York Times: "Conservative state lawmakers around the country are pressing to weaken an array of gun regulations, in some cases greatly expanding where owners can carry their weapons. But the legislators are encountering stiff opposition from what has been a trusted ally: law enforcement." -- CW
Ha. Ha. Good for This Guy. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A citizen gadfly in Maryland has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Senate leaders' decision not to act on President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Liberal activist Brett Kimberlin filed the suit against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley late last month in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt.'"Defendants have waived their right to advice and consent by (a) stating publicly and on the Senate floor that they refuse to advise and consent on the nomination of Merrick Garland, (2) putting pressure on other Republicans not to advise and consent, and (3) refusing to advise and consent,' the suit asserts." -- CW
Paul Duggan & Lori Aratani of the Washington Post: "Throughout [Washington, D.C.'s subway system] Metro’s 40-year history, the National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly raised questions about the agency's safety culture that have not been adequately addressed, its three-jurisdiction governance model has proven 'uniquely dysfunctional' and the federal agency that sought safety oversight of the transit agency has made recommendations that are 'non-enforceable.' That summary, from NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart, came during his opening statement Tuesday at the meeting where the panel will present its findings about the probable cause of the Jan. 12, 2015, smoke crisis in a Yellow Line tunnel near Metro's L'Enfant Plaza station." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... New Lede: "Metro's long history of deficiencies -- including poor maintenance, a loose safety culture, a blindness to potential hazards and a chronic failure to learn from previous disasters -- all contributed to last year's deadly smoke crisis in a Yellow Line tunnel, federal officials said Tuesday in a report that reads like an indictment of the beleaguered transit agency."
Beyond the Beltway
Elliot Hannon of Slate: Nathan Deal, "Georgia's Republican governor, vetoed Tuesday a campus carry bill broadly supported by his own party and easily passed by the state legislature that would have allowed college students to carry concealed guns on campus at the state's public colleges and universities.... Each of the 29 presidents of public institutions and their police chiefs all opposed the bill." CW: What with his also vetoing the so-called "religious liberty" bill last month, one might think Nathan Deal, who is term-limited, is the last responsible Republican in the South.
Benjamin Weiser and Vivian Yee of the New York Times: " Sheldon Silver, who rose from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to become one of the state's most powerful and feared politicians as speaker of the New York Assembly, was sentenced on Tuesday to 12 years in prison in a case that came to symbolize Albany's culture of graft. The conviction of Mr. Silver, 72, served as a capstone to a campaign against public corruption by Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, which has led to more than a dozen state lawmakers' being convicted or pleading guilty." Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker offers a history of Mr. Bharara's career. -- Akhilleus (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times: "The surprising departure of Jed Bernstein last month after just 27 months as president of Lincoln Center was prompted not by a change in career plans, as announced, but by the discovery that he ... had been in a consensual relationship with a woman in her 30s who worked for him -- and whom he had twice promoted...." -- CW
Jennifer Rankin of the Guardian: "Doubts about the controversial EU-US trade pact are mounting after the French president threatened to block the deal.François Hollande said on Tuesday he would reject the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership 'at this stage' because France was opposed to unregulated free trade...The gulf between the two sides was highlighted by a massive leak of documents on Monday, first reported by the Guardian, which revealed irreconcilable differences on consumer protection and animal welfare standards." -- safari
News Ledes
Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Prince was found dead one day before he was scheduled to meet with a California doctor in an attempt to kick an addiction to painkillers, an attorney with knowledge of the death investigation said Tuesday." -- CW
AP: "The entire population of the Canadian oil sands city of Fort McMurray, Alberta, has been ordered to evacuate from a wildfire that officials said destroyed whole neighborhoods.... The wildfire, whipped by unpredictable winds on a day of unseasonably hot temperatures, worsened dramatically in a short time and many residents were given little notice to flee." -- CW
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Reader Comments (12)
Mark Salter makes the best case for Hillary v. Bernie. Salter, a long-time aide & confidante to John McCain, says in a Hillary-Donald contest, he'll vote for Hillary because she is "the more conservative choice." That is, even if responsible conservatives consider her domestic policy proposals to be liberal pablum, she's a friend of Wall Street & a competent foreign-policy hawk who is unlikely to embarrass the U.S. & cause world economic & political chaos. Trump? Well, yeah, chaos everywhere.
Marie
There are some just desserts in watching TC endeavour, for the first time in his life, have a fact based conversation, with trumpoids. Whilst he stood his ground, these guys were having none of it. No namby pamby libturd facts for them. They've learnt from the master. It is frightening how proudly remote from sanity the trumpoids are. I worry that the DNC and HRC are not ready for this, and have no realistic strategy. They simply can't fathom this other mindset. HRC needs to campaign as if trump is not there. Go after the people who are appalled by him and Get Out The Vote.
BMJ = British Medical Journal
Gloria is worried that Hillary will not be prepared to deal with Trump's prick pomposity and looney tunes. I'd like to think she'll be armored well. Her experience with that "right-wing conspiracy" during her husband's reign toughened her up for almost anything. She's had to deal with foreign leaders who gave her sleepless nights and upset tummies. What I worry about is how many of these "jerks" are in this country that will vote for Trump––obviously quite a few––who knew America was populated by so many jamokes whose mindsets are crass and cruel and ignorant. But wait––weren't we seeing a lot of that in the Republican party's messages some time ago? Boy, oh, boy, sure is different when it hits you in the face.
Of all of Hillary's flaws as a candidate, the biggest is that she is a legacy candidate. Obviously, there's nothing she can do about that, but riding her husband's coattails greatly diminishes the accomplishment of becoming the U.S.'s first female president.
If Hillary had really cared about advancing equal rights rather than advancing Hillary Clinton, she would have urged another woman -- one who didn't gain power through her husband's influence -- to run for president last year.
No matter what Hillary does as president, the history books will depict her -- accurately -- as a woman who took over her husband's job after he was term-limited out. She will become a footnote to history, not a groundbreaker. Anybody remember Gov. Lurleen Wallace? Not many. But Gov. Ann Richards? Yeah.
The next female president, assuming Hillary becomes the first & the second didn't inherit the job from her husband or partner, will be dubbed "the first woman president in her own right."
Marie
Bemused or aghast? Disgusted or numb?
Many choices here this AM as American anger at the status quo boils over, propelling a racist blowhard to become one party's presumptive Presidential nominee and keeping the opposition's pot in a state of high simmer that is likely to last for a while yet.
Don't know that I'll have it all sorted out until the final votes are counted in the fall. Maybe then I'll know what I feel.
Now though, I do understand the anger. The sense that things are unfair and that many of our politicians have for years not been acting in the nation's best interests is no chimera. The evidence is clear even to the dullest and even when the dullest don't grasp the details of what has been happening to them, they still feel the wrongness deep in their bones. So they're angry and they want something, anything, to change.
No need to list all the sources of that anger here again, but the driving force behind the fundamental failure of our social and political systems remains economic. We've done our best to disguise that failure by braying the false equivalence of corporate capitalism and freedom for so long and so successfully that for most the source of the system's collapse, which is its un-sustainability, remains hidden.
Corporate capitalism has given us a Supreme Court that blinks at or can't identify bribery, a diminishing number of non-competetive airline monopolies that can still impose fuel surcharges when fuel prices are lower than they have been in decades, mass migrations caused by corporate trade agreements that disrupt established social orders, tax structures that are hammering the middle class out of existence, a corporate-controlled Congress unwilling and unable to act on the people's behalf, and continuing environmental degradation in the name of profit.
So now we're left with a racist capitalist, a woman who has too obviously been bitten and infected by the money bug, and and older man, bless him, who, in what might be his last hurrah, is still tilting at the gargantuan corporate capitalist windmill that powers the entire country.
I wish I were more optimistic about his chances...
Not Even as Good as Mickey Mouse.
I'm not sure MSM types have cottoned on to the seismic shift that took place yesterday in Indiana when a narcissistic creep, a textbook racist and misogynist who uses the National Enquirer as his daily briefing book, a guy who knows less about national and foreign policy than most high school B students, became the presumptive nominee for one of the the two national political parties in the United States of America.
News reports calmly begin: "Voters in Indiana have demonstrated overwhelming support for New York real estate developer and reality TV star, Donald Trump" when they should be saying "Holy shit! An idiot was just made the Republicans' presumptive nominee. What planet are we on?"
Way back in 1932, four years after Walt Disney released "Steamboat Willie", Mickey Mouse started showing up as a write-in candidate. Mickey and Al Capone received one vote each in the New York mayoral contest. Since then, Mickey and Donald Duck and other cartoon characters have regularly appeared on ballots, given write-in status as protest or joke votes but this is the first time one of them has actually won anything.
And sadly, Mickey Mouse is a much nicer person than Donald Trump.
I know, I know, when Trump first threw his hat into the ring, everyone laughed. But the laughs grew ever more nervous. The voting started and the laughter stopped. Now, outside of thugs, white supremacists, and other flaming assholes, who's laughing?
The Republican Party and Confederate media is entirely responsible for this outrage. Did Ted Cruz really just figure out over the last month or so that Trump is a fraud and a liar? Maybe it had something to do with Cruz being a fraud and a liar as well. But from the get go, Cruz, ever the egocentric, hypocritical, cynical schemer, left Trump alone because he didn't want to upset the thugs who glommed onto the orange headed clown. He was figuring that Trump would crash and he would pick up the racists and misogynists. Great idea, Ted. It never occurred to him what a bad thing it would be for the country for Donald Trump to gain the levers of power, so he did nothing. He kept his big mouth shut about Trump. Then when it was too late, he started crying about how a vote for Trump was a vote for evil. Just figuring that out now, Ted? Another asshole.
Then he starts whining about "policy". Really? Trump's supporters don't give a shit about policy. Neither do Ted Cruz's. Neither do supporters of so-called genius policy wonks like Lyin' Ryan.
The GOP electorate has been bred to a culture of victimization, hatred, racism, and more hatred. An object lesson for all those Confederates who still don't believe in evolution. The last two generations of Republicans would have given Darwin enough examples of social evolution to fill up three or four sequels to "Origin of the Species". The astounding evolution of these people, from a class of voters who once put Dwight Eisenhower into office to the current group now lining up to vote for a cartoon character--who isn't even as good as Mickey Mouse--would pop the pennies off the eyelids of dead Irishmen. Hell, forget about finch beaks. Republicans went from a respected war hero to a mustache twirling cartoon villain. Now that's evolution. Or perhaps devolution...
And already we see the normalization of Trump. In a couple of months when Trump is on with Upchuck Todd and starts spouting off about all the people Hillary has had killed, Todd will nod politely and ask Drumpf if he is still planning on nuking Syria his first day in office, all without blinking, acting as if this isn't the most surreal moment in television history.
So thanks, Roger, thanks, Rupert, thanks Clear Channel, thanks Rush, and a great big thank you to Ted Cruz.
They are all implicit in the apotheosis of an asshole.
Ken,
You are entirely correct about the anger out there. I'm guessing that plenty of Republican voters have realized that they've been had. And have been for decades, by contemptuous pols who promise to make them lords over all the hated minorities and liberals but then bend over for the banks and money men and forget all about those promises.
The word "dysfunction" makes the party sound too productive and effective.
But because they've also been bred to discount facts and critical thinking, opting instead for Decider style gut reactions, they are perfect targets for someone like Trump (and, Cruz, and Gohmert, and Ryan and all the other liars). Trump is just better at it.
The Powell Memo has proven to be too effective. It has elicited a culture of power at all costs and, of course, lying is a much easier way to attack your enemies while bolstering your own bona fides and abilities. But all that has caught up to them.
But I have to say that, despite Hillary Clinton's experience in dealing with the Right-Wing Conspiracy, I'm not sure anyone can say she's been entirely effective at freeing herself from its influence. Cruz might have been a tougher candidate, but once the normalization of Trump is complete, and the MSM starts treating him as if he's Teddy Roosevelt, it may still be a rough ride.
It was Winston Churchill who said:
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."
Yup. He was so right. Sigh.....
How about a Red State update on the electoral temperature, post-Indiana?
A rock-ribbed Republican acquaintance who had previously been vociferous in his denunciations of Donald Trump, today, when confronted with the disaster that is Trump, countered, testily, that he could say a lot of bad things about Hillary too, that she'd be even worse for the country.
They're lining up, kids. Some may still say "Never Trump", but plenty who heretofore had declined the honor of serving Herr Drumpf, will put on the arm band and goosestep right along with him.
It's begun.
...on the other hand...
Adopting a more reflective stance, I'm inclined to wonder whether or not Trump has what it takes to rein it in for the general. (Rhetorical question alert)
Case in point, here he is, the night before Indiana. Polls show a commanding lead (his victory exceeded even the wild numbers he was up by), and he comes out with this crazy-ass story about how Ted Cruz's dad helped kill JFK. A story from the fucking National Enquirer!!!
Was that really necessary? Of course not. The guy just can't help himself, I guess. He has no brakes on his mind or his mouth and no one around to tell him different.
And with only two candidates left to talk about--and listen to--for the next six months or so, there will be many opportunities for Trump to open mouth and insert foot.
Maybe the Enquirer will come out with a story about Hillary and Huma Abedin in some lesbian, transgender S&M sex party held in a White House bathroom while the Obamas videotaped the whole show.
And remember, Drumpf has Roger Stone, winner of the Lifetime Asshole Achievement Award, on his payroll. This is the guy who suggested that Bernie Sanders was a Soviet agent who should be shot for treason (never mind that the Soviet Union has not existed for a quarter of a century).
A few more talking points like that for Herr Drumpf, and we may not have much to worry about.
Maybe.
PD, I have no doubt that HRC is tough. I am concerned that the Dems, based on their past performances, can't keep their messaging tight and effective. I was relying on Bill to do this, as Explainer in Chief, but he has not so far. Perhaps health issues have affected him. He is clearly being restrained. I could be wrong, but I believe Gore was mistaken in not using him in his campaign, and Hillary would be disadvantaged to gag him. Unless there is something going on we don't know about, health or such. Bill is looking somewhat frail. This needs to be a targeted campaign, able to pierce the skulls of low info, disengaged moderates, with strong, concise messaging, such as the Cons excel at.