Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

The lights are all blinking red.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Monday Morning Open Thread: Everything’s Political

Monday Morning Open Thread: Everything’s Political

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repub - lapel pin - can get fuzzy

(Get Fuzzy via GoComics.com)
.

Speaking of cartoon animals, when did Joe Scarborough fall out of love with Trump? From the Washington Post, “Donald Trump’s Chicago scam”:

… Has anyone noticed that Trump’s campaign now regularly stages media events designed to eclipse any negative coverage that predictably follows Republican debates?…

When news broke early Friday night that the Chicago rally had been cancelled because of safety fears, you didn’t need to be a programming genius to predict what would be jamming America’s airwaves for the rest of the night. And for the next four hours, the candidate who is promising to weaken libel laws spoke on cable news channels about how his First Amendment rights were being violated. He was doing all of this while reaching a far larger audience than he could have ever done while actually speaking at a rally…

The rally was cancelled, we were told, because law enforcement officials consulted with the campaign and concluded that scrubbing the event was in the best interest of public safety. One problem: The Chicago Police Department said that never actually happened.

And if you find that curious, perhaps you will find it even more interesting that a political campaign whose security has been so stifling as to draw angry comparisons to fascist regimes would plan a key rally for Trump in the middle of a racially diverse urban campus. The fact that that campus sits in the middle of a city that is so Democratic that it has not elected a Republican mayor since before Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in as president makes the venue’s selection even more bizarre.

Following the rally’s cancellation, Trump supporters expressed surprise at the number of protesters that were filling the lines and streaming into the event on a campus that is 25 percent Hispanic, 25 percent Asian and 8 percent black. William Daley, the son of former Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, did not share that surprise. “Whoever picked that location knew what they were doing as far as poking that sleeping dog there,” Daley suggested to the New York Times that the venue was staged for the purpose of provoking protests that would energize Trump’s own supporters…

***********
Apart from the neverending circus, what’s on the agenda as we start another week?

Reader Interactions

299Comments

  2. 2.

    raven

    Scarborough has been critical of Trump for months. He also has correctly predicted his rise.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Happy Pi Day everyone. I even woke up at the Pi Moment. Well, my clock said 2:02, but it’s always wrong so I’m calling it 1:59

  8. 8.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Heard a bunch of news choppers overhead this even; turns out a dude lifted a West Covina cop car and led the cops on a high speed chase to downtown LA and then up to Glendale, about a mile from my cave. It ended in a shootout with a white sheet over the stolen cop car.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Randy P: Hmmmm…. It occurs to me Pi Moment (second to the Nth decimal place) should be measured at the international date line, which means it actually occurred yesterday and I missed it.

  12. 12.

    Bruuuuce

    @OzarkHillbilly: Why? You can have 24 of them. locally measured.

    Of course, NONE of them is ISO, because that Pi Day won’t happen until 3141, but hey, at least the kids are off my lawn :-)

  13. 13.

    Amir Khalid

    What is this Pi Day you speak of? It’s 14/3/2016.

    @Mustang Bobby:
    Imagine Trumpistas vs. Bernistas at a Bernie rally. The Donald has been hinting that his people might come by. That could get ugly too.

  16. 16.

    Amir Khalid

    On Salon’s front page right now is a story describing “Bill Clinton’s odious presidency”, a hatchet job with the hatchet aimed at his wife. I don’t think I’ve seen one of those before in American politics. At the very top is a dubiously argued rehash of the “Our likely nominee can’t win” argument against Hillary.

  17. 17.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Amir Khalid: I disagree. Senator Sanders has never encouraged his supporters to violently oppose his detractors. In fact, Senator Sanders stepped aside when BLM protesters disrupted one of his speeches on the West Coast. You cannot compare Trump with Sanders and assume that their supporters will react the same way to disruptions.

  18. 18.

    Mustang Bobby

    George Takei notes on Twitter that if you round Pi to the ten-thousandth place you get 3.1416, which is today, and since we celebrate Pi Day by eating pie and pies are round, Happy Round Pi Day.

  19. 19.

    EconWatcher

    It’s an interesting possiblity that Trump picked UIC knowing that there would be a huge backlash there, which he could then stoke to say his right to speak was violated. But I’m not sure if he’s that “eleven dimensional.” Let’s not make this guy bigger than he is.

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid: “Bill Clinton’s odious presidency”, I remember those horrid times well. Good thing Bush came along to rescue us from all that peace and prosperity.

  25. 25.

    Currants

    A not-politics blog: Can anyone recommend a good place to get a simple (low) garden gate? Approx 36h x 44w or so. Mine has finally completely given up the ghost (it was a makeshift thing but was perfectly functional for 7 years). I don’t really want to bother making one, but I could if I had to (so links to plans would work, I guess).

  28. 28.

    EconWatcher

    @Mustang Bobby:

    I think we may finally be seeing the self-destruction of Trump; if he can’t see the need for even a perfunctory and insincere condemnation of a moron who gratuitously punched a guy being escorted away, I think he’s taken it all a step further than he can survive.

    But if not, I do think Trump has a nice line of attack against Hillary as a tool of Wall Street. “I’m filthy rich, and I can’t be bought. But I’ve bought plenty of politicians like Hillary, because sadly that’s how the game is played. We can all see that the investment banks bought Hillary for $700,000, even right after bringing the world economy to its knees.”

    Those speaking fees will be the gift that keeps on giving.

  29. 29.

    Ryan

    Since at least the KKK issue, probably before. Remember, JoScar believes in the theory that if only the Republicans would nominate a True Conservative (TM), they’d win the Presidency. He fails to explain why the party always nominates the wrong person. The real problem here is that Joe concludes that Donald still has a chance to do the work to become a real leader. But why wouldn’t he when what’s worked so far as worked so well? The other problem is that Joe won’t acknowledge the role of the Right in promoting the knownothingism that made the rise of Trump possible. A party of rubes indeed.

  30. 30.

    Nemo_N

    CNN is running a whole serious segment on how some jokes Obama made in 2011 at Trump’s expense are the reason Trump is running. Therefore, Trump is Obama’s fault.

  31. 31.

    HRA

    @Amir Khalid: @Amir Khalid:

    If you had followed Bill Clinton’s first campaign for president, you would know he said “you get 2 for the price of 1”. It was no secret that HRC was very active in his administration. In fact, she has spoken of it in this campaign.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    @EconWatcher:

    Different take from a reporter who was there.

    I had expected violence, I had expected arrests — both of which were now happening in the arena — but it had not occurred to me that Trump could be backed down. But he has been, and everyone in that room knows it.

    I tend to think he didn’t plan it because he lied about the Chicago police telling him to call it off. That looks more like damage control than a plan to me. Why did he have to lie?

  34. 34.

    Mustang Bobby

    @Nemo_N: The Grey Lady Paper of Record came to the same conclusion. So basically Trump is running to avenge being embarrassed on national TV. By that logic the Kardashians should be running.

    Oh, wait…

  36. 36.

    sherparick

    A broken clock is right at least twice every day. Trump knows show biz and he knows his “base” and nothing fires them up then the idea that their rights as white people were infringed on by Those People. It was great theater on Friday night and Saturday and Cable News (all of them) loved it.

    And yes, someone is going to get killed.

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @HRA:

    If I attributed all of Bill Clinton’s presidency to Hillary, she would end up with a net positive result. YMMV.

  39. 39.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mustang Bobby: Kim’s talked about running for mayor of Glendale.

    ETA: I should note that we do not elect our mayor, the title rotates among the city council members, and Kim does not live in the city.

  40. 40.

    debbie

    My boss’s boss, who majored in math, has memorized pi to 100 decimal places. What a waste of grey matter.

  42. 42.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Currants: They sell chain link fence gates that are app that size, at Lowes. Not sure what your install situation is but there is hardware for most applications available.

    I make simple gates out of treated 2x4s for my place. I rip a 2×4 if half for the verticals, and cut a full width 2×4 for top and bottom rails.(in the case of your measurements, 40 1/2″) Pre drill and screw it together with 2- 3″ ext grade screws at each butt joint from outside the 2x2s into the ends of the 2×4 rails. (if your cuts are square, the gate should be too, to check for squareness, measure the diagonals- if equal it is square) When this is done, lay the gate on a 2×4 running diagonally from a lower corner to a higher corner, mark and cut, then pre drill and screw it into place. Mount the gate with the lower end of the diagonal on the hinge side, if it is otherwise the gate will sag. That’s your frame. I use welded wire fencing on my place so I just use it to cover the gate not just because it is cheap and easy to work with, but because I always have some of it laying around. You can cover it with anything you feel like, 1×6 is always available and fairly cheap.

  43. 43.

    Chyron HR

    @EconWatcher:

    B-b-but what about the SPEAKING FEEEZ????!

    Clinton sure is lucky Sanders has never brought up those evil speaking fees or her campaign would already be over. How could she possibly survive anyone attacking her speaking fees?

  44. 44.

    Amir Khalid

    @HRA:
    I myself consider Hillary Clinton’s presence in the Bill administration a net positive. That is a big part of why I see her now as the best candidate for president in either party.

  45. 45.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @EconWatcher:

    “I’m filthy rich, and I can’t be bought. But I’ve bought plenty of politicians like Hillary, because sadly that’s how the game is played. We can all see that the investment banks bought Hillary for $700,000, even right after bringing the world economy to its knees.”

    Am I the only person who can spot the fatal flaw with that statement? Please Donald, say that. I beg you.

  47. 47.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Amir Khalid: It would look bad on Trump if his supporters were on video attacking Sanders’ supporters at a Sanders’ rally.

    @Amir Khalid: Apart from President Clinton’s cheating/affairs (which had nothing to do with the public), he was a great President. The economy was booming in the 90s. I have no idea why Salon has sunk so low as to argue that the Clinton years were “odious”. I am so thankful that I stopped reading Salon not long after President Obama’s election in 2008. They continue to promote Paglia’s word salad as deep thoughts.

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: No, that is not why he’s running. He’s running because he is a bloviating thin skinned gas bag of a narcissist who can’t take a joke.

  50. 50.

    Bruuuuce

    @Patricia Kayden: “Apart from President Clinton’s cheating/affairs (which had nothing to do with the public), _and repealing Glass/Steagall,_ he was a great President.”

    There. FTFY.

  53. 53.

    BruceFromOhio

    “Whoever picked that location knew what they were doing as far as poking that sleeping dog there,”

    Yes, they most certainly did. Il Douche is happy to continue playing checkers while everyone else is trying to make it a chess game and losing badly.

    Art of the Deal, indeed.

  54. 54.

    Amir Khalid

    @Patricia Kayden:

    It would look bad on Trump if his supporters were on video attacking Sanders’ supporters at a Sanders’ rally.

    Yes it would. Is it in Trump’s power to hold them back from doing it? I don’t know. I wouldn’t bet that Trump himself knows.

  55. 55.

    Weaselone

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    There are several intriguing comebacks to that line, many of which I am sure Hillary will undoubtedly think of. Unfortunately, I don’t think she could get away with using many of them.

  56. 56.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    This is more on “fair trade” if you’re interested. Jared Bernstein worked for Joe Biden in Obama’s first term.

    I think “viewing Americans primarily as consumers rather than workers” is a really important point, and not unconnected to the fact that the people who develop the policy do not hear from the other side- the “Americans as workers” side.

  59. 59.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid:

    Is it in Trump’s power to hold them back from doing it?

    He has no intention of holding back the dogs that he has sicced on Bernie’s supporters, and will sic on Hillary’s too when the time comes.

  62. 62.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I was just over at DK reading the Morning Pundit Roundup and the Clinton hatred is still in full swing, though one noble soul has a diary headed “I don’t hate Clinton I pity her.”

  63. 63.

    Peale

    @Baud: only the bad parts are worth discussing. Only the bad parts should be relevant to your cost/benefit calculations. No true progressive would ever go through the day without finding a reason to reimagine the 1990s as a time of great pain and sorrow.

  66. 66.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    I begin week 3 of work from purgatory. More useless video presentations to sit through with no clue what the new managements intent is or what they have planned for us. I have to start now, if I don’t decide to hang myself with my mouse cable I’ll stop by again tonight

  67. 67.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Weaselone: Here’s one Hillary can use:

    “If Donald Trump buys politicians like candy, why is he running for President? Because he can’t buy me.”

    Hillary? I give you that one free of charge.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    In Ohio he is attacking Sanders, not Sanders supporters. He’s insisting that Sanders is sending these people. I don’t know if it works because I don’t think a lot of people hate Bernie Sanders, even in the GOP base. Sanders has better favorable ratings than any of the rest of them, really. That’s probably partly because they have no idea who he is.

  70. 70.

    HRA

    @Amir Khalid:

    “I myself consider Hillary Clinton’s presence in the Bill administration a net positive. That is a big part of why I see her now as the best candidate for president in either party.”

    I truly understand it very well. Some will not truly understand it as well when a person has to take charge for reasons not personally known by others.

  72. 72.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Sanders has better favorable ratings than any of the rest of them, really. That’s probably partly because they have no idea who he is.

    I bet my favorability rating would be through the roof.

  73. 73.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @Baud:

    Funny, I hope the security is flawed & Drumpfs brown shirts run wild. I want chair throwing, broken bottle wielding, fisticuffs & if a couple dozen handguns sneak in so much the better. I’m tired of playing nice with people who have no intent of returning the favor or even abiding by the least of the rules for civil behaviour

  76. 76.

    Cermet

    Happy Pi day and also to those lucky ones getting their MIT acceptance notices today – or maybe not so lucky relative to the infamous P-sets that take 8-10 hours a day (on average) … .

  77. 77.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @raven: I get the passion for Sanders. He’s inspiring, and frankly, I kind of love the guy. But I’ve always found the Clinton hatred puzzling. It’s like people are speaking in some code I don’t know.

    @Baud: It will not be pretty, which is too bad.

  78. 78.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Sanders is a better politician than I would have predicted. David Axelrod says he uses “value-laden” language and I think that’s true. People don’t really disagree with Democratic “values” in a knee jerk way – he’s hitting sort of universal “good” themes. It’s interesting. I wonder if that’s a better way to bring them in- get them to stick around for the policy by using broad themes they agree with.

  79. 79.

    gene108

    @Patricia Kayden:

    have no idea why Salon has sunk so low as to argue that the Clinton years were “odious”.

    Bill did not idiot proof the Presidency for his idiot successor, therefore the financial crisis of 2008, the stagnant economy of the aughts, the associated rise in income inequality and so on are all Bill’s fault.

  81. 81.

    Baud

    @Iowa Old Lady: I really can’t care about Daily Kos. When they’re good, they’re very good, but the community there has a split personality that makes them unreliable.

  82. 82.

    magurakurin

    @Iowa Old Lady: I don’t know, I don’t imagine it will be much to see. I think Marcos was really taken back a couple of weeks ago and I’m am willing to bet he has been monitoring things a bit more and has a list of names. They will zapped into the ether like mosquitos flying into the bug zapper on a hot August night. In fact, it is already calmer there as a large group have already been put on time out or banned. A lot of the saner Sanders supporters and most of the Clinton supporters are lying low lest they get swept up when the Scoops come in.

  84. 84.

    SFAW

    @Mustang Bobby:

    So basically Trump is running to avenge being embarrassed on national TV.

    “I’m not gonna let some uppity nig– uh, I mean Kenyan Mooslim embarrass me! I’m gonna do it myself!”

    In any event, he’s been banking on the long-term Rethug plan to destroy public education to keep a steady supply of morons supporters coming.

  87. 87.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Patricia Kayden: Thomas Frank is just continuing his “what’s the matter with Kansas” narrative, which is that the Democrats should have been embracing something like economic Sanders-ism all the way back in the Nineties to get working-class whites on board, instead of emphasizing cultural hot-button issues and “identity politics” and triangulating on economics.

    It’s impossible for me to imagine this actually working in the environment that prevailed back then, but my white lefty friends are eating it up.

  88. 88.

    raven

    Joe is bad but fucking Mika is way worse. She’s oozing about the “amazing things” Trump could do because he has so many followers.

  89. 89.

    Marc

    The Clinton administration was a distinctly mixed bag for liberals. It included welfare reform; it included a drastic escalation of criminal penalties at all levels; it included widespread repeal of financial regulations, and the bubbles that were generated led pretty directly to the great recession. Also DOMA and failed health care reform, leading directly to the loss of Congress – basically setting a pattern of almost uninterrupted republican control of the House after a 60-year Democratic streak. And things like NAFTA, which are not wearing well.

    There were good aspects too – Clinton made the Democratic party competitive again at the Presidential level, reduced the deficit, raised taxes on the rich, and presided over an economic boom. But we can now see the problems as well. They were real, and there are good reasons why liberals were unhappy with him even at the time.

  90. 90.

    Baud

    @Kay: He deserves credit for what he’s accomplished so far. I still have trouble seeing how his schtick is scalable to the party level, however. Hopefully, they find a way.

  92. 92.

    Marc

    @Matt McIrvin: Democrats basically treated union members in the 1990s as the equivalent of an embarrassing uncle, and the unions had zero support in fighting trade deals from the Democratic establishment.

    The political map was very different then – Democrats almost won Texas in 92 and 96, Republicans could compete in the west coast and northeast, and things were not nearly as regionalized or polarized as they are now.

  93. 93.

    Peale

    @Matt McIrvin: the 80s and 90s Dems would have been happy if voters would vote like the voters of old and Republicans behaved like those good ones your parents knew and that new issues never emerged. Those “hot button” issues didn’t pop up out of nowhere.

  94. 94.

    JMG

    Bill Clinton never pretended to be a conventional left-liberal. Never. Hillary Clinton has been a far more conventional Democrat as a Senator and now candidate. Thomas Frank has become a crank, which is too bad.

  95. 95.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    But I’ve always found the Clinton hatred puzzling. It’s like people are speaking in some code I don’t know.

    I understand it, to some degree. To present-day liberals, the Clintons represent the Democratic Party’s move toward the right, especially the economic right, during the 1990s. That was real. The welfare reforms that Bill Clinton signed have genuinely hurt a lot of people during the most recent recession.

    People forget that the DLC was a response to the Democrats getting clobbered in gigantic landslides in presidential elections, three times in a row, and the Republicans completely revolutionizing US politics and changing the way people saw the government. To pass some liberal agenda you actually have to get elected.

    Or, even if they do remember that, they think of Hillary Clinton (with some justification) as a creature of that past and want to be rid of it. That was part of the reason I supported Obama in 2008, to break free of the 1980s and 1990s when a Democrat had to say things like “the era of big government is over” and “end welfare as we know it” once and for all. We couldn’t completely manage it. But some of the Sanders movement is driven by that impulse as well. No more pretending to be Republican to win an election.

  97. 97.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    No more pretending to be Republican to win an election.

    I’d find that more credible if progressives had spent the last seven years actually winning more elections, particularly at the state and local levels.

  98. 98.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Marc:

    Also DOMA and failed health care reform, leading directly to the loss of Congress – basically setting a pattern of almost uninterrupted republican control of the House after a 60-year Democratic streak

    Eh, more like a 44 year streak, the Republicans had control of the House in the 80th Congress(elected in 1948). I’d attribute the loss in 1994 more to the Clinton Tax law and the gun control law. YMMV.

  99. 99.

    EconWatcher

    @Chyron HR:

    I think the speaking fees are a very big reason why Sanders has gotten much, much more traction than was generally expected when he threw his hat in the ring. He was supposed to be just a protest candidate. But overall, he’s been pretty genteel about it. Trump will not be.

    But your sarcastic response leads me to ask: You think it was a good idea for Clinton to take $700,000 in speaking fees from the aptly dubbed “vampire squid,” Goldman Sachs? After they helped bring the world to its knees, got massively bailed out (via AIG), and then quickly resumed paying fat bonuses? You see no problem there at all?

  101. 101.

    FlipYrWhig

    @JMG:

    Thomas Frank has become a crank

    Thomas Frank has had one idea in his life, and it’s “economic populism is good.”

    @Amir Khalid: Salon is a house organ for puerile pop-culture analysis. On Salon every piece of pop culture is racist and exclusionary, except for high-gloss pop music by women, which is radical and feminist. Everything is either counterintuitively BEST EVAR or counterintuitively WORST EVAR. It’s a ridiculous place frequented by ridiculous people.

  102. 102.

    Marc

    @Baud: Democrats controlled statehouses and were the vast majority of the governors in the 1980s. Democrats started losing state houses and congress…with the Clinton administration. We don’t think of the 1980s as a liberal era, so presidents define things a lot more than state houses. The new wrinkle is the willingness of the Republicans to break norms with what they do at the state level.

  103. 103.

    gogol's wife

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. I remember going to get the New York Times during Clinton’s presidency, and looking at the very boring front page, and thinking, “Gee, nothing ever happens any more.”

    Oh for those days.

  104. 104.

    FlipYrWhig

    @EconWatcher: Oh Jesus fucking Christ. At worst it’s mildly unseemly. Her VERY CONCERNING SPEECHES are a bunch of platitudes about the modern world. She’s a famous public figure. Donald Trump was making $1 million per speech and he’s an idiot who knows nothing.

  105. 105.

    Peale

    @Baud: DOMA was 1996 and was an attempt to do what Thomas Frank advises…tamp down on a hot button social issue. Jettison it from the party so that Dems could win in places like Kansas. Strangely, the issue didn’t go away, even though many Dems wanted it to.

  106. 106.

    Baud

    @Marc:

    The Dems had the benefit of incumbency and tribal voters through the eighties. Kim Davies of all people only left the party last year. If Clinton chased people away, it was because he was seen as liberal, not because he was seen as conservative.

    Think NAFTA. It was passed in 1993 on the backs of Republican votes, and the American voters responded by giving them a historical takeover of Congress. Clinton’s “neoliberalism” was not a negative in the 90s.

  107. 107.

    gvg

    @Kay: I am coming to the conclusion Trump is a compulsive liar. I have only encountered one real one before in my life but he was compelled to one up whatever anyone else said right then, even if he had just finished telling a different story that contradicted it. It was as if he didn’t realize people had memories. Example he said his wife was a Dr, because someone said their mother was a nurse, and the next day he said he wasn’t married. We had already met his wife and 2 daughters. By that point we were checking everything he said and his wife was a nurse. Also most people were just engaging in idle talk about their lives and interests and why did he see everything as competition? He couldn’t help it. Trump is really reminding me of that long ago manager (who got fired after a whole store of employees called the owner)
    Trump changes his story constantly even within these events. His supporters are morons with no grasp of logic but I think some of them will pick up on it.
    Trump is a good showman with good instincts about that but I don’t think something being illogical is any reason to conclude he didn’t intend to do something. It does make it harder to predict him though which is why a lot of business interests don’t like him.

  108. 108.

    bemused

    @Ryan:

    What the hell is a “true” conservative today? Republicans, conservatives are all over the map and there’s no consensus among any of them.

  110. 110.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Peale: Thomas Frank was on Chris Hayes talking about how the big split on the left happened not over the Southern Strategy but actually over Vietnam. If that’s true, it’s because the fabled “white working class” was… for the Vietnam War. Yeah, so, that was kind of a mistake, no? The labor movement in the 1960s and 1970s reamed itself.

  111. 111.

    Peale

    @EconWatcher: no. Would I have referred that the Clintons made money some other way than books and speeches? Sure. but I spent a bit of time working in corporate events organizing and the fee isn’t outrageous. I’d have a bigger problem if she had left office and went to work for a private equity firm or hedge fund and then tried to come back to public life.

  112. 112.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Baud:

    Clinton’s “neoliberalism” was not a negative in the 90s.

    Neoliberalism/pro-business positioning, governmental efficiency, some tough-on-crime stuff, and social tolerance are the reason why white suburbanites skew Democratic now. Populist liberals didn’t like any of those things when they were happening. Populist liberals also got their asses kicked in many consecutive elections, so there’s that.

  113. 113.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @EconWatcher: It’s not that it was a good idea (politically it certainly wasn’t), or that someone (can you say “Bernie”?) might be able to make hay of it, it’s that Donald Trump is the last person on Earth who can make good use of it.

  114. 114.

    NobodySpecial

    @Baud: At state and local levels, you still need to overcome both extreme gerrymandering and heavy financial support for your candidates. A lot of progressives are stuck in districts where their voting margins are tremendous because they’re intentionally suppressed.

    There’s more than one reason why we’re here, and the main one isn’t the Passion of the Liberals.

  115. 115.

    MrSnrub

    Working from home today, so I can see a presentation by my kid at school. Only to find out that he’s not presenting today, he’s presenting tomorrow, but parents can only come today.

    WTF?

  116. 116.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @FlipYrWhig: Plus, she made nearly $9M (see previous 2005 CBS link about finally paying off their lawyers) on royalties on just one book. G-S could buy her for a measly $650k? Really?

    Yeah, it’s a nice “truthy” talking point. I wish Democrats wouldn’t continue to keep complaining about it.

    J really dislikes Hillary and Bill. “Welfare Reform”, “Glass Stegal” “Rahm” “She claimed they were co-president so she has to take responsibility” “What has she done anyway?” And on and on. Rarely any mention of the opposition he had and its impact on the legislation. It’s kinda like they weren’t pure enough or something.

    (sigh)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  117. 117.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @FlipYrWhig:

    It’s a ridiculous place frequented by ridiculous people.

    Oh sh!t. I never go there. That doesn’t make me a serious person, does it?

  118. 118.

    gvg

    @Patricia Kayden: Trump however is threatening to have his supporters attack Sanders events if Sanders doesn’t call off his supporters. Note their is NO evidence Sanders has anything to do with the protests against Trump, but Trump is now scapegoating Sanders. A fascist type demagog scapegoating a rival who happens to be Jewish and Socialist…..haven’t we seen that before? I am appalled. Riots might not work as they should to cause a backlash if we are unlucky. I hope all the Democrats are making contingency plans to both protect their supporters and somehow make sure the threats backfire on Trump. I read it in TPM by the by.

  119. 119.

    Baud

    @NobodySpecial:

    Gerrymandering affects all Dems and it doesn’t affect governorships, senators, or mayoralities.

    And state and local primaries are extremely low turnout affairs. That’s how the tea party was so effective.

    It’s hard for everyone on our side. But in the end, there is no more persuasive argument than winning.

  120. 120.

    sherparick

    @Matt McIrvin: Frank simply has blind spot to the to the tangible and intangible psychic status of being white, most especially to the the Southern White Working Class (the Northern White Working Class is more divided – part of it is very class conscious and pro-union and not particularly religious. This group is the group Frank is mostly talking about. The other part of the Northern Working Class is more ethnic, identifies along religion and ethnic group, patriarchy, and hostility to Blacks and new migrants and toward the white “left” which undermines the values of the tribal hierarchy with which they identify. I call them “Northerners with Southern Sensibilities.”

    Between Obama derangement syndrome and the stew of racial resentment that the Republicans have been brewing and stirring these last 40 years, while basically stealing the country for their plutocratic paymasters, you get Trump. And since from the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Fox, they are told they only need to believe the information they want to believe and to keep on believing it even when it is pure bumpkin.

    “…Oh Chuck, Chuck, Chuck.

    If you had bothered to pay even peripheral attention to the state of the nation in which you live at any point over the last 20 years you would have noticed that the meatheads and bigots who have enlisted in the Trumpshirts make breakfast, lunch and dinner out of lies like this. They gorge themselves on internet hoaxes, bloody Fox News gobbets and ALL CAPS emails about secret UN plots against them and then they ask for seconds. And every time their dirty, commie Liberal friends prove that what they’re believing this week is sheer bunkum, they grunt out the same alibi — “Well, yeah, but Both Sides…” — and then waddle back to the Hate Radio banquet table.

    They. Don’t. Fucking. Care. Chuck.

    That’s the real story. The story you would rather gnaw your own arm off than cover…” http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2016/03/this-week-in-going-full-driftglass-neal.html

  121. 121.

    Marc

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I genuinely like both presidential candidates and will cheerfully support the winner, probably Clinton. I can also be frustrated by the sort of tone-deaf things that she does. Taking this money means that she can’t credibly employ populist attacks, because it makes her look like a hypocrite. It has proven to be an effective tactic to use against her in the primary, and the republicans will undoubtedly also use it effectively in the general election.

    These entirely predictable consequences, not corruption, are the reason why taking the money was a terrible idea for someone worth more than a hundred million dollars who was thinking of running for president. You don’t give your opponents free ammunition and you pay attention to trends in your own party – like the rise of income inequality and the unearned privilege of the rich.

  122. 122.

    Gimlet

    @sherparick:

    Frank simply has blind spot to the to the tangible and intangible psychic status of being white, most especially to the the Southern White Working Class (the Northern White Working Class is more divided – part of it is very class conscious and pro-union and not particularly religious. This group is the group Frank is mostly talking about.

    Doesn’t sound like that here.

    http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/03/14/has-bernie-sanders-been-underestimated/publics-disgust-with-the-democratic-party-propels-sanders

    Democrats habitually brush off economic despair with references to “globalization” and “technology,” as though their complicated free-trade deals were the unknowable doings of the Invisible Hand Itself.

    The problem is not changing the economic system, they say, it is adjusting ourselves to the changes sweeping the world. When they look at inequality, they see not economic failure but individual failure, usually having to do with education, a subject of pious reverence for the professional class.

    You’re falling because you didn’t study hard enough or you didn’t go to a good school or you majored in the wrong subject.

  123. 123.

    NotMax

    Anyone got the concession yet to hawk pitchforks and torches at Trump gatherings?

    Not run of the mill ones, either. Nothing but the classiest.

  124. 124.

    NobodySpecial

    @Baud:

    Gerrymandering affects all Dems and it doesn’t affect governorships, senators, or mayoralities.

    I would argue you’re wrong there. Gerrymandering, by promoting a plurality of ‘conservative’ districts, unduly warps the candidate selection process, and therefore the modeling of what a ‘good’ candidate is. That’s one reason why Blue Dogs kept magically appearing in leadership positions in the House and Senate. Also, one of the most potent arguments for the most conservative Democrats is ‘that’s the best we can get’. That’s a function of lazy state party apparatus rather than Insufficiently Passionate Liberals.

  125. 125.

    NobodySpecial

    @Gimlet:

    You’re falling because you didn’t study hard enough or you didn’t go to a good school or you majored in the wrong subject.

    Other than boilerplate ‘jobs retraining’ stuff, on which parallel Earth do you reside where bootstraps isn’t a Republican argument?

  128. 128.

    Gimlet

    @NobodySpecial: “Other than boilerplate ‘jobs retraining’ stuff, on which parallel Earth do you reside where bootstraps isn’t a Republican argument? ”

    http://time.com/3015682/obama-to-sign-bill-improving-worker-training/

    On Tuesday, President Obama and Vice President Biden will announce new executive actions on job training at the signing of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act

    The bipartisan, bicameral bill is a response to a projection that by 2022, 11 million workers will lack the education necessary to succeed in a 21st century workplace including bachelor’s degrees, associate’s degrees, and vocational certificates.

    “Workforce training is critically important to help grow the American economy still recovering from recession and bridge the widening skills gap separating thousands of unemployed workers from promising careers in 21st century workplaces,” said Senator Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) when the bill passed.

  129. 129.

    PurpleGirl

    The problem I see with saying that Trump is running this year for the presidency because President Obama dissed him is that President Obama isn’t running this year. He is term-limited, he’s had two terms and can’t run again. Trump is therefore running against the potential successor, so how does that work?

  130. 130.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NobodySpecial:

    That’s a function of lazy state party apparatus rather than Insufficiently Passionate Liberals.

    Sounds to me more like it’s a function of insufficient Passionate Liberals in the state party. State parties tend to reflect their membership.

  131. 131.

    currants

    @OzarkHillbilly: Thanks–especially for the hinge/sag tip. I’ll probably cover it with rabbit fencing, unless I can find a gate at Lowe’s that will work reasonably well (because that will take me less time, and I’d have to go there for the lumber anyway). Thanks again!

  133. 133.

    JMG

    @FlipYrWhig: Frank is half right. The Vietnam War alienated the left wing of the party from the old New Deal-Cold War party elite. Race was the driving factor in alienating white working class voters. That left the old elite with well, not much.

  134. 134.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Marc: President Clinton always seemed to have high ratings though even if some Liberals weren’t always happy about his policies. I remember an hilarious skit on SNL at the time which had his ratings going up to 100% after his impeachment.

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/116584/presidential-approval-ratings-bill-clinton.aspx

    @Matt McIrvin: What if there was nothing the Democrats could have done to attract White working class males? I think Frank is underestimating the amount of racial hostility that many White men have towards people of color. There’s not much Democrats can do to counter out and out racism. And to be quite honest, I prefer that racists go over to the Republican Party.

  135. 135.

    Punchy

    Somehow THIS happened and I missed it.

    Yes, Box Turtle Ben has journalistic standards. Or something. What slays me is that they thought something called “Brietbart News” or whatever would actually have any integrity or moxie.

    Good riddance to everyone involved.

    ETA: I may have my Bens mixed up. Either way, they’re all douchebags, so who cares?

  136. 136.

    Kay

    @gvg:

    Here’s a rundown of Trump’s compulsive lying- scores of lies in a single week.

    The result: more than five dozen statements deemed mischaracterizations, exaggerations, or simply false – the kind of stuff that would have been stripped from one of our stories, or made the whole thing worthy of the spike. It equates to roughly one misstatement every five minutes on average.
    From warning of the death of Christianity in America to claiming that he is taking no money from donors, the Manhattan billionaire and reality-show celebrity said something far from truthful many times over to the thousands of people packed into his raucous rallies. His remarks represent an extraordinary mix of inaccurate claims about domestic and foreign policy and personal and professional boasts that rarely measure up when checked against primary sources.

    Compare that to what has happened to a Presidential candidate who says something exaggerated or untruthful in a campaign in the past- Clinton’s “sniper fire” comes to mind.

    If Trump loses we are all going to see the real value of REALLY LONG political campaigns. Their weaknesses are exposed. He tells his fans he’s way ahead of Clinton in GE polls. There are going to be some angry people if he loses. It’s like “unskewing the polls” all over again. He’s already blaming “voter fraud” for losses, too.

  137. 137.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Iowa Old Lady: I don’t get the Secretary Clinton hatred either — especially from people on the Left. I was very puzzled by Christopher Hitchens’ visceral hatred of both Clintons. They have their flaws but they also have their positives. The way Republicans/Conservatives have demonized them is strange since many politicians on the Right have their own recurring issues with philandering and scandals.

  138. 138.

    EconWatcher

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    In a reasonable, rational world, yes, Trump would be the last person who should be able to make hay of it.

    But in case you haven’t noticed, American politics doesn’t operate on those principles. (John Kerry’s war record became almost a liability, for God’s sake, in a race against a guy who went AWOL while safely stateside.) And Trump has shown a gift for zeroing in on weaknesses and doing some serious damage, even if it’s completely hypocritical.

    And some of this talk is frankly amazing. It’s one thing to make money on speeches; another to take those kinds of fees from GS after the GFC. That sort of thing is powering Bernie and yes (even if completely hypocrtically) also Trump.

  139. 139.

    NonyNony

    @NobodySpecial:

    Also, one of the most potent arguments for the most conservative Democrats is ‘that’s the best we can get’. That’s a function of lazy state party apparatus rather than Insufficiently Passionate Liberals.

    No – it’s a function of a state party apparatus that Liberals have for a long time refused to become a part of – either because they don’t want to enter politics at all and think that voting should be sufficient or because they’d rather work for a third party alternative than do the hard work of trying to take the reigns of leadership in the Dem party in the state.

    Liberals basically gave up on partisan politics in the 1970s – opting instead to work with non-profits and try to do more charitable work than deal with politics at all. And it has taken a long, long time for younger liberals to realize that partisan politics is actually important. I think they finally are, but they’re still taking cues from the older liberals who have really skewed priorities when it comes to a view of how our politics work and it will probably take them awhile to realize that older liberals are kind of stupid when it comes to politics (like the idea that the Presidential race is the MOST IMPORTANT POLITICAL RACE EVAR – it’s important, but if you want to start a movement you need to take the state legislatures. Look at what Minnesota has been able to accomplish since they flipped their leg and governor – they’ve had amazing successes because of that effort. The focus on presidential politics is really dysfunctional.)

  140. 140.

    Peale

    @Patricia Kayden: yeah. Clinton actually managed what he had very well, considering. You might not get that big thing you wanted if the political downsides were too high, but he was good at the consolation prizes. If he recognized you as a group of voters you would walk away with something.

  141. 141.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Marc:

    Taking this money means that she can’t credibly employ populist attacks, because it makes her look like a hypocrite.

    “Yes, I have spoken before many business groups, including those in the financial sector. I have also served on corporate boards. I have always been an advocate for women in business and gender equity, I have pushed hard for those causes in my political and personal life, and I am proud to accept invitations to speak about my experiences as a woman in a male-dominated world.”

    There’s not just one Officially Approved Populist Attack, the Bernie Sanders kind, where you harangue banks for the bad things they do and then say to Break Them Up somehow through some unspecified angry means.

  142. 142.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Oh sh!t. I never go there. That doesn’t make me a serious person, does it?

    A) Your secret is safe with us
    B) If called on it, you can claim that your foot/leg problems (that was you, right? I can’t remember shit these days) prevented you from visiting that site.
    C) If all else fails, blame Obama

  144. 144.

    FlipYrWhig

    @NonyNony:

    Liberals basically gave up on partisan politics in the 1970s – opting instead to work with non-profits and try to do more charitable work than deal with politics at all.

    Good point. And two people who did this? Barack Obama, community organizer, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, children’s advocate.

  145. 145.

    GregB

    Trump, by force of will is going to keep Russia, China and Iran in heel but he can’t even keep a fucking campaign event from getting out of control.

  146. 146.

    Mike J

    @Baud:

    You know, in 20 years minutes, that’s how amped up young progressives will view the Obama administration.

    FTFY

  147. 147.

    Kay

    @gvg:

    Here’s my favorite Trump lie:

    “One of the polls just came out, and a number of them have just come out. I’m beating Hillary Clinton quite easily, thank you.” (March 7 in Concord, N.C. and at least one other time)
    Trump is likely referring to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll from mid-February, which showed him two points ahead of Clinton. A clear majority of other polls show she would beat him.

    He is saying this over and over again in Ohio. If he keeps it up in the GE and Clinton beats him there will literally be unrest in this state. No where are people as paranoid about “voter fraud” as in this state. I can’t even believe some of the conspiracy theories I hear. Republicans who live in the county they’re talking about will tell me there were “130k” votes for Obama “which is 99% like Russia” and there are only 45k people registered in the county.They ignore what they know to repeat the theory.

  149. 149.

    gvg

    @Currants: Lowes doesn’t have much on line but my local one has a couple of styles of wrought iron hook together panels in low sizes that look nice but it adds up if you want a whole fence as I am shopping for. A single gate would be more reasonable.

    Home depot has a much larger on line selection. Gate actually brings up too many choices, I had to narrow it to fence gate and it still gave me over a thousand hits, many looked near the right size but I don’t know your tastes.

    Both have no sag gate kits which are actually adjustable iron frames you can attach fencing too that match whatever else you have.

  150. 150.

    japa21

    Now, first disclaimer. I do not watch television 24/7. However, I have seen several political ads for tomorrow’s primary in Illinois. I can not say with certainty that I have not missed any.

    Every single one of Hillary’s I have seen have been positive. They feature her and refer to her policies, etc.

    Bernie’s are split. Some are positive pro-Bernie ads. But an equal number are attack Hillary ads, almost exclusively on the speaking fees, stating as close to outright as you can, that she is bought by Wall Street.

    Those ads are at best, misleading, and at worst, intentional character assassination without basis in fact.

    In Chicago, guns are a big issue, but I have not seen one ad going after Sanders for his stance on guns, which would be a more legitimate line of attack than his.

    Again, I may have missed something, and if so, I apologize. But I must say, this is a different Hillary than in 2008, and I like the changes I see.

  151. 151.

    Bill Murray

    @OzarkHillbilly: well my state used to have passionate liberals that won. now they have a bunch of pro-business moderate Democrats that don’t win. Mostly this switch started in the 90s and finished by about 2006 and I doubt there will be any Democrats of any sort elected statewide for the next 20 years at least.

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    @FlipYrWhig:

    the reason why white suburbanites skew Democratic now.

    What? White suburbanites don’t skew Democratic now, do they?

  153. 153.

    TG Chicago

    Does anybody have pics or video of anti-Trump protesters being the first to become physically violent or pro-Trump people being injured by anti-Trump protesters?

    I haven’t seen these things.

  154. 154.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @EconWatcher:

    And Trump has shown a gift for zeroing in on weaknesses and doing some serious damage,

    Against….? Republicans. Republicans are constrained in their attacks because they would have to attack their own base. They can’t do that.

    Here’s where I am coming from: Trump is the absolutely weakest general election candidate the GOP can nominate. Don’t take my word for it tho, listen to what the GOP themselves are saying. Getting only 35-40% support from Republican voters while the rest of the GOP does everything they can to destroy him, is not a recipe for general election victory. Yes, come the GE he will get 45-47% but that won’t get him the Presidency any more than it did Romney.

    All whoever our nominee is, whether H or B, all they have to do is laugh at him, point out the absolute ridiculousness of him, and then stand back and watch him implode on National TV.

    I have my Hillary bumper sticker all ready for the printers: “Hillary’s hands are bigger”, I’ll come up with something for Bernie too pretty soon. It won’t be hard.

  157. 157.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Kay: “Compare that to what happens to a Democratic Presidential candidate caught exaggerating or saying something untruthful.” IOKIYAR.

  158. 158.

    Bill Murray

    @Baud:

    Think NAFTA. It was passed in 1993 on the backs of Republican votes, and the American voters responded by giving them a historical takeover of Congress. Clinton’s “neoliberalism” was not a negative in the 90s.

    Republicans have long been supposed to crap on the working class, Democrats weren’t. I know 8 or 10 people who quit voting for Democrats in the 90s and most of them quit voting for any D because they were fairly religious and no longer had any reason to support a Dem. Also, I have had to be welfare for several family members who got hosed by the combination of lack of welfare and the financial crash of 2008.

  159. 159.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW:

    C) If all else fails, blame Obama

    Whew! Glad I still have that one. My wife is getting kinda tired of it tho.

  161. 161.

    EconWatcher

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I see Trump as a very high rolling candidate for the Republicans: very high risk, but in an election they have very little chance of winning without taking some big risks. A Hail Mary pass.

    I think Hillary would squash little Marco like a bug (Rick Lazio redux), and Cruz would lose much like Goldwater. The most likely outcome for Trump is also a big loss. But he throws in an element of unpredictability that others don’t.

    It is conceivable that he could pull in a good number of white blue-collar traditional Dems who would have otherwise stayed home or voted D. (Of course, he will repel other potential R voters.)

    But having an R candidate who is anti-Iraq War, supposedly anti-Wall Street and Big Donor, anti-trade, anti-immigration, and at least nominally pro Social Security and universal health care? You can say that some or all of this is self-contradictory and hypocritical, and you’d be right.

    But there’s an element of wildness and volatility in the air, and not just on the R side. This is what I’m feeling, anyway. And if the prevailing mood in November is still strongly anti-Establishment? Hillary might be pegged as the Establishment candidate.

  164. 164.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Bill Murray: So where did all your “passionate liberals” go? My point is that you have to be involved in order to influence. If you don’t have any passionate liberals running for office, maybe it’s because you don’t live in California? That is my problem, I’m an “almost socialist” living in MO, which once was a far more moderate state but is almost dogdamned MS now. I will never be able to vote for somebody like me in a state race with hope of election.

    Still, it is kind of a chicken/egg question.

  165. 165.

    EconWatcher

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I can’t agree. He says we never should have gone in the first place. He also claims to have said that before the war–a claim that has been debunked. But his position now is that Bush lied to start the war, and we never should have gone. He said so very clearly before the SC primary.

  166. 166.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @EconWatcher: The thing I fear, regardless of who the GOP pegs, is a downturn in the economy or a major terror attack. A Trump presidency would be an ISIS wet dream and I would be very surprised if they don’t try something.

  167. 167.

    FlipYrWhig

    @EconWatcher: He also says that we need to shoot Muslims with pork bullets and that we need to take Middle Eastern oil. He’s not remotely an antiwar candidate. He’s just a blunderbuss of trash talk.

  168. 168.

    Ridnik Chrome

    Trump supporters expressed surprise at the number of protesters that were filling the lines and streaming into the event on a campus that is 25 percent Hispanic, 25 percent Asian and 8 percent black.

    UIC is my alma mater. Good on the current student body for standing up to Trump and his morons…

  169. 169.

    Peale

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think Isis are kind of “both sides do it” terrorists when it comes to their party preferences. The reason they will hit us at this point is that they are losing. And they need to look like they are winning. They wanna win so much your head would spin.

  170. 170.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly: Looking back, I think I followed the political trajectory described upstream: passionate engagement in the political process in my youth, followed by disillusionment (Nixon, Reagan, etc.) and shift to work in the nonprofit sector. Now I’m re-engaging through an organization that advocates for legislation on poverty issues (both state and federal levels) and another that focuses on voter registration and GOTV. It’s a start.

  172. 172.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Peale: Heh. The reason they prefer a Trump as president is because then they can say “See? They really do hate all Muslims.” where as with a Bernie or Hillary they can only say “See? Not quite half of Americans really do hate Muslims.”

  173. 173.

    EconWatcher

    @FlipYrWhig:

    You’r preaching to the choir on the reality, but perception is another matter.

    This guy learned some things doing “reality TV,” which actually seems to involve selling something staged and bogus as if it were authentic. He has run a hugely successful primary campaign on very little money because he knows how to push the media’s buttons to get free coverage constantly.

    We’ve never seen anything quite like this before, and his timing running this year seems to have been impeccable. Betting odds still strongly favor Clinton. But Trump is a wild card.

  174. 174.

    Matt McIrvin

    @FlipYrWhig: Maybe my perspective is skewed by living where I do: my far-suburban-Boston town is moderately Democratic (though I’m sure that’s considerably less true of just the white population), but go one step over the border into suburban/exurban NH and you’re in deep, deep Republican territory. And once you get out into more rural areas, New Hampshire actually gets more liberal (and it’s a mildly blue state as a whole).

  175. 175.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Matt McIrvin: I grew up in the NJ suburbs and lived in Philadelphia for a long time. The Philly and NJ suburbs were home to flaming Reaganites in my youth. My hippie-ish parents moved to NJ from Berkeley, CA in the 1970s and were appalled by how conservative everyone seemed. But there’s been a seismic shift since then in politics and attitudes.

  176. 176.

    dogwood

    @FlipYrWhig:
    He ran Project Vote in Illinois which is credited with regisistering a record number of minority voters, and led to the election of Carol Mosely Braun to the Senate.

  177. 177.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: In my younger years I was not so politically engaged as I am now. I voted but mostly I was just too busy with life. The Iraq War was what flipped my switch. Trying to find a voter registration org out here to help with but until then I think I am working on Koster’s campaign for Gov. because the alternative is unthinkable.

    Funny: They sent me a “Tell us your story” email asking me to explain why I was for him. I told the truth: “He is not a Republican.” The funny part is he used to be a Republican.

  178. 178.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @FlipYrWhig: Thank you. You have summed up everything that annoys me not only about Salon, but also about Gawker, Stereogum and the current version of Pitchfork. I am going to clip and save your comment for future reference…

  179. 179.

    Gelfling545

    @Currants: Autocorrect wanted to correct my spelling of “aaarrrgh!” this morning. I never realized there was a “correct” spelling.

  180. 180.

    EconWatcher

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I lived on the Main Line during W’s first term. It felt like it was going from moderate Republican to D during that time. I gathered that trend continued after I left the area.

  181. 181.

    Anya

    @EconWatcher: the speaking fees are a big nothingburger. No one will care during the GE. Besides, Trump donated to Hillary and courted her and her husband, and all he got was her attending his wedding. Can he prove anything else? Not to mention, if he says he bought politicians in the past, would’t that prove he’s not the man of the people he’s claiming to be but just another greedy one-percenter — the type who buys politions and ships your job to China?

  183. 183.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly: Life does get in the way of extra curricular activities, especially once children are on the scene. Good for you for working on the gubernatorial campaign! MO’s politics are benighted these days and can use your help.

    WRT voter registration, I’ve joined the League of Women Voters, which I snubbed in my youth as too establishment. Whatever. They do good work. But maybe they don’t fit your demographic. :)

    On another note, I’m headed to Joplin in a few weeks to visit a dear friend. She has a group of liberal friends there who gather regularly for mutual support. And good food. Hopefully the happy few gathered there and elsewhere in MO eventually become a voting majority.

  184. 184.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid:

    Salon has hated Hillary Clinton AND Bill Clinton since before there was an internet. Ever For is how long. They need no reason to run an article telling us how come the Clintons are Evul, They do it 3 days a week and have been doing that since before Bill won his first election beating GHWBush. Poppy.

    Hilz is a Lesbo Murderer, never forget, who fired good hard working Republicans who worked at the White House, just for F’ing up the Clinton’s vacation travel plans, or something meaningless like that. Imagine that, firing Republicans from the White House Staff after becoming an elected Demoncrat President!

    So don’t take this Salon article as meaning anything but that the Powers that Be of Salon have not changed any.

  185. 185.

    Oldgold

    I have been involved with paying big money to speakers. The big money is spent, not to buy the speaker, but to draw a large targeted crowd you can sell your product to.

  186. 186.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @dogwood: Which led, indirectly, to his own election as senator (since he ended up with Mosely-Braun’s Senate seat) and then president. I always thought that when this country finally elected a black president he or she would be from Chicago. There has been a strong African-American political organization there ever since Harold Washington…

  187. 187.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Ridnik Chrome: I was a poll watcher for Harold’s first mayoral election. It was an awesome moment when he won. Something of a forerunner to Obama’s victory in 2008.

  188. 188.

    Kay

    Ohio primary
    Dem:
    Clinton 51%
    Sanders 46

    That’s a lot closer than I thought. What is going on with these Great Lakes primaries? It’s just really unsettled. They’re all over the place.

  189. 189.

    StellaB

    @Marc: The nineties were also the tail end of the realignment between the parties on race. Clinton “lost” the Congress when the last of the southern Democrats retired (e.g. Howell Heflin) and the south became solidly Republican. Clinton had come up through the party in what was then a purplish state by opposing Orville Faubus and racism, but there weren’t many other southern Democratic politicians running successfully at that point.

    WJC also opposed the repeal of Glass-Steagal and threatened to veto it. Changes were made to the bill and it passed with a veto proof majority. I believe that he wrote a signing statement. GS had little if anything to do with the recent unpleasantness anyway as it didn’t cover the shadow banking system. Modern economies require modern banking systems with modern regulations. GS was rapidly becoming obsolete and should have been replaced with regulations that reflect the 2000s, not regulations designed for the 30s.

  190. 190.

    aimai

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m having this argument right now (I know, I know!) over at Dkos with someone who keeps pointing out how very centrist and corporatist the various women senators are. Boo Hoo! I seem to be the first person ever to try to explain to this guy that people are as progressive, and no more, than their voters are and that voters in many of these states are *not actually progressive.*

  191. 191.

    Peale

    @J R in WV: I don’t think Salon was around back in 1992. Although they were definitely around in 1998 and were very different. Then they saw themselves as a potential online version of the New Yorker meets the Nation. I thought they were kind of late to the “We Hate Hillary” bandwagon in 2008. Spent 2009/10 becoming a zoo. Every day was one “Obama is a disappointment, you should never have trusted him” article after another. I think it may have been that their pop-culture stance (You should hate this thing that lots of people like. Here’s why!) caught up with their political analysis.

    Obama did something good today, here’s why you shouldn’t like that. Obama did something bad today, here’s why you shouldn’t like that either. He once did something bad, so here’s why you shouldn’t trust him when he does something good now. Look at Obama doing good things: Why I hate that.

  192. 192.

    japa21

    @Kay: Saw a poll last night that had Sanders 48%, Clinton 46% in Illinois.

    Bernie’s attack ads are apparently having an impact.

  193. 193.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    But maybe they don’t fit your demographic. :)

    That would probably be more of a problem for my wife than me. Than again, that might be just the ticket to get her motivated too. Joplin eh? I’ll bet they get lonely down there.

  194. 194.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @EconWatcher:

    But his position now is that Bush lied to start the war, and we never should have gone. He said so very clearly before the SC primary.

    I think that was mostly to take down JEB. Remember his announcement speech was 1 day after JEB announced. He didn’t jump in because Obama made fun of him at the Correspondents Dinner – he did it to take down JEB.

    I don’t think Trump would have any compunction about getting us into another war in the Middle East. Remember his trash talk about “taking the oil”.

    It’s all personal with Donnie. There’s not some grand strategy behind it.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  195. 195.

    japa21

    @StellaB: Certain things get imbedded in the psyche and no amount of factual rebuttal can change that. The Glass-Steagal repeal and the Clintons pushing that on the nation is one of those.

  196. 196.

    aimai

    @Anya: I don’t think you can logic your way into thinking like a Trump voter. But the speaker’s fee issue should/would evaporate as an issue in the general election except that Bernie and his voters are determined to make it a make or break issue right now. Its one of their biggest sticks. It ought not to matter to Democratic voters but some portion of the farthest left/sometimes democratic voters are going to let it affect their vote because its a way of feeling better about Bernie not winning. Its a kind of sour grapes approach to the election. If Bernie takes the nomination they will assume a right to the fealty/votes of every Democrat to the right of Bernie regardless of the beating they gave HRC. But if Bernie loses they reserve the right to refuse to vote for HRC on the grounds that she is too corrupt, or should have bowed out in deference to bernie. The speaker’s fee issue will continue to be an issue as long as Bernie and his voters want to make it one.

  197. 197.

    Lamh36

    ugh…this clown…

    Ted Cruz vows to back Trump as GOP nominee unless he actually shoots someone thkpr.gs/3759714

  200. 200.

    Germy

    @Peale:

    I think it may have been that their pop-culture stance (You should hate this thing that lots of people like. Here’s why!) caught up with their political analysis.

    Holy shit, that’s SALON in a nutshell. You’ve pretty much distilled their whole philosophy.

  201. 201.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @japa21: 538 gives Hillary a 98% likelihood of winning Ohio and 95% Illinois. But we saw how well Nate’s forecast worked in Michigan. I wonder if he’s made any adjustments based on that outcome.

  202. 202.

    Kay

    @japa21:

    I think it’s trade. It’s always bigger here than other places but it has so dominated this election. I don’t know though- it interests me so I pay more attention to it in that way people do where they see it everywhere :)

    It worries me a little for the general because losing Great Lakes governors worried me- I felt like that was canary-coalmine for Democrats. If it “spread” to national races I don’t know where they make that bunch of states electoral votes up. Republicans have been saying since 2012 they saw an opening. Sanders to me isn’t as closely identified w/the Democratic Party as Clinton is- that’s just a fact- it’s the big luxury of the “outsider” right? Not fair but probably true to people.

  203. 203.

    delk

    The nice thing about living in a big market, expensive city is the lack of political ads. That said, with the primary tomorrow, Chicago is being blasted with ads today. During the morning news I’d say 3 out of every 4 commercials were political ads. Up until now, maybe a couple of ads for local races during the entire day.

    My ‘hood is jumping. Hillary is speaking at the plumber’s union hall today.That’s a block away.

  204. 204.

    Marc

    @aimai: The speakers fee problem will remain a problem in the general election because it neutralizes an effective Democratic line of attack against Republicans. Clinton’s problems don’t go away if her primary opponents don’t mention them; she would be well served to come up with an effective response, which she hasn’t done yet.

  205. 205.

    Anya

    @aimai: The Trump voter was never going to vote for a democrat, including Sanders. In terms of Sanders voters, I think this is all for the primary. Once the race goes national the great majority of the Sanders supporters will back the nominee.

  206. 206.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @aimai: We have Claire fer cryin’ out loud McCaskill in the Senate, whom I enthusiastically voted for and will vote for again with just as much enthusiasm (should she run). Why?

    BECAUSE SHE IS NOT TODD FVCKIN’ AKIN!!!!

  207. 207.

    rikyrah

    March 14, 2016, 09:20 am
    Obama likes first lady’s ‘curves’
    By Judy Kurtz

    President Obama says he’s a fan of Michelle Obama’s “curves.”

    “When you’re the dad of two daughters, you notice more what when I was a kid I didn’t realize as much or maybe was even a part of — which is the enormous pressure that young women are placed under in terms of looking a certain way,” Obama says in a wide-ranging joint interview with ballet dancer Misty Copeland for Time and Essence magazines.

    “That pressure I think is historically always been harder on African-American women than just about any other women, but it’s part and parcel of a broader way in which we socialize and press women to constantly doubt themselves or define themselves in terms of a certain appearance,” Obama, dad to Malia, 17, and Sasha, 14, says in the interview released Monday.

    “Michelle and I are always guarding against that,” Obama says before adding of the 52-year-old first lady, “And you know, the fact that they’ve got a tall, gorgeous mom who has some curves and that their father appreciates, I think is helpful.”

  208. 208.

    Calouste

    @O. Felix Culpa: Nate Silver is no longer numbers based, he is now just a pundit who pulls shit out of his ass and puts a heavy thumb on the scale in his predictions. Just read his article on how Trump had less chance to win the nomination than the other GOP candidates, despite leading in almost all national polls and most early primary state polls for about 4 months straight.

    I’d trust a monkey throwing darts more than Nate Silver these days, because the monkey might actually aim at the dartboard, intentionally or not, while Silver tries to throw a yard to the side.

  209. 209.

    dww44

    @Amir Khalid: I accidentally happened on that piece even tho I swore off Salon some weeks ago, along with a couple more sites and/or their comments sections in particular. Internecine warfare distresses me because that’s what it always ends up as, disrespectful attacks on our own.

    The garbage on the GOP side is more than I can contend with and I absolutely am not going to delve into it on the Democratic side. Until pieces like that became dominant, I was an uncommitted Democrat. No longer am. I like Bernie, but cannot abide so many who speak for him in the blogosphere.

  210. 210.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly: Indeed. Having grown up in John Birch territory, I know how hard it is to get even a moderate Republican (RIP), much less a liberal Democrat elected. I wish some of these progressives would get out of their bubbles and/or leave their keyboards and get engaged in the real world.

  211. 211.

    Immanentize

    @O. Felix Culpa: This kind of woof makes me crazy — 538 doesn’t poll and it doesn’t predict. It takes known data and makes calculations based on cumulative data points. In the academy and in science this is called research. Cumulative data is better than one-off data sets. That is why people replicate research projects — to test their validity. This is analogous to several different polling companies polling the same population with the same (sadly, “similar”) questions. 538/Nate does none of that data creation, he just presents composites and then, based on other people’s research, he makes educated forecasts of likely correlation behavior. Michigan proves the old adage:
    Shit in, shit out.

  214. 214.

    Matt McIrvin

    @FlipYrWhig: The western NoVa suburbs where I grew up were very white and rabidly conservative Republican in my youth. They’re not now, but I think it’s mostly because the ethnic composition has changed: lots of East Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants there now.

  215. 215.

    Gelfling545

    @EconWatcher: Honestly, I see no problem unless it is a manufactured one. Business X comes to a private individual & says “Let us pay you a big bunch of money to come & talk to us about whatever. ” Why not let them get the benefit of a Democrat’s point of view? I’d rather see their ill-gotten gains go to her than the likes of Sarah Palin. I’m not saying my view is at all widespread. I don’t know. I just think that it can be made into an issue but it isn’t necessarily one at all.

  216. 216.

    dww44

    @Kay: I was at a board meeting at a non-profit at some point during the 2004 season. There were otherwise sane folks, all of them Republican, who were absolutely convinced that there had been massive voter fraud in Ohio. One of the most outspoken then is now the elected DA in his very Republican, military based economy county just below mine in this red state. The average GOP voter has long since lost the ability to reason and think sanely.

  217. 217.

    Patricia Kayden

    @rikyrah: Awwww. That’s so sweet. They are a gorgeous couple and it appears the chemistry is still there

    @EconWatcher: “I see Trump as a very high rolling candidate for the Republicans: very high risk, but in an election they have very little chance of winning without taking some big risks. A Hail Mary pass.”

    Do sane people have to take Republicans seriously any longer now that they’re about to nominate a clearly unqualified man as their Presidential candidate? I could see a Hail Mary pass as a VP. I cannot see any rational people advocating putting someone with Trump’s demeanor anywhere close to the White House.

  218. 218.

    Matt McIrvin

    @O. Felix Culpa: The most recent polls in Illinois have the D primary basically tied up there. Some kind of huge movement toward Sanders seems to have happened just in the past several days, seemingly overnight, unless some polls had vastly wrong assumptions.

  219. 219.

    aimai

    @Marc: How on earth does it neutralize any democratic line of attack? In a national election–perhaps you’ve been sleeping for the last twenty years–the Democratic candidate is always assumed to be the anti business candidate. Regardless of how anodyne their approach has been. The Republicans have enough money–certainly the Kochs do–to run all the adds attacking the Democrat for being anti business that they want. And they will. The chances that they will run ads against HRC for having accepted money from Goldman Sachs and the Camping Association of America are slim to none. Why? Because they don’t want the anti corporatist vote in the first place.

    The thing people also seem not to grasp about being a speaker and speaking in front of these large corporate groups (and they are very large groups) is that its a form of politicking and getting your name out there and defanging certain kinds of attacks on you by the people in those rooms. If I had been HRC I would have done those speaking engagements too because its another way to reach out and touch potential voters. In her case it was also necessary, given the massive attacks on her personally, to keep reminding people she wasn’t, in fact, a mass murdering lesbian etc..etc..etc…

  220. 220.

    Peale

    @O. Felix Culpa: Why yes! The “No Longer Credible Nate” has adjusted Hillarys chances down 5% because the most recent poll had her losing by 2%, but none of the three previous polls did. So apparently he hasn’t changed his model and is still using it. Appears that he is still crunching numbers and weighting more recent polls higher than earlier polls.

  222. 222.

    Calouste

    Did some calculations on the Republican delegate math:
    – Trump can’t get a majority until April 26 at the earliest, and most likely it will be mid May.
    – After tomorrow, a candidate needs to have at least 254 delegates to still have a mathematical possibility to get a majority (and practically, it is at least 80 higher due to unpledged delegates and some proportional primaries that are still coming up). That means that Kasich almost certainly can no longer win, and Rubio won’t be able either, unless he wins Florida. It will be interesting to see if they will drop out on Wednesday, or will go on to a divided convention.

  223. 223.

    bemused

    I agree it’s personal with thin-skinned, ego-driven Trump. Graydon Carter, Vanity wrote last November that more than 25 years ago in Spy magazine he referred to Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian” just to drive him a little bit crazy. Carter still gets the occasional note from Trump always with a photo of himself with his hand circled in gold Sharpie pen. Gail Collins wrote about his exaggerated fortune and he has sent her Times photo with gold Sharpie message “The face of a dog.”

    He will say the most rude things to others but cannot bear even the slightest hint of criticism towards himself. As Carter puts it, Trump has skin of gossamer.

  224. 224.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @rikyrah: Awesome man. I love that he’s addressing body image issues in such a positive way. Michelle and their daughters are gorgeous, elegant, and smart women. Wonderful to have in the public eye.

  225. 225.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Matt McIrvin: Given the movement towards Sanders in recent days, I wonder what percentage of democratic primary voters voted early, and to what extent they voted for Hillary or Bernie. That could potentially “skew” actual count versus recent polls.

    I’m not arguing in favor of 538 or its methods, BTW, just wondering whether early voting might make a significant impact in a recently changing landscape.

  226. 226.

    Peale

    @Kay: Yeah. I think its also that he won Michigan so people can take him seriously. She may have lost the Michigan vote because of NAFTA but also because the Muslim voters broke against her (and rightfully so, IMHO.) But that does create the impression that Bernie can win, which is helpful to him. I figured that once he won Michigan, Kos wouldn’t be able to put down his banhammer, We’re going to be at this for awhile. Clinton is running out of Southern states. I think she wins easily in Florida and North Carolina, but will lose some of the UMW,

    I’m still not convinced that Bernie’s support is that strong. The map of Michigan showed once again that he won the rural areas. Are small town democrats really where the hotbed of socialism is?

  227. 227.

    Kay

    @Peale:

    We used to have a progressive group here, “the farmer’s union”, that came about after the Depression. Some of the older farmers still got the newsletter, or did in the 1990’s. I would see it when I delivered mail.

    I don’t know that rural people were always “conservative” and I think Sanders benefits from the same distance from the Democratic Party that Obama had. People here didn’t put Obama in the “Democrat” box. He was new.

  228. 228.

    PurpleGirl

    @Iowa Old Lady: Yes, the City came and did repair work on Sunday. We had water back by 7 PM. They had opened a hydrant and were letting people fill buckets to take back to their apartments. TY for asking.

  229. 229.

    FlipYrWhig

    @srv: If Hillary Clinton had said anything complimentary about Jim Inhofe the prog-o-sphere would have melted into a puddle faster than a snowball on the Senate floor. Since it was Bernie Sanders it won’t even register in anyone’s consciousness.

  230. 230.

    Kay

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I wouldn’t care at all if Hillary Clinton had a conservative friend at work. I have conservative friends at work. No one cared about RBG’s friendship with Scalia.

  231. 231.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Where I grew up in rural-(ish) upstate New York, we still had the Grange Hall where a huge number of social and political events took place. Every time I think of a chicken barbecue or a cake walk (yes we still did those at the Grange) I think of farmer populism/progressivism and I hear Leon Helm sing “King Harvest.”

  232. 232.

    Kay

    Trump’s opening speaker calls on Sanders to convert to Christianity:

    It just gets worse and worse every day. It’s like he has to top what he did the day before. I cannot imagine what the Trump campaign will be doing by September.

  234. 234.

    Brachiator

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Do sane people have to take Republicans seriously any longer now that they’re about to nominate a clearly unqualified man as their Presidential candidate?

    I’m not sure that sanity has anything to do with it.

    Will sane people take America seriously if we end up electing Trump president?

    Apart from the neverending circus, what’s on the agenda as we start another week?

    I got a lot of work to get to this week, but I will be following the Tuesday primaries, especially the GOP primaries. I keep saying, I can’t believe that Trump is winning these things, and Trump keeps winning these things.

  235. 235.

    NotMax

    In happier news –

    1)

    A Palestinian primary school teacher who grew up in a refugee camp and educates her students about non-violence won a $1 million prize for teaching excellence on Sunday, beating out 8,000 other applicants from around the world.

    Hanan al-Hroub, a primary school teacher in the West Bank city of al-Bireh just outside Ramallah, was awarded the second annual Global Teacher Prize during a ceremony in the city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

    Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum was on-hand to present the prize to al-Hroub, however her name was announced by Pope Francis in a video message after he talked about the importance of education and teachers, especially for children who grow up amid war.
    [snip]
    She told The Associated Press that she will use the million-dollar prize money to create scholarships for students who excel in order to encourage them to choose careers in teaching. Source

    2)

    Israel’s Antiquities Authority says a hiker has found a rare, nearly 2,000-year-old gold coin.

    The authority said Monday that the ancient coin appears to be only the second of its kind to have been found. It said London’s British Museum possesses the other coin. Source

  236. 236.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    Ice cream socials! Which I love, BTW. Invite me to one of those and I’m there. My (grown) kids ask about them. “Why were we always going to those?” Duh. Because I like them and I’m the driver and planner?

  238. 238.

    Archon

    @Calouste:

    Yeah, Nate Silver lost me on his half hearted mea culpa on why he underestimated Donald Trump’s chances to win the nomination. His argument basically came down to, ” I thought the establishment would fight harder to prevent it”. He let a personal assertion interfere with what the polls were telling him for 6 months. That’s the type of lazy political analysis I would have expected from the Washington Post, not a true numbers guy.

    As we saw with Chuck Todd, sometimes numbers guys should just stick to the numbers.

  239. 239.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Peale: We’re so accustomed to this pattern that rural areas are super-conservative, it may be that we’ve been missing the potential for rural economic leftism, at least in the North. This has been a thing in Bernie’s home state (and adjoining areas of New England) for a long time, of course.

  240. 240.

    japa21

    @Kay: Here is the irony (hypocrisy) of the Sanders movement. He is not a Democrat, he is an “outsider”, he is not establishment, etc.

    And Sanders pushes that meme as much as his supporters do.

    Yet, when he is confronted with it, he will make a major point of how he has always caucused with the Dems and therefore should be considered as a Dem. He tries to have it both ways.

    To be honest, I don’t think Bernie ever thought he would be President or even was desiring to be President. I think he ran basically to get a message out and to push Clinton. Now that he is doing better than he ever expected, he has decided, “Why not?”

  242. 242.

    Peale

    @Kay: Yeah. The Socialist, Atheist, Jew…at least he’s not from Hollywood. In another election, I’d expect the swipes against the Socialism and Atheism to be front and center, but the antisemitism to be a bit more subtle. But nope.

  245. 245.

    Brachiator

    @Mustang Bobby:

    You’re being irrational, but I’ve got your number.

    A man went to a singles bar and chatted up a female mathematician.

    He tried to call her later, but couldn’t reach her.

    The phone number she gave him was imaginary.

  246. 246.

    NotMax

    John Oliver provides a fairly credible, if not entirely comprehensive, rundown on the Apple/encryption story.

    The extended fake ad at the tail end approaches comedy brilliance.

  247. 247.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    Was present many years ago when a friend needed to speak to a telephone operator for something.

    Long story short, he was mesmerized by the sound of her voice and demeanor and spent as much time as he could (memory says at least 20 minutes, but that may be more than in reality) conversing with her, eventually telling her how much he was impressed with and had enjoyed chatting with her and asking if he could have her phone number.

    Her answer? “Zero.”

  248. 248.

    WarMunchkin

    @Peale:

    I’m still not convinced that Bernie’s support is that strong.

    I’m pretty sure about this as well. He might do well in Illinois, Ohio and Indiana, but his supporters think he’s going to make up the difference and win in CA, NY and PA, and I see 20-30+ point margins of victory for Clinton in these states.

    @Kay:

    If he keeps it up in the GE and Clinton beats him there will literally be unrest in this state.

    This scares the shit out of me. Like so much of this campaign, we’ve gotten to this point where we’re at the logical convergence of everything the GOP has done. When you delegitimize an election this strongly if you don’t win, what’s going to happen? I’d rather get ahead of the game and start thinking about contingencies for armed responses from the Trump people. They need a path back from the brink, soon, even if that path is Ted Cruz.

  249. 249.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @NotMax: It was pretty good. I was pleased that he mentioned that there’s a strong argument that a legal search warrant gives authorities the right to search through everything in your home. And he said that the issue is more complex than people on each side say.

    But 98% of the piece was on how horrible “back doors” are, so it’s clear where he stands.

    I dunno the best balance. His point that if Apple’s encryption isn’t up-to-snuff then people have eleventy-seven billion other options (mostly outside the US) is true. That can be a problem.

    His bringing up the fact that China and Russia will want the same back door seems to me to be a red herring – they can demand that now no matter what the US does or doesn’t do.

    My bottom line is that I don’t like the idea that bits and bytes on a phone are more worthy of protection than physical papers and photos and credit cards and databases on a home PC and so forth. If we continue to insist that that is the case, then we’ll be making search warrants only effective against the poor and the elderly and the non-l33t-haxxor dudes and we won’t have “equal justice under law”. Courts have to be able to get access to evidence and records to render fair verdicts. Treating stuff on a phone (or anything encrypted) differently seems to me to be much more dangerous to the rule of law than a legal way to bypass encryption when required by a search warrant.

    Ya, the fake ad was well done too. :-)

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  251. 251.

    raven

    (CNN)Todd Palin, husband to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was seriously injured in a snow machine crash in Alaska on Sunday night and is in intensive care, a source close to the Palin family told CNN Monday.

    Sarah Palin canceled a campaign event set to take place Monday in Florida.

  252. 252.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay: Does the speaker know that Trump’s daughter has converted to Orthodox Jewry? Where is the brouhaha about how Trump is associating with bigots like what happened with President Obama and Pastor Wright?

  254. 254.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    Long story short, he was mesmerized by the sound of her voice and demeanor and spent as much time as he could … conversing with her

    The BBC Radio 4 news reader Charlotte Green was voted the “Most Attractive Female Voice on National Radio” in a poll by the BBC’s Radio Times publication in 2002. Green has acknowledged the reliance lonely listeners place in her; her habit of wishing listeners “a peaceful night” led many to send her letters.

    A sample letter:

    Her voice is a marvel, something to make one feel safe and secure, like being tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle.

    —David Jewell, BJGP

  255. 255.

    Miss Bianca

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    I’ve joined the League of Women Voters, which I snubbed in my youth as too establishment. Whatever. They do good work. But maybe they don’t fit your demographic. :)

    Well, if by demographic” you mean “male”…LOWV is officially sex-integrated. There have always been men in the chapters I’ve belonged to! ; ) And they do do good work. They always host our local candidate debates, for example, and I find their “issues” booklets invaluable when I’m perusing the ballots.

  256. 256.

    RaflW

    Wow, Moron Joe is starting to notice the patterns of Trump’s scams? The Donald has reached the level of blindingly obvious.

  257. 257.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Kay: That’s because you’re reasonable. I guarantee you the reaction would be something like OMG SHES TRIANGULATING KISSING REPUBLICAN ASS WHY DOES SHE DO THIS EVERY TIME SHE MAKES IT SO HARD FOR ME TO LIKE HER

  258. 258.

    Aleta

    The guy who tweeted on Trayvon Martin’s birthday:

    Trayvon Martin would have turned 21 today if he hadn’t taken a man’s head and beaten it on the pavement before being shot.

    — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 5, 2016

    and has maligned Matthew Shepard, Trayvon Martin, Hilary, and who knows how many others, has dramatically announced he’s resigning as an editor at Breitbart because

    Both Lewandowski and Trump maligned Michelle in the most repulsive fashion.
    In the ultimate indignity, (Breitbart News) undermined Michelle completely by running a poorly-evidenced conspiracy theory as their lead story.

  260. 260.

    Miss Bianca

    Thank you, Jesus. And Katha Pollitt (or should that be “Mary and Katha Pollitt”?).

    “Why We Need Women in Power”

    Have to say I am a firm believer in getting more women into office. One of many, many reasons I support Sec. Clinton’s candidacy. This country is not going to get on track until we have *truly representative* representation – we need many more women, and many more minorities, in elected office. And we have a long, hard slog ahead of us to make it happen.

  261. 261.

    Immanentize

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: My take on this is a bit different. If the government is searching, that is what governments do (hopefully with probable cause and a warrant when needed….) But what the Apple case is more like to me is having my local police department order me to break into my neighbor’s house to search it for them and, oh yeah, I have to make the ladder to do it.

  263. 263.

    Elie

    @WarMunchkin:

    Sorry, late to the thread…

    These primaries are not all the same… some are open — where independents and republicans can vote (like MI) and influence the selection of the nominee, some are closed — like Florida — where only Democrats can vote for the candidate. Ohio is open so there will be some crossover both ways. Some are hybrids with rules about who can and can’t and then you have caucuses which are a small sample of the most enthusiastic supporters for a candidate. We draw shaky conclusions from a lot of this (including Trump). We won’t know for a while the full picture but I guess this is the best we can do right now.

  264. 264.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Immanentize: The legal framework is definitely inadequate. The laws should have been updated in the ’90s so that they wouldn’t have to claim that something out of the 1700s is what they’re standing on.

    With that said, I don’t buy the analogy you’re using.

    The NSA is probably able to get into the phone very easily. But they wouldn’t be able to provide evidence for any trial, so that’s not the way to go. Asking for Apple’s help seems to me to be quite appropriate and reasonable. They’ve done so in the past, so I don’t think they have an argument that this is some great burden.

    And their argument that providing a way around the screen lock means that their security will be broken for ever and ever doesn’t strike me as compelling either. Software has bugs. They patch bugs all the time. If someone illegally finds their way in, Apple can change the way it works (and give the authorities access if required by a warrant). The code for the patches can be protected just as well as the main software itself.

    It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out, and what (if any) changes to the laws are made. Given how broken the House and Senate are now, I wouldn’t expect any changes for at least a year….

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  265. 265.

    Marc

    @FlipYrWhig: I don’t know what made you so incredibly hostile to Sanders supporters, but I doubt that my children, or the other Sanders supporters that I know, would react in anything like this way. The universal sentiment among them, as far as I can tell, is that they like 2 candidates but prefer Bernie. Which also goes for the Clinton folks (who like Bernie and prefer Hillary).

    Yea, there are idiots on the internet, but it only takes a few to create the appearance of a crowd.

  266. 266.

    WarMunchkin

    @Elie: That’s fair. We’re on the same page here. I agree with you about drawing conclusions from open primaries. The strategy from the Sanders people has been to win in deep blue – but I just don’t see that as a likely event. Also, NY’s closed primaries require party registration by the previous November.

  267. 267.

    Mary

    @Matt McIrvin: Without having any facts to back it up, my guess is that pollsters have adjusted their definition of “likely” voters to account for higher than usual turnout among under 30s.

  268. 268.

    SFAW

    @srv:

    She suggested in another tweet that some Trump supporters are simply “exhibiting manly temper” at rallies,

    … and (s)he wishes (s)he could be there to do the same.

    Where’s that damn meteor?

  269. 269.

    Paul in KY

    @Gimlet: And that’s very shortsighted. Many prospective Democratic voters who can’t or aren’t willing to jump thru the retraining hoops that ‘free trade’ wants them to.

  272. 272.

    Paul in KY

    @EconWatcher: Especially when you’re pretty sure you’ll be running for President in next few years. The speeches for GS was tone-deaf, IMO.

  274. 274.

    Kay

    @Paul in KY:

    It’s great though because the whole “fair trade” side that was essentially dismissed for 25 years is being heard:

    We should no longer buy the statistically strained arguments about F.T.A.s delivering growth and jobs. The evidence just isn’t there, a fact not lost on those campaigning for president.
    Second, various countries with whom we compete have historically managed their currencies to gain a price advantage (i.e., they keep their currency low to boost their exports to us and suppress ours to them), and this has long been a source of our persistently large trade deficits.
    Third, the F.T.A. process has been captured by investors and corporate interests. According to The Washington Post, 85 percent of the members of the outside committees advising the administration on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership were from private businesses and trade associations (the rest were from labor unions, NGOs, academics and other levels of government).

    The revolving door on trade is appalling. They go back and forth from these companies to federal trade agencies. I really think it flourished in the dark. No one was questioning these deals so no one noticed how they were increasingly being negotiated by investors and business interests.

  275. 275.

    Paul in KY

    @Marc: How about this: I wanted to tell them what they’ve done wrong & how they can operate as a true partner in our economy and I wanted them to pay for that privilege.

  276. 276.

    John D.

    @WarMunchkin:

    I agree with you about drawing conclusions from open primaries.

    Drawing any conclusions from primaries (for the general) is fraught with peril.

    Open. Closed. Semi-. It doesn’t matter.

    Primaries exist for a self-selected non-representative sample of the electorate to choose the standard-bearer for a party from a pool of candidates that by definition will be missing at least one from the general election — the other party’s candidate. Saying “Oh, [X] can’t with the young/old/urban/rural voters” misses the point entirely. They may do poorly amongst the strongly partisan primary voters but just fine with the wider electorate. They may fare poorly against their primary opponents but dominate their general opponent. Past elections consistently show us that the correlation just is not there.

    Here’s the one thing I guarantee you is a safe data point to draw from any and all primary contests: The pundits will blather on, painting a narrative designed to keep the political ad revenue flowing into their coffers.

  277. 277.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    I just learned something very interesting from a co-worker, about Rule 40(b) at the Republican Convention:

    (b) Each candidate for nomination for president of the United States and vice president of the United States shall demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination.

    If you don’t get at least 8 states, you don’t get on the ballot. Period. Per Noah Millman at The American Conservative:

    The purpose of the rule, as I understand it, was to forestall a Ron Paul primary challenge against an incumbent President Mitt Romney in 2016, of the sort that President Carter faced from Ted Kennedy in 1980 and that the first President Bush faced from Pat Buchanan in 1992…In other words, Mitt Romney expected to win, but he also expected his presidency either to be enough of a failure to prompt a serious primary challenge, or that there was sufficiently potent opposition to the party establishment that he might face a serious primary challenge even if his presidency was successful. And his team’s first instinct for how to deal with those possibilities was not to consider how to mend relations with the discontented faction, but to amend the rules to make it harder for such a challenge to succeed.

    So Rubio’s campaign manager was full of shit anyway – it doesn’t matter how many delegates you wind up with, unless you win eight states, and if you don’t, your delegate’s votes aren’t counted.

  278. 278.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @John D.:

    Obama lost Michigan, Florida, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas and California to Clinton, along with a bunch of other states, to your point about the electability argument. I’m completely sure that a lot of votes for Clinton over Obama were of the “a black man is unelectable in this country” variety as well. A primary win is not dispositive of anything.

  279. 279.

    Paul in KY

    @Kay: Excellent points, as always, Key. I can’t understand the strategery of someone who in Democratic Party would think that fixing a trade deal that is short term & in the most inconsequential ways (a DVR $50 cheaper) ‘better’ for ‘consumers’ rather than making it better for ‘workers’, who as a class would be generally be inclined to vote Democratic.

  280. 280.

    Bob In Portland

    @JMG: It’s a common fallacy, that each person sees him or herself at the center of the universe. Each person has sorted out the lay of the land, knows what’s the proper path, has attained sufficient knowledge to live his or her life correctly. Knows what to overlook.

    So now Thomas Frank is a crank. There is nothing that you refute in the article. Just a crank.

    Clinton has the second-highest unfavorability ratings of anyone in the race (second to Trump). She has large swathes of unfavorability on the right (based on decades of right-wing propaganda), on the left (because of her neoliberal beliefs, actions and her abiding relationships with the 1%), and among independents (because of her abiding relationship with the status quo).

    You may not see any of this, or merely write off criticism of Clinton as right-wing propaganda. Remember, you stand in the center of the universe. Thomas Frank can be dismissed as a crank.

  281. 281.

    Weaselone

    Regarding the impressive movement in polls towards Sanders in Illinois and Ohio over the last several days. Instead of reflecting some sort of massive overnight change in who people actually intend to vote for, perhaps it’s a change in poll methodology and weighting based on their experience in Michigan. I can think of a couple areas that might come into play.

    1. Updates to the weighting of different demographic groups by assuming a higher %of 20-somethings will vote.
    2. Attempting to adjust between discrepancies in polls and actual exit data either by changing survey methods or adding some sort of factor to adjust. Trying to reach more people that only have cell phones, or perhaps looking back at exit polls that showed African Americans breaking 65:35 in favor of Hillary instead of the 80:20 in the polls and adjust to reflect that your landline gathered results likely underestimate Sander’s actual levels of support.

  282. 282.

    glory b

    @Gimlet: Really?? I’ve been a democrat fro quite a while, and While I minght hear globalization given as a reason, it’s hardly been a “brush off.”

  283. 283.

    glory b

    @Gimlet: While you might disagree with the impact (and I don’t dispute that the job training thing isn’t as valuable as hoped), I’m still not seeing “brush off” here

  285. 285.

    J R in WV

    @Peale:

    Well, the world was a different place in 1992, and I barely remember it now. But whenever Salon first started “publishing” (which is what it was still called back then) they were trying for highbrow, no question. But to them, that didn’t imply ethics in journalism, particularly.

    And selling hate on Democrats in general and Clintons and Obama in particular has been their reason for existence for a long time, starting when they realized that they were never going to make much money until they sold out to the Republicans. So they did, in early days.

    Not to pick at what you wrote, you clearly have a better memory for that period, or took time to research, unlike me, who just ripped off a rant on Salon. I still swing by there, but I’m using an ad-blocker, so they shouldn’t make any pay-per-view from me. It’s a hate-hate relationship…

  287. 287.

    Peale

    @Calouste: I’m going to guess that there is going to be a fight over what constitutes a “state”. Those US V.I, Puerto Rico and Northern Marianas primaries that Trump might be overlooking might be added to his tally of “states” won.

  289. 289.

    Brachiator

    @Bob In Portland:

    So now Thomas Frank is a crank.

    Thomas is not a crank. He is one of many people (Robert Reich, Cornell West, etc) who think they can see the progressive promised land in Bernie Sanders. This makes him an over-enthusiastic propagandist who, in the recent Salon article, needs to see Bill Clinton as Evil and Hillary Clinton as the Bride of Evil.

    It’s just politics.

  293. 293.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Marc:

    I don’t know what made you so incredibly hostile to Sanders supporters

    I dunno, maybe the addiction to rage and dogpiling?

  294. 294.

    J R in WV

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    I’ve been a crotchety old man member of the League of Women Voters for a while now. I pass their info on to Mrs J when I’m done with it. I wish they were more common on the ground here. This state used to have lots of progressive/social/Democrats and strong union members, but not so much any more.

  295. 295.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @NotMax: Thanks.

    I support the EFF financially even though I don’t agree with all of their positions. It’s good for the government to be kept on its toes by strong advocates.

    Lawyers are very skilled at coming up with plausible arguments – it’s what they’re trained to do. :-) IANAL, so I have no idea how compelling their argument is. Presumably if this argument were was obvious and clear as the EFF states, then it would have been used earlier. Wikipedia says this usage to crack a cell phone isn’t new.:

    On October 31, 2014, a U.S. District Court in New York authorized a writ directing a cellphone manufacturer, whose identity was not disclosed, to assist an investigation of credit card fraud by bypassing a cellphone’s password screen.[5]

    We’ll see how it turns out.

    Thanks again.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  296. 296.

    J R in WV

    @Brachiator:

    And don’t forget, @Bob In Portland: is not only a crank, but a flake and a Troll as well as a crank. He claims to be a socialist but obviously isn’t, as he barely understands what socialism really is.

    He seems a lot like “Right to Raise” and srv to me, but I could be wrong, or a crank. Not flaky, though.

  298. 298.

    Brachiator

    @Bob In Portland:

    So Thomas Frank is a propagandist. (See the rest of what I wrote.)

    Yeah, I saw it. So what?

    I said that Frank can politic for his position. Frank wrote an analysis of Trump voters for the Guardian that was reasonable and light on agenda. His Salon piece is advocacy, not analysis.

    Recognizing the difference is not the same thing as dismissing him as a crank.

  299. 299.

    Linnaeus

    @FlipYrWhig:

    If that’s true, it’s because the fabled “white working class” was… for the Vietnam War. Yeah, so, that was kind of a mistake, no? The labor movement in the 1960s and 1970s reamed itself.

    I realize that the thread is probably dead, but I’d like to respond to this. There’s some very good scholarship emerging that challenges the myth of widespread, lockstep working class support for the Vietnam War. Working class attitudes about the war were much more nuanced than they are usually portrayed.

Comments are closed.