Thursday, March 17, 2016

Three-dimensional chess not necessary

When checkers is too tough for your opponents.


My favorite of all was LDS Bishop Hatch saying this ...

... and then Jake Tapper elbowed the Utahn in the teeth with this:


Even when you consider the mean IQ of these Republickin pigs running the Senate, Judge Garland is still a sacrificial lamb to the politics of the extremists.


Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington D.C. Circuit will most likely not become Justice Merrick Garland of the Supreme Court, at least not while President Barack Obama remains in office. He seems unlikely to get even a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, or a vote either by that panel or the whole Senate. 
And it may be partly because it’s hard to imagine an Obama nominee more likely to win confirmation, if the Republicans allowed a vote.

He wouldn't have been my choice, but as when Antonin Scalia asked for Elena Kagan in 2009 (he got Sonia Sotomayor that year and Kagan in 2010) the opinion of the current SCOTUS judges as to who might be worthy to join them is apparently given serious consideration.

So respected is Garland as a judge that Chief Justice Roberts, at his confirmation hearing (in 2005), answered a question about one of his majority opinions by noting that Judge Garland had dissented and, said Roberts, "Anytime Judge Garland disagrees, you know you're in a difficult area."

Yeah, but still no, and that's a win-win.

(T)he pitched political battle over Garland’s fate could turn in unexpected ways, and will shape – and be shaped by – the 2016 race: Not just Donald Trump’s unprecedented presidential bid but the fight to control the Senate, in which a platoon of Senate Republicans are facing stiff challenges. 
[...] 
Garland’s nomination would need 14 Republicans to disrupt an inevitable filibuster, and five to be confirmed. Even if (SML Mitch) McConnell had not drawn that early line in the sand, that would not have been easy, but it would not have been impossible, and surely would have carried shorter odds than if Obama had chosen a nominee closer to the base of the Democratic party. Put differently, there would be comparatively little political danger to the GOP in considering, and rejecting a liberal firebrand, even one plucked from the ranks of women or minorities.

So who do you want picking your next Supreme Court justice (if it can't be Bernie Sanders, that is)? Trump with a Democratic Senate, or Clinton with a Democratic Senate?

For the Republican base, the issue is even more stark: it’s not just a question of how Garland would vote, it’s their refusal to countenance handing Obama any sort of victory. Polls conducted before Garland’s nomination found nearly seven in ten Republicans saying Obama shouldn’t even try to fill the seat
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus captured the two notions – the court’s potential shift, anger at Obama – on Twitter. “We won’t stand by while Obama attempts to install a liberal majority on #SCOTUS to undermine our Constitution & protect his lawless actions,” he said.

Overlook the misuse of the definition of the word 'lawless' here; this is the expiring establishment GOP making one last symbolic stand for their rebel base.  There's a little more back-and-forth at the link about whether McConnell will fold, whether the Republican senators on the verge of being swept out of office in a blue wave will convince him to at least hold a hearing, even if it's to turn down the best nominee suited to their philosophy they will ever get.  

Obama's already standing at the finish line while they are lacing up their shoes.

“We have forced them into a telescoping series of untenable positions, where even agreeing to meet with the guy is a cave in the view of their base,” said a senior Democratic congressional aide. 
“It’s a win-win situation. Either we get the confirmation, and change the balance of the court for a generation, or they have to fight to November defending the most extreme, untenable position of no-votes, and we’ll annihilate them on that,” the aide said. “And then President Clinton nominates” Scalia’s successor. 
So, the aide said, “I don’t care if McConnell caves or not.”

Checkmate, Mr. Turtle.  Care for a game of checkers?  You can be black this time ...

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

The hearse is waiting outside

There's room for another casket.  The one already in the back is ... little.

Clinton’s victories in Ohio, Florida, Illinois and North Carolina put her firmly on course to defeat her primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. As the results were announced on Tuesday evening, she took the stage before a boisterous crowd of supporters here and seemed to pivot towards the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, who also won in Florida.

“We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November!” Clinton declared.

No polling versus reality shockers to be had on this night.

It looked as if Sanders might prove the Clinton campaign’s bullish prediction wrong after he won a stunning upset in Michigan on March 8, but Clinton’s victories on Tuesday helped her stop Sanders’ momentum and establish a seemingly unbeatable lead.

Though Clinton was expected to win the primaries in North Carolina and Florida on Tuesday, polls showed her potentially losing in Ohio, Arizona, Missouri and Illinois. Even if Sanders had won all of the states that were in play on Tuesday, he would still have faced an uphill battle. However, by taking Ohio and Illinois, Clinton definitively pulled ahead.

Elsewhere, the mood was more that of a wake.

Sanders took the stage shortly after Clinton’s appearance in Florida and addressed more than 7,000 of his cheering supporters in a convention center in Phoenix with his usual stump speech. The 74-year-old senator mentioned raising the minimum wage, getting money out of politics, fixing free trade deals and reforming the criminal justice system, among other typical stump-speech issues.

What Sanders didn’t mention were the five states that voted in the Democratic primaries Tuesday night, and what the results meant for his viability as a candidate. This was in contrast to Sanders’ election night appearance on Super Tuesday, when he explicitly downplayed his mixed showing and reassured his supporters he would take the fight to “every” state. In contrast with most election night gatherings, there were no TVs showing primary results in Phoenix, so Sanders’ supporters were not shown Clinton’s wins racking up in the background as the evening progressed. Arizona’s Democrats vote next Tuesday, and Sanders is expected to do well in the state.

Thanks again, corporate media.

No major cable network carried his speech, which coincided with Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s remarks and later, as Sanders continued speaking, with Donald Trump’s victory speech.

So we wait a bit longer for Team Sanders to wake up and smell the coffee, bust a move, and instruct his support network which way to go.  If you know any Sanders people, you already know that they're considering all options.  Since so many of them aren't Democrats -- like Sanders himself, allegedly -- we should expect to see wholesale defections among the blue ranks as Clinton turns her battleship to the right and steams ahead for the fall.  And there ought to be plenty of Republicans for them to recruit.


That's the only interesting storyline left to unfold (as far as I'm concerned): post-Sanders, how do the Democrats plan, go, and do in the general.  They may have been gifted with another Goldwater ... or perhaps will deliver us the nation's worst nightmare.  There's a bitter pill the #NeverTrumps have to swallow.  Will they?

Some Democrats say it's just like 2008 and  Hillary's PUMAs: everybody will get over their upset and fall in line, get onboard.  Eventually.  By November.

I'll just be glad to get to blogging about some things beside the presidentials every day after the past two months.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Against Bernie Sanders

(Open Source Dem, aka J. R. Behrman, infrequent poster here, former SD-13 committee chair, former presiding judge of the Harris County EVBB, former chair of the Texas Democratic Party's Progressive Populist Caucus -- among other honoraria -- posted this to his Facebook page after sending it to me.  I offered him my deepest condolences on the loss of his wife last week.)

I oppose the nomination of Bernie Sanders, Senator from Vermont. 
That is a surprise to some who fancy me a "left-wing" member of the Democratic Party. After all, I supported George McGovern back in the day. I supported Howard Dean there for a while. Moreover, I did not just support Barack Obama in 2008, I fought the pro-Clinton state party establishment tooth and nail through the highly contested primary and convention process. 
No, Belinda and I are so conservative we come around from the other side to a sort of traditional liberalism. 
Moreover, I have grave reservations about Secretary Clinton and her "permanent campaign" entourage, not least their reprise of the "inevitable" campaign. It is not doing her any good now, and it will be a burden for her when she challenges whoever or, dare I say, whatever the GOP comes up with. 
So why my change now? 
First, it will take not a "village" but an entire national party to defeat the GOP at all echelons of government today in 50 gerrymandered states and dozens of rotten Congressional Districts. 
Sanders is an independent and has kept his distance from the Democratic Party -- unlike, say, Howard Dean. Our nominee must first take the reins of the Democratic Party. 
Second, Hillary Clinton has been an altogether loyal and constructive contributor to the administration of President Obama. 
Sure, Sanders' socialism is somewhat attractive to me, as far as it goes. Labels do not scare me. But, President Obama is not a socialist (or a Muslim). He has pretty much exhausted the limits of what can be done in just one of the nine echelons of our dysfunctional government and politics. These accomplishments do not deserve Sanders' conceited dismissal. 
No, his socialism is almost a museum piece and does not even begin to provide a robust intellectual foundation for future governments. As Paul Glastris at Washington Monthly says, Sanders is "intellectually consistent but not intellectually honest." 
Even venerable socialist governments and even the formidable Green parties in Europe or charismatic leaders like Yanis Varoufakis are struggling to dump obsolete or delusional intellectual frameworksto govern their own parties, and to fix a broken socialist international. 
Finally, Bernie Sanders is simply a novelty. Sure, he is charming and attractive to political junkies who are disillusioned with and critical of our party and government. 
(Yes, that could be said of me.) 
But I stand with those like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown, who expect to see more actual progress from a Clinton administration than a Sanders crusade. 
In any event, here is what I would like to do: 
Build a strong party 
Sanders would need and Clinton will need a new kind of political party to actually govern. This is where the most radical of new ideas can flourish, because a political party is "lightweight" -- a good thing in engineering -- even "flimsy". It is easily transformed almost overnight. No negotiations or "deals" with the crazy-right are necessary or even possible. 
Not a lousy claque 
A political party is not, actually, an extension of government, though you would not know that here in one-party Texas with its kludge of cornpone state and county parties. No, my party should be a check on government and an instrument of the people. In our case, that is a party rooted in republican principle and built on democratic aspirations. 
Make it work 
This means that the Sanders and Clinton supporters will have to have a voice in party affairs, will have to cultivate party loyalty, and will have to stop political exit on the left that is manifest as despair and apathy. Otherwise, right-wing extremism will just keep growing and poisoning everything. 
Right here, right now! 
There is actually no better place to start that transformation than Harris and eight surrounding counties in Texas. It will take strategy, planning, and finance. That is where I hope to play a role. 
But not for a while. 
The wheels are off my life right now, following Belinda's death. I will sign in at the desultory Senate District Convention, but not attend the silly state convention. 
After the national election, it will be time to consider robust reconstruction of the post-Reconstruction Texas Democratic Party. It is now just an antique facility for bi-partisan concession-tending that is no longer viable at any echelon of government or politics.

$20 billion for her Iraq vote

“I’m sitting there in the Oval Office, and Bush says to me, ‘What do you need?’ And I said, ‘I need $20 billion to rebuild, you know, New York,’ and he said, ‘You got it.’ And he was good to his word,” Clinton said in response to Matthews’ question on why Bernie Sanders was right on the Iraq War vote and Clinton was wrong. 
“Literally, that same day, I get back to the Capitol, and the Republicans are trying to take that money away. We kept calling the White House, Bush kept saying, ‘I gave them my word, I’m going to stick with it.’..."

About the four-minute mark in the video embedded here.

I suppose we should take her word for it.  I mean, she's probably not lying about this.  This is how a "progressive who gets things done" operates, after all.


She is either clueless about the things she says and does, or she just doesn't care what anybody thinks about it.  We already had one president like that, and he's in the photograph above.

Y'all go ahead and hug it out, though.  I'm done.

Update: I'll let the Republicans handle this one (the other gaffe from last night):

In comments that are sure to draw the ire of her Republican critics, Hillary Clinton sought to contrast the war in Iraq with the intervention in Libya during her stint as secretary of state. 
“I’ve said Iraq was a mistake,” Clinton told Chris Matthews during an MSNBC town hall event on Monday night. “Libya was a different kind of calculation. And we didn’t lose a single person. We didn’t have a problem in supporting our European and Arab allies in working with NATO.” 
As Politico noted, Clinton was probably referring to the U.S.-backed overthrow of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 and not the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, where four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed.

Monday, March 14, 2016

A few predictions for tomorrow

I've previously forecast that March 1 -- and then March 15 -- would be the day of reckoning for Bernie Sanders and his erstwhile presidential campaign.  I have to extend the deadline further out for that because he continues to rise in the polling, even as Hillary Clinton keeps shooting herself in the foot, the one which also happens to be in her mouth.

New Public Policy Polling surveys of the 5 states that will vote on Tuesday find that the Democratic contests in Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio are all toss ups, while Hillary Clinton maintains a significant advantage in Florida and North Carolina. [...] 
Clinton leads Bernie Sanders just 46/41 in Ohio and 48/45 in Illinois, while narrowly trailing Sanders in Missouri 47/46. Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri are all open primary states and Sanders is benefiting from significant support from independent voters and a small swath of Republicans planning to vote in each state, putting him in position to potentially pull an upset sweep of the region on Tuesday night ...

The race is going to go on for some time; more debates and town hall fora should ultimately be on tap despite resistance from the buffoonish Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and the primary schedule is somewhat lighter ahead, with more states moving to 'winner take all' upping the ante.

And the polling could be askew, as it was in Michigan.

Here's what we know: down by 37 in Illinois just five days ago, Sanders is now up by two according to CBS News; down by 30 in Ohio five days ago, Sanders is now down by only single digits; the only polling in Missouri has Sanders in a statistical dead heat with Clinton, per the poll's margin of error; and while the polling in Florida at first blush seems less favorable -- Sanders has "only" cut 17 points off Clinton's 45-point lead in the last 48 hours, according to CBS News -- the Sanders campaign reports its internal polling shows a race in the high single-digits, and given that this internal data turned out to be correct in Michigan, it seems we should all be paying it some mind.

Go read more there as Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook is already sounding the "we're losing!" alarm bells.  Time -- as in tomorrow evening -- will tell, but it looks as if Bernie is going to make it a race for awhile longer.  How much longer?  Won't hazard another guess.

For the Republicans, the outcome seems more certain.

Billionaire Donald Trump has slightly increased his overwhelming lead in Florida to 24 percentage points, while Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) looks set for a crushing defeat in his home state, according to a Quinnipiac poll released (today).

Everyone say "goodnight, little Marco".  More looking-ahead from Non-Prophet News.

The expectation is that Rubio will drop out after he loses in Florida. If Kasich is able to pull (the upset) off in Ohio, then he will likely stay in the race for the foreseeable future. That's a problem for Ted Cruz less because Kasich will be taking stealing his delegates, but because he will be stealing his media coverage. Kasich is the only one left who hasn't gotten any time in the limelight, and Rubio dropping out sets the perfect stage for everyone to start talking about Kasich and not talking about a two-person race. 
After these states cast their ballots, the calendar cools down until April 26; until then, only four states (Arizona, Utah, Wisconsin, and New York) will vote. That's a long time for a great deal of speculation about the race to occur and conspiracies theories to spread. What happens on Tuesday will go a long way towards setting the narrative of what happens over the next month.

There is no reason to believe that Trump is going to be upset, blocked, or otherwise prevented from the GOP nomination.  Not today, not tomorrow, not at the convention, brokered or not.  There is some reason to believe that Hillary Clinton will.  Everything you'll read and hear after Tuesday night will be spin about the polls or the he said/she said bullshit.  Until we have more debates or more election results, take everything with a shaker of salt.