The Weekly Wrangle

No members of the Texas Progressive Alliance can be found in the Panama Papers, but there are some salacious blog posts in this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff warns about the likelihood of North Carolina-style anti-equality legislation being put forth in next year's Legislature.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos believes the GOP deserves its bigoted presidential frontrunners. 50+ years of an ugly dog whistling Southern Strategy reaps the worst among us. The Republican Party and its bigoted frontrunners. The devil made them do it.

Ken Paxton, under indictment for fraud, hired another theocrat on the public dime. CouldBeTrue at South Texas Chisme doesn't think much of his family values.

Socratic Gadfly takes a look at Bernie Sanders, presidential politician.

One of the topics later this week in the New York Democratic presidential debate will surely be qualifications to be president, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

jobsanger calls 'BernieBros' the TeaBaggers of the left, and Bay Area Houston goes after Sanders' "quote-unquote".

Egberto Willies wonders if the Dem primary is on the verge of implosion, like the GOP's.

Neil at All People Have Value said that while we discuss the anti-gay legislation in North Carolina and Mississippi, we should recall that Houston voters repealed our human rights ordinance just a few months ago. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

And the Lewisville Texan Journal eulogizes former mayor Gene Carey.

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And here are more posts from the Texas blogosphere.

In a truly horrible account, Trail Blazers points how badly 4-year-old Leiliana Wright needed Dallas CPS, and how it failed at every turn.

Grits for Breakfast updates on legislation in California and Texas regarding 'junk science writs'.

Prairie Weather is struck with a realization while reading Robert Kaiser's The Disaster of Richard Nixon: maybe this is how the Republicans can appear to get away with 'it'.

Idiotprogrammer has some e-publishing updates you might be interested in.

Ashton Woods at Strength in Numbers clears up a few misconceptions.

Better Texas Blog argues that sales tax holidays are not good for consumers.

The Lunch Tray gives a meal delivery service a try.

Paradise in Hell looks forward to being able to discriminate against numerous of his fellow citizens who have raised his holy ire.

The TSTA Blog bemoans the effect of ideology on public education.

The Makeshift Academic examines cost sharing and access to health care.

The Urban Edge defends the maligned urban freeway.

And Pages of Victory tells some stories about hitchhiking and train-jumping.

Sunday 'It's Up to You, New York" Funnies

"Trump shuffles campaign staff after stumbles"

On qualifications

The temperature inside the Democratic bubble increased overnight, with Twitter hashtags and their subsequent hijacking the order of the morning.  I think I'll dodge the catfight except to point out that Hillary and her people have always been just this progressive in their acidity, and she appears to have dragged Bernie down to her level at last, with this 'who's qualified' crapola.

Following a week where Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign refused to agree to a New York debate unless Bernie Sanders “toned down” his campaign, the Clinton campaign escalated its negative tone against Sanders, with one aide telling CNN their goal was to “disqualify” and “defeat him.”

One day after losing the Wisconsin primary by a sizable margin, Clinton appeared on “Morning Joe.” POLITICO’s Glenn Thrush gave Clinton a flattering interview. The New York Daily News published a cover story headlined, “Bernie’s Sandy Hook shame.” It accused Sanders of callously defending gun manufacturers against a lawsuit brought by relatives of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

As CNN reported, “It’s the latest chapter in Clinton’s approach to Sanders. She’s tried ignoring him, brushing him aside, gently dismissing his policies.”

“The Clinton campaign has refrained from going nuclear on Sanders, aides say, in large part to keep at least some goodwill alive in hopes of unifying the party at the end of the primary fight,” according to CNN. “No more, a top adviser [said]. The fight is on. Extending an olive branch to Sanders’ supporters ‘will come later.'

This is what her supporters refer to as her being "battle-tested", this fighting dirty like a Republican business.  It's one of the descriptions they file under 'qualified' (that she's withered the assaults from the right-wing and come out smiling).  The difference with Clinton is that all of her constant battling has left her weary and reactive in the most negative sense.  It has absolutely changed her for the worse over time.  Bearing scars from past scrapes has made her a much more bitter, vindictive candidate, one completely tone-deaf to her own hypocrisy.

To be redundant about it, I just don't think this long experience of fighting with everyone qualifies as a worthwhile presidential qualification.  And to be clear, I like my Democrats to be fighters, as a long list of archived posts here would show.  But in 2016, as in 2008, as her campaign loses enthusiasm and momentum, she and her subordinates aren't actually battling anything; they're flailing like a fish on the dock, trying to stick a spiny fin into somebody as they gasp for breath.

(T)he Clinton campaign and media outlets like CNN promote a false narrative that the campaign has not been in attack mode. Since September, she has used a network of surrogates and rapid response super PACs to push anti-Sanders talking points into the media.

Shadowproof has documented a pattern of dishonest attacks and rumors, particularly since January. The attacks include: Sanders supports Minutemen vigilantes and similar anti-immigrant hate groups, Sanders opposed bailing out auto workers, Sanders supports the NRA, Sanders wants to dismantle the Affordable Health Care Act, Sanders supported the indefinite detention of immigrants, and Sanders sees President Barack Obama as “weak” and will not support Obama’s legacy.

Voters have yet to see the full scope of what the Clinton campaign will sling at Sanders, but today’s interviews indicate she will return to her effort to paint Sanders as a gun-lover. She will focus on the fact that he is an independent senator, and, therefore, he is not a Democrat who will help the Democratic Party win in down-ballot elections in November. She also will attack him on regulating “too big to fail” banks and re-up her artful smear that Sanders has no respect for President Obama.

Let's take one example: the two candidates' perches on money in politics.  She has chosen the Rovian path -- attack your competitor's strength -- with her lambasting his responses in the now-infamous NYDN interview.

Hillary Clinton fashions herself as the ultimate general in a war against big-money politics.

“You're not going to find anybody more committed to aggressive campaign finance reform than me,” Clinton said following the New Hampshire primary.

But the Democratic presidential front-runner stands poised to bludgeon her general election opponent with Republicans’ favorite political superweapon: the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which earlier this decade launched a new era of unbridled fundraising.

Clinton’s massive campaign machine is built of the very stuff — super PACs, secret cash, unlimited contributions — she says she’ll attack upon winning the White House.

Indeed, a Center for Public Integrity investigation reveals that Clinton’s own election efforts are largely immune from her reformist platform. While Clinton rails against “unaccountable money" that is “corrupting our political system,” corporations, unions and nonprofits bankrolled by unknown donors have already poured millions of dollars into a network of Clinton-boosting political organizations. That’s on top of the tens of millions an elite club of Democratic megadonors, including billionaires George Soros and Haim Saban, have contributed.

She has to keep having $700,000 fundraisers with George Clooney headlining because Bernie Sanders gets $1.5 million dollars a day from people who can only give $27 on average.  I'm sure it's been humiliating for Candidate Clinton to have to keep beating the streets for more big donors even as Sanders outraises her with his legions of small ones.  This is to say nothing about the ethical standards of the people who are raising her money.  They're not all as squeaky clean as Clooney.

Her ability to pump this much jack -- specifically the craven panhandling for it -- has become a liability, one holding sway with Republicans as well as Democrats.

A Center for Public Integrity/Ipsos poll conducted in late February indicates many potential general election voters are likewise concerned about how serious Clinton is about remaking the nation’s campaign system —a monumental challenge under any circumstance, but a goal supported by the vast majority of Americans.

Half of all poll respondents overall — and nearly four in 10 self-identified Democrats — said Clinton is relying on super PACs and big money too much. That compares to 18 percent overall who said Clinton is relying on them the “right amount” and 5 percent who said “too little.”

And when asked, “If elected president, which of the following would do the most to reform the campaign finance system and make it less reliant on big money?” Clinton trailed both Sanders and Trump among respondents.

Her deeds don't match her words.  She has no credibility on the issue.

Citizens United reformer or no, she's very unlikely to be getting things done, progressively or not-so-much, with a Congress gone putrid after eight years of obstructing Obama.  (Sanders will have this same problem as well, of course.)  Supreme Court justice nominees with a freshly-Democratic Senate in 2017 should fare better, but climate initiatives that include something as innocuous as a BDS effort are a non-starter in a Clinton II Administration, and forget about $15/hour minimum wage jobs and an economy for the working class and not the investor/donor class.

As with our government-approved, private sector profit-motivated healthcare insurance, we're all just going to have to "keep shopping" until we find something we can get by with.  If the definition of 'qualified' includes the public duty of First Lady as her longest term of experience -- neither an elected nor appointed position -- yet you wish to have that experience considered only when it suits you and not when it doesn't, then we might just have to agree to disagree.

Sanders keeps winning, still losing; Carnival Cruz sails ahead

Post-Badger State wins for both, Ted Cruz's prospects for snatching the GOP nomination -- unfortunately for us all -- appear to be a little brighter than Bernie's.

First, the losers.

As the results came in from Wisconsin last night, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the front-runners in the Republican and Democratic primaries, were nowhere to be seen. According to reports from the television networks’ campaign correspondents, they were both in New York. Trump was holed up in Trump Tower, and Clinton, after attending a fund-raiser in Riverdale, had returned to her family’s home in Chappaqua, in Westchester County. The fact that Trump and Clinton had chosen to stay at home and not to schedule any press availabilities indicated that they were both expecting to lose. However, it is doubtful that either of them expected to be defeated quite so badly.

Lucky thirteen.

In the Republican primary, Ted Cruz beat Trump by about thirteen percentage points, forty-eight per cent to thirty-five per cent, delighting the organizers of the “Never Trump” movement. And in the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders also won by about thirteen points, fifty-six per cent to forty-three per cent, earning his sixth victory in the last seven contests. Despite the fact that Sanders had been expected to win in Wisconsin, and that his campaign had expended a lot of energy and money there, his margin of victory was impressive. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, Clinton was holding a narrow lead in the polls. Buoyed by a large turnout, Sanders turned that deficit around and won handily. According to the network exit poll, he came out ahead among voters of both sexes and all income groups, and with college graduates and those who did not graduate college.

It should be stated straight away that neither of the two Wisconsin results made much immediate difference in regard to the delegate math, which will ultimately decide who the parties’ Presidential nominees are. Both Trump and Clinton still have substantial leads in the number of elected delegates, and Clinton also has a big advantage over Sanders among Democratic superdelegates—party officials and politicians who can cast votes for whomever they want at the convention. (The Republicans have far fewer superdelegates.)

On the Republican side, forty-two delegates were up for grabs in Wisconsin, which is a “winner-takes-most” state for the G.O.P. The nature of the contest insured that Cruz received the overwhelming number of those delegates: as of this writing, he was set to win either thirty-six or thirty-nine, depending on the final vote tallies. That left just three or six delegates for Trump, who went into the night with two hundred and fifty more delegates than the Texas senator.

It sets us up nicely for the New York debate between Clinton and Sanders on April 14 and the vote on the 19th.  My expectation is that Hillary and the Prags are going to come out slinging.  More bricks and bats in the Five Points from Poop Cruz and Drumpf are on tap as well.

What can’t be disputed is that both New York primaries are shaping up to be epic showdowns. Trump, who has had a terrible couple of weeks, will be trying to steady things and confirm his position as the front-runner. Sanders will be seeking an upset victory in the state that Clinton served as a senator and where she now lives—a result that would hit the Democratic Party like an earthquake.

[...]

... It’s hard not to see Cruz’s victory as a consolidation of anti-Trump forces—one that is likely to continue and perhaps expand further, especially if John Kasich, who finished a distant third in Wisconsin, were to drop out. (Despite the result, he showed no signs of doing so. “Nothing is more important than winning back the White House in November,” his campaign tweeted. “Only John Kasich can make that happen.”)

Watch to see how the state elections going forward -- New York and Pennsylvania this month -- have different elements that favor Clinton and Trump to some greater degree. 

From now on, most of the primaries, including New York’s, will be closed or semi-closed, and many will take place in states with a larger percentage of minority voters than Wisconsin has. That doesn’t mean that Sanders can’t win in such places. It does mean, however, that he will have to win over more registered Democrats and non-whites than he has previously.

Senior pol David Gergen sees Trump now as the underdog.

With 16 primaries and caucuses remaining, Donald Trump has to win 70% of the delegates to secure the 1,237 needed to win a first ballot at the Republican convention. Several states are coming up that are more favorable territory for Trump than Cruz, especially New York and Pennsylvania where Trump still has significant leads.

Even so, winning more than two thirds of the remaining delegates is a daunting challenge for him. In the 36 primaries and caucuses leading up to Wisconsin, Trump won only 46% of the delegates. And now he heads down a tough homestretch with Cruz seizing the momentum.

In a year crammed with surprises, no one can say for sure what will unfold in Cleveland, Ohio. But there are two likely outcomes: First, Cruz and Trump have each vowed to vote against a change in the GOP's Rule 40. That's an obscure provision that requires any candidate to win at least eight primaries and caucuses before he or she can be nominated.

Trump and Cruz will be the only two people in Cleveland with that distinction. They should also have enough delegate strength between them to block a rewrite of Rule 40. In other words, potential candidates like John Kasich, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney won't be eligible even if many delegates think them likely to fare better against Hillary Clinton -- the race could narrow to Trump vs. Cruz.

If Trump then falls short on the first ballot, there will be a donnybrook. But it is now becoming apparent that Cruz is much better prepared to win that fight. Trump has run a campaign long on the outside game of televised rallies but short on the inside game of quietly piling up delegates.

[...]

In a first ballot, delegates must vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged but thereafter, of course, may vote for someone else. Signs increasingly point to the fact that Republican party regulars pledged to Trump are ready to bolt on a second or third ballot. With Cruz the only other man in the race, that almost certainly means they will drift -- rush? --toward the Texan, and he will take the crown.

Wisconsin exit polls gave further evidence, as if any were needed, that Trump's self-destructive behavior in the two weeks leading up to the vote cost him dearly. He reacted so badly to various challenges, especially in his inability to speak clearly about abortion, that one wondered whether he had tired of the game and wanted to go home. Wisconsin voters punished him severely.

Trump's trump card has always been to ditch the Republicans and go his own third way, but the time remaining for him to qualify for the ballot on enough states to compete -- not to mention the 'sore loser' laws that would prevent him from doing so in states like Texas -- make it clear he can't be anything but a pure spoiler in that regard.

Is it possible that Trump is going to prove to be a very bright flash in the GOP pan?  Can the so-called establishment wrest control from him, only to see Cruz grab the rebound?

So if we're headed to a Hillary v. Ted fall matchup, the Texas media will be thrilled, crowing about all the Lone Star influence to be had once again in DC and yaddayadda, and with Julian Castro riding side-saddle with Calamity Clinton producing the same measure of Texas pride in Democrats, maybe we won't all be bored to tears.  Nobody should whine about Texas not being a swing state, thus nobody should complain if Bernie's revolution keeps going left and maybe Green.  There will still be angry conservatives in bunches when Cruz runs aground on the shoals of sanity, the po' folks will still be scratching out a living without making time to vote, and the biggest headache the wealthy will have is crossing Panama off their tax haven lists.

Kinda sorta same as it ever was.