Archives for 2016

With each new primary win, it is looking more likely than ever Donald Trump will be the GOP’s presidential nominee. The hated, divisive figure with zero political experience may well be the one to carry Republican hopes for retaking the White House.

Great news for Democrats, you would think, right? You could almost see the headlines, “Landslide, Cakewalk.” But not so fast. Who will the Democrats most likely put up against this hated, divisive Republican… a hated, divisive figure of their own, Hillary Clinton.

It is abundantly clear that Americans, both Republican and Democrat, are sick and tired of politics as usual. They don’t want to remodel the house; they want a complete teardown. They want revolution, not evolution. Trump offers something radically different to Republican voters; Hillary Clinton does not.

The revolutionary Democratic candidate is, of course, Bernie Sanders.

But while Sanders has the right message, he is the wrong messenger for a number of reasons.

Bernie Sanders likes to refer to himself as a “democratic socialist.” Try as he may to explain to the American voter what that means, how it is not threatening in anyway, his only real success has been among young voters. To older Americans, socialism is seen as communism and well you know how that works. The ironic twist is that Bernie is not even a registered Democrat. He is an Independent.

Bernie is a spry 74 year-old. But the fact remains, at that age, he would be the oldest president ever to serve in office. How can he lead the revolution, some ask, if he will most likely need a walker by the end of his first term? What about a second term?

Just imagine for a moment Bernie’s message of a corrupt political system, where the deck is stacked against the middle and lower classes, coming from, lets say, a John Kennedyesque figure. Against a buffoon like Donald Trump, the Republican Party would no doubt be relegated to the dustbin of history after a certain electoral calamity.

But Democrats have Hillary. A deeply flawed candidate, from a deeply blemished political clan.

This presidential election cycle has produced a “perfect storm” on both sides of the political divide, with one candidate hated by his political party; one candidate propped up by her party’s elites. Who will American voters hate the least?

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

For anyone who even had the slightest doubt the our hallowed Supreme Court is not a partisan, politicized institution, old Mitch McConnell set the record straight in an interview on last week’s Fox News Sunday.

In response to a question from host Chris Wallace, who asked if Senate Republicans would consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court after the election if Hillary Clinton were to prevail, McConnell responded that he “can’t imagine that a Republican majority in the United States Senate would want to confirm, in a lame duck session, a nominee opposed by the National Rifle Association [and] the National Federation of Independent Businesses.”

Gone was the original rationale that Obama’s nominee should not get a Senate vote during an election year. Gone was the talking point that we should let the American people, by way of the upcoming presidential election, decide who gets to pick the new justice.

This was a rare moment in American politics. The Majority Leader of the Senate admitting that Republicans must get the approval of the NRA in order to vote on a Supreme Court nominee. It is one thing to think such a thought or to perhaps discuss it among your fellow Republicans, but to admit it on national TV?

It’s almost too ironic, bordering on the comical, that only last month Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. delivered some blunt remarks about the Supreme Court confirmation process. The Senate should ensure that nominees are qualified, he said, and leave politics out of it.

This is rich because the Chief Justice spoke only 10 days before the sudden death of his colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia and he could not have known how timely, albeit awkward, his comments would turn out to be.

Will Justice Roberts once again speak out against politics influencing the confirmation process now that an actual vacancy has occurred? Don’t hold your breath.

Republicans are rightfully upset over the unexpected loss of their favorite, most partisan justice, Scalia. They know the ideological … OK I’ll say it …the political balance of the Court is at stake. Even a moderate justice, Democrat or Republican, will move the court away from the almost certain 5-4 conservative rulings you routinely got with Scalia on the bench.

Truth is, McConnell didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already suspect: the Supreme Court is a political body and not an impartial arbiter of the Constitution. With Scalia and the other four conservatives on the bench, the Court had almost become an extension of the Republican establishment.

What we didn’t know was that, according to the Majority Leader, the U.S. Constitution had been amended to read that U.S. Supreme Court justices were to be appointed with the advice and consent of the NRA, not the U.S. Senate.

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Just days after predicting there would be riots if he is denied the GOP nomination, Donald Trump told a group supporters at an Arizona rally, “We’re going to win with our Second Amendment. We’re gonna win big league with our Second Amendment!”

Win with our Second Amendment?

While Trump did not go all the way, as did former Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle who talked about resorting to “second amendment remedies” against our tyrannical government, the message appeared to come across loud and clear to his cheering supporters

There will be riots. Armed riots.

Trump has not yet explained what he meant by winning “with our second amendment” but you can be sure he will deny he meant what his angry, dim-witted, gun-toting supporters assuredly understand it to mean. Armed insurrection.

The Republican National Convention will be held in Cleveland, Ohio, July 18-21. Did you know Ohio is an “open carry” state?

Trump, for all his angry rhetoric, is very careful about how he delivers his message of hate, preferring to speak in code … code well understood by his diehard supporters.

The GOP elites have vowed to stop Trump from securing its party’s nomination come hell or high water. Trump has “predicted” riots if that were to happen. Now he is going to win with the second amendment?

It doesn’t get scarier than this. Yet no one in the media, as far as I know, has confronted Trump about what he meant by his seemingly incendiary remark.

It would be tragic, and sadly ironic, if gun violence were to take place at a convention held by the party that does everything within its power to stop any type of gun regulation.

God help us.

Photo | moreperfectunionpodcast.com

Adding to his amazing legacy, Barack Obama is causing Republican heads to explode today now that he has officially stepped foot on Cuban communist soil. The three-day Cuba trip, first by a U.S. President in over 88 years, is sure to be a game changer in U.S. – Cuba relationships.

And therein lies the problem for Republicans.

Republicans have done everything within their power over the last seven years to put a lid on anything that could bring credit to our first African American president. They’ve gone so far as to oppose even policies they once promoted, such as the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

No, Republicans are unhappy this morning as Obama sips his first tropical drink in the presence of Raul Castro, dictator of the evil communist island. They are reaching for their Maalox as hordes of Cubans cheer our intrepid President in the streets of Havana and laud him with chants of, “USA, USA, USA.”

It is so delicious to see our cool, calm and crafty president outmaneuver Republicans once again.

Do Republicans seriously think they can beat Obama in their fight over appointing a new Supreme Court Justice? Their extreme partisanship has blinded them to the fact that Obama has boxed them in for the umpteenth time. If they refuse to hold hearings on Obama’s nominee, they will surely pay a price at the polls come November. And not just in the presidential race, but also in contests for the Senate and House of Representatives.

Bobby Jindal had it so right when, in a moment of candor, he labeled the GOP the “Stupid Party.”

The Republican Party is heading towards its day of reckoning. After years of pushing conservatively popular wedge issues and speaking in dog whistles to a base of mostly white angry men, they now have Donald Trump as their likely presidential nominee.

While party elites will do everything within their power to deny Trump the nomination, they are once again done in by their own ineptitude. Deny Trump, who will either have enough delegates to win the nomination outright or have the highest delegate total of any candidate, and there will be rioting in the streets. And a catastrophic shellacking at the polls.

Congressional Republican leaders like to refer to President Obama as a lame duck.

There is nothing lame about this Presidente. “Ole Obama!”

Photo | AFP

The man Time Magazine named “The Republican Savior” in a front cover spread just a few years ago has quit the Republican presidential race. The candidate embraced by the Republican establishment as their new white knight after Jeb Bush’s disastrous campaign, has gone the way of the other thirteen Republican presidential candidates before him … home.

After suffering a humiliating blowout primary loss yesterday in his home state of Florida, Marco Rubio’s career as a politician appears done for. To quote a favorite expression of Richard Nixon, his political career seems “deader than Kelsey’s nuts.”

Rubio’s days as a Florida senator are numbered… literally. His senate career will come to an end at the end of the year, having promised not to seek reelection. At a press conference in West Palm Beach, Rubio told CNN, “January of next year, I will either be president of the United States or I will be a private citizen. If I never hold elected office again, I’m comfortable with that.”

We’ve all heard the expression, “What a difference a day makes,” right? In Rubio’s case, it was more like, “What a difference a debate makes.”

After Rubio’s unexpected strong third place finish in the Iowa caucus, which he and the media hailed as a resounding victory, things were looking up for Marco. It appeared the Republican elites had found their man. He would be the one to go toe- to-toe with the two hated frontrunners, Trump and Cruz.

But then we know what happened next… the New Hampshire Republican debate.

Held just days before the New Hampshire primary, Rubio laid about as big an egg as a candidate could on a debate stage. For some inexplicable reason, he kept repeating the same talking point about President Obama, over and over. An aggressive Chris Christie relentlessly mocked him on what appeared to many to be a computer glitch in Rubio’s brain. A few days later, all the Rubio momentum was gone. He finished a distant fifth in the all-important primary.

Many political analysts are wondering if Rubio has hurt his brand so badly that a 2018 run for the Florida governorship is now out of the question.

At the age of 44, Marco Rubio was the youngest remaining Republican candidate to compete for his party’s nomination. In view of his age, many pundits believe his political career, and fortunes, can be resurrected.

While Barrack Obama was about the same age, and had the same skimpy political resume, as Rubio, the Florida senator proved he did not have the same intelligence, charisma, wit and political skills as the President.

In the words of the late Lloyd Benson who famously said to a youngish Dan Quayle during the 1988 vice presidential debate, “I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

Marco, you are no Barack Obama.

Photo |triton.gfd.si

After last night’s disappointing primary losses in the all-important states of Florida and Ohio, reality is starting to set in for Bernie Sanders supporters. Many had hoped last week’s massive upset victory in Michigan would be the springboard for another surprise win in the neighboring rust-belt state of Ohio. Big “Mo” was on Bernie’s side, supporters proclaimed.

But, oh, that political gravity!

Not only did Hillary Clinton prevail in Florida and Ohio, she also racked up victories in Illinois and North Carolina. The fifth state where Clinton and Sanders faced off, Missouri, was too close to call late Tuesday night. Sanders held a narrow lead of 49.9% to 49%.

While Sanders has repeatedly said he will remain in the race up until the nominating convention, the math just doesn’t add up for him. He is trailing badly in the number of pledged delegates and is being swamped in the number of “super delegates,” almost all of whom are committed to Clinton.

Yes, Bernie’s message still resonates with Democratic primary voters and he has a large chunk of money in the bank, but the nomination itself is looking increasingly out of reach. It’s not impossible, just highly improbable.

The blogosphere was abuzz with Progressives consoling one another over the crushing defeats, with many vowing to sit out the general election if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee.

Here are a few actual comments:

Write him in and continue the revolution…We will survive Trump as a nation. We will not survive Hillary in the Democrat Party.

As a Sanders supporter, I don’t think Hillary is an alternative. Won’t show up definitely.

Most people I know will not vote for Hillary. We may be giving the election to the Republicans if that’s the case. We need to do away with Super Delegates

If it does end up being a contest between Clinton and Donald Trump, I am willing to bet that a good many of the “Bernie or Bust” Democrats will get over their bruised egos, think clearly and support the Democratic ticket.

There is no doubt Bernie’s candidacy has stirred up passion in a great many people, especially the young, who demand real change. But as all Progressives should know, and all reform movements have shown, change travels in the slow lane of social justice.

Photo | theguardian.com