Why Defeating Donald Trump Isn't Enough

GOP's Barbara Comstock - political whore to Donald Trump

In less than two weeks, Democrats and decent minded people have an opportunity to send a loud and clear message of what America is really about and what our values consist of.  Yes, Donald Trump needs to be sent to an ignominious defeat, but so too must many Republican office holders who have been complicit in his misogyny through either their endorsements of the man or by their refusal to condemn both Trump and his policies of hate and division, not to mention his crude mindset that celebrates the sexual assault of women by disgusting men like himself.  This is  election is an opportunity to stand up for morality and decency, something utterly lacking in Donald Trump and in those who have put their political party ahead of the nation and the morality that Republicans falsely claim to uphold.  Those without the moral courage to condemn Trump and/or who continue to endorse him need to be sent into political retirement.  A column in the Washington Post makes this case:

It is a message Democrats will be sending in suburban precincts all over the United States during the 2016 campaign’s final days: Defeating Donald Trump isn’t enough. Fully rejecting Trumpism also means routing Republican House and Senate candidates who showed any ambivalence in pushing back against a nominee that so many upscale voters regard with horror.

Rudra Kapila, a Democratic organizer, explained the mission . . . . “is to get folks to vote Democrat down the ballot.”

It’s an objective that really matters in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, where Republican incumbent Barbara Comstock faces Democrat LuAnn Bennett in one of the most closely contested House races in the country. If Democrats are to have any chance of gaining the 30 seats they need to take over the House — a long shot still — they have to win in places like this, where Hillary Clinton is expected to enjoy large margins.

Comstock, a staunch conservative and longtime Clinton critic, is well aware that Trump is poison for many of her constituents. . . . . it took Comstock far too long to get to that point [of denouncing Trump]. “My question to her is: Where have you been? Why now and not before?” Bennett said in an interview after she greeted the volunteers. “She has been one of the many, many enablers of Donald Trump. She spent most of this presidential campaign dancing on the head of a pin.”

Many vulnerable suburban Republican candidates have waltzed around Trump because they need votes both from his supporters and also from independents and Republicans who loathe him. 

Many of the more rural and working-class districts that were friendly to Democrats when the party took back the House in 2006 are now reliably Republican. Democrats have moved their hopes up the class scale and further into the suburbs.

By making even more highly educated, metropolitan and ethnically heterogeneous seats competitive, Trump is speeding up a political transition that was already underway. It will be a problem for Republicans in the longer run, even if they hang on to the House this year, as a more diverse electorate and a new generation that is primarily moderate or progressive comes to predominate in more districts.

The Trump effect has already improved the Democrats’ chances of taking the Senate. In the House, they are now on track to add about a dozen seats, and pickups in the high teens or low 20s are quite possible.
 Virginia’s Bennett sees Trump creating a “lose-lose” situation for her opponent. That’s why she and scores of other Democrats will not let voters forget the name that sits, like a very heavy weight, at the top of the Republican ticket.

Will Russian Hackers Target Voting Machines In November?

Donald Trump has encouraged Russian government hackers to continue to target the DNC and Hillary Clinton - something that in days past might have been viewed at traitors, certainly if done by Democrats.  And now, some are raising the frightening possibility that Donald Trump's Russian supporters might decide to target voting machines to insure a Trump victory in exchange for the promises Trump has suggested he would deliver: the dismantlement of NATO, the throwing of eastern European nations to Vladimir Putin's megalomania, and wholesale changes in America's trade policies.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this all too possible threat.  Here are highlights:

Russia was behind the hacks into the Democratic National Committee’s computer network that led to the release of thousands of internal emails just before the party’s convention began, U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedlyconcluded.

The FBI is investigating. WikiLeaks promises there is more data to come. Thepolitical nature of this cyberattack means that Democrats and Republicans are trying to spin this as much as possible. Even so, we have to accept that someone is attacking our nation’s computer systems in an apparent attempt to influence a presidential election. This kind of cyberattack targets the very core of our democratic process. And it points to the possibility of an even worse problem in November — that our election systems and our voting machines could be vulnerable to a similar attack.

If the intelligence community has indeed ascertained that Russia is to blame, our government needs to decide what to do in response. This is difficult because the attacks are politically partisan, but it is essential. If foreign governments learn that they can influence our elections with impunity, this opens the door for future manipulations, both document thefts and dumps like this one that we see and more subtle manipulations that we don’t see.

We need to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin in some way — politically, economically or in cyberspace — and make it clear that we will not tolerate this kind of interference by any government. Regardless of your political leanings this time, there’s no guarantee the next country that tries to manipulate our elections will share your preferred candidates.

Even more important, we need to secure our election systems before autumn. If Putin’s government has already used a cyberattack to attempt to help Trump win, there’s no reason to believe he won’t do it again — especially now thatTrump is inviting the “help.”

But while computer security experts like me have sounded the alarm for many years, states have largely ignored the threat, and the machine manufacturers have thrown up enough obfuscating babble that election officials are largely mollified.

We no longer have time for that. We must ignore the machine manufacturers’ spurious claims of security, create tiger teams to test the machines’ and systems’ resistance to attack, drastically increase their cyber-defenses and take them offline if we can’t guarantee their security online.

Longer term, we need to return to election systems that are secure from manipulation. This means voting machines with voter-verified paper audit trails, and no Internet voting. I know it’s slower and less convenient to stick to the old-fashioned way, but the security risks are simply too great.

Hacking of voting machines isn’t new, either. But what is new is a foreign government interfering with a U.S. national election on a large scale. Our democracy cannot tolerate it, and we as citizens cannot accept it.

Good News: The Whole Other Trump Disaster

Yes, there is some good news on the 2016 campaign front which boils down to Donald Trumps refusal to date to set up his own team on the ground.  While his lack of a ground game may have worked with the base of support that he was courting during the GOP nomination process, many in the Republican Party are fearful that it will not work in the general election.   Better news yet is that Trumps approach could be a drag on down ticket GOP candidates.   Yes, by some fluke Trump's approach might work, but it ignores the usual need to get every possible voter out to the polls on election day.  A column in Talking Points Memo looks at this situation.  Here are highlights:

It's hard not to fixate on Donald Trump's string of galactic unforced errors on the campaign trail. But there's a whole different story playing out on the campaign mechanics front - and one that has Republicans rightly worried. According to this new story out from AP, the Trump campaign estimates that it currently has a nationwide field staff of 30 people. 30. This in a country with 50 states.

It is difficult to overstate just how many crazy notions are embedded in this package. No presidential campaign can really outsource its field operation to the party. That just means that the party has to build a whole additional field staff in addition to the one its already building (set aside not being able to control its strategy, quality of work etc.) That's not possible, or at least not possible to do well. The way this works in the modern campaign is that the presidential campaign has its field operation, the party has an additional field operation and they are coordinated together and in some ways integrated together in the fall for maximal impact.

Down ticket races are heavily, heavily dependent on these two massive field operations; they get pulled along with the wave of turnout these and other campaign committees coordinate.

Trump seems to have decided he's just not going to have one. Maybe he'll decide that's ridiculous and he wants to build on after all. But you can't just build a campaign operation overnight. And Trump is way, way behind.

It will have a substantial impact beyond the presidential contest itself. And that is assuming Trump gets into gear now and starts building. But that assumption itself seems highly, highly questionable.

Will Donald Trump Hand the Senate to Elizabeth Warren?

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren share many views and both now tend to define Democrat populism.  Of the two, I see Warren as the more genuine and with more staying power and less driven by ego.  I'm sorry, but with Sanders, too much of the story is about him.  Now, should fears that Donald Trump will lead the GOP to a rout in November prove true, a lengthy piece in Politico considers how Warren could be poised to take charge of the U. S., Senate, something that would be a true case of karma being a bitch for the Republicans who blocked her confirmation to head the CFPB.  Here are some article highlights which I hope prove to be accurate: 

In a normal year, the Senate would be likely to stay in Republican hands. But now that Trump has secured the nomination, the prospect of a powerful anti-Trump turnout puts as many as a dozen Republican-held seats in play—with the possibility of electing as many as eight new female senators to join the 12 Democratic women who will return in 2017. That would give us a new Senate with a Democratic majority, a historically large bloc of women—as many as 20 on the Democratic side—and one person ready to lead them. In short, Trump could end up making Warren one of the most powerful people in the Capitol.

It would be quite a set of ironies to cap off this strange national election: While Republicans decide which cliff to leap off, Trump’s nomination could unwittingly usher into power a small army of liberal women, following Warren into battle against wealthy money men like himself. And the gate-crasher who ran for Senate in 2012 because Senate Republicans wouldn’t let her run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could soon be pulling the strings of the Senate Democrats—and bossing around the very Republicans who blocked her.

For Democrats soured by Republican obstructionism during Obama’s eight years in office, the stakes couldn’t be higher. “Having the majority is critical. An example right now is what is happening to Merrick Garland,” Warren says. “The difference between majority and minority is being able to hold hearings and call votes.”

Of course, if Democrats take the Senate, it’ll be a Senate majority forged in Warren’s image. “A lot of groundwork is being laid in 2015 and 2016 for an Elizabeth Warren-style agenda to be put on the floor in 2017, if we have a Senate majority,” says Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

In other words, it’s Warren’s Senate for the taking—but first she needs to pay for it.
It’s no secret that Warren is now the go-to banker for Democrats in need of campaign cash. . . . But the amounts she can give directly pale next to what she can raise. (Direct donations aside, the PAC is primarily to cover costs for her travel to speak at fundraisers.) And the scary thing is, Warren’s influence and name recognition are so powerful that she doesn’t even need to get on a plane to get the money flowing. She just needs to hit send.

Flipping a Senate majority, from its current 46-54 deficit, has been considered a crapshoot. But a Trump nomination could slide a whole host of contests into Democratic hands. As the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia depicted last month, a “Trumpmare” scenario would push Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania Senate races from “Tossup” or “Lean Republican” to “Lean Democrat.” It’s easy to see why: Recent polls show Clinton beating Trump by 15 points in Pennsylvania and 19 points in New Hampshire. It’s hard to imagine that kind of lopsided drubbing wouldn’t affect the Senate races there.

That alone would get Democrats a 51-seat majority. But the Trumpmare map also puts Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio contests in play—a potential rout for the blue team. And even without Trump, the University of Virginia’s analysis throws six Senate race “Crystal Ball” ratings in the direction of Democrats. Other experts have made similar adjustments.

That’s eight Democratic women seeking to join the 12 who will be returning to the Senate in 2017—a potentially game-changing shift even within the Democrats’ Caucus, where a little less than a third are women. Warren’s transformation of the Senate could usher in not only a majority, but a particularly Warren-esque revolution: Democratic, female and progressive.

Asked if she sees herself as a potential leader of Democratic women in the Senate, Warren demurs but does not deny. . . . . Warren’s only real rival in terms of national following would be Sanders, whose historic presidential run has built a loyal following outside of Washington. But, as Barney Frank has made abundantly clear in recent public tirades, Sanders’ progressive Capitol colleagues have always looked at him as a party of one, not a leader or even a team player. He became a Democrat only last year, and has publicly conceded that he did so only for self-interest; he continues to list himself as an Independent for Senate business. And Sanders isn’t doing himself any favors with them by criticizing what he calls a “rigged” nominating system of superdelegates—which includes all Democratic senators. His failure to help raise money for down-ballot Democrats hasn’t helped either.

“She’s one of the most mission-driven politicians I’ve ever worked with, says Doug Rubin, top strategist for Warren’s 2012 campaign, who says he speaks with Warren regularly. “It always starts with driving her agenda: income inequality and rebuilding the middle class.”

What she couldn’t have known was how perfectly the GOP might play into her plans. If Trump’s numbers don’t improve, the presidential contest could quickly become a foregone conclusion—pushing attention further toward the action in the Senate races.  And, quite possibly, toward making Elizabeth Warren the new Queen of the Capitol.

Trump Is Surrounding Himself With Vicous Homophobes

Trump and Cruz who Trump as mentioned as a Supreme Court nominee

Some have tried to claim that Donald Trump will be more friendly towards gays than some of his critics maintain.  As a child, I remember having my parents drum in to me and my siblings that you are known by the company you keep.  If one applies that rule to Mr. Trump, he is keeping company with a bunch of virulent homophobes.   A piece in Huffington Post by Michelangelo Signorile looks at the anti-gay elements with whom Trump is not only consorting but also considering for appointments in his administration.  Perhaps most frightening of all is Trump's purported consideration of Ted Cruz for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.  An appointment that might make the late Antonin Scalia look somewhat reasonable.  The take away is that,if one is LGBT or has LGBT friends and family members, you need to register to vote and go to the polls and vote Democrat.  Here are article highlights:

Ben Carson should have been sidelined from GOP politics forever after his presidential campaign tanked. In addition to his major foreign policy gaffes and his bizzaro tax plan, he’d defined himself as a complete troglodyte on social issues, particularly his horrific comments about homosexuality. He’d compared homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality, and said prison turned men toward homosexuality, proving being gay is a “choice.” He claimed that gay marriage would lead to polygamy and bring something akin to “the fall of the Roman Empire.”

But no, Donald Trump has announced that Ben Carson will play a role on his vice presidential selection committee — and Carson is reported to actually be on the VP running mate shortlist himself. Also reported to be on the shortlist is another enemy of LGBT equality, who’s been advising Trump as part of his inner circle for months now and who endorsed Trump early: Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

The GOP senator is among the most anti-LGBT senators in history, scoring a zero continually from the Human Rights Campaign, voting for everything anti-gay that ever came before the Senate, like a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and against everything remotely pro-gay, from a hate crimes bill to protect gays to the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He’s said it would be “a big concern“ to have a gay Supreme Court nominee and attacked the “activist judiciary” that ruled for marriage equality. He opposed Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court in part based on her support for LGBT equality as dean of Harvard Law School.

Also reported on Trump’s short list, and another man who’s been privately advising Trump and publicly praising him, is Newt Gingrich, the perennial homophobe who called gay marriage a “temporary aberration“ and compared it to paganism. In 2014 he implied the LGBT rights movement was inspiring the left’s “new fascism.”

Others on the shortlist, all of whom have been talking with or advising Trump to varying degrees are; Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin, who said gay marriage violates “religious freedom,” successfully fought hard against LGBT rights measures in her state, dropped benefits for all couples in the Oklahoma National Guard rather than give benefits to same-sex couples and whom Trump said would be a “great” VP pick; Chris Christie, who’s opposed gay marriage for years as a bully to equality in New Jersey; and Florida governor Rick Scott, who fought marriage equality, supports allowing religious-based adoption agencies to turn away gay couples (and is opposed to adoption by gays altogether, though didn’t fight a court ruling) and who signed an anti-gay law as recently as this past March.

Trump also will soon release his picks for Supreme Court justices, saying he would choose them in the “mold” of the late virulently anti-gay Antonin Scalia, and even floated in recent days the idea of putting that homophobe from hell, Ted Cruz, on the high court.

Looking at who he’s surrounding himself with now, and the fact that he’s received huge support from evangelical voters as well their leaders, like Jerry Falwell Jr., it’s even more clear that, like Ronald Reagan, no gay friends from the past will likely get in the way of Trump dutifully bowing to moralists who helped put him in office.

Trump is himself opposed to marriage equality and told religious conservatives during a Christian Broadcasting Network interview to “trust me” to overturn what he called the “shocking” Obergefell ruling from the Supreme Court on marriage equality. While it would be quite difficult to overturn Obergefell, it’s safe to say, looking at who Donald Trump is turning to now, that it’s not likely there will be any progress on LGBT rights — and quite likely there could be great harm to them — under a Trump presidency.

Bernie Sanders Remains Delusional, Republicans Consider Voting for Hillary

While Bernie Sanders remains locked in an ego fueled fantasy that he will somehow win the Democrat nomination (to me, his ego seems as big or bigger than Donald Trump's), sane Republicans are now considering what they once thought unthinkable: voting for Hillary Clinton in November. Sanders seemingly cares nothing about making sure a Democrat wins in November - perhaps because he is not really a Democrat -  and prefers to indulge his egomania by continuing an unwinnable contest, only aiding Donald Trump in the process.  A piece in Politico looks at the situation of sane, non-extremist Republicans.  Here are highlights:

Ted Cruz’s sudden suspension of his campaign following his double-digit loss to Trump in Indiana Tuesday night is forcing anti-Trump Republicans to finally confront the Hobson’s Choice of a general election matchup between Hillary Clinton and a demagogic conspiracy theorist untethered to conservative principles.

While many conservative stalwarts are conflicted and stuck in a state of paralysis, some are considering the ultimate betrayal.

Schmidt predicted that “a substantial amount of Republican officials who have worked in Republican administrations, especially on issues of defense and national security, will endorse Hillary Clinton in the campaign.”

Trump is eager to unify the Republican Party, recognizing Cruz as a “great competitor” with a “brilliant future” just hours after suggesting that the Texas senator’s father was involved in the assassination of JFK and promising to “win big in November.

Cruz, in his farewell speech, didn’t mention Trump. At least three Republican senators —Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Nebraska’s Ben Sasse and Cory Gardner of Colorado — signaled Tuesday night that they remain opposed to a Trump candidacy. Like many in the #NeverTrump brigade, they’re thinking beyond November 2016 and about the very survival of the Republican Party.

"If we nominate Trump, [the party] is lost beyond this cycle. I think we lose women for a generation, in big numbers,” said Katie Packer, who served as Romney’s deputy campaign manager and now leads the Our Principles super PAC that spent $10 million in an effort to stop Trump.

“There’s a feeling among Republican women that I talk to that the people who would nominate this guy don’t have any real respect for us as women—especially professional women. They would rather see us in a Mad Men era, where women knew their place and catered to their husband, cooked dinner and met their sexual obligations and didn’t have any other role in society. And there are other people who are supporting him because the guy’s a blatant racist and they identify with that.

“So there’s a sense that if this is who my party is, I don’t really identify with it anymore.”

But the most absolutist opposition to Trump is largely held by the GOP’s donor class and Washington-based establishment—the very people Trump and his supporters have delighted in offending from the start.

For the last several months, the increasingly panicked GOP establishment looked at the first mainstream Republicans to line up behind Trump—first, endorsements from Chris Christie and Jeff Sessions, later former RNC staffer Rick Wiley taking a job with Trump’s campaign—as “Vichy Republicans,” likening their appeasement of an outsider who, in their view, was hijacking their party to the appeasers of Adolph Hitler during his takeover of France.

"It’s like everything that I was taught to believe about conservative philosophy is totally out the window,” Packer said. “When Newt Gingrich and Bill Bennet are defending Trump and making excuses for him—these are people I used to look to as real pillars of conservatism—it’s like bizarro world. It just doesn’t make sense to me anymore."

But now that Trump’s takeover is nearly complete, Republicans are at odds over who that label applies to more—the conservative appeasers of Trump or those willing to back a Democratic nominee.

[I]t’s very difficult for me to come up with any principle by which Donald Trump is aligned with the Republican Party,” said Stuart Stevens, the strategist who guided Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign.

“That’s the same argument the Communist Party used for years—you have to do it for the party. I’m not going to go along with the Brezhnev logic. If the party stands for nothing but election, it stands for nothing.”

Many long-time conservatives find themselves in a state of paralysis, unable to decide which side of that line they’re going to be on. “The goal is to defeat the Democratic candidate,” said Fred Zeidman, a prominent Republican in Houston who was been a bundler for Jeb Bush and eventually opted to support Cruz. But asked if he would support Trump, he hedged. “I’m just not ready to answer that question.”

It is time for Sanders to suspend his campaign and his followers to focus on keeping Trump out of the White House come November.

Will HB2 Be The Downfall of Governor Pat McCrory?

North Carolina GOP political whore, Pat McCrory

Karma can indeed be a bitch.  Ask North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory who nearly fell over himself to quickly sign anti-LGBT HB2 into law in order to prostitute himself to the Christofascist elements in the North Carolina GOP base.  Now, as he plummets in the polls - reportedly he is now 8% behind his Democrat challenger in the latest poll - McCrory told the New York Times that he suspected that the passage of the Charlotte ordinance targeted by HB2 had been orchestrated by Democrats and the Human Rights Campaign to Democrats an advantage in a tight governor’s race. Funny thing is that I saw no one holding a gun to McCrory's head as he happily signed HB2 into law, surrounded by right wing supporters.   Meanwhile, Charlotte lost another big convention today. Personally, I find a tawdry prostitute to be more virtuous than McCrory and similar Republicans who rush to pander to Christofascists and bigots.  A column in Huffington Post looks at whether or not McCrory assured his own defeat in November by signing HB2 into law.  Here are highlights:

It may too soon to tell, but so far North Carolina GOP governor Pat McCrory’s signing of a sweeping anti-LGBT law hasn’t been a great help to his re-election campaign. It would be ironic — and just desserts — if a cynical political move to save his campaign actually doomed it.

All winter McCrory was slightly ahead or tying with Democratic attorney general Roy Cooper in the polls, but since his signing of HB2 several weeks ago — and since the tremendous backlash across the country and around the world — Cooper now has a lead over McCrory by several percentage points in several polls. At the same time, a new poll shows that HB2 is deeply unpopular with the state’s electorate, with only 36% of North Carolina voters supporting it.

Again, it’s early. And polls of the gubernatorial race may have little to do with HB2, as there’s been a lot of dissatisfaction with McCrory for many other reasons, his approval numbers having plummeted. But it’s certainly better than if McCrory saw a boost in support while anti-LGBT conservatives and groups like Family Research Council and demagogues like Ted Cruz have been heralding this bigoted law.

With the daily barrage of media attention, McCrory’s re-election could fast become a referendum on HB2, and if he goes down it may be because progressive activists and Democrats took a far different approach than LGBT activists did in Houston last November, when voters rescinded the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.

Opponents had turned the Houston ordinance — which protected 15 classes of people against discrimination — into “ The Bathroom Ordinance,” via ugly but effective ads that, like McCrory and the North Carolina GOP legislators, claimed protecting transgender people would allow predators into women’s restrooms.

But in North Carolina, not only has the economic impact of the law’s passage been front and center every day, with powerful companies, major musicians like Bruce Springsteen and cities and states joining a boycott, but Democrats are committed to ads that focus on that devastating economic impact. One powerful ad already being deployed lays the economic harm to the state at McCrory’s feet.

At the same time, the pressure on McCrory has been intense, at the political level and literally on the ground, as activists this week have engaged in civil disobedience meant to bring more attention and underscore the passion people have about the harmful effects of the law.

It would seem that support for HB2 would need to be much higher than the current poll to help embattled McCrory in a great way, and this is only the beginning: As the backlash grows and more economic impact is felt, support for the law is only likely to decrease as voters believe McCrory has harmed the state.

[I]f McCrory loses the race, the optics of the anti-LGBT law, and the backlash against it, will be damaging to anti-LGBT conservatives. After the terrible defeat in Houston that gave anti-LGBT forces some wind at their sails, McCrory’s loss could deal a blow to anti-trans bathroom bills.

That’s why LGBT activists and allies must continue to do everything possible, including civil disobedience and forceful, uncompromising messaging to the public about how dangerous and detrimental these laws are to a state. If Houston taught us anything it’s that pleading for equality while hate-mongers put out lies is not a strategy.

I am in total agreement with the column's author.  I would also argue that HB2 and the economic harm it is bringing to North Carolina needs to be hung around the neck of every single Republican who voted for it.  Examples need to be made and voters need to become convinced that politicians who pander to Christofacists are a clear and present threat to economic well-being.  Indeed, they need to be voted out of office.

The Myth of Bernie Sanders' November Advantage

As noted in a post yesterday, in my view, it increasingly appears that Bernie Sanders is putting his own ego ahead of keeping a Republican out of the White House in November.  Despite the delegate math stacked against him, he is vowing to fight all the way to the Democrat Party convention and is beginning to demand that delegates ignore the fact that Hillary Clinton has won more votes and more delegates.  Why?  Because he claims that he has the best chance to beat Donald Trump or whoever becomes the GOP nominee.  A piece in Mother Jones makes the case that this supposed advantage is a myth.  Here are excerpts:

Soon after Sen. Bernie Sanders was declared the loser in the New York Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday night, his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, was on MSNBC explaining the path ahead for the independent socialist from Vermont. Weaver contended, optimistically, that Sanders could potentially win all the remaining contests. When pressed on what the campaign would do should Sanders end up second to Hillary Clinton in the delegate hunt, Weaver said the campaign would spend the weeks between the final primary in early June and the Democratic convention in late July trying to flip the superdelegates who have declared their loyalty to Clinton.

To some, this might seem fanciful. . . . Weaver justified this possible strategy by insisting that Sanders is the Democratic candidate better situated to win in the November general election. Sanders, he argued, has more appeal with independents and younger voters and generates more enthusiasm.

Any conversation with a Sanders supporter inevitably turns to the polls. And indeed the polls do say what Weaver suggested. According to Real Clear Politics' average of recent polls, Sanders performs better than Clinton in hypothetical general-election matchups. Against Donald Trump, Sanders leads by 15 points, Clinton by 9. Against Ted Cruz, Sanders wins by 11 points, Clinton by 2. Many Bernie-ites point to these numbers and confidently declare: Case closed!

Maybe not. There is one missing factor in these polls, and it might be huge. Sanders has yet to face a true negative ad campaign aimed at destroying his public image. Were he to be the Democratic nominee, he would be confronted with hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads designed to rip him apart. And everyone knows what that pummeling would focus on: He's a self-proclaimed socialist.

Clinton has taken a few pokes at Sanders, claiming his policy proposals are pie in the sky and his numbers don't add up. . . . But this is nothing compared with the onslaught that Sanders would be up against as the nominee. The ads write themselves: "Don't take our word for it, take his. He's a socialist!" Cut to a super-cut of Sanders proclaiming "I am a socialist" over and over.

Of course, almost all Americans are socialists to some extent. (You believe in Social Security and Medicare? Congratulations, you get your socialist card.) But the word still has the potential to frighten or put off voters in the crucial swing states. And there will be other lines of attack against Sanders: the usual tax-and-spend stuff Republicans always hurl at Democrats (but to a greater extent), the radical writings of his past, his unconventional personal life, and more. It's not difficult to imagine a veiled campaign that exploits the fact he's not a Christian.

Once, Devine continued, people said don't vote for a black man because he cannot win the presidency; now some say don't vote for a socialist because he cannot win. His implication was that such talk is nothing more than a self-limiting scare tactic among progressives.

Perhaps. These are all lovely assumptions, and they could prove true. Maybe the socialist charge will not have much firepower. But the point is that until Sanders is tested under such battlefield conditions, polls that compare his performance against Trump to Clinton's are meaningless. As the Clinton people will say—and they're not wrong on this—she has withstood decades of attacks, some real and fact-based, some phony and underhanded.

Sanders would be virgin territory for the dirt-throwers of the right. A clean canvas.  This is not to say that Sanders and his populist crusade would not be able to prevail against a billion dollars in ads assailing him as a crazy socialist hell-bent on raising taxes and expanding government. But until he's the target of such a blitzkrieg, hypothetical comparisons have little currency. Any sophisticated political operative knows these particular poll numbers are no basis for picking a candidate. Nor are they a rationale for Sanders, should he finish in second place, to continue his campaign.

[L]ast year Gallup released a poll asking voters about their attitudes regarding political candidates of various races, religions, and beliefs. . . . The label that fared the worst in this survey was socialist. Forty-seven percent said they would be willing to support a socialist candidate; 50 percent said they would not. . . . The poll was conducted last June, and it may well be that Sanders' performance in the months since has altered public attitudes toward a socialist candidate. Yet the survey's results do suggest the socialist tag could be a problem for Sanders in a general election.

There are some positions that I support - most notably a single payer, universal heath care system.  But with so much a stack in this election - likely 3 Supreme Court appointments among other things - winning in November is crucial and pragmatism is required.  

Antonin Scalia’s Death has Changed the Supreme Court

As regular readers know, I was never a fan of Antonin Scalia and, in fact, on more than one occasion opined that he needed to be removed from the U.S. Supreme Court because of his inability to put aside his own religious, racial and male chauvinist prejudices when confronted with cases.  Nature - or God, if one is a Christofascist - stepped in and Scalia was removed from the Court in a manner I had not contemplated.  Now, if only Clarence Thomas would be removed, we might begin to see a Court with mostly responsible justices (Alito remains a boil on the Court, but might come around if sufficiently isolated).  A piece in Slate looks at how the passing of one bigot and opponent of modernity has changed the Court - most likely for the better, especially  if the Republicans fail to win the White House.  Here are column highlights:

Nobody quite knows what to make of it yet, but nobody disputes it, either: The Supreme Court of March looks nothing like the court we knew in February. The loss of a single justice, Antonin Scalia, has blown up the court and reshuffled everything. It’s the early days yet, and much of the evidence of newish, liberalish outcomes at the court lies in routine housekeeping matters: unsigned orders and withdrawn appeals. Still, it’s safe to say the high court is no longer going to be a candy store for pro-business and socially conservative litigants. What will rise in its place is still a work in progress.

The crazy new vibe at the court isn’t even limited to the raft of orders that have come down in the past week. Those include a critical and unanimous order affirming the right of same-sex partners to adopt children and the tossing of a death penalty conviction in Louisiana because the state withheld significant exculpatory evidence.

There was also last Friday’s unsigned order allowing several abortion clinics in Louisiana to reopen their doors, following an emergency decision from the 5^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that would have shuttered all but one clinic in that state. In one sense, the order to keep the clinics open while the case progresses was not a massive surprise. Last June, the Supreme Court issued a similar last-minute stay of the 5^th Circuit’s Whole Woman’s Health decision that would have closed a significant number of clinics in Texas. . . . .   in choosing to reinstate the Louisiana abortion rules, the 5^th Circuit brushed aside the fact that the Supreme Court had prevented Texas’ clinics from closing last June. Faced with the snub, the court tartly reminded the 5^th Circuit that keeping the Louisiana clinics open is “consistent with the Court’s action granting a stay in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole.” In other words, says the Supreme Court to Louisiana, “We may be 4–4 now, but we are still here. Thank you.”

This week, the Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin also noted that a new alliance seems to have cropped up between the court’s two most conservative members, Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito. The emerging split between these two determined conservatives and their colleagues might be in reaction, writes Bravin, to Chief Justice John Roberts “apparently seeking consensus where he can on a court hobbled by potential 4-4 ideological splits.” By contrast, Thomas and Alito seem to be redoubling their efforts to form a bulwark against “the path set out by their six colleagues.” . . . . . The two conservatives also aligned in an effort to uphold the right of states to sentence juveniles to life in prison without parole.

But changes at the court itself are only half of it. There’s also a growing sense among conservative interest groups and litigation shops that the good times and rich bounty of the old Roberts court are no longer on offer and that it may be better to cut and run than stick around and lose.

In an incredibly short time frame we have seen, for instance, a major antitrust appeal from Dow Chemical settled for $835 million last month, when the company determined that it wasn’t worth the risk to spin the wheel at a 4–4 court. Having only last month granted a completely unprecedented stay in a challenge to President Obama’s new environmental regulations—before the case had even been adjudicated in a lower court—Roberts batted away a similar request challenging a different pollution regulation without comment last week. Not here, he seemed to be cautioning Michigan and the other states that wanted to challenge the law. Not anymore.

Consider, too, that in New York this week a key gun rights group opted to drop its challenge to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s SAFE Act—the big post–Sandy Hook gun control initiative—out of a concern that it could not prevail at the high court without Scalia on the bench. According to the New York Daily News, a National Rifle Association board member explained that the challenge had been halted en route to the court because “it’s just the wrong time.” His lawyers advised that “going forward could damage the case because the High Court at the very least would likely deliver a split 4-4 decision that would leave the law in place.”

This is a shocking turn from how the judicial landscape looked earlier this year. Going into this term, a number of important cases had been seen as likely to change the way we vote, the way we regulate abortion, and the way we fund public-sector unions. So certain were some plaintiffs of their likelihood of success that they had their appeals rocketed to the Roberts court on a fast track.

Suddenly, in a scenario where the conservative justices have been reduced to four, the high-speed pipeline looks far less attractive. It’s not at all clear these fast-track appeals will continue, so long as outcomes are uncertain and given the possibility of a long-term vacancy. By the same token, the tactics deployed to hustle last year’s big Obamacare challenge to the high court will likely lose their allure now. Nobody wants to rush a case to the court with even odds. Watch for a lot of hurry up and wait from conservatives groups that used to be all hurry.

Expect a lot more weirdness and subtle signaling from the court as the term rolls on. An institution that never wished to be an election issue has become one. What might have once been routine orders have now turned into a complex game of reputation management. Whether it’s the chief justice trying to appear apolitical, the conservative justices trying to fly the flag of ideology, or the liberals making hay while the sun briefly shines, nothing at the court these days is exactly what it appears to be, and it appears it will be that way for a while.

[T]he sudden frailty of the conservative bloc and the almost giddily emboldened left reveal how high the stakes will be in the general election. These past few weeks have proved to the right that its fears about the post-Scalia court are justified and tantalized the left with promises of a golden era with Ruth Bader Ginsburg tossing thunderbolts around from on high. Even as it tries to speak softly and subtly this month, the court reveals just how much now hangs in the balance.