Not Good, Not Good At All

As you no doubt saw, last night Bernie Sanders launched a pretty blistering attack on Hillary Clinton, calling her unqualified to be president because of various past positions, relationships and votes. The attack was premised on Sanders' claim that Clinton had said that he was unqualified to serve as president. Only she didn't say that. The sorry tale tracks back to what was simply a false story in The Washington Post. The Post published a story that put together various Clinton interviews and recent statements and summed it up as 'Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be President.' As I said last night, I'm willing to believe, actually assume that Sanders was told the story was true. But the fact is that it wasn't.

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Losing the Magic

You know Trump's fading when he starts telling rally supporters not to assault the protestors as they're being dragged out of the arena.

You Should Read This

A disillusioned ex-staffer explains how Wisconsin Republicans were giddy at how their voter ID law would knock down minority and youth voting in their state. This is what this is about. “It just really incensed me that they started talking about this particular bill, and one of the senators got up and said, ‘We really need to think about the ramifications on certain neighborhoods in Milwaukee and on our college campuses and what this could do for us." Read it here.

Welcome To America, Ted

Cruz cancels school visit in the Bronx after students threatened walk-out.

John Judis Joins TPM as Editor-At-Large

I'm pleased to announce that my friend John Judis is joining TPM as an Editor-at-Large.

John, who's currently at work on his next book, will become a presence in the Editor's Blog and involved in our coverage of the 2016 election and other topics in a variety of ways. Mainly, I'm just terribly pleased to add John to our masthead because there are few political journalists or writers in the last several decades who've more ably and insightfully fused historical erudition with journalistic reporting to illuminate and explain the great issues of politics, economics and public life in the United States.

Answering Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat has an interesting piece in the Times looking at the slow motion train wreck heading into Cleveland. Particularly, he disagrees with a post I wrote a week ago ("Hell to Pay") in which I said that whatever the technicalities and bylaws of the nomination process, these paled in the face of the legitimacy iceberg Republicans would face if they essentially tossed out the primary and caucus voting process in favor of an establishment figure like a Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney. Now, I'd quibble a bit with Ross's suggestion that I'm 'surprised' by this turn of events. That's not what I said. But the core point of disagreement is a valid one and one that's worth exploring.

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Yep. That's the Idea

GOP rep from Wisconsin is pumped about November, says Wisconsin's new voter ID (voter suppression) law will help Republicans win.

Clinton Needs Sanders

From John Judis ...

One clear lesson from yesterday's results in Wisconsin. It's time for Hillary Clinton and her boosters in the commentariat to stop calling on Bernie Sanders to withdraw. Agreed that he has a very small chance of winning the nomination, but he has some, and he and his supporters are entitled by the American system to get their message heard until the clock really strikes 12. (See Clinton vs. Obama in 2008.) More important, Clinton herself needs to keep campaigning against Sanders. The Wisconsin primary removed the main rationale for Sanders to drop out -- that Clinton needs to focus on Donald Trump. After Wisconsin, we don't know anymore who the Republican nominee is. It's a moving target. If anything, the Democrats might consider secretly boosting Trump, because he would be a lot easier to beat in the fall than a candidate like Paul Ryan or even Ted Cruz (who, believe me, will shift to the center if he gets the nomination).

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Live chat with Ryan Johnson, $15 minimum wage expert, Friday 4/8 at 2 p.m. ET

Ryan Johnson, executive director of the Fairness Project and expert on economic inequality, is joining Hive members for a live chat on Friday at 2 p.m. ET. Have questions about the $15 minimum wage battle, the wage gap, etc.? Drop them in here and join us on Friday afternoon for the chat.

Blowback

Predictions from political betting sites are very much 'take them with a grain of salt' things of course. But I'll note that as of this moment, BetFair.com is showing Donald Trump with a 40% chance of winning the GOP nomination and Ted Cruz with a 32% chance. (This site converts the current odds to percentages.) Again, there's no magic to these sites. They're best seen as accurate projections of what we might call informed conventional wisdom.

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Trumpian Reckoning?

Polls close at 9 PM eastern. Join us for the results as they come in.

You and What Army?

There was clearly a sea change in elite perception over the week I was away on vacation. Before I left, Donald Trump was still considered the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination. Now it's considered at best a 50-50 proposition. And there's an evolving consensus that if he can't clinch the nomination on the first vote, he's finished. This change is not based on nothing. Beyond the chatter of Trump's supposed 'worst week ever', it does seem likely that he'll lose the Wisconsin primary tonight. (Notably, there is as yet only the slightest if any negative impact on his national poll support.) A Wisconsin defeat will have a symbolic impact. More importantly, it will make it another notch more difficult for him to get to the 1237 delegates required to secure the nomination on the first convention ballot.

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Is It Never Over?

Unanimous Supreme Court solidifies principle of one person, one vote. All good, right? Mostly good, yes.

But if you're used to picking through the dissents (or in this the case the concurring opinions) of the conservative justices, looking for the clues to the next conservative legal attack on this or that longstanding precedent, you saw something in Justice Alito's concurrence to give you pause -- unless you're one of the architects of the current conservative grand legal strategy, in which case you might have had a gleam in your eye.

Tierney Sneed reports.

Trump, You're Not in Manhattan Anymore

It is, or should be, a general rule of thumb that top industry CEOs often have no better understanding of fiscal policy or macro-economics than the average man or woman on the street. But the CEO often thinks she does, which is the problem. In a sense, this shouldn't surprise us. A good CEO knows his business and industry inside and out. He might also know various policies that could facilitate the growth of individual businesses. But the entire economy, macro-economics, fiscal policy, currency policies - none of that is just a really big business, certainly not a really big business in your industry. It is a qualitatively different thing altogether. But we often don't get that. CEOs definitely tend not to get it. Again, this should be a rule of thumb - not because business leaders know nothing about national economic policy but because they don't tend to know much more than other comparably educated people, only they think they do.

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Big, Big Deal

This was the latest conservative onslaught against voting rights. A high-powered effort to dismantle more than a half century of one person, one vote jurisprudence. But the Supreme Court shut it down today in an 8-0 decision. Tierney Sneed has the details.

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