For years, we’ve had a running conversation about how much or whether the often vitriolic, seemingly gut level opposition to President Obama is tied to his race as opposed to simple partisanship, opposition to policies and more. It’s a tangled question since supporters and opponents each bring preconceptions and commitments to it. And it’s a question that is inherently over-determined since the same people who might bear a racial animus toward the President probably also oppose him intensely purely on policy grounds.
But we do have a resounding counter-factual always ready at hand: Bill Clinton.
GOP strategist has an idea about how to get Karl Rove to quit wildly speculating about whether Hillary Clinton suffered a “traumatic brain injury.”
Ed Kilgore: Yo, GOP establishment, is this what your comeback year is supposed to look like?
BREAKING: Federal judge rules Idaho’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.
— Idaho Statesman (@IdahoStatesman) May 13, 2014
More on the ruling here.
TPM’s Dylan Scott dismantles the GOP’s next line of attack against Obamacare and shows it’s missing a pretty key fact.
Jon Stewart launches his own hashtag campaign to hit back at people like Rush Limbaugh who have been hating on the #BringBackOurGirls phenomenon.
Late word out of Los Angeles is that embattled racist team owner Donald Sterling apparently missed the train he was supposed to catch to STFUville. He tells Anderson Cooper that in addition to not doing enough to help black people Magic Johnson “should be ashamed” to have HIV.
You’ve probably already seen that embattled racist basketball team owner has now come forward to apologize for the comments that got him banned from the NBA and to clarify that he’s not a racist. Meanwhile his wife has said that she thinks Sterling may have dementia and doesn’t see why she should have to give up her 50% stake in the team. (California is a community property state.) But the Sterling family penchant for comedy came through mostly in Shelly Sterling’s insistence that she’s really divorcing Donald. Really.
I’m not sure whether anyone still thinks Marco Rubio is a serious presidential candidate. But if anyone does, he wants to be clear that he doesn’t think climate change is real.