It’s almost sad to watch Jeb Bush try to hold on to his brand as the Republican who really likes Hispanics while also showing he can be just as big a xenophobe as the next presidential candidate – almost sad but more often funny. He’s spent the last few days trying to come up with a palatable way to say “anchor baby.” So yesterday down at the US-Mexico border he explained that “anchor babies” are really more a problem with “Asian people”, not Mexicans.
Yep, it’s a disaster. GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has a net -51% favorable among Hispanics.
This is what’s frightening about the instability in the Democratic nomination race: you could end up with a numbskull like Scott Walker as President. Either channeling 2008 McCain or perhaps just finding new forms of doofus militarism, Walker is calling on President Obama to cancel the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s because the borderline collapse of their economy is pulling down our stock market.
Is Donald Trump a ‘populist’, the candidate of resentment and privilege or simply the final embodiment of the Crazy, the Crazy made flesh and coming amongst us, the Jesus who was foretold by Michele Bachmann’s John the Baptist. One of the great injuries Trump has already done to America and our collective dignity is that we are now forced to take him seriously in terms of understanding what he represents in political terms since he’s not going anywhere and only appears to be gaining strength.
Much of what has driven the GOP in the Obama era has been anxiety and resentment about losing out to rising forces in the American political-economy and culture – the decreasing white share of the national electorate (embodied by but also partly connected to Barack Obama’s election), changing social and cultural mores (support for LGBT rights) driven by Americans under the age of 35, a renascent and assertive women’s movement and the increasing defensiveness or even paranoia of organized wealth.
Trump bags first mega campaign contribution from disgraced ex-con real estate mogul behind one of the New Jersey/New York’s most notorious recent scandals.
Donald Trump’s effort to rebrand the GOP as a white nationalist party seems to be going splendidly.
This amusing BBC write-up of how enchanted the French are by the American male archetype may be unintentionally revealing of Brits’ own American man-crush:
VP Biden holds meeting with Elizabeth Warren as he mulls entering presidential race.
Tomorrow will mark nine years since my father died, suddenly and unexpectedly at 68. I took two weeks off from TPM and when I came back I wrote this piece about his death and who he was.