9:22 PM: Man, Snarkders.
9:24 PM: Sanders must be positively devastated when Wolf quotes CEO’s attacking him.
9:25 PM: I’ll give this one to Sanders. What on earth was Wolf thinking referring to Sanders “contempt for American businesses”? Good lord. That’s an insane level of editorializing. Here’s the exact quote. “Given your obvious contempt for large American corporations, hue would you as president be able to effectively promote American businesses around the world?” That was so over the top, I at first thought it was part of the quote from the Verizon CEO.
9:29 PM: Did I mention, good lord, what was Wolf Blitzer thinking? Sanders is obviously a critic of corporate America. And it might not be unreasonable to say that he sometimes speaks about corporate America with contempt, you could say that. But a moderator isn’t supposed to make obvious and fairly invidious editorializing remarks.
9:31 PM: What is going on here? I feel like Trump’s going to come on to the stage and ask these two to take a take a deep breath and think for a moment about civility.
9:02 PM: So we’re here at the Sanders campaign rally / AKA the Democratic debate.
9:06 PM: I can’t believe Sanders is still hanging on the phony Washington Post headline.
9:07 PM: Okay, I guess we’re basically in death match mode here. But hey, it’s New York. That’s how we roll.
9:09 PM: Okay Sanders has Clinton dead to rights on the Iraq War vote – a failing not so much of judgment but political courage. But he didn’t “lead the opposition” to the Iraq War. Please.
9:13 PM: Interesting point by Sanders, basically making a vaguely Hayekian point that the government shouldn’t be determining the structure of the successor mini-banks. I think I agree with that. But an interesting non-government intervention moment for him.
9:16 PM: Sanders simply ducked or fudged that question about what Clinton had done to favor the banks in the context of her campaign contributions. Certainly there must be various pro-Wall Street positions she took, even if they were meritorious in themselves. But he couldn’t or wouldn’t say one and made this muddled though perhaps damaging point about her speeches.
9:18 PM: I’m curious, how many of you prefer the current Angry Sanders versus the old Good Natured/Happy Warrior Sanders?
This article is pretty amazing. Basically, even though Ted Cruz is the only viable candidate in a position to deny Trump the nomination and basically the entire GOP elite is behind his effort to take as many delegates from Trump as possible, still basically no Senators will endorse him or in some cases even talk to him. Here’s a run-down of numerous Republican senators who either politely or acidly said they’re telling Cruz to go jump in a lake because they hate him so much.
Trump adviser on delegate math assures Trump-supporting members of Congress that he’ll have the nomination wrapped up after California in June.
We’re hearing a lot about Donald Trump’s dismal favorability numbers, also about Hillary Clinton’s and then finally a steady backdraft of commentary about how the Democrats aren’t much more united than the Republicans. This is not accurate. Clinton’s favorability ratings are not at all where you would want them to be right now if you’re a Democrat. But a look at the polls shows how differently each party sees all its candidates.
Politico has an article today suggesting that Karl Rove – despite being or having been a hardcore anti-Trumpite – is warming to a Trump candidacy. That’s not precisely what it says, when you read down into the piece. Or at least there’s a good deal of hedging involved. What it seems to amount to is that the big SuperPac which Rove founded and remains the moving force of – Crossroads USA – is now telling donors that if Trump is nominee he can actually win so there’s still plenty we can do with your money.
Back at the 2011 White House Correspondents Association dinner, President Obama beat Donald Trump like a protester. This year, when he’s at the center of the political world, Trump is saying he won’t attend.
It’s a good thing to see Deutsche Bank, PayPal, Bruce Springsteen and these other bigshots and big institutions boycotting North Carolina because of the state law overturning Charlotte’s law on which bathrooms transsexuals can use. And it’s a good thing to see the state backtracking. But you wonder with Alec MacGillis why none of the high rollers thought of boycotting the seventeen states that have denied Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act to millions of their low-income citizens. Millions. And that includes North Carolina. I am afraid it goes back to something I wrote about twenty-five years ago: why social rights issues that cut across class and sometimes partisan lines (such as abortion and gay rights, e.g. Cheney family) can summon enormous influence on their behalf, while those that predominately affect the poor and low-income people cannot. Moral appeals are clearly not enough in these instances.
The deep enmity toward Ted Cruz within the Senate is coming back to bite him in new and maybe unexpected ways.
As Lauren Fox talked to GOP senators for this piece, one of the dynamics that emerged was that even if senators might be inclined to soften their loathing of Cruz as a way of heading off a disastrous Trump nomination, many of them had already endorsed other candidates earlier in the race who have since dropped out. The prospect of endorsing a second time and having that person lose, too, runs the risk of making individual senators look fairly ridiculous.
A member of the Republican National Committee, who will sit on the convention rules committee, made a bit of a stir today when he said that 1237 wasn’t the magic number for Trump. It was probably more like 1100 delegates. He wasn’t saying that 1100 guaranteed Trump the nomination but that if he has more than 1100 he’ll be in a strong position to convince the remainder to come over and back him. A lot of people reacted like Randy Evans, the RNC committeeman, is crazy. But I’m not so sure. I won’t say that Evans has any special insight into the matter, at least not more than any other high ranking Republican. But I think he’s got a better handle on things than a lot of people who are chattering about this at the moment.