A majority of Trump supporters say that white people “losing out” because of preferences for blacks and Hispanics is a bigger problem than blacks and Hispanics losing out because of preferences for white.
TPM Reader BL, a gang researcher, has some thoughts on Ted Cruz, targeting Muslims, and criminal justice reform:
Nobody likes seeing Cruz squirm more than I. But his “patrolling
Muslims” misstep is both understandable and very revealing.
Obama: “As far as the notion of having surveillance of neighborhoods where Muslims are present, I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighborhood surveillance. Which, by the way, the father of Sen. Cruz escaped for America.”
In this era of “must read!” “whoa!” “unreal!” “wow” and “you won’t believe what happened next!”, I’ve probably overcompensated with understatement. But Tierney Sneed just filed her report on the oral arguments in today’s contraceptives mandate case. All of the above apply. The extent to which the conservative men, and it must be said men, on the Supreme Court don’t understand how women obtain contraception and more broadly how health insurance even works is beyond dismaying. Read it.
Alabama Governor apologizes for transgressions while rebranding “sexting” as “statements.”
Gotta take my lumps on this. TPM Reader SM was flagging the North Carolina anti-LGBT bill to us all day yesterday via email, and I was too busy on other things to give it a close look. So let me yield the floor to SM:
Not to beat a dead horse here (kinda surprised there’s been no TPM coverage of this at all), but what happened in NC on Wednesday was nothing short of breathtaking.
Picking back up on the thread that began with John Judis’ post Tuesday and continued with TPM Reader RM‘s email yesterday, here’s more of the discussion on what constitutes the “proper” long view of the Middle East and radical Islam, from TPM Reader BC:
I was very interested in RM’s analysis, particularly by his analogy — which I hope is correct! — of the Middle East with contemporary Colombia. Unfortunately, the analogy ignores a key element that separate the two situations: the presence or absence of Great Powers in Colombia vs. the Greater Middle East.
Over the last week I’ve seen a number of new articles claiming again that Democrats shouldn’t be so sure Donald Trump is an easy beat in the fall. He could reshuffle the deck in unexpected ways and become a formidable candidate. Now, before sharing my thoughts on this I want to restate what I’ve been saying for months which is that I think that the range of possibilities in a Clinton v Trump match up is anything from a narrow Trump victory to a historic Clinton blow out. Trump can win. He has the inherent power of celebrity familiarity; Clinton has the inherent weakness of seeking a third term in power for her party; Trump has a galvanizing and clear message for aggrieved white voters; and, critically, he would basically be the first ever anti-trade liberalization, anti-globalization presidential candidate – a critically undeserved niche in the national party system. With all this said though it is important to see just how long a shot this ‘reshuffle the deck with white working class voters’ model really is.
Let’s start with some thought experiments.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) is not happy with Mitch McConnell’s Supreme Court blockade: āI would rather have you complaining to me that I voted wrong on nominating somebody than saying Iām not doing my job.ā