TPM Reader PL has a take on the Sanders-Clinton battle which I agree with in a lot of ways. As he puts it, he never thought Sanders would be the nominee. The aim was to push the party left and show the establishment that the the left-wing of the party is growing, strong and has teeth. Now, they refuse to go away.
Now that Donald Trump is definitively the Republican nominee, it’s time to see whether he can unite the party. Who will endorse him? Will more than nine people stay in the #NeverTrump minyan? We want to help you track who’s endorsing, who’s not and the various grey areas of awkwardness in between. So starting this afternoon, after consulting statisticians, political scientists and ourselves, we’ve derived this five part taxonomy.
They are: 1) Endorse, 2) “Supporting the Nominee”, 3) Mum’s the Word, 4) Fuzzball and 5) NeverTrump.
“President Trump” is a dangerous proposition.
Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio agree.https://t.co/fUkISvgaXC
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton)
May 4, 2016
After Trump kept using “Start Me Up” as his walk-out music at rallies and victory celebrations, I was starting to think, I really hope the Stones aren’t okay with this. And now they’re asking him to stop. Thank God.
I would note though that “Sympathy for the Devil” has a certain element of appropriateness and “Brown Sugar” might represent either some very consistent race messaging or perhaps some subversive counter-programming from someone in the AV team. The song operates on a few levels.
It’s worth taking a look at this to see just the level of clowns Donald Trump has surrounding him. Ben Carson, now running Trump’s Veep search, suggests that Ted Cruz might take a quick appointment as AG to jail Hillary Clinton before being appointed to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.
It’s good to know folks in Trump land are clear that the Department of Justice isn’t supposed to be the President’s personal army.
It looks like at a minimum, Donald Trump isn’t planning on making much hay of Hillary Clinton’s speech ties to Goldman Sachs. Why? Well, Trump’s new national Finance Chair, Steven Mnuchin, is a longtime Goldman Sachs executive who spent 17 years at the firm.
But more notably, to paraphrase Austin Power’s Dr Evil, Mnuchin seems to share with Trump a penchant for bankruptcy.
Our Official TPM Elected Official Trump Endorsement Scorecard continues to grow. See our five categories here. Check out the list and tell us if there are people we’ve left out. Remember we are only including sitting members of Congress and governors. At the moment we have only three in the “Endorse” category, though we know there are some members of the House that are still be added. Meanwhile, there are only three who are in the genuine “NeverTrump” category. The great majority are in the “support the nominee” or “fuzzball” category. Check it out and let us know who we’re missing. Our panel of Trump taxonomy judges continues to evaluate where everyone stands.
We’ve got another member of Congress added to the “support the nominee” add to the Official TPM Elected Official Trump Endorsement Scoreboard. The latest is freshman Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Awkward statement after the jump. From the Press-Republican …
It’s moving fast and furious. Embattled Sen. Rob Portman has just moved from the “Fuzzball” to the “Supporting the Nominee” category on the Official TPM Elected Official Trump Endorsement Scorecard.
Speaker Paul Ryan not ready to throw his support behind Donald Trump as the GOP nominee quite yet.