Day: February 22, 2016

Listen to this audio obtained by comedian and radio host Harry Shearer. It starts around the 20 minute mark. If the chummy ass kissing of Trump doesn't make you sick, just wait for the part when Trump asks for "easy questions", and gets them. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/248201243" params="color=ff5500" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

That should have been the be subject line of Copeland's angry email. It would have been more honest. Instead he went with:

GOP Statement On Democrats Proposed 'Temporary' Gas Tax Increase

When I read that headline I was left wondering if Copeland's statement was going to be the typical "Grrr!! TAXES BAD!!" nonsense the issues from the ass end of the DEGOP every once in a while, or was it going to offer some Republican alternative? Needless to say, I wasn't wondering for long.

First thoughts: jeb! was over on the day he started back in June. Not to pat myself on the back too hard, but I laid it all out here. The upshot is that now it is a two man race. Jeb is out, and Cruz appears to be tanking thanks to a bunch of "Christians" in South Carolina who decided that torture and genocide fits in with their reading of the Gospels. [If there is one good thing about the rise of Trump, it is how pissed off and confused Ted Cruz is by it. Trump is literally stealing "the year of the insane person" right from under him. It was Ted Cruz who worked so hard to make this "the year of the insane person", not Trump...the nerve!]

Slate's Jamelle Bouie wonders if Clinton is once again inevitable:

The Clinton campaign believes that Sanders’ strength and enthusiasm is illusory; that it reflects the peculiar demographics of Iowa and New Hampshire — rural states with few minorities — more than any pro-Bernie tide in the Democratic Party. Nevada, in other words, was a test. If Clinton lost, then it presaged a tighter race in South Carolina and beyond, and possibly one that ended with a Sanders nomination. Now, instead, we have a race that essentially looks like it did in the beginning of the year. Clinton has the advantage, and barring a catastrophic decline with black voters, she’ll march steadily to the nomination. [...] Sanders is still a formidable candidate. He will win additional contests and demonstrate the extent to which he — or at least, his ideology — is the future of the Democratic Party. To that point, Sanders continues to excel with young voters, including non-whites. In exit polls, Sanders won 68 percent of non-white voters under 45. Clinton will continue to have to respond to Sanders’ challenge and reach out to these supporters. Despite a clearer path to the nomination, she cannot be complacent. In all likelihood, this primary season will end with a Clinton who has moved even further to the left, adopting some of Sanders’ approach and even his rhetoric.

If that is the end result of a Clinton v. Sanders primary, I'd say, to most everyone except the Sanders diehards or anti-Hillary forces, that that is a successful result. A more liberal, more progressive, more campaign tested Hillary is a better nominee than a complacent inevitable coronated Hillary running to the middle. The latter is something most of us feared as approached 2016, that the lack of a credible primary would hurt Hillary. Well, that fear has been avoided.