Sunday Open Thread [6.5.16]

Filed in National by on June 5, 2016

While the 2016 campaign sucks up all of the oxygen in the media, President Obama continues work on his Clemency Initiative. Today he commuted the sentences of an additional 42 individuals – bringing his total to 348. He has now surpassed the previous 7 presidents combined in the number of commutations. But, given that all of these people were sentenced for nonviolent crimes, here is an astounding figure:

Among the 42 people who received commutations on Friday, nearly half (20) were serving life sentences. Of his 348 career commutations, 130 were in prison for life.

Dan Balz: “It’s been almost five weeks since Donald Trump’s victory in Indiana made him the presumptive Republican nominee.”

“Here’s what’s happened since: He’s wasted time, proved to be a sore winner and veered sharply off message. He’s put a higher premium on settling scores than finding a script that will appeal to a wider, general-election audience. Will it cost him?”

Yes.

Billionaire Mark Cuban questioned whether Donald Trump is really a billionaire, BuzzFeed reports.

Said Cuban: “So when you’re putting your name on steaks, and you’re putting your name on water, you’re putting your name on playing cards, you’re putting your name on all this nonsense, right? You’re not gonna make big bucks, no matter what. It’s not like Trump Steaks were gonna make him $100 million. It’s not like it was gonna make him $5 million.”

He added that he has more money than Trump: “It’s not even close, I do… the reason I know is when you file your federal election campaign reports, you have to list all your cash and liquid securities and bonds. You have to list them one by one. So we know without any question that as of May 27, Donald doesn’t have more than $165 million in cash and securities and bonds.”

Kathleen Parker probes the translucent remains for any sign of life.

With the surrender of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) to the Trump crusade, it is fair to wonder what the Republican Party stands for.

Ryan’s endorsement of Trump, which appeared in an op-ed the speaker wrote for his hometown paper — rather than before a gaggle of reporters and newscasters with his arm draped around Trump’s shoulders — was a white flag from the establishment opposition. …

To Trump’s supporters, a billionaire with no governing experience, questionable business practices and secret tax returns would be vastly better than Clinton on no substantive basis whatsoever. Most compelling of all is the belief that Trump would nominate conservative justices. …

At least now, Ronald Reagan can finally get some rest. The Republican Party has left him.

I guarantee you the President wrote that himself.

Brookings:

So Clinton had to drive a wedge between Trump and his advisers. She had to close off the path where Trump could disguise himself in the protective garb of prudent nationalism. She framed the choice as between America as a superpower leading an international order and America as a rogue state. She detailed why alliances have a practical benefit for the United States. She connected Trump’s worldview with his temperament and explained why it would destabilize the world and weaken America. And she did this by using Trump’s own words over the last three decades.

The only way that Trump could effectively rebut the speech would be to disavow dozens of his own prior statements and demonstrate he is a responsible steward of American foreign policy—that he understands why alliances matter, why the United States defines its national interests broadly, and why the U.S. economy does best when the rest of the world does well. But this is the one thing that Trump cannot do. Trump’s view of the world is perhaps more deeply held than any other belief he has. Much as he is on every side of multiple issues, he has been remarkably consistent in his core foreign policy beliefs.

Hillary won the Virgin Island caucus last night by some insane margin, garnering her 6 delegates to Sanders’ 1. That means if the AP delegate count is accurate, he is now 65 delegates away from the nomination. If she wins Puerto Rico by some similarly insane margin, like 85-90% of the vote, then it is possible that she can win the 65 delegates she needs out of the 72 delegates available. But that’s not likely. First, I’d imagine Bernie will do better on PR than on VI because he has taken a stand against the whole Puerto Rican debt bailout issue. Second, while VI’s population was primarily of African descent, PR’s population is obviously more Latino, so demographically he will do better. He will still lose, but I sense PR is more like a 70-30 percentage split. That should mean 42 delegates for Hillary and 18 for Bernie, leaving Hillary 23 short. So she will clinch at 8 pm on Tuesday when New Jersey closes.

Joe Klein:

No sooner do I write a column lamenting Hillary Clinton’s inability to “win” news cycles than she starts winning them. She won one the old-fashioned way in California Thursday, with substance—but also with high-class mockery and disdain—withher brilliant speech about Donald Trump’s ridiculous attempts to articulate a foreign policy. The speech was so potent that Paul Ryan’s perfectly timed attempt to steal her thunder, by finally endorsing Trump, fell flat.

Why? Because Clinton used blunt, confident language for a change. There was almost a Thatcherite clarity to her attack on Trump’s foreign policy ideas:

They’re not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.

It was devastating and Trump’s response was lame.

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  1. puck says:
    June 5, 2016 at 10:10 am

    From The Hill:

    Hillary Clinton is under mounting pressure from supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to back California’s ballot measure aimed at reducing steep drug prices ahead of the state’s primary on Tuesday.

    The first-in-the-nation ballot measure would allow California’s health agencies to negotiate directly with drug companies to lower drug costs.

    Sanders and his supporters are now pressing Clinton to put teeth behind her oft-repeated campaign promise to crack down on price-gouging by “big pharma.”

  2. Liberal Elite says:
    June 5, 2016 at 2:32 pm

    I’ve got to ask… Is Trump a Hillary plant?

    His rhetoric of late is exactly what Trump should be doing if he wanted to take down the entire GOP. And his response to Hillary’s speech was simply lame lame lame. It could not have been much worse.

    It’s quite amazing, and all apparently unforced…

  3. anonymous says:
    June 5, 2016 at 3:22 pm

    I think if he were trying to help Hillary, he’d screw it up as badly as he screws up most things. His only real talent is for getting people to look at him, which puts him in the esteemed company of the Goodyear blimp.

  4. Dave says:
    June 5, 2016 at 5:34 pm

    ‘It’s quite amazing, and all apparently unforced…”

    Yeah, but his only alternative to was to keep his mouth shut and wait for the change in the news cycle. However, since he is the news cycle and since he can’t keep his mouth shut, what else was he to do but step in it?

    Really, a big score for Clinton. Forceful and deliberate. And of course, Trump provided all the fodder so really as we often say – Low hanging fruit and slow fat bunnies.

  5. Jason330 says:
    June 5, 2016 at 7:36 pm

    It makes perfect sense to Trump voters that a Mexican judge should be refused. Just at it makes sense to them that a guy born in the US to American parents who emigrated from Mexico in the 1920’s is a Mexican.

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