National

Jonathan Chait says Trump proves that I, Delaware Dem, was right all along about the nature of the right's opposition to Obama: “As careful studies of the tea-party movement revealed, what animated Republican voters was a fear of cultural change. Their anti-statism was confined to programs that seemed to benefit people other than themselves. Racial resentment and ethnocentrism, not passion for limited government, drove the conservative base.” “Almost alone within the party, Trump understood this. That is why his comically long list of ideological deviations never hurt him. Trump’s racism demonstrated to most Republican voters that he stood with them on the essential divide that ordered their political world — one defined by identity more than ideology.” “In the conservative elite’s imagination, the romanticized history of the tea-party revolt — a story of liberty-loving Americans rising up against Big Government excess — still prevails. It is a story that attributes the party’s extraordinary opposition to the president’s policies, not to the primal fears he aroused. Trump has not only disproven the conservative movement’s theory of its own base. He’s disproven its history of the Obama presidency.” They opposed him with such vehemence because they were and are racists. And being racist explains why Trump has won the GOP nomination. The GOP is racist. Trump is racist. It is a match made in hell.

In a 3-2 decision, the Delaware Supreme Court has ruled the state’s death penalty unconstitutional. Chief Justice Leo Strine found that certain aspects of Delaware’s statute conflict with a recent U.S. Supreme Court Case striking down Florida’s capital punishment program. More to come as I get it...

Jonathan Chait says Republicans have chosen racism: “Even though Trump has sprung naturally from the conservative fertile soil of racism, anti-intellectualism, and authoritarianism, his nomination is truly a sea change. No successful candidate before him has identified himself so tightly with white-identity politics. His place at the top of the ticket, and potentially as head of state, has presented fellow Republicans with an agonizing dilemma. To be sure, their choice is not comfortable. Those Republicans who have distanced themselves from the nominee, even in carefully measured increments, have endured fierce blowback from their own voters and even donors… In a party rife with racism, anti-racism is hardly considered an acceptable basis for partisan disloyalty.” “What most Republican elites have always wanted is to lead a party that appeals to a majority of the country on the basis of abstract small-government, patriotic themes. Trump has revealed that this is a hopeless fantasy, and what they can lead instead is a party of racists. And they have decided, nearly every one of them, that they will take it.”