National

State Senator and President Pro Tem Patti Blevins (D-Elsmere) has endorsed her down Kirkwood Highway colleague State Senator Bryan Townsend today. This may not seem like a rather large deal, given that they are fellow upstate Democratic Senators. But Blevins is a further signal that the Dem Establishment is lining up behind Townsend now that their favorite, Bryon Short, is out. So in that case it is.

To be delegate to the Democratic convention can be an expensive proposition. You have at least five nights in a hotel at at least $150 a night, and that is being, pardon the pun, conservative. I, as a Hillary supporter, have donated personally to a Bernie delegate, because she is a friend and because, if you need help to participate in our party democracy, you should get it. In that vein, Rebecca Faye Powers and Mona Parikh are hosting, and the Progressive Democrats are sponsoring, a fundraiser for those delegates, whether they are Bernie delegates or Hillary delegates, who need assistance. Rebecca Faye Powers knows the Bernie delegates who are in need, and Drew Fennell knows the Hillary delegates who are in need. Whatever is raised at this fundraiser will be divided evenly between those on each side who need help. So please join us all on next Thursday, June 2 between 5:30 and 8:30 pm at the Ernest & Scott Taproom, 902 N. Market St, Wilmington, Delaware 19801.

You know what will bring unity among Sanders and Clinton supporters: the sacking of DWS. And it looks like some Democratic Senators are actually contemplating sacking her BEFORE the convention, which will give Bernie a literal scalp to crow about.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are discussing whether Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz should step down as Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman before the party’s national convention in July. Democrats backing likely presidential nominee Hillary Clinton worry Wasserman Schultz has become too divisive a figure to unify the party in 2016, which they say is crucial to defeating presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in November. Wasserman Schultz has had an increasingly acrimonious relationship with the party’s other presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, and his supporters, who argue she has tilted the scales in Clinton’s favor. “There have been a lot of meetings over the past 48 hours about what color plate do we deliver Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s head on,” said one pro-Clinton Democratic senator. A senior Senate Democratic aide said, “There’s a strong sentiment that the current situation is untenable and can only be fixed by her leaving. There’s too much water under the bridge for her to be a neutral arbiter.” Another Democratic senator who supports Clinton said Wasserman Schultz will hurt her chances of rallying the liberal base in the fall. “We need to get this figured out and come together,” said the lawmaker. “Hillary’s got the nomination. She needs Bernie’s energy. It’s time for her to accommodate. It’s time to pick hard-nosed people to cut through things and figure out a deal. “They need to know this is their party,” the lawmaker said, observing that if Wasserman Schultz were to be replaced as party leader, young liberals may become more enthusiastic about the ticket.

Jesse Berney at Rolling Stone looks at Trump’s donations to veterans groups:

He claimed to have raised $6 million for the various charities — $5 million from others, $1 million from himself. That's real money when it comes to nonprofit budgets. Only… he didn't. Trump being Trump, we'll probably never know how much money he raised that night. But his campaign manager has admitted it wasn't the $6 million Trump claimed. Trump, who went to a rich kids' military boarding school, got multiple deferments to get out of Vietnam, and has said he likes troops who "didn't get captured," loves to fashion himself a champion of veterans. That's what his counter-event that debate night was all about: selling himself as a generous friend of the men and women who serve our country in the military.

Jonathan Chait on Why Democrats Have Popular Presidents and Republicans Don’t:

As the matchup between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton takes shape, it has begun to dawn on some conservatives that the Republican Party faces a distinct handicap: The Democrats will have two popular ex-presidents to campaign for them, and the GOP will have none. Bill Clinton is the party's most effective surrogate for wife Hillary, writes Byron York in the conservative Washington Examiner: “Republicans haven't had the same luck. The only two-term GOP president in the last generation, George W. Bush, has stayed mostly out of politics in the seven years since he left the White House.” Meanwhile, writing for The Wall Street Journal opinion page, Richard Benedetto grapples with President Obama’s value as a surrogate. “When Mr. Obama ran for office in 2008, a central part of his campaign strategy was to heap blame on George W. Bush,” writes Benedetto. “How has Mr. Obama dodged similar treatment?” How indeed? The answer, I’d suggest, is something along the lines of by governing competently rather than presiding over a flaming wreck of a presidency. But this answer presumes a level of introspection into the success of the last two Democratic presidents, and the conspicuous failure of the one wedged between them, that is absent from both columns, and from conservative thought in general.