April 4, 2016

Trump has one path to the White House, and it runs straight thru Hillary Clinton

He's been busy imploding himself lately, so it's not too much of a worry. But Secretary Clinton's fragility as a candidate was all out on display this weekend. Like a bad boxer, she's got a glass jaw. Her plan was to have this nomination sewed up by now. The battle plan has not fared well under field conditions and she's not adapting to the new circumstances well, despite having a massively superior air game to Sanders.

She'll win the nomination in the end, but I gotta wonder how well she'll hold up in the fall running against Trump, who has not but an air game. The one thing she's not doing--and she desperately needs to do this--is leave the door open to Sanders supporters. She's doing damned little to try and win them over, which needs to start happening yesterday. Of course they won't desert Sanders now, but she needs to make them jumping ship for her campaign an attractive prospect.

Meanwhile, I'm sure Trump's out there, trying to see how he can game the electorate and pick up some gullible progressive votes by playing his bogus can't-be-bought card. He obviously can be--his brand is for sale to the highest builder and his campaign's debt will only be erased by corrupt lobbyists and bundlers coming in after the election to bid out favors from the federal government. So at this point, Trump has a major financial motivation for winning the race, and thus the motivation to go out for a job that, frankly, he probably never really wanted in the first place.

Oh, democracy, you can be so silly sometimes.

March 7, 2016

A history of Democratic Primaries since I've been awake. And why I'm worried.

1980
- Carter, the incumbent, was challenged by two strong opponents. Carter was amazingly weak, having run an undisciplined White House and having been humiliated by the ongoing Iranian hostage crisis, and had approval ratings that stayed in the low 30s. But there were other problems. Another gas crisis, altho not as bad as the '73 crisis, made people antsy. It also triggered a lethl combo of inflation and a stagnant growth rate--"stagflation" they called it.
- Jimmy Carter was an agile campaigner, but his strength was in the moderate and Southern factions of the Democrats, although the Republicans had long since started digging into the Democrat's
- Factional lines were fluid, and personalities dominated more than interest group, but opposition generally broke down as:
- Teddy Kennedy represented the union movement and old line Cold War liberals. He was a flawed campaigner, at various times not being able to give strong off-the-cuff responses to highly predictable media questions like "Why do you want to be president?" and "What really happened at Chappaquiddick?"
- Jerry Brown was a precursor of both Third Way politics and earth-conscious environmental causes. He started late and didn't have a strong base in the early contests.

These were three giants. Brown hovered around 10% in the first contests in February and then dropped to <4% in March. He dropped out in April. Kennedy and Carter battled for the rest of the spring and into the summer. Kennedy eked out a couple of big states, but Carter won many contests by substantial margins, until he was inevitable. Then, once it looked hopeless for Kennedy, he started winning big states like California and New Jersey.


1984

There were four strong contenders and a number of viable also-rans this time.
- Walter Mondale was the establishment candidate, but no one presumed to tell other ambitious senators not to try and challenge him. We were a democracy after all. He had almost unanimous union support--at least from union leaders. He had a strong liberal record and represented both the Kennedy and the Humphrey wings of the party
- Gary Hart was the break out "dark horse" of the campaign, running on a "New Ideas" platform and attracting socially liberal young professionals
- Jesse Jackson put together a strong coalition of the "forgotten man" - urban minorities, family farmers, progressive & single issue activists, and large numbers of university students and intellectuals and civil rights advocates -- the people the party establishment liked to ignore
- John Glenn ran a vigorous candidacy, also drawing from the Kennedy tradition, but was a little too stodgy on the stump to break through to the later primaries & caucuses. He dropped out in March.

These were four giants, but other notables like Ernest Hollings and Alan Cranston ran serious candidacies. (Most heartbreaking was the tepid return of George McGovern, who failed to catch on as he had 16 years earlier in 1972's insurgency campaign)

Generally speaking, Mondale won the eastern states and Hart won the western states and Jackson pulled off three upsets (DC, Louisiana, & Mississippi)




1988
In 1984 Kennedy had shocked everyone by not running. In 1988, it was Mario Cuomo who surprisingly did not run.

A deep bench of mostly new contenders showed the strength of the democratic Democratic party that year. There really wasn't a single "establishment" candidate that year. A few years out of office does that to a party (viz, Republicans in 1980, 2000, & '16, and Democrats in 1992, 2004 & '08). So we had...
- Mike Dukakis combining elements of the Kennedy, Hart, and Cuomo appeals, but also running as supercompetant manager type (it was the 1980s, after all)
- Jesse Jackson repeating, but to less effect, his 1984 Rainbow Coalition. He instead become a regional candidate, but couldn't break out of the South.
- Al Gore combining both the Hart "new ideas" approach and the as-yet-unnamed Third Way that meant appealed to moderates, especially southern moderates, although the country seemed significantly less regional compared to half a generation earlier.
- Dick Gephardt was, if anyone, the union/Humphrey wing candidate. But he was also strong on farm issues and stood for a strong foreign policy in the JFK/Scoop Jackson tradition
- Paul Simon also drew union support as well as professional/Hart-wing & academic support. Bruce Babbitt ran for a while as a conservationist and a westerner (this is when California was considered a potentially flippable Republican state)



Gary Hart blew up in a sex scandal that year. Cuomo began cultivating his Hamlet-on-the-Hudson rep. Joe Biden and Pat Shroeder jumped in and then jumped out when the crowds didn't gather for them.

Again, campaign coalitions were pretty fluid. The people running for the nomination were running on their resumes and their ideas, not their interest bases. All the major candidates were the sorts of leaders the full party could support. Unlike 1980 or today, the party didn't have the sense of being divided into factions, just spread among different candidacies. We lost cause "liberal" had become a dirty word somehow. This was the apex of Nixon's Southern Strategy era.


1992

Bill Clinton happened and Democrats finally got a candidate with some real Elvis in him. He combined Dukakis's & Hart's "governing ideas that work for all the people" appeal with Jerry Brown's liberal-moderate positioning. He swept almost everyone else aside by mid-March. His main rival was...

- Jerry Brown, who now was running a more outsidery/New Age/pro-environment campaign and earned the support of much of the old Rainbow Coalition. Brown kept losing but kept at it until the convention. This is probably the real beginning of the current cultural divide in the party... the candidacy that isn't about resume but about policy approach--the "include us too" coalition of the forgotten families.

A few others also tried to get the nomination, but they were running as job applicants, not interest-base candidates. Still, there was competition and a real question as to "Who would catch on with the people". The small-d democracy mattered still.
- Tom Harkin who won his home state of Iowa and sub-30% victories in the midwest on Super Tuesday before dropping out
- Bob Kerrey who won South Dakota big and couldn't break 15% support anywhere else before dropping out
- Paul Tsongas who had unfair comparisons to the lackluster Dukakis, won New Hampshire and did just as good as Clinton on Super Tuesday (winning Maryland and several western states while Clinton bagged Georgia, South Carolina, and Wyoming and Brown won Colorado in a three-way photo-finish). He was plagued by health rumors tho (he died of cancer before Clinton's 2nd inauguration) and lost every contest (by 2-to-1 margins) except his home state in the two weeks after Super Tuesday.

Again, these were all men of parts, and the contest was decided by the people, although big campaign donations were starting to matter to all but the insurgency candidate.



2000

Succeeding a successful president was bound to fall to the young handsome intelligent vice president. But even then, the Democrats had a real contest with real arguments between two potential leaders.
- Al Gore ran the first Democratic campaign in the Fox News era. He was clearly the establishment Democratic candidate and the moderate in the race. He had boodles of money. Despite the dot-com bubble popping there was plenty of Wall Street money for the Democrats to wallow in. Democrats, it was finally demonstrated, simply ran the economy and the government better than the Republicans (a comparative list of Reagan-Bush-Bush scandals towers over the paltry and mostly naughty Clinton scandal list, while Obama's scandals consist pretty much of one fucked up website). A few potential challengers (Kerry, Kerrey, Gephardt, Howard Dean) "tested the waters", meaning they found out no one would back them against Gore's megabucks. In the end only one candidate challenged him:
- Bill Bradley attempted to capture the liberal banner, but the party wasn't up to monkeying with a successful formula. He didn't really play effectively to the "hey include us too" wing of the party, the forgotten underclass. He was a millionaire and had no feel for the expanding yet shrinking working class. He lost every primary and was out by mid-March.
- There was no one else. We were a party with a short bench.

By this time, the Willie Hortening of the Democrats was more or less de rigueur now. This was the post-Lewinsky election. So the Al and Tipper showed the strength of their marriage by making out on the podium. This wasn't about governance, but about values. He talked like Mister Rodgers during the debates, as if out-dumbing George Bush was a viable strategy.

Democrats' real strength was now being able to trump Republicans on the economy (tho the party of Reagan never gave up the talking point). So they grabbed the culture war theme from the 80s and 90s, which was only meant to keep the South from drifting to moderation, and placed it center stage. They also gussied up Dubya in the veil of "compassionate conservative" and pretended he would be a bipartisan leader--a deeply empty promise it turned out.

so Florida happened

Despite winning, by a hair, we lost the White House.

But oh, our loins ached for Bubba, just as the generation from 1968 to 1988 ached for Bobby's return. Damn that Constitution. We needed that Clinton mojo back. And there was that new senator from New York with her secret weapon. Fox News spent the next three years sneering that we were all puppets for Hillary. And so, of course, CNN and all the newspapers echoed the voice of America's dysfunctional drunk uncle.



2004

Not surprisingly, Sen Clinton didn't run in the next election. I mean, after all, it'd be insane for a 1st term senator, never re-elected, to run for the White House.

So we got another deep bench year. This was DU's first Democratic primary season. Those of us who were here 12 years ago remember the vitriol. It was harsh, but at least it was a race split multiple ways.
- John Kerry represented the old Kennedy wing, the high church liberals, and a strong slice of the union vote--altho to our shame as a nation, the union vote in 21st Century was not as weighty as it'd been in the middle of the 20th.
- John Edwards gave a populist twist to the moderate wing, striking a perfectly inclusive note for the forgotten citizen, but seemed to lack gravitas (and boy howdy! as we found out four years later!)
- Dennis Kucinich recreated the Rainbow Coalition and gave for the leftier activists a true voice
- Wesley Clark went for the intellectual crowd, and was accused of being a Hillary surrogate, but also brought a lot of veterans and suburban professionals into the Democratic tent
- Joe-mentum (!)
- Al Sharpton did his thing, but mostly just diverted the black vote as a bargaining tool for the convention
- and then there was people-powered Howard Dean, who galvanized many activists and more importantly created the internet wing of the Democratic Party.

Every four years every candidate running for president and every surrogate for each party repeats the implausible mantra that "this year's election is uniquely historical... indeed, it may be the most important election of our lifetimes." For short I'll call it the MIEOOL. They have always been wrong, probably even for 2016, except when they said it in 2004. Bush's run for "re"-election was the MIEOOL of your lifetime. Unless you're under 12 [font size="1"](in which case Kanye's run for reelection in 2024 is your MIEOYL)[/font].

Both Dean fully realizing how to use social media and the internet in pulling together a voting block and the American public's failure to repudiate George Bush's reckless warmongering had lasting implications for democracy and for America's global behavior for the rest of this half century. Thirty years from now we will still be cleaning up Bush's mess in the middle east.

When America needs an orgasm, it turns to the Republicans. When it needs a janitor, it turns to us. Each election pretty much comes down to "Do you want to get the house in order or do you want to want to throw a missile at your middle aged insecurities?" And that leads us to the year....


2008

Once again there was a deep bench. But despite the quality candidates coming forth, there was really only two. One ran on Wall Street money, one ran on Chicago money. But the cast was impressive. One was the Clinton establishment and one inherited the liberal opposition to Clinton, despite being discernibly a moderate of the Third Way stripe. He hadn't been bamboozled by the Bushco drumbeat for war in Iraq, but then he hadn't been a senator yet. It was one candidate with connections and another with a sort of professorial version of Bubba's Elvis factor. He shifted his cadences when he went south and it won him important primaries. She turned up the fire and when she did she won, despite her husband's Hermann Munster like inability to help. I won't go all Freud on the Big Dog, but he was not playing his A-game that year.

There was also...
- John Edwards finished a close 2nd or 3rd for January, then dropping out after losing South Carolina.
- Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel splitting the activist and anti-establishment vote, but Kucinich dropping out after South Carolina
- old schoolers Chris Dodd and Joe Biden running shoestring campaigns like it was 1972 again, and thoroughly rejected by the party money-bags
- Bill Richardson who in another time might have made history, but stumbled under rumors of hubris (as if they didn't all suffer from ego inflation!)

But really it was just the two. It was epic. It was civil war. It was razor close again and again. And then we made history. Which leads us to...



2016

And this year, I contend, is different. It's more than just "2000 Jr" with the incumbent successful-despite-shockingly-disciplined-obstruction. In 2000, a mainstream liberal senator was able to mount a serious opposition against a competent-yet-Fox-villified establishment candidate. Gore then was favored, but his opponent was given more or less equal coverage. The terms of the debate was "who could build on the establishment Democrat's worthy record of progress?" In 2000, a few senators tested the waters.

In 2016, no one from the DC establishment tested the waters. There was a presumptive nominee and there was no one, as in no one, who made any noise. I mean, it's still America and so a few gadflies went out there, Dodd/Biden-like to test the waters, to see if they could catch fire as the anti-Hillary as Obama had done 8 years before. Two were jokes and Martin O'Malley lacked charisma. And money--boy, did he lack money. Senator-Secretary Clinton, for all her service and gravitas and experience and connections to the financial world and good works with the Clinton Foundation, was still a flawed candidate with national negatives that hovered around 55%.

To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, it was the story of the donkey who didn't bark. Where have all our giants gone? The country's forgotten citizen, the screwed over working class, is far far more numerous now than it was in 1984 when we still had strong unions and college students expected to live better off than their parents. Both the incumbent and his designated successor represent a genuine compassion for the working class who, despite the compassion, continue to get squeezed down by a relentless globalized economy. No one with a solid Democratic pedigree stood up, like FDR would've, like Hubert Humphrey would've, like Ted Kennedy would've, like Bobby died doing, to speak powerfully for the disincluded American.

Had we become the compassionate conservatives? The Party of Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Carson, and Murdoch is quantifiably neither compassionate nor conservative. They are contemptuous reactionaries, perverting the American dream in ways that would mortify Reagan if he were alive (or Poppy Bush if he weren't a whore for energy, pharmaceutical, finance, and construction interests), and polluting the minds of actual conservatives with tribalized resentments that threaten the unity of the nation.

Nope, this year should be a walk for us. The Republicans, long culturally denoted by their ability to conform and line up behind their leader every four years, are fractured like rats on the Titanic ripping out each other's throats over who gets to eat Leonardo's fingers before drowning. Okay I botched that metaphor. They had a few giants of their own ilk this time around and--significantly--rejected every last damn one of them so they could choose between a deranged theocrat, an empty suit, and gold-plated Mussolini.

They're falling apart. And yet they consistently beat our front runner in head to head polling, except for the fascist (but even then we haven't seen his inevitable tactical turn to reforming populist; and ideologically he's the best positioned to pick up independent and moderate votes that currently elude him for his monkeyshines--trust me, those'll go away by the end of May). They conduct their debates with the dignity of a middle school food fight. And yet they still outpoll Clinton.

With so weak a frontrunner, why was there no mainstream challenger this year? Where was our bench?

Of course, instead we saw the rise of a non-Democrat as the voice of the "Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party." Bernie Sanders is a national treasure, but it's not insignificant that he hasn't ever run as a nominal Democrat to Congress. He's been great, speaking for the voiceless, caring for the forgotten. But he's so far out of the mainstream that he hasn't been able to coalesce a working majority against the centrist candidate--a singularly unpopular centrist at that. There's no reason on earth that big money couldn't gather behind a more effective spokesperson--one who hasn't been smeared by a quarter century of lies, vitriol, rumor mongering, conspiracy theories, baseless character attacks, and plain old misogyny. But it hasn't. Either someone up there in the penthouses wants us to lose this year, or there is a corrupt class of one-percenters who are truly out of touch with the mecha-bot they think they're driving.

And don't get me wrong. I do respect Hillary Clinton as an administrator, as commander, as a champion for women's rights, as a foe of global climate change, as a diplomat negotiating treaties. I'd trust her as president as much as any other mainstream Democrat. Part of me wants to see Fox heads explode when she's inaugurated. Sadly, I'm not very confident she can hurtle over that bar, however. And I adore Bernie Sanders's fire and advocacy as a politician, though I do worry about his trade policy and the economic impact of his approach to healthcare (I'm supporting him financially, but mostly because he's tons more electable and probably can't get his more extreme proposals through anyhoo). And they're both wonderful people and they're invited to my barbecue. But from a historical perspective, I gotta ask... is that all we've got?

So, again, I wonder what's going on. How was every ambitious, charismatic senator and governor spooked out of challenging Secretary Clinton? How was the anti-Clinton vote defaulted to a guy who has the political luxury of giving zero fucks (as the kids say) when her cloud-high negatives have been a known entity for so long a time? How was all of the money on Wall Street funneled into only one candidate's warchest?

In a phrase, what on God's green Earth happened to our Democratic Party?

February 29, 2016

Old CW: Trump'll be a trainwreck; he can't unify the GOP. New CW: He's unifying the GOP

About a month ago the big orange troglodyte was persona non-grata in the minds and hearts of all Republican leaders. They all loathed him. They plotted and wheedled about looking for a single conservative David to take on this carnival huckster of a Goliath. They nudged Walker, then Christie, and then by God Jeb W. fuckin'Bush out of the race just to consolidate the opposition. It didn't work, as the Insultinator racked up <40% victories and grew increasingly coarser and edged higher and higher in the polls.

The worst part about it all--and I mean worse for America, not for the Republican establishment--the worst part was Donald Trump's Mussolinalicious campaign works just like any other narcotic. The more you take, the greater your tolerance level grows, and the more, the more pure, and the more harsh varieties of the drug you need. By this summer, the Democratic logic goes, Republican voters will be free-basing orangutan hair and outrage enough independent voters to give us a landslide. Trump, in a word, is unelectable. After years of indulging in the gateway drug of dog-whistle rhetoric, the Republicans are now hitting the hard stuff, speedballing outright racism, marching gleefully behind a guy who shrugs off Klan endorsements and revels in retweeting actual Mussolini quotes and openly announces he'll "open up the libel laws" so he defang the First Amendment. In the good old days of the early 2010s, Republicans only had the cops eject noisy protesters from their rallies. Trump, like the true Il Duce bag that he is, calls on his supporters to beat up protestors and lets it be known he'll cover their bail. Democratic logic assures us no one who goes that far in America can get elected.

The Democratic logic is flawed. He's not scaring away potential voters from his camp. He's actually, finally, getting closer to that 50% support threshold in the Republican polls. Instead continuing in a linear devolution down to virulent tribalism and then quietly marching off a cliff toward unelectability with his radical proclivities, The Donald is actually taking a sizeable chunk of the party, including the first outliers of the party establishment, with him. This is the same party establishment that first ignored, then laughed at, then fought, and finally faintly echoed the tar-baby of his substance free entertain-o-thon campaign. They are now, slowly, willingly waltzing into the balls-out, xenophobic, misogynistic, loving arms of Donald J. Trump.

He's not just winning now, he's winning over the quisling leaders of the Right. Those of us who thought the GOP would see a convention walk-out are going to be disappointed. Those of us who thought Rubio or Cruz or Droopy MD were going to launch a 3rd party run and split the Red State votes are going to be disappointed. Those who once reveled in the pouty tweets of Christine Todd Whitman that she'd vote for Hillary over The Donald are going to be the most disappointed of all. That fucker is going to hold them all together. The rats have started running toward the cheese traps, lining up for their slice of the chedder. One thing you can always count on Republicans to do is fall in line and follow the leader when the time comes. Every Republican loves a winner. It is their natural manure.

Thus, come November, they will turn out to vote. But for now, the steady trickle of endorsements for Trump is just starting. More rats will line up as The Donald gets closer to the brass ring. In fact, they've already started doing that. It's not just Chris Christie.

Jeff Sessions, Jan Brewer, Kansas POS Kris Kobach, Sarah Palin, US Reps Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter, and Gov. Paul LePage of Maine are the vanguard. And sure, to you and me this sounds like a run-down of Dick Tracy's Rogues Gallery, but to Republicans most of these people are only a little bit shy of eccentric, the sort of mavericks who "speak their minds" and "don't knuckle under to the PC culture." But they are just the tip of the spear.

Little by little, the GOP is becoming the Party of Trump. And they are becoming a unified party. Before too long, the conservative establishment will come along, convinced like Neville Chamberlain, that they can compromise with Trump, cut deals with him, pat him on the rump, and then get a few choice seats at his cabinet table. They just have to not raise a ruckus while he toes his way into the Sudentenland of their nomination. Surely he won't want the rest of it all, right?

If you're like most Democrats, you've been thinking Trump can't pull them together. He can't rebrand himself and unite the party. Even if he can, he can't then re-rebrand himself in the Fall and be an anti-corporate populist, pretending he's more concerned with curtailing corporate corruption of Congress than with stopping immigrant racists. But when has he not told the next group of voters he's facing exactly what they want to hear? When has he not tailored his message to the fears that motivate the biggest number of panic voters?

But pivot he will, bank on it, when time comes to retailor his messages for a general election in November. Meanwhile, Democratic voter turn out is looking pretty sluggish this year. Despite the expected backlash of floods of Democrats coming out to register a "stop Trump" vote for Hillary or Bernie, we've got crickets. Are our people demoralized, burnt out, or finally driven by this year's trash politics across the thin line between apoplectic and apathetic? We're not the pro-Democratic party this year, just the anti-Trump party. When in US history has that ever been enough?

Of course when in US history have we ever faced an anti-small-d-democratic candidate like Trump before? When I joined this website in 2002, I got a smirk over the hyperbolic name: Democratic "Underground"--ha ha--as if plutocrats like Bush and Cheney were gonna start hunting down the noisy opposition. I'm not laughing at the hyperbole now. This only thing scarier than this Trump guy is the fact that we as a party aren't more ginned up about stopping him.

February 19, 2016

Bernie Sanders will stand up to Bankers just like he stands up to Barbers!!

When Bernie's in the hot seat, you do things HIS way.

Say no to Big Scissors. Say yes to Bernie.

February 18, 2016

Young Turks explain on how millionaires gain influence/access to Democratic candidates

Cenk is framing it how Clinton is taking millions from industries that her administration will later be required to regulate. But this is really how all industry controls Washington.

February 18, 2016

TrumpDonald.org will blow you away

or someone at least http://trumpdonald.org/

February 16, 2016

Obama nominee

Obama nominee (it's an)
Obama nominee (I really think so!)

Obama nominee (it's an)
Obama nominee (I really think so!)

February 16, 2016

Obama nominee

Obamanominee...

Obamanomineeee...

Obama-noma-noma-noma-noma-nomineeeee....!!


(now it's stuck in your head too)

February 13, 2016

Bernie Sanders Sex Scandal

are four words I never expected to hear. But let's face it... it's a scandal... how this man is that damned sexy!!


[font face="Angsana New" size="1"]and check out where I'm pulling this picture from for a little added irony[/font]

.

January 23, 2016

two articles explain how fucked Republicans are

GOP establishment capitulates to Donald Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/01/22/the-gop-establishment-capitulates-to-donald-trump/

This article (WaPo) talks about how GOP leaders are trying to cozy up to the fascist shithole because they think he's gonna get nominated anyway and they can appease him somehow. The second they offer him a few handshakes, he ramps up the the immigrant bashing again and spins out the lie that Cruz is for legalization of undocumented immigrants (all Cruz did was shy away from supporting Trump's gestapo-like round up of hard working families). Make no mistake: Trump's a fascist and the Republicans, apparently, are bracing themselves to play the Neville Chamberlain role.


Why GOP Elites Prefer Trump to Cruz
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/gop_elites_prefer_donald_trump_to_ted_cruz.single.html

This opinion/analysis piece at Salon compares how GOP top brass think they can cut deals with Trump, but see Cruz as leading an insurgent faction of extreme rightees who want to replace them as the Republican leadership. If Trump is the fascist in this analogy, then Cruz is Stalin, a smarmy dysfunctional bully who no one likes but who has a more clearly defined ideology to govern by. They're certain Cruz will lose. They think Trump has a path to the White House. Trump is a pretty sly fox. He probably does have decent chance of winning.

====


Given the increasingly likelihood that Trump will win the nomination, I guess that leaves the Democrats to play the Churchill role. But now I've overstretched the analogy. I'll end it with this: Trump is a fascist and a double-dealer, make no doubt, but he's no Hitler. He's a Mussolini, but not a Hitler.

Anyway, my main point is, given the choice between a jackass and a fascist, the Republicans are going with the fascist. Why? Because they're party bosses and they think he can be negotiated with. He make a fetish out of cutting deals, after all, right? But they're fools. He won't be controlled, and frankly a Donald Trump with power is a dangerous prospect. You and I and absolutely they should be very afraid of that prospect.

So why aren't they? Because they're party bosses. They want to win. They think he can do it (and it will blow your mind next fall when you see how deftly Trump pivots and starts appealing to moderates to win the election). But as an American first and only as a Democrat second, I really want to see the Republicans nominate someone else; anyone else. Cruz is reprehensible, but at the end of the day, the Republic will survive 4, even 8, years of President Ted Cruz.

There'll be a mess to clean up, certainly, tho we're still cleaning up Bush & Cheney's in the financial sector and the MidEast. But there'll also be a Constitution and the rule of law at our disposal to start to address whatever problems a Cruz or Rubio or Christie or Kasich White House creates. I'm not quite so confident that a Trump presidency would end with bona fide elections. I can't see what's at the other end of that tunnel.

I started writing this post thinking about how fucked Republicans are, meaning fucked both as screwed and fucked in the head. The more I think about where this sort of thing goes, the more it seems that the whole country's in a pretty fucked situation.