* While Hillary Clinton looks virtually assured of her party’s nomination, it’s far from certain who all will have her partisan back in the general election. In short, will the “Bern, baby, Bern” crowd become sore losers or throw in with an erstwhile adversary for the sake of party unity, Obama continuity and a GOP loss, possibly a HUGE one, in November?
Democrats cringe at how some of the Bernie Sanders campaign’s anti-Clinton rhetoric will play in Republican ads in the fall. The closed-door, big-dollar, big-bank speeches, the bad call on the Iraq invasion, the less-than-veiled “entitlement” references could haunt.
Many of Bernie’s brigades were attracted by the rhetoric of “revolution,” something we haven’t heard a lot of since colonial times. But it’s been an effective rallying cry. Nothing on the hustings says anti-establishment and not-political-business-as-usual like “revolution.”
It’s problematic, however, that those rallying around revolutionary rhetoric–make Wall Street speculation underwrite free college tuition and tax carbon dioxide emissions–would see compromise as a back-up plan. One manifested in electoral activism and votes for Clinton. .
Maybe there’s a piece of advice that could apply equally to both Sanders’ supporters and Republicans repelled by the prospect of a Hobson’s Trump-Cruz choice. Take one for your country. Vote for Clinton.
* I’d like to think that Donald Trump’s most recent comments on bathrooms and transgender people–“use the ones they want”–presaged a more professional, worthy-of-America approach to the rest of the campaign season.
But I doubt it.
First, Trump is Trump. A scorpion doesn’t change. Second, he’s not looking for a tempest in a toilet when there are so many other polarizing issues to take advantage of. And, third, he told Sean Hannity the other night that this was not a federal issue anyhow. This was something best left to the states.
From George Wallace to Marco Rubio, from segregation to the definition of marriage, “states’ rights” has a well-chronicled, coded history. In Trump’s case, I would think his base can give him a (bathroom) pass–while perceiving a “wink and a nod” approach to this societal issue.
* Donald Trump’s New York primary win was decisive and momentum regaining. He won 61 of the state’s 62 counties. John Kasich won the other one, which was, ironically, Trump’s home borough of Manhattan, where voters presumably know him best.
* Anyone else think this whenever RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is referenced? Still sounds like a Toyota. Still looks like Forrest Gump