It's at the point where I can't pretend that my job's busy season is really keeping me from blogging anymore and get down to admitting that these Democratic presidential primaries seem to give me roughly the same sense of intense lassitude that debt ceiling arguments do. So I'm going to take the results of last night's primaries (including the one in my home state)--a sweep by Donald Trump and a 4 out of 5 win by Hillary Clinton, as a hopeful sign of the Beginning of the End. At least, I think Trump and Clinton seem in agreement that this is the beginning of the end, even if their intraparty opponents don't!
Senator Sanders still maintains that there is a path to the nomination (and some of his principal advisers seem eager to keep things going until the convention, regardless) even though the chances of a contested convention are pretty darn remote. (I am going to discount the probability suggested at Salon that an FBI investigation is going to sink her campaign on the grounds of this ain't her first rodeo, and I'm sure her legal self-vetting regarding her conduct as Secretary of State was exceptionally thorough--all political candidates seem to have gobs of hubris, but she has experience of how people get burned.) This is despite signs that his campaign is beginning to cut back.
I really do want Sanders and his supporters to have a voice regarding party platform at the convention, because I've been a fan of much of what he has been talking about, but my issue has mainly always been procedural--how do progressives get things done? And as a watcher of how campaigns fund and spend, it's only my dearth of blogging in general that has kept me from writing a "Bern rate" post--big rallies generate their own advertising, but their cost hasn't necessarily been balanced out by returns at the ballot box.
As for Donald Trump, he has two challengers who are bolstered by the #Nevertrump notion into hanging on, that are almost shamefully inept. Senator Ted Cruz, in a Bizarro World Hail Mary move (about which more in a later post), has announced a running mate a day after being basically mathematically eliminated from serious contention. Ohio Governor John Kasich still has less delegates than Senator Marco Rubio, who dropped out in early March.
Although I will write about future primaries--my heart isn't in it anymore. I want to write about Trump's obnoxious style versus Clinton's substance. I want to write about the bullshit misogyny of deriding "the woman card" versus the real need for leaders who do understand and represent the concerns of, it turns out, the slight majority of US voters by gender.
So despite some of the enervating aspects of the 2016 election year to date, bring on Trump vs. Clinton! If I had any questions about how strongly I supported Hillary Clinton before Trump decided to adopt the "unqualified except for being a woman" meme--well now it's entirely on.
I really do want Sanders and his supporters to have a voice regarding party platform at the convention, because I've been a fan of much of what he has been talking about, but my issue has mainly always been procedural--how do progressives get things done? And as a watcher of how campaigns fund and spend, it's only my dearth of blogging in general that has kept me from writing a "Bern rate" post--big rallies generate their own advertising, but their cost hasn't necessarily been balanced out by returns at the ballot box.
As for Donald Trump, he has two challengers who are bolstered by the #Nevertrump notion into hanging on, that are almost shamefully inept. Senator Ted Cruz, in a Bizarro World Hail Mary move (about which more in a later post), has announced a running mate a day after being basically mathematically eliminated from serious contention. Ohio Governor John Kasich still has less delegates than Senator Marco Rubio, who dropped out in early March.
Although I will write about future primaries--my heart isn't in it anymore. I want to write about Trump's obnoxious style versus Clinton's substance. I want to write about the bullshit misogyny of deriding "the woman card" versus the real need for leaders who do understand and represent the concerns of, it turns out, the slight majority of US voters by gender.
So despite some of the enervating aspects of the 2016 election year to date, bring on Trump vs. Clinton! If I had any questions about how strongly I supported Hillary Clinton before Trump decided to adopt the "unqualified except for being a woman" meme--well now it's entirely on.
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