The Wobbling Pivot

So, about that pivot where Donald Trump is going to focus on the general election now that the GOP convention is over?

Yeah, there might be a bit of a hitch to that, as apparently, Ted Cruz is still on Trump's mind, bigly: Yep, he resurrected the conspiracy theory about Cruz's dad and Lee Harvey Oswald. Because nothing says calm, presidential focus like still fighting the primaries with weaponized batshit.

Oh, and he's also thinking about destroying Ted Cruz and John Kasich's political careers going forward by creating SuperPACS . Because...?

But other than that...

Edit: Not that he's actually going to do any such thing, necessarily. But why threaten it? It's like he can't let any damn dumb thing go. What a pricklepants.

I'd Say It's all Over But the Being Over

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.

Marco Rubio Calls it Quits

After being absolutely clobbered in his home state (and showing why he didn't decide to try for another term as US Senator--he might not be all that liked in FL), Marco Rubio is packing in his awkward run for the White House.

The "Robot Rubio" and "small hands" things might have taken away from the impression that he was a plausible presidential nominee, but I think expectations were unrealistically high regarding him in the first place.  He came across as young and ambitious--but the basis for his campaign was sort of horrible: "Congress doesn't do anything fun, so let me try being President instead." Hoo boy. Add that to the kind of neoconservative folderol of his foreign policy (echoes of PNAC right in the slogan) and retrograde social conservatism, and there just wasn't anything fresh and new about him but his face.

It looks like OH Gov. John Kasich really will have to be the GOP establishment's "new hotness", now.

John Kasich--the New Hotness?

Since going from third to fifth seems to have thrown a kink in Marco Rubio's 3-2-1 strategy, is New Hampshire #2 John Kasich the new hotness? I mean sure, Trump's lead over Kasich is amazingly steep, but in the mental space where many conservatives are in denial about Donald Trump's nomination chances, isn't Kasich sort of more plausible?

And just to put a pin in that one, I note that Ted Cruz is a very close third having really spent hardly anything in NH at all, and it looks like he's polling at a likely second place finish in SC. State by state, I don't see how there's going to be any consensus on an "anti-Trump" for some time.

And wow--Clinton took a shellacking from Sanders--as the poll numbers pretty much said she would. And other states are not New Hampshire. This really feels like the start of a long primary season, right?

This is probably very good news for Mike Bloomberg. (I'm kidding. I think.)

Where Does Trump Go from Here?

Donald Trump's campaign would like to deny that the candidate was mocking the disability of a reporter whose recollection of certain disputed events differs from the candidate's own recollection. The campaign would prefer that one believe that the candidate does not know what the journalist in question looks like.

Oh, really? Because the exact words out of Trump's mouth before he scrunched up his right arm were:

“Now the poor guy, you ought to see the guy,” he said as he gestured, drawing condemnation from the Times and disability advocates.

Right. You ought to see the guy, like Trump knows what he looks like, and in case you don't...?

Tacky. But this is an interesting thing--why did Trump single out this reporter's disability? To discredit him. Why use this to discredit him? Because in Trump's mind, any weakness is to be exploited. Naturally. Of course the disabled guy's reporting is faulty. In the Trump regime, don't actually expect that weakness will be suffered or cozened. Actually, expect that if you have weakness, you are suspected of trying to weaken the entire corpus Americanus. There won't really even be a place for charity towards the ill.

What the hell does that sound like? See, when I hear "Make America Great"--in part I hear, "Make Americans Pure". And that purity might not entail someone you know.

Trump doesn't need "sensitivity training". He isn't being chided for being less than politically correct. He knows who the hell that reporter is, and he mocked him like a child who knows no better might mock someone before being advised that he lives in a world with a lot of other people of varying strengths all of whom have value. But he is not a child. And he shouldn't have to be taught like one.

John Kasich and Exporting "Judeo-Christian Values"

You know, I think OH Gov. John Kasich has come as close as there can be to being the "reasonable man" on stage in primary debates. He's informed, compassionate, and except for a little signifying, not overtly doling out pandering horseshit.

Which is why this business with creating an agency to dispense Judeo-Christian memes to countries he deems could use them is a hot mess. Remember just a blog post or so back when I mentioned that Ben Carson's adviser, Gen. Dees, was in favor of militarized missionaries? Well, that sort of thing is actually not allowed by military convention--US soldiers are not to proselytize.  (It's bad enough when heavy proselytization is used on the troops themselves.) We have this funny old thing here in the States about church and state separation, despite the best efforts of people like the head of Ted Cruz' SuperPAC, David Barton, to pretend it is not a real thing. An agency like the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, created under President George W. Bush, is questionable enough--but even that office recognizes the Establishment Clause and steers away from proselytizing.

This proposal does not. It specifically mentions "Judeo-Christian values"--implying that any other values of any other creed must be less-than. (I've recently mentioned on Twitter that "Judeo-Christian" is such a passive-aggressive phrase in that the third Abrahamic faith is, intentionally, silent.) It specifically would be geared towards spreading "Judeo-Christian values" to--whom? The poor benighted boogers of lesser faiths who don't have values that Kasich recognizes as "correct"? Why, that is tremendously paternalistic and really likely to make people more pissed off at our colonialist mindset!

Yeah. I had a little respect for Kasich, but, while this idea might sort of woo evangelicals, seriously, if there was a way to peel them off of Carson and Cruz, Huckabee would have tried it. I think it's a turkey, and as God is my witness, I do not believe turkeys can fly.