Monday Reads: “Excuse me, I’m Talking!”
Posted: March 7, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads, Hillary Clinton 55 Comments
Monday again!
So, we’re past Super Tuesday and heading towards the Ides of March. I didn’t think I’d learn much new from the Democratic Debate in Michigan last night. There may have not been any new information but there certainly was a lot of reinforcements of impressions and old information.
Y’all know me. I’m a nerdy girl. I always have been. I play piano. I paint. I love animation. I read The Hobbit in 4th grade for the first of many times and discovered Dr. Who in Grad school. I had a comic book collection as a kid. I was in every AP class in High School. I have a doctorate in financial economics which means I use the same damn math that Rocket Scientists and theoretical physicists use. I love anything nonfiction and documentary. I’ve worked at the FED, lots of banks, and I’ve taught university. I’ve been nearly the only damn woman in the work environment or class many, many times. I had to go through a lot to get there and stay there. I’ve been the brains behind a stupid CEO in quite a few states and cities.
So, believe me when I tell you that there’s always one old quack in the room that talks over women, gives nonverbal cues that what we say is unappreciated, and feels that his opinion is the only one that’s important. Every single one of those experiences came flooding back to me last night in living color accompanied by the ol’ heebie jeebies. Oh, and I’m white and any one whose been to my house prior to the flood of young white hipsters would likely call my neighborhood a “ghetto”. WTF?
Losers* Bernie Sanders: The senator from Vermont had effectively walked a fine line in the previous six debates when it came to attacking Clinton without coming across as bullying or condescending. He tripped and fell while trying to execute that delicate dance on Sunday night. Sanders’s “excuse me, I’m talking” rebuttal to Clinton hinted at the fact that he was losing his temper with her. His “Can I finish, please?” retort ensured that his tone and his approach to someone trying to become the first female presidential nominee in either party would be THE story of the night.
You don’t have to be a woman making her way in a primarily male environment for work to be continually hushed by men. We all know the rules of 
communication are different for us. We have to interrupt frequently to just get a freaking word in edgewise.
It seems the only thing of importance that happened at last night’s Democratic debate is that Hillary Clinton interrupted Bernie Sanders and he shushed her. This has erupted into a big debate on the Twitters and Facespace thing, but I actually think it’s an important topic we need to discuss.
The rules of communication are different for women and men.
Here’s the deal, guys: women don’t like to be shushed. At all. If my husband ever tells me to be quiet or shush — yes, it’s happened — it elicits an intense, visceral, negative response. It makes me furious. And when it happens in a professional setting? It pushes every feminist button I own.
Why? Because you’re telling me I’m not important. You’re discounting me. You’re saying my ideas don’t matter, and that I don’t have the right to express them.
Men interrupt each other all the time and I daresay they don’t have that same response. It’s just how they communicate. But men and women come at communication from very different places.
The way we communicate is one of the many subtle ways women are expected to take a subservient role in society. I know it looks like we’ve come a long way, baby — hey we can vote and wear pants, huzzah — but when you look at basic social interactions, we’re constantly sent the contradictory message that we are second place. We get talked over, our ideas don’t matter, our issues aren’t important to the country at large they’re “women’s issues,” so who really gives a shit. Our work is worth less. Our effort is less valuable. This is the world from a professional woman’s point of view.
“But Beale,” you say, “Hillary interrupted him.” Yes, she did. Of course she did. And this is another thing about the difference between male and female communication: professional women always have to assert themselves to express their opinion. Because women are talked over all the damn time, it’s something we’ve lived with for generations, and many of us have learned how to interrupt if we want to say something.
But, that wasn’t the only moment where we had our doubts about Bernie’s ability to absorb and be interested in the rights of Americans and the 
intersectionality of racism, misogyny, xenophobia and sexual preference. Those of us that experienced the “White People Don’t Know What It’s Like To Live In The ‘Ghetto’ ” moment last night nearly had a collective heart attack if we knew anything about code words used to race-bait since the adoption of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. (Follow that link to a great article by historian Heather Cox Richardson on how the Republicans got to their FrankenTrump Monster.)
Movement Conservatives fought to take control of the party from moderate Republicans. Movement Conservatives stood firmly against taxes and government activism, but they built their power by adding racism to their anti-government crusade. They argued that tax dollars redistributed wealth from hardworking white people to undeserving people of color and women. This argument proved a winner when Movement Conservative Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater’s only five states in 1964–aside from his home state—were in the Deep South. In 1968, Nixon captured Goldwater voters by adopting the Southern Strategy to assure white southerners that the days of federal enforcement of civil rights were ending. In 1980, Reagan began his general election campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been murdered during Freedom Summer, and told the crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.” The message was unmistakable. He also used the image of the “Welfare Queen,” a black woman who stole tax dollars by making fraudulent welfare claims, in winning the presidency.
With a Movement Conservative in the White House, the faction’s leaders tied the Republican Party to tax cuts, the deregulation of business, and the end of social welfare policies. Then, when even racism did not produce enough popular support for their economic policies, leaders welcomed evangelical voters into their movement, promising them conservative social legislation in exchange for their votes.
Trump has just been refreshingly openly racist to the point that he’s publicly attracting white supremacists. It seems to be how he won Louisiana since his big supporter turn out was in David Duke’s old district. New Orleans’ segregationist suburbs gave him his win. No wonder he was so obtuse about Congressman Steve Scalise’s old Stormfront buddies. He’s dropped the old code words and gone straight for the hate.
Now, imagine our surprise when those code words show up on the lips of a candidate for the Democratic nomination in today’s Democratic Party which
is solidly supported by the country’s African American voters.
Social media lit up after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders told debate watchers “when you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto” during the Flint Democratic presidential primary debate.
The answer came after CNN anchor Don Lemon asked the candidates about possible “racial blind spots” they may have.
“(W)hen you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto,” Sanders responded. “You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car.”
He then went on to call for an end to systemic racism.
But, the statement drew mixed reviews from those on social media.
I spent a good deal of last night and this morning trying to gently explain the entire concept to a really white young guy going to SFU.
So, here’s my nice young BernieBro’s whitesplain. I’ve withheld the name to protect the ignorant.
This is just an opinion, but I don’t think it was that offensive, especially in the context with which he used it by Sen. Sanders in that debate.
There are ways with which you should and should not use “ghetto” in describing something. Using it to describe the terribly unfortunate and specific living circumstances of some families is proper use of that terminology in my eyes.
Again, just my opinion.
I couldn’t let that go especially given this was posted to the page of a black democratic activist’s page and comment stream.
He answered the question on institutional racism by using code words and paradigms of white male privilege. Bringing single women into middle class livelihoods will not mean they will not be making 70¢ on the male dollar any more. Bringing black people into or beyond the middle class will not make access to jobs, education,loans or neighborhoods necessarily available. Poverty occurs across gender and racial lines but the experience of poverty or even middle or upper class livelihoods intersect with racism and misogyny which still exist despite income levels. We have plenty of poor whites in this country but when privileged white men use words like “ghetto” or “thug” we know they are code words specifically applied to the black community. It’s a way to apply the “n” word without speaking it. When white folks are unable to see these things it is because of blind spots they develop while living in a society that advantages whites. While I can never truly experience racism, I can watch and listen to others experience of it and learn about my blind spots and experience of privilege. It’s evident that Sanders has not done this in his many years of living and public service. A person with a tin ear cannot truly experience enough empathy to find ways of leading policy to places where problems are solved for all communities.
And of course, the usual “I have to have the last word cause I’m the guy in this conversation” keeps bringing back responses. I keep getting whitesplaining and mansplaining in one fell swoop. For some reason, these folks are convinced that Bernie was the white MLK. I have no idea why.
You bring up great points, but I disagree that Sanders hasn’t tried to look into his blindness and see past his privilege in order to and understand what poverty and living circumstances look like for poor black families vs other poor families, or even more specifically black folks in general (no matter their walk of life or income levels).
His work during his younger years in university more than establish that, which certainly carries in to a lot of his policies and thoughts as Senator.
To that end, I still don’t think that just because he’s privileged and white that he should be barred from using such terminology as “ghetto” when describing someone’s living situation. Like I said above, the way he said it seemed incorrect, but I seriously doubt that he would stick to that exact wording were he able to elaborate further on what it means to be poverty stricken, no matter your race or ethnicity.
I believe this for my before-mentioned point at the beginning.
You know me, I can’t let this go.
Ok. So my final point on this is to ask you to listen to what black people are saying rather than to rationalize in your mind that both you and Sanders couldn’t possibly be whitesplaining or under the influence of a blind spot.
At this point, my friend wakes up and takes up the lesson.
Kathryn: your last comment on this is spot on.
Sorry, but your defense of Sanders is sort of like when I hear my white friends say, “my grandad is not racist, but…”
While I don’t believe Sanders’s comment came from a place of malice, his experiences POST college activist days (because who hasn’t done crazy shit when they were in college?) have clearly left him out of touch with the black community. The dude was totally winging this answer. And you’d think that after being shut out by black lives matter, and after being crowned by white people as the white Dr. King, he’d be able to speak more intelligently on this subject.
But no. He is, as Clinton pointed out, a one issue candidate. If the topic doesn’t revolve around breaking up big banks, or if he’s unable to pivot to Wall Street, Sanders knows nothing.
Nah, Kathryn is right: Ghetto is a code word that is specifically applied to the black community by politicians. Bernie used it that way himself!
There it is, whitesplaining. I guess that’s the trump card.
I did watch the debate, and I don’t understand why you’d think that I wouldn’t understand the moderators question, though, Lester.
I have a question for you though. Kathryn and yourself both mentioned that white males are of privilege, and in Bernie’s case also a politician, use that word to only make mention of the black community.
My question is, would it miraculously be ok for a white male in the middle class to mention ghettos when talking about poverty and living circumstances when, let’s say, maybe he came from the ghetto himself?
I just want to clear the air with that. That seems to be where a lot of this is stemming from.
He continues to be as obtuse as Bernie. Albeit, he’s young so he still has a chance, I suppose. There were many things that upset me last night. None of these things have made me into a Bernie Fan. Just the opposite.
One of the more interesting things I found out was that the NRA was happily tweeting support for Bernie last night. This continues to concern me mightily.
During the debate, CNN moderator Anderson Cooper argued that a suit brought by families of the victims from the Sandy Hook shooting against Remington may not go anywhere. He asked Sanders what he would say to those families.
Sanders replied that if a gun was legally purchased, he disagreed with holding the gun manufacturer liable.
“If that is the point, I have to tell you I disagree. I disagree because you hold people — in terms of this liability thing, where you hold manufacturers’ liable is if they understand that they’re selling guns into an area that — it’s getting into the hands of criminals, of course, they should be held liable.
“But if they are selling a product to a person who buys it legally, what you’re really talking about is ending gun manufacturing in America. I don’t agree with that.”
Hillary Clinton‘s campaign has sought to use Sanders’s position on guns against him. It has particularly lambasted his vote in favor of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in 2005.
Critics say the law provides gun manufacturers with an unprecedented form of immunity that no other industry enjoys, but supporters maintain that it protects the firearms industry from frivolous lawsuits.
The NRA’s tweet for Sanders was quickly highlighted by Correct the Record, a super-PAC that backs Clinton.
Here are the remaining March Election Dates for your information.
Hawaii — Republican Party Caucus March 8, 2016
Idaho — Scheduled Elections: US President for Republican Party and US President for Constitution Party March 8, 2016
Michigan — Presidential Primary Election Day March 8, 2016
Mississippi — State Primary and Presidential Primary Election Day March 8, 2016
Washington DC — Republican Party Convention : Number of Delegates: 19 Total Delegates March 12, 2016
Florida — Presidential Preference Primary Election March 15, 2016
Illinois — Presidential Primary Election and State Primary Election Day March 15, 2016
Missouri — Presidential Preference Primary March 15, 2016
Northern Marianas — Republican Party Caucus : Number of Delegates: 9 Total Delegates March 15, 2016
North Carolina — Presidential Primary and State Primary Election Day March 15, 2016
Ohio — Presidential Primary and State Primary Election Day March 15, 2016
Virgin Islands — Republican Party Caucus : Number of Delegates: 9 Total Delegates March 19, 2016
Idaho — Democratic Party Caucus March 22, 2016
Utah — Presidential Preference Primary Election March 22, 2016
Alaska — Democratic Party Caucus March 26, 2016
Hawaii — Democratic Party Caucus March 26, 2016
Washington — Democratic Party Caucus March 26, 2016
A new poll shows Clinton way ahead in Michigan
Clinton Opens Up Huge Lead in Michigan (Clinton 66% – Sanders 29%)
There continue to be other lies mentioned by Sanders that keep getting repeated. First, he keeps at the how he tried to single handedly stop Wall Street from getting Big Banks when he voted for the Deregulation of Derivatives which was probably the one piece of deregulation law that had the most to do with creating the concentration in banking. Clinton first slammed him with it the CNN debate back on January 18. He’s not stopped the charade.
“You’re the only one on this stage that voted to deregulate the financial market in 2000,” Clinton said, making reference to his support for former President Bill Clinton’s Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
The law effectively gave bankers, or “sophisticated traders,” free rein from pre-existing oversight mechanisms when they wanted to make deals on the sidelines of the major stock exchanges, in “over-the-counter” trading.
Clinton himself would later cop to having made a serious mistake in signing the bill, saying he didn’t understand the extent to which these deals, if they went bad, could ripple across the global economy.
“Even if less than 1% of the total investment community in derivative exchanges, so much money was involved that if they went bad, they could effect 100% of the investments,” he told ABC’s “This Week” in 2010.
The new interesting slam to Sanders was Michigan specific. He voted against helping the Auto Industry because it might help Wall Street at the same time. He was against and for but somewhat against the very successful Auto Bailout. This is another nuanced vote where Sanders decided he wasn’t going to vote for the bill because “purity”.
The bank bailout was so big it had to be doled out in portions. In January 2009, Senate Republicans tried to block the Treasury Department from releasing the second half of the money, some of which was designated for the auto industry. Sanders, based on his opposition to the Wall Street bailout, voted against releasing that money as well.
That vote gave Clinton the opening she needed to hit Sanders as anti-auto bailout on Sunday. “If everybody had voted the way he did, I believe the auto industry would have collapsed, taking 4 million jobs with it,” she said.
(Side note: Having your votes picked apart by opponents is one reason whyit’s tough to run for president as a senator.)
Clinton is technically correct that Sanders voted against releasing the money that went to the auto bailout, but Sanders can also correctly argue that he supported the auto bailout when it wasn’t tied to the Wall Street one.
This back and forth likely isn’t going anywhere; expect both to claim as much over the next few days.
The Export-Import Bank conversation was even more interesting because Sanders actually agrees with Tea Party crazies on this who think it’s a waste of Tax Payer money. Let me get wonky on you. Remember I’m a nerdy girl and economist to boot!
Ex-Im exists to help American businesses sell to customers abroad. Recently, it’s not only not been costing taxpayers anything, it has returned significant amounts of money to the Treasury in the same way Fed profits do.. Bernie’s position threatens a significant number of US jobs. The competitive position of companies like Boeing would be impacted. Boeing specifically needs Ex-Im because it has one competitor on the global stage; Airbus. This industry is a classic duopoly. Airbus is a European entity that enjoys significant support from its own government when competing with contracts around the world. This is actually one area where every one is better off with our Government helping that corporation who couldn’t compete with Airbus given its subsidies. The bank has not relied on any taxpayer money since 2008.
Every year Congress sets a limit on the bank’s financial activities. The bank then borrows money from the Treasury to give out direct loans, which it pays back with interest.
Since 2008, the bank has not relied on taxpayer dollars to cover its operational costs and loan loss reserves. Instead, the bank charges customers fees and interest that it uses to cover those costs in full. Often, the fees generate a surplus, which the bank gives back to the Treasury. In the past five years, the bank has given back $2 billion.
Additionally, the bank’s default rates have historically been lower than private financial institutions — the current default rate is less than 0.25 percent.
The bank hasn’t been completely without losses, though. In 1987, several straight years of losses of more than $250 million to $300 million forced the bank to ask Congress for a $3 billion bailout.
The most recent losses were in the 1990s, following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, said Export-Import Bank Advisory Board member Gary Hufbauer, also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan think tank.
Still, the bank has generated an overall profit of more than $5 billion for the Treasury since 1990. But just looking at cash flow doesn’t give us a full picture.
My final issue with the Bernie lies and tin ear comments is that he continues to insist that he does not take Super Pac Money. Sanders keeps earning Pinocchios for this one. Here’s a pretty comprehensive article on that from Time magazine.
I just would like to add one more thing about last night’s debate. The more I see and hear from the man, the more of an active dislike I take. He should quit before no Dem will work with him in Congress.
Sorry for the really long and late post but I had a helluva lot to say. I probably should’ve put up Nancy Reagan’s obit as a nicety but I still remember how political she was to Rock Hudson at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. I’ll let The Advocate talk about her mixed responses on that account.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Live Blog: Democratic Debate from Flint
Posted: March 6, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Live, Live Blog | Tags: CNN, live blog, Michigan Democratic Primary 2016 Debate 105 Comments
Good Evening!
Last night, Louisiana went big for Hillary! I was so proud to be part of a really good campaign effort by the Hillary Field Team and Louisiana Democrats. We managed to overwhelm the results of the caucuses in both Kansas and Nebraska given our state has a much higher delegate count. I will let the Republicans argue about the benefits of size. However, the next few weeks some of the really big important states will vote. This Tuesday, it will be the important state of Michigan. Tonight, there is a Democratic Debate from Flint, Michigan.
On Sunday night, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will face off in their seventh debate, less than a week after Clinton expanded her delegate lead on Super Tuesday and in-between additional primaries and caucuses on Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday.
CNN will host the debate, which begins at 8 p.m. ET, from the Frances Wilson Library on the University of Michigan’s campus in Flint.
Both candidates have repeatedly highlighted the water crisis in Flint during the campaign. Clinton has said that “what happened in Flint is immoral,” and Sanders called on Gov. Rick Snyder to resign a while ago. The crisis dates all the way back to 2014 when a state-appointed emergency manager decided to switch Flint’s water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River to save money. But the water from that river was corrosive and caused lead to seep into old pipes, which has left many Flint residents with long-term health effects associated with lead exposure and might have caused deadly cases of Legionnaires’ disease.
The debate will come just a day after voters headed to the polls or caucus sites in the Democratic race in Kansas, Louisiana and Nebraska, the same day as the Maine Democratic caucuses, and just two days before Michigan and Mississippi hold their primaries.
Clinton racked up a win in Louisiana’s primary Saturday by wide margins, 71 percent to Sanders’ 23 percent. But she also lost Nebraska and Kansas to her rival by several points in each contest.
Michigan has plenty of problems. Flint situation with the water and Detroit’s deterioration will likely be topics. We may also hear about the Auto bailout by the President.
It will be the last time the two will get to argue policy before the Michigan primary Tuesday, and it could possibly be a chance for the two to address the water crisis in Flint, where city residents suffered lead poisoning from the city’s water supply. Ahead of the highly anticipated debate, here are the latest poll numbers showing who is ahead in the race to the national convention.
Hillary Clinton
The former secretary of state has maintained a commanding lead over her main opponent, Sanders, throughout the election cycle. A recent CNN/ORC International conducted Feb. 24-27, found Clinton polling at 55 percent. A poll from Rasmussen Reports had her polling at 53 percent, still at a commanding lead over Sanders among likely voting Democrats. Clinton has won most of the primaries and caucuses so far, and going into the debates Sunday she also has more delegates than Sanders. Clinton has 601 pledged delegates so far, and with 457 superdelegates, that brings her total delegate count to 1,058.
Sanders is making a big play for Michigan because he’s falling farther and farther behind.
A win in a big industrial state could upend the race, they say — and Michigan figured to be especially receptive to the Vermont senator’s economic message.
But with just two days before the state’s delegate-rich primary, Sanders hasn’t yet made the sale. He has trailed by double-digits in each of the nine public polls taken since the beginning of February. Hillary Clinton’s got the backing of both of Detroit’s newspapers, the state’s top Democrats, and the mayor of hard-hit Flint. While there are signs of tightening as Sanders floods the airwaves with ads, Clinton’s big margins among African-Americans elsewhere raise questions about whether the senator can break through in a state where 14 percent of the population is black.
Hillary Clinton is polling strong in Michigan.
In the Democratic contest, Clinton leads Sanders among likely primary voters by 17 points, 57 percent to 40 percent. But the race is closer among the larger potential Democratic electorate — Clinton at 52 percent and Sanders at 44 percent.
Sanders continues to play loose with facts as shown with this NPR Fact-Check on Michigan’s abandoned buildings and NAFTA.
On Thursday, Sanders tweeted, “The people of Detroit know the real cost of Hillary Clinton’s free trade policies,” along with five photos of dilapidated buildings. Shortly after that initial tweet, he added: “43,000 Michiganders lost their jobs due to NAFTA. I opposed that bad deal, @HillaryClinton did not.”
The Big Question:
There’s a lot going on here, so we’re going to break this into two parts:
1. What does free trade (and especially NAFTA) have to do with the devastation Sanders’ tweet depicted?
2. How big of a proponent of NAFTA was Hillary Clinton?
The Short Answers:
1. Probably not much (though it did cost some people their jobs), and
2. She supported it, though she expressed reservations sometimes. (Either way, importantly, it was signed under her husband’s administration.)
I’ve included some pictures of State Senator Karen Carter Peterson who is also doing a great job with the Louisiana Democratic Party and of some of the volunteers who phone banked yesterday to bring the win!
I can hear Bernie spinning tales right now. Tell us what you think!!!
Additionally, there are two primaries today. The Democrats held one in Maine. The Republicans had a primary in Puerto Rico.
We’ve got some preliminary results.
The Associated Press projects Bernie Sanders the victor of the Maine Democratic caucuses. With 85 percent of caucus sites reporting, Sanders led, 64 to 36 percent.
And on the Republican side:
CNN and the Associated Press are projecting Puerto Rico for Marco Rubio, who was widely expected to win the territory. As Vann has noted, if he wins more than half the vote, he’ll take home all of Puerto Rico’s delegates. Right now, CNN has him at roughly 74 percent, with 32 percent of votes counted.
As you can see, my little Hill Dawg Tempe and I are relaxing today! I always wear my Pikachu socks when life’s giving me smiles! We’ve got more work coming up. You can make calls for Hillary from your home if you’d like. I did it in 2007 and I will be trying to call out just as soon as I get my voice back!!
Live Blog: Super Saturday Primaries and Caucuses
Posted: March 5, 2016 Filed under: just because 101 Comments
John F. Kennedy’s siblings watching election returns in November 1960.
Good Evening Politics Junkies!
Today’s another busy day for the candidates on both sides of the aisle. There probably won’t be many surprises, although no one seems to have any idea what will happen in Nebraska on the Republican side.
Ted Cruz has already won Kansas, which has large population of evangelical Christians. Cruz is addressing his supporters right now. I’m going to give that one a miss.
As we all know already, Bernie Sanders will likely take Kansas and Nebraska and gain some delegates, but Hillary Clinton is expected to win Louisiana overwhelmingly and that will wipe out the gains Sanders makes today and then some. Right now Clinton is 199 pledged delegates ahead of Sanders and she will add to that total tonight. We’ll have to wait awhile though, because Louisiana’s polls don’t close until 9PM ET.
Here’s some background information on today’s contests at Vox: Elections 2016: Today’s poll closing times and results.
Washington Post: Ted Cruz wins Kansas caucuses as 3 other ‘Super Saturday’ states vote in GOP contest.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who has sought to present himself as the chief alternative to GOP front-runner Donald Trump, secured a strong victory in the Kansas presidential caucuses Saturday, according to a projection by the Associated Press, as voting and ballot counting continued in three other GOP contests.
With 53 percent of the vote counted, the Associated Press called the victory for Cruz (R-Tex). He led Trump with 49 percent of the vote to 25 percent for Trump, according to the AP.
he 2016 election pressed forward Saturday as five states held presidential nominating contests across the country. Dubbed “Super Saturday,” Republicans are also voting in Louisiana and are caucusing in Maine and Kentucky. Democrats are voting in Louisiana and are caucusing in Kansas and Nebraska.
The presidential race entered a new stage Tuesday after real estate mogul Donald Trump (R) and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton (D) secured victories in a majority of the 11 partisan primaries and caucuses held that day, when hundreds of delegates were at stake. Clinton — the Democratic establishment favorite — has pulled sharply ahead of rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, while Trump’s wave of populist support showed little sign of waning even as he has endured scathing attacks from GOP leaders.
The fallout from Saturday’s contests will again pitch the election forward, as Clinton and Trump’s rivals seek to keep them at bay by maximizing their delegate counts. The two front-runners, meanwhile, are looking to protect their leads and to sustain their momentum ahead of a series of high-stakes, high-delegate races in mid-March.
The Obamas watching election returns in 2008.
I’m going to turn the floor over to you while I look around to see what’s going on. I’ll add some links in the comment thread, and hope you will too.
Super Saturday Reads
Posted: March 5, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 Democratic nomination race, 2016 GOP nomination race, Bernie Sanders, DailyKos, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, misogyny, Sexism, Super Saturday primaries and caucuses 60 Comments
Smoking Bar for Ladies, Harry Grant Dart
Good Morning!!
A note on the illustration above: It is an anti-women’s suffrage cartoon originally publish in the satire magazine Puck, showing the horror that could befall the country if women actually got the vote.
We have a busy few days coming up for presidential politics. Today is the Louisiana primary, and Hillary is expected to win overwhelmingly on the Democratic side. There will also be Democratic and Republican caucuses in Kansas and Nebraska. For Republicans, there will be additional caucuses in Maine and Kentucky. Maine Democrats will caucus tomorrow and there will be a GOP primary in Puerto Rico. Then on Tuesday there will be primaries in Michigan and Mississippi.
Tomorrow night there will be a CNN Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan and on Monday night Fox News will hold a Democratic town hall event. Hillary originally declined the invitation, but yesterday she agreed to go. I think it’s a mistake for her to go, but we’ll see. The next Republican debate will be on March 10 in Miami.
Washington Post: Five more states ready to chip in delegates to campaign 2016.
Hunting for delegates, Trump added a last-minute rally in Wichita, Kansas, to his Saturday morning schedule and Cruz planned to stop in Kansas on caucus day, too, one day after Rubio visited the state.
Trump’s decision to skip an appearance Saturday at a conference sponsored by the American Conservative Union in the Washington area to get in one last Kansas rally rankled members of the group, who tweeted that it “sends a clear message to conservatives.”
The billionaire businessman’s rivals have been increasingly questioning his commitment to conservative policies, painting his promise to be flexible on issues as a giant red flag….
With the GOP race in chaos, establishment figures are frantically looking for any way to stop Trump, perhaps at a contested convention if none of the candidates can roll up the 1,237 delegates needed to snag the nomination. Going into Saturday’s voting, Trump led the field with 329 delegates. Cruz had 231, Rubio 110 and Kasich 25. In all, 155 GOP delegates are at stake in Saturday’s races.
Illustration of “founding mothers”
“Woman is a slave from the cradle to the grave — Ernestine Rose
On the Democrats:
Clinton is farther along than Trump on the march to her party’s nomination, outpacing Sanders with 1,066 delegates to his 432, including pledged superdelegates. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. There are 109 at stake on Saturday.
In Louisiana, Clinton was hoping that strong support from the state’s sizable black population will give her a boost. Both Democrats have campaigned heavily in Nebraska and saturated the state with ads. In Kansas, Clinton has the backing of its former governor and onetime Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. Sanders held a pre-caucus rally in Kansas’ liberal bastion of Lawrence hoping to attract voters.
A couple of big stories out of Louisiana:
Think Progress: BREAKING: Supreme Court Reopens Clinics Closed By Anti-Abortion Law.
The Supreme Court handed down a brief order Friday allowing four Louisiana abortion clinics to reopen after they were closed due to a recent decision by a conservative federal appeals court.
Last week, an especially conservative panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handed down an “emergency” decision permitting an anti-abortion Louisiana law to go into effect. Under this law, physicians cannot perform abortions unless they have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital — an increasingly common requirement masterminded by an anti-abortion group that drafts model bills for state legislatures. A challenge to a similar Texas law is currently pending before the justices.
The Supreme Court’s order temporarily suspends the Louisiana law, effectively preventing the Fifth Circuit’s Wednesday decision from taking effect. Only Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly dissented from the Court’s order.
Could this be a good sign for the Texas case that is currently being considered by SCOTUS?
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Texas case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, this Wednesday. During those arguments, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy appeared open to striking down the Texas law — although he also seemed concerned with a procedural issue unique to that case. The Court’s decision to halt the Louisiana law is another sign that the conservative-but-not-absolutist justice believes that laws like the ones in Texas and Louisiana may go too far.
I sure hope so. Meanwhile Louisiana’s economy is in desperate shape, thanks mostly to former Governor Bobby Jindal’s horrendous policies.
Wonkblog: Battered by drop in oil prices and Jindal’s fiscal policies, Louisiana falls into budget crisis.
Already, the state of Louisiana had gutted university spending and depleted its rainy-day funds. It had cut 30,000 employees and furloughed others. It had slashed the number of child services staffers, including those devoted to foster family recruitment, and young abuse victims for the first time were spending nights at government offices.
And then, the state’s new governor, John Bel Edwards (D), came on TV and said the worst was yet to come.
Edwards, in a prime-time address on Feb. 11, said he’d learned of “devastating facts” about the extent of the state’s budget shortfall and said that Louisiana was plunging into a “historic fiscal crisis.” Despite all the cuts of the previous years, the nation’s second-poorest state still needed nearly $3 billion — almost $650 per person — just to maintain its regular services over the next 16 months. Edwards gave the state’s lawmakers three weeks to figure out a solution, a period that expires March 9 with no clear answer in reach.
Louisiana stands at the brink of economic disaster. Without sharp and painful tax increases in the coming weeks, the government will cease to offer many of its vital services, including education opportunities and certain programs for the needy. A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be canceled. Students will lose scholarships. Select hospitals will close. Patients will lose funding for treatment of disabilities. Some reports of child abuse will go uninvestigated.
“Doomsday,” said Marketa Garner Walters, the head of Louisiana’s Department of Children and Family Services. If the state can’t raise any new revenue, her agency’s budget, like several others, will be slashed 60 percent.
“At that level,” she said in an interview, “the agency is unsustainable.”
Read more about the disastrous consequences of Jindal’s embrace of Koch brothers politics at the link.
Seneca Falls, 1848
The Tax Policy Center just released its analysis of Bernie Sanders’ tax plan, and it’s stunning. Here’s the abstract:
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposes significant increases in federal income, payroll, business, and estate taxes, and new excise taxes on financial transactions and carbon. New revenues would pay for universal health care, education, family leave, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and more. TPC estimates the tax proposals would raise $15.3 trillion over the next decade. All income groups would pay some additional tax, but most would come from high-income households, particularly those with the very highest income. His proposals would raise taxes on work, saving, and investment, in some cases to rates well beyond recent historical experience in the US.
You can read the entire report in a pdf at the link. From Bloomberg:
Senator Bernie Sanders’s proposals for sweeping tax hikes on businesses and individuals to bankroll universal health care, infrastructure and free college tuition would raise $15.3 trillion over the next decade but “substantially reduce incentives to save and invest in the United States,” according to a new policy study.
Sanders’s plan would “modestly raise” tax rates for average taxpayers and “raise them significantly for high-income taxpayers,” according to the report by the Tax Policy Center, a research group in Washington, D.C. that’s a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. The report is the last of the center’s analyses of leading presidential candidates’ tax plans.
While the plan — which would be sure to face opposition in a Republican-controlled Congress — could generate benefits by increasing “the nation’s investment in productive physical and human capital,” economists are unsettled on the question of just how much increases in tax rates spur or stymie economic growth. Sanders’s proposals “would be a great experiment,” said Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center.
Warren Gunnels, Sanders’s policy director, criticized the tax center’s findings. The analysis was conducted “in a vacuum without taking into account the savings the American people would gain” under the candidate’s proposal to replace private health-insurance with a publicly funded “Medicare-for-all” plan, he said. Gunnels cited an earlier study by Citizens for Tax Justice, which found that 95 percent of U.S. households would see their take-home pay increase under Sanders’s health plan.
Girls in a milk-bar in England, 1954
Kevin Drum on the analyses of the five candidates’ tax plans so far:
As before, the Republican plans are all the same: a tiny tax cut for the middle class as a sop to distract them from the enormous payday they give to the rich, and a massive hole in the deficit.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s plan is fairly modest. It leaves the middle class alone and taxes the rich a little more. Once her domestic proposals are paid for, it’s probably deficit neutral. Bernie Sanders is far more extreme. He’s basically the mirror image of the Republicans: he’d tax the middle class moderately more and soak the hell out of the rich. This would raise a tremendous amount of money, which he’d use to pay for his health care plan and his other domestic proposals. It’s impossible to say for sure how this would affect the deficit, but the evidence suggests that it would blow a pretty big hole.
It looks like Sanders is going to continue and even increase his attacks on Hillary Clinton even though she will likely have the nomination in hand by March 15. It doesn’t seem to bother him in the least that he’s hurting the Democratic Party and making it more difficult for their candidate to win the White House in November.
From The Hill: Sanders blames Clinton for Michigan’s declining middle class.
“If the people of Michigan want to make a decision about which candidate stood with workers against corporate America and against these disastrous trade agreements, that candidate is Bernie Sanders,” he said during a rally in Traverse City, according to a campaign statement obtained by NBC News.
Sanders argued that Clinton’s support of legislation like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had helped create the Great Lakes State’s crippling poverty.
“[NAFTA] is one of the reasons that the middle class in this country is disappearing,” the self-described Democratic socialist said.
“[NAFTA and other trade deals are] crafted by the big-money interests and corporations. Hillary Clinton was on the wrong side of many of these trade agreements.”
I love this photo of the 2013 class of women in the House.
Hillary did not hold political office when NAFTA passed Congress. I believe she opposed NAFTA as first lady, but to blame her for bill passed by a right wing Republican Congress and signed by her husband is both unfair and sexist. But that’s how Bernie rolls.
Markos laid down the law at Daily Kos yesterday, and the reaction was hilarious. As background, the front pagers have been supporting Hillary in 2016, but the majority of diarists have been pushing for Bernie, attacking Hillary using every right wing meme they can find and the most misogynistic language they can dream up. Read about it here: March 15, and Daily Kos transition to General Election footing.
The gist is that Kossacks have to stop attacking Hillary with right wing memes and ugly sexist language and if they are planning to vote for Donald Trump or Jill Stein if the Democrats nominate Hillary, they have to keep it to themselves. They can criticize Hillary, but only in positive ways that could help the party.
The response was predictable, with people posting “goodbye cruel world” diaries and threats to continue advocating for Bernie in any way they choose if if Kos bans them. It was like watching kids arguing on a playground or like the last GOP debate.
So . . . what are you hearing and reading about today? I’ll post a live blog later for discussion of the primary and caucus results.
Friday Reads: Shock and Awe on the American Campaign Trail
Posted: March 4, 2016 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Emails, Hillary Clinton, Kasich, Republican Debate, Rubio, Trump 36 CommentsGood Morning!
Well, I am supposed to be waiting to hear the Big Dawg speak at an event today. Instead, I’m sitting here with a flat tire waiting. I’ve heard Bill Clinton speak quite a few times down here including with George H.W. Bush in a small tent on campus right after Katrina when I was one of two profs actually teaching on the UNO campus. Exactly one building was open. He’s really a great speaker and he has the ability to make you feel like the most important person he’s ever met when he’s one on one. I wanted to see if he still had it frankly.
I’m still stunned by the so-called “debate” last night between the remaining Republican Presidential Candidates. Did you ever think you’d see ten minutes of one of these things dedicated to the penis size of the front runner? Did you even think that a member of the U.S. Senate would be the one to bring it up on national TV? I’d like to go on record saying that the Republican party needs to goes the way of the Dodo. I’m not sure if there are any sane people left in the infrastructure, but whatever grown ups are left need to just turn off the lights and start over. They need to send the racists and the religious kooks and the enablers that make them deny economic and scientific reality back to whatever self-created hell realm they’ve emanated from. Paul Krugman isn’t very generous about their shit show either.
So Republicans are going to nominate a candidate who talks complete nonsense on domestic policy; who believes that foreign policy can be conducted via bullying and belligerence; who cynically exploits racial and ethnic hatred for political gain.
But that was always going to happen, however the primary season turned out. The only news is that the candidate in question is probably going to be Donald Trump. Establishment Republicans denounce Mr. Trump as a fraud, which he is. But is he more fraudulent than the establishment trying to stop him? Not really.
Actually, when you look at the people making those denunciations, you have to wonder: Can they really be that lacking in self-awareness?
Donald Trump is a “con artist,” says Marco Rubio — who has promised to enact giant tax cuts, undertake a huge military buildup and balance the budget without any cuts in benefits to Americans over 55.
“There can be no evasion and no games,” thunders Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House — whose much-hyped budgets are completely reliant on “mystery meat,” that is, it claims trillions of dollars in revenue can be collected by closing unspecified tax loopholes and trillions more saved through unspecified spending cuts.
Mr. Ryan also declares that the “party of Lincoln” must “reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry.” Has he ever heard of Nixon’s “Southern strategy”; of Ronald Reagan’s invocations of welfare queens and “strapping young bucks” using food stamps; of Willie Horton?
Put it this way: There’s a reason whites in the Deep South vote something like 90 percent Republican, and it’s not their philosophical attachment to libertarian principles.
The Republican Party is capable of nothing these days but ruining the states they govern, stopping any kind of governance on the Federal level,
and making laws to make lives miserable for any one that isn’t either white male or white male property and branded the right kind of “christian”. The one thing I will say about the ongoing shit show is that people that have been voting Republican under the mistaken idea that Republicans are anything but a party of rich dudes getting political favors and racists, misogynist, homobigoted religious freaks are finally finding out what’s been the underlying theme of insurrection since the Reagan Shit show. The Republican Party is not the Party of Lincoln or even Ronald Reagan. It’s the party of George Wallace, at best.
The Republicans have become so obsessed with one policy–subsidizing the extremely rich--they’ve also tanked any possible hope that we can get reasonable trade policies or any kind of reasonable form of government spending to include fixing the damn roads and bridges. If you look around the world, you can see how trade has been creating healthy middle classes. There’s a lot of money that flows into countries from trade and a hell of a lot of it goes to workers and smaller businesses because responsible government ensures this through good policy. NOT in this country, however. They’ve destroyed the decades of what economics has taught us they way they’ve turned racism, misogyny and bigotry into religious freedom.
The Econ-101 case for free trade is straightforward: Trade benefits those who produce exports and those who consume imports (including producers who use imported goods as inputs). It hurts the producers of goods which can be made better or more cheaply abroad. But the gains to the winners exceed the gains to the losers: that is, the winners could make the losers whole and still come out ahead themselves. Therefore, trade passes the Pareto test.
[Yes, this elides a number of issues, including path-dependency in increasing-returns and learning-by-doing markets on the pure-economics side and the salting of actual agreements with provisions that create or protect economic rents on the political-economy side. It also ignores the biggest gainers from trade: workers in low-wage countries, most notably the Chinese factory workers whose parents were barefoot peasants.]
So when the modern Republican Party (R.I.P), in the name of “small government” and opposition to “class warfare,” set its face against policies to redistribute the gains from economic growth, it destroyed the theoretical basis for thinking that a rising tide would lift all the boats, rather than lifting the yachts and swamping the trawlers. Free trade without redistribution (especially the corrupt version of “free trade” with corporate rent-seeking written into it) is basically class warfare waged downwards.
Trade by itself can’t account for all of the fractal growth in incomes, with the top half of earners (mostly college graduates) pulling away from the less-educated bottom half, the top decile pulling away from the rest of the top half, the top 1% pulling away from the rest of the top decile, and the top tenth of 1% pulling away from the rest of the top percentile. (I suspect that the billionaires have also been pulling away from the merely rich, but I’m not sure there’s data to support that.) The increasing importance of “winner-take-all” phenomena (linked to the information revolution and the increasing importance of very-low-marginal-cost goods as well as trade), the combination of dual incomes and assortative mating, and the destruction of labor unions have all done their share.
But the bottom line is that all of the gains, not merely from trade but from economic growth, have been concentrated in the hands of a relative few. And worsening inequality harms the relative losers even if their absolute incomes do not fall.
Have we finally reached a critical mass where folks on both sides of the aisles will realize that all they do is lie and that if Bernie Bros or Hillary Haters repeat their lies, we’re as good as cooked. Donald Trump has pretty much killed the narrative that the Republicans are a Big Tent party that are just interested in a different approach to governing.
Reeling from a second straight loss to Barack Obama, a flailing Republican Party in 2013 found its culprit: Mitt Romney’s callous tone toward minorities. Instead of being doomed to irrelevance in a changing America, the party would rebrand as a kinder, more inclusive GOP. They called their findings an “autopsy,” and party leaders from Paul Ryan to Newt Gingrich welcomed it with fanfare.
But even then, Donald Trump was lurking.
Now, with Trump’s GOP takeover fully underway, interviews with four co-authors of the 2012 autopsy and 10 other Republican leaders reveal a party establishment terrified that Trump is not only repeating the party’s failures — he’s destroying the party in the process. And while the leaders continue to insist that their report laid out the Republican Party’s best chance of victory, they fear Trump’s dominance will tear the party apart before they ever get a chance to put it in play. “New @RNC report calls for embracing ‘comprehensive immigration reform,’” he wrote in a little-noticed tweet, nestled alongside digs at Mark Cuban and Anthony Weiner on the day of the report’s release. “Does the @RNC have a death wish?”
Pundits laughed it off as the buffoonish ramble of a fringe New York billionaire on that March 2013 day, but what Trump didn’t say — and what the party establishment couldn’t have imagined — is that, three years later, he would be the one on the verge of making that death wish come true. The billionaire has not only ignored the report’s conclusions, he has run a campaign that moved the party in the exact opposite direction.
This is the same candidate that has open support of David Duke and white supremacists and answers questions about that support with “meh”. You need look no farther than Trump Rallies to find them out in the open and acting like goons. White nationalists shoved and assaulted a young black woman with absolute impunity.
White supremacists and other Donald Trump supporters could face charges for altercations that broke out during a Kentucky campaign rally — but so could protesters.
Video showed a white nationalist leader shoving and screaming at a black woman who protested the Republican presidential candidate’s rally Tuesday at the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville.
Matthew Heimbach, head of the Traditionalist Youth Network, admits he was involved in an altercation with a black woman who he said was screaming obscenities and creating a disturbance, but he denied the woman’s claims that he used racial slurs.
One of the protesters, Henry Brousseau, filed a police report alleging that he was punched in the stomach by a woman in Heimbach’s group for shouting “Black Lives Matter,” reported the Courier-Journal.
The 17-year-old Brousseau said he did not know the woman’s name but took a photo of her before he was ejected from the event by what he believes was a combination of Trump security guards, Louisville Metro Police officers and Secret Service agents.
Trump interrupted his roughly 40-minute speech at least a half-dozen times to call for the removal of protesters, reported WDRB-TV, and some of the demonstrators said the candidate’s supporters roughed them up before they were ejected.
“I didn’t expect hands to be placed on me,” said protester Shalonte Branham. “I expected security to say, ‘It’s time to go,’ but I did not expect people to try and harm me.”
Karma has been swift for these horrible people in the world of social media. Those of us living in the world outside Trump’s wet dreams are ensuring that chickens come home to roost.
Imagine if you will that you are one of the dullards who frequents Donald Trump rallies. Imagine that Donald Trump’s rhetoric is actually exciting enough for you to become energized when he hits the stage. Now imagine that because you are of the low-information variety American voter, your favorite part of the show is the racism.
You would be just like young Joseph Pryor, who was just kicked off of the US Marines’ delayed enlistment program, meaning he will not EVER be a United States Marine, because of the antics he pulled in connection with the assault of a black woman at a recent Trump rally in Kentucky.
Louisville police added to the mess the Trump supporters got themselves into by announcing they’re looking at filing criminal charges against several people. There has been some speculation that Trump himself may be facing charges as a ringleader, but that is unconfirmed at this time. What we do know is that a woman was treated with the utmost of disrespect, was physically and verbally assaulted and quite possibly had her civil rights violated for no reason other than the color of her skin.
It’s a common scene at these things. Protesters stand as quietly as they can and are eventually discovered and removed with extreme prejudice. Trump security personnel, local police and tens of thousands of unruly thugs in red hats solves those issues while Trump stands on stage scanning for the next people to have booted out. It’s nothing but a reality TV hook.Now this poor young man, whose racism may have just been a side-effect of being raised by idiots and who may have had hope with just a few more IQ points, will tell the story of how he sacrificed his military service for Donald Trump. His friends will toast him with Natural Ice until the day he dies of liver failure. He’ll be buried with full honors by his World Of Warcraft buddies in a casket draped with the Gadsden Flag In an unsanmctioned cemetery slated to be paved for the new Walmart Supercenter parking lot.
This guy isn’t the first person to go full stupid for Donald Trump and lose big and he certainly won’t be the last. But, so many folks are also
falling for horrid Republican lies about Hillary Clinton. Last night, Rubio out right lied about the focus of the FBI interest in Clinton’s emails which were first outlined here. Politico fact checked it last night along with other blatant lies last night. The entire lot of them lie like a warehouse filled with rugs.
Marco takes two shots at Hillary on Benghazi; misses
Rubio launched a late attack on Hillary Clinton that contained what were at best two distortions. First, he said she’s under FBI investigation. In fact, the FBI is investigating handling of classified information on her email server, which is not quite the same as investigating her—at least not yet. Second, Rubio said Clinton lied to the families of the victims of the attack in Benghazi. But there’s no way to know: PolitiFact has delved into this before and determined “there simply is not enough concrete information in the public domain for Rubio or anyone to claim as fact that Clinton did or did not lie to the Benghazi families.” Clinton and the families disagree about what was said, but even if she blamed the video mocking Islam for triggering the attacks, that might not have been an intentional lie given the intelligence at the time.
— Isaac Arnsdorf
This morning our local published an Op Ed a local freaking Republican pol repeating the same damned lie! (H/T to Adrastonos.) “There is no FBI or DOJ email investigation of Hillary Clinton.” Immunity granted to Bryan Pagliano does not look bad for her or mean she’s done something criminal at all. There are now lies! damned lies! and Republican lies!!!
What about Clinton – does Pagliano’s immunity somehow count against her? Hardly. Again, it is only what it is. The whole country saw her on live television being questioned by a Republican-majority House Committee. They can decide about her from what they saw themselves.
WAPO puts it this way: “Clinton emails continue to be non-scandal, disappointing Republicans”. So, they lie.
US citizens of goodwill can no longer take the Republican Party seriously. This morning, Fox News is trying to push Kasich as the reasonable one left
in the room. This is the governor that is trying to take credit for both Obama’s and Clinton’s legacy while simultaneously damning them. He is no moderate. Never has been or will be.
For all of Kasich’s supposed moderation, he is one of the most extreme antiabortion politician in America. Such views, however, seem to have little impact on Kasich’s moderate image.
Consider that, since Kasich took office in 2011, he has signed into law 16 antiabortion measures. These include a ban on abortions after 20 weeks; a mandatory ultrasound for women having abortions in clinics that receive state funding; and a provision in the state’s budget bill that prevents rape crisis counselors from providing women with information about abortion services. Onerous regulations on abortion providers have led half the abortion clinics in the state to shut down. All of this would seem to reflect Kasich’s “Christian moral imperative” too.
“John Kasich also peddles economic quackery and social conservatism.”
While there’s substantial evidence that Kasich is not consumed with a sociopathic loathing of immigrants and the poor, that’s a remarkably low bar to clear to merit the “moderate” appellation. To be sure, Kasichhas not quite followed the ultraconservative path charted by, say, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — but it’s not for lack of trying. Just as Walker did, Kasich signed a law stripping public employees of collective bargaining rights shortly after taking office in 2011 — and like Walker, Kasich witnessed a plunge in his standing in the polls; one April 2011 survey pegged Kasich’s approval rating at a mere 30 percent. Unlike Wisconsin, Ohio lacked a law providing for a gubernatorial recall, so opponents of Kasich’s anti-union law staged a November 2011 referendum on it instead. The outcome was a humiliating rebuke to the new governor; by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent, voters overturned the law — a chastening result that informed Kasich’s subsequent decision not to pursue legislation making Ohio a so-called right-to-work state.
It is imperative that more and more people see exactly what the Republican Party has become. For that, I’m thankful for the Trump candidacy.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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