Politics: National

As you can see, our Front Page Editor is not shy about his opinions as we head into the general election race. I don't share them but he takes a better photo than your humble columnist. He also represents a not insubstantial portion of Bernie-struck progressives. Now that [the real-estate developer] has made his nomination virtually inevitable, I do have a few observations.

1. It's amusing seeing the pearl-clutching, "how could we have been so wrong?" musings of the pundit class. See the New York Times' Nate Cohn here. If you want further laughs, there's always Thomas Friedman, sans taxi driver. As someone rightly tweeted, "@tomfriedman wrong on every single thing he writes, every day of his life, & it will not in any way jeopardize him."

Even a simple, small-town boy from Phoenix could tell that Trump was formidable from the get-go. He is a reality TV star in Moronistan. He doesn't give a damn about "conservative" dogma, but knows how to push just the right buttons with the real conservative base in today's America. He was facing nullities as opponents. Time magazine anointed Marco Rubio as "the Republican savior," among a host of covers crowning Chris Christie, Rand Paul et al. As commenter Concern Troll would say, "lol lol."

2. Neither "conservatism" nor the Republican Party are dead. They have merely taken off their human suits, shucked off the last of William F. Buckley intellectual respectability, seen their Gingrich Revolutionaries tote each other to the guillotine, and found their true north in [the real-estate developer].

There was not, as George Wallace would say, a dime's bit of difference between the creepy Ted Cruz and the pleasant John Kasich. All were in thrall of the nostrums of The Party That Wrecked America. The Party of Lincoln and TR, even a mass American political party, had been dying for some time. But don't be under any delusions.

The same political savants now predicting mass defections are wrong. When they get to the polling place, they will vote for [the real-estate developer]. Unlike the most fervent backers of Sen. Sanders, they know there's a huuuuge! difference between him and Hillary. More significantly, they will continue to vote Republican down-ticket. This will especially matter if Democratic fratricide continues.

[The real-estate developer] gave a "serious foreign policy speech" this week and it actually had much to recommend it. To be sure, it had contradictions. He channeled John Quincy Adams when he said that under his administration, "The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies." He savagely critiqued the Cheney Doctrine. Thoughtful people would be unsettled by "America First," because that echoes the isolationism of Charles Lindbergh. And while he challenged free-rider allies to do more, he said, "We’re going to finally have a coherent foreign policy based upon American interests, and the shared interests of our allies." Perhaps the key word is shared. Because many interests of our allies, especially Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel, do not serve our national interest.

But overall, it was a serious and compelling address, one to make the foreign policy elites squirm. Things such as this make him a very dangerous opponent for the Democrats in the fall.

He has already found the sweet spot for Republican voters, a combination of economic nationalism and xenophobia on Muslims and Mexicans. Most average conservative voters don't really care about the dogma peddled by Ted Cruz and the right-wing elites. Jim Kunstler is willing to write what is forbidden in liberal circles but widely felt elsewhere:

In terms of sheer persona on persona, Trump is not much better (than Hillary Clinton), a walking hood ornament on the faltering beater car that America has become. But at least he recognizes that the beater beneath him needs a complete overhaul, even if he can barely cobble up a coherent list of particulars, or name the mechanics who might be able to fix the damn thing. And, of course, a broad swathe of Americans whose lives have also come to resemble beater cars are very sympathetic to the impulses Trump radiates.

For example, I happen to agree that the nation needs to act on immigration, both on the problem of illegal immigrants and on limiting the quotas of legally admitted newcomers. The Left, sunk in its sentimental sob stories of “dreamers,” and its nostalgia for the Ellis Island romance of 1904, can’t conceive of any reason why the nation might benefit from, at least, a time-out on invitations. The idea undermines their world-saving fantasies. In my little corner of America, the computer chip factory run by Global Foundries (owned by the Emirate of Dubai) has just laid off the majority of its homegrown American technical labor force and replaced them with foreign technicians on H1B visas, thus creating x-number of new Trump voters among the laid-off, and rightfully so, I think.

The number of foreign-born Americans is at a record, higher than even the enormous wave of immigrants from the 1890s to 1920, after which the nation implemented just such a time-out.

A restroom sign at Safeco Field in progressive Seattle. You won't find this in Red America.

Living on the ring of fire, I think of earthquakes, try to prepare for them. The U.S. Geological Survey explains their cause, “The tectonic plates are always slowly moving, but they get stuck at their edges due to friction. When the stress on the edge overcomes the friction, there is an earthquake that releases energy…”

Our whole country consists of tectonic plates that have been stressing against each other for decades, ready to let loose The Big One.

The last time we were this divided was the eve of the Civil War. This time, the sectionalism remains — it has even grown — but there’s little chance of secession. So we will grind on until some event precipitates the big break.

I think of this watching the controversy over North Carolina's House Bill 2, otherwise known as the “bathroom bill.”

The Republican governor, Pat McCrory, was Charlotte’s mayor when I was business editor of the Charlotte Observer. I knew him as a not-very-useful source. He was good looking, one lapel shy of being an empty suit, no Rhodes Scholar.

Outside the social media echo chamber of #FeelTheBern, Sen. Sanders is even less competitive than he appears in the race for delegates. But the willingness to burn down the party if he doesn't get what he wants, something discussed in an earlier column, has become even more apparent.

Earlier this week, Sanders said Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be president. Also that she is willing to destroy the party to attain her ambitions. Her response was appropriate. He also lied about Clinton saying the same about him. By the end of the week, he walked back the assertion but the damage was done. A quarter of Sanders supporters said they would not support Clinton if she is the nominee, compared with 14 percent of Clinton backers if Bernie is the standard bearer.

So, assuming Sanders wins the nomination, I have a few questions. These are serious inquires and I hope they will draw out equally serious responses in the comments section.

1. After the vicious campaign against Hillary Clinton, which involved recycling Republican attack points as well as questioning her integrity, intelligence, and fitness for office (and ascribing the worst possible motives to her supporters), how does the Sanders campaign plan to unify the Democratic Party for the general election?

2. Does the Sanders campaign realize that the United States is closely divided between red and blue — the Cold Civil War — with an edge to the Republicans because of their control of statehouses and increasing voter suppression measures? What is the general election strategy to reach 50.01 percent and win the Electoral College?

3. A "political revolution" is not a political program unless you are advocating bloodshed and extra-constitutional means. Sanders has raised no money for down-ticket Democrats and has been coy as to whether he will at all. So what's the plan to assemble a House and Senate solidly controlled by lawmakers who would actually pass the bills to create Sanders' social democracy?

Let's deal with [the real-estate developer] first.

Many on the left see him as the second coming of Adolf Hitler. Despite Godwin's Law, Jim Kunstler wrote, "As for [the real-estate developer], he remains what I said at the campaign’s outset: worse than Hitler, lacking the brains, charm, and savoir faire of the Ol’ Fuhrer, and with his darkness even more plainly visible."

Google [the real-estate developer] and Hitler, and you got 5.6 million results as of today.

In an interview, New Left warhorse Noam Chomsky gave a more nuanced but still Weimar-y assessment of the reasons behind [the real-estate developer's] surprising strength:

Fear, along with the breakdown of society during the neoliberal period. People feel isolated, helpless, victim of powerful forces that they do not understand and cannot influence. It’s interesting to compare the situation in the ‘30s, which I’m old enough to remember. Objectively, poverty and suffering were far greater. But even among poor working people and the unemployed, there was a sense of hope that is lacking now, in large part because of the growth of a militant labor movement and also the existence of political organizations outside the mainstream.

But let's calm down for a moment and note a few important differences.

A truly mass party: The 1976 Republican Convention shows the triumphant centrist Gerald Ford over the conservative Ronald Reagan. Liberal Nelson Rockefeller, Ford's vice president, is to his right. Next to him is Ford's daughter, Susan.

The media have constructed a narrative for their campaign horse race stories, the ones all about the positioning of candidates and little about real issues. It goes something like this: The Republican "establishment," apparently represented by the likes of Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, is contending with an "insurgency" from Ted Cruz and especially Donald Trump.

Things are so dire that the idiot David Brooks, who traveled to the sprawl abortion of Verrado in the mid-2000s and saw "the future" rather than the dangerous housing bubble, to write a column (kinda) missing President Obama.

This, of course, is nonsense from a cowed national media.

The "moderate" Kasich is obsessed with a balanced budget achieved by cutting federal spending, attacking women's reproductive rights and charter schools. At least he said climate change is real — once. His ambition has him back denying mainstream science and he opposes EPA regulation of carbon emissions.

Kasich cut more than $84 million from Ohio's public schools. He removed a modest amount of state funding that had been slated for the Cincinnati streetcar and deep-sixed Ohio's plans for high-speed rail. Ohio boasted some of the finest public universities in the nation, including "public ivies" Miami University and Ohio University. Kasich threatened to "take an ax" to them if they didn't cut costs and raise tuition.

As a presidential candidate, he says he wants to keep Medicaid expansion, but favors "repealing and replacing" the rest of Obamacare (with what is murky). He wants to cut taxes and reduce union bargaining power. He wants "boots on the ground" to fight the Islamic State.

The trouble with Hillary Clinton was painfully captured in a New Hampshire town hall, carried on CNN and moderated by Anderson Cooper, Wednesday night. I'll let Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post take it from here:

For 59 minutes of it, she was excellent — empathetic, engaged and decidedly human. But, then there was that other minute — really just four words — that Clinton is likely to be haunted by for some time to come.

"That’s what they offered," Clinton said in response to Cooper's question about her decision to accept $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in the period between serving as secretary of state and her decision to formally enter the 2016 presidential race.

Clinton is both seemingly caught by surprise and annoyed by the question all at once. Neither of those is a good reaction to what Cooper is asking. Both together make for a uniquely bad response.

Here's the thing: I'm not sure there is a great answer, politically speaking, for Clinton on the question of her acceptance of huge speaking fees from all sorts of groups — from colleges and universities to investment banks. She took the money because these groups were willing to pay it. And who wouldn't do the same thing in her shoes?

The problem is that you can't say that if you are the front-running candidate for the Democratic nomination, a front-runner facing a more-serious-than-expected challenge from a populist liberal who has made your ties to Wall Street a centerpiece of his campaign.

And that's just part of the trouble with Hillary Clinton.

As every student of American politics knows, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater led a conservative insurgency that captured the Republican Party in 1964.

The GOP was a mass political party then, with liberals, centrists, and conservatives — the latter had been defeated and marginalized since 1932. The 1952 nomination fight loss of Sen. Robert Taft, "Mr. Republican," to the centrist Dwight Eisenhower had been especially embittering to the right.

The party was controlled by the generally liberal Eastern establishment. But in the 1964 national convention, its leading candidate, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, was smashed by the Goldwater machine at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.

The department store heir embraced the reactionary right's agenda to roll back the New Deal and confront the Soviet Union much more aggressively. Goldwater opposed federal civil rights legislation, a stance he later came to regret but it attracted Southern whites. He didn't want to run against the ghost of the recently martyred John F. Kennedy (who, when alive, had worried about a Goldwater challenge). But he felt it was his duty to the party and his conservative principles.

Of course Goldwater went down in one of the worst drubbings in the history of presidential elections. He carried only six states: Arizona (despite Eugene C. Pulliam endorsing LBJ) but more significantly for the future four states in the Deep South and South Carolina. Of equal significance was the visible support of actor Ronald Reagan, especially his famous "Time for Choosing" speech on the eve of the election. It made Reagan a political star and Goldwater's heir presumptive.

We can wonder what Barry and Dutch would think of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, et al, and I have speculated that both would now be seen as "too liberal" to win a GOP school-board election. But the fact is that they built today's white, extreme-right Republican Party and everything it has brought to our national politics, life, and future. Much of Reagan's 1964 speech echoes eerily into our present.

Which brings us to Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Although wealthy Republican Rick Snyder, the governor of Michigan, personally apologized for the catastrophe in Flint, he emphasized this, "Government failed you — federal, state and local leaders — by breaking the trust you place in us."

Well, no.

As Juan Cole made clear, Flint's water from Lake Huron has been fine under the city's elected government. But "Snyder staged a coup in Flint and appointed a city caretaker,or Emergency Manager, one Ed Kurtz, depriving the citizens of their voting rights. And Snyder’s appointee decided that a little money could be saved by switching the city’s water source from the Detroit Water and Sewage Dept. to the local Flint River. DWSD complained bitterly about Kurtz setting the two cities against one another."

As emails from the governor's staff also make clear, the crisis was dismissed by his top aides as unmerited complaints from antagonists in the majority black, Democratic city. In an echo of the GOP anti-science mentality, a pediatrician's study of lead in the water and its hazards was blown off as "data." Data, as we know, has a left-wing bias.

Behold, government run like a business.