The Reaction

Donald Trump and the War on America

2017-02-06T21:21:00.000-05:00

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The rest of the world knows what's going on.

Take, for example, Germany, which is now far more of a leader of "the free world" than Trump's American dystopia.

Once upon a time, it was America going to war against German fascism. My, how the roles have reversed. It may not be a war, yet, but Germany is certainly on the side that is fighting American fascism.

Yes, the great threat to America is Kim Jong-trump, the orange-tinted demagogue roaming the White House in his bath robe.

We know what's going on.

Steven Wilson: "Home Invasion" and "Regret #9" (live)

2016-01-30T15:46:00.002-05:00

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From a Yahoo! / Live Nation broadcast, here are Steven Wilson and his awesome band performing "Home Invasion" and "Regret #9," two songs that work as one, both on Wilson's 2015 album Hand. Cannot. Erase. (to me, the Dark Side of the Moon of our time, and, like Pink Floyd's masterpiece, one of the greatest albums ever made -- perhaps the pinnacle of Wilson's career so far, including his time with Porcupine Tree), at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on June 13, 2015.

I saw Steven Wilson in Toronto on that tour, and "Regret #9" was certainly one of the highlights of what was a truly incredible show from start to finish. The back-to-back keyboard and guitar solos by Adam Holzman and Dave Kilminster, respectively, were simply astonishing, as they are here.

Enjoy!

The Pineapple Thief: "A Sense of Fear"

2015-08-22T21:08:00.001-04:00

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here's a great video from another of Kscope's great acts, The Pineapple Thief, a fantastic band that released the truly fantastic album Magnolia, which includes this song, last year.

This isn't the first time I've mentioned them here.

For The Pineapple Thief admirably covering Pink Floyd's "Money," see here.

For the song "All the Wars" (one of my favorites of 2012) by The Pineapple Thief, from their album of the same name, see here.

For the song "Frozen North" (one of my favorites of 2013) by The Pineapple Thief's Bruce Soord and Katatonia's Jonas Renkse, see here.

Enjoy!

The Receiver: "Transit"

2015-08-21T22:02:00.002-04:00

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted anything. Other things going on, other priorities. Alas. But we're still here, we're still blogging, and, well, let's get back into it this Friday evening with some music.

Specifically, a song by The Receiver, a couple of brothers from Ohio, Casey and Jesse Cooper, who recently signed to my favorite label, Kscope (home of Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree, Anathema, The Pineapple Thief, and Gazpacho, among others, the absolute best in "post-progressive" music).

The Receiver's new album is called All Burn, and this is one of the highlights.

Enjoy!

Gov. Kasich jumps in because, you know, why not?

2015-07-21T22:55:00.001-04:00

By Richard Barry

Whatever one may think of John Kasich as a presidential candidate, and he’s certainly not my cup of tea, the man has the kind of resume you would expect from a serious contender: Governor of Ohio, member of the House of Representatives from 1983 to 2001; a commentator on Fox News Channel, hosting Heartland with John Kasich (2001–2007). He also worked as an investment banker, as managing director of Lehman Brothers’ Columbus, Ohio, so he’s got the private sector covered.

On Tuesday Kasich will announce his bid for the presidency, making him the latest entrant in a very crowded field of Republican contenders.

The question is will anyone care?

His strategy appears to be built on the fact that there is no presumptive nominee so anything could happen, particularly as Jeb Bush hasn’t been able to get the job done.

“He hasn’t caught fire, and that’s why there’s so many people running,” said John Weaver, Kasich’s chief strategist and a veteran of presidential politics, who argued that for the first time in more than half a century the party lacked a presumptive nominee. “There’s not a front-runner in this race.” As he sketches out a path to the nomination, Kasich — who waged a short-lived bid for the presidency in 2000 — is preparing to make his most aggressive stand in New Hampshire, the famously independent-minded state where, his advisers believe, his plain-spoken approach and pugnacious style will garner the most appeal.

Now, there’s a campaign slogan: “Anything Could Happen, So Give Kasich a Look.”

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

A tale of two (Wisconsin) priorities

2015-07-20T20:31:00.002-04:00

By Frank Moraes

Kevin Draper over at Deadspin reported, Wisconsin Senate Votes To Give $250 Million To Billionaires. This is in reference to the Wisconsin state senate voting to give a quarter billion dollars to build a new sports center for the Milwaukee Bucks. The owners of the team — Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens — are both billionaires. But that’s the great thing about being rich: you never have to pay for anything. Well, not much anyway. The two of them are going to throw in a total of $150 million dollars. So the actual owners will pay a whole 37.5% of the cost of their new home. And I don’t know the deal, but I assume that these guys are also getting huge tax breaks. So it is questionable whether they are paying any part of this.

Some people will claim that this is a great thing for Wisconsin to do. You know: the Bucks will bring in all kinds of money to the area. But as David Cay Johnston has noted in Free Lunch, the tax breaks and outright payments for sporting venues almost never pay for themselves. The big economic boost that is supposed to take place around the arenas, never comes. Instead, people drive to the events, spend their money at the events, and drive away. There is no spreading out — no trickle down.

What’s more, Johnston has done the calculations. It turns out that if it weren’t for taxpayers providing all the money they do for the millionaire and billionaire owners of the teams, none of the four sports leagues — baseball, basketball, football and hockey — would be profitable. We taxpayers spend $2 billion per year subsidizing all these teams. Obviously, the owners don’t need the money. They own these teams because they like it. But apparently, they don’t like it enough to pay for it. Regardless, as I said: the rich are used to not having to pay for anything.

Johnston noted something else interesting about our 43rd president. He’s a great example of how these things work, “George Bush owes almost his entire fortune to a tax increase that was funneled into his pocket and into the use of eminent domain laws to essentially legally cheat other people out of their land for less than it was worth to enrich him and his fellow investors.” He’s talking about the time that they built a great stadium for the Texas Rangers in Arlington. One of the best ways to make money is to take a team from a crummy venue and move it to a nice one. All you have to do is get someone else to pay for it.

But the case in Wisconsin is particularly interesting. Because just a few days ago, “Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a state budget that includes cuts of $250 million to the University of Wisconsin system, among other cuts to public education funding.” But this is the standard way for the modern Republican Party. Gone is any pretense of what conservatism used to mean. Now it is all about taking from the poor and giving to the rich. We’ve seen this in Kansas recently, where previous tax cuts for the rich blew a big hole in the budget. When it came time to fill in the hole, the Republicans in Kansas raised taxes on the poor.

In Wisconsin, we are seeing the same thing. Education has to be cut! So they have money to give to rich guys who own sports teams. Welcome to modern America.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Move over Ted Cruz, there's a new fool in town

2015-07-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

The problem with running a campaign based on channelling voters' grumpy old man is that there is always a possibility of being out-grumped. This seems to be happening to Sen. Ted Cruz who, according to a new poll of insiders by Politico, is suffering the most from Trump's unlikely recent success.

Insiders say ... Trump ... is as uncompromising as Cruz on hot-button issues like immigration - and can deliver the message with even more fiery rhetoric," by Katie Glueck: "Roughly a third of Iowa and New Hampshire Republican insiders pointed to Cruz as the candidate who is damaged the most in their states by Trump's rise in the polls. [An Iowa Republican:] 'Cruz, the incumbent proxy for the disaffected GOP "Hell No!" Caucus, has been virtually starved of oxygen since Trump entered the race.' ..

Sure, Trump is a jerk, and having to endure his enhanced celebrity status is annoying, but just for today I am going to take some pleasure in how unhappy it must be making Ted Cruz. The enemy of my enemy is a temporary source of satisfaction.

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Could there be hope for Martin O'Malley?

2015-07-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

Anything can happen in politics. We’ve all seen improbable outcomes. Though pundits will sometimes deny this, it is usually unwise to suggest there is, in an absolute sense, no hope once a candidate decides to jump in.

And, no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump and the embarrassment his current small degree of success is causing for anyone with a conscience nor how so many of us will feel should he survive too far into the process.

I am thinking about former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and how strange it must be for him to contemplate Bernie Sanders’ success – the same Bernie Sanders whose full legal name many must think is “Self-Described Socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders,” as I don’t think I’ve ever read an article about him without that phrase in it.

O’Malley knew from the start that the only way to run against Hillary Clinton was from the left, as so many Democrats don’t trust Mrs. Clinton to be a voice of true progressivism and find her, fair or not, to be on the side of wealth, power, privilege, Wall Street, etc.

When Sen. Elizabeth Warren chose not the run O’Malley must have seen a clear path to a credible candidacy and many months of robust media attention.

So, that hasn’t happened, at least not in the short term.

In a recent piece in the Des Moines Register, it was said that O’Malley is looking to Iowa where he will go “all in” in an attempt to present himself as the “anti-establishment” option and the real alternative to Hillary Clinton.

As the Register rightly points out, O’Malley has little choice. It’s easy to make the case that he either establishes himself as a real threat here or goes home as New Hampshire is next, a state that has long been good to the Clintons and is in Sanders’ backyard. After then it’s on to South Carolina and Nevada, states with significant numbers of minority voters, also fertile ground for Clinton success.

Much of the Register article outlines the work O’Malley’s team intends to do in Iowa including hiring paid staff, a travel schedule that would see him meet as many eligible voters as humanly possible, and investing more in resources than in any other early-voting state.

As we know, Iowa is not without its magic. In 2008, the state was a springboard to then-Sen. Barack Obama’s eventual Democratic nomination win, which is still probably not a great topic for conversation at the Clinton household. On the Republican side, in 2012 Rick Santorum came out on top and positioned himself for many as the anti-Romney.

The point is that it’s a funny little process in Iowa and odd things have been known to happen even if, according to recent polling, few people in Iowa seem to know who Martin O’Malley is. He’ll have to change that.

At a minimum, O’Malley has to come out of Iowa as Hillary Clinton’s main opponent, which obviously means he has to leap-frog Bernie Sanders. The thing is, I actually believe O’Malley might be able to do that based on one observation, which is that the Democratic Party, from coast to coast, especially away from the major media centres, is not as liberal as it would need to be for the Bernie Sanders wave to continue unabated. Sure, O’Malley will position himself to the left of Hillary Clinton, but he could do it in a way ultimately more palatable to Democratic voters.

I am just saying that I wouldn’t count Martin O’Malley out mostly because he is a very good retail politician in a caucus process where that counts for so much, and his opponent for second place is still “The Self-Described Socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.”

If O’Malley comes out of Iowa with only Mrs. Clinton ahead of him, that changes everything including how hard it will be for Mrs. Clinton to win the nomination. In other words, Clinton should prefer Bernie Sanders as her main opponent.

By the way, I’m not saying I want it to happen, only that it could.

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

They used to love you, Rick Perry, but it's all over now

2015-07-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

What's that they say, in love and politics it's all about timing? Well, maybe they don't say that but they should.

The team at NBC News notes that Gov. Rick Perry has terrible fundraising numbers this quarter ($1.07 million) compared with the $17 million he raised in the first quarter of his 2012 campaign. Back then he started out hot as a pistol but sounded too much like a moron as things progressed to be taken seriously, although you'd think sounding like a moron would be an asset for a Republican candidate.

Anyway, the consensus is that Perry has improved significantly as a candidate since 2012 but, as his fundraising figures would suggest, no one cares.

One appropriate cliche could be that it's all about timing, but a better one is that you don't get a second chance to make a first impression.

Trump is going down (but not soon enough)

2015-07-09T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

Here's a good chuckle for the day. Chuck Todd and the team at NBC News note that although Donald Trump is doing well in the short term it won't last due to past statements sure to piss off the base. For example:

His comment to NBC's Tim Russert in 1999 that "I'm very pro-choice." (That '99 quote is striking, especially considering what he told CNN last month: TRUMP: "Right, I'm pro-choice." CNN: "You're pro-choice or pro-life?" TRUMP: "I'm pro-life. I'm sorry.") Exhibit B: His remark on not opposing gays serving in the military in that same 1999 interview. "Hey, I've lived in New York City and Manhattan all of my life. So my views are a little different than had I lived in Iowa." (Expect that line in a TV ad to Iowa voters.) Exhibit C: Another 1999 quote from Trump via Buzzfeed. "I'm very liberal when it comes to health care," he said. "I believe in universal health care." Make no mistake, GOP rivals and outside groups will make Iowa and New Hampshire voters know about those lines if Trump is still riding high in the polls by November or December. And remember, our own NBC/WSJ poll from last month found 66% of Republicans saying they couldn't see themselves supporting Trump.

Yes, it's a sideshow. We know it. Trump knows it. But the attention continues, which further validates the American delusion that great wealth has something to do with great wisdom.

That's Gilmore with a "G"

2015-07-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

I was a little tired this morning as I went through various news sites for my daily infusion of political information, so I can probably be forgiven for thinking, if only for a second, that comedian, television host, and Colbert replacement Larry Wilmore was running for the GOP presidential nomination. After blinking a few times I realized the headline I had just read was actually "Gilmore Will Run for President." You can understand my confusion.

If you didn't know, there is a former governor of Virginia (1998-2002) by the name Jim Gilmore, and he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch he's joining the cast of thousands currently vying for the Republican nomination, a move only slightly less implausible than a Wilmore candidacy, and far less entertaining.

According to the Times-Dispatch story Gilmore said he's running because "he does not think any other Republican candidates have addressed what he considers the vital national security and economic concerns facing the nation."

Sure he doesn't, but he may have the shortest campaign in history as he is unlikely to make the cut for the first debate in August and therefore get left in the dust before anyone has a chance to figure out who he used to be.

It's been said that the GOP race is incredibly flat, which is supposed to mean there is no front-runner or group of leading candidates, but that's just not true. If it were true it might make sense for obscure no-hopers to jump in because, you know, what the heck.

Still, as long as the media reports the race like literally anything could happen, the Gilmores of the world will be tempted for one more moment in sun.

Just wondering what or who is next.

Donald Trump's diabolical plan to own centre stage

2015-07-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

Just try to have an intelligent conversation
with me around.

I think everyone is noticing what Steve Benen wrote about a few days ago, which is that Donald Trump is driving the debate amongst Republican presidential candidates.

It reminds me of something a counsellor friend once said to me, which is that in any group of people, whether family or friends or co-workers or whatever, one person frequently gets the lion's share of attention. It's usually because the behaviour is so outrageous that everyone needs to talk about it, complain about it, or devise ways to deal with the mayhem created by said individual. Importantly, this person doesn't even have to hold a prominent position within the social group. The only thing required is outrageousness or inappropriateness. You know what I'm talking about.

Donald Trump is now that person for Republicans, as we have seen, for example, in the reaction to his comments on immigration.

Ted Cruz said that Trump may have a colourful way of speaking but he has a point. Huckabee also distanced himself from the way Trump said things but not from his general argument. Santorum said he didn't like Trump's "verbiage" but cited illegal immigration and its impact on American workers. Chris Christie, Rick Perry, and Jeb Bush are all talking about Trump, though the latter two have been critical of Trump's characterization of Mexicans.

The point is that Trump's stock-in-trade is saying outrageous things, which he will continue to do. And candidates will be asked to agree or disagree with what has been said if only because of the absurd way in which Trump has said it.

Cruz, Santorum, and Huckabee don't want to be too far off side of Trump's basic point of view because it plays well with their base. Bush in particular wants to put some distance between himself and Trump because Bush wants to position himself as the adult in the room. In all cases Trump is increasingly setting himself up as the standard against which candidates are judged, the dispenser of opinions that have to be embraced or rejected.

Trump can't win, but he'll get way too much attention and have an out-sized impact on the way issues are framed.

Is there any way that can be good for the Republican Party?

Ted Nugent and cruelty to black bears

2015-07-06T19:57:00.001-04:00

By Frank Moraes

I was over on No More Mister Nice Blog the other day, and I learned, Some of Ted Nugent’s Best Friends Are Illegal Bear-Penis Traffickers, Allegedly. It’s all about that strange little man and his hunting activities. The main thing involving Nugent dates back to 2009 when he was hunting black bears with a bow up in Alaska. But he apparently isn’t that good. He hit one, but it only wounded the bear, who ran away. Undeterred, Nugent found another bear four days later, which he shot and killed. This was illegal because once he wounded the first bear, his license was for that bear alone. He had no license to kill the second bear.

I’m not a vegetarian, so I certainly understand that animals die for the sake of my life. Still, I’ve always found “pleasure” hunting to be awful. Killing another animal shouldn’t be something one takes pleasure in. But it isn’t part of my culture and I don’t dismiss the practice altogether. I do, however, think that whatever thrill or joy one gets out of it should go along with a great deal of seriousness. To give you some idea of where I’m coming from, I will not swat a fly if I can’t get a clean hit. I don’t wish to be cruel to a house fly and I would hope that hunters would feel the same way about their quarry.

What Nugent seems to have done strikes me as especially vile. If you wound a black bear, you should move heaven and earth to track it down and end its suffering. I often wonder if house flies have the same connection to pain that I do. But there is no doubt that a black bear does. Now according to Nugent’s lawyer, Wayne Anthony Ross, the arrow just grazed the bear. He said, “They’ve got apparently some crazy law in Southeast that says if you even touch an animal with an arrow, it becomes your animal… [Nugent] looked to see if he had hit it and didn’t believe that he’d hit it fatally.”

So Nugent’s arrow just “grazed” the bear. They’ve got a law that if you “touch an animal” it’s yours. The lawyer goes on and on to indicate that it was nothing big. But there are problems. There was blood at the site. I assume the arrow was stillin the bear because no mention was made of finding it, which would have been exculpatory. But there was no trail of blood, which might be a sign that the the bear was moving fast — you know, adrenaline and all. And Nugent and his “buddies” looked for the bear but didn’t find it. Ross’ conclusion: “The bear didn’t die.” My conclusion: Nugent and his “buddies” aren’t good trackers and they didn’t care enough to track the bear anyway.

The form of hunting that Ted “real man” Nugent takes part in is pathetic anyway. They set up a “bait station” and wait for the bears to come by and then kill them. Now I see this as totally reasonable for those people who are hunting out of need. But for the sport hunter, it doesn’t seem very sporting. It sounds to me like a bunch of guys just sitting around drinking beer waiting for animals to be prone and then blowing them away. It’s about as sporting as the buffalo shoot in Bless the Beasts and Children.

For Nugent, apparently, the whole incident is about the law. His lawyer claimed, “He only took one bear.” But it really should be about his incompetence causing a fellow mammal to suffer. All in the name of Ted Nugent feeling like a real man to make up for the fact that he refused to go to war when he had the chance. It’s just pathetic and horrible.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

No path to socialism for America, but we can dream

2015-07-06T07:30:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

When will this "road to serfdom" nonesense end? Probably never. Republicans love it too much, along with the claim that America is becoming just like Europe, and not in a good way.

The latest is Bobby Jindal, another GOP presidential hopeful with absolutely no reason for hope. On a radio program in New York on Sunday Jindal accused President Obama and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton of dragging America to socialism.

“I’m running [for president] because I want to stop President Obama and Secretary Clinton from turning the American dream into the European nightmare . . . We are on the path towards socialism. It’s not too late but the hour is late.”

Oh, please. You are not on the path to socialism, and I say that as someone who wishes you were. Americans can't even wrap their heads around the need for a single-layer-health-system like so many other civilized countries.

The hour is indeed late, but not in the way Jindal thinks.

Meeting expectations in an irrational society is the definition of insanity

2015-07-03T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

I don't mean to be unkind to Jenna Johnson, a writer for the Washington Post, and there really is no need to be as she is simply following convention when she writes about Bernie Sanders and the things he advocates for on the campaign trail, most recently in Madison, Wisconsin.

Bernie Sanders stood before 10,000 screaming fans in this liberal college town on Wednesday night and promised to fulfill all of their progressive dreams: paid vacation for all, generous maternity leave, tuition-free public colleges, a minimum wage of $15, no more big banks, less youth unemployment, dramatic prison reform and an end to economic inequality.

There it is. No matter how reasonable this list of policy aspirations may appear to many of us, it is but a progressive dream, an unattainable fantasy existing only in the minds of those who don't really know how the world works.

But Senator Sanders is undeterred:

“Please, think big, not small,” Sanders said. “Our vision should be that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world there is nothing that we cannot accomplish."

Bernie Sanders' campaign is catching fire because people are tired of being told what is possible and what is not. Why shouldn't we fight for things that make sense?

Follow the money

2015-07-02T11:04:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

First Read wonders if the Republican Party should still be considered the party of big business.

Donald Trump vs. Macy's. The battle over the Ex-Im bank. Conservatives decrying the same-sex marriage ruling, immigration reform and normalization of relations with Cuba. A lot of stories in the past week have demonstrated how the Republican Party just isn't a reliably comfortable home for big business anymore. A big part of that has to do with the fast-changing landscape on social issues. Big brands raced to find catchy ways to embrace the same-sex marriage decision last week even as the 2016 Republican candidates denounced it. As we've seen with the spectacularly quick race of businesses like Macy's and now professional golf organizations away from Donald Trump, companies had no interest in being associated with anti-Latino statements.

The point, they admit, is that this is all about the money.

Businesses have decided that they don't want to offend customers and they don't want to be boycotted. That's a cynical way to look at, we know. But it also shows just how influential groups like Latinos and the LGBT community have become - not just politically, but when it comes to purchasing power as well.

Capitalism is indeed a very complicated thing and sometimes it actually works in the interests of good rather than evil, as long as an offer is made that can't be refused.

No path for Christie

2015-06-30T12:47:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

Chuck Todd and company at NBC describe two ways to win the GOP nomination.

The first is to "sell yourself as the right candidate to win over the base on the issues -- i.e., the ideological warrior." The second is to "sell yourself as the most electable, the candidate who can beat Hillary Clinton -- i.e., the winner."

They go on to say that neither way is available to Gov. Christie who announced his candidacy today.

As for Christie's conservative ideological purity, well, no so much. And as a candidate with the broad-based support to win it all? Again, no.

So what does he think his path to victory is? Since Christie will never be the darling of the ideological right, it has to be in his belief he can sell himself as the most electable. No idea what he's basing that on.

Whatever he's thinking, he's delusional.

Bernie Sanders: Hillary Clinton's ideal opponent

2015-06-29T14:44:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

Yesterday I wrote about some reasons it was good Bernie Sanders was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. One of them was that it would push Hillary Clinton to talk about issues important to the left that might not otherwise get a full hearing.

A somewhat more nuanced way of saying the same thing, which S.V. Date at the National Journal suggests, is that Sanders candidacy will "allow Clinton to focus on issues most primary voters in the party can agree upon, while in no way challenging her character or competence for office."

Bernie Sanders, as Date writes, can criticize big banks, Republicans who deny climate change, and the billionaire Koch brothers and Clinton can agree. Certainly she will talk about those things on her own, but Sanders' campaign allows her to amplify her stance, especially if she positions herself as having evolved to some extent because of Sanders' candidacy and the enthusiasm of his followers.

Of significance too is Sanders' statement that "I have never run a negative political ad in my life, and I don't intend to."

"If I'm a Hillary Clinton person, this is what I want. I want someone like Bernie Sanders in the race," says Mo Elleithee, a former top staffer at the Democratic National Committee who now runs Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service. "It gives her the opportunity to address the issues that he and his supporters want to hear about."

There may be a few topics where they genuinely disagree like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but that could work in her favour as she can present herself as hard-headed on the economy while making it clear she is, after all, no socialist. Similarly on security issues and foreign policy, in a country revved up to expect there to be a terrorists around every corner, she can argue, with all due respect to Sen. Sanders, that she can be tough on the world stage.

There is little reason for Mrs. Clinton to be off-side with Sen. Sanders' domestic agenda and much to recommend a friendly conversation amongst a few candidates who mostly agree on the general themes.

As someone who is very pleased with Sanders' candidacy but who will also be quite happy with a Clinton presidency, it's a cozy set up. Let's have a good chat about some of the things that really matter without doing any real damage to the eventual nominee.

Too be clear, this means I'm with Sanders until Clinton is the nominee. On the other hand, if some world-gone-crazy scenario overtakes events making Sanders the nominee, we can take comfort in the fact that Hillary Clinton would not have been able to defeat the Republican nominee anyway. I love Bernie Sanders, but if Hillary Clinton can't dispatch a socialist from Vermont, what does that say?

But that's not going to happen. What is going to happen is an important and interesting discussion amongst Democratic hopefuls featuring elements important to the left. Hillary Clinton should be happy about that as should the Democratic Party.

Three reasons to be glad Sanders is in the race

2015-06-28T15:31:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

The first thing that should be said about the Clinton-Sanders match-up is that it is a good thing that Clinton is being seriously challenged. It generates interest in the campaign and encourages discussions amongst voters that otherwise would not have happened.

The second thing is that having a candidate like Sanders raise so passionately the issue of income inequality in a presidential campaign is a really good thing. Hillary is now being forced to take this era defining issue more seriously than she is probably inclined.

The third thing is that if, against all odd and well beyind my own expectations, Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, that's a great thing because it means America is that much closer to embracing a truly progressive agenda. And I say that understanding Sanders' chances of winning the general election are virtually nil.

I know this frightens people but I think it's best to consider the long game in politics. This means that having people vote for what they believe in is always better than having them vote for what is expedient.

Expediency rarely changes the world.

Having said that, Hillary Clinton is going to win the nomination.

What do you do with a problem like Donald?

2015-06-26T07:30:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

Donald Trump is going to be such a headache for Republicans this campaign cycle.

He has virtually zero chance of winning the presidential nomination. But insiders worry that the loud-mouthed mogul is more than just a minor comedic nuisance on cable news; they fret that he’s a loose cannon whose rants about Mexicans and scorched-earth attacks on his rivals will damage the eventual nominee and hurt a party struggling to connect with women and minorities and desperate to win.

And that's all true. The other point is that Republicans are in the position of needing to reach out to new constituencies while not alienating their core vote. This requires a relatively high degree of subtlety and sophistication. Trump's involvement in the campaign will mean that any candidate wishing to be taken seriously will have to take Trump on directly, which will upset their ability to effectively talk out of both sides of their mouth.

In a sense, Donald Trump is a distillation of many of the worst qualities of conservatism. The problem for the Republican Party is that Trump had no interest in sugar-coating the message.

Republicans secretly cheer survival of Obamacare

2015-06-25T17:16:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court saved President Obama's signature health care law and, as countless news organization said this morning, ensured his legacy.

The ruling holds that the Affordable Care Act authorized federal tax credits for eligible Americans living not only in states with their own exchanges but also in the 34 states with federal marketplaces. It staved off a major political showdown and a mad scramble in states that would have needed to act to prevent millions from losing health care coverage.

Great news for those of us who like the thought that people will be able to get the health care they need. But you know who else it's great news for? Republicans.

As Steve Benen writes, you won't hear them crowing about it publicly, and on the record they will continue to say all sorts of nasty things about the law and now the Supreme Court. But if you have your eye on the next election cycle, Republicans don't mind the survival of Obamacare at all.

Heading into this morning, some basic policy truths were clear. We knew, for example, that congressional Republicans have made no progress in creating an alternative to the Affordable Care Act -- despite more than five years of broken promises -- and in all likelihood, they never would. We also knew that most of those who would suffer from a plaintiff victory in King v. Burwell would be middle-income families in red states who would naturally look to their GOP representatives for help.

Those same representatives would face enormous pressure from right-wing institutions to let the American health care system burn and treat affected families like collateral damage in a political war. And then there were the Republican governors -- some of whom also happen to be presidential candidates -- who would have been under pressure to create exchange marketplaces in their states to prevent constituents from suffering. Of course, those same governors would have simultaneously faced equal pressure from partisans and ideologues to do exactly nothing.

Let's say the words together just so we can better understand how ridiculous politics can be: Republicans have fought the Affordable Care Act like no other initiative of the Obama Administration. They have made it the centrepiece of their attack on big government and the liberal nanny state. Now that it's the law and actually helping some of the same people they hope will support their party, they will continue to criticize it but also count themselves lucky they don't have to be held accountable for its demise.

My head hurts.

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Even Fox News is bored by Sarah Palin

2015-06-24T07:00:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

If you follow politics, the only reason to pay attention to the wackier sorts in and around the Republican side of things is to discern why their brand of self-aggrandizing foolishness has any traction at all. People like Donald Trump, Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorum, and Sarah Palin may be, or have been, national political figures of a sort but this doesn't mean most people, aside from those blinded by love, think they will seriously compete for national office.

But each of these individuals, and others on the fringes, have a constituency, and any serious conservative politician has to understand it in order to cobble together a coalition large enough to win a nomination.

Anyway, that's my mea culpa for writing about people like Sarah Palin and, in this case, as a lead up to news that she has been dumped by Fox News.

Fox News will not renew its contract with Sarah Palin, whose bombastic appearances have been a cable staple since the former Alaska governor’s failed run on John McCain’s ticket in the 2008 presidential election cycle. When asked for comment, a Fox News spokesperson confirmed the network had amicably parted ways with the governor on June 1.

Palin, 51, is expected to make occasional guest appearances on Fox and Fox Business, and will appear on other networks and cables. She has a show on the Sportsman Channel, does a lot of speeches, and will announce a new publishing project soon.

So, this doesn't mean she's going away entirely in the short term. She has 4.5 million Facebook fans and 1.15 million Twitter followers, and in more conservative states is sought out as a valuable endorsement.

Maybe Sarah Palin is so much a creation of the 24-hour news cycle, social media's need for new content, and the way so much of politics has morphed into one big reality TV show that she will never really go away.

But maybe this is the beginning of the end. Let's hope.

Behind the Ad: Bailout Bush?

2015-06-23T20:11:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

Who: America's Liberty (a super-PAC backing Sen. Rand Paul)

Where: Web ad in early primary states (though it appears to be running elsewhere)

What's going on: Here comes the crazy. In the style of a loud and frenetic infomercial, a screaming pitchman by the name of Max Power (remember the Simpsons episode featuring Homer as Max) offers a Bailout Bu$h action figure and tell us, the viewer/customer, about how Jeb worked for Lehman Brothers right before the crash and supported the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

"This offer guarantees a presidential candidate cannot win a single primary state, let alone the general election," a voice-over says at the end of the ad as Power bathes in a tub of money.

Does anyone on the right know how to be funny? Apparently not.

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

TPP represents the failed neoliberal past

2015-06-22T20:25:00.006-04:00

By Frank Moreas

Lydia DePillis tried to get to the bottom of a question, Why NAFTA Passed and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Failed. She noted that nothing had really changed in terms of the arguments for and against the two deals. The only real answer she comes up with is that there was a procedural difference: the fast-track authority was long done on NAFTA — before it was negotiated. So it was just a matter of voting for it or against it. I think it is simpler than that.

The 1992 election was widely misinterpreted by both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans are to this day convinced that they lost because Bush raised taxes. The Democrats were for a time — and to some extent still — under the delusion that Clinton won because he turned right and had his “Sister Souljah moment.” So there was a feeling that conservative policy was the right way to go — or at least the wave of the future. That just isn’t true anymore. I think that even the Democratic Party establishment is waking up to the fact that the New Democratic movement was bad for the nation and ultimately bad for the party.

Here’s the question that people are starting to ask: why vote for the Democratic Party when its unofficial slogan is, “Not as bad as the Republicans!”? If the Republican Party hadn’t become so horrible, the Democratic Party would be doing major soul searching right now. And even as it is, a whole lot of Democrats are wondering what it matters to win elections when the playing field is so shifted to the right that even a conservative measure like Obamacare required herculean effort and passed only with Democratic votes. The American voter is pretty messed up, but almost no one is in favor of having two political parties as fully owned corporate subsidiaries.

I think most people are where I am regarding these matters, No Trade Deals Until Our Economy Is Fixed. Are trade agreements good for the economy? They appear to be. But they aren’t that good for the economy. They create modest growth. But this is nothing compared to the enormous disruption that they create. And the kicker is that people see no correlation because economic growth and job or wage growth. That’s because there is none. Over the last 40 years, we’ve seen the economy manipulated so that it exists for the benefit of the rich — and the rich alone. What do trade deals have to do with the lives of workers — other than making them even more insecure?

The only thing that is surprising is that our elected officials listened. But it makes sense. They too have been worn down by ever more trade deals. Trade deals are for centrist Democrats what tax cuts are for Republicans: things that are done because they will supposedly create jobs but never really do. A lot of people have wondered why Obama is so all fired up about the TPP. I think this is why. It isn’t rational. He just “knows” that this trade deal is good for the economy in the same way that George W Bush just knew his tax cuts were good for the economy.

The difference now is that Democrats are capable of learning. And they saw that this was not just — or even primarily — a trade deal. The thing is larded up with special deals for industries that are going to increase profits but not jobs. No one thinks that if Lionsgate can sell The Expendables for he next 70 years in Vietnam that more films will get made. At a time when the Democratic Party is finally waking up from its long neoliberal nightmare, yet another trade deal just doesn’t make sense. If NAFTA seemed like the future to the Democrats in 1993, TPP definitely is the past in 2015.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

The revolution is not coming (not this week)

2015-06-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Richard Barry

Tell me Bernie-mania isn't fun. Yes, in Colorado over the weekend Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders tore it up with a crowd of nearly 5,000 in Denver, his largest since announcing for the Democratic nomination in May.

Breathing a progressive political fire, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders ignited Colorado supporters with a blistering condemnation of billionaires and corporations.

The 73-year-old Independent spoke for an hour and hit a nerve on economic issues as he advocated for an end to income inequality as well as a higher minimum wage, pay equity for women and more government spending on infrastructure.

"What we are doing tonight is we are sending a message to the billionaire class and that is: You can't have it all!" Sanders said, shouting to a crowd that filled a University of Denver gymnasium and spilled onto a nearby lacrosse field. "The unquenchable greed of the billionaire class is destroying this nation and it has got to end."

Combine this with other stories out this weekend that, according to new polling data, there is a significant increase in the number of Americans who describe themselves as liberal and the number of Americans taking liberal positions on the issues.

Since the 1988 presidential campaign, when George H.W. Bush and Lee Atwater turned “Massachusetts liberal” into an epithet, the label has been tainted — so much so that many liberals abandoned it for “progressive.”

But new polling shows a significant increase in the number of Americans who describe themselves as liberal and the number of Americans taking liberal positions on issues. Gallup has found the percentage of Americans calling themselves social liberals has equaled the percentage of social conservatives for the first time since pollsters began asking the question in 1999 (when 39 percent identified as conservative and 21 percent as liberal). Democrats are more likely to call themselves liberal and Republicans are less likely to embrace the “conservative” description, opting instead for moderate.

I would caution my brothers and sisters on the left not to get too excited in the short term because we have a long way to go before a progressive like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren can win the Democratic presidential nomination or the presidency itself. But trends are everything in politics and, for many of us, this is a good one.

My sense has long been that the tea party movement is a response built on fear based on the diminishing stature of the U.S. in the world and potentially lower standards of living at home and the kind of selfishness that can accompany that fear.

My hope is that the recent rise of liberal sentiment is based on a growing understanding that if we are to survive intact we have to learn to share what we have, which means, horror of horrors, we have to talk about how best to redistribute the wealth.

It won't happen overnight, especially in terns of electoral success, but it's a good trend.