Grrrrrr...

(Ahem.)

Americans, look in the mirror this morning. What do you see?

If you see, not your usual face, but a drop‑jawed, dumbstruck, horrified facsimile of your familiar mug... you are probably all right.

If, instead, you see gleaming fangs, unmitigated hostility, a crazed face atop a body executing a pseudo‑military strut... stop for a moment; be sure you are really looking in the mirror, not viewing an image left paused on your video recorder from last night.

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I am 68 years old. When I was about 10, my father told me that there were things no civilized man ever said to any woman, no matter what the provocation. The times having changed, the concept of gender equality being what it is today, I have extended that rule: no civilized person ever says those things to any person, regardless of sex, gender identity, etc., at least not if s/he expects to be taken seriously henceforward by anyone within earshot.

But Mr. Trump has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that he is not a civilized person. Notwithstanding that horrendous character flaw, he wants to be president.

Dog help us all.

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(As he so often does, Josh Marshall, editor of TPM, has worthwhile insights in his editorial, In the Abuser's House.)

USA Today, WSJ: Not So Much ‘Vote For Clinton’ As ‘Don't Vote For Trump’

• USA Today
  
• WSJ
  

This is as much as one could reasonably hope for from America's mainstream conservative news source and America's exceedingly conservative news source. I echo their positions on this. I hope, for America's sake, you will elect Secy. Clinton, but at the very least, don't encourage an ignorant, hostile, possibly criminal, clearly crazy man by giving him your vote. Thank you.

‘I Just Don’t Think She Has A Presidential Look’

That's Donald, speaking of Hillary. Personally, I think Donald DOES have a presidential look... think of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, for example, crank down the charm by about 10 percent, and you've got Trump.

But that's not my real point. My real point is that Trump evaluates women entirely by their physical appearance. His wife... er, wives... are good evidence of that: not that any one of them is stupid, but all of them are attention-getting for their looks alone. So the statement that Hillary lacks "a presidential look" means exactly two things:

• she is not male, and
  
• she does not meet Trump's standard of femininity.
  

Go figure... when Hillary was First Lady, my father used to remark on her good looks. But what part of a president's toolkit is her looks, anyway? My mother was bright and articulate from my earliest memories, but I have pics of her in her young adult years, and she was striking... it's no surprise my father went for the whole package, brains, looks, speaking ability, writing ability, etc. (Occasionally, perhaps just to prove a point, Mom would tune the family car. Farm girls often acquire skills like that, though in her case I think it was probably the tractor she tuned.) But Trump clearly evaluates women with one thing in mind. What a schmuck that man is.

A reminder for poll-watching voters. Lately the big three broadcasting networks have been saying that Trump and Clinton are in a dead heat, statistically tied, use your own favorite phrase (but please... not "neck and neck"). Before you believe that statement in its usual sense, go read FiveThirtyEight.com; it's on this site's blogroll. You'll find the networks are cherry-picking the polls they average, and rotten-apple-tossing the tweaked results at you. If you can put aside their "methodology" (heh) for long enough to see what Nate Silver & Co. are saying, you'll see Hillary is still several points in the lead... and noticeably more likely to win the office. This does not mean she or her supporters can afford to be complacent, but neither is it time for them to tear their hair out.

GOP Adviser Resurrects 2008 ‘Lock-And-Load’ Meme

Josh Marshall voices his concern over the Trump campaign's winking at staffers' and other RWNJs' threats to murder Hillary Clinton. His specific example is the ranting of New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro, an adviser to the Trump campaign on veterans' affairs, who, speaking recently on a RWNJ talk show, said of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, "[Clinton] should be put in the firing line and shot for treason" for her actions regarding Benghazi.

Marshall's primary concern is that Trump and company are "wink-winking" at campaign staffers and spokespeople who make such threats, thus implicitly advocating the assassination of his opponent. One spokesperson for the campaign (see first article linked above) said, "We’re incredibly grateful for [Baldasaro's] support, but we don’t agree with his comments." Wink-wink, indeed; I fully agree with Marshall's assessment of the intended message, and of its direly unacceptable nature.

The only thing Marshall omits (as far as I can tell) is that THIS IS NOT NEW BEHAVIOR FOR THE GOP IN A PRESIDENTIAL RACE. Surely other Democrats remember Sarah Palin's repeated exhortations to "[l]ock and load," delivered to audiences full of gun-toting Republicans more concerned with their personal right to carry than anyone else's right to stay alive.

This is a trend. This is the second consecutive presidential election in which a candidate or his/her surrogates has urged a Republican audience to exercise their Second Amendment right by threatening (at least) to shoot an opposing candidate, or opposing voters, or anyone they don't like the looks of. THE GOP HAS BECOME THE PARTY OF VIOLENCE DIRECTED AGAINST ITS POLITICAL OPPONENTS. I cannot put an end to the threats, but I damned surely can voice my objection to them. America is in theory a representative democracy; WE DO NOT SETTLE DISPUTES ABOUT LEADERSHIP BY MURDERING POLITICAL OPPONENTS. PERIOD!

I am somewhat relieved to see that the Secret Service is investigating Rep. Baldasaro about his naked threat against Secy. Clinton... not that I really expect them to do anything about it, but at least they are making some noises that they will take an "appropriate" action. It's not much, and it won't save Mrs. Clinton from a Glock-toting RWNJ, but it's better than nothing.

Hillary Clinton For President

My head and my heart are both with Bernie Sanders... but Bernie is no longer running for president.

We surely owe Bernie a debt of gratitude for what he accomplished both in influencing Secy. Clinton's policy positions on a great number of issues and in using his five members of the Democratic Party's Platform Committee to embed those improved positions as planks in the platform. Many of us had serious hopes that, in the process, Sen. Sanders would amass enough convention delegates to win the nomination himself. That hope has since been dashed, and Sanders has taken the sensible step of withdrawing from the race and formally endorsing Secy. Clinton for president. That alone is reason to consider, seriously, voting for her.

But you all know there's another reason for doing so: clearly our nation's next president will be either Hillary Clinton or... wince... Donald Trump. No third candidate has a remote chance, and Sanders, unlike (say) Ralph Nader, understands the folly of a third-party run.

So as the slogan goes, I'm with her. The YDDV endorses Hillary Clinton for President of the United States. Do some reading about her; we could do much worse... we could, for example, end up with the DT without even taking a drink.

Finally I Get It - Why Bernie Must Stay In The Race Until The Convention

It took The Young Turks to explain it to me... well, them and the short Bernie clip they play in this segment. Bernie cannot drop out now and accomplish his most significant goal, specifically, shifting the Democratic Party... the party platform and Clinton's expressed positions... leftward far enough to make a difference.



Bernie is not stupid, far from it. And I understand he would make a great president... if there were a way for him to get from here to there. But there's not. Any honest American (and that certainly includes Bernie) knows that the president who takes office in January will be the candidate of one of the two major political parties, Democratic or Republican, not anyone else. Bernie will not be one of those candidates... but even so he has a real opportunity from his current position to influence the behavior of one of those parties, by staying in the race all the way to the Democratic convention. If he withdraws earlier, he loses that power. If he announces a third-party presidential run, he becomes Ralph Nader writ large, almost certainly assuring a President Trump (about whom, not so incidentally, I agree with Bernie: America would collapse in chaos within a year if Trump became president).

So Bernie, smart guy that he is, does the one thing open to him that accomplishes the most significant of his goals. In support of his run... even if its success in the usual sense is certainly unrealizable... I continue to endorse him, on this site and in personal conversations, until he and his surrogates have accomplished what they can at the convention. At that point, if I'm still alive, you can anticipate a "Clinton for President" banner in the left column of this blog. Politics makes strange bedfellows, a fact that in this case I willingly accept.

Bernie Sanders For President Admirable Person Of The Year

I understand how difficult it must be for Bernie to step aside. But I hope he faces this inevitability as he has courageously faced so many others: the delegate counts simply aren't there for him, and Secretary Clinton, FBOW, will be the Democratic Party's candidate for POTUS. Considering the likely catastrophe threatening our nation if Trump should become President, Sen. Sanders would best serve our nation by ending his own run for that office.

What we progressives owe him is incalculable: the public dialog on traditionally progressive/liberal issues has moved noticeably leftward thanks to Sanders's run, and he has surely made Clinton a better candidate by engaging with her on those issues.

As ambivalent as I am about Hillary Clinton, I admit Hillary is easily the most qualified candidate between the remaining two who have a realistic chance of winning (or, in Trump's case, stealing) the presidency. I'd like to give Sen. Sanders a day or two to make his own endorsement of Secy. Clinton before I remove my own endorsement of him from this site and (as seems likely at this point) begin my advocacy for Hillary Clinton.

More as it happens...

All Animals Democrats Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

Trevor Timm at The Guardian reminds me... reminds us all, or informs those of you who didn't already know... that the sadly misnamed Democratic Party chooses its presidential candidate using a system that is outrageously undemocratic (small-'d'):

Even if Sanders wins the popular vote, Clinton could still get the nomination

The Democratic party decides its nominee in a massively undemocratic way – and is a ticking time bomb for the party and its voter base if Bernie keeps winning

... 

The Democratic party’s nomination will ultimately be decided by more than 4,700 delegates at its nominating convention in the summer. Most of those delegates are allocated based on votes in each state’s primary or caucus. However, the party also assigns what are known as “superdelegates” –
700 or so people who aren’t elected by anyone during the primary process and are free to vote any way they want at the convention. They are made up of members of Congress and members of the Democratic National Committee – which is made up of much of the establishment that Sanders is implicitly running against. 

According to University of Georgia lecturer Josh Putnam, superdelegates exist solely to allow DNC elites to better control who ultimately becomes their nominee. “The reason superdelegates came into being in the interim period between the 1980 and 1984 elections was to allow the party establishment an increased voice in the nomination process,” he wrote on his blog in 2009.

...

Not that anyone ever asked me, but this is exactly why I ceased giving money to the Democratic Party through the DNC, DSCC, etc., and started giving money directly to candidates' campaigns. Although I've given and will continue to give money to Bernie Sanders for President, I am nonetheless long since not officially a member of the Democratic Party. I vote straight 'D' virtually every partisan election, but I just can't handle the notion of superdelegates.

Benghazi... Benghazi... Benghazi...

For once, congressional Republicans seem to be using their metaphorical guns to shoot themselves in the metaphorical foot (House Majority Leader and [possibly former] Speaker-in-waiting Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA); Benghazi Select Committee chair Rep. Trey (!) Gowdy; etc.) and even conservative print and broadcast political commentators are starting to notice.

And for once, congressional Democrats are starting to feed this free grist to the political mill.

Is it just me, or does anyone else look at Trey Gowdy's actions as chair of the Select Committee and find her/himself reminded of former Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana) of the GROS Committee, um, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee? the same style of battering one or more Democrats (in Burton's case, hundreds) with a sledgehammer while refusing to call GOPers to answer equivalent questions? When I hear Republicans whiiiining they are victimized by partisanship perpetrated by Democrats, I can't help thinking of Burton and gritting out through clenched teeth, "you bastards had it coming" ... now I can think of Gowdy as well.

In any case, there's at least a possibility after McCarthy's Clinton-related gaffe and Gowdy's offensively partisan chairmanship that Democrats may see GOPers get their just deserts. (Not to be confused with Gov. Chris Christie, who clearly gets just his desserts...)