2016 presidential race

An old friend, the guy who made the video above, came over for a visit Sunday. It reminded me of what Bernie has been having to go through as he tries delivering his message about the corruption that has gripped the transpartisan Beltway establishment. I want to ask you to watch that short video clip. I want you to see it so you can watch how the same ugly, deceitful and divisive tactics the Clinton Machine is using to destroy Bernie comes right from the playbook she used against Obama in 2008.

Although all of his Republican opponents repeatedly called Trump a liar, the epithet didn't stick, at least not among Republican primary voters. Only 9% of Trump's fact-checked campaign statements have been rated "true" (2%) or "mostly true" (7%) by PolitiFact, but it was only Trump's branding of the immensely dislikable Ted Cruz as "Lyin' Ted" that stuck with the voters.

When he was running against Trump, Rick Perry said "he offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued. Let no one be mistaken--Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded." Thursday Perry discarded his diagnosis and announced he would not just vote for this cancer on conservatism but will do everything he can to help get him elected.

Gas bubbles collect on the inside surface of a glass, and when they grow large enough, rise up (source)by Gaius PubliusI've been using two metaphors to describe the movement around the Bernie Sanders campaign. One is the grain of sand in the oyster that allows the pearl material, always present, to coalesce, come together. The sand didn't create the pearl. It just "occasioned" it.

I haven't read a Krugman column for months; I wonder if I ever will again. More recently I gave up on my evening Rachel Maddow ritual. Now when Chris Hayes' show is over, I flip off the TV. It's certainly healthier to eat an hour earlier. I stopped watching Maddow when she ceased being a professional journalist and became part of the Clinton campaign. Journalists are entitled to their preferences, just like anyone else but they shouldn't color their reporting with their own prejudices without announcing those prejudices.

Yesterday, Noah hit on something when he pointed out that in 1968 George Wallace had picked insubordinate and apocalyptic crackpot and arch-war criminal General Curtis LeMay as his running mate.

By NoahFor those who didn’t watch The Sopranos or don’t know: "The Big Casino" is a slang term often used by East Coast Italian-Americans instead of the word cancer, or, "The Big C."Trump is their guy! The best of the best of the 17 Repug contestants!Are Republicans missing a chromosome or two? Well, they don’t believe in science, so what does it matter?

Writer Shaun Kingby Gaius PubliusI'm looking ahead to the next stages of this unfolding drama, and setting up another installment in that series (Look Ahead part one here, Look Ahead part two here).

Trump has raised the prospect of trying to entice some Bernie voters who feel no allegiance to a corrupted and corporatized Democratic Party.

Clinton wants to bring her husband "out of retirement."by Gaius PubliusThe two topics in the headline are related. We're in the next phase of the campaign, with an uncontested candidate in the Republican Party (who knew that would happen first?) and a still-contested race on the Democratic side.