Yep. The Republicans are hoist with their own petard.
The wiser and most honest conservatives among us have been acknowledging, in the past few weeks, that the ascent of Donald Trump is a huge and historic mistake—but they also want to insist that he’s not just their huge historic mistake. They’ve been passing the blame around. …The same people who have long scoffed, often with reason, at the “root causes” theory of terrorism or crime or whatever—emphasizing, instead, individual responsibility for whatever it is we choose to do— have now become full-fledged rootsers. It isn’t Trump or his followers who are really to blame for his rise; it’s the circumstances that produced them and the guys, chiefly liberals, who they think created those circumstances. Or else it’s said that there is a “systematic rot” in American politics, of which Trump is merely a symptom. But in this case there is not a systematic rot. There is a specific rot. The rot was in a party and movement that never actually took the trouble to seal itself off from its extremists. …at some people simply refuse to be anything but poor, under-educated. Give them full access to education? Help them pay for it? …AdamGopnik,NewYorker
Maybe we’ll learn something from the bitter, senselessness of the GOP and its voters. Maybe we’ll even learn it in time to stop the rot. At the moment respect and responsibility are as absent from the largely immoral “Republican agenda” as they’ve ever been. They are glued to the bomb as it drops on us all.
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Bernie Sanders is the morality candidate. His “agenda” is about facing hard truths: for example, that we are not the most responsible society. We embrace inequality by telling ourselves that some people simply refuse to be anything but poor, under-educated. Give them full access to education? Help them pay for it? Sort through the profiteering in healthcare that enriches corporations, businesses whose obligation is to their shareholders? Hands off, commie!
It’s not surprising that anyone as skilled at self-enrichment as Hillary Clinton. Her bread is buttered. But things are not going well for her. Michigan was a bit of a shock. Couple of days later, Miami tended to confirm her vulnerability:
It wasn’t that Clinton performed poorly. To the contrary, she displayed her usual command of the issues, kept calm under hostile fire, and got in a few slams at Sanders. For much of the evening, however, she was put on the defensive, and the event seemed to encapsulate some of the problems that have dogged her campaign, which was was widely expected to be a quick victory march but has instead turned into a long slog. She’s carrying a lot of baggage from her past; she’s facing a happy warrior bearing a simple, bold message that he repeats like a metronome; and she doesn’t have a similarly arresting theme or a charismatic political persona to fall back on. …JohnCassidy,NewYorker
And there’s always that sound of grinding political machinery that accompanies Hillary Clinton — like it or not.
Cross-posted from Prairie Weather