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JUNE 7,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

CLINTON CLAIMS IT – Hillary Clinton claimed the Democratic nomination for president tonight after winning New Jersey.  California results are not yet in.  Bernie Sanders, showing his usual illusions of grandeur, did not concede.  Maybe he'll retreat to a commune and fight to the last proletarian voter.  Clinton's speech was an undistinguished but perfectly acceptable address, thanking the immediate world, but especially her mother, for her electoral success.  She properly noted that she became the first woman to win the presidential nomination of a major party.  She gave a major embrace to her daughter, a minor peck to her son-in-law, and an obligatory show of pseudo-affection to Bill, who seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. 

TRUMP REFINES A BIT – Donald Trump also spoke tonight, using a teleprompter to prevent still one more gaffe.  The contrast with Clinton was obvious.  No matter what one may think of her, and we don't think much of her here, she's a pro.  Trump came off as someone running for president of a fraternity.  He lacks the style of a presidential candidate, and he'd better develop it fast.  There is serious talk of revolt within the Republican Party.  The conventions will give each major candidate a chance to showcase their campaigns.  My fear is that Trump will be Trump and put on a lavish TV show, a kind of Miss Universe of American politics. 

PRESIDENTIAL WARDROBE? – FROM CNBC:   Hillary Clinton took a lot of flak on Monday after a report surfaced that the presidential candidate wore a Giorgio Armani jacket worth more than $12,000 during a speech in April about inequality.  Clinton, who was well-known for her vast pantsuit collection, has upgraded her wardrobe during her most recent bid for president to appear more relatable, according to the New York Post.  You need a $12,000 jacket to be relatable?  Who is she relating to?  I guess it's the average American mom.  They all have $12,000 jackets.  Walmart sells a ton of them.

June 7,  2016     Permalink

A GROWING CONCERN – AT 8:29 A.M. ET:  I am sensing from what I read across the internet and general media that concern about Donald Trump is growing dramatically within the Republican Party.  These are not fringe elements who are expressing the view that Trump must not become president, that he lacks temperament and judgment. 

In the last day Michael Reagan, son of President Reagan, wrote, ""This most likely would be the 1st time if my father was alive that he would not support the nominee of the GOP."

Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California expressed his revulsion at Trump's attacks on the judge handling the Trump University case. 

And Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a rising Republican star, is making clear his opposition.  From The Hill: 

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) lashed out at Donald Trump on Monday, calling the presumptive GOP presidential nominee's criticism of a California judge "the literal definition of 'racism.' "

Though the Nebraska Republican did not mention Trump by name, he's been a frequent critic of his party's presumptive nominee and has pledged to not support Trump in November.

Trump said last week that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has "an absolute conflict" of interest in presiding over Trump University lawsuits because of his "Mexican heritage."

Trump has been a tough critic of illegal immigration from Mexico and has vowed to build a wall along the U.S.'s border with the country. "I'm building a wall. It's an inherent conflict of interest," he told The Wall Street Journal.

His comments have sparked fierce backlash from Democrats and many Republican lawmakers, who worry Trump has gone too far.

COMMENT:  And he has gone too far.  He is obsessed with a private court case while the affairs of the nation are placed second. 

My worries are increasing by the minute.  It is true that Trump could be elected because Hillary is such a flawed candidate.  The reverse is also true.

Many on our side fear that Trump can blow the election.  But a growing number, yes, also on our side, fear that he could win.

June 7, 2016       Permalink

NICE TO SEE THIS – AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  There are occasional bright moments in the otherwise bleak landscape of American universities.   From the College Fix: 

Princeton Prof. Robert George has beaten the odds: Not only did he not have to sue his university for an improperly withheld promotion or fight for his tenure, but the conservative academic has just been honored by Princeton.

A startlingly rare social conservative at the top of the ivory tower who has co-taught a popular class with the Marxist Cornel West, George received a President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton’s commencement today along with three other professors.

A Princeton news release manages to say only nice things about George, with no backhanded compliments or political digs for being vocally pro-life or believing that gender identity cannot dictate reality:

A colleague highlighted the impact George has had on “generations of Princeton students” who have “fond recollections [of] his now famous courses in “Constitutional Interpretation” and “Civil Liberties,” which “remain among the largest and most popular in the politics department.”

A recent alumnus described how “Civil Liberties” “confronts some of the deepest and most controversial questions of public morality and civic life,” and how “Constitutional Interpretation” “wrestles with intractable debates about the foundations and nuances of constitutional doctrine.”

A former student who worked with George as an undergraduate and a Ph.D. candidate, said: “On a range of topics, he challenges my thinking profoundly. We have discussed everything from politics to philosophy to religion to science — everything under the sun. Moreover, he discusses these subjects always with an eye not to convince but to instruct. We certainly disagree sometimes, but I know that I am not off the hook unless my ideas are well grounded.”

COMMENT:  Congratulations to Professor George, and to Princeton for allowing him to flourish.

June 7, 2016       Permalink

BERNIE OBJECTS – AT 8:06 A.M. ET:  The head of the Democratic People's Brigade objects to news outlets declaring Hillary Clinton the winner of her party's presidential nomination.  From The Politico: 

Bernie Sanders’s campaign on Monday evening condemned the media for its “rush to judgment” in declaring Hillary Clinton the Democratic presidential nominee, saying superdelegates should not be automatically counted.

“It is unfortunate that the media, in a rush to judgment, are ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer,” Sanders’ spokesman Michael Briggs said.

The statement came after The Associated Press declared that Clinton had secured enough support to cross the threshold of 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.

Sanders has been adamant in recent days that he is ready to fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention in July, and that he will try to flip superdelegates to clinch the nomination.

However, the delegate math makes Sanders’ path to the nomination all but impossible.

Neither Clinton nor Sanders will likely be able to officially win the nomination without any superdelegate support, but Sanders faces a near-impossible task to overtake Clinton among pledged delegates.

COMMENT:  Unless, of course, as we've noted before, Clinton is zinged by the FBI report.

My own sense is that the "news" of Clinton's clinching the nomination, coming only a day before the California primary, is a bit suspicious.  I speculate here that forces favorable to Clinton may have pushed for this "news."  Then, if Clinton loses California today, she can claim that her voters stayed home because they thought she'd already won.  Hey, it's logical, isn't it?

June 7,  2016     Permalink

JUNE 6,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:25 P.M. ET: 

THE FUTURE PRESIDENT? – There's a new book coming by a Secret Service agent who guarded the Clintons when they were in the White House.  FROM LONDON'S DAILY MAIL:   A former Secret Service officer who helped protect Hillary Clinton while she was in the White House charges in a new tell-all book that the former first lady had a 'volcanic' temper and occasionally got violent with her husband – and that a loud 1995 fight left the president with a black eye.  In the book, 'Crisis of Character,' former agency officer Gary Bryne, details arriving at work after a 1995 shouting-match that left a light blue vase 'smashed to bits' and Bill sporting a 'real, live, put-a-steak-on-it black eye.'  Things got so bad that Secret Service agents had discussions about the possibility they might have to protect the president from his wife's physical attacks, the New York Post reported in advance excerpts of the book.  Hillary will twist this as proof that she favors a strong national defense.

WHAA..? – FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:   Buyers walking into a Cadillac dealer in the near future could find an interesting thing on the car lot: nothing.  General Motors Company's luxury division has about three times as many U.S. stores as German luxury auto makers or Toyota Motor Company’s Lexus, but sells only about half the volume. Short of steering around rigid state franchise laws and hammering out financial settlements to shutter stores, a plan is being hatched to convert a portion of Cadillac’s 925 stores into virtual dealerships that will be low on overhead and big on sophisticated technology.  In a somewhat unprecedented way of moving metal, Cadillac President Johan de Nysschen will this month begin looking for commitments from some store owners willing to set up showrooms where buyers can get a car serviced or learn about products via virtual reality headsets without getting behind the wheel. Driving off immediately with a new vehicle will be impossible because these stores won’t have inventory.  Yessiree, that's what I always wanted – the chance to buy a luxury car without ever driving it.  This will not go down as one of history's great ideas.

BULLETIN – CLINTON CLINCHES – FROM NBC NEWS:   Hillary Clinton has secured a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, NBC News projected on Monday evening — making the former secretary of state the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.  Clinton, whose first quest for the Democratic nomination ended in a concession speech almost exactly eight years ago to the day, now becomes the first woman ever to win the nomination of a major political party in the United States.  Clinton reached the majority of 2,383 delegates with a combination of pledged and unpledged "super delegates." The new tally includes pledges from over a dozen new superdelegates as well as her accumulation of 36 pledged delegates in Sunday's Puerto Rico primary.  Clinton was widely expected to reach the 2,383 threshold on Tuesday, when six states hold their nominating contests on one of the final primary nights of the race.  She's got it, unless Bernie Sanders can turn her superdelegates.  Highly unlikely, although the FBI probe might produce that very result.  Nothing is certain this year.

June 6, 2016       Permalink

TO BERNIE, IT'S 1917, AND THIS IS MOSCOW – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:   Bernie refuses to bow to reality.  This is a revolution.  They are in the streets.  The royal family is running away.  Princess Anastasia is missing!  From the Washington Post: 

SAN DIEGO — Bernie Sanders concluded a hurried day of campaigning Sunday by delivering a defiant rebuttal to the growing calls from some Democrats for him to drop out of the presidential race.

Rousing more than 4,000 supporters as the sun set over his rally near Qualcomm Stadium, Sanders signaled that he plans to fight on to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and is far from ready to cede the nomination to his rival, Hillary Clinton, who picked up more delegates in contests over weekend as she inched closer to clinching.

The sprawling and rebellious scene in Southern California captured the spirit of the Sanders campaign ahead of the primaries that will take place Tuesday here and in five other states. Instead of beginning to accept Clinton’s likely ascent, the Vermont senator and the people behind him are responding with simmering indignation about the forces they believe are aligned against him.

COMMENT:  This is what happens when you allow a man to run for the nomination of a party, even though he's not a member of that party.  Ditto Donald Trump.

Parties are private organizations.  They can, within the law, make their own rules, and it's time to revisit the rules of each of our major parties.  A year like this must never happen again.  I'd rather go back to the smoke-filled rooms, where professional politicians made professional choices, then have this disorganized madness. 

We've been given bad choices this year.  As I've said, deciding between Clinton and Trump is like deciding between Bonnie and Clyde.  And the Dems' second choice, Bernie, is a political nut case who thinks the proletariat yearns for him. 

Each party had better people available, and failed to deliver.

June 6, 2016       Permalink

GEEZ! – AT 10:54 A.M. ET:  Is Donald Trump on a kamikaze mission?  He simply refuses to get off this obsession with the judge in his private case involving the now-defunct Trump University.  From the Washington Examiner:   

Donald Trump insisted Monday that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is treating him unfairly in the Trump University case, even after facing criticism from Republicans and Democrats that his charge is racist.

"One hundred percent. This is a case that should have been thrown out a long time ago by the judge," Trump said on "Fox and Friends" Monday morning when asked if he'd be found innocent in the case.

"It shouldn't even be a case," Trump continued. "This case should have been thrown out on summary judgment. If someone else was in charge, this would have been thrown out on summary judgment."

While the judge was born in the U.S., Trump has said the judge's Mexican heritage has biased him in the case, since Trump has said he would build a wall on the southwestern U.S. border.

Hillary Clinton, many Republicans and members of the media have charged that Trump is making a big mistake by leveling that charge. Clinton called Trump's remarks inexcusable, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus called for Trump to "evolve" on the issue.

COMMENT:  Shut up, Donald!  Right now!  Nobody gives a damn about your private court case.  You're showing yourself to be too small a man to be president.  One can already sense the growing panic in the Republican Party.

We'd expected better.  We'd thought that, once you'd clinched the presidential nomination, you'd grow in stature, become a president, not a glorified landlord.  But, instead, you've gone in the other direction, giving us early Trump, the reality TV star. 

We don't even know what you stand for.  It's one thing one day, the opposite the next.  You viciously attack anyone who disagrees with you, then have a kiss-and-make-up meeting.  Eventually, some people may not want to make up.

You will argue that your tactics have gotten you the nomination.  Maybe.  But what helped enormously was having an initial field of 17 candidates, who hopelessly divided the opposition. 

Wise up.  Ross Perot, also a successful businessman, ran for president in 1992, at one point leading in the polls.  But he could not rise above pettiness and eccentricity.  He became an asterisk.  You're on track to the same fate, Donald, unless you put your ego in your pocket and your brain out front. 

June 6, 2016       Permalink

TODAY – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:   Today is D-Day.  To those of us of a certain age, the day still has deep meaning. 

It was on this day in 1944 that Allied forces invaded northern France, breaching Hitler's wall, and entering the heartland of Europe.   World War II in Europe would be over in less than a year. 

We seemed to understand D-Day, and its importance, for many decades after the war.  After all, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower, became president of the United States in 1953, leaving office in 1961.  And Ronald Reagan gave the most moving of all D-Day speeches in 1984, some 40 years after the invasion.  His successor, George H.W. Bush, who left office in 1993, was the last American president to serve in the Second World War.

In the years since, our memory of the war, and its meaning, have faded.  A new, poorly educated generation, a product of the fever swamps of American colleges, seems little interested in the sacrifices of its ancestors.  We have become soft and spoiled.  CNN anchorwomen regularly announce that we are today a "war weary" nation.  Really?  What has made us war weary?  Being inconvenienced at an airport?

Six months after D-Day we fought the Battle of the Bulge, where 20,000 Americans were killed by Nazi forces in six weeks, out of an America of 139 million.  That's war weariness.  What we have today, outside our armed forces, is bother.

We have always had a core citizenry that will keep the flame, those whom FDR called the "unending line" of patriots.  They are the ones who today, and into the future, will remember D-Day.

I like to think that most of the readers of Urgent Agenda are part of that line. 

Ronald Reagan's speech on D-Day, 1984.

June 6,  2016     Permalink