Saturday, February 27, 2016

Last Call For Ths Is Sparta(nburg)!

And the Associated Press called the SC primary for Clinton within minutes of the polls closing.  She will win by 35 points or more, and the exit poll numbers are murderous for Sanders.  Here's the big one:



In SC, black voters were a massive two thirds of primary voters, and black women were 40%.  That is gigantic.  Bernie still won white voters though, splitting white women evenly and winning white men by more than 2-to-1.



And here, voters in SC overwhelmingly want to continue President Obama's policies, and of those who did, 80% voted for Clinton.  And finally:



This race was over months ago.  Sanders never had a chance here.

This Is Sparta(nburg)!, Con't

Democratic voters head to the polls today in South Carolina, where black voters are expected to give Hillary Clinton an impressive victory.

Democrats are still voting in South Carolina, but the Democratic candidates were already moving beyond this state on Saturday — both literally and figuratively — as a victory seems nearly certain for former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

In South Carolina itself, Clinton sent surrogates including Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) — the top-ranking black Democrat in the House — to polling places to make one last pitch. In many places, it seemed that the voters didn’t need it: Black voters, seen as key to Clinton’s victory here, praised her long experience in Washington.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the last eight years, and Hillary is the best person out there to continue the progress,” said Al Tucker, a 67-year-old African American in Columbia. “You look at South Carolina, and we’re at the bottom in anything you can think of: education, poverty. I think Hillary would be good because she’s going to look out for us.”

If you're wondering why black voters are lining up behind Hillary in red Southern states, it's because the federal government is the only chance black folk have in the South.  Who's going to advocate for them, Republicans at the state level, systematically destroying schools, economic opportunity, infrastructure, and voting in black neighborhoods?  And not putting too fine a point on it, Team Bernie is heading for...whiter pastures too.

Sanders is looking ahead to contests in which he has a greater chance of winning — and a chance, he says, to hang onto the momentum and enthusiasm that his strong liberal message has generated in this unusual election year.

He has said he is prepared for a drawn-out battle for the Democratic nomination. But Super Tuesday could test whether voters will let Sanders go that far.

He will win his home state of Vermont, of course. But Sanders is also hoping for victories in such states as Oklahoma and Massachusetts, where polls show Clinton may be more beatable. Sanders also seems to believe that he has a chance of success in Texas, given his campaign schedule there Saturday. But recent polls have shown him down significantly.

If you wonder where the notion that Bernie is less than enthusiastic about the fact that he'll need black votes to win comes from, take a look at who Bernie is talking to.

Or in this case, ignoring completely and taking for granted.

The Whiff Of Desperation, Con't

The "How Republicans Ended Up Nominating Trump" histories are going to be quite fascinating a year from now, but they should all reference this NY Times piece for its frantic rehabilitation of the racist scumbags openly running the GOP, and that Trump can be stopped by a brokered convention.

Don't believe a word of it.

Advisers to Mr. Kasich, the Ohio governor, have told potential supporters that his strategy boils down to a convention battle. Judd Gregg, a former New Hampshire senator who had endorsed Jeb Bush, said Mr. Kasich’s emissaries had sketched an outcome in which Mr. Kasich “probably ends up with the second-highest delegate count going into the convention” and digs in there to compete with Mr. Trump.

Several senior Republicans, including Mr. Romney, have made direct appeals to Mr. Kasich to gauge his willingness to stand down and allow the party to unify behind another candidate. But Mr. Kasich has told at least one person that his plan is to win the Ohio primary on March 15 and gather the party behind his campaign if Mr. Rubio loses in Florida, his home state, on the same day.

In Washington, Mr. Kasich’s persistence in the race has become a source of frustration. At Senate luncheons on Wednesday and Thursday, Republican lawmakers vented about Mr. Kasich’s intransigence, calling it selfishness.

One senior Republican senator, noting that Mr. Kasich has truly contested only one of the first four states, complained: “He’s just flailing his arms around and having a wonderful time going around the country, and it just drives me up the wall.”

Mr. McConnell was especially vocal, describing Mr. Kasich’s persistence as irrational because he has no plausible path to the nomination, several senators said.

While still hopeful that Mr. Rubio might prevail, Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr. McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump’s loss as a given and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a President Hillary Clinton, according to senators at the lunches.

He has reminded colleagues of his own 1996 re-election campaign, when he won comfortably amid President Bill Clinton’s easy re-election. Of Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell has said, “We’ll drop him like a hot rock,” according to his colleagues.

They want to get rid of Kasich, the guy that would actually give both Bernie and Hillary a real race, but they want to stop Trump too because of electability issues?  The GOP Senate is going to attack the nominee for President in order to save themselves?  These assholes have had years, if not decades to distance themselves from Trump's racist hate, and they wallowed in it instead.

Nope, let the GOP burn down to the ground and take Trump with it.  And the GOP Senate.  And God willing, the GOP House as well.

Bobo's Lament

Even as bad as 2016's GOP race has gotten, with outright fascist impulses, Islamophobia, bigotry, and open racism, David Brooks still cannot name the beast in our midst.

Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics. These groups — best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right — want to elect people who have no political experience. They want “outsiders.” They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power.

Ultimately, they don’t recognize other people. They suffer from a form of political narcissism, in which they don’t accept the legitimacy of other interests and opinions. They don’t recognize restraints. They want total victories for themselves and their doctrine.

Sigh.  Both Sides Do It(tm).

We’re now at a point where the Senate says it won’t even hold hearings on a presidential Supreme Court nominee, in clear defiance of custom and the Constitution. We’re now at a point in which politicians live in fear if they try to compromise and legislate. We’re now at a point in which normal political conversation has broken down. People feel unheard, which makes them shout even louder, which further destroys conversation.

And in walks Donald Trump. People say that Trump is an unconventional candidate and that he represents a break from politics as usual. That’s not true. Trump is the culmination of the trends we have been seeing for the last 30 years: the desire for outsiders; the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible; the decline of coherent political parties; the declining importance of policy; the tendency to fight cultural battles and identity wars through political means.

Nowhere in Bobo's piece is the word "Republican" used.  The man has no clue, and will never admit that a generation of false equivalencies by columnists like himself have directly contributed to the situation that the Republican party has 100% created in America.

One party is committing the grave sins that he lists. Only one party is incoherent, bashing, fighting cultural battles through political means.

That party is not the Democratic party.  Donald Trump is not a Democrat.

David Brooks has helped to create the hell he laments today.