CT News:
NEWTOWN – For a team of 26 bicyclists who will ride from Town Hall to Washington, D.C., on Saturday to honor victims of the Sandy Hook massacre and to call on lawmakers to reduce gun violence, the annual event has become less about their own healing and more about the bigger picture.
“Now we ride to honor all the victims of gun violence, to build bridges, and to unite Americans in this movement,” says Monte Frank, the founder of the ride and a Sandy Hook resident.
I'll be commenting less than usual this am, because I'll be there to see them off. Two of my fellow docs, Bill Begg and Armand Daccache, will be riding this year with Monte and the team.
Michael Tomasky:
More serious debates will sometimes compare the positions and platforms of the Democrat and the left alternative. But in my experience, these debates also tend to get personal pretty quickly: "I just can't stand Al Gore," and so on. We're human beings, after all, and it's understandable to feel that you have to be able to at least tolerate the sight of this person you're going to be exposed to on a daily basis for the next four to eight years.
But it's not a good way to think about lesser-evilism. Yes, the candidates' platform positions tell us certain things about their political imagination, their vision of a just society and, more prosaically, which wealthy interests they're unwilling to risk offending. So they do count for something.
But the right way to think about one's vote for president is to think about the presidency not as a person, but as a thing—a huge, sprawling, complex, cumbrous, many-tentacled thing. The executive branch is a corporation. Or, if it makes you feel better, a huge nonprofit. It's thousands of people doing thousands of things: big things, like setting Middle East policy, and small things, like making sure a few painters in central West Virginia are getting a fair wage for federal contract work.
And on this score, the differences between the two major parties are vaster than vast. This maybe didn't used to be so, back when there were actual moderate Republicans. But now? With the Republican Party controlled by the radical right, a Republican presidency doesn't mean merely that you're going to have to see that distasteful reactionary with the cracker-ish accent on your TV screen for the next few years. It means that thousands of people are going to be making many thousands of deeply reactionary decisions, across all federal agencies and departments. This stuff doesn't make the front pages. It rarely makes the news at all. But it goes on, and it affects all of us every day: decisions about civil-rights and environmental enforcement, about the protection of public lands, about the ethical questions raised in scientific research, about the safety of consumer products (and now financial instruments, thanks to Elizabeth Warren), about which polluting or swindling corporations to investigate and with how much zeal… You get the picture.
More politics and policy below the fold.
NY Times:
A racist song that caused a national uproar when it was caught on video was a fixture within a fraternity chapter at the University of Oklahoma and not an anomaly, the university reported Friday, and members first learned it at a gathering of the national fraternity four years ago.
“It was learned by chapter members on a national leadership cruise sponsored by the national organization of Sigma Alpha Epsilon,” the university said in a brief report on the results of its inquiry into the episode. “Over time, the chant was formalized in the local S.A.E. chapter and was taught to pledges as part of the formal and informal pledgeship process.”
The national fraternity released a statement confirming that its members from the University of Oklahoma “likely learned a racist chant while attending a national Leadership School about four years ago.” It said it continues to investigate its more than 200 chapters, and has not turned up any sign “that the chant is widespread.”
Forbes:
In a new book, 2016 and Beyond: How Republicans Can Elect a President in the New America, veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres argues that given demographic trends, Republicans need to attract more minority voters or face Democrats winning the White House in 2016 and on into the foreseeable future. Ayres is founder and president of North Star Opinion Research and has consulted for high level Republican candidates and conservative organizations.
Below is an interview I conducted with Ayres to discuss his book and Republican political fortunes in America’s new demographic reality.
Charlie Cook:
There are as many ways to look at presidential nomination contests as there are political aficionados. A few weeks ago, I wrote about my preferred method for understanding the GOP race: treating it like the NCAA basketball tournament. According to this scheme, the Republican race consists of four brackets—the Establishment bracket; the Secular/Conventional Conservative bracket; the Tea Party/Populist Conservative bracket; and the Social, Cultural, and Evangelical Conservative bracket—with the winner of each heading to the Final Four.
I've used this analogy myself. So, Bush, Walker, Cruz/Paul and who cares? leads each of the brackets, respectively.
WaPo:
In his eight years as the Senate’s Democratic leader, Harry Reid earned a reputation for legislative sorcery epitomized by the way in which he muscled President Obama’s health-care reform bill through the Senate.
And so, it may be fitting that the Nevadan’s retirement announcement came Friday accompanied by an almost magical development: a quiet and bloodless succession.
Reid’s endorsement of his top deputy, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) makes Schumer the heavy favorite to assume the Democratic leader’s chair in 2017, forestalling a messy intracaucus battle that would have played out over the next two years.
David Leonhardt:
Ted Cruz received almost 4.5 million votes in the 2012 Texas Senate election, which he won in a landslide. Millions more Americans, outside Texas, agree with his aggressive brand of conservatism. He has been one of the most influential figures in Congress lately, and this week he became the first major candidate to announce an official 2016 presidential campaign.
He also has virtually no chance of winning the Republican nomination, let alone of becoming president.
So what are we in the media supposed to do about Mr. Cruz’s candidacy? He is, on the one hand, a major figure in American politics, with a dedicated following. On the other hand, many leading figures in the Republican Party — people who control money and influence voters — believe Mr. Cruz would severely damage the party’s chances of winning in 2016 and will fight against his candidacy if he becomes a serious threat.
And he probably won’t ever become such a threat anyway.