Francis Wilkinson:
The agony of the GOP, unfortunately, will continue to be foisted on the nation at large. Ornstein, who predicted Trump's success, also has a four-point prediction of the Republicans' agenda if Trump loses in November.
- Delegitimize the president.
- Delegitimize government.
- Incite their base to anger.
- Suppress the vote of the other side.
That's a familiar recipe. But a Republican opposition under President Hillary Clinton would likely be marked by weaker leadership (undermined by Trump's candidacy), a higher concentration of anti-government radicals (as more moderate Republicans lose seats) and a notable uptick in political desperation (as the White House appears increasingly beyond grasp). Republicans have already stooped to nominate Trump. The bar could go lower.
ICYMI, and so it doesn’t go down the memory hole, here’s what happened Tuesday prior to the anodyne Trump speech, from MSNBC:
The Republican Party devolved into all-out civil war Tuesday as Donald Trump defended his racially tinged criticism of a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit alleging fraud by Trump University. GOP elected officials on Capitol Hill denounced the attack as offensive and one senator withdrew his endorsement of Trump entirely – forcing a hard reckoning among party leaders weighing the wisdom of hitching their White House hopes to a candidate whose racial views they describe as incompatible with party principles.
Libby Nelson:
Donald Trump is no stranger to lawsuits. During his career, he's been sued nearly 1,500 times, and sued others even more than that. Right now, as the presumptive Republican nominee for president, he's the subject of more than 50.
But the lawsuits over the defunct Trump University clearly have him rattled. He's made the judge in the case, Gonzalo Curiel, a target of racist insults, arguing that Curiel's Latino heritage means he can't judge fairly. Given that hearings and court dates are scheduled throughout the summer before a trial begins in November, the controversy isn't going away.
Trump's animosity toward Curiel is longstanding — in February he initially accused him of being biased because he was Hispanic, but it didn't get much attention. And Trump has good reason to fear the lawsuits over Trump University. The suits make the case that Trump is not a wildly successful entrepreneur or a canny dealmaker, but a fraudster who made promises he couldn't keep. They have already revealed the details of the Trump University scam. They still could reveal a closely guarded secret: his net worth.
Even worse, the targets of Trump University look very much like Trump's voters: middle-class Americans who think he can solve their problems and provide them with a better life. Trump's campaign rests on the promise that he will turn his nastiness outward in order to help the country — that he will, in his words, be "greedy for America." The Trump University case suggests that even when he was pretending to offer a service to help others, he was really helping himself.
Reuters:
Senator Elizabeth Warren will soon endorse presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and, while not currently interested in serving as her running mate, has not ruled it out, several sources close to Warren told Reuters.
Monkey Cage:
There is no “Trump Bump” in the polls — just a growing lead for the Democrats
Lots of commentary has accompanied the “Trump Bump,” as the alleged bump in Donald Trump’s poll numbers has been called. While most polls had Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, up by a solid 10-point margin as late as March, this lead seemed to have shrunk. Huffington Post’s Pollster counts about 100 head-to-head polls for Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump since the start of 2016. Their model estimates that Clinton’s lead has shrunk to 4 points.
Is this shift real? We do not think so. Based on data we have collected using Pollfish, we see the opposite: a slow and steady rise for the eventual Democratic nominee…
Our data is clear: the trend is in favor of the Democratic nominee. Donald Trump is starting his presidential campaign with a serious deficit, not a surge.
Norm Ornstein with an important piece:
How to Fix a Broken Mental-Health System
I used to pass most of the [homeless] people on the streets by studiously looking the other way, sometimes reacting with annoyance if someone was talking to himself or shouting. But after a difficult, 10-year journey of serious mental illness with my brilliant and talented son, which ended in tragedy, I have a different attitude. My son had, as an integral part of his illness, a phenomenon called anosygnosia, the inability to recognize you are ill. And given the laws and approaches in the country, since he was over 18 when he became ill, my wife and I were powerless to do anything to help. He did not end up homeless, or tased or shot by police, or abused or killed in jail or prison, which is the fate of many with serious mental illness. But he died at 34 from an accident shaped by his lack of judgment from his illness. I encountered in the worst possible way the tragic nature of these terrible brain diseases and the tragic failure of our policies to find ways to help reduce the pain and the costs, in money and heartache, that come with them.
Cultural dynamics and public-policy choices made my son’s problems, and those of others like him, much worse; our focus has been far more on less serious illnesses like anxiety and depression than on the most serious mental illnesses, and our deep and understandable concern about civil liberties has gone too far when it comes to those who either don’t recognize they are ill or have deep psychoses. For them, freedom of choice can mean homelessness, jail, or worse. Our commendable sensitivity to privacy also means that parents and other loved ones can be shut out of any role and knowledge of what their children, grandchildren, or siblings are encountering within the system.
WaPo:
California was the biggest delegate prize of 2016 for Democrats. Sanders spent the better part of the past month camped out there. And Clinton beat him by 13 points – or nearly half a million votes.
She won the second most valuable prize available last night, New Jersey, by 26 points. And she defeated Sanders in New Mexico and South Dakota.
The Democratic coalition will ultimately unify behind Clinton – as long as she pays a modicum of respect to Sanders, which she will – because the liberal base does not want Donald Trump to become president. And Clinton benefits enormously from growing concerns among independent voters about the presumptive Republican nominee.
This is amazing, from Joanna Castle Miller (with permission):
Over the last week, I spent time with all of the 3 major campaigns here in CA as part of the show I’ve been working on. Everyone I met was polite, energized, and passionate. But I noticed one big difference between Hillary’s supporters and everyone else.
When I spoke with Trump and Bernie supporters, they were mostly eager to get in front of a camera. They spoke with a lot of confidence, and they spoke very freely.
Almost all of Hillary’s volunteers (approx the same number as were at Bernie’s office that same day) were women, of varying age and race. And her supporters did *not* clamor for the camera. It was the opposite. They wanted to be interviewed, but they debated it for what seemed like forever. They got quiet and asked questions like, “Will my name be used?” “Where will this be seen?” and “Can I wear sunglasses?” Some of them thanked me and said no, and they looked really sad about it. When I pressed them, they told me they were terrified of the online threats they might receive, and in some cases had already received. Even lead organizers admitted they hadn’t put up a yard sign or bumper sticker for fear of retaliation. When women walked in to volunteer for the phone bank, they were assured they wouldn’t have to give their names if they were afraid.
Hillary’s office was tucked away in a dying mall, with little hand-drawn posters taped up, cheerleader-style. It was cheery, but quiet and nearly invisible. A lot like those volunteers.
This is not to generalize all women as Hillary supporters or as timid – of course not! But I personally believe there’s a correlation between her largely female volunteer base (as of now), her unexpected voter turnout, and the fear so many women have of expressing themselves online, or on the street, or in the board room.
A lot of people on social media have wondered where all of Hillary’s votes came from, because there was no signage, no outpouring of love on Facebook. It shouldn’t surprise us that when we fail to listen to women’s voices well in the public sphere, we mis-calculate what women are actually thinking and doing in private. We didn’t know where Hillary’s votes were coming from because they didn’t feel it was safe for them to tell us in the first place.
Amy Davidson:
At the end of the speech, before walking off the stage to the sound of David Bowie’s “Starman,” Sanders raised his fist and declared, “The struggle continues!” It is a slogan that leaves open the question of which struggle, exactly, and against whom. No one has sole ownership of idealism, or of bitterness, in this campaign. But there can be only one Democratic nominee in the end. Bernie knows that, too.
It begins:
Bernie Sanders must walk away so Donald Trump won’t win
By The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board
After House Speaker Paul Ryan’s criticism of it as “the textbook definition of a racist comment,” Donald Trump’s abrupt realization that it’s unfair to declare a federal judge can’t be impartial because of his heritage is welcome. It’s awful for a major-party presidential nominee to say such things. But it’s also ominous in that it suggests Trump probably won’t self-destruct before November — that he may yet heed strategists and adopt a blander persona more acceptable to millions of unhappy voters eager to vote for an outsider. Even one with more baggage than Lindbergh Field.
The possibility of a Trump victory remains shocking. Many of his supporters say he’s facing criticism primarily because he refuses to be “politically correct” about immigration. We find Trump’s rhetoric to be awful, but we are at least as alarmed about the prospect his bluster could lead us into war or break U.S. commitments in a way that causes a global recession. No presidential nominee in modern history has been so unnerving that he prompted a former CIA director to say it may be necessary for the U.S. military to ignore his orders. No nominee has suggested that the U.S. should consider not paying its creditors in full.
These are not minor issues or insignificant gaffes.
Everyone agrees Bernie needs to do this at his own pace. They also agree he needs to do this. And Most agree he will.
WaPo:
Hillary Clinton's clinching of the Democratic presidential nomination this week has officially set in motion the effort to mend the wounds of a sometimes bitter primary contest.
Party leaders hoping that Sen. Bernie Sanders's backers will support Clinton this fall have at least one reason for optimism: There are apparently fewer hard feelings among Bernie supporters this year than there were among Clinton backers when she lost the presidential nomination to Barack Obama in 2008.
Bloomberg:
Early evidence suggests that the Affordable Care Act is working — at least in one important respect, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Analysts Nicole Dussault, Maxim Pinkovskiy, and Basit Zafar state that the primary purpose of this law "is not to protect our health per se, but to protect our finances." And they've found a big difference between indebtedness trends in states that embraced the Medicaid expansion versus the ones that did not.