Politico:
“I don’t think you can credibly say that everyone has a right to rise and then say you’re for phasing out Medicare, or repealing Obamacare,” Clinton said, a jab at Bush’s well-known PAC slogan, “Right to Rise.”
“People can’t rise if they can’t afford healthcare,” she continued. “They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on. They can’t rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education. And you can’t seriously talk about the right to rise and support laws that deny the right to vote.” The crowd cheered.
When Bush finally took the stage to address issues of race and repairing American cities, he didn’t hit back. “I’m pleased to see other candidates here as well,” Bush said, even acting like a host in his home state and thanking Clinton, as well as the three other candidates who spoke, by name. (A Clinton spokesman did not respond to a question about whether the candidates crossed paths behind stage.)
A
Maine obit you should not miss:
But in the end Coleen’s untreated personality disorder and addictions prevailed. In later years, after LePage removed poor adults from MaineCare, Coleen could not afford the methadone clinic. Heroin was the cheapest way to avoid going into withdrawal. For readers without loved ones who are opiate addicts, you cannot imagine how powerful and difficult is that disease. The author of this obituary, who grew up comfortably removed from such things, thought he was educated but had no idea. Addicts shoot up to avoid being deathly ill and because the disease heightens also the psychological desire for the drug and the needle. Real addicts rarely manage to get high they just scratch and claw everyday to avoid dope sickness. Coleen wanted to get back into a methadone clinic, but LePage and enough republicans in the Legislature said “No” to the Medicaid expansion. It is no stretch to say that but for LePage’s veto of the Medicaid expansion, Coleen probably would not have shot the heroin that ended her life, and probably would not have had the serious recurring infections that ravaged her limbs the last couple years.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Erica Grieder:
Since I promised you all a new post today, though, I’ll offer a brief comment on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, as a Collin County grand jury is expected to start hearing evidence against him imminently, and may soon charge him with securities fraud. My full comments will be in a forthcoming issue of the magazine, and so my brief comment is just this: if you are surprised that Texas’s new attorney general was under investigation less than three months after he was sworn in as the state’s top law enforcement official, you have only yourself to blame, because Paxton (literally) admitted to a third-degree felony more than a year ago, between the Republican primary and the Republican primary runoff, as it happens.
Matthew Dickinson (Middlebury College, VT) political scientist with 2 on Bernie.
First:
Before my twitter and blog feed is inundated with negative comments from the #feelthebern crowd, let me remind my readers that I’m analyzing where the candidates stand right now, and not expressing a political preference regarding an outcome. As a longtime Bernie-watcher, I’m thoroughly enjoying his time, however brief, on the national stage, and I sincerely hope his run lasts beyond Iowa and New Hampshire if for no other reason than to see Bernie scowl one more time at another inane horserace question from Chuck Todd. Bernie is raising important issues – including concerns about the intersection of race and income inequality – that need to be discussed at the national level. But it is also the case that his “surge” in the polls is much more about pollsters dropping Elizabeth Warren’s name from their list of potential candidates as it is any discernible shift in support away from Clinton. It fits the media horserace narrative to speculate about the possibility, however improbable, that Clinton will stumble and Sanders will step in to steal the nomination. As of today, however, the facts say that is not going to happen. Bernie trails Clinton in all the important indicators; national polls, early state polls, fundraising and party endorsements.
Is there something about Bernie? Yes. Right now, he’s losing.
Second:
My point here is not to declare the race for the Democratic nomination over. As I noted in my response to a couple of commentators yesterday, polls this early are subject to change. More than one of you pointed out (see comments) that Clinton was leading Obama in national polls at this point in the race back at a comparable point in 2007. (For what it is worth, she was up on Obama in the RealClearPolitics aggregate poll by less than 13%, at 38%-25.8% on July 31, 2007. As of today, Clinton is ahead of Bernie by about 40%, 58%-18.2%.)
It is true that at this point, Bernie is an unknown quantity for most Americans. It is possible that as he gains exposure, and his message becomes more widely disseminated, he will actually gain ground on Hillary. Locally, Bernie supporters remain convinced that this is what will occur. As Middlebury College student Lizzie Weiss put it in her story on Bernie that came out in the local Addison Independent yesterday, “Yet while Americans from Brooklyn, N.Y., to the Bay Area of California begin to rally behind Sanders and political pundits grapple with his campaign, there is a sense here, in his home state, that the rest of the country is just now beginning to learn what Vermonters have already long understood.”
His strongest supporters, then, are convinced that in time Bernie’s message will begin resonating with a growing segment of the American public. As evidence of his grass-roots support, they point to the roughly 100,000 Bernie supporters who turned out in a series of “house parties” at some 3,000 locations on Wednesday night. (This article gives a sense of what went on at a typical house party.)
In the meantime, they are not averse to criticizing anyone who might question the reality of #berniementum, as a sampling of these twitter and other online comments responding to yesterday’s post indicates:
Go where the data takes you.
Speaking of which, Philip Bump:
So, at the top, I'll link to these recipes for crow. The first is a crow and mushroom stew, which sounds completely horrifying. Step one? "Clean and cut crows into small portions and let them cook a short time in the lard/shortening in a saucepan, being careful not to brown them." Don't brown the crows, guys. The recipe for crow pie reminds you to remove the bones, a good tip for any pie-making.
Point being that I assumed that Donald Trump would probably pay some sort of penalty for his comments about John McCain and/or that his initial bounce would have faded by now. That doesn't seem to have happened. Ergo: Stew.
John Harwood:
Donald Trump makes mainstream Republicans angry, understandably. His inflammatory rhetoric and sudden rise toward the top of 2016 presidential polls threaten their careers.
Yet Republican political leaders themselves bear some responsibility for Mr. Trump’s ascent. In dealing with the dyspeptic constituency that has empowered them, they’ve repeatedly failed at anger management.
Throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, the Republican Party has been a hothouse of grievance: against his health care law, his immigration policy, even his citizenship. The ire of conservatives helped Republican candidates wrest control from the Democrats of the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014.
But the inability of party leaders to control that intensity has often backfired. In primary campaigns, it has toppled effective Republican lawmakers.
Kimberly Leonard:
Medicare and Medicaid may have passed 50 years ago, but how the nation implemented the complex health care programs that cover elderly, disabled and low-income Americans holds particular importance today. Some look to the impact those programs had as foreshadowing for how the nation will adjust to President Barack Obama's health care law, the Affordable Care Act.