The Editorial Board of The New York Times takes note that An Openly Gay Man Runs the Army:
Last week an openly gay man, Eric Fanning, became secretary of the Army. Read that sentence again and contemplate what it reveals about how much and how quickly American society has changed. Only five years ago, openly gay people were barred from serving in its armed forces. During Mr. Fanning’s lengthy confirmation process, his sexual orientation was simply not an issue. That is a tribute to those who fought so hard to repeal the ban, and a measure of the nation’s at times uncertain, but as yet unfailing, march toward equality.
In retrospect the fight that convulsed this country over whether gay Americans should serve in uniform seems senseless, almost absurd. Yet it is instructive, if only because a Pentagon plan to allow transgender Americans to serve openly in uniform remains stalled by a similar, albeit quieter, debate.
Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times writes—Obama's pivot to Asia is working:
When President Obama declared in 2011 that he wanted U.S. foreign policy to pivot to Asia, some derided the move as a clumsy attempt to flee the messy conflicts of the Middle East.
But the pivot has actually worked pretty well – as will be evident when Obama travels to Asia this week. Almost every country in the region is clamoring for a closer relationship with the United States.
The most striking case is Vietnam, most of whose leaders are old enough to have fought in their country’s war with the United States. The communist regime has been openly courting a deeper military relationship, and has even invited the U.S. Navy to return to Cam Ranh Bay, its base during much of the war. During his visit, Obama is expected to announce an expansion of American military sales.
Paul Krugman at The New York Times writes—Remembrance of Booms Past:
If Hillary Clinton wins in November, Bill Clinton will occupy a doubly unique role in U.S. political history — not just as the first First Husband, but also as the first First Spouse who used to be president. Obviously he won’t spend his time baking cookies. So what will he do?
Last week Mrs. Clinton stirred up a flurry of comments by suggesting that Mr. Clinton would be “in charge of revitalizing the economy.” You can see why she might want to say that, since people still remember the good times that prevailed when he was in office. How his role might be defined in practice is much less clear.
But never mind. What I want to do right now is talk about the lessons the Clinton I boom actually holds for a potential Clinton II administration.
Mike Konczal at The Nation writes—Monopoly Power Is on the Rise in the US. Here’s How to Fix That:
As if dealing with airlines wasn’t enough of a hassle, now flyers have to deal with airline monopolies. A recent study by Jose Azar, Martin C. Schmalz, and Isabel Tecu found that five of the seven largest institutional shareholders of United Airlines were also among the largest shareholders of Southwest and Delta. The researchers showed that mergers among these giant shareholders, such as with BlackRock’s purchase of Barclays Global Investors, results in higher prices for consumers. Even more disturbing, such monopolies are on the rise in dozens of other industries. [...]
When it comes to addressing the new monopoly power in the United States, we should turn once again to public-utility regulations. The utilities here are platforms and infrastructure that everyone can rely on to carry out their activities. Public-utility regulation, which is designed to make certain resources universally accessible, is usually discussed in the context of natural monopolies, especially regarding expensive investments in infrastructure. But it’s broader than that, and it may be even more important in curtailing monopoly power than just breaking those monopolies up.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—Election From Hell:
The year was 1991. I was a college student in my home state of Louisiana. And the race was a gubernatorial runoff between the Democrat Edwin Edwards (who reportedly once counseled Bill Clinton on how to deal with the Gennifer Flowers scandal) and the Republican David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (who this year endorsed Donald Trump). It was the first gubernatorial election in which I voted. [...]
Though he didn’t win, [Ku Klux Klansman David] Duke’s imprint on the state was real. As The Times reported in 2014: “Two decades later, much of his [1991] campaign has merged with the political mainstream here, and rather than a bad memory from the past, Mr. Duke remains a window into some of the murkier currents in the state’s politics, where Republicans have sought and eventually won Mr. Duke’s voters, while turning their back on him.”
Whether or not Trump loses in November to “crooked Hillary,” as he has dubbed her, he may well be an important part of the future of his party. He has given his Republican supporters permission to vocalize their anti-otherness rage, and that will not easily be undone.
As a Louisiana boy experiencing a confounding sense of déjà vu, let me assure you: There is no way to un-cook the gumbo.
Thomas Frank at The Guardian writes—Why Hillary Clinton's 90s nostalgia is so dangerous:
Donald Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” is one big, flatulent exercise in delusional nostalgia, as so many have noted. Given the likely outcome of the American presidential contest, however, it is Hillary Clinton’s delusional nostalgia that may ultimately prove more harmful for the country.
Campaigning in Kentucky recently, she promised that, should she be elected, she would task former president Bill Clinton with “revitalizing the economy, because he knows how to do it”. A few minutes before, she had recited her husband’s qualifications for this job: “In the 90s, everybody’s income went up, not just people at the top. We lifted more people out of poverty than at any time in our recent history.” And so on. [...]
American columnists have already expressed their annoyance with Hillary for offloading her duties-to-come onto her husband and thus compromising the first female presidency before it’s even started. But what really lends distinction to her announcement is the perversity, the sheer incoherence of the kind of policies she seems to hope her husband will recommend.
Alex Shepard at The New Republic writes—It’s Not Bernie Sanders’s Job to Unify the Democratic Party:
Team Bernie and Team Hillary are at war. The two sides have skirmished throughout the election, but the chaotic Nevada Democratic Convention in Las Vegas last weekend has prompted a bloodbath that—if the pundits are to be believed—could tear the party apart and hand the presidency to Donald Trump. On Tuesday, CNNwarned that Democrats were worried about the growing “revolt” within their party and headlines throughout the week warned that the Democratic rift could cost Hillary Clinton the election and cause another Chicago 1968, all to serve the growing personality cult of Bernie Sanders.
The Clinton and Sanders camps are, in the usual schoolyard fashion, pointing fingers at each other. The truth is, both sides are to blame. But the onus is on Clinton, not Sanders, to turn down the temperature. If she intends to unify the party, now is the time to prove she can do it—that’s her burden as the frontrunner and likely nominee. [...]
… characterizing Sanders’s supporters as a mob intent on revolting against the party ignores these voters’ genuine grievances and the political and economic changes they want to enact. It’s also a lousy argument, one that relies on conflation—that the trolls and Sanders’s base are one and the same—and a series of counterfactuals and half-baked historical allusions. Criticism of Sanders is based on what might happen if he stays in the race and never considers that an energized youth wing could have positive effects in November. Meanwhile, it ignores the fact that, as The New York Times reported on Friday, most Democrats don’t believe their party is divided: Eight in ten are both hopeful for the party’s future and believe that Clinton can unify it before the convention in July. (Over 80 percent of Republican voters surveyed, meanwhile, felt their party was divided.)
Bill McKibben at The Guardian writes—Let's give up the climate change charade: Exxon won't change its stripes:
In 2015, shareholder activists put forward a variety of resolutions, the most important of which would have set goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Again Exxon opposed them, its CEO informing shareholders that if climate change caused any “inclement weather” humans would “adapt”.
Here’s what’s happened since that meeting: we’ve had 12 straight months of record-busting temperatures; this February and March were the hottest months ever recorded on our earth. We’ve seen the highest wind speeds ever recorded in the western and southern hemispheres. We’ve watched the rapid death of vast swaths of coral, as hot oceans triggered by far the largest “bleaching” event ever recorded. [...]
With that as the backdrop, we approach the next Exxon annual meeting at the end of the month. Once again environmentalists are presenting the same resolutions, in a kind of rite of spring that’s likely to have the usual outcome. [...]
“Waste of time” is how New York divestment activist Mark Dunlea characterizes it. And he’s right since time is the thing in short supply. Since this kabuki dance started in 1990, CO2 levels in the atmosphere have gone from about 350 parts per million to more than 400. Since this charade began the planet has exited the Holocene, that 10,000 year stretch of benign climatic stability that underwrote the rise of civilizations.
Jeet Heer at The New Republic writes—The race war version of The Apprentice is a disturbing glimpse into Trump’s mind:
Andrew Kaczynski has posted a remarkable audio of a 2005 appearance by Trump on “The Howard Stern Show” in which the presumptive Republican nominee talked about his unsuccessful push for a version of the reality show where the teams would be divided along racial lines. NBC nixed the idea but Trump was still keen on it, despite Stern’s skeptical questioning. “Wouldn’t that set off a racial war?” Stern asked.
Trump had put much thought into his idea. He wanted the white team to be all blonde but the black team to be an “assortment” of blacks of differing skin colors. Racial consciousness and competition is clearly never far from his mind. Although Trump flip-flops on many issues, there are three he’s been consistent on all his life: supporting mercantilist trade wars, upholding gender hierarchy, and racism. If he’s elected, these ideas will play out on a stage far greater than a reality show.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Fighting phony ‘populism’:
On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) offered a model for the conversation we need. Speaking at the New America Foundation, she laid out what amounted to a bill of rights for the growing number of Americans engaged in contract, part-time and temporary work in the “gig” economy.
Warren was careful to note how technological innovations “have improved our lives in countless ways.” Uber and Lyft, for example, have challenged local taxi monopolies and provided “more rides, cheaper rides, and shorter wait times.”
But she also pointed out how the companies have “resisted rules designed to promote rider safety and driver accountability” and that “their business model is, in part, dependent on extremely low wages for drivers.”
Acknowledging both the gains and the problems of the new economy is the first step toward wisdom about where we need to go.
“To fully realize the potential of this new economy,” Warren argued, “laws must be adapted to make sure that the basic bargain for workers remains intact, and that workers have the chance to share in the growth they help produce.”
David Atkins at The Washington Monthly writes—Get Ready for a Long, Very Ugly Election Won on the Ground:
… the way both sides will try to win is not to convince the disaffected that their candidate will affect dramatic positive changes (though Trump may have some disaffected voters with whom he can make that argument; Clinton’s chance of persuading her own version of the same is somewhat less due to her intentionally incrementalist message), but to scare them into believe that the other candidate will make dramatic negative changes.
In other words, Trump will try to convince apathetic conservative that Clinton will turn America into a gun-free Venezuelan socialist despotism, while Clinton will try to convince apathetic liberals that Trump will turn America into an unstable, trigger-happy fascist dictatorship. Clinton will use Trump’s lascivious past against him, even as Trump brings up decades of unsavory personal Clinton associations. It’s going to a very nasty affair. The one big advantage Democrats will have is a probable surge in the Latino vote out of genuine self-preservation.
In the meantime, the election will actually be won not in the air, but on the ground. The ugliness on the air will depress turnout even further, which will require campaign organizers to depend on millions of face-to-face conversations with voters on the fence about whether to vote at all.
All of which is to say this: as we approach the general election, those who want to help their candidate win in November should probably spend a lot less time arguing with other people in online forums or obsessing over television ads, and a lot more time making calls and knocking on doors. That’s where this very ugly game is going to be won and lost.
Ruth Conniff at The Progressive writes—Ralph Nader's Democracy Crusade:
...whatever you think of the wisdom of Nader’s third-party bid, or how much blame for the 2000 result can be laid at his feet (as opposed to the lackluster campaign of Al Gore), Nader knows a great deal about how to build a national progressive political infrastructure. He has done it before, with his public interest research groups.
Nader did not do it through the Green Party after he ran for President. But neither, to be fair, did Barack Obama, whose Organizing for America became not a progressive pressure group, as it was originally conceived, but a mere fundraising vehicle for the national Democratic Party. The Bernie Sanders campaign just might grow into something more lasting. Naturally, Nader himself has some thoughts on Sanders’s next steps.
“What Bernie Sanders should do if he doesn’t win is turn himself into a civic mobilizer,” Nader says.
Nader has some specific ideas for how to do that. It should start, he says, with a big rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., after the primary is over, followed by a rollout of further rallies across the country.
“He has to avoid allowing himself to be turned into a toady for Hillary Clinton,” Nader says of Sanders. “The Democrats are going to try to absorb him and neutralize him and turn him into a ditto-head.”
Chris Hedges at TruthDig writes—Reform or Revolution:
We who seek to build radical third-party movements must recognize that it is not about taking power now. It is about taking power, at best, a decade from now. Revolutions, Luxemburg reminded us, take time.
In an understanding that eludes many Bernie Sanders supporters, Luxemburg also grasped that socialism and imperialism were incompatible. She would have excoriated Sanders’ ostrichlike refusal to confront American imperialism. Imperialism, she understood, not only empowers a war machine and enriches arms merchants and global capitalists. It is accompanied by a poisonous ideology—what social critic Dwight Macdonald called the “psychosis of permanent war”—that makes socialism impossible.