I’ve had a lot of mixed feelings about Hillary Clinton the last several years, including declaring I was through with her after the email scandal erupted. But it should come as no surprise I’m back in the fold now that Donald Trump is steaming toward the Republican nomination.
Super Tuesday is upon us, and it appears hand-wringing, gnashing of teeth and screams of anguish will be the order of day tomorrow night, after the votes are counted.
As you well know, those screams will not be coming from Democrats; they will be from what’s left of the mainline Republican Party, i.e., Mitch McConnell and the other Republican Congress members who have fallen in line behind McConnell’s obstructive, do-nothing leadership.
Maybe you’ve heard that McConnell has just about thrown in the towel as far as his party’s chances of winning the presidency this year.
An excellent story in the Sunday New York Times, said McConnell was holding out hope for a Marco Rubio victory but had “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.”
The story went on to say, “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.”
The story also said that at a recent presentation, political advisers to billionaire conservatives Charles G. and David H. Koch “characterized Mr. Trump’s record as utterly unacceptable, and highlighted his support for government-funded business subsidies and government-backed health care, according to people who attended.”
At this point in the political campaign, with the general election still eight months away, nothing could make me happier than seeing Mitch McConnell and the Koch brothers bitter and blue, with the Democratic frontrunner seemingly on the way to an easy victory in November.
A couple of days ago, in a reply to a commenter, I said the only way Trump could beat Hillary is if every registered African-American and Hispanic voter stayed home on election day. (In the 2012 presidential election, 45 percent of the people who voted for Obama were racial minorities, and many of them will be back to vote for Hillary this year.)
Going back much farther, I went out on a fairly long limb when I made this this prediction in a Nov. 7, 2012, post:
My first feeling, after learning Tuesday night that Barack Obama had won re-election, was that happy days aren’t just here for four more years but quite possibly 12. And for the additional eight years of prospective, Democratic control of the presidency we can thank Obama for naming Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State when he took office. If this 12-year scenario comes to pass, Rush Limbaugh might well be dead before the Republicans regain the White House.
Damn, people, I’m only eight months away from being dead on!
(I swear on my children’s college diplomas, though, this is the last time I’m going to mention that prediction…unless Trump somehow reduces Hillary to jello and beats her in November. Then, I’d eat 100 inches of electronic space.)
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While Bernie Sanders appears to be a delusional candidate with his prediction of a voter “revolution,” the Democratic race has at least been anchored in constructive debate and an atmosphere of respect and dignity. Sanders is smart, quick and does not embarrass himself. Hillary is also fast on her feet, and more poised, polished and credible than Sanders.
On the Republican side? Wow. From the outset, it’s been a damn circus. The enormity of the egos and the volcanic level of the bluster have not only made it hard to watch but have made many of us turn away in shame and pain. Why? Because we know, inside, that we’re a better people than what that field of candidates has projected.
We may well be in for more shame and pain when we watch Trump flail away at Hillary, but, for most rational people, that’s going to quickly turn to anger. And then those angry, rational people are going to storm the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 8, and the rout will be on.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Me, I’m feeling the Bern, cousin!
The crowds he’s been drawing in the Midwest are astounding…Is your mother feeling it, too???
Bernie’s endorsement by former Sec of Labor Robert Reich might have nudged her a bit!
She definitely was intrigued when former Senator Paul Kirk gave that absolutely eloquent endorsement of Bernie — did you read it? Beautifully composed.
But I’m not sure she’s fully ablaze yet!
She is disadvantaged, in that she is still relying on newspapers and television for news, and the corporate news media is beyond inadequate — it’s debased. It’s in complete disgrace.
I’m working on her.
The Millard Filmore blues.
Maybe Trump will end up running as more Whig than Republican.
I hope you’re right, because I cannot begin to imagine a country ran by Trump, and what’s as disturbing is that wife of his being First Lady.
That is an unsettling prospect, Kerri…
Lesbian porno not your thing?
Let’s face it, there are no good choices ANYWHERE, and that is a sad commentary for this nation.
Unfortunately, I think Trump has at least a 40 percent chance of winning the whole thing. To quote H.L. Mencken, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
Kris W. Kobach just embraced Donald Trump, one assumes owing to his alleged immigration policies. If so he picked the wrong horse.
Just today, Glenn Beck is reporting that folks who were in the room when Trump was interviewed by the NYT editorial board are claiming that Trump renounced his own promises regarding immigration and border security saying he would do none of it when he became president. However, it doesn’t matter if those reports are true because his promises are not going to happen anyway.
Take for example his claim that he would cleanse the country of illegals within two years. Utter BS. The immigration courts have never processed more than 250,000 cases in any given year. Do the math, if there are 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, that’s 48 years by which time it wouldn’t matter because all of their kids would be American citizens having been born in this country.
Ah, but The Donald promised to rid the country of anchor babies, didn’t he? Sorry, not going to happen. That, for better, or worse, is settled Constitutional law. SCOTUS has already ruled on the issue and The Donald is wrong.
But even that doesn’t matter because Trump isn’t serious anyway. As a builder and also a man with many holdings in the hospitality industry, Trump knows a UGE portion of his labor force is comprised of international labor because, as The Donald just admitted the other day, Americans won’t do the work for the going wage rates. Even if he could kick these folks out of the country, he won’t because his own enterprises would flounder (again) and fail (again).
You see, at the heart of the immigration problem is the fallacy that it is a problem. No, our bloated entitlement system is the problem and a labor force of folks who have no access to our welfare system is the solution to that problem. And who would that be? You guessed it, international labor either here illegally, or through guest worker programs with no path to citizenship.
In essence, everything Trump is proposing is either unconstitutional, legislatively impossible, or an outright lie. Personally, I think he did this to troll the GOP and make fun of them, but didn’t anticipate the number of Democrats and working/middle class Republicans who would make him a (frightening) movement. Conservatives by-and-large have abandoned him and are pushing Cruz.
Any way it goes though, Kobach just bought a wagon load of manure and traded a healthy chunk of his conservative base for it.