MORNING MESSAGE
...
moderator Gwen Ifill flipped the script on race relations in America during the
last Democratic presidential debate ... "If working class white Americans are
about to be outnumbered, are already underemployed in many cases, and one study
found they are dying sooner, don’t they have a reason to be resentful" ...
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders stuck to scripted, generalized positions.
Neither deeply engaged the question. That’s unfortunate, because Democrats are
in a better position to answer it ... Do they have reason to be resentful? Yes,
but let’s examine why, and where that anger would be rightly directed.
Dems Jockey For African-American Vote
Sanders
gains on Clinton nationally. Politico: “…the latest national NBC
News/SurveyMonkey weekly online tracking poll released Tuesday [shows] Hillary
Clinton’s advantage over Bernie Sanders has narrowed to its smallest in the last
seven weeks … Clinton leads Sanders 50 percent to 40 percent … Sanders holds a
narrow 3-point advantage over Clinton (47 percent to 44 percent) among white
voters.”
Clinton
to deliver speech on racism in Harlem today. Politico: “In her speech, which
she is scheduled to deliver after a closed-door meeting with Rev. Al Sharpton,
National Urban League President Marc Morial and NAACP President Cornell Brooks
earlier in the day, Clinton is expected to call for ‘new investments in job
creation to ending redlining to ensuring equal pay for women of color to ending
the school-to-prison pipeline,’ according to a campaign aide.”
Sanders
meets with victims of Flint crisis. W. Post: “The senator from Vermont said
his private meeting with seven or eight Flint residents was among the most
difficult in his public life, and he confessed that he had not realized ‘how
ugly and how horrible and how terrible’ the situation is. ‘It is beyond my
comprehension in the year 2016 in the United States of America we are poisoning
our children,’ Sanders told the crowd here at Eastern Michigan University…”
Sanders
touts 1988 support for Rev. Jesse Jackson. W. Post quotes: “I did it because
I saw in him a man trying to bring working people together … There were three
white elected officials in America that endorsed Jackson in 1988. I was one of
them.”
“Clinton
hit from left and right on immigration” reports W. Post: “…a spot launched
this weekend from the conservative American Crossroads demonstrated how
conservatives are trying to widen the divisions of the Democratic primary.
‘Hillary’s Wall,’ aimed at Spanish-speaking voters in Nevada, uses well-known
but infrequently-replayed clips of a Bush-era Hillary Clinton saying she opposed
‘illegal immigration’ … and voted for a border fence.”
REPUBLICANS PREP FOR BROKERED CONVENTION
Republicans
fret no one will amass enough delegates. Politico: “Mysterious outside
groups are asking state parties for personal data on potential delegates,
Republican campaigns are drawing up plans to send loyal representatives to
obscure local conventions, and party officials are dusting off rulebooks to
brush up on a process that hasn’t mattered for decades.”
George
W. Bush stumps for Jeb in SC. NYT quotes: “These are tough times, and I
understand that Americans are angry and frustrated, but we do not need someone
in the Oval Office who mirrors and inflames our anger and frustration.”
Trump
tries to woo South Carolina Democrats. WSJ: “…Youtube personalities Diamond
and Silk came on stage and urged Democrats to vote for Mr. Trump. ‘All lives
matter,’ Diamond yelled … South Carolina Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster then reminded
the crowd it was an open primary, and Democrats and independents could vote for
Mr. Trump.”
Rush
Limbaugh says Trump’s anti-Bush rhetoric targets Democrats. NYT quotes:
“People think that Mr. Trump was out of control, that he had emotional
incontinence that night … Maybe, but I still think there was a strategy going
into this.”
Trump
threatens third-party run despite earlier pledge. The Hill: “‘When
somebody’s in default, that means the other side can do what they have to do,’
he said. ‘The RNC is in default.’ … Trump said he was disappointed with the RNC
because it stacks the room at debates ‘with special interests and donors.'”
Rubio
further downplays his immigration reform vote. NBC: “‘The Senate immigration
law was not headed towards becoming law,’ he told a questioner at a town hall in
Rock Hill, S.C. ‘Ideally it was headed towards the House, where conservative
members of the House were going to make it even better.'”
James
Dobson campaigns for Cruz. NYT quotes robocall: “Other Republicans are
certainly worthy of consideration, but at this point it looks like a vote for
anyone other than Ted Cruz is a vote for Donald Trump.”
WH Presses GOP On SCOTUS
WH
presses GOP on Supreme Court vacancy. W. Post: “‘This is not the first time
the Republicans have come out with a lot of bluster only to have reality sink
in,’ [WH press sec Eric] Schultz said … Schultz quoted President Ronald Reagan,
who pressed for a vote on his Supreme Court nominee Anthony M. Kennedy, who was
confirmed in 1988: ‘Every day that passes with a Supreme Court below full
strength impairs the people’s business in that crucially important body.'”
Paul
Waldman finds and quotes 1970 law review article by Mitch McConnell: “The
Senate should discount the philosophy of the nominee … The president is
presumably elected by the people to carry out a program and altering the
ideological directions of the Supreme Court would seem to be a perfectly
legitimate part of a Presidential platform”
“[H]istory
supports Mr. Obama” says Prof. Timothy Huebner in NYT oped: “On 13
occasions, a vacancy on the nation’s highest court has occurred — through death,
retirement or resignation — during a presidential election year … In 11 of these
instances, the Senate took action on the president’s nomination. In all five
cases in which a vacancy occurred during the first quarter of the year the
president successfully nominated a replacement.”
When
Republicans blocked LBJ from filling a vacancy, “liberals made them pay for it”
reminds Prof. Josh Zeitz in Politico: “From the date of Fortas’ resignation,
the seat stood vacant for 13 months until Nixon nominated a compromise
candidate, Harry Blackmun. Blackmun, in turn, went on to pen the court’s
decision in Roe
v Wade.”
GOP
obstruction could backfire on Election Day. NYT: “One of [Democrats’] main
concerns for months has been how to reproduce the surge of enthusiasm among
young and minority voters who helped elect President Obama twice. They view the
Republican refusal to consider a nominee with almost a year left in Mr. Obama’s
tenure as a potent weapon to generate excitement.”
Progressive
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