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Sanders' inevitable loss? Well, maybe.

Clare Foren, writing in The Atlantic, adds up Bernie Sanders' wins and sees an avoidable loss. 

Bernie Sanders may be on the verge of a winning streak. After defeating Hillary Clinton in the Indiana Democratic primary, the Vermont senator notched a win in West Virginia on Tuesday, and appears well-positioned for a victory in the upcoming Oregon primary. It’s also likely to help the campaign pull in a fresh flood of small-dollar donations from energized supporters.

That will allow Sanders to claim momentum. ...TheAtlantic

Hurrah!  So what's the problem?

Still, none of that changes the fact that Hillary Clinton has effectively sealed off a pathway to the nomination for Sanders. ...TheAtlantic

Wait a minute.  More yadda yadda about superdelegates?  Yes, but there's another side to this.

A CBS poll from April shows that 44 percent of Democratic primary voters want Sanders to win, but only 23 percent actually believe he will win. That suggests at least some people support the senator to indicate political preference, not because they necessarily believe their vote makes it more likely for him to win. ...TheAtlantic

That's the real problem, in my view.  I have a serious problem with pre-pledged delegates.  For the rest of us peons, self-defeating voting is beyond annoying.  It's childish.

Maybe (finally!) there'll be a backlash.

At the far end of the spectrum, there are the defiant die-hards. These voters willfully reject predictions from the mainstream media and political pundits that Sanders’s path to the nomination is effectively closed off. These are supporters who devote hours to pro-Sanders message boards, and furiously take to Twitter to denounce anyone who portrays the race differently than they do. Hearing people say Sanders can’t win may make these voters even more motivated to show support for him or to volunteer for his campaign in an effort to get out the vote. “Many of his supporters don’t trust the government establishment, but they also don’t trust the media or the polls,” Lilliana Mason, a political science professor at the University of Maryland College Park, said. “So for them, the reports of his demise are premature.” ...TheAtlantic

All the junk that we accuse Washington of perpetrating?  It starts and ends with our votes.  And -- worse -- our regular absence from the voting booth.

Very bad and getting worse

Just this reminder from the New York Times this morning:

This year the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia will be bankrolled entirely with money from corporations and wealthy individuals. Not since the Watergate era, when a $400,000 pledge to the 1972 Republican convention from ITT Corporation was linked to a favorable outcome for the company in a federal antitrust decision, has this happened.

That was then.  This is now:

The law shifted ever-escalating convention costs onto rich donors and corporations like Google, Facebook, Duke Energy, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Bank of America, General Motors and AT&T, which were all past contributors. Corporations can give unlimited cash, services and swag to Democratic and Republican host committees for conventions that basically are four-day-long parties. Shareholders in these companies pick up the tab since the money comes directly from corporate coffers.

Also in the Times, democracy gets a bunch of criticism for being so -- you know -- boringly inclusive. Bernie Sanders is on a streak.  He's been winning some states.  Sounds like the Times believes he should get out of the way:

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont captured the West Virginia primary on Tuesday, forcing Hillary Clinton to continue a costly and distracting two-front battle: to lock down the Democratic nomination and to take on Donald J. Trump in the general election.

Mrs. Clinton has a nearly insurmountable lead in delegates, which Mr. Sanders’s victory, one week after he won Indiana, did little to narrow. But by staying in the race, as he has vowed to do until the Democratic convention in Philadelphia in July, Mr. Sanders continues to tug Mrs. Clinton to the left.

What a drag!  Democracy is so... divisive!

Trump takes aim at Hillary... from the left

"Trump is effectively running to the left of Clinton on many issues" is the top headline in the Post early this morning.  Nothing unusual in that.  Trump has been all over the political map for years. Most of us are.  Trump allegedly likes Bernie. He plays the Hillary=Wall Street melody; he excoriates Bill's NAFTA (who doesn't!). 

How much of that is tactical and how much is genuine respect for Sanders?

The real estate mogul has sought to develop a clear contrast with Clinton on foreign affairs and international trade, calling for an “America First” policy that simultaneously turns her experience as the nation’s chief diplomat against her while tapping into the anxieties of angry voters worried about being left behind by globalization. In recent days, he has also moved to the left on the minimum wage and tax policy, suggesting that he is willing to alter his positions to benefit the middle class. ...WaPo

That's nice. But, as the Post reporter points out,  he's still a racist and a nasty old bugger.  Just how serious is Trump's flirt with America First?

How did Trump happen?

Trump also grasped what Republican élites are still struggling to fathom: the ideology that has gripped their Party since the late nineteen-seventies—anti-government, pro-business, nominally pious—has little appeal for millions of ordinary Republicans. The base of the Party, the middle-aged white working class, has suffered at least as much as any demographic group because of globalization, low-wage immigrant labor, and free trade. Trump sensed the rage that flared from this pain and made it the fuel of his campaign. Conservative orthodoxy, already weakened by its own extremism—the latest, least appealing standard-bearer was Ted Cruz—has suffered a stunning defeat from within. And Trump has replaced it with something more dangerous: white identity politics.  ...GeorgePacker,NewYorker

Some see Trump as a weapon against Obama's "extremism"-- apparently connected to his skin color.

There have been some conservative writers who have tried to hang Trump’s success on the current president, pointing to his putatively extreme positions. But in most respects, Obama is a conventional politician—well within the center-left of the Democratic Party. Or at least, he’s governed in that mode, with an agenda that sits safely in the mainstream. Laws like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act weren’t impositions from the far left; they were built out of proposals from the right and left, passed by a majority of Congress that was elected to pursue solutions on health care and the economy. Barack Obama is many things, but conservative rhetoric aside, he’s no radical.

We can’t say the same for Obama as a political symbol, however. In a nation shaped and defined by a rigid racial hierarchy, his election was very much a radical event, in which a man from one of the nation’s lowest castes ascended to the summit of its political landscape. ...JamelleBouie,Slate

I wouldn't call Obama's background "lowest caste."  His mother was an anthropologist, daughter of middle class parents.  His father was a middle-class, highly educated Kenyan (Phi Beta, graduate fellowship, Harvard etc.).  Obama had a pretty comfortable middle-class upbringing and education. 

Trump's background is all business.  He had the good luck to inherit money and a full-blown business and a fantasy that he did it all by himself. 

Some see echoes of Ross Perot:

If the Trump phenomenon seems new and strange, it may be because John D. Rockefeller never ran for president. Nor did Vanderbilt, Edison, Disney, Hearst, Westinghouse or Henry Ford. Neither, in more modern times, have Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Carl Icahn or Bill Gates. As of Tuesday, neither had billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the three-term Gotham mayor. So, except for the success of businessman Ross Perot in 1992—he “succeeded” only in splitting the Republican vote and handing the White House to Bill Clinton—there is scant history here of tycoons deigning to enter the lesser game of politics.

“Would this have happened if Kim Kardashian had run, or Caitlyn Jenner, or Octomom?” Maclean’s asked Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at SMU. “No, because mere celebrity is not enough,” he replied. “Some people believe that celebrity, combined with accomplishment in another field like neurosurgery or developing real estate, can translate into politics. Those people are wrong.”...Allen Abel,Maclean's

Without the media, that zephyr we call "celebrity" wouldn't exist. 

So let's come out and say it:  Donald Trump is -- as much as anything -- a creature of the media. Irresponsible media?  Sure.

A wonderful, creative solution to the Trump problem

Why, of course!  What took them so long?!

William Kristol, the longtime editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and a leading voice on the right, met privately with the 2012 nominee on Thursday afternoon to discuss the possibility of launching an independent bid, potentially with Romney as its standard-bearer.

“He came pretty close to being elected president, so I thought he may consider doing it ..." ...WaPo

So. You don't like the dangerous nut you're stuck with this time.  So you decide to rally 'round your previous failure?

All together now...

"Compared to What" lyrics