Daniel Drezner, writing at the Washington Post, still thinks Donald Trump will have a lot of trouble winning the Republican Presidential nomination. His two main points: Mr. Trump hasn't done the work that would actually turn voters out (like buy voter databases and hire field staff), and Howard Dean, also, looked fairly inevitable in 2004 "right up to the moment people voted." Mr. Drezner isn't the only one who's ever cited Howard Dean in suggesting that actually pulling the lever for Donald Trump might give a lot of folks pause once they're in the voting booth. But Democratic primary voters are a different animal than Republican primary voters -- I wonder what, if anything, gives the latter pause.
The "liberal" media has heavily reported Paul Ryan's desire to spend more time with family as an obstacle to him taking the Speakership, but Bryce Covert at Think Progress reminds us that Mr. Ryan has consistently opposed policies that would help poor working families achieve a similar work-life balance, like paid sick leave. It's one thing to walk the walk about work-life balance yourself, and another thing entirely to cut off poor people at the knees so they can't do the same, because you say it's a "culture problem" when people can't get jobs corporations aren't creating.
The incomparable Dave Zirin reminds us not to resort to false innocence or cynicism when confronting the Louisville basketball recruiting scandal, wherein the University of Louisville allegedly paid a "Louisville madam" to ply players and recruits with sex. The path of cynicism is always the wrong path -- I'd put "always" in shouty-caps, if I weren't philosophically opposed to shouty-caps -- but the path of false innocence, a path to which I'm just as susceptible as anyone else, also blinds us to the sexism of this apparent "recruiting tool." I mean, just because "everyone does it" doesn't mean it's not outrageous.
This Center for American Progress report tells us, in about as restrained a voice as is humanly possible, what's wrong with the economy: corporations don't invest in the future, despite high profits and low borrowing costs. The right counters that corporations just need more tax cuts, but we've had nearly four decades now of evidence that tax cuts haven't done much for the economy but have starved our government of necessary revenues. And though CAP won't come out and say it, I will: corporations won't invest because the CEOs want all the money for themselves. I'll say this, too: when we condemn corporations who only care about short-term profits, we're the conservatives in the room, not the corporate lackeys in the Republican party.
Finally, there's Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, again, saying that Adolf Hitler really didn't want to kill the Jews but the then-Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was (of course!) a Palestinian, forced his hand. But you know what's getting lost in all the brouhaha about this, ah, questionable thesis? That Hitler killed the Jews. You'd think a "conservative hero" like Mr. Netanyahu would know to blame the people who actually do evil, rather than the people who "forced" them to do evil. But maybe Mr. Netanyahu doesn't get that because he's a reactionary, not a conservative, and reactionaries don't get anything but what makes them angry or hard.
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