From what I can see, they’re already projecting Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders to win the Wisconsin primary. I haven’t archived a story on this yet and it shouldn’t be assumed that I will.
The obvious temptation will be to attribute slow progress in the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices to political considerations. That may be so, but bear in mind that FBI Director James Comey has a reputation stemming from an incident during his service with the George W. Bush administration in which he “made headlines by rushing to a Washington hospital to prevent White House counsel Alberto Gonzales from getting a bedridden Attorney General John Ashcroft to sign off on reauthorizing a domestic surveillance program.” He was also “a major player in investigating [in 2004] the mishandling of classified information by former President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger.” Allegedly, “whatever the verdict is, both parties will have to accept it because Comey is, in many ways, untouchable.”[1]
From what I can see so far, it is unclear that this massive leak exposes any violations of the law. But it’s generating plenty of heat as constituents wonder why their politicians employ these sorts of financial vehicles.
I’ve generally, but not always,[1] tried to stop short of forecasting a Donald Trump win in November, although with Hillary Clinton as his likely opponent, it certainly looks that way to me.[2] Now a couple economic models have forecast a Republican victory, even if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, and a third predicts a Democratic victory, but President Barack Obama’s approval rating has risen, which might tip the balance toward two forecasting a Democratic victory.[3]
I think I’ve made clear before, probably in response to an earlier article forecasting a Trump victory based on a model,[4] that I don’t think this is the year to rely on any modeling. This year is just too different from previous election years, with the establishment coming under serious challenge on both left and right. I think the Democrats’ failure to nominate Bernie Sanders would mean that Donald Trump, assuming he in fact wins the Republican nomination, would be the only populist, albeit authoritarian populist, voice that people whom the elite have left to twist in the wind[5] can turn to. I think that while a great many people will be repulsed by Donald Trump, their anger at the establishment (functionalist conservatives) and the choices they’re being offered[6] may be such that they may also simply refuse to turn out for Hillary Clinton in November.
So the part of Vicki Needham’s article I would listen to is this:
“As economists this is a very unusual election and there’s a lot more uncertainty introduced this time around that could upset the balance and the historical relationship of how marginal voters vote,” said Dan White, an economist with Moody’s Analytics who oversees the firm’s monthly election model.
Ray Fair, a Yale professor who launched his model in 1978, told The Hill that while all elections include unruly features that an economic model can’t pick up, “this one seems particularly unusual.”
“If there’s any time in which personalities would trump the economy it would be this election,” Fair said.[7]
Meanwhile, thinking surely I should have heard something by now, I also tried to chase down confirmation of the story yesterday on Bernie Sanders having won Nevada after all.[8] I only found one story covering what happened at all, in the Washington Post. It says only that Sanders narrowed the gap, with Clinton still ahead, 18-17, barely mentions that “the rules of which were the source of a good deal of controversy among Clinton and Sanders partisans,” and quotes spokespeople from both the Clinton and Sanders campaign expressing some uncertainty as to the final result, which is apparently yet to be determined.[9] I have prepended a correction to yesterday’s blog post.
[1]David Benfell, “Donald Trump would (and probably will) be the president the establishment deserves,” Not Housebroken, March 3, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8802↩
[2]David Benfell, “The very possible and increasingly probable President Trump,” Not Housebroken, January 21, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8562; David Benfell, “Updated (again and again and again): Damnation by faint praise: Sanders claims to be more electable than Clinton,” Not Housebroken, March 6, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8529↩
Musa al-Gharbi offers the most comprehensive exposition of Hillary Clinton’s record on race[1] I’ve seen. I hope it finds its way to the people who need to see it.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Turley—the very person I want to hear from on these sorts of issues—weighs in on the Clinton aides accepting joint counsel. It seems to me a lot depends on how it all actually plays out, but where Rachael Bade’s article on April 1st seemed to suggest that this decision was a sign that the Justice Department was less likely to prosecute,[2] Turley seems to understand this move as a defense against that very possibility.[3]
Bade’s suggestion comes in the form of two quotes:
[Dan Metcalfe, founding director of the DOJ’s office of information and privacy], now a law professor at American University, called it an “optimistic approach”: “They must believe prosecutors don’t have that much.” . . .
[Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney-turned-right-leaning legal commentator] questioned why the DOJ would greenlight the arrangement in the first place, arguing that it “presents an amazing conflict of interest” and allows for coordination of stories.
“If it’s a serious case, you don’t run the risk of having all sorts of collusion between people — it’s just not done,” said diGenova. “If the department has accepted that, that tells me they’re walking down the line of not bringing a case, because they’re not serious if they have accepted that arrangement … They’ve thrown in the towel.”[4]
If it is true that Justice had the option, as diGenova suggests, to object to this arrangement,[5] then their acquiescence indeed seems to suggest that prosecution is unlikely. Turley, on the other hand, writes that
[Beth] Wilkinson is a top lawyer with close contacts at the Justice Department. She is a logical choice [for the top four staff members to Clinton], particularly if you believe that the FBI may push for charges and the only fail-safe would be a refusal by the Justice Department to prosecute.[6]
I don’t quite know what to make of Turley’s choice of the word ‘fail-safe.’ While it is indeed likely that Hillary Clinton’s connections to the Obama administration may weigh against a prosecution and it may indeed be true that nuances of culpability which I don’t quite understand may also weigh against such a prosecution, that doesn’t seem to me to be much of a ‘fail-safe.’ I think that if there is a fail-safe, it lies in somebody’s ability (if such exists and from whatever source) to influence a decision not to prosecute. Such influence would, of course, be corrupt, which seems to be Clinton’s modus operandi, but if it occurred in the face of the FBI’s call for a prosecution, it would be especially glaring.
Updated for a story on the media obsession with Donald Trump, another story on Hillary Clinton losing her patience (she’s entitled, after all), and an unconfirmed story about Bernie Sanders winning Nevada after all.
I am cancelling my subscription to the New York Times and I have discontinued all my newsletter subscriptions with them. Their extraordinarily biased coverage of the Democratic Party primary contest and of the economy undermines the utility of this so-called “newspaper of record” for me as a scholar.
I addressed the New York Times coverage on so-called “free trade” just a few days ago.[1] It is now celebrating Barack Obama’s legacy on the economy, to which my response can be found in #7 here: “If you’re going to post crap about what a great job Barack Obama has done as president, then where’s my job (figure 1)? I’m not interested in your excuses or his—they won’t pay my rent. Where’s my job?”[2]
Fig. 1. Annual labor force participation and employment as a proportion of population, from Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
The newspaper has continued its dismissive tone of Bernie Sanders’ candidacy even after having been called out by its own public editor for it last September,[3] when she memorably wrote,
The Times has not ignored Mr. Sanders’s campaign, but it hasn’t always taken it very seriously. The tone of some stories is regrettably dismissive, even mocking at times. Some of that is focused on the candidate’s age, appearance and style, rather than what he has to say.[4]
Times senior politics editor Carolyn Ryan responded, essentially by dismissing the allegations, especially on tone,[5] and it has since become increasingly clear that the Times has felt no need even to appear unbiased. This is a stark departure from the tradition praised by longtime executive editor Bill Keller, most memorably in his exchange with Glenn Greenwald on advocacy journalism.[6]
I of course respect Greenwald’s work, now mostly with the Intercept, and I continue to subscribe to other, known-to-be biased sources, like the Wall Street Journal. But there’s a difference. I have never heard the Journal described as a “newspaper of record.” It is authoritative only within an extremely limited sphere of finance, not even on the economy as a whole. It is unabashedly partisan and its neoliberal bias is easily discerned. I knew what I was subscribing to when I subscribed to it. And with Greenwald, again, there is no mistaking his advocacy. And in this sense, both Greenwald and the Journal now seem substantially more honest to me than the Times.
But finally, in addition to the biased coverage against Bernie Sanders, the simple truth is that it is getting very hard for me to respect anyone who supports Hillary Clinton. For me, she so thoroughly reeks of corruption and entitlement[7] that it’s just inconceivable to me that anyone can really support her. Wesley Pruden, editor in chief emeritus of the conservative (I’m still not sure which tendency) Washington Times, went overboard in comparing her to Richard Nixon,[8] but I don’t think really by all that much.
I really didn’t want to have to point something out about Donald Trump’s abortion flub. Thankfully, Katha Pollitt has, and more thoroughly than I could have.[9] As to the damage Trump may have done himself? It’s probably wisest to sit back, wait, and see. Instead, we have a lot of noisy speculation, which I’m desperately trying to ignore.
So now we get to paranoid-level shit. Is the Clinton campaign really behind voter suppression in Arizona? If not, who is and were they really doing it to try to influence the outcome or as a ‘false flag’ operation to smear her campaign? And now what happens? Will the mainstream media pick up this story or ignore it because it cannot reflect favorably on their preferred candidate?
Or, since we’re doing the paranoia thing, should I be looking at another level?
Oh, and by the way, U.S. Uncut is not a source I’m familiar with, but if this story by Tom Cahill is accurate, what happened in Arizona is nothing compared to what happened in Nevada—where it seems Bernie Sanders may have won after all.[10]
All I really know is that none of this helps me to take any more seriously the argument that I should participate in a fraudulent electoral system.[11]
It would appear that Hillary Clinton distinguishes between an industry and its lobbyists in order to deny that she takes donations from the industry. This from the self-proclaimed ultimate outsider.[12]
[1]David Benfell, “The New York Times gets it badly wrong on so-called ‘free’ trade,” Not Housebroken, March 30, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8836↩
[7]David Benfell, “Updated (again and again and again): Damnation by faint praise: Sanders claims to be more electable than Clinton,” Not Housebroken, March 6, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8529; David Benfell, “The art of the intolerable,” Not Housebroken, March 20, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8823; David Benfell, “Donald Trump and the polls,” Not Housebroken, March 31, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8849↩
Updated for a Politico story on Hillary Clinton “growing increasingly frustrated with not being able to shake Bernie Sanders”[1] and a Common Dreams article about her confrontation with a Greenpeace activist in which she displayed that frustration.
“Hiring the same attorney allows Clinton’s advisers to have one gatekeeper for most of the DOJ’s inquiries — and it likely indicates that they expect to offer substantially similar testimony if they’re questioned.” The strategy is apparently unusual and the Department of Justice might only have accepted it because they do not expect to prosecute.[2]
Also, for the record, it seems that “Clinton’s biggest campaign bundlers are fossil fuel lobbyists.”[3]
