post-Tuesday

I was offline when I saw the Philadelphia Daily News ("The People's Paper" tabloid) headline FACE IT (Trump and Hillary).  Media moguls essentially scolding their reader base, but Bernie ran in five primaries and won four of them, losing one where Hillary beat Obama by 15 points, outraising her in February by a whole lot, with a major cash in hand advantage.  Before I went online I made an infrequent visit to WalMart to look for something they didn't stock.  The store was mostly empty and the staff seemed depressed but polite and walking around the box looking for something made the headline hit home, as this Arkansas company had leaned so hard on the Clintons to railroad permanent trade relations with China so these people can stand in this box and sell junk made by command economy sweatshops.  But the more I crunched the numbers the more I realized that it's a tough fight but Bernie, his team, and his grassroots are performing exceptionally and it is not denial to say that, despite what mainstream media says, his momentum to win the whole thing is privately envied by the political class.  The media seemed to have its spin written and just changed the paragraphs about who won Colorado and Minnesota.

Trump is a businessman who thinks little of the David Duke clan but he was clearly signaling to trigger a backlash by the Republican establishment and the press and he got one. It was a calculated political move made in a year where white nationalism has been provoked internationally by the migrant crisis.  George Wallace and Hillary Clinton are/were not hardened racists but both, like Trump, use this demagoguery for their benefit at the moment it benefits them.  So does he pivot for the general election, or, as Eastern European pageant contestants would say, can he change?  Here is where I say I loathe the guy in the strongest possible terms.  El Paso has the lowest rate of rape (and crime) of any city its size or larger, and it's over 90% Mexican. & the Muslim baiting etc etc.  He is, as blue collar GOP whites who have no other anti-NAFTA choice will hopefully not have to find out, a guy who doesn't just side with the economic elites but has a particular passion for economic disparity, who retains a legal staff which enables him to rip off more construction contractors per project than any Jersey builder, notable in a state where Toll Brothers operates.

I didn't blog this ahead of time, but it kinda goes without saying that a GOP establishment that drops $150 million on Jeb Bush doesn't know where its constituents are or what hit them.  They didn't even think to back someone who could give whatever their platform is a new look and personal clean slate.  If Cruz hadn't alienated the establishment GOP, they'd realize he's the only person who can beat Trump, but then again Cruz would lose a lot of voters if he hadn't done so. The establishment can't come out and say they hate us and we deserve it.

There is overwhelming bipartisan anger over trade agreements, Citizens United, and the bailout of the financial sector. Whomever Trump faces, the general election is going to the Midwestern Rust Belt and it's going to have to deal with trade and the economy. If Hillary pulls it out, all this goes in a suggestion box she has made a career of ignoring. Donald's sincerity is what it is. That brings us to that Pwogressive...  But Trump is the first Republican to make the establishment pay for this, going, like Bernie, inside the primary structure, rather than the third party runs of the anti-NAFTA Perot and Nader.