Politix Update: The 2008 Election (Kind Of) Lived Up To Its Promise. Will This One?

LET'S TAKE A BREAK FROM OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING TO TAKE A LOOK BACK AT WHAT WAS CONSIDERED THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF MY LIFETIME -- UNTIL THE CURRENT MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF MY LIFETIME.   

THAT WOULD BE 2008, WHICH SEEMS MORE LIKE LIGHT YEARS AGO THAN A MERE EIGHT YEARS.  HERE ARE EXCEPTS FROM KIKO'S HOUSE POSTS:

(FEBRUARY 18) Let us pray that 2008 heralds not only a new realignment but that the year lives up to its promise.  The initial omens are good. Whether prodded by the repo man or concern for personal freedoms, a gratifying number of Americans have awakened from their slumber. 

Judging from the Democratic presidential race -- its sheer excitement and dynamism standing in marked contrast to the dreary, undersubscribed Republican affair that has breach birthed a change-allergic septuagenerian from a field of white men virtually undistinguishable on the issues -- many voters view choosing a successor to George Bush as a referendum on change. 

Make no mistake about it: America has not necessarily transcended race, let alone gender. But many of the voters who will determine who the next president of the United State is are desperate to transcend the darkness visited upon them by Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzalez. 

That is why, in the first big change unfolding in this infant year, the wind is at Barack Obama's back, Hillary Clinton has her back against a firewall and John McCain has little chance of getting the Republican Party back in the game. 

(APRIL 7) Anyone who takes a politician's statements literally over and over again is either a hopeless optimist or a fool.  Or likely both in the case of John McCain supporters upset over the cottage industry in misquoting his statement about being just fine with American involvement in Iraq for 100 years.  

Back on January 3 at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, McCain said that he could see a 100-year American presence in Iraq like the U.S.'s presence in Japan and South Korea "where Americans are not being injured or harmed or killed." 

Good enough. 

But to keep focusing on the contextual sleight of hand employed by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and a small army of pundits, Yours Truly included, in not taking McCain's comment literally is to miss the larger and more important point: Dragging Japan and South Korea, let alone any other historic antecedent involving an American presence in a foreign country, into the Iraq quagmire is like a stripper wearing pasties to conform with a no-total-nudity law. 

(MAY 14) I have a theory about West Virginia, the state with the "Wild and Wonderful" slogan and the first bearer of good tidings for Hillary Clinton since her accountant told her it was okay to lend herself another few million bucks in her quest to defy gravity. West Virginians aren't irredeemably racist as some commentators portray them, they just don't like any politician who is not a white male, and despite her lopsided 41-point victory there yesterday Clinton is no Mountain Mama, merely their version of sloppy seconds. . . .  

Obama's race will be a huge factor in the fall and the big question is whether people who will not vote for the nominee simply because of his skin color and/or because they falsely believe he is a Muslim can be offset by new Democratic voters who don't give a fig about race, already registered blacks, more affluent white voters and Independents.

(JUNE 4) In the end, the protean Barack Obama did what was best for the Democratic Party in not declaring that it was over until he had clinched the requisite number of delegates while Hillary Clinton, smiling through gnashed teeth, refused to give the trailblazing nominee in waiting his due. Nevertheless, you can practically feel the tectonic plates of the political universal slide into alignment, and John McCain should be afraid. Very afraid.
 
(JUNE 12) Like radio waves reaching earth from some cosmic calamity millennia ago, the yarbling of Hillary Clinton sycophants who believe that her candidacy was gang banged into extinction by the mainstream media, right-wing bloggers and Barack Obama acolytes can be faintly heard, although it is so much background noise as Clinton herself and practically everyone else who is determined to take back America link arms and march toward November. 

Has it only been five days since Clinton’s extraordinarily gracious concession speech? It seems like light years in this corner of the universe where the political landscape changes by the news cycle, and yet some diehards just can't seem to face up to the reality that the fancy evening gowns they bought so they could dance the night away with Bill and Hill at her inaugural balls will have to be returned. 

(JULY 29) The desperation of John McCain -- ranging from character attacks to outright lies to repeated shifts on the issues -- is symptomatic of a candidate scrambling to keep his head above water a few days before an election, not 15 weeks out.

This sad state of affairs is the result of two realities: McCain would be a weak candidate in any election year, but he has been rendered weaker still because of the albatross of George Bush and a cascade of bad news at home and abroad that is beyond his control. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is a strong if not fully rounded candidate who has the wind at his back because that news plays to his advantage. 

(AUGUST 15) As uncomfortable as the subject may be for people for whom the protection of privacy is more important than the corrosive effects of lying and hypocrisy on politics, the more that I learn about John Edwards' romp with Rielle Hunter, the more Elizabeth Edwards reminds me of Hillary Clinton. Minus the cancer, of course.

In fact, the parallels are rather stunning.

Both women worshiped at the altar of political prominence and power, so much so that they overlooked clear evidence of their husbands' violation of their wedding vows. They contributed to their husbands' phony public personas as straight arrows and then circled their own wagons when confronted with the truth. 

(OCTOBER 9) There is little question that the presidential race will tighten as Election Day approaches. It always does. But absent an apocalyptic event, Barack Obama will cruise across the finish line ahead of John McCain in the most important election since Franklin Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover in the depths of the Great Depression. . . .

This brings me to the second presidential debate and the sit-up-in-bed realization (because I happened to be lying down at the time) that even if McCain had the chops and even if Obama had a resume longer than a page and change, the cold fact of the matter is that they have been battling for the privilege of sitting in the cockpit of an airplane that has become aerodynamically unstable.  

(OCTOBER 25) Would Sarah Palin be running for vice president if she had a big wart on her nose? Of course not.

Now that we've gotten that no-brainer out of the way, let's move on to why she is John McCain's running mate: It certainly isn't her experience or world view, so it's pretty easy to conclude that a big reason is her MILF-ness, and I've lost count of the number of times I've seen The Old Guy stare at her shaply derriere when they're on stage together. 

Yes, Palin is "objectively hot," as one male blogger put it. But for the record, I'm not befuddled because for me Palin is a turnoff.  I've never been attracted to women who use their sexuality as a cudgel, and make no mistake about it: This woman is not being used by the men who run the McCain campaign. If anything she is using them.  

(NOVEMBER 6) I'd already had some pretty good boo-hoos over the summer as Barack Obama's impossible quest became improbable and then possible.  But I was a veritable Niagara Falls on Election Night.

Having kept a stiff upper lip through the first two hours or so of MSNBC's excellent coverage, I began to crack as it became obvious that Obama wasn't merely on the verge of becoming the 44th president, but was going to win in a landslide that would supercharge his mandate as the first African-American to lead all Americans. . . . 

I was sniveling -- a gulping insucking of breath and a few stray tears -- by the time MSNBC was showing aerials of the tens of thousands of people streaming into Grant Park, a place that holds great feeling for me because of the 1968 police riots there amidst the last gasps of Eugene McCarthy's anti-Vietnam War insurgency at the 1968 Democratic convention. 

Then a camera found its way to Jesse Jackson, tears streaming down his face as he stood frozen in the moment in the crush of bodies before the stage in the park where Obama would soon speak.  Tears suddenly streamed down my face, as well, because that close-up meant so much: The ambivalence that I feel for the civil-rights leader, who while the most charismatic man I have ever met has been so maddeningly self aggrandizing and jealous in recent years as his place in the African-American power pantheon has diminished with the coming of Obama and other black politicians who now overshadow him on the national scene. 

(NOVEMBER 12) I said from the moment it became obvious that Barack Obama would prevail that winning would be the easy part, and I have felt distinctly uncomfortable observing his first interactions as president-elect with George Bush and the Washington establishment. 

Part of that unease falls into the category of This Is Too Good To Be True, and it will be a while before I don't wake up in the morning wondering if it is all a dream.  

The larger part of my unease is the reality that governing -- you know, stuff like uniting, leading and legislating -- presents challenges for any incoming president, even one with a mandate that is as broad as Obama's. (Chris Rock hilariously notes that Obama of course has been given the most difficult job in the world because he's black.)

But this guy is being handed the reins of power in the midst of a multi-alarm fire, and while Democrats control both houses of Congress, the potential to screw up is high even if there were the makings of a bipartisan consensus on some seriously big issues like the economy, health-care reform and Iraq.   

Which there are not.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES 

Merle Haggard (April 6, 1937 ~ April 6, 2016)

MORE HERE. 

Politix Update: Ted Thinks He's The Big Cheese; Bernie Gets Comfy In The Gutter

I felt like I should sidle up to a round of cheese at the local delicatessen and give it a big hug, or something, after the fawning coverage given the good burghers of Wisconsin in the run-up to Tuesday’s primary.  

Cheesehead State voters were too civil and way too smart to go for the stinky limburger that Donald Trump was trying to jam down their throats, according to the news media narrative, and preferred Ted Cruz’s more palatable cheddar even if he did refuse to wear one of those goofy yellow blocks on his head even after his seven-year-old daughter tried to get him to do so.  

Well, Trump did lose, but the joke is on Wisconsin voters — and the media of course — because Cruz is an uncivil, censorious, hate mongering, hardhearted and extraordinarily mean-spirited man, as well as the most spectacular liar to ever run for president, which is really saying something.  His victory is merely another reminder that the Republican race has come down to which poison you prefer. 

Cruz bragged that his Wisconsin win is a "turning point," but it is only in the sense that Trump lost.  

We'll see how chipper the Texas senator is following the New York primary on April 19 with its huge delegate haul and a probable win for The Donald.  And then how The Donald reacts when he finally realizes that his celebrity power alone won't be enough to make him the next president.   

The Dump Trump movement is patting itself on the back over his loss in Wisconsin, but he pretty much did it on his own.  He was even less comprehensible than usual in the week before the primary as he babbled on about abortion and using nuclear weapons, among other topics, managing the deft feat of making his surrogate Sarah Palin almost sound intelligent.

§  

Bernie Sanders, who won handily in Wisconsin, is really starting to piss me off.  

Not because he won't drop out.  No one expects him to do so anytime soon even if he won’t catch up to Hillary Clinton.  No, what has my dander up is that Sanders has become so desperate that he has taken to doing the very thing that once put him above the wannabe pack and was his greatest virtue: He is smearing his opponent. 

His latest smear, which he is repeating ad nauseam, is that Clinton is a tool of fossil fuel interests.  "Secretary Clinton has relied heavily on funds from lobbyists working for the oil, gas, and coal industry," he says.   

The truth? 

Of the roughly $160 million Clinton has raised in campaign donations as of the end of March, $308,000 comes from individuals who work for fossil fuel companies, or about 0.2 percent of her total take.  (For those of you keeping score, 97.7 percent of all fossil fuel-related donations have gone to Republican candidates.) 

It is a sure sign that Sanders' days are numbered when The New York Times and other major outlets are doing postmortems on his campaign.   

The prevailing view is that Sanders made a tactical error in vowing to take the high road and not hitting the gutter earlier.  My view is that his biggest problem — and this speaks volumes, folks — is that even after a 35-year political career, his base remains narrow and his claims that he would successfully fight the entrenched power of Washington are fantasy.  

And that fantasy is exacerbated by an inconvenient and little-noticed fact: Clinton raises money for her campaign and for other Democrats down ticket. The admittedly impressive sums Sanders raises go to his campaign only, which begs the question of how his revolution is going to succeed without a friendly Senate, let alone the House. 

This begs another question: What has Sanders accomplished in his 25 years in Washington?  As it turns out, not a whole lot.

POLITIX UPDATE IS WRITTEN BY SHAUN MULLEN, A VETERAN JOURNALIST AND BLOGGER FOR WHOM THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN IS HIS 12th SINCE 1968.  CLICK HERE FOR AN INDEX OF PREVIOUS COLUMNS. 

© 2015-2016 SHAUN D. MULLEN.

IMAGE FROM DONKEYHOTEY/FLICKR.  

USED WITH PERMISSION.

The Difference Between The Roman Catholic Church & The Mafia? Non Tanto.

THE CATHEDRAL OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT DOMINATES THE ALTOONA SKYLINE 

Just when you think the Roman Catholic Church in America could not get more repulsive — and were’s talking the earthly and not the holy here — along comes yet another sex scandal that tops all the others. 

A grand jury revealed in a report late last month that the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown engaged in an extensive, decades-long cover-up of abuse by as many as 50 church officials.  The cover-up was orchestrated, in part, by two bishops who wielded enormous power in the central Pennsylvania railroad towns and was aided and abetted by pubic officials, some of whom remain in positions of power. 

The stories told by the 250 victims of the abuse, which is only the number who have come forward so far, have a familiar ring.  A prominent monsignor sexually abuses a 12-year-old organ player for two years.  When she goes to another priest, he also abuses her, while a third suggests she comfort herself with a daily candy bar each day, and a fourth who merely tells her to see a counselor. 

What is different about what happened in Altoona and Johnstown is that it was finally revealed after a succession of major clergy abuse and cover-up scandals in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and most prominently Boston as recently dramatized in Spotlight, the Oscar-winning movie.   

And that despite those staggering scandals and the resulting prosecutions, bankruptcies of entire dioceses and closing of schools because of damages paid to thousands of victims, not to mention the betrayal, pain and the lives destroyed, church and public officials in the central Pennsylvania communities not only remained silent, but police, district attorneys and judges colluded with the bishops in the cover-up, ignoring the pleas of parents who tried to call attention to the priests who were sexually abusing their children. 

The grand jury found that law enforcement agencies repeatedly blew what investigations there were: The state police dropped the ball in a 1982 case, Altoona police conducted a half-hearted investigation of a 1986 allegation, and two former county prosecutors are unable to explain why a 1985 case died.  Meanwhile, two judges tried to find a job for one troubled priest, and a diocesan administrator told the grand jury he had influence in the selection of local police chiefs. 

The grand jury report terms as "heroic" the efforts of Altoona businessman George Foster to investigate misconduct allegations on his own even though he had no duty to do so. 

In 2014, Foster met state investigators at a hotel and turned over letters, files and other documents he had been compiling for 14 years. The report quoted him as being puzzled over the longtime inaction of civic and religious leaders. 

"Where were the police and the bishops?" he asked. 

Beyond the usual finger pointing and flurry of legislation to extend statues of limitation, which have expired in this instance, what is different about this scandal is the possibility that the perpetrators and their helpmates could be prosecuted under a Mafia-busting tool known as the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, or RICO.  That, however, will be difficult because of statutes of limitations, some abusers have died and some victims are too traumatized to testify. 

State Representative Mike Vereb, a former Philadelphia cop, is leading the push for RICO prosecutions.  RICO provides for extended criminal and civil penalties.  It focuses on racketeering and permits prosecutors to try the leaders of a syndicate — in this case archdiocesan officials -- for the crimes which they assisted or abetted others in doing, closing a legal loophole that allowed people to escape trial because they did not actually commit a crime personally. 

"This failure was colossal. It was nothing less than organized crime," Vereb said. "There was no chance, if you were a victim, that you were going to get justice." 

The church in America has responded half-heartedly, at best, to the scandals and in recent years has recast its opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage as a struggle for "religious liberty" against a government and culture that are infringing on the church’s rights. Yes, the church is characterizing itself as the victim. 

Benedict XVI spent most of his time as pope and previously as a cardinal covering for pedophile priests, while Pope Francis has moved aggressively — by Vatican standards — to excommunicate pedophile priests, as well as establishing a Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.  The current Altoona-Johnstown bishop, who unlike his two predecessors is not accused of any wrongdoing, has recently suspended a few priests named as alleged abusers in the report.   

Catholics and others in the deeply religious area wonder how much the fallout from the years of abuse has to do with a pressing contemporary problem: An epidemic of drug abuse, suicides and drunken driving arrests.  The answer surely is that there is a connection, and people need to look no further than decay in their church to trace the roots of decay in their community.

Ross Douthat On The GOP: 'It's An Odd Mix Of Vindication And Depression'

MORE HERE.

Joe Medicine Crow (October 27, 1913 ~ April 3, 2016)

MORE HERE.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHIP SOMODAVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

Politix Update: When The Hunter Is Trump & He Gets Captured By The Game

WHAT’S THIS WHOLE WORLD COMIN TO / THINGS JUST AIN’T THE SAME / ANY TIME THE HUNTER GETS CAPTURED BY THE GAME ~ TRACY THORN

Could it be that the man with the small hands and peculiar hair has hit the wall after so many premature predictions of his downfall?  That there are no more angry white guys out there for him to seduce with his racist siren call?  That the notoriety that enabled him to take and keep the keys to the Republican clown car has become a liability?  And that the entire notion of running for president has become tiresome, and even a little humiliating to him, despite his overarching narcissism? 

Yes. 

The dirty secret of Donald Trump's campaign — that is unless you’ve been reading Politix Update and the musings of a few other pundits — is that his support from Republican voters has never exceeded 40 percent, and his average margin of victory two-thirds of the way through the primary-caucus season remains a few clicks south of that although the field has narrowed from six candidates to just three, and only Ted Cruz is a threat to him. 

Trump simply has no more room to grow outside the conservative bubble even if he does become the GOP nominee.  And his negatives are ginormous.  He is disliked by most Democrats and independents, by young voters and minorities, and absolutely loathed by women, including most Republican women.  

HuffPost Pollster, which averages all publicly available polling, currently gives him a 63 percent unfavorable rating, up from 56 percent in January.   

Indeed, the political number crunchers are collectively swooning over how bad Trump is polling.   

"There is no precedent for this," explains Republican pollster Neil Newhouse.  "In the modern polling era, since around World War II, there hasn't been a more unpopular potential presidential nominee than Donald Trump." 

"In terms of any domestic personality that we have measured, we've never seen an individual with a higher negative," says Democratic pollster Peter Hart, calling Trump's image "exceptionally rancid." 

§ 

It's hard to beat political analyst Larry Sabato when it comes to calling races.  For example, he nailed the 2012 presidential outcome, including correctly predicting the exact number of electoral votes Barack Obama would win. 

In May 2015, a month before Donald Trump announced his candidacy, Sabato's Crystal Ball projected a Democratic victory in November 2016, but his electoral map showed a close and competitive race: With a majority of 270 votes in the Electoral College needed for victory, Sabato had Democrats winning 247, Republicans winning 206, and 85 he considered toss-ups.  

In March 2016, Sabato shows presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton winning 347 Electoral College votes to a mere 191 for Republicans if Trump is the nominee, with the Democratic take likely to go higher, eclipsing Obama’s 365 votes to John McCain’s 173 in 2008.   

Interestingly, in the highly unlikely event that Clinton is not the Democratic nominee, Trump would fare even worse in a general election against Bernie Sanders in head-to-head polling in most swing states because of Clinton's negatives. 

§ 

It is now beyond obvious that Donald Trump is not the cause of the Republican Party's destruction; he's the fulfillment of everything the party has become.  And that every time the party takes a breath these days, that reality wracks it like the cough of a terminally ill smoker. 

Trump and the GOP had a ginormous time of it last week. 

The candidate declined to apologize for his lewd attacks on "Lyin' Ted" Cruz’s wife, angrily criticized a female reporter who accused his campaign manager of assault while denying that the widely photographed incident had occurred, said that more nations should have nuclear weapons and as president he would not refuse to use them in Europe, and declared in a series of ad-libs typical for him that women who had abortions should be punished, then said it was providers who should be punished, then further said no changes should be made in abortion laws, and then further further said that no changes should be made until he is president. 

The party, for its part, is preoccupied with the grim prospect of Trump becoming "a kind of zombie candidate — damaged beyond the point of repair, but too late for any of his rivals to stop him," as The New York Times decorously put it.   

While Cruz is expected to beat Trump in Wisconsin on Tuesday, the campaign moves onto decidedly favorable turf for Trump in its final phase with contests in his native New York on April 19 and then a series of Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states where he is expected to do well, so the nomination may be within his real even though the presidency is most definitely not. 

§ 

Returning to where I started, is it possible that the entire notion of running for president has become tiresome, and even a little humiliating, for Donald Trump despite that overarching narcissism?   

Yes. 

My friend Hugh Cutler and I have the better part of a century between us (argh!) in sifting political tea leaves, he the now-retired longtime national editor of a major metropolitan newspaper and I as a reporter, editor and blogger. I had this to say to Hugh after Trump's spectacular Super Tuesday successes at the beginning of March:

"I have had a thought bouncing around in the recesses of my mind for some time now: Trump will make some sort of grand gesture at some point because he really is not, down deep, interested in being president, and may even understand that he is incapable of being president.

"I do not know what form that gesture would take or when he will make it, but after many months of this wild ride, I still cannot believe he's in it for the long haul."

Hugh’s reply resonated deeply then and does even more so now:

"It's safe to say that betting against The Donald has been the undoing of many a TV and print pundit this campaign season, and I'd have to think that to know his mind would put me in very sociopathic company.  I take your point, though, and, for me as well, it's difficult to imagine he'd be willing to give up the high life and constant stroking of his coterie and settle for the White House and endure congressional and media brickbats as he fails in his many pledges. But 'leader of the free world' is an awesome title and aspiration, and it's similarly hard to imagine how he could find a creative way at this point to bow out 'manfully.'

"Still, the prospect of defeat -- either in a brokered convention or in a general election campaign -- could wonderfully concentrate Trump's mind to hint that his business interests are too crucial to leave to others."

Is that going to happen? Dunno.   

But Trump's ad-libbing on abortion was deeply revealing: He still doesn’t take this running-for-president thing seriously and lazily passed the buck to pro-life right wingers.   

(There was one . . . uh, delightful consequence to his buck-passing: Cruz and John Katich are virulently anti-abortion and pro-capital punishment, and Trump unintentionally put them in the position of reconciling the irreconcilable. How can they advocate harshly punishing people for murder but not punishing the women who choose to terminate pregnancies since the pro-life movement considers abortion to be murder?) 

Including abortion, Trump still really doesn't have a position on anything that doesn’t involve buying or selling real estate.  The hunter has gotten captured by the game and he doesn't like it.

POLITIX UPDATE IS WRITTEN BY SHAUN MULLEN, A VETERAN JOURNALIST AND BLOGGER FOR WHOM THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN IS HIS 12th SINCE 1968.  CLICK HERE FOR AN INDEX OF PREVIOUS COLUMNS. 

© 2015-2016 SHAUN D. MULLEN.

IMAGE FROM ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

Cartoon du Jour

MATT DAVIES/NEWSDAY

Guest Post: 'The Four Doors Of The Lesser Evil'

 By DAVID BENNETT 

A man dies and goes to hell. There he is greeted by a demon who represents the devil. The demon says – "for your sins, you are sentenced to an eternity here. However, our master Lucifer is not an unfair devil; he will give you a choice of your punishment. There are four doors — have a peek and choose which one suits you best." 

The poor sinner opens the first door, looks in, and sees millions of tortured souls being forced to watch the 2016 presidential race over and over for eternity. The poor sinner says, “My god please no – I could not stand this horrible fate. Please let me see the second door!" 

He opens the second door, sees millions of people being forced to do nothing but watch Fox News for all eternity. The poor sinner screams – "Oh God! I repent of my sins, please forgive me. This is an unbearable punishment." The demon says, “God can’t hear you down here, it is too late, you blew your chance when you voted for Hillary Clinton instead of a third party candidate." 

“Oh, please Mr. Demon, I must see what is behind the third door.” The poor sinner tries to open the door and it is locked.  

The demon says – “Oh it costs money to go in there, for that is one of the more bearable tortures.”  

“I must go in there but I have no cash — will you take a credit card?”  

"Sure, as long as it is still good. I will let you have a peak first before you buy,” says the demon” The demon opens the door and the poor sinner sees millions of lost souls being forced to listen to “Happy” by William Pharrell for all eternity.  

“What!” the poor sinner screams, “You call that a more bearable punishment? This is far worse than the other two. Let me see the fourth door.”   

The fourth door is opened. He sees millions of people standing in a sea of shit, sipping coffee. “Well this doesn’t look too bad, I love coffee. I’ll take this one.” So he goes in and the door slams behind him, the stench is horrible, but he thinks, “Well I will get used to it.”  

A demon approaches him and instructs him to stand in a certain place and ask. “How do you take your coffee? “  

“I like mine black, please.”  

The demon delivers the coffee and he sips it thinking,  “I really screwed up back there in life — hope I made the best choice this time.”  

Suddenly another demon comes in and screams at the poor souls – “Coffee break is over.  Back standing on your heads!” 

This, my friends, is the current state of the 2016 election.

STORY © DAVID BENNETT / IMAGE © SOUTH PARK 

Cartoon du Jour

TOM TOLES/WASHINGTON POST

'We've Got To Get Together Sooner Or Later Because The Revolution's Here'

SOMETHING IN THE AIR

By Andy “Thunderclap” Newman

Call out the instigator

Because there's something in the air

We've got to get together sooner or later

Because the revolution's here

And you know it's right

And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together

We have got to get it together, now

Run through the fields and houses

Because there's something in the air

We've got to get together sooner or later

Because the revolution's here

And you know it's right

And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together

We have got to get it together, now

Call out the instigator

Because there's something in the air

We've got to get together sooner or later

Because the revolution's here

And you know it's right

And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together

We have got to get it together, now

VIDEO HERE.

Politix Update: Fabtastic News For Bernie! He Needs Only 988 More Delegates.

SANDERS' CALL FOR A REVOLUTION IS A VAGUE, DEEPLY DISINGENUOUS IDEA THAT IGNORES THE REALITY OF MODERN AMERICA. . . . I HAVE BEEN TO THE REVOLUTION BEFORE.  IT AIN'T HAPPENING. ~ JAN WENNER 

Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jan Wenner and actress Susan Sarandon think they know a political revolution when they see one.   

They were born within months of each other in 1946, but that's pretty much where the similarities end.  The pragmatic Wenner, who was a George McGovern acolyte in 1972,  is not swayed by Bernie Sanders' revolutionary rhetoric and will vote for Hillary Clinton, while the petulant Sarandon is in awe of The Bern' and says she will sit out the election if he doesn't get the Democratic nomination.  

Wenner, who bitterly remembers the 49-state drubbing McGovern took,  resulting in a second and disastrous Richard Nixon term, fears that there are a lot of Sarandons out there, most of them idealistic young people who have yet to navigate the shoals of the real world.   Some surely will go PUMA, which stands for Party Unity My Ass, and like Sarandon will prefer to stay home than vote for Clinton, whom they consider an establishment toady.   

Sarandon also played the purist card in 2000 when she went head-over-heels for Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who some people bitterly believe siphoned off enough votes to throw the Al Gore-George Bush nail biter into the Supreme Court.  (I do not happen to be one of those people, but no matter.) 

Well, as uncertain as this political year has been, Clinton will be on the November ballot as the best hope to prevent the kind of Republican dominance in Washington that makes Nixon seem in retrospect like a not-so-bad guy. 

The outlook for Sanders is stark: He needs 988 more delegates to wrest the nomination from Clinton.  He would have to take 57 percent of the remaining delegates while Clinton would only have to take 34 percent. 

And lest we forget, primaries are elections for delegates, and indirectly that strange Democratic superdelegate hybrid.  Primaries are not popularity contests, although Clinton has amassed two million more votes than Sanders. 

Sanders scored three impressive caucus wins last Saturday in three largely white and liberal Western states receptive to his message and may well take Wisconsin and a big chunk of its 96 delegates on Tuesday.  He also is likely to do well in Oregon, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Montana, but victories in those small delegate yield states would only forestall the inevitable.   

The democratic socialist is running out of caucuses, where he has done well because they attract diehard supporters like his own, while Clinton's delegate and superdelegate lead is insurmountable because the largest remaining primary states — including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and California — are tailor made for her strengths, notably black and other minority support.  Clinton is likely to cross the finish line with upwards of 500 delegates more than Sanders.    

Beyond the delegate numbers, Sanders' biggest problem is that even after a 35-year political career, his base remains narrow and his claims that he would successfully fight the entrenched power of Washington are fantasy. 

That is a bitter pill for the foot soldiers in Sanders' young army to swallow.  But all is not fair in war as in love, and to mix another metaphor, times change but Clinton has not: Despite trust issues, she is the ultimate establishment Democratic candidate -- a deeply knowledgeable and battle-scarred veteran able to seem liberal or moderate depending upon the occasion, and an accomplished debater with a substantial war chest and sophisticated campaign organization.  And just enough seemingly fresh new ideas to not seem ossified compared to Sanders.   

(And guess what, Sanders diehards?  Clinton and Sanders voted the same way 93 percent of the time the two years they shared in the Senate.

Asked to be specific about how his revolution will be carried out, which is something Sanders has been notably reluctant to do, his stock reply is that "The only way we can take on the right-wing Republicans, the only way we can get things done, is by having millions of people come together."    

That is pablum. 

In 2008, Obama helped Democrats win 255 seats in the House and 56 seats in the Senate.  Despite an absence of Republican support, the young president did get Congress to pass an ambitious stimulus package, health-care reform and a host of smaller but still important laws. The circumstances would be much worse were Sanders to be elected even if Democrats manage to eke out a Senate majority. 

There is nothing in Sanders' stump speechifying or own history to suggest that he will succeed with obdurate, governing-resistant Republicans where Obama has repeatedly failed, and it is important to remember that Obama's first-term accomplishments were because he had the support of every Democrat in a majority Democratic Senate, including centrists like Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh (remember them?) who pushed him toward a political middle that sometimes made a mockery of the Hope and Change mantra. Sanders would have to similarly capitulate if he were to accomplish anything, and so Washington would remake him, not the other way around.    

"America chooses its presidents from the middle, not from the ideological wings," Wenner notes. "We are faced with that decision again. . . .  This is not the time in history for a 'protest vote.' " 

It is easy to forget that at this point in the 2008 primary campaign, Clinton was nipping at Obama's heels as Sanders is now nipping at hers, and she did not concede for another month to the future first black president whom she will now succeed as the first woman president.  And that a fairly large number of diehard Clinton supporters, primarily women, declared that they were going PUMA.  Evidence suggests that many if not most relented and voted for Obama rather than staying home.   

Let’s hope Sanders' most starry-eyed fans also see the light.

POLITIX UPDATE IS WRITTEN BY SHAUN MULLEN, A VETERAN JOURNALIST AND BLOGGER FOR WHOM THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN IS HIS 12th SINCE 1968.  CLICK HERE FOR AN INDEX OF PREVIOUS COLUMNS. 

© 2015-2016 SHAUN D. MULLEN.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DICK POLMAN/NEWSWORKS