National Politics

Primaries end, now attention turns to defeating the dangerous demagogue Trump

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The long primary season finally came to an end on Tuesday night with the primary in Washington, D.C. Hillary Clinton easily won with over 78% of the vote.

Screenshot from 2016-06-15 04:46:05

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders met Tuesday night to discuss the next phase of the campaign. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders Meet as Their Battle Ends:

Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders met privately for nearly two hours on Tuesday night to size each other up as they started exploring what kind of alliance they might build for the general election battle against Donald J. Trump.

Yet Mr. Sanders chose to withhold his endorsement of Mrs. Clinton, several Sanders advisers said, because he wants her to take steps to win his confidence before the Democratic convention, where his supporters expect him to speak and Clinton advisers hope he will give her his full-throated backing.

Aides to Mrs. Clinton said she had never expected his endorsement Tuesday night. A statement from the Clinton campaign after the meeting described it as “a positive discussion about their primary campaign, about unifying the party and about the dangerous threat that Donald Trump poses to our nation.”

They discussed issues like raising wages and reducing college costs, and “agreed to continue working on their shared agenda, including through the platform development process for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.”

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Democrats begin the dance of party unity

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Maybe some of Bernie Sanders most ardent supporters should take a cue from Bernie Sanders himself, who met with President Obama on Thursday. Bernie Sanders Meets President Obama and Pledges to Work to Defeat Donald Trump:

ObamaSandersSenator Bernie Sanders met with President Obama on Thursday and said afterward that he would do everything within his power to stop Donald J. Trump from becoming president — and would work closely with Hillary Clinton to make that happen.

After the meeting with Mr. Obama, which lasted more than an hour, Mr. Sanders gave no indication that he was ready to leave the race just yet, insisting that he would compete in next week’s primary contest here in Washington, D.C. However, he made clear that party unity was on his mind.

“I will work as hard as I can, to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States,” Mr. Sanders told reporters, saying the Manhattan businessman “makes bigotry and discrimination the cornerstone of his campaign” and would be a “disaster” as commander in chief.

As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post writes, It’s over: Bernie Sanders begins winding it down:

[A]fter his meeting with President Obama, Sen. Sanders started with this:

Let me begin by thanking President Obama and thanking Vice President Biden for the degree of impartiality they established during the course of this entire process. What they said in the beginning is that they would not put their thumb on the scales, and in fact they kept their word. And I appreciate that very very much.

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Talk of a GOP convention coup and unendorsing Trump: a time for choosing

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Arizona’s junior senator, Jeff Flake, suggested this week that there could be a convention “coup” to deny Donald Trump the nomination at the GOP convention in Cleveland. That would certainly make for “Must see TV”!

Steve Benen reports, Talk of a convention coup rattles Republican politics:

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a Donald Trump ally, said yesterday his party’s presumptive presidential nominee has “two to three weeks” to fix his campaign. What Corker did not say is what happens in two to three weeks if Trump is still, well, Trump.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who remains part of a small “Never Trump” contingent within the GOP, went just a little further in an interview with the Associated Press.

Screenshot-16Said Flake: “Let’s face it: meet the old Trump, just like the new Trump. We’ve got what we’ve got. That’s not somebody who can win the White House.”

He added: “Where there’s no talk of a convention challenge or anything else, this might spur it.”

Hugh Hewitt, a prominent voice in Republican media, said on his radio show this morning that the party “ought to change the nominee.” Bob Vander Plaats, an Iowa-based leader for social conservatives, told NBC News, in reference to a possible convention coup, “Everything’s got to be on the table.”

Yeah, about that convention coup . . .

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Think Trump-Arpaio is a Scary Combo? In Israel They’d Be Moderates

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Interestingly, a friend of mine and staunch Israel supporter posted this photo on Facebook, along with her statement that it was the “scariest photo she’d seen in a while”: Googleusercontent So I wonder, where would Trump and Arpaio stand on the “scary spectrum” in Israel? How would they be perceived if standing next to Ayelet … Read more

Immigration Blow-up: 1000s of Children Flood the Border

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In Tucson, we live on the front lines of the battle for immigration reform. As the Congress rushes to further militarize the US-Mexico border with more Border Patrol officers and expensive high-tech gadgets, we imprison thousands of innocent people in for-profit jails, we turn a blind eye to the exploitation of undocumented workers, we regularly … Read more