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MARCH 1,  2016

THERE'LL BE NO "SHORT TAKES" TONIGHT BECAUSE I'VE BEEN MONITORING THE "SUPER TUESDAY" RESULTS.  "SHORT TAKES" RESUMES TOMORROW UNLESS I DECIDE TO FLEE TO MY BUNKER IN AUSTRALIA.

The voting is over, I think.  It's after midnight.  Generally, predictions were accurate.  Hillary Clinton swept most of the states participating in "Super Tuesday," but Bernie Sanders did pick up his own home state of Vermont, along with Oklahoma, Colorado, and Minnesota.  Bernie has an estimated $45-million in the bank, so he stays in to lead the movement to bring socialism to the Democratic Party.  He will be a major presence at the convention, but, barring a negative finding by the FBI in her e-mail probe, Hillary Clinton will be the nominee.  If there is a negative finding, the Democratic race could turn into a free-for-all.

On the Republican side, Trump won in most of the states, but some of his victory percentages were in the low thirties.  He did not "break out" to any staggeringly impressive numbers.  Once again the divided field opposing his candidacy gave him relatively easy victories.  However, Ted Cruz won a landslide victory in his home state of Texas, and also won in Oklahoma.  And Marco Rubio won his first state of the campaign, emerging victorious in Minnesota. 

News reports say that a new anti-Trump super PAC is about to be launched, with the hope of forcing an open convention this summer.  It could happen, although, as Trump rolls up victory after victory, the statistical chances of it diminish.  While Rubio pledges to stay in the race to the bitter end, he might have to rethink that pledge if he loses his own home state of Florida two weeks from now.  And he is way behind Trump in the polls there. 

Hillary Clinton's victory speech was a shrill recitation of traditional Democratic themes – how she is going to unify the country and personally be sure that every American benefits from the economy.  She never mentioned foreign policy once.  She never explained how she was going to pay for all the gifts.  I didn't get the feeling that she believed a word of what she was saying, and that voice, after five minutes, became a weapon of war.

Trump's victory speech was remarkably sober and even "presidential."  It appears he's been getting some advice from grown-ups, and is now looking toward the general election.

There'll be another Republican and another Democratic debate later this week.

Peggy Noonan tweeted, after Trump's Super Tuesday victories, that she felt this was the breakup of a great political party.  Many Republicans feel that way.  The overall mood of the party isn't triumphant, but gloomy, even desperate in some circles.  Donald Trump was not in their dreams.  Many regard him not as a victor, but as an invader.  It's that feeling that will fuel the remainder of the race. 

March 1, 2016       Permalink

FRAUD – AT 11:46 A.M. ET:  Iran voted last Friday, and the world hardly noticed. We have been told since the election that the "moderates" won.  Hey, good news, right?  Not so fast, Jones.  A "moderate" in Iran is kind of like a member of Murder Incorporated who hasn't met his quota.  From the great Eli Lake at Bloomberg: 

If you are following the Iranian elections, prepare to be dazzled. According to major news outlets from the BBC to the Associated Press, the reformists beat the hardliners.

But wait. Didn't Iran's Guardian Council disqualify most of the reformists back in January? Of course it did, but thanks to the magic of Iranian politics, many of yesterday's hardliners are today's reformists.

Take Kazem Jalali. Until this month, Jalali was one of those hardliners whom President Barack Obama had hoped to marginalize with the Iran nuclear deal. Jalali has, for example, called for sentencing to death the two leaders of the Green Movement, who are currently under house arrest. And yet, he ran on the list endorsed by the reformists in Friday's election.

Two former intelligence ministers, accused by Iran's democratic opposition of having dissidents murdered, Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri and Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, also ran on the list endorsed by Iran's moderate president for the Assembly of Experts, the panel that is charged with selecting the next supreme leader.

The initial Iranian reform movement of the late 1990s sought to allow more social freedoms and political opposition of the unelected side of Iran's government, such as the office of the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council. Over time however, the changes supported by the reformists like Mohammed Khatami, who was president between 1997 and 2005, were stymied by these unelected institutions. When the next generation of reform politicians ran for office in 2009 under the banner of the green movement, the unelected part of the state arrested their supporters when they demonstrated against what they saw as a stolen election. On Friday, many of the hardliners that opposed the reformists in the late 1990s and in 2009 are running under this banner.

As Saeed Ghasseminejad, an expert on Iranian politics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recently said: "Putting a reformist or moderate label on hardliners does not make them reformist or moderate."

COMMENT:  It does in the eyes of the Obama administration.  Look for great smiles on the faces of those who negotiated the Iran nuclear deal.  Why, doesn't the election of "moderates" vindicate their work?

March 1, 2016       Permalink

WHAT TO WATCH FOR – AT 11:31 A.M. ET:  We will be tracking the voting on Super Tuesday all day, and most of the night.  Here, via Fox, is a pretty good view of what to focus on:   

The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are charging into Super Tuesday in a coast-to-coast battle for delegates across a dozen states -- but while they're looking for as many wins as possible, a few select states stand out as the crown jewels.

At the top of that list, in both primary contests, is Texas. The Lone Star State has the biggest cache -- 222 Democratic delegates and 155 for Republicans.

And perhaps no candidate is fighting harder for that prize than Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. The senator went all out on Monday, holding rallies in voter-rich Dallas, Houston and San Antonio in hopes of at least defeating national front-runner Donald Trump in Cruz's home state.

“We are going to have a very good Super Tuesday,” Cruz assured the Dallas crowd. Cruz has maintained a polling lead in the state, but knows a surprise loss there could doom his campaign.

For Republicans, the second-biggest prize is Georgia, with 76 delegates at stake. Both Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio put in face time with voters Monday in the final hours before polls open, while Cruz stayed rooted in Texas.

On the Democratic side, too, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have focused their efforts.

While Clinton declared Saturday night after her decisive win in the South Carolina primary that the campaign was going “national,” the former secretary of state was concentrating Monday on two delegate-heavy states -- the Democratic-stronghold of Massachusetts (91 delegates) and Virginia (95 delegates).

Solid wins there and beyond on Super Tuesday could give her a nearly insurmountable delegate count toward the nomination.

COMMENT:  I'd be careful about making any statements about "certainty" after today's results are known.  The "certainties" of this campaign season have proven to be uncertain indeed.

One thing I would be looking for, even after results are in, is a possible move toward third-party candidates, especially if Trump has an almost clean sweep.  There are rumblings about Mike Bloomberg getting in.  There are even rumblings within the Republican Party about backing another Republican in the general-election campaign.  Newly minted Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a rising conservative, is openly speaking that way.

The major combat may still be ahead.

March 1, 2016       Permalink

SUPER TUESDAY – AT 8:18 A.M. ET:  Today is Super Tuesday, the first primary in which a number of states vote on the same day.  Most of those states will be in the South.  More states vote next Tuesday, and still more the Tuesday after that.  Within two weeks we should get a clear view of where the races in both parties are going.

That is, if any clear view is possible in a year in which the Democratic frontrunner faces an FBI probe into very serious alleged infractions, and the Republican frontrunner isn't a Republican and has given generously to liberal causes in the past. 

What a system we've built. 

But wait.  Let's put things into perspective.  We've been here before.  Well, almost here.  We didn't have a 24-hour cable news cycle to report every sneeze of every potential president.  But...

In 1948 the Democratic Party broke apart.  Its Southern wing walked out of its national convention, and former Democrat Strom Thurmond ran against President Harry S. Truman, leading pundits to believe that Truman had no chance with the usual "solid South" of Democrats missing in action.  (Oh, the left wing also walked out a la Bernie Sanders.  Former Vice President Henry Wallace, a so-called "progressive," also ran against Truman, who'd replaced him as vice president in 1945, with Truman then becoming president upon Franklin D. Roosevelt's death.)  Despite ridiculous odds, Truman won the election.

In 1952 the GOP was tearing itself to pieces.  The traditional Taft wing, still neo-isolationist, was battling the Eastern establishment wing, accusing it of leading the party to presidential defeat in both 1944 and 1948, under the banner of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey.  But that year a true knight entered the picture.  His name wasn't Trump.  It was Dwight Eisenhower, the architect of victory in World War II in Europe.  In many ways, Eisenhower, whose party affiliation was vague at best, saved the Republican Party from itself by winning two presidential elections in a row.

In 1964 the country was in political depression.  President Kennedy had been assassinated the year before, replaced by Lyndon B. Johnson, a vastly capable legislator, but a Texan despised by the elitist wing of his own party.  And the GOP nominated one Barry Goldwater, who even many Republicans regarded as too right-wing for the country's good.  Americans by the millions held their collective noses and voted Johnson in with landslide numbers.

In 1968 the Democrats faced revolt again.  The anti-Johnson forces rose up against the Vietnam War and against a president who didn't speak the way they did and hadn't gone to the right college.  In that year both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were murdered.  And the Democratic convention in Chicago was beset by street violence outside the hall.  Richard Nixon, a political has-been, and loathed by much of the electorate, squeaked through to presidential victory in November over Hubert Humphrey, who was Johnson's vice president.   

In 1972 the Dems were in full collapse, nominating the clueless George McGovern, who wasn't allowed to accept his nomination until 3 a.m. because the self-important conventioneers, their hall filled with the aroma of marijuana, had to let representatives of every aggrieved group in the universe have their say.  Even Richard Nixon, obnoxious to be sure, won the election in a landslide, only to be destroyed by Watergate two years later. 

In 1976, incumbent President Gerald Ford, who'd become president upon Nixon's forced resignation, was challenged for the presidential nomination by "warmed over movie actor" Ronald Reagan, former governor of California.  The party was stunned by Reagan's audacity, and rejected him, but not by much.  Ford lost the presidency to the pathetic Jimmy Carter.

In 1980, it was Reagan's turn.  Clearly the popular favorite within the party, he was despised by the Republican establishment, which feared he might actually do something as president.  They tried to force former President Gerald Ford on him as vice president, advertising the proposed ticket as a co-presidency, wherein Ford would be the reasonable go-along guy and Reagan would be the nutbag who'd be restrained.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Reagan went on to become a great president.

In 1992, professional sleaze Bill Clinton became president because a third-party candidate, Ross Perot, entered the race and took votes from President George H.W. Bush.  Perot, whose personality made Dick Nixon seem almost lovely, has since faded from politics.

And in 2000 we didn't even know who'd won the presidency until weeks after the election, when the result in the state of Florida became known.  Dems, backing Al Gore, were outraged when George W. Bush was declared the winner by about 500 votes.  They never forgave Bush for winning.  They never blamed Gore for losing his own home state of Tennessee.

And in 2008, the Democrats rejected the corrupt but experienced Hillary Clinton and nominated one of the most grossly underqualified candidates ever to run for president, the minor senator from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., a man whose resumé fit on the head of a pin.  He won the election and, from what I see in the papers, is still president.

Oh yes, we've had plenty of tumult in presidential politics over the years.  The country has survived.  And yes, this year does feel different, more desperate, more lacking in substance on the presidential level. 

But never underestimate the ability of the American people to snap back and set their country right.  Despair often leads to invention and ingenuity.

March 1,  2016     Permalink

FEBRUARY 29,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:52 P.M. ET: 

HIGH TECH NEWS – From AP:   LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A self-driving car being tested by Google struck a public bus on a Silicon Valley street, a fender-bender that appears to be the first time one of the tech company's vehicles caused a crash during testing.  Google accepted at least some responsibility for the collision, which occurred on Valentine's Day when one of the Lexus SUVs it has outfitted with sensors and cameras hit the side of the bus near the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California.  No one was injured, according to an accident report Google wrote and submitted to the California Department of Motor Vehicles. It was posted online Monday.  I'll bet the bus driver got into an argument with the car's steering wheel.

DEMS SLIP IN DEM MECCA – From the Boston Herald:   Nearly 20,000 Bay State Democrats have fled the party this winter, with thousands doing so to join the Republican ranks, according to the state’s top elections official.  Secretary of State William Galvin said more than 16,300 Democrats have shed their party affiliation and become independent voters since Jan. 1, while nearly 3,500 more shifted to the MassGOP ahead of tomorrow’s “Super Tuesday” presidential primary.  Galvin called both “significant” changes that dwarf similar shifts ahead of other primary votes, including in 2000, when some Democrats flocked from the party in order to cast a vote for Sen. John McCain in the GOP primary.  The primary reason? Galvin said his “guess” is simple: “The Trump phenomenon,” a reference to GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, who polls show enjoying a massive lead over rivals Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and others among Massachusetts Republican voters.  Trump has tapped into anger and frustration, and that crosses party lines.  We reported this morning that some professional pols think he can take New York State in November.

MORE BRILLIANCE – From the Washington Examiner:   The White House is quietly pushing for an increase in refugees from Syria, despite new concerns raised by state and county officials that federal help is often missing when they arrive.  President Obama's assistant for immigration policy told a task force set up by the National Association of Counties that the U.S. is eyeing a bigger role to help alleviate the growing crisis.  "We want to make sure that we can increase our numbers of refugees that are able to settle here," Felicia Escobar said.  This will be immensely unpopular with the American people, but I do love Democrats who hand our side election issues.

February 29, 2016      Permalink

THE BEST ON CLINTON – AT 11:58 A.M. ET:  This is the very best piece on Hillary Clinton's legal problems that I've read.  I urge you to read it all.  From University of Chicago Professor Charles Lipson at RealClearPolitics: 

If FBI Director Comey does recommend criminal charges, he will put DOJ and the White House in a very tight box. First, as a seasoned prosecutor, he will present only strong, winnable cases. Second, he won’t present one or two charges. He will present evidence of dozens and dozens of felonies. AG Lynch and her career attorneys won’t be able to say, “On the whole, there’s just not enough here to convict.” They will have to say that over and over, on each charge. Indictment on even a few felonies is a torpedo beneath the waterline for Clinton. Third, it is clear that CIA and FBI investigators already fear an administration whitewash and have leaked damaging information to the press.

If insiders think the administration is engaged in a full-fledged cover-up, they will resign, led by Comey. They won’t go quietly. They will spill the beans. And two hours later, it won’t smell good.

Knowing that, Lynch and her political bosses, Barack Obama and his closest adviser, Valerie Jarrett, will have to decide which is worse, indicting their party’s presumptive nominee or risking their own Watergate?

Whichever they choose, the White House will not want its fingerprints on the decision. They will want White House spokesman Josh Ernest to say, with a straight face, “This decision was made entirely by respected, career professionals at the Department of Justice.”

If the FBI recommends felony charges, as is likely, the DOJ’s choices are damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t. For Loretta Lynch, it will make for a painful final year. For her party, the stakes are the presidency. For her country, they are the impartial rule of law.

COMMENT:  Comey has a superb reputation for competence and integrity.  He will not trash it.  And I doubt that Loretta Lynch wants to sacrifice herself for the good of the Clintons.  And Obama would probably be happier with Joe Biden as the candidate to succeed him. 

The FBI probe is expected to come to an end soon.  The results cannot be covered up in a town that leaks like a sponge. 

Of course, it's possible that the FBI will find no serious criminal activity, but I don't think they've assigned 150 agents to look into a technical violation.   This is not about parking tickets.

The best of this campaign is yet to come.  Read that whole piece.

February 29, 2016       Permalink

TITANIC! – THE SINKING OF – AT 9:53 A.M. ET:  The Oscars were on last night, someone told me.  There was a lot of wonder about where the ratings would go in light of the controversy over "diversity."  After all, most people used to watch the Oscars for entertainment, not a political lecture.  Turns out most people today are still most people.  The ratings last night were in the tank.  From Deadline Hollywood:

Chris Rock came out swinging in one of the most anticipated opening monologues in years and took on the diversity controversy from the get-go at the 88th Academy Awards. Last night also saw Brie Larson win Best Actress, Leonardo DiCaprio snag Best Actor in his fifth nomination, Alejandro G. Iñárritu was named Best Director and Spotlight won Best Picture. With all that, the Oscars themselves did not have a great night ratingswise with a 23.1/37 in metered market results.

Declining to an 8-year low, that’s down 6% from the 24.6/39 that the ceremony got last year in early results from the 56 markets across the country. That 2015 Neil Patrick Harris hosted Oscars were matched with the 2011 Oscars for the third worst the Academy Awards has done in MM ratings since the last time Rock fronted the gig in 2005 – only 2009’s Hugh Jackman-hosted 23.3 and 2008’s Jon Stewart-hosted 21.9 were lower. Obviously, in the early results, last night’s show dipped below 2009 and close to 2008 numbers.

The 2005 Oscars were the best the show has done in the past decade with a 30.1/43 MM rating. That high has also remained true in later numbers for the show. With Million Dollar Baby winning Best Picture, the 2005 Oscars ended up with a massive 42.14 million viewers and 19.6 million among adults 18-49. In both categories, that was a dip from 2004’s results. Compared to the last time Rock hosted 11-years ago, last night’s 8:30 – midnight show was down 23% in metered market results – much more than a dip.

COMMENT:  I know there's a lot of show-biz lingo in that piece, but, bottom line, the bottom line was embarrassing.  Chris Rock is very popular, but even he couldn't save the show from the big turnoff. 

The political atmosphere didn't help.  Neither did the fact that millions of Americans don't know those movies or those so-called stars.  The golden age this ain't.  The great industry anthem is "There's No Business Like Show Business," but, unless Hollywood comes alive, increases its contact with its own audience, and stops politicizing every written line, show business may be no business.

February 29, 2016       Permalink

OH HAPPY DAY – AT 9:15 A.M. ET:  I love this, especially on a Monday morning.  Fred Dicker, one of the best reporters on New York State politics that we have, tells us that the real pros think Hillary Clinton might lose New York in a race against Donald Trump.  From the New York Post: 

Confidential polling data shows Hillary Clinton could lose the presidential election in heavily Democratic New York to Donald Trump as the GOP front-runner’s support grows to the point of being “surprisingly strong,” The Post has learned.

The poll results, from Democratic and Republican legislative races, have surprised many leading Dems, virtually all of whom have endorsed Clinton, while confounding and energizing GOP leaders, many of whom until recently have been opposed to Trump.

“There are some Democrats who think that Hillary can be taken if Trump mounts a strong campaign,’’ one of the state’s most prominent Democrats said.

Most of the polling didn’t address the possibility that former Mayor Michael Bloomberg would run as an independent, but some of it did — and found the former mayor took “significant’’ votes away from Clinton in heavily Democratic New York City and the surrounding suburbs, a source familiar with the data said.

The new polls, a second source said, showed Trump’s support, even without Bloomberg in the race, was “surprisingly strong’’ in Westchester and on Long Island, the key suburbs often viewed as crucial swing bellwethers on how statewide elections will turn out.

COMMENT:  Urgent Agenda is done in Westchester, and I grew up on Long Island.  The Clintons live in Westchester.  The local congresswoman, Nita Lowey, is a close Clinton friend.  If Clinton is wobbly in Westchester, she's in trouble. 

We note that polls are snapshots in time.  The election will be held in November, not now.  The Dems will be training their heavy guns – oh, I mean non-firearm devices – at Trump, and he provides fertile ground.  But Hillary still has the FBI probe hanging over her.

I do wish our side had a better frontrunner, with low negatives.  Republicans have the potential this year to run the table...with the right ticket.

February 29,  2016     Permalink