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MARCH 2,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:54 P.M. ET: 

HILLARY SWEATS – From Fox:   The Justice Department has reportedly granted immunity to a former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server.  A senior U.S. law enforcement official told The Washington Post on Wednesday that the FBI secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the private server at her New York home in 2009.  Current and former agents told the newspaper that agents will likely want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information in emails as part of the ongoing investigation.  This is a very big deal.  This guy took the Fifth when testifying before Congress because he didn't have immunity.  Now that he has it, he can sing.  Hillary must not be amused.

AMERICA MARCHES ON – From Gateway Pundit:  A reporter at a DFL caucus for Minnesota’s House District 60B could not report on the candidates’ speeches to caucus attendees because the speeches were only given in Somali.  Eric Roper with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune posted a series of tweets from the Brian Coyle Center in Minneapolis about the caucus. English speakers were in short supply in the area now populated by Somali refugees.  “Several Hillary Clinton supporters in this crowd in the center, I learned through a multi-person interpreter.”  Hey, shouldn't we all learn Somali?  It's the multicultural thing to do.  Down with the colonial language!

ROMNEY SPEAKS – There is semi-anticipation over the speech Mitt Romney is giving tomorrow in Utah.  The 2012 Republican presidential candidate is expected to vigorously denounce Donald Trump and warn of same.   I'll certainly watch it, but I wonder how much clout Romney has with the public.  He's hardly been in the news for the last four years, and he did lose in 2012.  Of course, it's possible, though unlikely, that Romney could offer himself as an alternative to Trump.  It's also possible, but unlikely, that he will announce the formation of a new party, or a new faction within the GOP.  Romney is clearly making his statement with the hope of shaking up the race.  But what has he shaken up lately? 

March 2,  2016     Permalink

STARTLING – AT 10:51 A.M. ET:  Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.  Chris Christie has endorsed Donald Trump, whom he earlier had ridiculed and insulted.   And now we have Lindsey Graham, a former presidential contender, showing just how far the stop-Trump faction is willing to go to prevent Donald from getting the nomination.  From Weekly Standard: 

As Donald Trump racks up wins on Super Tuesday, many of the anti-Trump crowd are suggesting candidates for the GOP to rally behind.

Senator Lindsey Graham made a surprising suggestion—Ted Cruz. Graham has long been a vocal critic of the Texas senator, ran against him, and endorsed one of his opponents.

Charlie Rose asked Graham, "So there is no way, you're seem to be suggesting, at the convention or before the convention to stop DonaldTrump from being the nominee?"

He replied, "Short of a major scandal, probably not. And if Marco doesn't win Florida, I don't know how he goes forward. If Kasich loses Ohio... you know, Ted Cruz is not my favorite by any means. I don't wish him ill. I was making a joke about Ted, but we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump, and I'm not so sure that would work."

Rose followed up. "But you would recommend that in order to stop Donald Trump and rally behind Cruz?"

"I can't believe I would say yes, but yes."

COMMENT:   Polling shows a great deal of discontent about Trump in the Republican Party, but, as the saying goes, you can't beat somebody with nobody.  The anti-Trump brigades have to find a leader and support him.  The fact that they haven't done that up to now is killing their efforts.

March 2, 2016       Permalink

THEY REALLY DISLIKE HER – AT 9:51 A.M. ET:  Hillary Clinton may be steamrolling toward the Democratic nomination, but that doesn't mean the public is overwhelmed with enthusiasm.  In fact, her "we love you" rating has reached a new low.  From the Washington Free Beacon:   

Hillary Clinton’s unfavorability rating has hit a record high as the former secretary of state pushes to become the Democratic nomination for president, a campaign that has been weighed down by inquiries surrounding her use of private, unsecured email at the State Department.

Currently, 55 percent of American voters view Clinton unfavorably, according to a CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday that was conducted in the days leading up to the Democratic primary in South Carolina, which Clinton won over the weekend. This represents the highest unfavorable rating that Clinton has registered in the history of the poll, which has asked the question since March 1992.

The share of Americans viewing Clinton negatively has ticket up three percentage points in the last month as reports have continued to emerge about the presence of classified information on Clinton’s private server, a controversy that has been brewing for nearly a year.

More than 2,000 Clinton emails that the State Department has released to the public under court order contain classified information, though the agency and Clinton’s campaign have insisted that the correspondences were not marked classified when they originated on her email. Twenty-two messages have been upgraded to top secret, and those were blocked from release because of their high sensitivity.

COMMENT:  If she wins, she will probably be the most unpopular new president in the nation's history.  The same could probably be said of Donald Trump, should he win.

As the comedian Ted Lewis used to ask, "Is everybody happy?"

Uh, well...

March 2, 2016       Permalink

TED TAKES ALASKA – AT 9:22 P.M. ET:  Giving him three victories for the night.  From the Washington Times: 

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A high-profile endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin couldn’t deliver this state for Donald Trump as Ted Cruz won the Alaska Republican presidential preference poll.

Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, edged the national GOP front-runner in Alaska for his third win of Super Tuesday. Trump was still the night’s big Republican winner with victories in seven states. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who finished third in Alaska, won one state.

The other two candidates on Tuesday’s ballot in Alaska — John Kasich and Ben Carson — did not garner enough support to win any delegates.

The Alaska GOP reported high voter turnout that exceeded 2012 levels as thousands of Alaskans decided which of the remaining GOP presidential candidates would get their support. Party spokeswoman Suzanne Downing said in an email that volunteers manning polling sites were somewhat overwhelmed by the “unbelievable” turnout.

Some sites saw long lines, including the convention center that served as the lone polling location in Juneau, where dozens of people, including state legislators, lobbyists and Alaska’s first lady, waited their turn to vote. First lady Donna Walker declined to say who she supported.

State Sen. John Coghill, a Republican from North Pole, wasn’t shy in declaring his support for Cruz, seeing Cruz as closest to his own philosophy. He said Cruz and Rubio — but Cruz especially — seem to be more supportive of states’ rights. Coghill is among the state legislators who have been concerned about federal overreach. He said he would support whomever the Republican nominee winds up being.

COMMENT:  As noted, Cruz won three states last night, including his own delegate-rich state of Texas.  Trump did win seven, but that was against an opposition divided among Rubio, Cruz, Carson, and Kasich.  Trump's numbers weren't especially impressive.

While Trump does move closer to clinching the nomination, his delegate total is less than a third of the number needed for victory.  The race goes on. 

March 2,  2016     Permalink

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