Wow. Scalia croaking has already cost Dow Chemical $835 million.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Yes think of all those companies that invested monies to Scalia. You know a few $100,000 here, free trips there. When cases were coming up they new they had his vote. Now that He is dead they have lost their corporate leverage with the Supreme Court. Some outside of the Corporate world might consider these things bribes but in GOP land it is just tips for a future job well done.
Only justices appointed by Republicans could imagine money equals speech. No legalized bribery here, nothing to see, move on little people, move on!
How dare you counter-message the despair here at the Frog Pond, Boo.
If we needed clarification of what’s at stake in this election, here it is.
Yes, that’s why I’m not voting for the corporate candidate.
LOL… made me laugh.
I’m glad!
To be sure, $835million is chump change & the cost of doing bidness for Dow, but very interesting. Color me unsurprised.
And this goes to those arguments from rightwing legal zealots who want Zombie Scalia to keep getting to vote from beyond the grave. Now we know at least one company who may be paying off these legal types to say that nonsense.
Indeed, the 4/4 Supreme’s split with cases reverting to the District Courts for the original ruling focused our attention towards cases such as Texas and its arbitrary impediments to Roe V. Wade. Off of the radar comes this DOW Chemical anti-price fixing ruling by Kansas City’s District Court, and it is a pleasant surprise. Sock it to DOW, the manufacturers of Napalm during the Vietnam War. Were they ever forced to pay a settlement to severely burned Vietnamese civilians? Bastards.
Early reports saying that turnout in South Carolina is low today. Should be good for Clinton, of course. And South Carolina won’t matter for Democrats in November, so she’s doing a great job down there.
ABC exit polls point to a 35 point win for Clinton in SC.
I’m waiting for turnout numbers and numbers on first time voters. Remember in IA Clinton won the non-first time (DEM caucus base) by 78% to 22%.)
My sister called a few minutes after 6:00. She said it was declared for Clinton about one minute after the polls closed. She intends to vote for Hillary (one of your geriatric feminists) but is mad about this.
What’s she mad about? Exit polls are always accurate when it points to a landslide for a candidate or favors the most conservative candidate.
At least she didn’t live in CA in 1980 when it was called for Reagan with several hours left for people to vote out here.
She thought that it was impossible to count the votes in one minute and it indicated a fix.
She’ll be delighted to know about today’s announcement by Booman of the demise of the Sanders campaign because now she can have her female President, never realizing that her present poverty is the direct result of Clinton priorities.
As for me, I am irredentist, like those crackers with the Confederate flags. I will never accept her. I could live with O’Malley or someone else, but never Clinton.
I got a sample ballot from the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization. They endorse Hillary. I kept it as a guide for who to vote against in what will probably be my last Democratic Primary.
From the votes that are in at the moment, it looks like the only segment Bernie pulled strongly were around university towns. At least that’s how I’m reading the Pickens and Oconee totals. Clemson sits on the county line between the two counties and on the Pickens side of the county line.
Is South Carolina an open or closed primary for Democrats? Some of the other counties that Sanders has strength in either are Operation Chaos crossovers or points that Sanders has some unusual strength among either a minority of African-Americans, among rural white people, or both.
The totals so far point to dismal turnout in South Carolina in November for Democrats.
Base turnout so far looks to be comparable to that in IA and NH. Probably a tad stronger than IA for the establishment choice, but I guess that’s to be expected. Apparently only white lefties are unforgiving of those that play the race card for personal gain.
Perhaps the vast majority of African-American voters in South Carolina simply disagree with your characterization of Clinton’s campaign. That is a more likely explanation of tonight’s result.
Obviously they do. Checking back on the numbers, I did neglect to note that Clinton got 35% of the AA vote in ’08.
Many on the left lament the fact that white voters in many parts of the country vote against their own interests. Do you object to such statements? I believe that those who lament about that aren’t restricted to white folks. Would never occur to me to denigrate any AA that made such an observation.
But by your standards, it’s inappropriate for a white person like me to make a similar observation about how AA votes. Another in your seemingly endless series of double standards about anything I say.
Look, you and others get in your Hillary bashing up and down every thread. I raise objections to a fraction of these comments when I feel that the bashing is least fair-minded, and where I believe it becomes counterproductive to your desire to have Sanders as the Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, a desire I share. We can’t and won’t move Hillary supporters with baloney presented in a hostile way.
The Sanders campaign itself is not issuing many of the harsh attacks you have here. Perhaps they agree that it would counterproductive and counterfactual to do so. Given that Bernie and his staff have run a remarkably successful campaign so far, their hesitation to go your way may become meaningful to you.
I must return to never directly posting a comment in response to any comment you post in response to Martin’s FP posts or response from you to any other commentators here. I’ve tried not to do that but admit to having lapsed. However, generally it’s you that begins any back and forth comments with me as if you’re trolling me. This puts me in the awkward position of appearing impolite by not responding to you, which I can live with, but it also usually entails letting your crap hang there as the last word which I do mind but can’t be bothered with in dead threads (or even read whatever your last missive is in such dead threads).
I’m not interested in debating facts with you or anyone (dittoheads love to do that), and I can’t stand it when people make arguments by changing the goalposts (another dittohead tactic). Or my weighting of facts for relevance either. I also work very hard at being consistent in evaluating anyone — IOW if GOP X does Y and DEM Z does Y, I either give both of them a pass or critique them exactly the same way (or close enough considering that being perfectly unbiased isn’t possible). What you will never see from me is criticism of a DEM that is harsher than the same thing done by a Republican once I have all the facts, or as many of the facts that will be publicly available, in hand.
You don’t like my standards and I don’t like yours; so, there is nothing to be gained from any comments and responses between the two of us. Let’s agree to disagree and ignore each other from here on out.
In today’s Democratic party, white people aren’t allowed to have opinions.
What do new voters look like?
No word on that yet. My guess is somewhat similar to NH.
Another way of looking at it is that this one case is almost as much as Obama raised for his 2012 campaign. That just puts in context how cheap it is for the wealthy to drop comparatively vast sums on elections.
Usually the ROI is many multiples.
Poor babies
I dunno, when the almost certain GOP nominee for the POTUS can have their name invoked by high school students in a way which is essentially meant to say “Fuck you, Mexicans,” I have a problem believing that this expression of the current zeitgeist makes it possible to imagine that Republicans will get the votes they need from non-whites to win as much as they would like to in November:
Call me crazy.
Many here are issuing dark threats about the probability of President Trump. The reporting linked below is astonishing in its reporting; I’ve pulled some portions, but the whole thing is worthwhile:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/donald-trump-republican-party.html?_r=0
“…At least two campaigns have drafted plans to overtake Mr. Trump in a brokered convention, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has laid out a plan that would have lawmakers break with Mr. Trump explicitly in a general election.
…
Late last fall, the strategists Alex Castellanos and Gail Gitcho, both presidential campaign veterans, reached out to dozens of the party’s leading donors, including the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and the hedge-fund manager Paul Singer, with a plan to create a “super PAC” that would take down Mr. Trump. In a confidential memo, the strategists laid out the mission of a group they called “ProtectUS.”
…
The two strategists, who declined to comment, proposed to attack Mr. Trump in New Hampshire over his business failures and past liberal positions, and emphasized the extreme urgency of their project. A Trump nomination would not only cause Republicans to lose the presidency, they wrote, “but we also lose the Senate, competitive gubernatorial elections and moderate House Republicans.”
…
While still hopeful that Mr. Rubio might prevail, Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr. McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump’s loss as a given and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a President Hillary Clinton, according to senators at the lunches.
He has reminded colleagues of his own 1996 re-election campaign, when he won comfortably amid President Bill Clinton’s easy re-election. Of Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell has said, “We’ll drop him like a hot rock,” according to his colleagues.“
And the angry Trump voters won’t vote down-ticket?
Of course not. Angry Trump voters either don’t care about down ticket races or prefer DEMs (as some people analyze elections)
The prediction McConnell is making here is that there will be more angry anti-Trump voters than there will be angry pro-Trump voters. It isn’t hard at all to believe this will happen; Trump’s negatives for the general electorate are through the roof, significantly higher than Hillary’s, and that’s before Trump has been exposed to his very first general election campaign.
Recommending to his Senate candidates that they consider explicitly distancing themselves from their POTUS nominee is a way for Mitch to attempt to preserve his majority.
How did that turn out for the blue dogs in 2010 vis a vis Obama?
2010 wasn’t a Presidential election. Turnout is always much different and heavier for a Presidential election, even without our Nation’s most famous loudmouth racist juicing progressive/minority turnout further with his general election candidacy.
What we’re talking about in this section of the comments thread is the Majority Leader of the Senate Republicans deciding to advise his colleagues that the Presidential campaign of their Party’s nominee may be so problematic and weak that they should start thinking now about how and when they might distance themselves from him.
That seems notable.
OK, I took a closer look at your post, and understand better what you’re suggesting, that re-election candidates distancing themselves from the President from their own Party hasn’t had a history of working.
While pointing out that distancing yourself from a Presidential candidate who has never held elected office is different from distancing yourself from the seated President, and running in House Districts is different than running Statewide for Senate seats, I’m in agreement with your larger point: McConnell’s strategy probably won’t work very well.
You mean the guy who had his pick lose to baby paul in 2010, and the current sitting Gov of his home state, primaried him last year for being too squishy. Yertle the Turtle ain’t loved any more by the base than Jeb? is.
t-Rump will shred Yertle much quicker than he has any of the other nut bags in the clown car.
McConnell’s won a lot more elections than Trump.
Only in Kentucky, with the machine he built, with in the last two elections he wasn’t the candidate, his hand picked candidate lost.
2010: baby paul beat McConnell’s hand picked candidate Trey Grayson in the senate race
2015 Matt Bevin beat McConnell’s choice James Comer in the governors race.
McConnell isn’t a tea party man, and wants the plutocrats to run the country. His problem, they are a large part of the base the pubies need to hold power.
Actually, McConnell was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 1998 and 2000, helping his Party’s slate of candidates win majority control for the GOP Caucus in each election. He’s also been the Minority and Majority Leader since 2006; he’s had a role there in recruiting and advising Senate candidates as well.
I hate his politics, and the TEA Party has begun to swamp him a bit, but he’s a skilled politician. Meanwhile, Trump has won exactly zero general elections to office.
Sorry, but he is losing his hold on power because he is too beholden to the plutocrats, and the base is starting to revolt against that.
Hell his first pick in 2016 in the GOtPer clown car, baby paul has already dropped out of the primary fight.
The person he despises is winning, looks like his power is severely in decline, as to candidates he baqcks.
Mitch is looking at Trump’s sky-high disapproval ratings with the general electorate in recent polls.
Look, I’d love it if he told his Senators to tie their campaigns and messages to Trump’s; we’d have the Senate majority all locked up. Weakening position or not, I think McConnell’s making the right call for his caucus in telling his Senators to consider maintaining their distance from Trump if he wins the nomination.
McConnell is hated by the base represented by t-Rumps supporters. So his telling GOtPer senator candidates to distance themselves from t-Rump comes with a backlash. It also tell t-Rump’s supporters NOT to vote for the squishes that cut and run from t-Rump.
It’s a quandry. They’ve got a problem, all right. They’ll probably attempt to maintain plausible deniability early and reserve the right to cut bait in the fall if polls look bad for the buffoon.
I don’t think this strategy will save the vulnerable GOP Senators. The Democrats running against them would be well advised to make sure the plausible deniability strategy won’t work.
If the Democrats ran elections like Republicans, they would be preparing to secretly fund third-party candidates explicitly supporting Trump in critical states and Congressional districts throughout the country. Done right, that could potentially flip both the Senate AND the House…
Guys, really…I worry about Trump’s ability to gain votes from Hispanics:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/watch-donald-trump-blames-trump-university-legal-woes-on-hostile-jud
ge-who-happens-to-be-spanish/
“We’ve won much of that case, they’ve missed the statute of limitations, and most of it is going away,” he explained. “The rest of it we’re doing very well, we have a very hostile judge because, to be honest with you, the judge should have thrown the case out on summary judgement. But because it was me and because there is a hostility towards me by the judge — tremendous hostility, beyond belief — I believe he happens to be Spanish, which is fine. He’s Hispanic, which is fine. We haven’t asked for a recusal, which we may do.”
Presumably Trump is referring to U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel of California.
It is very revealing to see Trump going on in the video for five minutes, sounding extremely defensive about the Trump University case.