The Republican and Washington and media establishments have failed to stop the rise of Donald Trump and their critics have accused them of not taking him seriously until it was too late.
One evening last June, some of the Republican Party’s wealthiest donors gathered for a cocktail party at an exclusive resort in Deer Valley, Utah, during a three-day retreat hosted by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
They had just heard from six presidential hopefuls. Tom Duncan, the CEO of tool-maker Positec Tool Corp, chatted with a few attendees about a fantasy ticket to secure the White House in November 2016: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as his running mate.
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Ben Carson has left the presidential race and did not take part in the last debate though it is not clear how many people even noticed his absence.
But The Daily Show did not want him to completely disappear into the night unsung and they compiled a tribute.
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You can be excused if you missed the story that the US military had in a drone strike bombed to death 150 people in Somalia in one fell swoop. News reports on the strike quickly disappeared from the front pages.
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Whatever else one might say about Donald Trump (and there is always plenty to say), there is no question that he has exposed the seedy underbelly of the lies that the Republican party has been feeding its supporters over the years, that the policies that the party advocates will benefit them when in reality it benefits just the one-percenters. Trump’s success shows that the voters are catching on that they’ve been had on that issue, though they may have just replaced an old con with a new one, that Trump will solve their problems.
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Last night’s primary results produced a shock win for Bernie Sanders in Michigan where polls had had him trailing Hillary Clinton by about 20 points almost right up to the election. On the morning of the election yesterday, the poll guru Nate Silver had predicted a greater than 99% probability of a Clinton victory. Harry Enten says that “Sanders’s win in Michigan was one of the greatest upsets in modern political history.”
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Last Thursday’s over-the-top (or should I say below-the-waist) Republican debate happened too late in the week for many comedians to take shots at it but now they have weighed in.
On the latest episode of her show Full Frontal, Samantha Bee looks at what happened over the last week and how the last Republican debate went down. She gives a eulogy for the party and wonders if we can really trust the nation’s future in the hands of men who seem to be far too emotional.
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The Republican primaries would seem to be a fertile ground for game theorists. For example, you have the current situation where Donald Trump is leading in the polls and in winning states and delegates. He does not have an overall majority in each category but is heading for a plurality. Ignoring John Kasich for the moment, the question is what is the best strategy for the two challengers Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to adopt in order to try and win.
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After the Alabama state supreme court threw in the towel last Friday and ended their opposition to the US Supreme Court decision banning same-sex marriage, yesterday saw the state supreme court suffer another setback, this time being directly rebuked by the US Supreme Court in an adoption case involving a lesbian couple.
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Last night featured a Democratic debate that took place in Flint, Michigan, the town that is currently at the center of the crisis about lead in the water and for long has been emblematic of the decay of America’s cities and its manufacturing base. I could not watch it but this report from The Guardian summarizes what happened and describes it as a ‘fierce debate’, with sharp exchanges between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton over actual issues but with no personal attacks or mudslinging. In short, the opposite of what happens in Republican debates. Tessa Stuart provides some of the choice quotes.
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