Sad but true, regarding the horrific mass murder in Orlando: “GOP Congressmen Offer “Thoughts and Prayers.” Here’s How Much the NRA Gave Them to Offer Nothing More” by Forrest Wickman at slate.com.
Julian Zelizer probes “What Orlando terror attack means for Clinton, Trump and 2016” at CNN Opinion and observes, “the turmoil and fear the attacks raises will spur more questions and concerns from some voters about whether Trump can be trusted with the awesome responsibility of handling a terror attack; whether he has the knowledge, the temperament, the wisdom and the demeanor to guide the nation through these kinds of events.”
Trump doubles down on call for a temporary ban on Muslim migration to the U.S., tries to portray Clinton as advocate for for increasing the number of Muslims admitted to the U.S.
Washington Post syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains why “The strategic playing field is tilting toward Clinton“: “Hillary Clinton faces a strategic choice…she needs a decent share of the blue-collar vote to hold key Midwestern states — and she will have to rally what have been core Democratic constituencies: younger voters, who eluded her during the primaries, African Americans and Latinos. But the direction of her campaign and her selection of a running mate will depend in significant part on the class tilt of her strategy…Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg says Republican candidates for the House and Senate would risk large defections from their base if they are seen as sabotaging Trump…Greenberg argues that Clinton knows she has to offer a strong economic message with a populist feel to win over the millennial voters who flocked to Sanders. Appeals aimed their way will simultaneously help earn Sanders’s blessing and pick up the white working-class votes she’ll need.”
“Trump can’t even take the Romney map for granted,” said Pennsylvania GOP strategist Ray Zaborney, quoted in “Road to 270: Electoral map already looks tough for Trump” by AP’s Thomas Beaumont and Julie Pace.
At The Fix, Philip Bump reports that “Donald Trump’s polling surge has faltered — and Democrats haven’t even united.”
Lots of hype in headlines about Sen. Sanders not yet conceding or endorsing Clinton, even in some of the better newspapers. But when you read the stories below the headlines, what makes more sense is that Sanders is just waiting for the optimum moment to endorse Clinton, when his supporters will be ready for it and when it can do the most good.
At the Crystal Ball Kyle Kondik offers a salient back-of-the-envelope calculation about what constitutes a wave election which can propel Dems to a House majority: “Remember: Democrats narrowly won the national House vote in 2012 but only won 201 seats. In 2006 and 2008 — years where Democrats won House majorities — they led the generic ballot polling by about 10 points right before the election…That’s probably where the generic ballot polls will have to be in the fall to suggest that Democrats have a real shot at flipping the House.”
Should that happen, one of the more obnoxious wingnuts and Trump endorsers may be one of the celebrated political casualties of the blue wave, according to Eric Garcia’s Roll Call post, “Darrell Issa Gets Viable Challenger: Retired Marine colonel’s strong showing in jungle primary surprises experts.”

There are many moving tributes to Hillary Clinton’s remarkable victory and the historic significance of what she has accomplished. For openers try this Baltimore Sun editorial, which notes, “But make no mistake, this is big. As of today, the whole parent-daughter chat about “you can grow up to be anything you want to be including president of the United States” sounds a bit more credible than it did the day before. And few candidates better embody the struggles women have faced in the last half-century — from balancing motherhood to career to be accepted in the various male-dominated professions — than the presumptive Democratic nominee…How overdue is a female head of state? While Republicans and Democrats may brag that they’ve collectively elected more women to Congress than ever (about 20 percent of the House and Senate is female), other countries have done much better. As a Pew Research Center study released earlier this year points out, the U.S. ranks 33rd among 49 high-income countries in electing women to its national legislature. But wait, it’s really worse than that: Compared to 137 countries where data is available, the U.S. ranked 83rd , according to Pew.”
At The American Prospect, Adel Stan adds “Call me a sentimental sap, but forgive my tears. A woman has just won the presidential nomination of one of our two major political parties. An accomplished woman. A woman who can throw a rhetorical punch. A woman who’s made tough choices. And for the sake of all of the women who come after her, that’s a righteously good thing. We’ve been waiting a long time.”
From “Will Bernie Sanders supporters rally behind Hillary Clinton now? Here’s what we know” by Scott Clement and Emily Guskin at The Fix: “A May Washington Post-ABC News poll found 20 percent of Sanders primary supporters said they would support Donald Trump if he faced Hillary Clinton in a general election. At the same point eight years ago, 26 percent of Clinton primary supporters said they would support Republican Sen. John McCain…Post-ABC polling tracked Clinton’s 2008 primary supporters throughout the fall campaign and found they steadily gravitated toward Obama during the general election. Obama’s support among Clinton primary supporters rose from 64 percent in May to 73 percent in mid-September, 79 percent in mid-October and 83 percent by Election Day, according to the national network exit poll.”
Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reports on President Obama’s White House meeting with Sen. Bernie Sanders scheduled for today.
At The Hill Brent Budowsky envisions a new, powerful role for Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2016 campaign: “After the California primary, it is now certain that Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) cannot be the Democratic nominee for president, but he can still be the second most important Democrat in the election if he plays his cards right. Sanders should drop out of the presidential campaign as a candidate for the presidency, and reconstitute his campaign as a people’s PAC to raise substantial money from small donors that would be used to support liberal candidates running for the House and Senate against Republicans…Sanders still has a golden opportunity to have a truly powerful impact on American history in ways that would touch, and improve, many aspects of American life. His supporters and small donors can have a huge impact, achieving many aspects of the Sanders revolution that would begin immediately and last for decades to come.”
In his Tuesday night speech in Santa Monica, reports Amy Davidson at The New Yorker, Sanders “emphasized that he was still after something bigger than Trump–“transforming our country,” “knowing that we can do much, much better as a nation,” and making health care a right. Also, breaking up the banks and making “the billionaire class and corporate America” pay more taxes.” — all of which fit in nicely with Budowsky’s suggestion.
If there are any swing voters of conscience who remain undecided in their choice for president, this ad should close the deal:

At The Boston Globe Matt Viser’s “Reid reviews scenarios for filling Senate seat if Warren is VP pick,” explains how problematic it could be for Dems to keep Warren’s senate seat if Clinton selects her as running mate. Ditto for Sens. Sherrod Brown and Cory Booker, who would also have their replacements selected by Republican governors. Other frequently-suggested Democratic running mates who don’t have that problem include Sens. Bernie Sanders (VT), Tim Kaine (VA), Jack Reed (RI) and Amy Klobuchar (MN) along with CO Gov. John Hickenlooper.
Political scientists may have to coin a new term for Republicans who couple their denunciations of Trump’s racism with their endorsements of the GOP nominee. William Saletan provides an instructive typology at slate.com, “14 Republican Excuses for Donald Trump’s Racism.”

With 95 percent of precincts reporting, it appears that Hillary Clinton has won the California primary by about 13 percent and she has also won the New Jersey primary by 26 percent margin, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. In addition, she has won the New Mexico and South Dakota primaries by about 3 percent in each state. Sen. Bernie Sanders got a consolation prize in the form of victories in the Montana primary and the North Dakota caucuses.
An estimated 20 percent of California mail-in ballots will have to be counted in the days ahead. But it is likely that Clinton’s double-digit lead in that state will hold.
Given’s Clinton’s impressive win, Sanders will most likely endorse her before too long, despite his stated intention to campaign in next week’s Washington, D.C. primary, which marks the end of the 2016 Democratic presidential primary season.
At reuters.com John Whitesides provides this assessment of the accomplishments of the Sanders campaign:

During the campaign, Sanders forced Clinton to tack left repeatedly on issues ranging from her support for a higher minimum wage to her opposition to the Asian trade pact and Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Sanders’ progressive allies said those shifts by Clinton will be helpful in the Nov. 8 election against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has touted an anti-trade and pro-jobs economic agenda, and for Democrats in their efforts to recapture a majority in the U.S. Senate.
“When the story of the 2016 election is told, a major part of it will be that Bernie Sanders helped the Democratic Party turn up the volume on economic populism issues,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Some media are amping up stories about Sanders being a sore loser. But it seems unlikely that a candidate who has the smarts to do as well as he did would be politically tone-deaf enough to let his campaign end on a sour note. That would deny him leverage with the next president — and also Democratic leadership, when it comes time to assign committee chairmanships.
It remains unclear what percentage of Sanders supporters will vote for Clinton, though historical patterns indicate that a healthy majority of them will vote for the Democratic nominee.
Questions bearing on the timing of Sanders endorsement of Clinton include: What elements of the Sanders policy agenda will be incorporated in the Democratic Convention party platform? Will Clinton select Sanders as her running mate, or, if not, will Sanders like her choice? and perhaps most important of all, how hard will he campaign for her?
Clinton has been gracious in victory, and hopes for a unified Democratic campaign going forward at full strength rest in large measure on how well Clinton and Sanders work together.
In her New York Times report on Clinton’s victory, Amy Chozick nicely describes the factors that made Clinton such a strong candidate:

She may not be the orator President Obama is, or the retail politician her husband was. But Mrs. Clinton’s steely fortitude in this campaign has plainly inspired older women, black voters and many others who see in her perseverance a kind of mirror to their own struggles. And Mrs. Clinton’s very durability — her tenacity, grit and capacity for enduring and overcoming adversity — could be exactly what is required to defeat Donald J. Trump.

…And reverberate down-ballot, helping Democrats regain majorities in congress and the state legislatures.

In his insightful post “Black Democrats Want To See Bigger, Earlier Voter Turnout Efforts,” Darren Sands notes at BuzzFeed News, “Many of the political committees and campaigns seem to be a standstill when it comes to planning and moving money into programs that will turnout base democratic voters,” Quentin James, a Democratic strategist said. “Coming out of the 2012 cycle, we saw African-American voters cast ballots at a higher rate than white voters for the first time. I’m not a rocket scientist, but it seems a smart strategy would be to double down on turning out that demographic.”…”People are tired of the last-minute money,” one well-connected Democrat said, alluding to a trend in recent years to put resources into black outreach beginning in the fall. “That is a huge concern and they don’t want that. They want see that early investment. It needs to happen on the ground and now.”
Catastrophoic visions and squirmage epidemic in GOP over Trump’s doubling down on Latino-bashing.
But Trump’s attack against Judge Curiel may be more about creating a distraction from his growing fear that the ‘Trump University’ scandal can get even uglier, as the press uncovers the outrageous details, notes Heather Digby Parton at salon.com.
“Top Republicans in the state legislature are seeking to block Mr. McAuliffe’s sweeping order, which re-enfranchised 206,000 Virginians who have completed sentences, probation or parole. Last week, the Supreme Court announced a special session to hear arguments in July — in time to rule before the November election…Still, race is a powerful subtext; African-Americans make up 19 percent of Virginia’s population, but 45 percent of those covered by the governor’s order. The Sentencing Project, a Washington research organization, says one in five African-Americans in Virginia cannot vote because of felony convictions…But what Mr. McAuliffe granted, the Virginia Supreme Court may now take away.” – from Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s NYT article, “Virginia at Center of Racially Charged Fight Over the Right of Felons to Vote.”
Significant pros and cons about this idea. But keeping Biden close makes a lot of sense.
Politifact says “For median income, we found that 95 of the 100 poorest counties were located in red states” and “For percentage of residents in poverty, we found that 93 of the 100 poorest counties were in red states.” In the spirit of false equivalence, Politifact adds stretchy yada yada about Republicans doing well in rural areas and these counties being poor way back when the states were Democratic, but the fact nonetheless remains that Republican dominated state government has utterly failed to reduce poverty in these areas.
At The Atlantic Michelle Cottle explains why “There’s No Escaping the Top of the Ballot,” and notes “The level of split-ticket voting between the presidential race and races in the House and Senate is down to about 5 percent at this point,” said Richard Pildes, a law professor at NYU who has written on the nationalization of U.S. elections. Getting that number up much higher, predicted Pildes, “will be like pushing a boulder up a hill.”
Well, this is encouraging: “Senate Democrats are doing everything they can to link candidates in swing states to Trump, launching their “Party of Trump” campaign in March aimed at vulnerable GOP incumbents. The DSCC has reserved about $50 million worth of television airtime in the fall to hammer that message home,” reports Alexander Bolton at The Hill.
Will violence at demonstrations against Trump help him? Jose A. DelReal and Sean Sulivan address the concern at the Washington Post.

Hillary Clinton turned a corner in San Diego yesterday. She opened up a fierce, broadside attack on Donald Trump that left the GOP’s presidential nominee-apparent sputttering weak cheap shots and resembling a schoolyard bully who just got a fat shiner from a kid half his size.
Clinton’s speech was a genuine masterpiece. It was exceptionally well-written, and brilliantly-delivered. Here it is:

Few who saw Clinton’s speech would doubt that she is more than tough enough to win a one-on-one battle with Trump. She accomplished what President Carter tried and failed to do in 1980 — portray his GOP adversary as dangerously unprepared to conduct U.S. foreign policy and serve as commander in chief.
Credit Clinton’s staff with an impressive job of crafting her speech. Even the optics were compelling, with Clinton delivering her address in front of 19 U.S. flags. Everything about her presentation conveyed the impression that this is a candidate for president who has the gravitas, maturity, judgement and work ethic Americans want in the White House, in very stark contrast to Donald Trump. As Clinton put it in lacerating comments about Trump in her speech:

“He is not just unprepared — he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility,” Clinton said…This isn’t reality television. This is actual reality,” Clinton said as she chided the real estate mogul and political novice for his lack of experience on the world stage.
“He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia…The stakes in global statecraft are infinitely higher and more complex than in the world of luxury hotels…He believes we can treat the U.S. economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008”

As AP’s Julie Pace observed, “Gone was the wonky, meandering policy speech Clinton has delivered to lukewarm reviews in primary campaign appearances. Instead, she was focused and direct, lacing her remarks on the Islamic State group and Iranian nuclear accord with bumper sticker-worthy slogans about Trump.”
Stephen Collinson and Dan Merica noted at CNN Politics, “She attempted to convince voters that Trump’s ideas are a mix of “bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies.” She lambasted his “bragging” approach to foreign policy based on a string of “nasty tweets” and accused him of harboring a “bizarre” affinity for authoritarian leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Communist rulers of China and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.”
“It wasn’t just an incredibly well written speech, it was arguably Clinton’s most compelling public moment of the entire campaign so far,” said Simon Rosenberg, founder and president of NDN, a Democratic think tank,” quoted in Alex Sewitz-Wald’s nbcnews.com post, “Did Clinton Just Finally Figure Out How to Hit Trump?”
Until now, Trump has pretty much dictated presidential campaign news coverage with his daily barrage of tweets, insults and half-baked pronouncements. Clinton’s speech changes that dynamic, challenges the media to provide more thoughtful coverage and shames Republicans who are cowering in Trump’s shadow. She also eloquently challenges American voters to do some serious thinking about what kind of nation and world they want for their families, and to face the danger presented by the Republican’s nominee.

Melanie Trottman and Brody Mullins report at The Wall St. Journal on the labor movement’s efforts to challenge Trump’s inroads with a key constituency: “Unions spend heavily to support Democrats in elections and wield great influence over whether their members support those candidates. But labor leaders fear many of their members could be drawn to Mr. Trump. Merged Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling data from the first four months of the year show that among white union households, support is split evenly between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, at 44% each, in a potential general-election matchup…The AFL-CIO is preparing an education campaign to highlight some of Mr. Trump’s statements–such as that wages are too high–and lesser-known things about how he has run his businesses and treated employees, said Mike Podhorzer, political director of the nation’s largest federation of labor unions…More than half of the collective membership in AFL-CIO unions identify as Democrat, while about one-third identify as Republican and the rest as independent. The latter group is the one organized labor is most concerned about.”
Greg Sargent’s “Can Trump ride white anger into the White House? A new analysis suggests it’s a fantasy” at The Plum Line all but shreds one of the Trump campaign’s most treasured myths.
WaPo’s Ed O’Keefe and Mike DeBonis take a look “Inside Democrats’ Trump-fueled scramble to take back the House.” Most credible observations: “It’s unlikely that Democrats win back the House, but we can’t completely rule it out,” said Nathan Gonzales, editor of the Rothenberg & Gonzales political report. “Donald Trump puts enough volatility into the national political environment that we have to keep an open mind to lots of different scenarios. Gonzales anticipates that Democrats will gain at least 10 more seats, but he said that picking up the 30 needed for the majority will be “a challenge.”…House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) boasted recently that she thinks she could reclaim the speaker’s gavel. If the election were held today, she said, “We would win. We would pick up more than the 20, we could get to the 30. But it’s not today.”…Privately, some Democrats say the party waited too long to find potential candidates.”
At nasdaq.com Marshall Gittler explains why “Dollar, US Economy, Stocks: They All Do Better Under Democrats.” National Democratic leadership really ought to make an ad using the numbers Gittler offers.
At cnbc.com Jake Novak opines about “The three biggest mistakes Hillary Clinton is making right now,” including: “1. She’s taking a dive off of the platitude plateau…2. She’s letting Trump drive the agenda…3. She’s not breaking with President Obama… on ANYTHING.”
Paul Singer’s “USA TODAY VP Power Rankings: Kaine tops the list for Clinton’s running mate” features the picks of a panel of 20 political observers.
Republicans don’t just depend on voter suppression; They brag about it.
Zachary Roth’s msnbc.com post “In Ohio, battle rages over access to voting” provides an update on GOP suppression in a key state for Democrats.
Weather wonks predict high voter turnout in CA, NJ primaries on Tuesday.

In his Huiffpo post “Can Democrats Avoid the Circular Firing Squad?,” Robert Kuttner, cofounder and co-editor of The American Prospect discusses one scenario for an upset win of the Democratic nomination:

…Hillary Clinton could still lock up the nomination by the last primaries on June 14, but not without relying on super-delegates. Here are the numbers:
Clinton has 1,769 pledged delegates won in caucuses and primaries, out of 2,310 delegates required for nomination. There are 913 yet to be awarded in the last round of primaries. To go over the top before the convention, not counting super-delegates, Clinton needs to win 541 more delegates, or well over half. But with Sanders surging nearly everywhere, that seems extremely unlikely.
So the state of play after the six states vote June 7 (DC votes June 14, but has only 20 delegates) is likely to show Clinton with 50 to 100 votes short, Sanders with momentum, and the Sanders campaign mounting a last ditch effort to persuade most of the 712 super-delegates (541 of whom have already declared for Clinton) to reconsider, on the premise that Sanders has the better shot at beating Trump.

I’ll leave it to others to analyze this delegate math. But the nightmare scenario for Democrats would be if one of the two candidate wins the popular vote majority, while the other wins the delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. No matter which candidate is nominated under those circumstances, it would be tainted, perhaps fatally.
It is the popular vote that confers moral legitimacy on a candidate. That’s one reason why the Bush II presidency will always be viewed as a failure of democracy, and one which led to horrific consequences.
If Clinton wins the popular vote but loses the nomination, many of her supporters will call it out as yet another example of systemic denial of women’s rights, and not a few will stay home on election day. Some may even write her in.
If Sanders wins the popular vote, but not the necessary delegates, many of his supporters may stay home on election day, vote for a write-in or third party candidate or, worse, support Trump as a protest.
Either one of these “winning ugly” scenarios will cast the dark shadow of the ‘Dems in Disarray’ narrative over the election, and dramatically reduce the possibility of a Democratic victory. It would almost certainly gut hopes for a Democratic landslide that extends down ballot.
It’s possible that separate winners of the Democratic popular vote in the primaries and delegates would not necessarily lead to a Trump presidency, and that a Democrat could win. Trump in the White House is such a frightening prospect, that a Democratic nominee just might be able to win without having first won a majority of the party’s primary votes. But that’s a pretty high-stakes gamble.
At present Clinton leads Sanders by about 3 million popular votes. It would be a tall order for Sanders to finish with more popular votes in the Democratic primaries, but it could happen. He has some momentum.
But, if Sanders and Clinton made a mutual pledge to ask their delegates to support the candidate who wins the most popular votes when the primaries and caucuses are all finished, it would affirm the Democratic Party’s commitment to democracy and enhance Democratic voter solidarity. it would show that both Democratic candidates support the will of the people over super delegate politics.
It’s really not such a radical idea. The super delegate system is a train wreck in waiting. It should be dumped at the earliest opportunity. But both candidates can render it harmless right away with a popular vote pact that doesn’t require a rules change.
Polls indicate that Sanders and Clinton can both beat Trump, assuming Democrats unify behind their nominee. A popular vote pact between them could promote Democratic unity. It’s a good choice both Democratic candidates can make with little or no downside, and the timing is about right.

In “Can Donald Trump Win? These Battleground Regions Will Decide,” Jonathan Martin, Alexander Burns, Trip Gabriel and Fernando Santos focus on “the four regions likely to decide the presidency — Florida, the upper Southeast, the Rust Belt and the interior West.”
Ramesh Ponnuru of Bloomberg explains how “Clinton can crush Trump with one message” and notes, “Her most powerful message against Trump might be a non-ideological one: His lack of knowledge, seriousness and impulse control make him too dangerous to put in the presidency…That strategy would have room for many specific criticisms of him that fit within the overall message of his unfitness. Instead of presenting his $11 trillion tax cut as a typical right-wing scheme, for example, she could tie it together with his speculation about defaulting on the debt and suggest that he is far more reckless than normal conservatives. (His encouragement of other countries to get nuclear weapons also illustrates this point.) And she would have to outsource some potential attacks to others. Calling Trump a “fascist,” for example, would make her rather than him look wild-eyed.”
At Politico David S. Bernstein explores an unlikely scenario, “How Hillary Loses: Donald Trump can actually win if Clinton makes these four mistakes. Spoiler alert: She’s already making all of them.” In his summation graph, Bernstein says “…Trump survives a Latino surge in the South and West; Clinton fails to bring home young voters in the Southeast and Midwest; Libertarians give Trump a foothold in the Northeast; the Rust Belt puts the nail in the coffin–and with somewhere between 274 and 325 electoral votes…” Lots of stretchwork there, and Bernstein does acknowledge that “it’s also possible Clinton wins in a landslide.”
“Pennsylvania and Michigan have voted Democratic in every election since 1988. (Ohio is a swing state, of course, so that’s a bit more realistic.) Central to Trump’s argument is that he’ll increase turnout and support from working-class white voters, enough to counteract votes from heavily Democratic (and less-white) parts of each state…On Thursday, Bloomberg Politics released a poll that cast some doubt on that happening. Pollster Purple Strategies surveyed voters in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan who earn between $30,000 and $75,000 a year — what they call “middle income.” Their choice for president? Hillary Clinton, by 7 points…..the numbers in the Bloomberg survey are not what Trump needs — by a wide margin — if he’s to sweep the Rust Belt or even pick off a couple of states.” – from Philip Bump’s “A new poll has bad news for Donald Trump in the Midwest” at The Fix.
And Dan Balz chucks in a sobering reminder at Washington post Politics that “The methodology of all types of polls is under challenge. There is a serious and urgent debate underway among public opinion researchers about the way forward…For the rest of us, the exchanges lead to common points of agreement, all of which might seem obvious but should not be forgotten. Don’t put too much emphasis on any single poll. Look closely at averages of groups of polls to determine whether there are real shifts in the race. And don’t expect polls to predict the future.”
But this kind of poll ought to be instructive: “Only eight percent of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in the Republican Party, and 15 percent – in the Democratic Party. Similarly, just 29 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of Republicans have any confidence in their own political parties,” notes a new poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Despite the edge Dems have here, when 70 percent of Democratic respondents in a poll say they lack confidence in their party, not doing anything to boost the party’s image, instead of just promoting candidates, indicates negligent leadership. Where, for example, are the ads showing Democratic accomplishments?
Yet another example of frustrating and hard to understand Democratic weakness in a state that ought to be trending purple: “Democrats hold a small minority in the Missouri House with 45 members, and in 66 of the chamber’s 163 districts no Democrats have filed to run. Republicans, with 117 members, have a supermajority and could maintain it with wins in at least 43 contested races. It needs to win only 16 to maintain a majority.” Pathetic.
Kate Stringer reports a little good news from Washington state: “Washington CAN, along with the Washington Environmental Council, recently completed an experiment on how door-to-door canvassing affected voter turnout in south Seattle, which has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the county–as well as some of the highest diversity…The precincts they canvassed are more than 50 percent people of color. The group found that 82 percent of registered voters who consistently voted over the last three years in these neighborhoods identify as White. The experiment, named Operation Spectra, moved chronic nonvoters–or people who hadn’t voted in the eight most recent major elections–to vote in the November 2015 election 13.7 percent higher than other diverse precincts Washington CAN used as a control group…Melissa Michelson, a political science professor at Menlo College, has conducted dozens of studies on canvassing and is co-author of the book Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns. Her past experiments failed to sway chronic nonvoters. “If [this trend] repeats, then it’s a huge change to what political scientists know about mobilizing nonvoters,” Michelson says.”
Tobias Konitzer, a Ph.D. candidate in communication at Stanford University and David Rothschild is an economist at Microsoft Research present some intertesting (and wonky) findings at The Monkey Cage in their post, “New polls show that more Americans prefer Democrats’ policies.” As the authors conclude, “The general population is much more aligned with Democratic rather than Republican positions. For five issues, the Democratic position is much more popular than either the neutral or the Republican position. Those include increased taxes on high earners, legalizing abortion in cases of rape and incest, having anti-discrimination laws for sexual orientation, federally mandating that businesses offer maternity leave and increased gun control measures…For two issues, the Democratic position and the neutral position are equally popular: whether the government should try to reduce income inequality and whether global warming exists…American voters are decidedly neutral on two issues associated with Republicans: reducing Medicare costs by giving vouchers to subscribers and curtailing government regulations…But they agree with the Republicans on two issues: reducing immigration and considering military options to deal with Iran.”

If the Sanders-Trump debate becomes a solid go, Hillary Clinton may want to reconsider her decision not to debate Sanders before the California primary and give the OK to a three-way debate that allows her to take on Trump.
Not participating gives her adversaries a free ad with millions of viewers. Neither Trump nor Sanders will miss the opportunity to attack Clinton. That will be the central focus of the debate, knocking off the front-runner. “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
If Clinton just criticizes the Trump-Sanders debate as a bad idea because it breaks precedent, and leaves it at that, she runs the risk of sounding like an ossified traditionalist who can’t cope with change. The spin doctors will pin the “sour grapes” and “scardy cat” labels on her, and in this crazy election year, it just might stick.
Clinton participating in the debate would be better, even though it has a downside — it gives Trump a forum to bash Democrats and perhaps gain some credibility just by being the sole Republican underdog fighting a tag-team. Of course he could likely as not make an even bigger fool of himself.
The upside is Clinton is a strong debater. She will have to debate Trump in the near-future anyway, and she is already well-prepared to win that contest. Sanders will lose some of the stature he would have gotten in a one-on-one debate just by having Clinton on the stage and she has already demonstrated that she can hold her own in debates with him.
The wisest course for Sen. Sanders is to urge that Clinton be included in any debate with Trump. In that way he can look fair-minded and respectful of voters, whether or not she agrees to be in the debate.
It may be that the time is ripening for debates across party lines before the primaries are over. The parties won’t like it much, but it would make for a more engaging primary season. It might have been interesting, if for example, there were a series of one-on-one debates between various presidential candidates, such as Kasich-O’Malley, Trump-Clinton or Sanders-Cruz and other combinations. Those debates earlier on could add clarity to the policy differences between the parties. Coming so late, it just looks like a hail-Mary.

At The New York Times Thomas B. Edsall frames a question many are wondering about: “How could a candidate with as much baggage as Trump be neck-and-neck with one of the most admired, best credentialed and most broadly experienced nominees in the history of the Democratic Party?” Edsall elaborates, “The unrelenting assault from the right and the left on her integrity and competence, conducted both by Republicans and by her opponent for the Democratic nomination, appears to have taken a toll. Clinton has been under attack from the right throughout her 25 years in the national arena. The Sanders critique from the left has served to deepen her negative ratings…One alternative for Clinton is to try to elevate the campaign debate to issues of judgment, temperament and experience, as Lyndon Baines Johnson was able to do when he ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964. This is clearly terrain where she holds an advantage. But so far this year no one who has faced Trump has been able to change the conversation.”
Paul Krugman has a ‘Conscience of a Liberal’ post up on “The Truth About the Sanders Movement.” Krugman offers a list of categories to pidgeonhole Sanders voters including: Genuine Idealists; Romantics; Purists; “Clinton Derangement Syndrome” Victims; and “Salon des Refuses.” Krugman may be too dismissive here of issue-oriented Sanders voters. He should also add a category for “Strategic Lefties” — those who see support for Sanders as a way to push Clinton to embrace a more progressive policy agenda, which has worked out rather well.
At Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Alan I. Abramowitz explains “Why Democratic Unity Could Be Easier to Achieve This Time: Donald Trump and Barack Obama.” Among Abramowitz’s observations: “…Because of the extraordinarily negative opinions that Democratic voters currently hold toward Trump, even a fairly tepid endorsement by Sanders may be sufficient to convince the vast majority of his supporters to cast their ballot for Clinton in the general election…A somewhat greater concern for Democrats in 2016 may be ensuring that Sanders’ youthful supporters actually make it to the polls. A much larger share of Sanders backers than 2008 Clinton backers are under the age of 30, which means they are probably less reliable general election voters. The Clinton campaign clearly will need a strong get-out-the-vote effort and all the help they can get from Sanders in motivating his young supporters to turn out in November.”
Dan Roberts of The Guardian sees Sen. Elizabeth Warren as a potent unity advocate for Democrats. “Warren remains a senior party figure,” explains Roberts, “perhaps the only one other than Barack Obama who is respected by both halves of a divided Democratic party.”
And Warren’s message on the essential role of government in facilitating entrepreneurship and private enterprise still resonates:

It’s time for Democratic candidates and campaigns at every level to start raising holy hell about the need for infrastructure upgrades that will provide millions of needed jobs. Rene Marsh, David Gracey and Ted Severson spotlight the public safety threat [posed by “America’s infrastructure: Beams disintegrating under bridges” at CNN Politics. As the authors note, “As former Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood says, “We’re like a third-world country when it comes to infrastructure…Nearly 60,000 bridges across the country are in desperate need of repair…According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, every state has some degree of bad bridges that need to be repaired. In Los Angeles, CNN found trees growing out of cracks in a bridge. In Chicago, netting is in place to protect drivers from falling concrete….According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, bridge infrastructure investment needs to be increased by $8 billion annually. The society said that increase would address the estimated $76 billion in needs for deficient bridges across the United States.”
When your crazy uncle starts ranting about Clinton’s emails, refer him to this link.
At The Upshot Josh Katz and Kevin Quealy review historical data since 1980 to provide an answer to the question, “When Should You Start Worrying About the Polls?” With respect to this political moment, the authors note, “At this point – 167 days before the election – a simple polling average has differed from the final result by about nine percentage points. …But this far out, a simple polling average is not particularly helpful at predicting the final result. (An analysis from the political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien concurs. That analysis focused on the correlation of polls with the final result, instead of the difference in percentage points.)…The day before the voting, an unadjusted polling average has been about 3.5 points off the final result.”
Also at The Crystal Ball, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley say “Libertarians Should Have Their Best Presidential Election Ever.” Kondik and Skelley note that “early polls suggest that the Libertarian ticket is taking about equally from the two major parties.” My hunch is that later polls will show the Libertarians doing significantly more damage to the GOP.