Heard on Morning Joe, today, while driving to the mall for my walk.
Per Joe and Mika, establishment Republicans and pundits, much though they hate it, are admitting Trump might actually be their party's nominee, when the dust settles.
He is far more Main Street than Wall Street, being opposed to immigration and free trade while refusing to try to eliminate Social Security and Medicare.
Each of these is directly opposed to the Wall Street view.
In the money primaries, Jeb W, Cruz, and Rubio are way behind Trump and Carson.
In the polls, Trump leads and Carson isn't far behind, while all the "respectable" candidates are in single digits.
Carly Fiorina gets a bounce with every debate and then falls back, again.
Eugene Robinson, writing about the Democrats' debate.
The main event was Clinton versus Sanders, and what should worry Republicans is that the two leading Democrats spent so much of the evening on the issues Americans say they care about.
To cite one representative survey, a recent CBS poll asked registered voters what they most wanted to hear the candidates discuss.
"Economy and jobs" came in first at 24 percent, while "immigration" was a distant second at 11 percent and "foreign policy" third at 10 percent.
But what do Republicans talk about in their debates?
Who is going to be toughest on illegal immigration, who is more opposed to President Obama's foreign policy, who is more determined to defund Planned Parenthood.
On the economy, they fight to establish who is more opposed to raising the minimum wage.
The GOP establishment candidates have no economic message to offer beyond the party's standard prescription of tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation for businesses.
That may be why the front-runners are Trump and Carson, who have never held public office and whose economic prescriptions are more populist.
It is a pressing fact of daily life for most Americans that middle-class incomes have fallen in the past decade and are roughly the same as they were 20 years ago.
This explains why Gallup found recently that despite the economic recovery, only about half of Americans are "feeling better" about their financial situations.
How can government help the middle class?
With a higher minimum wage?
With a mandate for businesses to offer paid family leave?
With assistance in paying for higher education, perhaps even free tuition at public universities?
With trade and tax policies that encourage keeping jobs in the United States?
The Democratic candidates understand that these are the issues people care most about.
Trump gets it, too, in his own bombastic way.
A party that goes into the election without a compelling message on jobs and incomes -- I'm talking to you, GOP establishment -- is begging to lose.
And then there is Krauthammer.
Unless she’s indicted, Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination.
. . . . .
Amid the playacting between today and Clinton’s coronation next summer, we can joyfully savor the most delightful moment of the debate, when we were reminded by Anderson Cooper that Sanders had honeymooned in the Soviet Union.
Really?
Well, yes, supposing a working honeymoon is still a honeymoon.
And if it was red-baiting, as Bernie's fans on the left are insisting, to allude to this it was only red-baiting of a venial sort.
First, because Cooper did not actually denounce him but only alluded to his working honeymoon.
And second because, if you surf the net for it you will find that while some people and some dictionaries define "red-baiting" as (1) denouncing someone as a communist, anarchist, radical, socialist, or what have you others define it as (2) falsely denouncing someone as a communist, anarchist, radical, socialist, or what have you.
Now, the truth is that Bernie deserved to be red-baited in sense (1), given his unrenounced past and flaunted present.
Thus red-baiting someone who was for decades an apologist and fan of red revolutions and even now daily and unreservedly denounces capitalism, calls vociferously for a "political revolution," and insists he is a socialist is hardly unfair.
In any case, it is clear one could not denounce him any more falsely than he has, himself, as a communist, anarchist, radical, socialist, or what have you.
In a nutshell:
Calling Bernie a socialist is only red-baiting in sense (1), which is to say, it is telling the truth.
Calling Hillary a socialist, as some lying right wingers have done, is red-baiting in sense (2).
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