The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

It's over, sort of

Informed comment this morning is taking the races in both major parties as settled, with Il Duce and Hillary the nominees in waiting - waiting for the conventions to make it official.

A relatively conciliatory Sanders statement has been taken as a sort of de facto, if rather graceless, concession speech.

In it, he vowed to continue to the convention in order to write a Sanders platform for Hillary and the Democratic Party in which he has refused membership for going on half a century and which he has lately regularly and robustly damned as hopelessly corrupt, but made no suggestion that he might somehow become the nominee.

And on the other side, Trump declared himself the chosen one and ordered Kasich and Cruz out of the race while scheduling a "presidential" speech on foreign policy for today.

Cruz, mathematically eliminated from any chance of a first ballot victory, has scheduled a speech for 4 pm today, and nobody seems to know what it's about.

Having called a basketball hoop a "ring" while campaigning in Indiana, reputedly his absolutely last ditch if not one ditch past his last ditch, twitter has advised him his goose is cooked in that state.

The short-lived Cruz-Kasich alliance to stop Trump has failed.

Trump, who convinced Republicans Cruz and Rubio were not for them by dubbing them "Lying Ted" and "Little Marco" to their faces during debates and permanently adopting the style of Mussolini, is already denouncing "Crooked Hillary" as weak, tired, old, female, and totally incapable of the job.

Neither he nor anyone else has done anything to convince anyone of the truth of his claims about free trade, immigration, Chinese currency manipulation, the corruption of the establishment and the primary/delegate selection/convention process, his own competence, the possibility and usefulness of throwing out existing trade arrangements, or anything at all.

His entire sales pitch is bombast, aggression, and thuggery, and it has taken him very far, indeed.

Well, to be fair, Bernie's campaign rhetorical style has not been much different, though the worst aspect of his own ad hominem approach has been to smear Hillary by vicious innuendo and the entire Democratic Party - and indeed the entire classe politique and the government of the United States and every state - by explicit accusation of corruption.

Per the newsies, 30% of his voters have said they will absolutely not vote for her, and Trump is already wooing them by continuing Bernie's attacks on free trade and "Crooked Hillary."

An unknown but not insignificant number have already declared for Il Duce.

Meanwhile, diehards on the left are still running against Hillary rather than for Bernie, or even for any of his particular signature issues.

That will not help in November.

Meanwhile, it's perfectly true that more unites than divides Hillary from Bernie, and that the actual agenda in play is not radical at all, but pretty main stream.

No comments:

Post a Comment