The Question: Who Is Worse?

Ed Rogers blogs politics from a conservative perspective for The Washington Post. Today he considers the probable state of the presidential race from here to November. It looks an MMA cage match followed by mud wrestling and a duel with chain saws.

This will be an election unlike any other in the modern era. Two wildly flawed candidates for president will try to convince voters that the other is the one more unfit for office.

For the next few months, the media will ensure the race stays competitive and will sustain wall-to-wall coverage of every insult and barb. Much of the media will do Trump's work for him by simply repeating what he says. He knows how to effectively leverage the media.

Nothing is out of bounds for him, there's no place he won't go and nothing is too low.

Trump will dish it out, he can take it and none of his tactics have caught up with him so far.

Clinton's brand is already sullied and running against Trump will not be a flattering experience.

SF Analogy

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds reports an observation about Trump's ability to break the rules and prosper in spite of it, from the blog's comments section. The analogy was drawn by an obvious fan of the science fiction classics, in this case Isaac Asimov.

Trump was the Mule to Nate Silver’s Foundation.

Translation: the normal political rules don't apply to Trump because he isn't normal. He is thus unpredictable statistically; he's an outlier, sui generis, a black swan.

Further Political Ruminations

Very often the U.S. political system gives us this presidential choice: which major party nominee is the lesser evil? I anticipate for some voters 2016 will be such a year.

Many in the conservative punditry are declaring they will not vote for Trump. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I suppose they will leave the presidential choice on their ballot blank.

My analysis: such a choice means you believe a Trump presidency will be at least as bad as a Clinton presidency, if in different ways, or perhaps even worse. If you are conservative and honestly believe that, abstention is your clear choice.

Hillary has promised us four more years of Obamaism, leavened with Sanders-style leftwing populism. She has repudiated all admirable aspects of her husband's administration. To me, a Hillary term sounds really awful.

A Trump term may be awful, may be wonderful, may be something in between. I see at least a chance it could turn out well, I see no such chance with Hillary. So I will not abstain. If Trump is nominated I will support him, perhaps with reservations, and vote for him. It's a crapshoot but better than a sure loser.

There is at least a chance Trump could turn out to be a Teddy Roosevelt-style high energy whirlwind in office. He has the energy, the non-stop gift of gab, the imagination, and the sense that, whatever he sets his mind to, he can achieve. TR had those characteristics and maybe The Donald does too, they seem to be what he needed to get this far.

Coulter on The One in 2016

Ann Coulter is extreme, that's her shtick, it's what she does, and she's often fun as well as bang on target. Writing for Breitbart, she sums up the GOP primary season in her patented, free-swinging style.

A guy just won the Republican nomination for president by spending no money, hiring no pollsters, running virtually no TV ads, and just saying what he truly believed no matter how many times people told him he couldn’t say that.

I always hoped I’d see this once before I died. It’s like to going to Mecca, for Americans. Pay attention, because it’s the last time we’re going to see it in our lifetimes.

And she concludes:

I’m bitter and cynical enough on immigration that I don’t trust anyone not to betray us. But if there was ever a candidate we could believe will build a wall and stop the mass importation of the Third World, it’s Trump.

Analysis: True.

The Left Is Worried

Power Line's Steven Hayward echoes a quote from a Facebook rant by CNN contributor Van Jones, a former Obama appointee and leftist apparatchik, posted to Red Alert Politics. Jones says:

70 percent of African Americans have a horrible view of Donald Trump. In order for the Democrats to win the White House they don’t have to get 50 percent of the black vote or 60, or 70, or 80, or 90, Democrats in order to win historically need 90 to 92 percent of the black vote. If only 70 percent don’t like Donald Trump, that means 30 percent are open to his argument. If he gets half of those, he’s president.

Trump could do it, too. Job losses as factories moved overseas have certainly hurt black Americans. And they know they compete with illegal immigrants for the remaining jobs, too.

White Hippie Head Trips

Taki Magazine looks at racial performance disparities in the Berkeley public schools. They focus on black-white issues and write the following as a telling aside.

Ambitious Asian parents tend to avoid the Berkeley school district, presumably viewing Berkeley as being into a lot of white hippie head trips that won’t help their tiger cubs ace the SAT.

Head trips in 'Berserkly'? Count on it.

Kasich Bye-ku

Politico reports Ohio Governor John Kasich is dropping out of the GOP presidential race. This leaves Donald Trump still in the running and therefore presumptive nominee.

Once again, we commemorate the sad occasion with a haiku of farewell - a bye-ku. As always, we tip our hat to James Taranto who popularized the form.

Cranky John Kasich,

Your "lovable" persona

Wasn't credible.

Political Ruminations

This has been quite a presidential primary season. I've demonstrated, to my own satisfaction at least, that I am out of the political mainstream.

I've been drawn to two candidates in the GOP primary: Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. Neither survived although Cruz was effectively the runner-up.

Cruz, I believe, would make a marvelous Supreme Court justice. Scott Walker perhaps might be a Veep?

Now we see Trump vs. Clinton, or conceivably Sanders. Trump is something like Draco Malfoy, a talented bully and put-down artist.

I look forward to Trump skewering Hillary - the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua - making her a laughingstock. It shouldn't be too difficult, Clinton is the archetype of a shrewish ex-wife. In fact, I predict ex-wives will be a major demographic supporting her.

Indiana Update

At 6:20 p.m. Pacific time, with 64% of the vote counted, CNN has called the Indiana primary for Bernie Sanders. They have him with 252,000 votes while Clinton has 221,000. Sanders continues to give the supposed front-runner black eyes.

Inasmuch as all Democrat primaries allocate delegates proportionally, it appears he will get 39 to her 29 of the delegates apportioned by the vote. She will get all 7 IN super delegates.

Cruz Bye-ku

Senator Ted Cruz has decided to drop out of the presidential race, following tonight's big loss to Trump in Indiana. His decision is reported by Politico.

As has been our custom, we compose a haiku of farewell - a bye-ku - for Ted Cruz. In doing so, we acknowledge the form's popularizer James Taranto.

Celebrity trumps

Your conservative message

So you lose, Ted Cruz.

It's Fork Time

Preliminary results are in for the primary election in Indiana. As I write this at 5:20 p.m. Pacific time, some 48% of the votes have been counted and reported. As it now stands, Trump has 52.9% of the Indiana GOP vote. Cruz has 36.7% and Kasich 7.8%. My source is RealClearPolitics.

Indiana's delegates are apportioned thusly: the overall state winner gets 30, the winner of each of 9 congressional districts gets 3, for a total of 57. Five of the nine districts have been called, all for Trump. Presuming none of those "calls" is overturned by subsequent returns, Trump has won at least 45 of 57. He probably will win several more, possibly all 57.

On the Democrat side, the race is too close to call with 48% reporting. Hillary has 178,000 votes and Bernie has 161,000.

If the #NeverTrump people wanted to stop Trump, they waited too long and were too half-hearted in supporting Cruz. He may continue to fight for the CA delegates but I believe we can now view Cruz as finished. Stick a fork in him, he's done.

Fifteen minutes later ... Politico reports Ted Cruz has suspended his campaign, saying "We've given it everything we've got, but the voters chose another path." Give him credit, he's a decisive realist.

Your Tuesday Snark

Guest blogging at Instapundit, Ed Driscoll cracks wise about people emigrating from blue cities and states:

Socialism: If You Build It They Will Leave

He pays an obvious inverse homage to A Field of Dreams.

Whom to Sacrifice

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds writes a weekly column for USA Today. Today his topic is how large, complex systems (for example, empires) fail and die. I like the bitter realism of his conclusion:

As you vote, remember that the more resources you put under the control of the political class, the more likely it is that things will eventually go bad. Politicians seldom look past the next election, and they’re willing to sacrifice pretty much anything to hang on. And that “pretty much anything” includes you. 

I suggest you are the first thing they'll be willing to sacrifice and you know that already, hence the widespread support for Trump.

Liberals Are Sniveling Brats

Scott Johnson of Power Line posts a P. J. O'Rourke quote from his 1992 book Give War a Chance.

The liberal is continually angry, as only a self-important man can be, with his civilization, his culture, his country and his folks back home. His is an infantile world view. At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child-miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.

With apologies to my (few) liberal friends, that rings pretty darned true.

What We Have Here Is a Failure to Adapt

Historian Walter Russell Mead blogs at The American Interest, today about the slow-motion train-wreck that is Arab "civilization."I like his conclusion:

What we are seeing is not so much a clash between civilizations as a crisis of Arab civilization: the failure of the Arab world to master modernity—to find a way to be economically and politically successful under modern conditions without losing the core cultural and social values. This is comparable to what happened in China in the 19th century, when China failed to find a way to adapt Western methods and ideas to Chinese conditions—which led to decades of state failure, weakness, and immense suffering for the Chinese people.

To which he adds:

It looks as if for the foreseeable future, the rest of the world is going to have to deal with the consequences of Arab failure without being able to do much about the underlying conditions.

Industrious Chinese stayed home and struggled through the adaptation. Slacker Arabs seem hellbent on dumping their problem on us, basically becoming our wards.

Angela Merkel is wrong; we must find the tough love to refuse to be the Arabs' safety net. They need to "cope." Hat tip to Cool Hand Luke for the caption.

Hinderaker on Trump

John Hinderaker is first among the equals who blog at Power Line. Today he writes about the fracturing of the Reagan coalition which has powered the GOP for the past decades but appears to be dying. Some of his choice thoughts:

I don’t want to join those who hail Donald Trump, after the fact, as a genius, but it must be acknowledged that more than anyone else, he tailored his candidacy to the new issues landscape. The subjects he emphasizes the most, immigration and trade, are the wedge issues of the day.

Trump is no conservative. He is, however, pro-America. His slogan, make America great again, resonates with conservatives of all stripes. On the other hand, it is anathema to liberals, who believe that America never was great, and certainly don’t want her to start being great now. And Trump, like no one else, pushes back against the Left’s efforts to suppress free speech, which usually go under the too-generous rubric of political correctness.

Hinderaker also notes that social conservatives and economic conservatives in the post-Cold War era, no longer have opposing Communism as a unifying theme. Getting unified around fighting jihadi violence hasn't held the same "magic."

I particularly enjoy his "liberals, who believe that America never was great" wisecrack. I wish for them the joy of some Third World hellhole with undrinkable water, casual violence, and no toilet paper.

Happy May Day

COTTonLINE wishes our readers a happy May Day. Go find a socialist or communist and rub his nose in the utter failure of those systems.

The systems fail because they willfully misunderstand human nature, choosing to believe we're more selfless and altruistic than experience shows most of us to be most of the time. See, for example, Venezuela - a formerly wealthy country driven into ruin by the socialist policies of Chavizmo.

On a happier, if somewhat irreverent note, grad school friends from icy Minnesota celebrated the day thusly:

Yea, yea, the first of May, outdoor sex begins today.

Imagine how odd that sounded to a native Californian.

Beyond the Horserace

Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard reprints an edited version of a memo written by Rich Danker, boss of the Lone Star Committee, a Texas super PAC supporting Ted Cruz. In it he freely admits Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee and tries to answer the question "Why?"

Danker seeks to determine what Trump did right and Cruz supporters (including himself) did wrong. His conclusion: Cruz was playing chess, Trump was playing some other, more relevant game.

Danker contrasts the data-driven, consultant-managed style popularized by Obama and used to some effect by Cruz, with the broad-brush, press-available style common to Reagan and Trump. We know which was more effective and, not incidentally, cost less - the Trump model.

This analysis is darned interesting for those of us who like the "inside baseball" side of politics. Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.

Travel Blogging XV

Dateline at sea west of Baja, about even with Los Moches, Mexico: We are roughly 30 hours sailing out of San Diego, our port of disembarcation. We ran under overcast skies all day Saturday, with calm seas.

Our month-long cruise is almost over, it's been pleasant even though the weather hasn't cooperated. The ship is experiencing a minor conjunctivitis epidemic at the moment, highly contagious "pink eye" isn't limited to children but most of the seniors on board haven't had it since their kids were small.

Ships are small, closed communities not unlike elementary schools - passing around a cold or other communicable disease is easy. Norovirus outbreaks gain the most notoriety but the infamous  "ship's cold" or in this case conjunctivitis are equally plausible villains.

In the days of wooden ships, sailors were actually healthier than landsmen. Sailing ships were often many weeks or months between ports. When a ship left port everybody had a cold for the first couple of weeks and then, lacking fresh sources of infection, folks who didn't die during the first two weeks were pretty healthy until the next port was reached, often months later.

----------o--0--o----------

Our ship carries a largish cast of singers and dancers who have talent and work hard, but are ham-strung by a persistently poor choice of music to perform. It isn't their fault, I'm certain an entertainment coordinator in Seattle makes the choices for all HAL productions.

It appears those choices are influenced by a desire to spend as little as possible on royalties. Many pax have remarked to us the performers keep singing music pax have never heard before, and that isn't what retirement-age audiences seek.

Foot-Shooting Time

In Orange County hundreds of anti-Trump demonstrators waved Mexican flags and rioted. Talk about not smart, it may be great theater on Mexican TV but it won't play well with American voters.

Waving Mexican flags was a wonderful way to say "Vote for Trump." I doubt doing Trump a favor was their intention but it sure as blazes was what they accomplished.