Easily Offended

Senator Mike Lee cannot take a joke.

There was a "joking yet blunt attitude" taken by John Boehner and David M. Kennedy of Stanford University at an event hosted Wednesday by Stanford in Government and the Stanford Speakers Bureau. Asked his opinion of Ted Cruz, the former House Speaker responded "Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends, I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."

Surely Boehner, who said also "you can call me boner, beaner, jackass, happy to answer to almost anything," was not being serious. Ted Cruz is not a female dog.

Still, Lee called in to the Mark Levin radio show Thursday evening and let loose as he raged

I hear John Boeher heaping praise on Bernie Sanders, heaping praise on Hillary Clinton, heaping praise on Donald Trump.

And yet for Ted Cruz? What's he call him? He calls him the devil! He calls him Satan, he calls him Lucifer. Why? The question is why? Why does he do this? Well, there's an answer. Ted Cruz actually challenges the system - the very same system that Donald Trump claims to rail against!

This is an insightful moment. First of all, I'm appalled that John Boehner would do this.
I have bit my tongue for years. I've held my tongue for years on John Boehner even when I disagreed with him. Because I respected him as a person and respected with his office enough to not call him out on it personally.

I expressed disagreement with his policies, but I've never ridiculed him personally. The fact that he has done this is appalling and he should be ashamed of himself and I demand that he apologize!

...This is a wake-up call for people who are supporting Donald Trump thinking that he's the guy who is going to rail against the establishment. He's NOT! He is the establishment. He's the golfing buddy - the texting buddy of John Boehner. The same guy who praises Hillary Clinton -- who praises Bernie Sanders. So if you're out there thinking that Donald Trump is somehow going to be the guy who takes down the establishment, think again because quite the opposite is true.  

Give that man some cheese with his whine!  Manchego and a passable Merlot will do. He will just hold his breath till he turns blue if Boehner doesn't apologize. He's a sensitive soul, that Mike Lee, at least when it comes to his friend and favorite presidential candidate, who led the government shutdown in 2013 over the Affordable Care Act. But the Utah Republican should realize, as the Atlantic's Molly Ball has written

Another criticism of Cruz is that his antics are disruptive and damaging to the Republican Party. The shutdown nearly led to a national default, terrifying the business community. It led to the lowest approval ratings for the GOP in decades. Even the Kochs came out against such tactics. Groups like the Chamber of Commerce generally support a conservative platform, but not at the price of government ceasing to function. “It’s not what he’s trying to accomplish or what he says he’s trying to accomplish that bothers people,” former McConnell chief of staff Josh Holmes told The Washington Post. “It’s that he’s consistently sacrificed the mutual goals of many for his personal enhancement.”

So maybe Boehner wasn't entirely joking. Bill Maher (video below from a different occasion), who prefers to consider the Texas senator "evil," explains "There’s a reason why everyone hates Ted Cruz. There’s a reason why the big question about Ted Cruz is always, 'When he shaves in the morning, how does he avoid spitting in the mirror?'”













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Gaming The System

Politico on Wednesday reported that Carly Fiorina told MSNBC

He has spent his life taking advantage of that system, and so has Hillary Clinton. So if you think that system isn't working for you, and it isn't working for the vast majority of Americans, as you point out, then don't vote for Donald Trump and don't vote for Hillary Clinton as well. And now you have a clear choice. You can vote Cruz/Fiorina or you can vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. And they are two sides of the same coin

There may be no one who knows more about making the system work for her than does Carly Fiorina.  In September, soon after the former business executive declared for President, the Daily Beast's Michael Daly explained that Fiorina's Hewlett-Packard took the lead in lobbying intensely for the Homeland Investment Act of 2004, part of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. "The purported aim of the legislation," Daly added

was to generate economic growth and therefore jobs at home by according corporations a one year “tax holiday” on billions in overseas profits they had stashed offshore.

The result was a $265 billion corporate giveaway.

The windfall was supposed to go toward research and development, and other job-creating endeavors.

Instead, almost all of it was put into stock buybacks as a way of funneling cash to stockholders, these prominently including CEOs.

Never mind that the bill prohibited such buybacks.

And all that talk about putting more Americans to work did not stop the corporations from cutting as many as 100,000 American jobs in the name of even greater profits.

Hewlett-Packard saved more than $4.3 billion and put more than $4 billion into stock buybacks. It laid off 14,500 workers.

To make it all even uglier, Hewlett-Packard lobbied for the Homeland Investment Act as a member of something called the Homeland Investment Coalition—this at a time when the “war on terror” was intensifying and the word “Homeland” made everyone think of national security.

The Department of Homeland Security had been founded in 2002. We had invaded Iraq in March 2003. And there was Fiorina sixteen months later, party to using “Homeland” to hustle the government out of billions with false promises of new jobs.

And there she was the following year, following the disastrous merger with Compaq she engineered, being asked to step down as HP CEO, with the incentive of $21 million plus $19 million in pension benefits and stock, quite a severance package for someone who would never consider working the system.
A few years later, Firorina felt her business experience qualified her challenge an incumbent United States Senator.  However, we learn from Politico

after her 2010 loss to Barbara Boxer, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive quickly dismantled her political machinery, moved across the country to Virginia and didn’t pay off all her debts to vendors and strategists for more than four years, even as she made sure to quickly reimburse herself $1.25 million she loaned the campaign.

Fiorina reportedly paid off her debts shortly before she announced for president in 2015. But "after she lost to Boxer, she moved to Virginia, notwithstanding approximately $500,000 in unpaid bills, including money owed to the widow of a consultant who died during the campaign."

She's a real sweetheart, not someone who would ever take advantage of the system like the scoundrels Trump and Clinton.

And have I mentioned how loathsome Carly Fiorina is?















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Another Reason To Prefer Trump

Ted Cruz has come in for some criticism- all of it deserved- for selecting Carly Fiorina as the individual who would run with him were he to gain the Republican nomination for President.

One thing, however, which Carly Fiorina has mastered is the ability to fake sincerity. Donald Trump the previous day had claimed Hillary Clinton was exploiting her gender for political advantage. Fiorina seemed so earnest when promptly after her campaign rally with Cruz, she was asked about Trump's remarks by NBC News' Hallie Jackson and contended

You know, I think Donald Trump clearly has a problem with women. Clearly. I mean, the week we had a terrorist attack in Brussels, he attacked Heidi Cruz. So I think Hillary Clinton sometimes says to people vote for me because I'm a woman. I would never say to somebody vote for me because I'm a woman. I would say vote for me, vote for Ted, because you think we're qualified and principled. 

I'm offended, frankly, when Democrats talk about women's issues. Because we're the majority of the nation, and every issue that faces this nation is a woman's issue.









When in September Sean Hannity noted Fiorina "took great offense" at the suggestion that "people (are) claiming that you're just in this to run for vice-president," the candidate responded

Well, you know, it would be different, Sean, if all of the candidates were asked that same question with the same regularity, but they're not. I'm the person who's asked that question over and over again. And so one can only conclude that I'm getting asked that question because I'm a woman. which is disappointing because I don't sense that with voters at all.

Claiming that she would never, ever play the gender card would be at least a little more credible if she were asked about the vice-presidency only because she's a woman. However, noting also that earlier that day Fiorina had labeled "sexist" the charge that she was in the race to be vice-president, conservative partial-libertarian Matt Miller observed

Perhaps Fiorina missed all the times that Scott Walker dropped Marco Rubio’s name as his possible running mate.

Or maybe she missed this MSNBC segment, titled: “Is Rubio really running for vice president?” (is this a case of anti-Cuban bigotry?). What about the time CNN asked Ben Carson if he would consider running on a ticket led by Donald Trump (obviously a racist question)? Or how about this HotAir.com headline, “Bobby Jindal to announce he’s running for (vice) president” (anti-Indian American?).

I could go on — but what’s the point? Fiorina’s statement that “No one talks about the men being in to be veep” is provably false.







In fairness, it is less dishonest than Fiorina's repeated claim to have seen a Planned Parenthood video which no one else has seen.









That may be both the Achilles heel- or at least one of them- and the beauty of Carly Fiorina the politician. She will lie and swear to it and not blink even once.  She may be an awful executive, but as a liar she has few equals.

And have I mentioned how loathsome Carly Fiorina is?









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When A Gun Is Not A Gun

Jamelle Bouie has passed on a tweet from a Chris Geidner reading "You have got to be kidding but you aren't."

The head of the line officers' union in the Cleveland Police Department surely is serious when, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Eric Heisig, he

says the family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice should use money from a $6 million settlement to educate children about the use of look-alike firearms.

Steve Loomis, the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association, was criticized on a national scale for statements he made to the media in the weeks and months after two officers in his union were involved in Tamir's death.

The usually talkative Loomis issued a news release that said "we can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms.

"Something positive must come from this tragic loss. That would be educating youth of the dangers of possessing a real or replica firearm," the release continues.

The release comes in the wake of the city's decision to settle a lawsuit brought by the family. The settlement, announced Monday, releases the city and officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, who were involved in the shooting, from all claims.

The officers- at least Loehmann, who never should have been hired- appear to be quite lucky given that

Loehmann shot Tamir outside Cudell Recreation Center on the city's West Side. He and Garmback were responding to reports of a "guy" with a gun, and both said they saw Tamir reaching into his waistband to grab a gun when Loehmann opened fire.

Tamir had an airsoft pistol in his waistband. The pistol had the orange safety tip removed. Neither officer was criminally charged.

Loomis has used Tamir's shooting to show that police often cannot tell the difference between real and replica firearms. He has stood by both officers following Tamir's shooting, saying their actions were justified.

This argument has not gone unanswered for, Heisig notes

Subodh Chandra, an attorney representing the Rice family, blasted Loomis' release in an emailed statement. He said that the comments "reflect all that is wrong with Cleveland's police division — he managed to (1) blame the victim, (2) equate the loss of the life of a 12-year-old child with the officers facing scrutiny, and (3) demand money from the victim's family and counsel."

It would be dereliction of duty for the head of the union not to defend the action of his members. except in extraordianry circumstances. Nonetheless, commenting "we have maintained from the outset this has been an absolute tragedy for the Rice family as well as our involved Officers and their families" does minimize the loss of life.

But the thrust of Chandra's criticism is that Loomis chose to "demand money from the victim's family and counsel."   It is not the responsiblity of the victim or even his attorney to subsidize a cause designated by Mr. Loomis- or any cause whatsoever.

Still, the union chief has a point.  A slide show accompanying the Plain Dealer article demonstrates how difficult it is to determine the difference between a real firearm and a fake one.  (In the picture below, one pistol is Loomis' service revolver and the other is a toy gun used in a robbery in Cleveland.)

The paper encourages readers to take the test. If you do, you'll probably notice that Chandra has let industry off easy. It is the attorney's responsibility to defend the family, not to advocate safe or effective social policy. However, in a presidential campaign which has included one candidate attacking another for being insufficiently appalled by mass shootings, no mention has been made of the issue raised by the head of the Patrolman's Association.  

Well over a year ago, a state representative in Ohio, Alicia Reese, introduced legislation which would require a fake gun to be easily distinguished from the real thing.  We couldn't expect the likes of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or John Kasich (though governor of Ohio) to speak up. We should, however, have expected Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders to have done so and now that Steve Loomis- insensitivity notwithstanding- has done so, there is even less excuse.

 









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The Timeless Word Of God

In his important, though questionable, essay, Emmett Rensin writes

Suffice it to say, by the 1990s the better part of the working class wanted nothing to do with the word liberal. What remained of the American progressive elite was left to puzzle: What happened to our coalition?

Why did they abandon us?

What's the matter with Kansas?

The smug style arose to answer these questions. It provided an answer so simple and so emotionally satisfying that its success was perhaps inevitable: the theory that conservatism, and particularly the kind embraced by those out there in the country, was not a political ideology at all.

The trouble is that stupid hicks don't know what's good for them. They're getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better. That's why they're voting against their own self-interest.

"Many forces" (especially The Daily Show), Rensin maintained, "advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy and that its opponents were, before anything else, stupid."

Slate's Jamelle Bouie takes Remsin on and argues "to suggest" that liberal smugness toward the working-class

is a prime mover in their alienation from the party is to ignore the actual dynamics at work. The driving reason working-class whites abandoned the Democratic Party is race. The New Deal coalition Rensin describes was devoured by its own contradictions, chiefly, the racism needed to secure white allegiance even as the party tried to appeal to blacks.

Pressed by those blacks, Democrats tried to make good on their commitments, and when they did, whites bolted. The Democratic Party’s alliance with nonwhites is what drove those whites away, not the sniffing of comedians on cable television. And,looking at the politics of the last seven years, it’s still keeping them away.

Remsin believes that the culture in which liberals wallow includes "The knowing that police reform, that abortion rights, that labor unions are important, but go no further: What is important, after all, is to signal that you know these things. "

It turns out, inconveniently for Remsin, that on at least one matter (oh, there are others) conservatives themselves simply know certain things. And it turns out, conveniently for Mr. Bouie, that he realized this well before Remsin's piece, when two years ago he recalled of the 1960s

In his book Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics, Jonathan Dudley notes that most evangelicals held far more liberal views at the time. “God does not regard the fetus as a soul no matter how far gestation has progressed,” wrote professor Bruce Waltke of Dallas Theological Seminary in a 1968 issue of Christianity Today on contraception and abortion, edited by Harold Lindsell, a then-famous champion of biblical “inerrancy.” His argument rested on the Hebrew Bible, “[A]ccording to Exodus 21:22–24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. … Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.”

This was't anyone from a United Church of Christ, or even United Presbyterian (now Presbyterian Church in the USA), seminary, but from the famed Southern Baptist Convention seminary in Dallas.

A few years later, Bouie adds, the SBC called

for “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

As most evangelicals will assert, the Bible is enduring, Jesus Christ immortal, and the word of God infallible. Evidently, they hadn't accurately discerned God's mind because

By 1982, however, the SBC—along with most American evangelicals—had switched gears entirely. During that year’s convention, delegates held that “human life begins at conception” and that they would work for “appropriate” legislation or a constitutional amendment to “prohibit abortions except to save the physical life of the mother.”

Bouie asked

What happened to cause this sea change in attitudes toward fetal life and abortion among evangelicals? In short, politics, and in particular, the successful coalition-building of Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, and other Christian conservatives in the wake of Roe v. Wade. Conservative Catholics were quick to mobilize against the court’s ruling, but many Protestant evangelicals were relatively apathetic. At that point, “culture war” issues such as abortion, feminism, and homosexuality weren’t on their radar (hence Jimmy Carter’s successful appeal to them in the 1976 presidential election).

It took the organizational might of Falwell and his “Moral Majority”—as well as evangelical anti-abortion figures such as Francis Schaeffer—to galvanize evangelicals around other “culture war” issues such as feminism, homosexuality, and school prayer. This in turn led to alliances with largely Catholic organizations like the National Right to Life Committee.

Belief tends to follow behavior, and working in political alliance with Catholics—a significant shift from earlier periods of evangelical political activism—led conservative evangelicals to adopt “pro-life” positions on abortion. Likewise, there was a shift in evangelical media—via books, magazines, radio, and television—toward anti-abortion beliefs. In 1980 Falwell declared, “The Bible clearly states life begins at conception.” Four years later, notes Dudley, InterVarsity Press—an evangelical imprint—was forced to withdraw a book that restated the earlier consensus around abortion.

Christian cultural conservatives are informed by their belief that Scripture confirms life begins at conception and abortion is thus "murder" (by which they mean "killing"; accuracy optional). They just know life begins at conception. Unlike those "smug" liberals, however, it is insufficient to let it go at that. The belief must be memorialized (a long word used by smug liberals, no doubt) in law. They're not "stupid hicks"-  most aren't hicks, and being derogatory is primarily a right-wing trait, anyway.

They also aren't necessarily "stupid," with approximately as many stupid conservatives as stupid liberals, "stupid" not being synonymous with ill-informed (and certainly not terrorists, unlike the guy shown below).  But prior to the 1980s, those "tent revivalists" were unconvinced that God condemned all abortion. Fortunately for conservatives and GOP fundraisers, the word of God proved quite flexible.

"Ask most (white) evangelicals about the morality of abortion these days," Bouie summarized two years ago, "and you’re certain to hear about its absolute immorality in most, if not all, circumstances. But this is a recent innovation in the history of evangelical belief, a product of political forces as well as new theological insight." Lacking smugness, Bouie even now would be too polite to answer the question (posed as a charge by Rensin) as to whether politically conservative evangelicals are "getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong." We don't need Bouie's response.  History can answer that.

















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On This, Sanders Misguided

"If this industry was treated like every other industry in America, we wouldn’t have the problems that we have today,”  Governor Daniel Malloy declared at a rally for Hillary Clinton in Hartford, Connecticut on Thursday. Similarly, the woman-of-honor charged "If anything else were killing 33,000 Americans a year, you can bet that we would be fully mobilized, doing everything possible to save lives.”

Their motive is unassailable, their cause righteous, their words even noble, and their strategy realistic. Unfortunately, they're wrong.  In an article written ten months ago, the Los Angeles Times' Melissa Healy reported

By contributing to obesity and, through that, to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks appears to claim the lives of about 25,000 American adults yearly and is linked worldwide to the deaths of 180,000 each year, new research says.

Low- and middle-income countries are bearing the brunt of the death toll attributed to overconsumption of sugar-sweetened sodas, sports drinks and fruit drinks, according to an assessment published Monday in the American Heart Assn.'s journal, Circulation. Each year, more than 3 in 4 of the world's deaths attributed to overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages occur in those poor and developing countries.

The researchers found the highest death rate due to consumption of such drinks in Mexico, but "The United States ranked second. In 2010, there were 125 deaths per million adults, or about 25,000 deaths total."

That sounds darn exceptional to me.  Fortunately, there are pockets of resistance, such as in Philadelphia, where newly-elected mayor James Kenney in March announced a proposal for, the Philadelphia Daily News wrote, "a three-cents-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks to bring in $432 million over five years to pay for: universal pre-K; community schools; and upgrades to parks and recreation centers. The tax would be collected at distributorships and would not include diet drink."

Not surprisingly, both the industry and the Teamsters have launced a campaign to defeat this eminently bold and sensible idea. More surprisingly, it has become an issue in the Democratic presidential campaign.  While the frontrunner declared herself "very supportive" of the measure, her opponent stated

My disagreement is how we proposed to fund it. I think that taxig soda is a regressive way to fund it. That tax burden will likely come down on low-income and working families, many of which are struggling right now to make ends meet....  At a time of massive income and wealth inequality,it should be the people on top who see an increase in their taxes, not low-income and working people.

A U.S. Senator should- notwithstanding the video below- understand that the City of Philadelphia, with a taxing ability far less than that of the federal government, is left having to fund what he recognizes as a worthy program. One can only hope that Sanders' opposition is prompted largely by the mayor's support of Clinton's presidential bid. Otherwise, he is suffering from a failure to understand the city's limited options.








The powerful forces in Philadelphia opposing the tax contend that it would raise consumer costs and reduce jobs. However, as this Daily Kos contributor- a Sanders supporter- recognizes

Doesn't that sound familiar, Bernie?

Doesn't that sound exactly like the arguments made by opponents to raising the minimum wage, to addressing income inequality, hell, even Obamacare?

That sounds right to you?

Although a soft drink tax does directly have a greater impact on the poor than the affluent, the impact of the beverage upon health also is regressive.   University of California- San Francisco health policy professor Laura Schmidt explains "I understand the idea that this is a regressive tax and I think the thing we all have to remember is that diabetes is a regressive disease- it doesn't just affect everybody evenly. It disproportionately affects low-income communities and communities of color." With efforts underway in other cities to tax sugary drinks, a New York Times columnist has tweeted "a tax on poison is a good thing."

A study published two years ago in JAMA Internal Medicine summarized

Randomized clinical trials and epidemiologic studies have shown that individuals who consume higher amounts of added sugar, especially sugar-sweetened beverages, tend to gain more weight and have a higher risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemias,  hypertension, and cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Researchers studied only cardiovascular disease mortality and thus did not address other devastating effects of sugar upon human health. Nor were they considering the disproportionate impact upon poor people or blacks.

It would be ironic if in the name of not taxing such harmful items, ethnic minorities would be consigned to additional costs to their health and to their bottom line. Sugary drinks do not come cheap, and deterring their use might be economically advantageious for low-income individuals in the short term, as well as inarguably and overwhelmingly advantageous economically in the long-run.

Everybody gets some things wrong, and this is, for the foreseeable future, only a municipal issue. It is, however, one which Bernie Sanders- unless he has ulterior motives- gets very, very wrong.








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Silly Hand-Wringing

If you're looking for the insider's inside look at Washington, there is no better place to start than the source Charlie Pierce has dubbed Tiger Beat on the Potomac.  In this case, Steven Shepard reports

Democrats have a message for Bernie Sanders: Shut it down before the July national convention in Philadelphia.

That’s according to The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 10 key battleground states — who worried a protracted post-primary clash for the nomination could hurt Hillary Clinton, the party’s likely nominee, in their states in the general election.

Half of Democratic insiders said Sanders, who trails in the delegate race by a wide margin, should end his campaign before the final primary on June 14 in the District of Columbia. Another 39 percent said the Vermont senator should continue campaigning through the D.C. primary, but end his campaign immediately after if he trails Clinton in pledged delegates — which is likely given Sanders’ current deficit of 277 pledged delegates after Clinton’s resounding victory in New York this week.

It's very generous for them to think of Sanders' welfare. Or it would be if they were, but instead

Only 1 in 10 Democratic insiders said Sanders should try to woo superdelegates to help him overtake Clinton on the convention floor in Philadelphia if he finishes the primary season trailing in pledged delegates, as campaign manager Jeff Weaver suggested Tuesday night in a televised interview.

“I think it would benefit the Democrats to have Bernie drop out sooner rather than later and ask his supporters to coalesce behind Hilary,” said a Wisconsin Democrat, who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. “He stands no chance of winning the nomination at this point, and the Democrats can show a united front while the Republicans are so deeply fractured.”

The Vermont senator has run a campaign based almost entirely on issues. The major exception appears to be when he said that Clinton isn't qualified to be president- and that itself was predicated on campaign financing, Iraq, and trade.

“Bernie made his point,” added one Colorado Democrat. “It's time to bring the party back together. The longer he waits, the more damage he does. The question is whether or not he cares. The rest of us do.”

Cares about what? The party hasn't been rent asunder because the once-presumptive Democrtic nominee, the individual everyone expected to be crowned in Philadelphia, has faced a primary challenger.  It has made Mrs. Clinton a better candidate, having forced her to the left on economic issues, persuading her even to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (which she previously had praised), a "trade" deal so bad the Administration has resorted to bribery to squelch criticism.

Politico's Shepard continues

A Nevada Democrat suggested the Sanders camp should focus on “doing what’s necessary for a Democratic victory in November,” but said Weaver “made a fool of himself by declaring on MSNBC that Bernie would take the campaign to the convention even if they were behind in delegates and popular vote.”

That Nevada Democrat seems to have forgotten that neither Sanders, nor his campaign or his supporters, made those rules.  Superdelegates were created in part to block the nomination of someone outside the Party establishment, such as the independently-minded Sanders. If the underdog rolls over and plays dead, there will be no reason to reconsider the undemocratic system of superdelegates. It will simply go on, there to assist a future establishment favorite who is behind in pledged delegates entering the convention.

Weaver could have denied his candidate would take the campaign to the convention. He might have as well declared "we're not in it to win it."  If the Senator takes the campaign beyond the convention, refusing to endorse Clinton promptly after she is nominated, there may be some damage done. But not until then, and that won't happen.

"Some insiders," Politico notes, "suggested a graceful exit could help Sanders — the independent junior Vermont senator — become a major player in Democratic politics in the years to come."  As someone who will be 75 this autumn, the Vermont Senator is not likely to be a "major player" the next quarter-century.

Assuming Bernard Sanders is not nominated, his contribution will have been to have moved the Party closer to its roots, one focused on the interests of Americans aside from their racial, gender, or sexual-preference status.  If his campaign has an impact on campaign financing, trade, and fair pay for workers, the concern claimed by Democratic candidates for the middle class in the post -Carter/Clinton/Obama era will be genuine.















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