william blum
*these leaders are cruel because only those willing and able to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment; it might as well be written into the job description. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers – let alone American soldiers – do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or secretary of defense, or national security advisor, or attorney general, or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they particularly want to.
There’s a sort of Peter Principle at work here. Laurence Peter wrote that in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. Perhaps we can postulate that in a foreign policy establishment committed to imperialist domination by any means necessary, employees tend to rise to the level of cruelty they can’t live with.*

Posted by: denk | Apr 7 2016 16:20 utc | 4

What Qualifies A Politician? = a simple answer
In the U.S.A and its vassals-
1st requisite: Exceptional Liar;
2nd requisite: Adhere to the Israel first policy;
3rd requisite: Promote MIC and other big interests.
Do I have a bingo?

Posted by: likklemore | Apr 7 2016 16:33 utc | 6

to qualify one must pledge allegiance to Lucifer, then show one has the characteristics of a sociopath. next, to prove these qualifications aren’t just lip service, an act of extreme cruelty is required (and documented to ensure control) usually involving the defiling of innocence, like raping a child. once the demonic suitability of an individual has been established, further initiation into the mysteries occur. outwardly, they rise within the visible hierarchy of power while inwardly they accumulate demonic energies wrought from the death they delight in dealing the less fortunate.
and so it goes.

Posted by: lizard | Apr 7 2016 16:47 utc | 8

qualify for definition as human type (as opposed to statesman etc.) or qualify for office at some given time (suitability, fitness). All kinds of shit ensues when the man of the hour has the wrong virtues for the task at hand.

Posted by: rjj | Apr 7 2016 16:51 utc | 10

Citizens United is the corporate answer to that question. The US is looking less like a democracy and more like an oligarchy. Maybe Hillary wants to make it a monarchy?
Some advocacy groups have called loudly for reform. MoveOn.org’s petition demanding that superdelegates should not “deny democracy” has over 200,000 signatures.
“So far, this idea of a leftist political revolution has been widely dismissed as implausible by many liberal commentators — and I share a large part of their skepticism. But new research by Stanford political scientists Simon Jackman and Bradley Spahn has convinced me that at least one big part of it is correct: There really is a reasonably large segment of the American population that most political campaigns aren’t reaching.”

Posted by: Maracatu | Apr 7 2016 16:54 utc | 12

Ad hominem: she is just slime. There’s no other way to deal wi her than a personal level. That’s not Bernie Sander’s style. I wonder if she knows how to bake a cookie.

Posted by: Quentin | Apr 7 2016 17:14 utc | 14

OK I see, the question isn’t what qualifies a good politician…
Apart from that, what kind of person would you call a politician? Ghadaffi? Putin? Obama? Trump? The current chinese head of party (or whoever may be on top of their social pyramid)?
I guess I wouldn’t call Putin, e.g., a politician, more a “president”. Politican per se implies, to me, a person that has no real power.

Posted by: radiator | Apr 7 2016 17:23 utc | 16

@8
“Sanders’s” is how I learnt to spell and punctuate it in grade school.
At least here in the U.S., the alternative “Sanders'” is less common and has an archaizing flavor, at least in my opinion.

Posted by: lysias | Apr 7 2016 18:28 utc | 18

What does qualify a politician?
Sincerity
When you’ve learned to fake that, you’ve got it made.
All the Top Assholes are very good at it.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 7 2016 18:44 utc | 20

How publicly?

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 7 2016 19:03 utc | 22

“What Qualifies An ‘amerikkan’ Politician?”
deep pockets, or ties to those with deep pockets… plutocracy – oligarchs rule… corporate media is in tow.. nothing is as it seems.. @5 likklemore has a good response..

Posted by: james | Apr 7 2016 20:29 utc | 24

Ultimately, the primal qualification for being president of the United States of America is that you actually CARE ABOUT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Hillary Clinton has shown time and again that she just doesn’t care. Start stupid wars with no purpose other than to enrich politically connected defense contractors, add trillions to the US deficit and unleash ISIS and make the United States a de-facto ally of Al Qaeda? (Yes, really). Give trillions of dollars to Wall Street and starve main street of capital? Open the borders to unchecked third-world immigration, likely turning the nation into just another overpopulated third-world sweatshop in a generation or so? Push of Obamatrade, that will tear up the constitution and make US law subordinate to the rulings of foreign corporate lawyers meeting in secret? I could go on, but you get the idea.
Really really, Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be president. Frankly, if I was crowned King, I’d put her on trial for treason against the nation.

Posted by: TG | Apr 7 2016 21:02 utc | 26

Interesting quote in that first link:
“I want to see the United States Senate move back into Democratic hands with my friend Chuck Schumer as the majority leader”
Hmmmm. Is Chuckie back in the good books having dumped on Obama over the Iran deal?
Or is he still a bad smell, and Hillary has just let some of that s**t stick to her?

Posted by: Yeah, Right | Apr 7 2016 22:11 utc | 28

In so-called democracies, you technically don’t need any special educational or income-related qualifications to campaign for the presidency: that’s why they’re called democracies.
In the United States at least, you need to be either US-born and/or to have parents also US-born. Ted Cruz’s candidacy caused some problems because he is Canadian-born and one of his parents was US-born. That’s what’s stopping Arnold Schwarzenegger from campaigning.
These days also, you need to pledge your soul and the souls of your family for the next seven generations to the Devil to be US President.

Posted by: Jen | Apr 7 2016 22:40 utc | 30

The WP is a neocon POS. Their editorial oversight is appalling and their coverage is disgraceful. The columnists and opinion writers are the stupidest people on the planet; I don’t know why anyone would bother with their BS musings. The Psot have not broken a story since Watergate and even that was handed to them, and was most likely a CIA setup to get Nixon. Whatever the post reports, probably the opposite is true. I only go there to Troll the comments section.

Posted by: Secret Agent | Apr 8 2016 0:17 utc | 32

Re: above; please note 1.1 definition by Oxford Dictionary…

Posted by: V. Arnold | Apr 8 2016 1:07 utc | 34

@4 denk

There’s a sort of Peter Principle at work here. Laurence Peter wrote that in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. Perhaps we can postulate that in a foreign policy establishment committed to imperialist domination by any means necessary, employees tend to rise to the level of cruelty they can’t live with.*

That’s a very reasonable description of where we are right now. Barack the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate slash “Really Good At Killing People” Obama is the prototypical nihilist politician. Hillary Clinton has demonstrated her ability, Trump and Sanders will if given the chance.
The opposite hand, the Frederick principle?, as described by Frederick Douglass:

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

The whole of American|Western|Capitalist Society – pick your favorite description – is built on the concept of ‘externalities’, of focussed ‘mission’, of the frog in the well gazing up at the ‘world’ : the narrow circle of sunshine at the top. Everything else is damp and dark. Froggy-Homey. Nothing else matters.
A politician is just one particular type of frog, in his own particular well, gazing up at his own particular circle of light.

Posted by: jfl | Apr 8 2016 1:42 utc | 36

What we have is an excess of the non-politicians.
To be a politician by definition you must represent the citizens and very few, if any of the current US batch represent citizens in the pre Corporations are people sense of the term.
Greed has killed all the real politicians.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 8 2016 1:52 utc | 38

@Muddock no. 37
I believe that was in a series of tweets from billmon. Qualified=credentialed and meritorious.

Posted by: sleepy | Apr 8 2016 2:17 utc | 40

Etymology to the rescue: Let’s examine the etymology of the word “politics”. “Poli-” is from the Greek, meaning “many” or “of great number”. “Tics” are, of course, disgusting, blood-sucking parasites.

Posted by: Macon Richardson | Apr 8 2016 3:03 utc | 42

Will Sanders back down after this dust-up (like prominent Democrats are calling for), or will he turn up the volume?
I’d love to see him lambaste Hillary’s hypocritical slogan like this: Hillary’s slogan is “Fighting for us”. How can we trust that she will fight FOR US when she takes so much money from Wall Street and special interests?

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 8 2016 3:28 utc | 44

@38 becoming a politician is one of the final get-rich-quick schemes remaining. Local politicians tend make the capital hill politicians almost saintly.. The whole system is beyond all hope

Posted by: aaaa | Apr 8 2016 4:18 utc | 46

“Fighting for us” … what I want to know is: who the h… is “us.”
She and Bill … ?
She and the oligarchs … ?
She and the banks … ?
She and Wall Street … ?
She and the Wal-Mart style corporation … ?
Whoever it is, it is not the working stiff, or the unemployed (more likely imprisoned) black or hispanic …

Posted by: rg the lg | Apr 8 2016 4:38 utc | 48

Politics= the distribution of power. It can be studied to the level of post doctorate in my country. Unfortunately not one politician I know about has studied it… Its like employing plumbers to build a rocket engine. The result is that no lift-off is guaranteed… The problems get solved by engineers, not psychopaths…

Posted by: dan | Apr 8 2016 5:44 utc | 50

To succeed in a political career:
1) Be healthy as a horse. Manage sleepless nights, too much alcohol, strange food, smoky rooms, horrible trips, minor injuries/illnesses, without a blip.
2) Controlled, high, empathy and a good understanding of self and others. Determination, no fear of failure, set-backs.
3) Be able to take in new information very rapidly, and relate it (systemic thinking.) Understand numbers (at least to stat 101.)
4) Be able to speak in public on any topic at all for 4 minutes in an informative (or if not then entertaining and sincere) way. Be able to speak 30 mins on any topic of political importance.
This was my ‘smiley’ list when on a board working out policy for students who fail in their chosen path and seek an alternate.
Doesn’t look like Killary was suited. Nope.

Posted by: Noirette | Apr 8 2016 11:19 utc | 52

Someone that is blackmailable?

Posted by: shadyl | Apr 8 2016 13:44 utc | 54

NY is turning into a pivotal vote
If Sanders manages to upset Clinton in her home state (polls show him down by about 10 pts), the Democratic race could be dramatically changed.
If Trump doesn’t win BIG, the chances for a brokered convention increase quite a bit. He has to fight for every delegate as it is.
In the worst (best?) case we could have a FOUR-WAY race for President. This would happen if tumultuous Party Conventions result in Bernie supporters (25% of whom say they would never vote for Hillary) to move to the Green Party (and maybe Bernie himself?!) and the also Republicans split: Trump makes an independent run or the disaffected Republican establishment supports another candidate (running independently or as the Libertarian Party or Conservative Party candidate).
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
My guess

1) Hillary wins NY.
2) Bernie toes the Party line; doesn’t rock the boat.
3) Some Bernie supporters move to the Green Party.
4) The Republicans split.
5) Hillary pleads to a misdemeanor/”slap on the wrist”, saying that she would have fought the felony charges but she has to put the email matter behind her so that she can focus on the Presidential election.

In this scenario, whether Hillary becomes President depends on how energized the Greens are – how many votes they pull away from the Democrats/Hillary. Effectively, it would comes down to anti-establishment candidates (Greens + Trump) vs. Establishment candidates (Hillary + anti-Trump Republicans). Put another way: the Presidential race would essentially be: Occupy + Tea Party vs the Establishment.
Imagine a result like this:

> Trump: 34%
> Hillary: 32%
> Conservative + Corporate Republicans: 20%
> Greens: 7%
> Others: 2%

The Greens – the ‘principled left’ – would have denied Hillary’s win. This would catapult the Greens into a real force in American politics!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 8 2016 14:34 utc | 56

US pols – in the main – don’t campaign on a vision, an ideology, an organisation for society, or a worked-out political platform.
They campaign to attract supporters, voters, by taking varying, shifting positions on very simplisitic ‘issues,’ sometimes concrete objects like walls and guns – plus on narrow societal ‘topics’ re. which everyone has, or can have, an opinion: abortion, gay marriage, minimum wage, and the like. Identity politics loom large, and intrinsic belongings are exploited.
The two accepted establishment candidates, Clinton and Cruz (though he is despised by his own party), are using the Obama card (first Black..), thus supposedly on the side of women and Latinos, respectively. The slice-n-dice approach!
Meanwhile everything is run from backstage …
The mold has been partly broken by Sanders – nobody cares that he is an elderly Jewish white guy, though of course he is not outside the Establishment, just a re-vamped New-Deal ‘Dem’, but too far left — more radically so by Trump, as the outsider with a big mouth who actually speaks about the unmentionable occasionally.
Within this political landscape, one cannot attack, nor endorse, a public figure for being Latino, old, a woman, or whatever, that is taboo. So the Dem apparatus has had to construct a new quasi-intrinsic marker, which has turned out to be experience. They have been doing it for quite a while, with Clinton touted as the ‘most experienced, the most qualified.’ (link, ex.) A nebulous characteristic, spurious, plus a blatant code-word for ‘an insider who will keep the Dem hoi polloi in power.’ Echoes to a corporate style management: the ‘experience’ to ‘do the job’ is ‘needed.’ The ‘qualified vs. non q-etc.’ meme took off …Sanders should not have taken it up imho.
NYT jan 2016

Posted by: Noirette | Apr 8 2016 15:45 utc | 58

@ dan 50:
The response to your observation that one needs to understand power in order to properly employ it would be the notorious Karl Rove quote as reported by Ron Suskind:
“That’s not the way the world really works anymore.” He continued “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Naturally, Russia and China have learned how to take this American predilection towards “we create reality” imperious impulsiveness (Bush II was hardly unique in this respect, although his first term did arguably represent the apogee of such “irrational exuberance,” if you will.) and use it to their own advantage, allowing the Empire to obliviously create petards out of precedents and hoist itself by them, while inexorably, and as quietly as possible, slowly building an alternative structure of global order — 180 degrees opposed to Bush I’s trademarked “New World Order™.”
(You want Kosovo? Really? Fine, we’ll take South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea, NovoRussia, etc. Engineering faux democratic color-revolution consent for co-opted change exposes the Empire to the hypocrisy of refusing to accept authentic democratic calls for change. The exposed hypocrisy of foreign policy slowly but inevitably corrodes and devalues the coin of empire.)
On a more humorous note, bringing plumbers into the issue only exposes oneself to plumber’s cracks. (Egad! Not a pretty spectacle.) Plumbers are practical generalists, and hence have more power and ability than is generally thought. For instance, a small group of plumbers was able to take down a Presidency — Nixon’s. And one safely imagines that plumbers building rocket engines might perhaps be able to get that “O” ring thingy right! So maybe it would not be as bad an idea as you think ;~)

Posted by: Malooga | Apr 8 2016 16:50 utc | 60

Noirete @58
“The mold has been partly broken by Sanders – nobody cares that he is an elderly Jewish white guy, though of course he is not outside the Establishment, just a re-vamped New-Deal ‘Dem’, but too far left”
Apparently you really have no idea who or what ‘The Bern’ is or what he represents …
– Sanders studied at Brooklyn College for a year in 1959–60[28] before transferring to the University of Chicago
– While at the University of Chicago, Sanders joined the Young People’s Socialist League (the youth affiliate of the Socialist Party of America),[32] and was active in the Civil Rights Movement as a student organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.[16][33] Under Sanders’s chairmanship, the university chapter of CORE merged with the university chapter of SNCC.[34] In January 1962, Sanders led a rally at the University of Chicago administration building to protest university president George Wells Beadle’s segregated campus housing policy. “We feel it is an intolerable situation when Negro and white students of the university cannot live together in university-owned apartments,” Sanders said at the protest. Sanders and 32 other students then entered the building and camped outside the president’s office, performing the first civil rights sit-in in Chicago history.
– In addition to his civil rights activism during the 1960s and 1970s,[41] Sanders was active in several peace and antiwar movements. He was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Student Peace Union while attending the University of Chicago. Sanders applied for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War; his application was eventually turned down, by which point he was too old to be drafted.
50 YEARS LATER LOOKING AT CHICAGO TODAY WE CAN SEE HOW THIS RACIAL EQUALITY THINGIE WORKED OUT
Hilary and The Bern are both disciples of Community Organizer Saul Alinski and their community organization has given us the high body count in 2016 Chicago.
http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/breaking-newly-discovered-letters-hillary-clinton-saul-alinsky-marxist-community-organizer/

Posted by: ALberto | Apr 8 2016 17:33 utc | 62

AngryPanda @63:

It’s a wonder no-one’s come out and called Sanders a sexist misogynist pig for daring to question Hillary’s qualifications…

Sen. Claire McCaskill came close (she is probably the most prominent to do so):

… calling Hillary Clinton not qualified is like fingernails on a black board to many women across this country … I think women who have succeeded in male-dominated fields have been used to being marginalized about whether or not they are truly qualified …

FYI: Four times the Clintons Said Obama was Unqualified to be President

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 8 2016 18:22 utc | 64

At this point, a split in the Democratic Party, for better or worse, seems highly unlikely.
Sanders is again reiterating his support for whoever the eventual Democratic nominee is, according to HuffPost. As I will show below directly, Sanders seems committed to taking over and reforming the Democratic Party.
All of this “back of the envelope” statistical analysis seems a little dodgy. The estimate for the Greens is a little over twice their best performance, under Ralph Nader in 2000 (2.74 pct.). Nader is of course a much better known figure than Dr. Stein, whose last outing got them 0.36 pct.
Nader’s showing in Florida is thought by many to have cost Gore the election. So ergo, one would have thought that this defeat of the duopoly would have “empowered” the Greens.
Of course, it did not. Their haul dropped to 0.10 pct. in the next election. As I recollect, Nader got flak for failing to build the Green Party, and this forced him to the sidelines.
The subsequent leadership has not improved on Nader’s work. They have never picked up more than a half percent of the House vote nationally. They have gotten nearly 1 pct. of the total vote in Senate races, but that was in 2000. Both were just under a third of a percent nationally in the last elections.
Given the Greens have been around for a number of years, and have had some exposure to the voters in that time, one might imagine that were they amenable to Green politics, the Sanderistas would already be in those ranks. Leakage to other parties seems less likely than a level of abstentionism.
Here’s a leg up on the number crunching, as well as a run-down on the nature of Sanders’ campaign, from the reliably “pwogwessive” Alternet. Bernie Is Crashing America’s Two-Party System—That’s Why Establishment Democrats Are so Afraid of Him, they say.

Sanders seems to believe that reform within the Democratic party is a more feasible option for the American left than third party politics (which some on the left vehemently disagree with)…. In order to make third parties viable in American politics, this electoral system would have to be overhauled and replaced with a form of proportional representation, which is found in many other democratic nations.

It goes on to discuss one or two other reforms, especially on campaign finance. I would urge each and every Barfly to talk up proportional representation, it is a key “Transitional Demand.” It is also the sort of thing that could be, perhaps, brought about by grass-roots pressure from voters. “What is your position on proportional representation” should be asked of every politician of every stripe at every possible occasion.
At present, the article reported, only one in four Sandersistas will not back another Democrat. This although 30 to 50 percent of the support that Sanders has gotten in primaries has come from Independent voters; the regulars prefer Clinton.

Posted by: rufus magister | Apr 9 2016 3:00 utc | 66

rufus @68
As you pointed out in the Open Thread (here’s my reply), Sanders success has brought the Clinton-focused DNC headaches. He is shaking the foundations of the Party. His best chance to win the nomination is to WIN New York.
But if he doesn’t win the nomination, a large number of Sanders supporters (25% of whom vow that they will not vote for Hillary) will help to energize the Greens. Its still early, and in this environment the Greens could well do better than expected, so my ‘back of the envelope’ numbers are not unrealistic.
The establishment duopoly has nobody to blame but themselves. For screwing the pooch and conspiring against the people.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 9 2016 4:05 utc | 68

what qualifies a journalist?
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/08/fallout-from-panama-papers-revelations-so-far-country-by-country
all the usual suspects, from the empire of evil of course, and to make it look fair, we’ll add (temporarliy) the uk prime minister

Posted by: Mina | Apr 9 2016 13:32 utc | 70

You’ve conjured seemingly random numbers for a highly unlikely scenario.
One assuredly cannot assume that a quarter of Sanders supporters will feel disinclined to vote Demcoratic, when faced by the reality of the Rethuglican campaign in November, and that all of them will go Green. I think I made a reasonable surmise that they will not. Abstention by Sandersistas has been noted as a problem; this bit from the NYT was the first to hand on the topic. And given the inchoate nature of much of the anger with the status quo, that the Guardian reports some might go with Trump does not surprise me. I would hope the socialist “third parties” pick up some of this support, as it will surely diffuse to a number of tendencies, left, right, and center.
Assuredly, substantial numbers of Sanderists will not go along. But I do not see the Greens growing beyond their core constituency of drearily sincere, moralistic petit-bourgeois urbanites on the coasts through Sandersista refugees.

Posted by: rufus magister | Apr 9 2016 16:53 utc | 72

At the end of long list of the names of the ‘Panama Club’ members comes the paragraph that explains political qualifications.
The Panama Papers: The People Deceived

So there you have it, the information you need to know but which CNN, The Guardian, the BBC, CBC, the New York Times and all the rest of the media refuse to provide you so that you can properly assess the story they have propagated through the world media. The role of the western media is not to inform the public but, as Umberto Eco says, “to teach people how to think,” to manipulate opinion and action. Their suppression of that information is a lie and as that other great writer, Jose Saramago, wrote, they use “the lie as a weapon, the lie as the advance guard of tanks and cannons, the lie told over the ruins, over the corpses, over humanity’s wretched and perpetually frustrated hopes.” It is time for these people to be exposed for what they are and called to account for their deception of the people they claim to serve, for what greater crime can their be than to deceive the people?

Qualified politicians are those who have been taught how to think, and their experience, naturally, only confirms their lessons.

Posted by: jfl | Apr 9 2016 21:49 utc | 74

@lizard 8: Sad but true. I’m becoming more and more convinced that the deaths of the Bush and Cameron children were not accidents but ritual sacrifice to seal the allegiance.

Posted by: ProPeace | Apr 10 2016 17:10 utc | 76

b: What qualifies a politician?
James Michael Greer (aka The ArchDruid) has an answer (of sorts):

The leadership of a rising civilization pays close attention to the outcomes of its policies and discards those that don’t work. The leadership of a falling civilization prefers to redefine “success” as “following the approved policies” rather than “yielding the preferred outcomes,” and concentrates on insulating itself from the consequences of its mistakes

In essence, its Hillary’s self-proclaimed ability to “make the tough choices” that qualify her. Her experience is only a way of demonstrating that quality to the elites that will select her.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 10 2016 19:24 utc | 78

Comment 79 (re arms shipments) was unintentionally posted here, owing to browser problems.

Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | Apr 12 2016 2:03 utc | 80

After the southern primaries, wherein solid-south operatives delivered the black vote – in states that will vote republicrat in November, the Clintons show their real, their ugliest face …
Bill Clinton Insults Blacks in Order to Build Hillary’s “Big Tent” Party

Bill Clinton’s tirade against Black Lives Matter demonstrators in Philadelphia, last week, signals that his wife’s inner circle is having great difficulty resisting the urge to lunge rightward into general election campaign mode to scoop up the millions of Republican voters disaffected by Donald Trump. For months, corporate Democratic strategists have been salivating over the prospects of building a super-party – the ultimate “big tent” – from the ashes of a disintegrating GOP. They calculate that the numbers of suburban Republican “moderates” that can be won over to the Democrats in November is greater than potential defections from the party by disgruntled Sandernistas. The Black vote does not even count in this equation, on the assumption that they have nowhere else to go.
There is no question that Bill Clinton’s attempt to create another “Sister Souljah moment,” as the Washington Post’s James Hohmann put it, was dangerously premature. The hordes of Trump-traumatized Republican defectors to the Democrats are still theoretical, while polls show that about a quarter of Sanders’ supporters say they will not vote for Clinton in November if she wins the nomination. Plus, now that the primaries have moved out of the South, larger percentages of Black Democrats are willing to the be swayed by Sanders. The Philadelphia episode will have an impact on their decisions.

Bill has always been good at stepping on his own dick, he may have done so again. Let’s hope so.
What qualifies a politician? In the cynical, derogatory, backroom ‘elite’ sense of the term the Clintons are eminently qualified : stroke then stab, stroke then stab, rinse off the blood and repeat … and of course, they are very experienced.

Posted by: jfl | Apr 14 2016 0:24 utc | 82