The Latino Vote

Among the top three Republican candidates for President, two are Latinos. I haven't heard this discussed much, but what will happen if the Republicans run Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz for President or Vice President? Will they win half or nearly half of the Latino vote (and the election)?  In the Nevada caucuses we got an answer.

Among Republican Latinos, Donald Trump beat both Rubio and Cruz in Nevada. And Trump is running a racist anti-Mexican campaign. Putting Cruz or Rubio on the ticket won't help the Republicans. I can guess that Latinos see Cruz and Rubio as men who sold out their own Spanish culture in order to pander to racists on immigration.

Both men have Cuban parents. Latinos don't see themselves as a block, and we don't treat them as a block. Cubans go to the head of the line for green cards, while Mexican families get rushed into deportation.  The histories of Cuba and Mexico with the United States are different. For whatever reason, the Republican Latinos of Nevada rejected Cruz and Rubio, and I assume that independent and Democratic Latinos, most of them of Mexican origin, would do the same--and also reject the racist Trump.

The old stone savage

     The poet wrote to Don Trump: “Something there is that does not love a wall, that sends the frozen ground swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun, and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”

     But what does the poet mean? The natural world does not love a wall? Then why do people build walls? To divide property, to separate themselves from others? 

     Consider another line about a wall-maker from the Poet. “I see him there bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top in each hand, like an old stone savage armed.”

The Pope vs. Donald Trump

I'm what one might call a cultural Christian. As a child I went to church and read the Bible and so on, but I'm not religious. I've been struck by how astoundingly ignorant talking heads on  TV (Joe Scarborough, for example) have been supporting Donald Trump in the exchange between Trump and the Pope about who is a Christian and who isn't. It's clear that political commentators have no idea at all what it takes to be a Christian.

The current Pope is a Christian. Many Popes have not followed the teachings of Christ, but this one tries. Yesterday, for example, he changed doctrine by saying that in some medical or health circumstances it isn't a terrible sin for someone to use birth control. That might not seem like much--most American Catholics already use birth control. My grandmother used birth control on the grounds that "what a priest don't know won't hurt him." But the doctrinal change is an example of the Pope's genuine caring for people faced with the Zika virus.

When the Pope indirectly indicated that Donald Trump is not a Christian, because he builds walls to shut people out when he should be building bridges to welcome them, the Pope was on firm ground. Every Pope has made comments with political implications. The Bible says that sooner shall a camel pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter Heaven. The Pope knows that Donald Trump is going to Hell, if there is one.

FDR vs the Clintons

For an explanation of the ideological split in the Democratic Party (FDR vs the Clintons), you can google "Why Bernie vs Hillary Matters." The New Deal descendants of FDR (Truman, JFK, LBJ) died out with the election of Jimmy Carter, a decent man who began deregulation--and dismantling the New Deal. Since then, the Democrats have elected Clinton (major deregulation) and President Obama, whose Clinton staff followed the Clinton program on many financial matters. (On other issues, Carter and Obama have been inspirational leaders, in my opinion.)

Wall Street Money

You might have seen Hillary Clinton on TV saying that Wall Street is out to get her by funding her opponents. Oddly enough, the candidate who has received the most funding from the financial services sector is not a Republican. It's Hillary (with Jeb! a close second).
  

Iowa, too

Let's say that a horse race ends in a dead heat. That does happen on rare occasions. The next step is to determine a winner by flipping a coin.

Iowa!

 As usual, Iowa's caucus system scrambled the candidates in ways that may turn out to be meaningless.  On the Republican side, the nastiest snake won (Ted Cruz), Trump survived and Marco Rubio did well enough  to give himself a shot at the nomination. To me, Rubio is blah. He's an amazing liar--but his lies are dull. He wears high heel boots to make himself look fully grown.

Commentators talked and talked about the different groups of Republican voters and the candidates the groups supported. No one in the mainstream media breakdowns mentioned the most important GOP group, the racists, or how the racists were voting this season. No poll figures on that one. 

What struck me were the MSNBC figures spinning for Hillary Clinton. Hillary began the campaign with a 40 point lead in Iowa and by hard campaigning and meeting the public whittled that down to a virtual tie with a socialist, Bernie Sanders, at the end. That's how much the voters liked Hillary, how they responded to the shape of her focus group personality. She lost the Obama base except for African Americans. For some on MSNBC, this was a great Hillary victory. Let's hope she doesn't have to run against a likable Republican.