The Chris Moeller Archives

The Zen of Dennis Kucinich: "I'm electable if you vote for me"

Bernie Sanders now trails Hillary Clinton by only seven percentage points in Iowa (30% to 37%), according to the new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll, and Clinton has lost wholly a third of her support by that measuring stick only since May. In New Hampshire, Sanders leads the former first lady by that much and more. But Clinton will continue to be referred to as "the front-runner" by the national news media.

For his part, Donald Trump has been doing to presidential campaigns what Charlie Sheen did to television sitcoms. Our political institution, the "Washington consensus," is so corrupt that it may be actually benefiting from an infusion of tiger blood. Andrew O'Hehir is a must-read this week in Salon...  

We don’t have enough time between now and the heat death of the universe to figure out all the reasons behind the media and political elite’s collective freakout of 2015. I think we can say a couple of things: Some of the reasons are obvious and some are less so, and no matter what happens in the short term, this shock to the system is a critically important moment for democracy. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Donald Trump is not entirely a bad thing. Liberals who get the vapors, Danny Shea style, about what a national embarrassment Trump is are missing the point. We need a national embarrassment right now, or at least we need politics that break free of the tepid safety zone of bipartisan paralysis, dysfunction and apathy. Of course I don’t actually want Trump to be president, but he serves a number of useful purposes and the forces trying to shut him down are the same ones seeking to shut Bernie Sanders down, the forces that long to ensure a boring, safe and utterly substance-free general election between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.

posted by CM @ 10:29 AM