Politics: All the Latest Headlines from Real Clear Politics

Booker and Scott Plan a ‘Smart War’ on Poverty
John Avlon, The Daily Beast
AmericaÃ¢??s two African-American senators have a plan to steer some of the $2.3 trillion sitting under American mattresses into communities starved for investment.

Politics Move Left, Americans Move Right
Joel Kotkin, RealClearPolitics

For Reformed Felons, Voting Rights Are Not Enough
Lincoln Caplan, The New Yorker
Voting rights are only one of many rights that are withheld from people who have had felony or other convictions.

End the Student-Loan Bubble by Demanding Results
Kupiec & Nabil, National Review
To reduce waste in government tuition loans, colleges should pay part of the price when students default.

Why Clinton Won’t Offer a Bold Economic Agenda
David Dayen, The New Republic

The Media is Playing Mouth of Sauron for Trump
Leon Wolf, Red State
Share on Facebook 1 1 SHARES If you’ll forgive me, I’m going to nerd out for a bit. I never really got into comic books or anything, but I love Tolkien and have read all of the Lord of the Rings books several times. The Hobbit was the first book I genuinely fell in love with as a kid. Anyway, there’s this scene inÃ‚ The Return Read More Â»

Indiana: A Trump State That Looks Like a Cruz State
Jamelle Bouie, Slate
The last time the Indiana Republican primary mattered was 40 years ago, in 1976, when Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan battled for the presidential nomina …

GOP Should Have Adopted the Democrats’ Rules
Michael Barone, Washington Examiner

The Hell After ISIS
Anand Gopal, The Atlantic
Falah sabar heard a knock at the door. It was just before midnight in western Baghdad last April and Falah was already in bed, so he sent his son Wissam to answer. Standing in the doorway was a tall young man in jeans who neither shook Wissam’s hand nor offered a greeting. “We don’t want you here,” he said. “Your family should be gone by noon tomorrow.” For weeks, Wissam, who was 23, had been expecting something like this, as he’d noticed a dark mood taking hold of the neighborhood. He went to get his father, but when they returned, the stranger was…

Anything Trumps Hillary Clinton
David Stockman, Contra Corner
It’s all over except the shouting. That is, the primary election season effectively ended last night and now the actual shouting match between Hillary and The Donald begins. This will surely be the most entertaining election in US history, and probably the most pointless, too. After all, Hillary wants to use government to make Government Great Again. And Trump promises to use government to make America Great Again.

Is U.S. Ready for Post-Middle-Class Politics?
Charles Homans, NY Times Magazine
On April 12 last year, Hillary Clinton formally announced her run for the presidency by posting a two-Âminute video on YouTube. For the first minute and a half, Clinton was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the video showed a montage of a dozen or so Clinton supporters: a Âmiddle-Âaged white woman tending to her garden; two Hispanic brothers starting a business; a pregnant young black woman and her husband unpacking boxes in a sun-Âdappled suburban living room; a burly, bullet-headed white man surveying an American-Âflag-Âdraped warehouse.

How Donald Trump Beats Hillary Clinton
Michael Walsh, New York Post
Absent an alien invasion, the zombie apocalypse or the sudden re-annexation of California by Mexico, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president. It’s time to move on to the real question: Can he beat Hillary Clinton? You’re darn right he can. This runs contrary to conventional wisdom, of course. Then again, conventional wisdom also said (a) that he wouldn’t run, (b) that establishment candidates like Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Rick Perry would crush him in the primaries and (c) that the Republican electorate would never accept a social liberal who donates…

Will Ferrell and the Left’s Anti-Reagan Obsession
John Fund, National Review
It took two days of outrage from the Reagan family and many ordinary Americans, but actor Will Ferrell finally announced Friday that he wasn’t going to star in Reagan, a “comedy” that sought to rewrite history by showing President Reagan slipping into Alzheimer’s during his second term. In the movie, his presidency is saved by an ambitious intern who connives the president into believing “he is an actor playing the president in a movie,” according to Variety magazine.

Trump Embraces Blunt Sexism in Attacks on Clinton
Amanda Marcotte, Salon
Donald Trump never met a preposterous statement he wasn’t willing to stand by, and so it is with his apparent belief that women are unfairly advantaged over men in our society. On Fox News on Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Trump why he would say that Hillary Clinton is a talentless hack who is coasting on the “woman card,” i.e. the unearned privilege he believes women enjoy over men, and Trump defended himself by pulling his P.C.-police-suppress-the-truth card.

One Top Taxpayer Moved, and New Jersey Shuddered
Robert Frank, New York Times
Our top-heavy economy has come to this: One man can move out of New Jersey and put the entire state budget at risk. Other states are facing similar situations as a greater share of income — and tax revenue — becomes concentrated in the hands of a few. Last month, during a routine review of New Jersey’s finances, one could sense the alarm. The state’s wealthiest resident had reportedly “shifted his personal and business domicile to another state,” Frank W. Haines III, New Jersey’s legislative budget and finance officer, told a State Senate committee….

Congress Can Solve Illinois’ Pension Crisis
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Chicago Tribune
Most people don’t care whether pensions are underfunded. After all, retirement is far in the future. But if their income taxes are going to go up because state pensions are underfunded — that’s another story. One advantage Illinois has is that the state has a low individual income tax rate. But now some legislators want to raise it from 3.75 percent to a max of 9.75 percent. That would be the fourth highest individual income tax rate after California, Oregon and Minnesota.

Obamacare’s Looming Rate Hikes a Headache for Democrats
Paul Demko, Politico
The last thing Democrats want to contend with just a week before the 2016 presidential election is an outcry over double-digit insurance hikes as millions of Americans begin signing up for Obamacare. But that looks increasingly likely as health plans socked by Obamacare losses look to regain their financial footing by raising rates. Just a week after the nation’s largest insurer, UnitedHealth Group, pulled out of most Obamacare exchanges because it anticipates $650 million in losses this year, Aetna’s CEO said Thursday that his company expects to break even, but legislative fixes…

Trump Will Be Worse Than Romney and McCain
Dan McLaughlin, RedState
Share on Facebook 1 1 SHARES My reasons for not voting for Donald Trump, even in a general election against Hillary Clinton, are straightforward. Trump is not with me on any issue I care about, would be a terrible and unstable Commander-in-Chief, and would discredit and poison the party and the movement I believe in. Why on earth would I give my vote to him, Read More Â»

The Beginning of the End for Ted Cruz
Philip Diehl, The Hill
Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) has run a brilliant campaign, and if it were not for Donald Trump, he’d probably be on the verge of wrapping up the Republican nomination by now. The Texas firebrand knew long before others that the party’s primary schedule and delegate allocation rules played to his advantage, not to an establishment candidate like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. From his arrival in the Senate, Cruz has bent the political space-time continuum around himself by demonstrating GOP leaders’ inability to govern effectively or deliver on their promises to conservatives.

Sanders Can Force a Contested Convention. But He Can’t Win It
Philip Bump, WP
With the Democratic presidential nomination system working the way it does, there are essentially two possible outcomes: A candidate will either win in a blowout, or he or she will need superdelegate votes to gain a majority. The reason for this is simple: Fifteen percent of all of the Democratic delegates are unbound superdelegates. So unless you have about an 18 percentage-point lead among delegates by the time the voting wraps up, you’ll need some superdelegates to put you over the top. This makes the difference between a close race and a blowout a little murky — which can be…

Clinton’s Battle Plan
Peter Beinart, The Atlantic
As they look ahead to the general election, some commentators envision a campaign in which Donald Trump attacks viciously and Hillary Clinton makes a virtue of her refusal to stoop to his level. “I think Trump’s method will be to turn on the insult comedy against Hillary Clinton,” declared GOP consultant Mike Murphy earlier this week. “Her big judo move is playing the victim.” Vox’s Ezra Klein speculated earlier this year that “Trump sets up Clinton for a much softer and unifying message than she’d be able to get away with against a candidate…

Congress Must Act to Give Puerto Rico Relief

Protesters for Trump

A Reasonable Trump? We’re More Than a Little Skeptical

Hollywood Can’t Help Hating on Reagan

Closed Primaries Did Not Stop Bernie Sanders
Bill Scher, RealClearPolitics
Bernie Sanders is so convinced that his campaign was fatefully hamstrung by “closed” primaries in which independent voters could not participate that he is including the end of closed primaries in his list of convention demands. There’s no reason to deem this demand self-serving; at 74 years of age, Sanders will not be running for president again and he apparently wants to create a process in which candidates who follow in his footsteps will have a better shot.

With Time Running Out, Cruz Makes Stand in Indiana
Byron York, DC Examiner
With time running short and polls looking grim, Ted Cruz is turning up the intensity as he tries to make the final hours of the Indiana primary campaign a turning point in his uphill presidential run. If there were any doubts about the stakes, Cruz’s friend Rep. Louie Gohmert, who has been traveling with a sometimes motley Cruz campaign entourage, set the stage Sunday by telling about 1,000 supporters gathered at the sprawling Faith Church complex, “This is the defining moment. Tuesday in Indiana is the defining moment.”

Paul Manafort: The Quiet American
Franklin Foer, Slate
Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s palace, is impressive by the standards of Palm Beach—less so when judged against the abodes of the world’s autocrats. It doesn’t, for instance, quite compare with Mezhyhirya, the gilded estate of deposed Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych. Trump may have 33 bathrooms and three bomb shelters, but his mansion lacks a herd of ostrich, a galleon parked in a pond, and a set of golden golf clubs. Yet the two properties are linked, not just in ostentatious spirit, but by the presence of one man. Trump and Yanukovych have shared the same political…

Obscure Panel May Have Big Effect on Republican Convention
Rebecca Berg, RCP
As the possibility of an open convention looms over the GOP presidential primary, the Republican National Committee’s rules panel — which will set the criteria in Cleveland in conjunction with its convention rules sibling — has been dragged to the forefront. But another, less talked-about committee could earn a place in the spotlight: The RNC Committee on Contests. If less high-profile, it is nonetheless similarly pivotal in shaping the outcome of an open convention. In June, it will evaluate challenges to convention delegates selected at the state level, with the power to recommend…

Minimum Wage Causing Major Loss
Andy Puzder, Orange County Register
California recently became the first state to enact a $15 minimum wage, and the business community is stunned. Not by unions pursuing such an increase. They had a $15 initiative on the ballot this November in any event. Rather, the surprise was that CaliforniaÃ¢??s lawmakers were so anxious to avoid a popular vote on a measure that significantly reduces opportunities for working class Californians, the very individuals it was supposed to benefit.

The Union War on Charter-School Philanthropists
Nina Rees, Wall Street Journal
If you heard that a group of philanthropists came together to donate millions of dollars to schools, you would probably consider it good news. Indeed, thousands of underprivileged kids will be helped by the $35 million raised for Success Academy charter schools at a charity gala earlier this month. But teachers unions detect a nefarious purpose. This $35 million donation was “part of a coordinated national effort to decimate public schooling,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote in an April 13 article at the Huffington Post. “Wealthy…

Why Are Blacks Leaving Liberal Cities?
Aaron Renn, City Journal
Black lives matter, we’re told—but in many American cities, black residents are either scarce or dwindling in number, chased away by misguided progressive policies that hinder working- and middle-class people. Such policies more severely affect blacks than whites because blacks start from further behind economically. Black median household income is only $35,481 per year, compared with $57,355 for whites. The wealth gap is even wider, with median black household wealth at only $7,133, compared with $111,146 for whites, according to a study by Demos and the Institute on Assets and…