Politics: All the Latest from Real Clear Politics

Clinton’s Bid for Democratic Unity a Tough Sell
Talev & John, Bloomberg
With every pledge to unify the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton is acknowledging one of her biggest challenges between now and November: getting millions of Bernie Sanders’ fans to give her their votes. The Clinton campaign is still trying to figure out exactly what Sanders wants in exchange for rallying his supporters to her side. In recent weeks, he’s suggested that Clinton can’t expect them to just fall in line, but he hasn’t enumerated exactly what he believes would draw them in. He hasn’t said which of his policy positions is most important for her to adopt or…

Trump and the Obama Effect
Gordon Crovitz, Wall Street Journal
Top presidential advisers often go public as administrations end, but there has rarely been a disclosure as illuminating as how President Obama’s top spin doctor helped turn American foreign policy upside down. In a New York Times Magazine article this weekend headlined “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru: How Ben Rhodes Rewrote the Rules of Diplomacy for the Digital Age,” writer David Samuels details how…

Democrats, Don’t Celebrate Trump Nomination. Fear It.
Fred Hiatt, Washington Post
I know the polls say Donald Trump cannot win. But what if we are looking at the wrong poll question? What if Trump’s overwhelming negatives don’t matter? Or, to put it another way, what if the country’s negatives matter more? Right now, about 6 in 10 Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump, and only 36 percent view him positively.

I’m Voting Trump, Warts and All
Bobby Jindal, Wall Street Journal
Some of my fellow Republicans have declared they will never, under any circumstances, vote for Donald Trump. They are pessimistic about the party’s chances in November and seem more motivated by long-term considerations. They think devotion to the “anybody but Trump” movement is a principled and courageous stance that will help preserve a remnant of the conservative movement and its credibility, which can then serve as a foundation for renewal.

What’s Left of Turkish Democracy?

Puerto Rico, Illinois or Bust

Trump’s Triumph, America’s Tragedy

Trump’s Road to Republican Unity Begins With Hillary Clinton

Harvard Brings Back the Blacklist
Katie Barrows, FIRE
In a stunning attack on freedom of association, Harvard Universityannounced today that members of independent, single-sex, off-campus organizations will be blacklisted from Rhodes and Marshall scholarships and banned from leadership of on-campus organizations or athletic teams. Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust stated that next year, members of fraternities, sororities, and “final clubs” will begin to be denied these opportunities in an effort to foster “inclusion” and “address deeply rooted gender attitudes.” According to Dean Rakesh Khurana,…

Disdain: The Root of Our Diseased Politics
Andrew Eil, New York Observer
In recent months, presidential candidates have smeared one another—“con artist,” “phony” and “sniveling coward,” to list just a few verbal cudgels now hurled on the stump. Meanwhile, George Will of The Washington Post characterized Democratic policies as “Gesture Liberalism.” On the left, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, though insightful, is similarly notorious for, as The Nation put it, “his flair for condescending put-downs.” And cultural critic Leon Wieseltier recently told theTimes, “I don’t believe that…

Get Ready for Higher Obamacare Rates
Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times
It already looks clear that many Obamacare insurance plans are going to raise their prices significantly. Over the last few years, average premium increases in the Obamacare markets have been lower than the increases for people who bought their own insurance in premiums before the Affordable Care Act. But several trends are coming together that suggest that pattern will break when plan premiums are announced in early November. Many plans may increase prices by 10 percent, or more. Over the last two years, I’ve written articleswarning against scary headlines that exaggerate premium…

Tea Party & Trump Killed the GOP–Clinton Is Far Preferable
Max Boot, LA Times
I have been a Republican as long as I can remember. Joining the Grand Old Party seemed like a natural choice for someone like me who fled the Soviet Union as a boy and came to Los Angeles with his mother and grandmother in 1976. Refugees from communism, whether from Russia or Cuba, generally oppose socialism and embrace conservative political views. My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House. For me, Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped…

I’m Voting Trump, Warts and All
Bobby Jindal, Wall Street Journal
Some of my fellow Republicans have declared they will never, under any circumstances, vote for Donald Trump. They are pessimistic about the party’s chances in November and seem more motivated by long-term considerations. They think devotion to the “anybody but Trump” movement is a principled and courageous stance that will help preserve a remnant of the conservative movement and its credibility, which can then serve as a foundation for renewal.

After 10 Years, Gore’s Film Still Alarmingly Inaccurate
Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller
It’s been nearly one decade since former Vice President Al Gore released his film “An Inconvenient Truth.” It sent shockwaves through American politics and emboldened environmental activists to push for more regulations on American businesses. Gore warned increasing carbon dioxide emissions would spur catastrophic global warming that would cause more extreme weather, wipe out cities and cause ecological collapse. To stop global warming, humans needed to ditch fossil fuels and basically change every aspect of their lives.

The Raging Fires of Climate Change
Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker
The town of Fort McMurray, some four hundred miles north of Calgary, in Canada, grew up very quickly on both sides of the Athabasca River. During the nineteen-seventies, the population of the town tripled, and since then it has nearly tripled again. All this growth has been fuelled by a single activity: extracting oil from a Florida-sized formation known as the tar sands. When the price of oil was high, there was so much currency coursing through Fort McMurray’s check-cashing joints that the town was dubbed “Fort McMoney.”

The Real Cost of Bailing Out Puerto Rico
Joseph Lawler, Washington Examiner
A preview of this month’s scramble to save Puerto Rico from a debt catastrophe played out in the fall between two familiar adversaries in a Senate office hearing room. On the witness side of the dais was Antonio Weiss, the Treasury counselor dispatched to warn the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that Puerto Rico faced an “economic and fiscal crisis” that, unless Congress intervened, could become a “humanitarian crisis as well.”

Why George Washington Would Have Agreed With Trump
Michael Hirsh, Politico
For all the lamentation about the level of rhetoric in this Trumped-up election year, the race between Donald Trump and all-but-certain Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is already shaping up to be a debate over America’s global role of the kind we haven’t had for decades, perhaps since the last “America First” movement of the late ‘30s. And it is a debate that some foreign-policy experts suggest is long overdue, even if it tends to distress U.S. allies around the world. (“The unthinkable has come to pass,” Germany’s Die Welt wrote after Trump became the…

It’s Clinton’s Case to Make on Global Engagement
David Ignatius, Washington Post
By questioning the fundamentals of America’s global role, Donald Trump has given Hillary Clinton a chance to lift her game — by explaining why continued international engagement is in America’s interest and the world’s. If Clinton can’t counter Trump’s “America first” rhetoric, and make the case that U.S. leadership is still crucial for our security, she won’t be a strong president. And she won’t have public support for the policies needed to rebuild American credibility.

How Data World Missed the Boat on Trump
David Byler, RealClearPolitics
It’s analyst accountability time. For most of the Republican Party primary season, my predictions were wrong. At the beginning of the primary, I thought Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio would likely be the nominee. When Donald Trump picked fights with Fox News and claimed Arizona Sen. John McCain wasn’t a war hero because he was captured, I thought it would damage Trump’s standing in the polls. When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won Iowa, I thought media coverage might substantially shift away from Trump, changing the race dynamics. I could go on.

A Republican Party Playbook to Win in November
Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal
Acknowledging mistakes is hard. Ignoring and repeating them is inexcusable. If the November elections bring disaster for the Republican Party, let no one say that the GOP has the right to make excuses. That’s one takeaway of an intriguing new report, still yet to be released, commissioned by the Republican National Committee. The report, “2016 Election Principles,” was drafted by Newt Gingrich and reads as a treetop analysis of the GOP’s electoral track record over the past four years: highs, lows and lessons learned. It’s a clarion call to Donald Trump—as…

The Newly Emboldened American Racist
Jennifer Sabin, Huffington Post
I live in a political bubble. A lovely, liberal, northeastern bubble. The majority of my friends and family are Clinton supporters, and the rest favor Bernie. One or two Republicans I’m close to voted for Kasich in the primaries. I’m pretty sure there are a few closet Trump supporters in my life — and on my Facebook friends list — but as long as they stay in the closet, we’re good.

Calling Trump Hateful Won’t Be Enough for Dems
Stephen Stromberg, Washington Post
Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Tuesday night, turning his sights on Hillary Clinton, who, he says, will be easy to beat. She will not be — at least not for him. But Democrats must avoid making a similar mistake, dismissing Trump based on his historically high negative poll numbers without understanding why people are voting for him.

The Democrats Are Built to Win
Peter Beinart, The Atlantic
The bad news is that the Republican Party will now almost certainly nominate the most dangerous presidential nominee in modern American history. The good news is that the Democratic Party is built to defeat him. The reason is straightforward. The Democratic Party has become, to a significant extent, an anti-racist party. The Republican Party has not.

Donald Trump Will Do It His Way
Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard
If you’re expecting Donald Trump to change now that he’s the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, forget it. Trump says he can act presidential any time he wants to. But that time rarely comes. There’s a reason for this. Trump equates being presidential with being boring. And boring isn’t his style. Trump will give a few speeches on major issues with presidential-level trappings—teleprompters, prepared texts, invited audiences. He’s preparing one on the Supreme Court, a successor to Justice Antonin Scalia, and judges. Others are likely to focus on infrastructure and the…

I Believe Trump Can Get the Job Done
Larry Kudlow, RealClearMarkets
With a serious purpose, demeanor, and policy.Donald Trump has swept the primaries and is now the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. His almost unbelievable primary surge – from New York to…

Why Do Some People Respond to Trump? It’s Biology 101
Bobby Azarian, Daily Beast
Itâ??s no mystery. Social science has been telling us for years. Conservatives respond to fear-inducing stimuli more than liberals do.

What’s Bernie Sanders’ Next Move?
Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times
Bernie Sanders has plenty of sound reasons for continuing his presidential campaign, but now that Donald Trump is the apparent Republican nominee, he needs to make a change in tone.

Republican Senators Face Trump Dilemma
Josh Kraushaar, National Journal

Make America Empathetic Again
E.J. Dionne, Washington Post

Trump’s Tabloid
Carl M. Cannon, RealClearPolitics
Although he’s a billionaire who hawked expensive filet mignon steaks, Donald Trump’s own food preferences run to McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, Wendy’s hamburgers, and Oreos for desert. He’s also a teetotaler, meaning that a man who can afford to order Dom Pérignon by the case stocks his private jet with Diet Coke. Hey, he’s a man of the people. Who am I to judge? I like a Diet Coke and a Big Mac as much as the next man.But Trump’s low-brow culinary tastes also apply to his reading habits, and this is more than a matter of personal preference….

Step Up Zika Fight for Mother’s Day 2017
Ashish Jha, USA Today
There’s a lot we can to do make sure moms and babies won’t be paying for our failure a year from now.

On Trump, Never Means Never
Rick Wilson, New York Daily News

Hillary’s a Progressive, Despite What You May Have Heard
Jonathan Cohn, Huff Post
Here’s what people would be saying about her if she wasn’t running against Bernie Sanders.

Obama’s Last Act: Making Suburbs Less White, Less Wealthy
Paul Sperry, NY Post
Hillaryâ??s rumored running mate, Housing Secretary Julian Castro, is cooking up a scheme to reallocate funding for Section 8 housing to punish suburbs for being too white and too wealthy. The schemeâ?¦

What Makes Texas Texas
Manny Fernandez, New York Times

The Men Who Would Be King
Richard Fernandez, PJ Media
The banality of the White House