Togetherness Trumps Selfishness, Love Trumps Hatred

No, Bernie fans are not going to be voting for Donald Trump in any appreciable numbers-- and certainly not in numbers Trump would need to make up for the Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush fans he will be losing, making Florida even more of a stretch for him in November than it should be. Hillary outpolled him in the primary 1,097,400 to 1,077,221. She'll probably pick up Almost all of the 566,603 Bernie and 38,875 O'Malley voters. Will Trump get the 636,653 Rubio voters? The 43,452 Jeb voters? How many of the 403,640 Cruz voters or the 159,412 Kasich voters? The biggest county in the state is Miami-Dade. During the primary, Hillary took 129,467 votes and Bernie took another 42,009. Bernie won more votes than Trump in Miami-Dade. For Trump to win Florida's crucial 29 electoral votes, he needs most of those 111,898 Republican votes that Rubio won in Miami Dade. Rubio drew another 100,000-plus voters in the Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville metros, all areas where Hillary outdrew Trump even without Bernie. And Bernie has been clear he plans to work for Hillary's election in September and October. How hard? I suspect he wants to work very hard for her and for Democratic Senate candidates and for the progressives running for House seats, especially ones who endorsed him and can make a difference in Congress, like Zephyr Teachout (NY), Tim Canova (FL) and Pramila Jayapal (WA).

For those interested, an Economist/YouGov poll the other day asked Bernie primary voters who they intend to back in November. So, even before Bernie has started to work towards electing Hillary this was the breakdown:

• Hillary- 44%
• Jill Stein- 23%
• Herr Trumpf- 11%
• Gary Johnson- 4%

The best Trump can hope for is to drive Bernie supporters to stay home or to vote against her by backing the Green Party's Stein, but working towards getting any significant number of Bernie supporters to vote for him is patently absurd. As David Cay Johnston explained on Democracy Now yesterday, "The people who are supporting Bernie Sanders share the same economic concerns, and legitimately share them, because our policies have really hurt the bottom 90 percent of Americans in the last 36 years. But those are not people who are going to be drawn in by Donald’s fearmongering, Donald’s blatant appeals to racism, his his bigotry against Muslims and others. That’s not the Bernie Sanders crowd. Those people may stay home, but I can’t see very many of them joining Donald."

I have no inside info on this but my guess is that the amount of energy he puts into Hillary's campaign will be related to how progressive a campaign she runs. Naming someone like Tim Kaine-- who is anti-Choice, pro-bankster, a TPP cheerleader and LGBT-unfriendly is not going to help. Her acceptance speech in Philly next week is going to send a signal to voters how far right she's going to pivot for the general election. If it's too far right, I bet Bernie will spend more energy on candidates like Zephyr Teachout and less on the presidential campaign. If she responds to Trump's right wing populism by making a strong case against the TPP and against corporatism, it could go a long way into healing Democratic Party divides and give Bernie supporters more evidence that she really is the far lesser of the two evils being offered up.

First Lady?

Want to know how Trump's sick, diseased brain works? Watch Trump reviewing his own convention and his own speech below. It's pretty revelatory not just about him but about advance narcissistic personality disorder in general. One topic of the press gathering was his decision to persecute his war against Ted Cruz some more. (Sarah Palin already announced the Trumpists would consider paying someone to run against him in the 2018 Texas primary.) Trump insisted Cruz would eventually endorse him but that he wouldn't accept his endorsement. Trump, realizing he's not going to ever be president, explicitly, threatened to "set up a SuperPAC if he decides to run... in 4 years." Meanwhile, Pence laughed and applauded like a trained seal while Trump savaged his former ideological comrade-in-arms and raised the question, once again, of Cruz's father's role in assassinating JFK in Dallas based on what he insists is the highly credible National Enquirer. Trump referred to his well-dressed, plagiarizing wife, a former high-priced call girl, as a "tremendously successful and elegant model." Pence may be able to write a book some day, but I have a feeling his career in politics is pretty much as dead as the fish Trump tosses him when he balances a ball on his nose.