Salon

Sitting down to craft my explanation of why, going into the primary season, I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, I made a critical mistake. I read the unhinged, downright embarrassing attack on Sanders by the Washington Post’s editorial board published Wednesday night. The piece, which is a series of straw man attacks on Sanders’ platform (denying that single-payer healthcare is workable, even though it works perfectly well in Canada and the U.K., for instance) and red-baiting that would make Joe McCarthy proud. It made me want to vote Sanders, just to piss them off.

It’s a shame, too, because there’s actually a germ of an argument here that the biggest problem with Sanders is that his promise of transformative politics is undermined by his unwillingness, in many cases, to give the public and his followers especially a realistic path to actual change. The problem with his single-payer healthcare plan, for instance, isn’t that it’s unworkable — he’s right that replacing insurance premiums with a generic tax that pays for every person probably would save most Americans money — but that he might as well be promising everyone a pony, for all that this is ever going to happen.

Today Texas is the reddest of the red-hot states, covered by a big bubble of hot air that protects the most reactionary, radical and rabid set of officeholders that much of the country has ever seen. Hot red winds escape the bubble every once in a while and blow out of Texas onto the rest of you.  You’ve already been singed by the fire and fury of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose emergence as an alternative to presidential candidate Donald Trump creates fear and trepidation among Republicans and Democrats alike. And although you might have had a few laughs when former Gov. Rick Perry flopped again nationally, you’ve had to endure the follies of the other presidential seekers who grew up here: Jeb Bush, Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina.

The first official signs of Super Bowl 50—six-foot-tall, 1,600-pound, solar-powered number 50s, each with its own Super Bowl-themed design—started popping up at photogenic landmarks around San Francisco two weeks ago.

The first unofficial signs—rows of tents and tarps lining a major thoroughfare under the I-80 freeway to the Bay Bridge—started popping up two months ago.

That’s when Oscar McKinney, a 49-year-old hearse driver, pitched a tent on the sidewalk across from a Best Buy parking lot. McKinney moved there after being ousted from an encampment near the downtown staging area for Super Bowl City.

Since the 1990s, the culture wars have repeatedly been left for dead. Just months after political commentator Pat Buchanan declared a “cultural war” at the 1992 Republican National Convention, neoconservative Irving Kristol remarked, “I regret to inform Pat Buchanan that those wars are over and the left has won.” In 1997, New York Times reporter Janny Scott observed that the term “culture wars” had become as anachronistic as a “leisure suit.” “Not long ago, one could hardly get through a week without stumbling across somebody or other’s culture war—outraged fundamentalists or neoconservatives or righteous multiculturalists raving about Hollywood or political correctness or Robert Mapplethorpe or Allan Bloom,” she wrote.

While most morning news programs devoted much of their Monday coverage to tonight’s highly anticipated Iowa caucuses, Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” took some time to examine the importance of the African American vote on this first day of Black History Month, only to blast black voters for “slavish support” of the Democratic Party.

Guest and conservative pundit Crystal Wright (aka GOPBlackChick) began by arguing that Donald Trump is the only Republican presidential candidate credibly suited to compete for the African American vote, citing his plans for mass deportation as a boon to blacks and applauding the billionaire frontrunner for not “pander[ing]” to Black Lives Matter.

Over the last decade, the Koch brothers have taken an increasingly important role in American politics. Recent reporting as well as academic research suggests that the Kochs now control a network that will likely outspend the Republican National Committee in 2016, and has sophisticated data analytic capacities, as well as a surveillance operation. The Kochs fund organizations that create model bills, run get-out-the-vote operations and recruit candidates. That is, the Koch network shares all of the things a traditional party does, without being accountable to voters. The remedy, say two political scientists, is to shift the campaign finance landscape to strengthen parties. But any reform must include public financing.

“Those fucking girls are too stupid to be bitches. They’re too fucking stupid to be cunts.”

There is a flash of recognition between us: We are student and professor; we are kid and adult; we are male and female. But which is it we are recognizing each other as?

I don’t know what happens to my smile-formed face, but in that second I see a flicker to his eyes, as if some calculation of gender or age or role in life is happening in his brain but not happening quite fast enough to lower his voice or change his words or even stop mid-word in whatever word — cunts? — he is on.

I am startled, I feel a clutch in my gut, my face go hot. But neither of us misses a step. We each continue on our algebraic way. The moment is over. Go home, I think. Wine and a hot cable TV doctor await you. Just roll your eyes, laugh it off. Chill. Oh, kids today. You do not have to solve for x or y. Boys will be boys. Shrug.

Speaking of the need for citizen participation in our national politics in his final State of the Union address, President Obama said, “Our brand of democracy is hard.” A more accurate characterization might have been: “Our brand of democracy is cold hard cash.”

Cash, mountains of it, is increasingly the necessary tool for presidential candidates. Several Powerball jackpots could already be fueled from the billions of dollars in contributions in play in election 2016. When considering the present donation season, however, the devil lies in the details, which is why the details follow.

With three 2016 debates down and six more scheduled, the two fundraisers with the most surprising amount in common are Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Neither has billionaire-infused super PACs, but for vastly different reasons. Bernie has made it clear billionaires won’t ever hold sway in his court. While Trump… well, you know, he’s not only a billionaire but has the knack for getting the sort of attention that even billions can’t buy.

“You say man evolved from an ape … but if we evolved from an ape, why is an ape still an ape and a person still a person?”

It’s a question often asked by religious critics of the theory of evolution. To answer it Brown University Professor Kenneth Miller reached back to expert-witness testimony he delivered in a Harrisburg courtroom a decade earlier. Miller was speaking at a three-day symposium celebrating the 10th anniversary of the December 2005 Kitzmiller decision, which dashed evangelicals’ hopes that “intelligent design” could be taught in public schools as a counter-theory to evolution.

Political reporters might have written their template for post-Iowa Democratic primary pieces last summer. Everyone was fairly confident that the caucuses would signify the first step to a coronation of Hillary Clinton; the only unknown was which demographically appropriate running mate she would choose. Plug in the numbers for the also-rans later and voila, instant think piece.

But that’s not how it turned out. A 74-year-old self-proclaimed Democratic socialist drew the biggest crowds. Iowa ended up as the place where Clinton needed a victory to shift her opponent’s momentum in the first in the nation primary in New Hampshire. And Iowa ended in a virtual tie, which considering where the race began is a monumental achievement.