Arch conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, 79, died last night. It was sudden, but he had become increasingly cranky the last couple of years, so to me it wasn’t much of a surprise. No cause of death has been announced yet (16:22:27 MST,) but I suspect it was a stroke, heart attack, ruptured aortic aneurysm, or something similar.
His death opens a seat on the Supreme Court. President Obama will nominate a new justice, but even if he nominates another Scalia, his nominee won’t be approved by the Republican controlled U.S. Senate — unless Mitch McConnell and his colleagues become convinced that a Democrats will win the White House and senate in November. In that case, they might approve Obama’s nominee as the lesser of evils. At least in theory they might do that. In practice, don’t count on it.
And don’t count on Obama’s nominating a progressive. He loves to compromise — he regards compromise as an intrinsic rather than an instrumental good — and might be tempted to nominate a conservative if he deludes himself that the Republicans can be bought off by adopting their position.
Scalia’s passing hurts Bernie Sanders, 74, more than it hurts Hillary Clinton, 68, for it reminds voters that one’s lifespan is not infinite. And in that regard, it helps all Republicans, except Donald Trump, 69, more than it helps Democrats.
I seldom agreed with Scalia, but I usually appreciated his writing, which in his last years degenerated from colorful to strident.
Against my better judgment, I watched Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton debate in Milwaukee last night (transcript), but stopped after 90 minutes because the softer, more refined Hillary at the start of the debate had reverted to the self-important scold that’s her real self.
He probably would, although he might not be as hale at 83 as he is now at 74. According to the National Center for Health Statistics vital statistics report (PDF; Table A, page 3) issued on 6 November 2014, a 75-year-old white man can expect, on average, to live another 11 years. In fact, all of the candidates in both parties can expect to live longer than they would serve as President:
Teenaged gun lover Chet Billi files for House District 5 as a Republican. A senior at Whitefish High School, Billi is both running for office and ramrodding an initiative campaign (I-175) to legalize teachers’ packing heat in the classroom. He doesn’t appear to have a campaign website yet, but he does have a Twitter account.
Long term Whitefish school board member David Fern filed for the Democratic nomination for HD-5.
HD-5 (map) is an open seat — two-term Rep. Ed Lieser (D-Whitefish) is retiring — that leans Democratic.
Greg Gianforte has a campaign advertising quality control problem.Montana Cowgirl reports that just before the Superbowl, he “…sent out a football metaphor-laden fundraising email…” that featured a photograph of Gianforte’s lacrosse team. He had a head of thick hair in those days.
Gianforte needs to hire smarter fundraisers. And he needs to be smarter about hiring them, and smarter about supervising them. Getting the facts right matters.
Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin will be the featured speaker at the Montana Democrats’ Mansfield-Metcalf dinner. That’s 19 March at the fairgrounds in Helena. Tickets are $60 each, but there are ways for Democrats to pay more, a sure sign the economy is improving. Baldwin’s job as speaker is to excoriate Republicans and incite Democrats into a rip-roaring partisan frenzy. I hope she doesn’t take potshots at Bernie Sanders.
Other Democrats will speak. And speak, and speak, and speak. It will be a long evening that requires a special kind of madness to enjoy. I’ll be in Kalispell on 19 March.
Berni Bros dustup is much ado about nothing. Some internet commenters, known as Bernie Bros, are posting demeaning vulgarities about Hillary Clinton. They're independent guttersnipes, not part of Bernie Sanders’ campaign. In fact, some could be pro-Clinton mischief makers conducting a false flag operation. Clinton's campaign is in high dudgeon about the Bros, possibly, asserts Glenn Greenwald, to try to delegitimize all criticism of Clinton, thus precluding a discussion of whether she has the temperament to be President.
This crap, to borrow Bernie Sanders’ term, goes on all the time. Unless it can be traced to a campaign, it’s not a major issue. It’s not a minor issue, either. It’s just an annoyance that’s best ignored.
What else would one expect from a husband defending his wife? Yesterday, speaking to a small gathering in New Hampshire, Bill Clinton ripped into Bernie Sanders in a speech that became more mean-spirited the longer he spoke, reports the New York Times:
The former president, addressing a few hundred supporters at a junior high school here, portrayed his wife’s opponent for the Democratic nomination as hypocritical, “hermetically sealed” and dishonest.
Rosendale, a wealthy real estate developer, spent approximately one million dollars of his own money in an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican nomination for the U.S. House in 2014. He released a zany campaign video in which he used a deer rifle to shoot down a peeping drone. He also spoke at a Second Amendment Rally in Kalispell that was sponsored by the Oath Keepers.
Jason Pitt, spokesman for Montana’s Democratic Party, was at it again yesterday, issuing a press release calling Bozeman businessman Greg Gianforte a “New Jersey multimillionaire.” That’s a lie. Gianforte’s a Montana multimillionaire.
And Pitt’s not the only one lying about Gianforte. In a post at Montana Cowgirl this morning, Justin Robbins called Gianforte a “New Jersey billionaire.”
I’m not going call out Pitt, et al, every time they employ this lie. But I will from time-to-time to remind them that they’re committing political malpractice and credibility suicide, and helping Gianforte instead of hurting him.
I’ll vote for the Democratic nominee even if that nominee is Hillary Clinton. But I’ll never again watch her debate. Or give a speech. Or deliver a sound bite on the evening news. She’s not Presidential. She’s a self-righteous scold. I cannot imagine her staying calm in the Situation Room. I can imagine her getting us into war, but that probably won’t happen because I also can imagine her losing to a Marco Rubio/John Kasich ticket.
Here’s her Tammy Wynette moment during Bill Clinton’s Presidency. You’ll recognize her way of expressing disdain if you watched tonight’s debate:
In the Iowa caucuses, Republicans count the votes, but Democrats count the votes, make arcane calculations, then announce the outcome not in votes but in delegate equivalents, keeping the raw vote tallies secret. I’ve never understood why. It complicates the process, obfuscates rather than clarifies, and multiplies the opportunities for error. That’s a problem in close contests.
Did this gratuitous complexity and opacity result in an inaccurate Democratic count? Some think so. USA Today has a good story on the situation.
Montana’s biggest union endorses Republican Tim Fox for attorney general. Although organized labor usually endorses Democrats, it’s not a wing of the Democratic Party. In 1972, for example, the Teamsters endorsed Richard Nixon, possibly in exchange for Nixon’s pardoning Jimmy Hoffa. Now the 18,000-member MEA-MFT has endorsed Republican Tim Fox, Montana’s incumbent attorney general, for re-election. If re-elected, Fox reportedly plans to run for governor in 2020, so the union’s leadership is playing a dangerous game.
Democrat Denise Juneau wants to be Montana’s next representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, but she doesn’t seem to want to tell us where she stands on the issues. After Mike Dennison reported yesterday that she’s gay, which caught me by surprise, I checked her website: lots of her personal story, but nothing on the issues.
To borrow a term of emphasis from Bernie Sanders, I don’t give a damn whether she’s gay — that will neither hurt her among Democrats nor help her among Republicans — as long as she doesn’t run an identity politics campaign and comes clean on the issues.
I want to know where she stands on Social Security, health care, energy, foreign policy, breaking up the big banks, college tuition, progressive taxation, helping the middle class get ahead instead of falling behind.
As a citizen and voter I have a right to know where she stands on the issues. As a candidate, she has a responsibility to come clean on the issues.
8:11:58 MST. With the counting 99+ percent complete, the New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by three tenths of one percent, and that Ted Cruz won the Republican caucuses with 27.7 percent of the vote. Some quick takeaways:
Republican gubernatorial hopeful Greg Gianforte ran into some quantitative turbulence on MTN’s Face the State (watch it on YouTube) yesterday when Montana State University political scientist David Parker asked him whether Montana’s economy was really as bad as he claims.
Gianforte’s been saying that Montana ranks 49th in wages, just above Mississippi, a right to work state that still enjoys the Confederacy’s love of cheap labor. His number comes from the Transactional Records Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
Writing at Big Sky Political Analysis, Parker reports that by other measures, Montana is doing better than next to last:
I grew up in Minnesota, and thus have some experience with the precinct caucus system as was practiced there by the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. Iowa’s caucus system is similar.
Precinct caucuses reward motivation, enthusiasm, and organization. An insurgency with fired-up and well led activists can have disproportionate success at a caucus if more mainstream campaigns are caught napping and fail to get their activists to the precinct.
More on the SD-47 Democratic primary. According to Logicosity, former Rep. Joey Jayne is anti-choice and prone to taking extreme positions. Being anti-choice reduces a candidate’s chance of winning a Democratic primary. Democrats across Montana will be watching this primary closely.
Logicosity, incidentally, is analyzing legislative contests with an insider’s knowledge and acumen.
Confirmation bias and the Finicum shooting video. The FBI released aerial video of the shooting of LaVoy Finicum in the belief it would confirm the official version of why he was shot. Instead, much to the FBI’s surprise and dismay, the video, which many find ambiguous, has raised doubts that law enforcement authorities are telling the truth. What caused law enforcement to misjudge the public’s reaction so badly?
Today’s Washington Post reports that the latest Des Moines Register poll found Hillary Clinton leading Bernie Sanders by three points. Because the poll’s margin of error is four points, the Post says:
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are locked in a statistical tie in the hard-fought and unexpectedly close Iowa Democratic presidential contest, a new Des Moines Register-Bloomberg poll found Saturday.
The respected survey found Clinton commands 45 percent of Democratic support and Sanders 42 percent. The poll of 602 likely Democratic caucus-goers has a margin of error of 4 percentage points, meaning Clinton’s lead is within the margin of error. The survey comes three days before the first presidential voting of 2016 and reflects a late surge by Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who was once considered a long shot here.
A true statistical tie would be 45–45 or 42–42. Hillary’s three-point lead translates into a 77 percent likelihood that she’s actually leading; a lead is not a tie.
Rep. Albert Olszewski, M.D., as Greg Gianforte’s running mate? He’s one of three possibilities named by Matt Monforton at his Republican Uprising blog. The others are young Rep. Daniel Zolnikov and Rep. Nancy “Raw Milk” Ballance, whom Monforton describes as Montana’s Margaret Thatcher. Olszewski voted against legalizing the sale of raw milk. Thatcher was a chemist before she became a politician, so it’s possible the scientist in her supported pasteurization more than her inner libertarian supported the sale of raw milk.
If as governor Gianforte became too steamed over an issue, Dr. Olszewski as lieutenant governor would have credibility if he warned Gianforte to watch his blood pressure.
Zolnikov is just 28 years old. Montana’s 1972 constitution sets the minimum age for governor at 25 years of age. The minimum in Montana’s 1889 constitution was 30. There was an effort during the drafting of the 1972 document to allow an 18-year-old to qualify for governor (the voting age had just been lowered to 18), but cooler heads prevailed. The age 30 minimum makes more sense, and should be readopted.
New York Times endorses Hillary Clinton. Not unexpected, but disappointing nonetheless. HRC is a policy technician whose natural top step on the political ladder is deputy chief of staff. She’s not a crisis manager — I shudder at the consequences of her taking that three-in-the-morning call — and her judgment, as exemplified by her email debacle, isn’t sound. Bernie Sanders has good judgment and is a capable crisis manager, but he scares the bejesus out of Wall Street and the banker owned Democratic establishment. That’s why the Times endorsed HRC — and one reason why I support Sanders, the last of the New Dealers. I also support Sanders because I believe he has a much better chance of winning than HRC.
Democratic primary battle developing in Senate District 47. That’s the district (map, district snapshot-PDF, Indian majority districts map-PDF) that stretches from Missoula to Polson, comprising HD-93 on the north and HD-94 on the south. Termed-out Rep. Daniel Salomon (R-Ronan), who current represents HD-93, is running for the Republican nod for SD-47. Rep. Kimberely Dudik (D-Missoula) is running for re-election in HD-94, which she won by just 48 votes in 2014. Facing off for the Democratic nomination are Missoula attorney Tom France, and former Rep. Joey Jayne, St. Ignatius, also an attorney. Jayne consistently introduced legislation to repeal the death penalty, which is a double plus on my scorecard.
In 2014, more Republican than Democratic votes were cast in SD-47, but a strong Democratic candidate running a strong campaign with a strong get out the vote operation might have a chance in 2016.
The voting age population in HD-4 was 25 percent American Indian (download spreadsheet) in the 2010 Census. That could provide an advantage for Jayne in the Mission Valley. France (whom I know; he did the legal work on Conner v. Burford) may have an advantage in Missoula, but he’s off to a slow start; no website yet. Both would make excellent legislators.
Are Flathead Republicans conceding House District 5? HD-5, Whitefish, leans Democratic. The seat is open thanks to Democratic Rep. Ed Lieser’s retirement. Democrat David Fern, who has served many years on the local school board, filed for HD-5. So far, no Republican has filed, or even filed a C-1. There’s speculation that high school student Chet Billi, who is promoting I-175, the let-high-school-teachers-pack-heat-in-the-classroom initiative that’s approved for signature gathering, may file for HD-5 as a Republican. I expect a more seasoned Republican will file for the seat.
Updated at 13:46:22 MST. Yesterday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a 26-minute, low resolution video of the operation that ended in the shooting death of Robert LaVoy Finicum. After viewing the video several times, and going through the shooting segment frame by frame, I find myself wondering whether Finicum could have been taken alive. He should have been taken alive.
I have some comments. But first, a description of the video and images that I extracted from it.
Sanders County tea partier Gerald Cuvillier has once more filed for the Democratic nomination in House District 13. He also filed for HD-13 as Democrat in 2014 — despite having served as vice chair of the Sanders County Republican Party.
In 2014 HD-13 Democratic primary he received 95 votes. Real Democrat Weylin Achatz received 372. In the general election, Republican Bob Brown defeated Achatz 2,772–1,143.
Cuvillier ran for the Trout Creek school board last fall. He came in third (and last) in an election for two trustee positions, receiving 12.3 percent of the vote.
Why Cuvillier is committing this mischief again is a head scratcher. Judging from his frequent comments in the Flathead Beacon, he’s still guzzling the tea. In fact, by comparison, Ted Cruz seems a socialist.
So what happens if Ryan Zinke and Greg Gianforte make campaign stops in Trout Creek? Will they pose for a selfie with “Democrat” Cuvillier?
