https://youtu.be/6bvl6spBVEc

16. Predictwise: 2016 President – Democratic Nomination

http://predictwise.com/politics/2016-president-democratic-nomination

17. Nearly 4 in 10 Trump SC supporters wish South won Civil War

A new poll shows 38 percent of Donald Trump's supporters in South Carolina wish the South had won the Civil War.

Eighty percent say they support Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country. Less than half — 44 percent — think that practicing Islam should even be allowed in the United States, while a third say it should be illegal.

Furthermore, 40 percent say they support shutting down all mosques in the country, compared to 36 percent who oppose the idea. Sixty-two percent want to create a national database of Muslim citizens. http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/269510-poll-38-percent-of-sc-trump-supporters-wish-south-had-won-the-civil-war

1. Paul Krugman: How America Was Lost

Once upon a time, the death of a Supreme Court justice wouldn’t have brought America to the edge of constitutional crisis. But that was a different country, with a very different Republican Party. In today’s America, with today’s G.O.P., the passing of Antonin Scalia has opened the doors to chaos.
In principle, losing a justice should cause at most a mild disturbance in the national scene. After all, the court is supposed to be above politics. So when a vacancy appears, the president should simply nominate, and the Senate approve, someone highly qualified and respected by all.

In reality, of course, things were never that pure. Justices have always had known political leanings, and the process of nomination and approval has often been contentious. Still, there was nothing like the situation we face now, in which Republicans have more or less unanimously declared that President Obama has no right even to nominate a replacement for Mr. Scalia — and no, the fact that Mr. Obama will leave soon doesn’t make it O.K. (Justice Kennedy was appointed during Ronald Reagan’s last year in office.)

Nor were the consequences of a court vacancy as troubling in the past as they are now. As everyone is pointing out, without Mr. Scalia the justices are evenly divided between Republican and Democratic appointees — which probably means a hung court on many issues.

And there’s no telling how long that situation may last. If a Democrat wins the White House but the G.O.P. holds the Senate, when if ever do you think Republicans would be willing to confirm anyone the new president nominates?

How did we get into this mess? 2/14/16 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/opinion/how-america-was-lost.html

2. Doyle McManus: Trump and Sanders are the logical result of government that doesn't deliver

Of all the candidates on offer, Sanders and Trump are the ones speaking most directly to voters' economic anxieties and their anger at a failing political system. They offer very different policies, of course, but they start from many of the same premises. Both say traditional politics has failed. Both say political insiders and their wealthy donors have hijacked the process. Both promise to take the government back for the people.

Could a Sanders or Trump administration turn the economy around in short order? That's hard to imagine. A Sanders program of stimulus spending, income redistribution and government-run healthcare would need a liberal Democratic Congress to pass, and that's not on the horizon. Most of Trump's policies are too vague to assess, but even a President Trump would have to contend with a measure of gridlock on Capitol Hill.

And so would all the other candidates — unless, like Barack Obama in 2008, the next president wins in a landslide that ensures control of Congress. Even then, the problem of economic growth would still be there.

Summers thinks the chances of a recession are roughly even in the next few years (about one in three this year) – no matter who the next president turns out to be. If he's right, the challenge to democracies – in both Europe and the United States – will only grow steeper. 2/14/16 http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mcmanus-economic-threat-to-democracy-20160214-column.html

3. Ezra Klein: The rise of Donald Trump is a terrifying moment in American politics

It is undeniably enjoyable to watch Trump. He's red-faced, discursive, funny, angry, strange, unpredictable, and real. He speaks without filter and tweets with reckless abandon. The Donald Trump phenomenon is a riotous union of candidate ego and voter id. America's most skilled political entertainer is putting on the greatest show we've ever seen.

It's so fun to watch that it's easy to lose sight of how terrifying it really is.

Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he's a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he's also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it's hard to know if he even realizes he's lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash.

Trump is in serious contention to win the Republican presidential nomination. His triumph in a general election is unlikely, but it is far from impossible. He's not a joke and he's not a clown. He's a man who could soon be making decisions of war and peace, who would decide which regulations are enforced and which are lifted, who would be responsible for nominating Supreme Court justices and representing America in the community of nations. This is not political entertainment. This is politics. 2/10/16 http://www.vox.com/2016/2/10/10956978/donald-trump-terrifying

4. John Cassidy: Why Donald Trump Is Such a Formidable Politician

To ascribe Trump’s rise entirely to his independent status and his political incorrectness would be a mistake, however. The message that he is delivering—a mélange of American nativism, conservative politics, and populist economics—is also falling on receptive ears. When Trump says that Washington has failed the country, he is merely restating a central tenet of modern conservatism. When he claims that free trade with China and other countries has undermined American prosperity and cost countless American jobs, many blue-collar workers think that sounds right. When he says that the influx of illegal immigrants, many of whom have crossed the Mexican border, is having a similar impact on American living standards, that strikes a chord, too. And when he says that something drastic has to be done to prevent the threat of further terrorist attacks by Islamist radicals, he is preaching to the converted.

According to the New Hampshire exit poll, nearly half of the voters in the Republican primary said that they were angry at the federal government, and seventy per cent said that they were worried about the economy. Four in ten said that they were in favor of deporting undocumented immigrants en masse. Six in ten said that they were “very” worried about terrorism. And fully two-thirds expressed support for Trump’s proposal to institute a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States.

Figures like these, if they were to extend across the country, would have the makings of a winning coalition for Trump, because no other Republican candidate can match him for breadth. An establishment figure like Jeb Bush or John Kasich can’t hope to compete with him on incendiary issues like immigration and preventing Muslims from entering the country. A social conservative like Ted Cruz may match Trump’s rhetoric in these areas, or come close, but Cruz hasn’t got much of an economic message for embattled Reagan Democrats.

For now, at least, that leaves Trump in a strong position. He still has to demonstrate that he can extend his support beyond roughly a third of the G.O.P. electorate, but as long as his opposition remains divided, getting thirty or thirty-five per cent of the vote can take him a long way. On Wednesday evening, Predictwise, a Web site that combines information from the betting markets and the polls, was estimating the probability of Trump getting the G.O.P. nomination at forty-three per cent. With the polls showing him well ahead in Nevada and South Carolina, the next two states to vote, some would say that this estimate looks a bit low. http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/why-donald-trump-is-such-a-formidable-politician

5. Sady Doyle: More Than Likable Enough

Hillary Clinton is the impossible woman. The pressures she lives under, every moment of her life, are all-encompassing. She doesn’t have an inch of leeway, a single safe option; there is no version of Hillary Clinton that won’t be attacked. So the version of Hillary Clinton we get—this conflicted, conflict-inspiring candidate, the woman who has a genius-level recall of global politics but has to assure the world she’ll spend her presidency picking out flowers and china, the lady who books a guest spot on Broad City but can’t pronounce “Beyoncé,” the woman who was decades ahead of the curve on women’s rights but somehow thinks it’s a good idea to throw in a Bush-esque 9/11 reference at a debate—is the inevitable product of these pressures. 

And so is the fact that I like her. Honestly, ask yourself: How long would you make it, if people treated you the way you treat Hillary Clinton? Would you not just be furious by now? Would you not have reached levels of blood-vessel-popping rage and despair? She’s been dealing with it for decades, and keeps voluntarily subjecting herself to it, and knows exactly how bad it will get and exactly what we’ll do to her, and yet she is running for president again, and—here’s the part I love, the part that I find hard to wrap my head around—she might actually win. That is awe-inspiring.

Her story moves me as an example of a woman who got every misogynist trick in the world thrown at her and didn’t let it slow her down. On that level, she’s become a personal role model: If people dislike me, I will no longer think Oh, how horrible this is for me. I will think, Well, if Hillary can do it … Seriously, if Hillary Clinton can be called an evil hag by major media outlets for much of her adult life and run for president, I can deal with blocking 10 or 20 guys on Twitter. Read more at http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/12/saying_nice_things_about_hillary_ clinton_has_become_a_subversive_act.html

6. Froma Harrop: Democrats, Don't Blow It

Sanders is an honorable man running a straightforward campaign for the Democratic nomination. One can't imagine his playing the third-party spoiler.

But what makes today similar to 2000 is how many on the left are so demanding of ideological purity that they'd blow the opportunity to keep the White House in Democratic hands. Of course, they don't see it that way. This may reflect their closed circle of like-minded friends -- or an illusion that others need only see the light, and their hero will sweep into the Oval Office.

The other similarity to 2000 is the scorn the believers heap on the experienced liberal alternative. They can't accept the compromises, contradictions and occasional bad calls that attach to any politician who's fought in the trenches.

The next president will almost certainly be either Clinton or a Republican. Democrats must ask themselves: Whom would you prefer to name future Supreme Court judges? 2/16/16 http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/02/16/democrats_dont_blow_it_129676.html

7. Jay Michaelson: GOP Cynicism on the Supreme Court Reaches a New Low

For 166 years, Supreme Court confirmations used to be a matter of course, with rare exceptions.  In the 19th century, they usually took only a few days.  The current process of Judiciary committee hearings began only in 1955, in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education, with segregationists and other conservatives outraged at the “activist” Warren Court.

The custom of not confirming judges in a presidential election year began with the avowed segregationist Strom Thurmond, who opposed LBJ’s appointment of Abe Fortas as Chief Justice back in 1968.  (Notice, by the way, the “Thurmond Rule” wasn’t even about filling a vacancy – it was about moving Fortas from Associate to Chief Justice.)

Prior to that time, Supreme Court nominations in election years were par for the course.  Justice Frank Murphy was nominated in 1940, Cardozo in 1932, Clarke and Brandeis in 1916, and Pitney in 1912.

According to a detailed study by the Brookings Institute, the Senate has already slowed down the pace of judicial confirmations to record levels.  In the case of Reagan, Clinton, and Bush, confirmations didn’t slow down until the second half of the presidents’ eighth year in office.  In their seventh years, the Senate confirmed 23, 17, and 29 judges, respectively.  In Obama’s seventh year?

In other words, the two-term Republican presidents fared almost twice as well as the two-term Democrat presidents, with Obama faring the worst by far.

In short, until this one, an opposing-party Senate has never observed the Thurmond Rule.  Not in 1980, not in 1988, not in 1992, not in 2000.  There are typically slowdowns in confirmations, but never a standstill.  And the rule has never been invoked before the summer, let alone before the cherry blossoms bloom.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, we’re in new territory this year, and at new heights of hypocrisy. 2/15/16 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/15/gop-cynicism-on-the-supreme-court-reaches-a-new-low.html

8. Catherine Rampell: Republican obstructionism is nothing new

In elementary school, I was taught that presidents serve four-year terms.

Apparently that number is off by three — or so I’ve learned recently from listening to Republican politicians.

See, according to former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), the first year of a president’s term doesn’t really count. After all, both have argued that George W. Bush “kept us safe,” suggesting that 9/11 didn’t stain W’s otherwise spotless safety record because it occurred too early in his presidency.

Also, according to Republican Senate leadership, the last year of a president’s term doesn’t count either; that’s why President Obama shouldn’t get to nominate a replacement for late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Finally, it turns out the second-to-last year of a president’s term also doesn’t count. How can you tell? Because Republican senators obstructed nearly all of Obama’s judicial picks last year, too. And obviously — per their recent rhetoric about Scalia’s successor — they would have only done that in a year when the president was already a lame duck. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republican-obstructionism-is-nothing-new/2016/02/15/2d856c12-d42c-11e5-b195-2e29a4e13425_story.html