6 March 2016

Political briefs

Ohio makes right call in banning 17-year-olds from voting in primary elections. Think Progress has the story. This should not be a difficult issue. As established by the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, Americans must be age 18 or older to vote. Some states allow 17-year-olds to vote if they will be 18 by the day of the general election in the fall. Ohio adopted that approach in 2008, but the latest election manual for the state says its residents must be 18 to vote in the primary. Some Democrats are howling mad at the change. I’m not. Those who are not 18 on the day they vote should not be permitted to cast votes.

Will a Democrat file for attorney general in Montana? There’s not much time left. Filing closes at the end of business on Monday, 14 March. So far, no Democrat has stepped forward, or even expressed an interest in the position. That’s probably because (1) a lot of Democrats consider Tim Fox unbeatable, and (2) the Montana AFL-CIO and MEA-MFT, usually backers of Democrats, have endorsed Fox. The brutal truth: a lot of Democratic leaders want Fox re-elected, and they don’t want a Democrat getting in Fox’s way. This is neither reaching across the aisle nor high-mindedness transcending partisanship. It’s a craven abdication of a political party’s raison d’être: fielding candidates to seize control of the government.

Hillary Clinton does not have an insurmountable lead in delegates. Her campaign would have us believe otherwise, but she’s only leading 663–457 in delegates won through primaries and caucuses. Many of the delegates she’s won are from old Confederate states that no Democrat will carry in November. Her lead in superdelegates, the party insiders who can vote for whom they wish, is 458–22. If she begins to falter, many superdelegates may defect to Bernie Sanders. Winning the nomination requires at least 2,383 delegates.

Ted Cruz would be a more dangerous Republican nominee than Donald Trump. If Cruz wins the nomination, the GOP establishment will hold its nose and support him. His comments are not as outrageous or frightening, but his politics are every bit as conservative. He’s an authoritarian’s authoritarian, and a highly intelligent authoritarian. He has a better campaign organization than does Trump. And he’s a much more skilled debater, easily the equal of Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. His major flaw is not being likable, but that might not hurt him that much if Clinton is the Democratic nominee.