"Who do you think Hillary Clinton would most want to run against — Trump, Rubio, Cruz, or Kasich?"

That's an extremely difficult question. It should be easy, because you only need to pick one and you've got 4 choices, but each is tough for Clinton in his own way and each presents some opportunities for attack. I feel I need to start at the opposite end: Who would she least like to run against? Even that way, it's difficult.

The link goes to my son John's Facebook page, where some people (not John) are saying Hillary would prefer to go against Trump. I don't see how that can possibly be right. I think Hillary is terrified of having Trump attacking her in his strange, unpredictable way. How can she prepare? How can she respond? These won't be polite attacks to be fended off with her trademark chuckles and guffaws and claims that she was already previously vetted. It will be wild, and tremendous energy, strength, and adaptability will be needed for the fight. And part of the attack will be that she lacks the energy, strength, and adaptability to be President, so her difficulty fighting him will fuel more attacks.

I'm going to guess Hillary would prefer that nice Mr. Kasich.

"They don’t really want all students to feel welcome. They want certain students to feel welcome..."

"... and the rest to feel like they’re constantly walking on eggshells," writes Glenn Reynolds, linking to my post yesterday about the UW–Whitewater students who got called "racist" for putting up a Snapchat photo of themselves in the middle of getting a beauty treatment that involved the application of dark goo to their face.

And my son John also posted about the story, and I left a comment over there. I wrote:

Why isn't there an outcry of racism against whoever looked at this picture and thought this is a depiction of black people? You have to have a pattern in your head to do that particular pattern recognition. If these students had had that pattern in their head, they wouldn't have put the picture up (I hope). So who's harboring the racist stereotype? I'm just saying one could flip this very easily and those who called the students out are somehow feeling invulnerable to the very kind of treatment they are dishing out.

I told you about the cascade.

Just back from a dinner in West Hollywood: shocked the majority of the table was voting for Trump but they would never admit it publicly.

— Bret Easton Ellis (@BretEastonEllis) February 21, 2016

What I posted a month ago: "The coming cascade of smart, educated people embracing Trump."

ADDED: Here's something I've been meaning to say about Trump: If a Democratic candidate were drawing in the sector of the American public that is going for Trump, they would be bragging about their appeal to the working class, the salt of the earth. 

Right brain/left brain.

I'd seen that a lot of people were taking this test and I finally gave in and took it. It was much more interesting than I thought it would be, and I think it turns out that I'm the kind of person who'd take a test like this based on whether I'd thought I'd find it intrinsically rewarding, which it was.

Think about the future in terms of days, even when the time frame is years.

So if, for example, there's something you want to achieve in 5 years, multiply it by 365, and think of it as 1825 days.

This seems intuitively right to me, as I read about a study described here: "Framing Time in Days, Not Years, Could Spur Action Toward Goals."

I stumbled across that researching the expression, which I wanted to claim as my own: We live in days. Meade insisted that it was a famous line in a poem. I found the poem. The poem "Days," by Philip Larkin reads, in pertinent part:

What are days for?
Days are where we live....
Where can we live but days?

Here's Philip Larkin, reading the entire poem, which, I'd like to point out, does not contain the word sequence "We live in days." The poem has a punchline, the answer to the question "Where can we live but days?"

In light of the answer to the question, you might think about how much longer you picture yourself living. Well, what did you think? Did you put it in years? Multiply by 365! Don't say, for example, 25 years. Say 9,125 days (or 9,131 days, to add the leap days). See the enhanced urgency? Now, get out there and achieve some goals... or plan to live in the day 9,131 times...

Will the Sunday shows be watchable today?

I DVR them all — or 5 of them, anyway — and usually sit down with a plan to — more or less — watch them all. But this morning, I'm dreading the drawn out post-mortem on Jeb Bush and the predictable predictions of Hillary and Trump's path to the nomination and fussing over whether there's any way Rubio can make it and how whether it's connected to anything that really could happen it's still so meaningful that Bernie's doing so well.

UPDATE 1: Chuck Todd ended "Meet the Press" with the exclamation that all primaries should happen on Saturdays. He loved the close proximity of the Sunday show to the primary. But the word I jotted in my notes to search for in the transcript was "jail." It was a snippet of Hillary Clinton's victory speech last night: "Wall Street can never be allowed to threaten main street again. No bank can be too big to fail, no executive too powerful to jail." I wondered: So, then, is no politician too powerful to jail? I'm thinking about her legal troubles. On the show, the snippet was put before Bernie Sanders.

TODD: It's pretty clear she has ratcheted up her rhetoric on Wall Street because of your candidacy. Do you see that as a victory of sorts? That you've got her trying to parrot your message?

Bernie joked about "copyright issues," and Meade and I got to talking about how Bernie Sanders doesn't even want to win. He just needs to inject his ideas into her head.

UPDATE 2: The word I jotted down for "Face the Nation" was "scary." Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief for USA Today, said they'd done a poll asking for people's "dominant reaction" to various candidates:

And the dominant reaction of Americans to Hillary Clinton's nomination was, "scary," and... the dominant reaction to Donald Trump's nomination was "scary." So just imagine a general election....

Meade and I got to talking about how America likes scary shows — horror movies and such. We get want we want.

UPDATE 3: The first show I watched was "Fox News Sunday," so I wrote down the most things here. A lot of the same people were on all the shows and I got a little tired of them saying the same things. I thought it was interesting how — even as the questions changed — I kept getting the same talking points. Anyway, Donald Trump was on first, and Chris Wallace asked him if, as he becomes the frontrunner, he needs to "tone it down" and "act more presidential." Trump began with a softer tone: "Well, probably I do." But then he added a boast with what we here at Meadhouse experienced as a hilarious qualification. He said: "I mean, I can act as presidential as anybody that's ever been president other than the great Abraham Lincoln.  I thought he was hard to beat."

And then there was this excellent exchange:

WALLACE:  To use a business term, are you involved in a hostile takeover of the Republican Party? 

TRUMP:  No.  I’m not at all.  I get along with the Republicans.  There's nothing hostile about it.  I was a Republican establishment figure.   And then the day I decided to run, I became an outsider -- and more so than I even thought.  People that were totally establishment that loved me, you know, I was a big contributor.  I gave $350,000 just before to the Republican Governors Association.  That was a major --

WALLACE:  But what's your view of the GOP establishment now, sir? 

TRUMP:  I think it's a mess.  I think it's a mess.  I think they'd better get their act together because they're going to keep losing elections.  With the kind of thinking that we have, with the Karl Roves and Steven Hayes and these characters that can't get themselves arrested, if you want to keep people like that, if you want to keep listening to people like that, you're never going to win.  You're never going win.  They're from a different age.  They're from a different world. 

That was great. Later, there was a panel, and Karl Rove was on it. Chris Wallace opened the discussion with: "Karl, I just want to make sure you know that Donald Trump sends his best this morning." Now, that's funny. Rove, for the record, responded: "I give him my best back."

Marco Rubio was also on the show. He was trying (I think) to give us an idea of how, if he gets the nomination, the image of diversity might work in the general election. He called attention to the picture on the stage last night, with him alongside Nikki Haley and Tim Scott:

I was endorsed by the daughter of Indian-American immigrants who’s the governor of South Carolina, along standing, alongside an African-American Republican U.S. senator, both of whom were there to support a Cuban-American U.S. senator.  It's pretty amazing that the Republican Party is indeed the party of diversity.  It is the only party where you have so many people, so many different backgrounds on a national stage.  I’m very proud of that.  We're going to continue to showcase it.  That's who we are. 

UPDATE 4: I didn't get to my recording of "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," so there's just one more, "State of the Nation" with Jake Tapper. First, I noticed this silent sideswipe at John Kasich. Tapper asked Trump if, after the South Carolina win, he's "unstoppable." Trump went with the softer, conciliatory, presidential tone (which I'm reading as meaning that he does think he won't be stopped):

TRUMP: Well, certainly, you can be stopped. I mean, I'm dealing with very talented people. They're politicians. They're senators. And I guess -- do we have any governors left? I don't know. Let's see. I don't think so. But we have a lot of talented people. And we will see what happens. But, certainly, nobody is unstoppable. 

So... he just couldn't even think of Governor Kasich!

Trump used the "outsider" theme we also saw in the "Fox News" interview. (I put it in boldface, above.) Tapper had asked him if he thinks some Republicans still don't take him seriously. His answer:

TRUMP: Well, I'm an outsider, and -- which I'm proud to be. But don't forget, I was a member of the establishment totally. I was a big campaign contributor. I gave lots of money to everybody. I mean, I would give money to everybody. And I was a very big donor to the Republicans. I used to be a donor to everybody, frankly, because, as a businessman, that was a good thing to do. But, yes, the day I decided to run, which was June 16, I became an outsider. And all of the establishment sort of said, well, wait a minute, what happened to him? He's not supposed to be doing that. That's not in the cards. And I don't want money. I'm self-funding my campaign, so I don't need donor money and lobbyist money and special interest money. And that bothers them, because the special interests want to control their candidates, and I can't be controlled. 

I also liked the interview with Bernie Sanders, when Tapper asked him about something his brother, Larry Sanders, said: that Bill Clinton was a "dreadful president, in general, for poor people." Sanders distanced himself:

Look, I read that interview. My brother lives in England. He is not part of our campaign. I disagree with what he said. He speaks for himself, not for me or my campaign.

He sounded — as he usually does — angry, so Tapper seemed to feel the call to help him out with a prompt: "Fair enough. I disagree with my brother on a lot of things, too, although I love him dearly as I'm sure you do yours." Sanders got the clue and said: "Me, too. I love my brother." Then he started another sentence with "He's" and then seemed to think better of it and just said "yes" and stopped. We were laughing at Meadhouse.

Quick, before it's too late — though it's already too late — everybody endorse Rubio.

Here comes Mitt Romney.

"It would not make much sense to say that one may not kill oneself by walking into the sea, but may sit on the beach until submerged by the incoming tide..."

"... or that one may not intentionally lock oneself into a cold storage locker, but may refrain from coming indoors when the temperature drops below freezing."

Wrote Justice Scalia, concurring in the 1990 case Cruzan by Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health. The case is about whether the Due Process Clause protects a liberty interest in assisted suicide, and that sentence comes as he rejects a distinction between action and inaction.

I'm reading the opinion this morning not because I want to see what Scalia had to say about death but because it contains what I have found to be his most essential sentence: "Our salvation is the Equal Protection Clause, which requires the democratic majority to accept for themselves and their loved ones what they impose on you and me."

To raise up a constitutional right here, we would have to create out of nothing (for it exists neither in text nor tradition) some constitutional principle whereby, although the State may insist that an individual come in out of the cold and eat food, it may not insist that he take medicine; and although it may pump his stomach empty of poison he has ingested, it may not fill his stomach with food he has failed to ingest. Are there, then, no reasonable and humane limits that ought not to be exceeded in requiring an individual to preserve his own life? There obviously are, but they are not set forth in the Due Process Clause. What assures us that those limits will not be exceeded is the same constitutional guarantee that is the source of most of our protection -- what protects us, for example, from being assessed a tax of 100% of our income above the subsistence level, from being forbidden to drive cars, or from being required to send our children to school for 10 hours a day, none of which horribles is categorically prohibited by the Constitution. Our salvation is the Equal Protection Clause, which requires the democratic majority to accept for themselves and their loved ones what they impose on you and me. This Court need not, and has no authority to, inject itself into every field of human activity where irrationality and oppression may theoretically occur, and if it tries to do so, it will destroy itself.

2 old men yelling at us — it's the pop style of our time.

Over at Facebook, my son John Althouse Cohen writes:

I remember when I first saw a minute of one of Jeb Bush's speeches last year, before any of the debates, I instantly sensed that he didn't have what it takes. He stumbled over practically every sentence as if he were reading the text for the first time. I instinctively turned off the speech — it isn't fun to watch someone who seems uncomfortable and forced.

There's a reason Obama, as a candidate in 2008, got so much acclaim for his soaring speeches. No matter what you think of Obama, you can't deny the political reality that his oratorical talents mattered.

I comment:

I remember blogging the '04 convention, complaining about all the speakers, and then, when it was Obama, saying something like: Now, this is a guy I can listen to. It's funny that it's so hard to find anyone in politics that we enjoy listening to. Right now, oddly, people are enjoying listening to Trump and Sanders... old men yelling at us. It's not soaring oratory, but it's all we've got. I'm thinking we, the culture, has some responsibility for this. It's the pop style of the time.

Here's the old post of mine, from July 27, 2004:

Now here is a speaker I can stand to listen to. He's modulating his voice and he seems to have the speech memorized, so he doesn't have that awful teleprompter stare. He places some emphasis on personal responsibility.... Obama does a great job delivering the speech, even though the words of the speech are quite banal. There are many references to hope. The speech is blessedly short.

A new pop style was emerging, the one that's been superseded by angry-old-guy-yelling. I click back to see who spoke before Obama at the DNC in '04. What was the dying-out old style then?

Daschle and Mosely Braun... Mosely Braun stressed out her voice and hurt my poor ears. Can't they turn up the sound levels and coach the speakers to speak to the people watching at home in their living rooms? This speaking to the huge auditorium is quite likely to get Kerry in trouble later this week, as his manner of speaking is insufferable when he's projecting into a large room. And we all know that speaking (and screaming) to a large, noisy crowd was fatal to Dean's candidacy....

And 12 years later we seem to have a taste once again for looking on as the loud voice stirs the crowd. It's nothing you want in your living room in person, but you like the thrill, vicariously, from a distance... like a teenager lying on the carpet, listening to heavy metal through headphones.

Trump wins.

But what I've got my eye on is Rubio's potential to come in second.

Bush, Kasich, and Carson should see the light and endorse Rubio. It's already too late, but come on! It's the only decent hope of stopping Trump.

UPDATE: Bush, appropriately, drops out.

UPDATE 2: He doesn't sound like he means what he's reading. When he says he's suspending his campaign there's a bit of a no from the crowd, but it's... I've got to say... Low energy.

UPDATE 3: "It's tough, it's nasty, it's mean, it's beautiful" -- running for President, according to Trump.

UPDATE4: Rubio says it's now, practically speaking, a 3-man race, and it's his campaign that has the best hope of bringing people together.

"With the naked eye, you see the insect as brown bug. But when you enlarge it..."

"... you really see the wonderful colors that come from the process."

Insects. Just insects. No politics. No insect politics.



Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not?

"Buoyed by the support of enthusiastic workers in the city’s big casinos, Hillary Clinton defeated Senator Bernie Sanders in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday..."

"... thwarting his momentum and proving to an anxious Democratic Party that she maintains strong support among minority voters that she can carry to a general election," the NYT reports.

At a caucus at the famed Caesar’s Palace, blackjack dealers, pit bosses, cooks and housekeepers excitedly declared their support for the former secretary of state. “She’ll change immigration. She’ll change the economy. She’ll change todo!” said Dora Gonzalez, 54, a casino porter at the Bellagio, using the Spanish word for everything.

“And she’s a mujer!” added her friend Elba Pinera, 51, and originally from Honduras, using the Spanish word for woman....

And Mrs. Clinton, who is typically a reserved presence on the trail, seemed to embrace the quirkiness of campaigning in Las Vegas... even receiving the endorsement of 500 sex workers, mostly from Carson City brothels, who formed the “Hookers 4 Hillary” group.

A mujer's gotta do what a mujer's gotta do.

"It's 100 years since Annette Kellerman became the first person to appear nude in a Hollywood film."

BBC reports.

"From the far-away sphere of the Unknown we are immediately borne, by this film, to a land of enchantment," [The Green Room theatrical magazine said]. "Something of the wonder of the Arabian Nights, of the glory of the East, of our own war, of fairyland, of womanly power and eternal beauty, is manifested to us by this masterpiece of cinematography."...

"She represented the fit, active and spectacular female body, and urged other women to throw away their corsets and become fit and healthy," says Angela Woollacott, professor of history at Australian National University. "She saw herself as something of a guru for women's fitness, but others also saw her as an icon of feminine modernity," she adds.

Threat/metaphor?

"Attempt to place Review-Journal obituary for Hillary Clinton prompts report to Secret Service."

Hillary Clinton is achingly honest when asked if she's always told the truth.

I don't know why everyone's treating her so roughly, like this WaPo item titled "Hillary Clinton’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad answer on whether she’s ever lied." Here's the exchange:

PELLEY: You know, in ’76, Jimmy Carter famously said, “I will not lie to you.”

CLINTON: Well, I have to tell you I have tried in every way I know how literally from my years as a young lawyer all the way through my time as secretary of state to level with the American people.

PELLEY: You talk about leveling with the American people. Have you always told the truth?

CLINTON: I’ve always tried to. Always. Always.

PELLEY: Some people are gonna call that wiggle room that you just gave yourself.

CLINTON: Well, no, I’ve always tried —

PELLEY: I mean, Jimmy Carter said, “I will never lie to you.”

CLINTON: Well, but, you know, you’re asking me to say, “Have I ever?” I don’t believe I ever have. I don’t believe I ever have. I don’t believe I ever will. I’m gonna do the best I can to level with the American people.

"I will never lie to you" is always a lie, isn't it? A President must lie some of the time. A Secretary of State must lie. A compulsive truth-teller would be a disaster. But she can't say that. She uses the word "leveling" in place of "truth-telling," and she shifts to the concept of trying.

In the course of her career, she's had to try to do a lot of things. Telling the truth doesn't always come first. In fact, we need a capable liar who has good judgment about when to lie. Pelley was trying to box her in. If she says "I've never lied," we'll be able to point to that as a lie, because we know she's lied about at least a few things. Pelley's question is oversimplified, but it worked for him. He got a great soundbite. She stumbled horribly, but wasn't that evidence of some honesty?

"Why Not Question Trump’s Faith?"/Why not question everything everyone asserts about religion?

The first question is asked by Kevin D. Williamson at The National Review. The second question is mine and is intended not so much as a question as an answer to Williamson's question.

Williamson says:

This is, after all, a man who avoided the draft with the help of imaginary bone spurs who nonetheless felt confident in mocking John McCain’s endurance of torture in a Vietnamese prison camp. Never mind Trump’s adultery and the pride he takes in it, never mind his desire for a hippie-style “open marriage,” never mind the bearing of false witness, the coveting, etc. Trump explicitly rejects the fundamentals of Christianity, i.e. man’s fallen state and his need for reconciliation with God. When asked about that, Trump made it clear that he doesn’t believe he needs to be forgiven for anything, that he just needs to — in his words — “drink my little wine and have my little cracker.” 

Trump explicitly rejects the fundamentals of Christianity? Do we really know that? And shouldn't we then have to question what are the fundamentals of Christianity? Is it "man's fallen state"? Isn't it love one another? Want to have a big public debate about it? Would Jesus forgive you for not forgiving a political candidate who won't say he needs forgiveness? Forgive me if I laugh.


"Depiction of the sin of Adam and Eve" by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Paul Rubens.

So what do I really think? How much religion should be part of the political debate? Speaking of fundamentals, I can't get to the bottom of that. There's already so much religion and so little religion. There's no getting to nothing, and yet going all in is ridiculous. I'm inclined to think we should judge each candidate in proportion to how much he or she relies on religion. If someone forefronts sanctimony, we should examine whether it's a lie. But if a candidate takes a minimal position — claiming a faith but grounding himself in morality that can exist apart from religion (which is what Trump does) — there's nothing to delve into. If it's a lie, it's an insignificant social lie, like saying you love your wife when your feelings have in fact gone cold.

There are no visible atheists or even agnostics at the presidential level of American politics. Do you want to start outing them? Maybe Bernie Sanders. He might be an atheist. What do you think? Want to try to smoke him out? He said:

“I am not actively involved with organized religion... I think everyone believes in God in their own ways... To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.”

To my ear, that sounds like an effort to say: Even atheists believe in God... in our own way. A mystical attitude toward all of humanity counts as belief in God. I found that quote in this article by Frances Stead Sellers and John Wagner in The Washington Post. They say:

Sanders often presents his support for curbing Wall Street banks and ending economic inequality in values-laden terms. He recently described it as “immoral and wrong” that the highest earners in the country own the vast majority of the nation’s wealth....

Their Jewish education was “unsophisticated,” [his brother] Larry Sanders said, grounded in a simple moral code of right and wrong. “He could read a prayer in Hebrew,” Larry Sanders said, “but not with a great deal of understanding.”... “He is quite substantially not religious.”

Do you feel a need to push any further? Are questions in order? Why? You shouldn't be saying: Because I oppose him politically and I think there are American voters who will vote against a candidate because his religion isn't good enough.