History was made several times on Tuesday.
A woman secured a major party's nomination for president of the United States. In other news, the opposing party's nominee-to-be was lambasted by the speaker of the U.S. House for making what that fellow Republican called "the textbook definition of a racist comment."
There's clearly a serious rift in the GOP. There seemed to be one in the Democratic Party, but that won't last. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., and his supporters seriously overplayed their hand.
Starting with the Republicans, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin denounced a man he still endorses for president. In Arkansas, we've heard that sort of thing before. No one was better at holding their own party's standard bearer at arm's length than Southern "blue dog" Democrats. Ryan suffered from three problems, though. First, he's not very good at this sort of thing. Second, nobody's arms are as long as his needed to be. Third, all the blue dogs are gone precisely because not even the skilled and practiced can pull off that trick anymore.
Donald Trump, the GOP nominee-to-be, is being sued over alleged fraud involving Trump University. Trump's platform includes building a border wall to stop illegal immigration from Mexico. He kept saying that the judge in the TU case was very biased against him and then mentions that the judge's immediate ancestors came from Mexico. Trump made such comments before, but wouldn't stop. Ryan and several other prominent Republicans publicly disavowed Trump's remarks.
I suspect Trump's ego's getting the better of him. If he were confident about this court case, he wouldn't be making excuses already. He's declaring a reason for losing that his supporters, and himself, will believe.
Meanwhile, Sanders supporters threw a fit when The Associated Press declared Hillary Clinton to be the presumptive nominee on Monday, before Tuesday's primaries in New Jersey, California and a few other states that are much smaller than those two. The fit was useless. All AP did was read the handwriting on the wall everyone could see.
The non-importance of AP's statement of the obvious bore out in the voting results. The count of early votes in California -- ballots cast before Monday's report -- came in with a 60-40 split for Clinton. Sander's final finish was better but was still a 12-percentage-point trouncing. None of this mattered because New Jersey voters shellacked Sanders, as every competent election observer knew they would.
Sanders should have signaled before Tuesday that he was dropping out. Then he could have left with some plausible argument intact that he's still a force to be dealt with. Clinton, after all, got visibly concerned about California and made the second-best speech of her life, ripping up Trump, in an appearance there. Then, when it was clear she was winning there, she made the best speech of her life Tuesday night.
New Jersey crushed Sanders. California humiliated him. Democrats just wanted this primary to be over.
The Democrats are a smaller party than they used to be. Mid-term elections in 2010 and 2014 -- the kind of election that the excited, young spur-of-the-moment voters Sanders brags about drawing don't show up for -- decimated them. The presidency is all the Democrats have left. Even the most devoted anti-Clinton liberal knows that.
Sanders' converts to his party were small compared to what Obama inspired in 2008. Sanders' votes came from having a big share of a small pie. As I said, the Democrats are a much smaller party now. Therefore, the diehard left makes up a much bigger fraction of what remains. That's what gave Sanders' wing its appearance of strength all along. Sanders' real power was fundraising. By the end, though, his campaign was selling false hope to small donors.
So the Democratic primary was an attempt by the far left to get control of what remained of the party away from the Clintons. That worked in 2008, because they supported a candidate who appealed to black voters more than even a Clinton did. They failed at that this year -- spectacularly. The left has learned -- or needs too -- that the real power in the party isn't the "establishment." The real power's the black vote.
Now a very few far-lefters want Clinton to lose. They believe Trump will throw the country into chaos, finally sparking the leftist wave they keep hoping for. I don't expect many liberals to follow them over that cliff.
Commentary on 06/11/2016