Progressivism's Problematic Path To The Presidency

Am I the only person who got caught off guard with today's primaries? When did Super Tuesday turn into saucy Saturday in primary politics?  Who expected to be talking politics this weekend, and who knew that it would be so significant to the future of the race?

The world of progressive politics has become so pervasive, that the GOP candidates have to spend as much time as they can bashing Obama just to keep from sounding just like Hillary and Bernie all of the time, while Hillary has resorted to GOP tactics just to deal with the pain of the Bern.

Sure, that joke about all the free stuff the Socialist Sanders will give away when he's president sounds like a funny line for sake of a chuckle, but it doesn't really offer alternatives to the current scenario in which incomes have plummeted and only forced hands will loosen enough to change that fact.  What force ends up looking like in the end is a matter of significant debate among both sides of establishment resistance.

Has GOP voters given in to the Trump craze
even though the GOP establishment has not?

What is not debated is the necessity of more income for average Americans.  Trump might be winning over massive support being the former Democrat that is willing to talk like a tough republican for the sake of a GOP win, but if you ask him what motivates him, he says he loves his work, meaning the deal making and the showmanship, not the politics.  When pressed, he still refuses to own that politician label while continuing to beg us all for a political vote of confidence.

Polls, and tonight's primary results (SC) strongly tilt toward Trump- until you place him head to head with either of the remaining candidates from the opposing side.  In that polling, Trump gets trolloped.  Yet, the tendency for either potential trolloper to prematurely lick their chops needs to be curtailed until they finish their own infighting.

In recent days, Bernie Sanders has correctly accused Clinton and her husband of damaging the black community as it relates to excessive incarcerations and those restrictive welfare policies (welfare to work) and programs that forced single black moms out of the house leaving black children without supervision.  The impact on many poor black single parent households was young men and women captured by the influence of gangs or drugs while  hard working black mothers struggled to keep food stamp support (which now requires both a job and poverty to maintain) to feed her remaining latchkey children that gangs haven't yet taken.

Like Jeb Bush and 9-11, can Hillary
embrace Bill's good without touching the bad?

If Bill and Hillary can admit that the policies were wrong, then they must admit that it was the impact their policies had on real lives that made them wrong, regardless of their good intentions or other good things they've accomplished for poor people in general.

Conversely, Senator Sanders has been accused of offering way too much in the way of free public services without a realistic vision of how to get it passed through congress or paid through fiscal provisions.  This is also an accurate claim against Sanders and his ideas, though ObamaCare, Social Security, the military, public schools or any needed socialized program demands proper funding adjustments to realize optimal efficiency, a word that is typically not associated with our government.

Hence the problem.

That same inefficient government likely holds the last best hope for price controls within our healthcare industry, controls that exist in nearly every country expect America. Current growth trends relative to medical costs show healthcare increasing at a much lower rate than it did prior to ObamaCare's beginning, but insurance companies are fighting to keep you from finding out.  For Sanders to speak to the necessity of changes in areas like medical costs or college debt strapping our children, doesn't immediately make him responsible for the details that would go with implementation of these obvious needs.

Hillary tried her hand at healthcare before Obama got it done and knows that details always need to be ironed out. Bernie also understands that the Clinton's expected their policies to ruin black families about as much as Bush expected to ignite ISIS with his invasion of Iraq.  For now, what they both know of each other and what they are saying lately have grown worlds apart.

For now, the gloves are not totally off, but Hillary and Bernie have switched to those smaller MMA version of gloves so that the sting is felt a little more.  Clinton has recognized the threat of Sanders despite his Democratic Socialist label, and Sanders has discovered a real viability for his message in spite of his Democratic Socialist label.

What shall proceed is not helpful to either candidate or to this coronation for progressivism.   Clinton is not going to be better off for having to explain how Bill screwed up black people or for having to articulate an impossible agenda for dealing with it when black people who support Sanders inevitably pose the question to her.  Sanders, on the other hand, is also not better served for having to do the very thing that Donald Trump scoffs at- share policy details.

If Sanders has to explain the single payer system too much, it won't get him elected and we will be stuck with huge deductibles, since huge deductibles are the last best place for the medical insurance industry to stick it to us and cover their shareholder commitments. Medical industry profits aren't as huge as most people think, and are mostly derived from the assured  long term presence of sick people and the low risk, high profit investment that assured sick people create.  Until we become truly healthy in our bodies and in our funding of healthy bodies- and a viable competitive alternative comes along to disconnect true healthiness from the sick industry that bears its name- the health industry has no real incentive to change.

Again, Hillary knows this.  What she doesn't know is how to stop Bernie Sanders without establishment support, and so she is resorting to the very things that the GOP will do to Bernie if in fact he is able to actually beat her and be the party nominee.

Is Ted Cruz developing a ceiling on his support that
Trump and Marco Rubio are likely to split if he falters?

Politics 101:  Never give your opponents the knife they're seeking to slay you with.

Of course, if Trump keeps tagging republicans with primary losses and the terrorism of 9-11 (which no other GOP candidate ever admits), the GOP might  soon hand Trump over to Hillary as the knife that she'll use to slash republican throats and make them bleed out all together. Jeb Bush's departure from the race might help the GOP secure a nominee, but the reasonable one's are dropping like flies.

Whatever they try to do to actually stop Trump promises to be an even better show than what we've seen thus far. Either way you project it, the future of this year in politics will be a whole lot of blood shedding, political entertainment as the two party establishment machines fight to kill progressivism while adopting it at the same time.

This week in politics is revealing that the last man or woman standing will be battered and bruised in the eyes of the general electorate because they will have already been weakened and drained of significant life blood from taking too many stiff jabs and knife stabs during the 2016 primary season.

And then the bare knuckle and grenades begin. Today, we took one significant step towards all that.