RIP: John Pine, Sanders' campaign & Wisconsin Electoral Legitimacy

Stephen Colbert, who had a great interview with Conan last night in part bonding over their scientist fathers, recently wished this singer well as he was reportedly put on a ventilator.  Unfortunately, he has died.  I was not familiar with his work, but can see why he received so much respect.

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(The young photographer had a moment of fame.) 

The main blame for the election f-up in Wisconsin yesterday ultimately is in the hands of the Wisconsin legislature, who had a chance to work with the governor to address the situation, particularly by agreeing to postpone. The U.S. Supreme Court and probably to a lesser extent the state supreme court worsened the situation, but they were dealing with an imperfect means to address the problem that the legislature created and aggravated.  This should be remembered in November and as more is done on the federal level to help address and prepare for the problems that in some fashion will arise  in the November elections. This was bad.  A major FU to democracy and basic decency.

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Sanders suspended his campaign today, perhaps pushed by talk that Biden is vetting vice presidents and the clusterfuck of Wisconsin.  Listened to his statement, followed by a nice statement from Biden. 

He spent most of the time promoting his message and saying it has had success in the polls among younger voters. Then, he dealt with the reality of him not having a realistic chance of winning & suspending his campaign.  He did note he will stay on the ballot (and the rules as I understand it require that if he already registered though someone told me Warren sued to remove her name in one state) and that collecting delegates is important to have a voice.

This last part rubbed me the wrong way since it encourages bad mouthing of Biden and risky trips to the polls by some of his supporters.  Anyway, thanks Sen. Sanders and hope you and your supporters will, as you say, deal with the threat of Trump and help Biden and other Democrats win in November.  We need to focus on Biden winning and stop whining about how we are upset he is the nominee (I get it) and his problems.  OTOH, I do kinda still want to vote for Warren in June.  Give me that. 

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A small reminder of just what is at stake is the new press secretary (though not sure what they do now -- the last one had not a single press conference; guess was mostly crafting troll press releases) and baseball wife (Sean Gilmartin used to be a Mets AAAA reliever).  A taste from that article:

For instance, in a video of Ms. McEnany on the Fox Business show “Trish Regan Primetime” from Feb. 25, circulated by Andrew Kaczynski of CNN, the new press secretary said, “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism come here, and isn’t that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama?”

Since Ms. McEnany made that statement, about 400,000 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus.

She has at times trafficked in the type of “othering” of President Barack Obama that Mr. Trump once did by promoting a lie that the first black president, whose father was Kenyan, was not born in the United States. “How I Met Your Brother — Never mind, forgot he’s still in that hut in Kenya. #ObamaTVShows,” Ms. McEnany tweeted in 2012.

The old "press" secretary will now work with Melania Trump.