Last night, Donald Trump gave a prepared speech after Hillary and before Bernie. It was an awkward place for him to be, since the night was so clearly a Democratic family affair. But there he was, reading from a TelePrompter, his eyes widening from a confused squint only when he dropped in an ad lib and mugged for the camera. He stayed away from his recent Trump U-related contretemps; stayed away, in fact, from most of the controversial topics that won him the nomination. Stayed away, too, from policy, governance, ideas and diction.

Instead, he focused his inconsiderable logic on touching all the bases that comprise red meat for the rest of the Republican base, especially fear, fear and fear. He also threw in a few becks to the Bernie crowd, talking about general election polls and how he “beat a rigged system.”

So rally ’round his rigged-system-thrashing flag, boys.

This was a speech meant to reassure the GOP, and hold it together in the face of the existential cataclysm which is the mouth of their nominee. “You’ve given me the honor to lead the Republican party to victory this fall,” he said, “I understand the responsibility of carrying the mantle.”

No, he doesn’t, but he needed to say he did after the week he’s had.   He’s trying to hold a powder keg together by wrapping duct-tape around and around and around it: the fuse is already lit, so wrapping it tighter will just make for a bigger blow when it goes off.

As much as the snacilbupeR may or may not be re-assured, however, we – and the rest of Planet Earth – can all take comfort in the fact that Trump clearly doesn’t know what he’s doing. Recent reporting from several sources along several lines of inquiry show a campaign where there is no actual campaign going on: there’s no staff, there’s no data, there’s no policy team, there’s no one who wants to be VP, there’s no surrogate team, there’s no coordinated messaging, there’s no fund-raising, there’s no field, there’s clearly no speechwriter.

There’s just no there, there.

Rumors have also come out that Trump’s focus for winning in November include chasing down the northern tier post-Industrial states, as well as New York and California. New York! California! I know, right? Surely not!

I’ve been ev’rywhere much more than THIS guy

Not so fast, there. Here’s what he said last night: “I’ve traveled to many of our states and seen the suffering in people’s eyes. I’ve visited communities in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana, and Ohio…”

Pennsylvania and Ohio are two swing states that make sense for Republicans to chase, as they have been. Indiana is something he may need to shore up. These – along with states like, say, Florida – are standard shout-outs in a general election campaign speech like this. But this is the first inkling we see that Trump is unable to let go of his home state, as well as its satellites. It’s almost as if he’s trying to run a Rockefeller map in a Goldwater election.

It’s almost as if he wants to lose. If so, he chose the right Party for it.

Eight years ago, my Momma was 82 years old.  She confessed to me that she felt a little guilty about voting for Barack Obama in the primary.   Her momma didn’t even have the right to vote until she was grown up.

“I wanted to see a woman in the White House before I die,” she wistfully told me.

“Well, Momma, that means you just gotta live 8 more years,” I laughed.

She did and at 90 years old, she voted for Hillary in the primary.  Although she votes by mail now, I am going to take her to vote in person this November.  It’s important.

Here’s Momma and her only little baby girl.  We are going to go vote together.

John Oliver, my favorite investigative comic, bought something valuable.

Some 9,000 people stuck with delinquent medical bills had their debts forgiven courtesy of HBO host John Oliver.

Oliver, on his “Last Week Tonight” program Sunday, took the action to illustrate a story about the practices of companies that purchase the records of debtors and attempt to collect on them. The show set up its own company to acquire $15 million worth of debt owed to hospitals in Texas, paying $60,000.

This is Texas, where our Governor is refusing Medicaid funds to help sick people who are working class but without health insurance.  Medicaid ain’t welfare. Our Governor doesn’t want the federal money because Barack Obama touched it, so now it has cooties all over it.

John Oliver, who is in this country on a green card and could be Mexican as far as Greg Abbott knows, helped Texans when Abbott and the Republican Legislature wouldn’t.

Now how a business can pay $60,000 for $15 million in potential profit is a whole ‘nother story.

Thank you, John Oliver.  Please come to Texas and run for Governor.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Ya know, there are some good folks in Texas. Real good folks. Filemon Vela is one of them.

Congressman Vela represents South Texas and does a dandy job of it.  He also slays bigots.

Vela told Donald Trump what he could do with his wall.

I would like to end this letter in a more diplomatic fashion, but I think that you, of all people, understand why I cannot. I will not presume to speak on behalf of every American of Mexican descent, for every undocumented worker born in Mexico who is contributing to our country every day or, for that matter, every decent citizen in Mexico. But, I am sure that many of these individuals would agree with me when I say: ‘Mr. Trump, you’re a racist and you can take your border wall and shove it up your ass.’

You can email Congressman Vela at velaforcongress@gmail.com

He’s a genuine Texas hero.

My paying job.

Please leave comments there, too.  It makes the bosses think somebody has read the damn thing.

Thanks!

After the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico primaries over the weekend, analysts started applying the islands’ delegate allocation rules to Hillary’s strong showing  and said hey! who needs California?  Bring me my datebook!

They then started calling superdelegates, several of whom for whatever reasons have decided to come down off the fence.  They lined up  in sufficient numbers that – lo and behold – shortly before 9 PM on June 6, 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton was named the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States.

As the news organizations dialed for delegates, they also measured the appetite these folks had for switching to Bernie.  This is an ongoing process, not something that was cobbled together yesterday, and the propensity to flip is an important metric to the back room pros.  The last time they got bitten by a call – Florida, 2000 – left them twice shy to make calls that could later be reversed.

Presumptively, they feel pretty solid about this call.

This turns my semi-regular “what’s-at-stake” pre-primary column into something completely different.  Nothing that happens tonight is going to prompt superdelegates to go against the pledged delegate counts, the popular vote and the first woman nominee from a major party in order to promote Bernie Sanders to the nomination.   We’ve spoken in the past about pledged delegates – there is nothing that is going to happen tonight to them other than that Hillary will expand her lead and finally lock down the majority of those folks, as well.

The naming of a presumptive nominee in this manner is rather anti-climactic, and happened contrary to the hopes of both campaigns.  Hillary plans to make her dispositive closing statement with wins in both NJ and CA.  Bernie is planning to try to win CA and continue with this feeble charade that somehow, some way, somewhere, people will come to their senses and nominate him instead.

The weak-tea, easily debunked narrative of electability based on polls is a little bit of artful misdirection.  What some on Team Bernie are really playing for is the issue he cavalierly tossed away in an early debate: e-mails.  As much as Bernie may say that Americans don’t give a damn about her e-mails (and, they don’t!), supporters are making the case to continue to obstruct the Democrats’ pivot to Trump on the off chance that some DOJ deus ex machina is going to descend from on high and snatch him up to the pinnacle of political power.

When it’s argued that superdelegates can change their mind in July, that’s the only thing that could make them do so.  Any other explanation is either woefully hopeful, tragically misconceived, or craftily disingenuous.

On Hillary’s part, the campaign was hoping to celebrate a traditional election night victory giving her the nomination.  When she took the stage after the news had broken, she acknowledged it indirectly by saying they were “on the brink,” although the brink was already in the rear view.  They have a big winning rally planned in Brooklyn HQ tonight, and the bean counters stole a little of her thunder.  New Jersey would have accomplished the same thing, and the celebration still would have started before California’s results were in.  But this is awkward for all.

It’s hard to say what effect this would have on tonight.  I was expecting Hillary to receive a bump from her speech last week that polls have not yet had a chance to measure.  It’s hard to say how such a mealy-mouthed “game over” will affect turnout:  Bernie supporters could be energized to more action, or demoralized to stay home.  Hillary voters could be celebrating already, or determined to put a big bow on the nom for her.  I suspect her superior ground game will help – but you can’t drag millions of voters to the polls one by one.

While a California loss would put a mild hitch in her giddy-up, PR-wise, it’s not going to resonate downstream.  “She lost California… to Bernie!” is going to be a useless general election taunt from Trump who, incidentally, is also praying that the same deus will hop into his indictment machina and save him, too.

In the meantime, for today, let’s quietly enjoy the historic moment amidst the shards of the highest, hardest glass ceiling in the world.  For tonight, let’s Democratic Party!

The next President of the United States… credit:NY Mag