Urgent Sports Post

Test of Champions
I must get something in before the kickoff of the biggest football game of the year:  the Champions League final game, between Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid, from Milan (Fox, 2:30 p.m. Eastern).

Spain's La Liga clearly has the best club competition in the world, with its teams dominating the European club championships for the last 2-3 years.  Beyond that, of course, Spain has won the last two European Championships and the World Cup before the last.

Real Madrid is an all-star team of some of the highest-paid players, and their fans and owners expect the best results, so this game is a must-win for the current squad and its management, as they have no other trophies this year (Barcelona won the league title and the domestic elimination cup championship).  Atletico has been right there in all of the competition, but the expectations of their long-suffering fans, who are at least as passionate as Real's, are more realistic.  In that sense, Atletico has already accomplished a great feat, eliminating the two teams I would have expected to meet in this Champions Cup final, Barcelona and Bayern Munich.  To provide an analogy to American sports, Real is the Yankees, Atletico the Mets.

This year's league contest went down to the final game before Barcelona won narrowly over Atletico and Real.  Barcelona had an unusual run of bad play for a few weeks this spring, which caused their lead in La Liga to shrink to the verge, and Atletico caught them during this period to eliminate them from the Champions League tournament.  Atletico then topped it of with a narrow victory over Bayern--which has the core of the world champion German team, plus others.

The match has galvanized Spain in a way that their long-lasting, unresolved political stalemate cannot.  In a possible foreshadowing of a problem the US could face in a few years, the two parties which controlled national politics since the end of the postwar Franco dictatorship have rotted away from the inside and are being steadily replaced by new ones:  Ciudadanos ("Citizens") has posed a good-government, free-market alternative to the corrupt, patronage-based "Christian" Popular Party which inherited the remnants of Franco's Falange party, and Podemos ("We Can") has been eating away the support of the Socialist party, which once posed a lively democratic alternative but has failed to be a successful governing party.  Podemos stands for rejection of austerity and has mobilized the disaffected, particularly the youth.

The resulting four-party division of support, complicated by the possibility of secessionist referendum for Catalonia, seems to be impossible to resolve with normal parliamentary methods, because none of the four parties trusts any of the others enough to govern with them (and particularly their party leaders do not).  Last December's general election created the mess, and June's new election seems unlikely to make any change to the situation.   Some kind of non-partisan technocratic solution seems the only likely outcome. to create a government of some kind.  In the meantime, it's good that the Battle of Madrid will be resolved in a neutral location--I'm thinking Milano will be relatively unscathed, but the home city may have some dangerous moments.

I hesitate to predict the outcome of the final--a single game is very unpredictable on its dynamics.  One likely result will be that one of the teams will show itself up to the occasion and the other will show nerves early, which could be disastrous (think of the Spain-Brazil World Cup final, which got out of hand early); another would be scoreless stalemate with both teams trying to avoid losing.  I'm hoping for a third, more exciting result:  a freewheeling, open contest that remains close but is decided in regulation time.  OK, I'll go with that, Real Madrid, 3-2.

Not to Exaggerate, But..
The Preakness Stakes last week was probably the best horse race I've ever seen in that classic, which , when there are any proven great horses competing, is usually the predictable intermission between the wild-and-woolly Kentucky Derby and the often-dramatic  test presented by the longer race in the Belmont Stakes. This year there are two great horses, as shown by the Derby result.  If I were advising Exaggerator's team, whose horse closed strongly late but came up short against the undefeated Nyquist in the Derby, I would've said to wait out the Preakness, rest your horse, and beat him in the endless homestretch of the Belmont.  They knew better:  the Desormeaux brothers, trainer and jockey for Exaggerator, who earned their stripes at the Preakness' Pimlico race track, went for it there and got a great break from the weather:  Nyquist had never raced in a sloppy track like Pimlico had last week, while Exaggerator's best win had been in an off track.

Exaggerator had a perfect ride, saving ground on the rail the whole way, and made a brilliant move coming around the final turn.  My congratulations to the Desormeaux family and the owners of their horse, who will now be favored in the Belmont, due to a fever that Nyquist came down with after the race.

Baseball
Not too many surprises so far, as major-league baseball reaches the one-third mark of the season this week.  The biggest positive surprise is Boston's Red Sox, who have surpassed division rival Toronto as having the most potent offense in the majors; the biggest negative surprise is my pick for 2016 World Series champs, the Houston Astros, for which everything (hitting, pitching, fielding) seems to be coming up snake eyes.  It is not too late for them, though, as their division has a fair degree of parity (all three American League divisions are still competitive, first-to-last).

The National League is different, with very clear winners and losers.  The biggest positive surprise are the expected losers from Philadelphia.  The Phillies' rebuilding program is proceeding faster than expected and they are at least mediocre.  The Cubs' rebuild is complete and they are close to total domination of the league, though they will have to prove it against tough postseason pitching.  The Dodgers are disappointing, while the Giants--winners of the World Series in the last three even-numbered years--seem to be rising to the top once again.

Basketball
Finally, to the NBA, where a huge game will be played today:  the big two of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, will have their big chance for postseason success take a final exam today.  They have a 3-2 advantage against the defending champions, the Golden State Warriors, who threatened, through their record-setting regular season, to change the nature of the game itself (small ball, 3-pointers), and the home game tonight in OKC could be viewed as the climax of the whole season.  Like Atletico Madrid, the Thunder has been earning their shot by toppling the favorites--first their dramatic victory over the Spurs, now, maybe, the Warriors.  If they do succeed, they will face Lebron James and the Cavaliers in a championship final that will be, like today's Champions League, difficult or impossible to predict because of the unlikely buildup.

OK, OKC over GSW (narrowly, tonight), and Cleveland over OKC, 4-2.

Intermission: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

This is the mea culpa moment for many a pundit, when they have to confess that they refused to believe the serious threat Trump presented to win the Republican nomination.  My own confession was that I did not take it seriously in July, 2015, when I stated in so many words that Trump "will not be...their ultimate candidate", though even then I noted his successes in attracting support. In my preview of the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, I did recognize that Trump's support was likely to materialize at the polls. After New Hampshire, there was no denying the threat (at least, I could not, much as I may have wanted to do so).  I always hoped that the adults in the party would get together and do something to foreclose on his prospects, and I was surprised that they did not.  (The miserably ineffective efforts of #NeverTrump and the stillborn Cruz-Kasich alliance of the past couple of weeks don't count as "doing something").   Yes, I was expecting Jeb Bush to win it; when he couldn't, I thought Rubio would, but I didn't doubt Trump's level of celebrity and showmanship could translate into electoral momentum.

So, this thing that I have been dreading for 18 months has come to pass.  It's not that I really believe those Trumpistas who have been convinced by the braggart that he can win in a landslide, that Hillary is a weak candidate, etc.  Neither do I think he is the weakest candidate they could have chosen, though, and I take little comfort from the squabbling of the Republican "leaders" and their reluctance to support him (or to appear on the stage with him, let alone on the national ticket with him)--they will be rounded up or suppressed by the time of the convention.  I expect none of them will be running as a third-party candidate for the "true Republicans" (or a "New Bull Moose Party", which would be an interesting and historically reverent move);  most of the party faithful will show up and vote as directed, even if unenthusiastically.

If I were looking for a candidate that would be easier to defeat in a general election, it would have been Ted Cruz, who would have won the hardcore party conservative vote but little more.  (If Trump loses big this year, the Democrats may still get to run against Cruz in 2020, as the far right Tea Party would still be seeking their True Conservative who could win--that should be promising.)  I have been fairly open in my personal preference for John Kasich, though he would have been the hardest one to defeat, and expressing my astonishment that the Republicans would not see this and move toward him.  My reason for this seeming illogic?  One cannot assume that any national party nominee, no matter how scurrilous, slow, or unqualified, could not win election:  we have examples such as Nixon, Reagan, Dubya to squash such thinking.  Kasich, for all his faults, was at least genuinely qualified, and not crazy, like Cruz or Trump are.

Doing Preliminary Electoral Vote (EV) Maps
In my last post, I addressed some of the major strategic questions that the Hillary Clinton campaign will face:  keeping the coalition together, picking a running mate, communicating on the issues.  I could have added a couple more obvious points, like using the threat of Trump to raise vast sums of money, enough that those big donors and PAC's should become almost unnecessary (which will help her cause, in the end, though I recognize a lot of that money will be paid forward and down on the ticket), or getting their hands on the names, software, and technicians who ran President Obama's hugely successful 2008 and 2012 web campaigns.

Moving to tactics, though, we must emphasize that this is decided in the end by the Electoral College, and ignoring its stubborn realities could be harmful to a candidate--of either party--whose campaign is focused solely on the popular vote.   The dreaded scenario is big wins in certain segments of the electorate, or regions of the country, combined with losses in some closely-contested states with large populations.  It caught up with Al Gore in 2000, and it could catch out Donald Trump in 2016, if he were wildly successful in his campaign, winning with large margins in some regions (the South, the Great Plains, the Inland West) but losing narrowly in states like Florida, Ohio, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Before we can address likely Electoral College outcomes, though, we must stipulate a couple of conditions for the basic scenario.  The first is that there will be no major third-party candidates, that the candidates on the ballot in most states will be Hillary, Drumpf, the Libertarian Party nominee (most likely it will be former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson), Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and apparently there will be a Constitution Party nominee named Darrell Castle. There is a movement among dissident anti-Trump Republicans to nominate someone, partially out of spite and partially in the hope to keep mainstream Republican turnout up, but at this point I see no takers, in terms of people willing to put their name out there, where it would be vilified by Trump backers until the end of their conscious lifetimes.  Some may also seek a challenger to Hillary on the left for the general election, or some sort of non-partisan moderate in the middle, but I think the outcomes in the two parties' primaries will eliminate those opportunities.  Still, I would expect this election, in this scenario, to produce a record vote  (2-4%) for the Libertarian party:  many Cruz-type conservatives might opt for that rather than a nose-holding Trump vote, and those will not be wasted votes:  a couple of percent withheld from Republican voters could mean the difference in a couple of states. The absence of a major third-party candidate would be another area where my guess was wrong:  I thought Hillary-Bush would be sure to produce a dissident candidacy, based on the "neither candidate is acceptable to a large number of voters" theory; though it's not Bush, the same applies to the Wherever Man (and I had Trump as #5 on my list of 10 likely possible 3rd-party candidates), but circumstances seem to be working against this complicating scenario.

The second condition would be that both Clinton and Trump each run at least a fairly competent campaign.  I have little cause to doubt Hillary, though there could be (in theory) some sort of "bimbo eruption" relating to her husband, a badly-handled outcome on the "damn email" case, or a brutally mishandled convention, relating to the supporters of primary opponent Bernie Sanders, which would turn off millions of should-be Democratic voters.  On the Republican side, it's hard to say exactly what would be a fatal mistake by Donald Trump, as he has made so many with so little cost to his support base--perhaps something in the Panama Papers about money he has hidden away, or a tape recording of how he really "hates those rubes" that support him.  A "47%" moment, or statements that indicate he is at heart bigoted against African-Americans, could really hurt him, as his supporters (mistakenly) are relying on the notion that he has their interests at heart, and some African-Americans might otherwise buy into his argument to shake up the status quo, which (even with Obama as President) has not been serving them well.

Anyway, one can build up the electoral map from scratch, or work from the map produced by the Obama victories of 2008-12; they will get to the same place: those states reliably Democratic in recent elections, those reliably Republican, the ones with an inconsistent pattern, and then the adjustment of the patterns for the peculiarities of this election.  In this case, the three most likely variations from recent norms are:  1)  a reduction in the turnout of black voters from their historic high points in favor of Obama; 2) an intensification of the support for the Democratic candidate among Hispanic voters and single women; and 3) an increase in the turnout and the support for Republicans among a group of voters I would describe as "middle-aged, white married people with status anxiety"--they would be the ones who will be most inspired by Trump's candidacy.

This last group is the true wild card of the election; their size is unknown but should not be underestimated.  Contrary to what some have found, I do not think they are that similar to Sanders supporters--one should note that the patterns of who won primaries in the two parties has been similar, but for the most part, it has been the Trump and Clinton victories that have been in common (or Sanders and Cruz).   Sanders and Trump both have populist appeals, but of different natures.

I do not think the net results of these three effects will turn too many states from their recent patterns. Here are a few comments, by region:
North East:  Most states will remain solidly in the Clinton camp.  Despite the indications from the NH primary (Trump won, Clinton lost), I see Clinton winning there, but I see ME as being a state where the Democratic support may be soft.
Middle Atlantic:  Trump bluster about NY is just that;  PA, NJ will have many passionate Trump supporters, but they should be outnumbered.  VA and NC are states where I see Trump strongly outperforming Romney's level.
South:  I don't believe winning GA will end up being a reasonable objective for the Democrats. Florida, as always, will be contested, but the result should reflect the national popular vote.   The rest of the states will be Republican, as usual, though Arkansas might be a bit closer than in recent elections.
Mideast/Midwest:  IN should go Republican; MI and WI Democratic; Ohio should be a tossup until Election Day, unless it is turning into a Democratic landslide.  MN should be safe Democratic; MO safe Republican (we should probably follow the SEC and include it in the South!)  West of Minnesota and Iowa (which I see as a pure tossup), and East of the Rockies, I don't see any Democratic states, with the possible exception of the one Congressional District in Nebraska that Obama won in 2008 (the attempt by Republican state legislators to close out that loophole failed this year).
Rocky Mountain states:  This may be one of the more interesting battlegrounds of the election.  UT hates Trump will but will still fall in line, but not by the usual overwhelming margin; CO should be safe for the Democrats.  I don't feel real comfortable about NM, though I should:  It has the highest Hispanic population %, the southern (Republican) part of the state should be more pro-Cruz than pro-Trump, and Gary Johnson could siphon off 5% or more would-be Republican votes.  On the other hand, I am strangely optimistic about the Democratic chances in AZ, where John McCain's strong opposition to Trump (in the midst of a somewhat desperate re-election campaign of his own) creates uncertainty, and in MT, where the Democrats have shown some strength.  Finally, NV should not be taken for granted; Harry Reid is determined to have a Democrat succeed him in his Senate seat, but the "middle-class anxiety" vote may work strongly in Trump's favor, and we should not forget Trump's big win in that state's early primary.
Far West: I feel that AK (Alaska) will be closer than usual; otherwise, the Pacific Coast should be solidly Democratic.

Here's my chart:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

That chart shows 212-151 Democrats in terms of safe EV; 289-205 counting "Likely" and "Lean", with 44 as toss-ups (307-231 if forced to decide today).  I would say that 289 likely Electoral votes indicates some reason for optimism but is hardly a safe bet.

You can do your own map at http://www.270towin.com/.  You could look at veteran Charlie Cook's early map at http://cookpolitical.com/presidential/charts/scorecard  (he has Clinton at 190-142 safe, 304-190 with leaners, with the same number--44--as tossups, though they are composed differently).

Betting on the Come
My (modest-sized) Predictit.org account has grown by 1/3 since last year.  I have played it fairly cautiously, with lots of small bets, looking for the odds or the outcomes to move my way, and have won much more often than not.  I did lose quite frequently on individual primary outcomes, but always with fairly small bets.  My larger gains have come from Clinton on the nomination (and on odds of winning the Presidency), betting against the GOP going to a second ballot, and betting against all of the Republican declared candidates at various times (the ones against Trump being losing bets).

Currently, I have some longshot money hopes on Evan Bayh being selected as the Democratic VP nominee (with smaller stakes on Deval Patrick, Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, and Al Franken); on the Republican side, I have a mix of positions:  against those who I think may have hurt Trump's feelings, in favor of those who flatter him with their support (plus Condi Rice, Marco Rubio, who failed to hurt him, and John Kasich).   Internationally, I am betting against Brexit, against Dilma in Brazil, and Rajoy in Spain (that one is still dragging on), against Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in the U.K., and in favor of the UN naming a woman as Secretary-General.

The new developments (just this week) are the individual state markets for some of the swing states in the general election:  PA, FL, CO, VA, and OH.  My initial positions are in favor of the Democrats in all five (in order to take a position and monitor movement), though my comments above would reveal I am not confident about the ultimate outcome in the last two of these. My bets are consistently against the Republicans/in favor of the Democrats in almost all of the contested Senate seat markets they have (PA, OH, WI, IL, NV, MD, NH, IN, though this last is at somewhat longshot odds), the exceptions being NC and AZ.   You should note that the odds vary on these, as do my own levels of confidence in those outcomes, and my sizes of bet. Finally, my bet on the range of number of House seats the Republicans will hold after the election is for 218-230 (and against all the other ranges); in other words, a very narrow Republican majority.

TMI, probably--sorry!

It's All Over--Let the Shouting Begin!

The decisive results of the five Mid-Atlantic primaries April 26 erased any  remaining doubt on the major parties' nominees. As such, they signal the end of Act II of the 2016 Presidential Drama--the remaining primaries should be conducted essentially offstage, and Act III will commence with the conventions in July.

I was anticipating that California's Republican primary on June 7 could be the finale for Act II, but the failures of the effort within the Republican party to stop Trump indicate it will be anticlimactic. The #NeverTrump movement is ending badly; the Kasich-Cruz cooperation, too little and too late, is poorly planned--New Mexico should have been a Cruz state, and Indiana a Kasich one--and poorly executed.  If it had started immediately after the Florida primary and Marco Rubio's withdrawal  (a mere 45 days ago), it could have succeeded, particularly with the skill that Cruz backers have shown to pick off possible Trump delegates in state conventions, but splitting votes in the states since then has helped ensure Trump wins in most states in the meantime.

It is clear that many in the Republican party who were appalled by the grotesque campaign of Donald Trump are finding their way to reconciling themselves with supporting him, or at least ending their opposition to his nomination.  It was ever thus in the party:  the magnetism of power will get  the filings in line.  Some will think themselves able to avoid contamination by dodging him, but it will only make them less likely to get the full support from the Republican base they will need to compete.

On the Democratic side, the eventual nominee has been obvious for months--perhaps  Hillary Clinton's nomination was never seriously threatened, at least since Joe Biden announced he would not run--but Bernie Sanders did a great job of keeping the primary campaigns  interesting and content-filled (unlike the Republican race, which has been shallow, echo-chamber vapidity combined with lowest-common-denominator personal insults and vulgarity throughout).  Alas, for those touched by the Bern, the dream is over.  Sanders' campaign has recognized the inevitable; he will keep his run going through the final primaries in early June, then work to get some favorable planks in the Democratic party platform and a say in the choice of the Vice-Presidential nominee of the party.

Clinton will be willing to concede some ground to Sanders on the former--he is essentially pushing on an open door--but I don't think she will give much ground on the latter.  The work to vet Democratic VP nominees for Clinton has begun.  I think the campaign will focus on the strategic choice among five alternatives:

1)  A Hispanic to lock in that vote  (Labor Secretary Tom Perez, HUD Secretary Julian Castro), particularly if Trump chooses a Hispanic VP;

2) A woman who can lock in that vote  (Amy Klobuchar), particularly if Trump chooses a woman VP nominee;

 3) Someone from the Sanders-Elizabeth Warren wing of the party, to help make peace with disgruntled Sanders supporters (besides Sanders or Warren, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson, environmentalist Bill McKibben);  

4)  A white male loyalist with moderate tendencies (Sens. Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, or Evan Bayh); or 

5) An established Democratic liberal who is not a Senator in a state with a Republican governor (Deval Patrick or Al Franken). 

As you might guess, I think the first three are relatively weak ideas (though I do like my selections of Anderson and McKibben from among the many minor political figures who have endorsed Sanders), but they cannot fully be discarded until the Democratic convention begins.  The choice between 4) and 5)  will depend on the level of confidence the Clinton campaign will have in their ability to get a decent share of white male voters who identify as independents--if weak, that would argue for 4), if strong, 5) might help generate additional enthusiasm in the base to run up the score.  I particularly like the choices of Patrick, who would solidify the feeling of smooth succession  from the Obama Administration (Patrick is a favorite there), and will feel like an unforced post-racialist choice of a respected African-American, or of Franken, who could make for an entertaining and effective "attack dog" nominee to go after Trump.  

Sherrod Brown, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren herself are names who will merit mention but not selection, as they are Senators in states with Republican governors:  the governor would be able to name some Republican who would have the inside track at holding onto the seat.  In addition, their election as VP would also immediately create an absence in the Senate caucus, which will need a majority in order to organize the leadership committee chairs, etc. around support that will be critical for Clinton to govern successfully in 2017,  As for Sanders, I think he is wise enough to understand that he would not be included in the decision-making in a Clinton White House and that he can be more effective in the Capitol.

Learning from an Ugly Past General Election Campaign
This promises to be an extremely ugly Presidential campaign; the only one that I can recall that remotely compares to this one in the level of crudeness we should expect was the 1972 Nixon-McGovern campaign. That disastrous result, which embarrassed us before the world in the way that Trump's primary campaign has done for us this year, featured Nixon's CREEP (Committee to Re-elect the President), bloated with dirty money, paranoia, and megalomania, and fresh off successfully stonewalling the initial investigation after its stupid Watergate break-in.  The Republicans successfully framed George McGovern--a decent, but unlikely, antiwar candidate who had emerged from a contentious primary season without a unified party--with a caricature of hiss program as
 the "3A's--Abortion, Amnesty, and Acid" en route to winning 49-states and 520 electoral votes.  That smashing victory was, in turn, smashed by the investigation of the Watergate cover-up and Nixon's resignation (and the imprisonment of much of Nixon's team) in less than two years.

McGovern's general election campaign was honorable, honest, earnest, and incompetent.  The worst mistake was the mishandling of the VP nomination (the "Eagleton affair", leading to his withdrawal and replacement by Sargent Shriver; more generally, McGovern won the nomination of a divided party, split on the Vietnam war issue, roiled by the candidacy (and assassination wounding) of George Wallace, and denied the candidacy of Ted Kennedy, the most popular potential candidate, and the one Nixon was worried about when his cronies greenlighted the Watergate break-in and other dirty tricks. His general election campaign relied on the proposition of ending the Vietnam war, which Nixon countered with his "secret plan to end the war".  Regardless of whether there was really such a plan (there was--the notion of negotiating a truce, then leaving after the famous "decent interval"), it was no great trick for Nixon to pretend he had one.

The circumstances are different now:  Trump will be the underdog, Clinton the leader of the incumbent administration's party, and the wars are less central of an issue (because Americans are not currently dying in them).  Nevertheless, there are lessons Democrats should take from that experience.

1.  No Holds Barred. -- The Drumpfentruppen will come at Hillary with everything they have. Trump's approach is to go hard early, try anything, see what sticks, and then rub it in at every opportunity.  While The Candidate Herself should remain "Presidential" and refrain from the low blows--something Donald can only wish he could pretend to be or do--Hillary will have a deep team of surrogates to counter his attacks with well-crafted truth, and they should be ruthless with counterattacks.

Trump has several weak spots which were exposed in the primaries:  the first is his thin skin, and his shocking lack of self-esteem (given his overweening pride and ego).  The second is the false nature of his appeal; blue-collar workers have nothing to gain from his tax plan, his protectionist trade policy.  An additional one that I recommend is to impugn his ethics and his integrity (something the Republicans will do for Hillary); it is inconceivable--"blind trust" or no--that he can govern in a way that is neutral towards his many business interests, and I see no reason to grant that he would be altruistic or self-sacrificing in the slightest.

2. Unity of Objectives -- In 2016, there is a single imperative:  crushing electoral success, from the top of the ticket, in the key Senate contests, and to maximize the gains in the House.  All else--the Supreme Court seat, control of the Senate, any hope for a legislative program--will depend on that success. The loathing toward so-called DINO's, the splittist tendencies of the Old New Left, these must be put on hold, for the greater objective of putting down Trump and the other Republi-Cons. Plenty of time to work out those problems later.

3.  The Issues Matter -  and it's not just one issue, or just three.  The good news is, our candidate has a better handle on all of them.  She is well-informed, has a progressive view on most or all, and she will have the benefit of advice from among the best in the business, not least of which will be her husband, Former President Clinton (the name I think he will take in the White House), the ultimate policy wonk, with outstanding political intuitions and who still manages a sky-high approval rating. She should welcome televised debates, which will showcase her superior grasp of the issues, as long as she can prepare for the traps he will try to spring.

To return to the party platform, the Clinton folks should accommodate Sanders' on issues like the minimum wage, the ultimate objective of universal health care, climate change, infrastructure investment, and most especially, on military spending and military adventurism.  Assuming Trump will be the nominee, Hillary cannot afford to be branded the "pro-war" candidate; that is the one area which could cause her to lose support among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

Three Things Donald Trump Has Right
Like the proverbial broken clock, and unlike his rival Ted Cruz, who is consistently wrong about every single thing, Donald Trump occasionally gets something right, and I think that deserves to be recognized.

First, Trump has been correct on the negative effects of the status of campaign financing, and that the Clinton campaign has a problem here.  Though Hillary has taken a responsible position in favor of overturning the Citizens United decision, or if necessary, passing a constitutional amendment to do that, he has a superior position in being able to say that he has no Political Action Committee as an unregulated ally with secret funds supporting him, and Hillary should find a way to cut that off--she will have plenty of conventional campaign funding support for the general election, for herself and for party allies.  It's true that Trump comes from a privileged position, due to his wealth, which reduces his dependency on fund-raising, but the facts remain.

On social issues--apart from those of minorities and women's rights--he has been relatively brave in his positions that run out of line with conventional Republican thinking.  Though he has insisted he is firmly anti-abortion, he has not supported defunding Planned Parenthood or overturning Roe vs. Wade, and he has avoided gratuitous insults to the LGBT community on issues like same-sex marriage and the newest, the absurd transgender bathroom issue.  He has also avoided parading his religious beliefs and imposing them on everyone.

When it comes to our foreign military entanglements in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and Iraq, he has again staked out a position at odds with conventional Republican neo-con thinking.  This does not mean his position is coherent, or that his claim to have always been against the Iraq war is factual.  In place of the certainty he would get us ensnared, we at least have reason to be uncertain what his Presidency would bring in this area.  As in so many others.