Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Throwing Shade

Rich Galen

Thursday May 19, 2016

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Just when you thought this Presidential campaign couldn't get any weirder, we find that it has burst right through the bizarre barrier once again.

We have been reliably informed by the geniuses on TV (including me) and by the most clever political writers (including, again, me) that Trump would either (a) implode and disappear into the Taco Palace within Trump Tower, never to be seen on a debate stage again, or (b) would win the GOP nomination and cause the dissolution of the Republican Party forever by dint of his propensity to wreak havoc every time he gets on the phone or in front of a microphone.

While that political succotash was being created, the Democrats were to be sailing aboard the Good Ship Hillary toward a coronation ceremony that would begin with her staid and stately nomination in Philadelphia and end with her standing on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol next January 20th.

Yeah. Well.

As of the past week, just the opposite is confronting - and confounding - us.

Donald Trump is pre-appointing Supreme Court Justices and making travel arrangements to go to Pyongyang to meet with Dear Leader and compare hairdos.

According to the Bloomberg.com delegate tracker Trump, after last night's wins in Nevada and Oregon, is sitting on 1,160 delegates. That's just 77 short of the magic number: 1,237. (CNN's estimate has Trump at 1,175 - 62 short of the goal.)

The Trump campaign is signing joint-fundraising agreements with the Republican National Committee and sending staff to Cleveland to make certain that the convention that will nominate Donald will be the Trump convention and not the Trump/Cruz/Romney convention.

Mitt Romney officially threw in the towel on his plot to have a third party candidate anointed to deny Trump a victory in November.

Someone close to the #NeverTrump people told me that the problem wasn't that they didn't have a strategy, but that their strategy changed on an hourly basis.

Trump won the Oregon primary with exactly 2/3 of the votes. The GOP Kentucky primary had been held on March 5.

Meanwhile over in Bernie & Hillie-ville, chaos rules the waves.

Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders by a whopping 1,924 votes - one half of one percent of the votes cast. In Oregon, Sanders whipped Clinton by double digits: 56% to 44%.

This past weekend, at the Nevada State Democrat Convention in Los Vegas, the Sanders supporters nearly rushed the stage when the State Chair, Roberta Lange, insisted on turning a deaf ear to their overwhelming "NAY" calls on voice votes while announcing that the Clinton supporters' lackadaisical "yeas" more than carried the motion vote after vote.

She finally gaveled the convention a close and ran off the stage while hotel security and uniformed police were brought in to clear the hall.

That led to Bernie Sanders and the Chair of the Democrat National Committee, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz (D-Fl) getting into it with DWS condemning Sanders for not denouncing the "violence" with enough, um, vehemence.

Bernie's campaign manager accused DWS of "throwing shade" over the Sanders campaign from the very start by openly supporting and abetting the Clinton campaign.

Among the shady bill of particulars, as reported by Politico.com:

- A limited debate schedule that featured weekend debates,
- Closed primaries in major states like New York,
- Revoking the Sanders campaign's access to the DNC voter database, and
- Entering into a joint fundraising agreement with the Clinton campaign

CNN pointed out that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev) and "other top Democrat party leaders publicly ruminated on the possibility of violence at the Democratic National Convention in July."

Violence at the DNC convention? What happened to Hillary leaving by barge down the Schuylkill River cheered by adoring crowds along the banks near the boathouses while palm fronds waved gently above to keep her cool.

Yeah. Well.

CNN commentator Van Jones went to the heart of the problems facing the Ds by saying,

"I think Bernie really misunderstands there is a nasty edge to his following that he's not taking seriously enough."

As to "throwing shade," the phrase was apparently popularized by the 1990 documentary "Paris is Burning" in which one of the people explains:

"Shade is: I don't have to tell you you're ugly, because you know you're ugly."
As opposed to a Read "where I tell you flat out, you're ugly."

Not sure how that fits, but my avant-garde meme days are long over, so I'll leave it to the Ds to sort out.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the Washington Post summary of the Nevada turmoil and to the CNN reporting on the DWS/Sanders … shading.

Also the Mullfoto is of a flyer that was stuck in my door recently.

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