IMPORTANT READS

AT LENGTH-The 2016 race for president seems to be spinning out in ever more curious and historical proportions without there being clear winners on either the Democratic or Republican sides. 

Clearly the Trumpers’ revolt on the conservative side is causing real teeth-gnashing among the Republican Party leadership. But even with his collection of primary “wins”, he still hasn’t garnered more than half the delegates he needs to win at the convention. 

Similarly, Hillary Clinton, the odds-on-presumptive candidate, is in the same position of not having broken the halfway mark to the goal of 2,383 delegates. What this means is that the downstream primaries of California and New York, where the bulk of voters reside, may still hold sway in both parties late in the season. That means that both the insurgent campaigns of Bernie Sanders and that of Ted Cruz could win enough votes to force a brokered convention in the two parties. 

Upsetting as this disruption is for the party elites and the Washington establishment, it does make for an entertaining political process that has historical precedent and is embedded in the DNA of American political culture. 

Think about the very birth of the Republican Party and the demise of its conservative predecessor the Whig Party -- founded in 1833 and dissolved in 1854. Political parties rise and fall based upon the politics of the day, but the democratic process continues. The only question is whether the Republican Party can survive Donald Trump’s candidacy? 

The fear of his nomination has to do with whether the republic could endure his presidency. This, I believe, would be America “making a great mistake.” Trump’s use of widespread fear mongering and race baiting would so drastically divide this nation, that his elevation to the Oval Office would make the current dysfunction in Congress appear slight by comparison. And, he wouldn’t even have the full backing of the Republican Party that nominated him. The July convention in Ohio should really be something to witness. 

What is really curious is how the Sanders campaign is serving as the counterpoint to Trump’s. It is a political uprising of the like we haven’t seen since presidential races of Sens. Eugene McCarthy in 1968 or George McGovern in 1972. 

The Sanders revolt is addressing the very core issues of inequality to which Trump supporters are reacting. The difference is that Sanders’ supporters are more educated and that Sanders’ attacks are specifically directed at the Wall Street banks, the big pharmaceutical corporations and the resulting decline of the American middle class. 

Sanders does this without demonizing Mexican immigrants and everybody else Trump has accused of making this nation less than great. 

Sadly, this is not the first time this country has faced off with its own nativist form of fascism. The American author Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) wrote It Can’t Happen Here in 1935, a novel about the election of a fascist to the American presidency. This was a controversial book at the time of its printing and was a cautionary tale in light of what was rising up in Germany and Italy at the time. It was a thinly veiled critique of American politics of the Depression era. It should be used today by history and English professors to explain Trump’s rise as a populist. 

Sanders’ win in Michigan comes as no surprise. His fortunes in Wisconsin on April 5 could go the same way considering the strong Robert LaFollette progressive tradition there. 

However, if the California primary still holds sway come June 7, one might want to revisit the campaign of the other Sinclair -- Upton Sinclair, whose End Poverty In California campaign set the historical precedent in 1934. Like Sanders, Sinclair was also a socialist turned Democrat and he ran on a platform that is almost uncanny in similarity to this one. 

The battle lines have been drawn. The best contest would be one that gives the American people the choice of Democratic Socialism or national Corporate Capitalism. 

I fear that Clinton, with all of her baggage, will pull off the Democratic nomination and take the middle path, leaving loyal Republicans with the choice of voting for their party and a candidate who would do more harm than good or voting for the one person (Clinton) they’d rather indict in lieu of not voting at all. 

In the end the battle between Sanders and Trump would most clearly define the issues and the sides of the current political debate. That would be one debate worth watching.

(James Preston Allen is the Publisher of Random Lengths News, the Los Angeles Harbor Area's only independent newspaper. He is also a guest columnist for the California Courts Monitor and is the author of "Silence Is Not Democracy - Don't listen to that man with the white cap - he might say something that you agree with!" He was elected to the presidency of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council in 2014 and has been engaged in the civic affairs of CD 15 for more than 35 years. More of Allen … and other views and news at: randomlengthsnews.com.)  Photo: Chicago Tribune. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

HAVE YOUR WALLET HANDY--California will have 5,000 volunteers test a new system that would tax drivers based on how much they actually use the roads, not how much gas they buy, reports the Sacramento Bee.  

PRICE PAIN--Big Pharma remains in the headlines, and those headlines have centered around the Golden State lately. After all, the California Drug Price Relief Act did earn itself a ballot measure next November with well over 500,000 signatures (only 366,880 were needed), and according to recent polling research by the Kaiser Family Foundation, over 70% of Americans think something should be done about the cost of pharmaceuticals. 

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--The sun has set on the British Empire. Its successor, America, is showing signs of decline. But one empire still has plenty of battery life: California.

EDITOR’S PICK-Hamilton is the hottest show on Broadway, filled with hip-hop songs, R&B rhythms, and tri-cornered hats. Its multi-racial cast portrays the pantheon of Revolutionary greats, and for many a starry-eyed critic this sing-along with the founders offers “a factually rigorous historical drama.” Those are the words of Jody Rosen in The New York Times, and he is not alone. As an academic who spent years studying Aaron Burr before producing a scholarly biography, I can say emphatically that rules of historical rigor do not apply to Hamilton.

GELFAND’S WORLD--California is joining the states that allow physician assisted suicide. As of June 9, the right to die using legally prescribed pharmaceuticals will be the law. It is, admittedly, a limited sort of access to this form of chemistry, in that being terminally ill is the essential requirement. Society will still try to rescue people whose suicidal thoughts come from psychological turmoil. Still, the passage of this law signals a long term cultural trend. 

EDITOR’S PICK--Technology is a wonderful thing. Think about all the things we can do online---you can buy practically anything. You can check out new vacation spots and you can register to vote.

EDITOR’S PICK--The neoliberal ideology that is the engine of corporate capitalism spews its poison around the globe. Constitutions are rewritten by judicial fiat in a mockery of democracy. Laws and regulations that impede corporate exploitation are abolished. Corporations orchestrate legally sanctioned tax boycotts. Free-trade deals destroy small farmers and businesses along with labor unions and government agencies designed to protect the public from contaminated air, water and food and from usurious creditors and lenders.

POLITICS--Fury in the GOP as the two leading candidates are two iconoclastic outsiders (Trump and Cruz), and fury in the Democratic Party as the Bernie Sanders folks decry a fair shake against the candidate who is "supposed to win" (even if she is the first potential female President). 

TRANSITION POLITICS--Dear Caitlyn: Much as I'm reluctant to further any infighting within the transgender and gender nonconforming community, I also have a responsibility to speak truth to power. Your visibility has gone from mildly annoying, to problematic, to atrocious, to outright detrimental, and so I ask you, politely: 

Stop trying to help though the media and public appearances. Please. Stop. 

EDUCATION POLITICS-Someone once gave me this explanation of the Yiddish word ‘chutzpah’: "It's like killing your mother and father and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that you're an orphan."

GELFAND’S WORLD--Americans are justly puzzled at the behavior of Donald Trump and his crowds of followers. Episodes of people being expelled from Trump rallies just for looking or dressing differently are common. References to violence, or at least threats of violence, appear with regularity.

NANCY REAGAN REMEMBERED--At 8:50 this Sunday morning I received a call to tell me I'd just lost a friend. Nancy Reagan had died.

GUEST COMMENTARY--Apologies to those of you understandably all Trumped out. But Holy Mother of God, this shall not pass. At a snarling, jabbing, invective-laden "rally" in Louisville, a mob of Trump supporters - following The Donald's vicious lead - jostled and heaved a black college student out of the building, calling her "nigger" and "cunt" as she passed. 

EDITOR’S PICK--It all began with a college football game, a well-known, talented female sportscaster and a costly lapse of judgment on the part of the Nashville Marriott staff. You see, none of the emotional and psychological wounds that Erin Andrews has suffered over the past 80 or so months had to have happened. All she did was check into a generic chain hotel for a work event. 

EDITOR’S PICK--A self-proclaimed socialist decides to run for high office. And, for practical political reasons, he becomes a Democrat to do so. Soon he attracts enthusiastic supporters to his cause with his unconventional ideas for transforming the economy.

EASTSIDER-Usually I stay away from national hot button topics, figuring that there’s already plenty of coverage from the pundits and TV’s talking heads. However… 

EDITOR’S PICK--In my experience, good public policy is best shaped by the dispassionate analysis of what in practice has worked, or not. Policy based on common assumptions and popular sentiments can become a recipe for mistaken prescriptions and misguided interventions.

EDITOR’S PICK--The government wants our data, whether it’s sitting on our iPhones or in transit across the Internet.

GUEST WORDS--One fact that has received little attention in the current encryption debate is that many categories of individuals rely on strong encryption for their own security.

MUSING WITH MIRISCH-After the news that Republican Senate leaders will not even consider any Supreme Court nominee until a new president is in office, President Obama is taking it to the streets in an effort to get his yet unnamed pick approved. Or at least to make some much-needed political hay.