In this morning's Washington Post, Catherine Rampell tackles another side of Trump's personality, his persistence in playing the victimhood card. Of course, he is in no sense a victim, as she points out, but the people to whom he is appealing, working class voters, really have been victimized by a political and economic system that is faceless and amorphous but which has decimated their jobs and insulted their values. That is why it works.
At Religion News Service, a splendid satire by Guthrie Graves Fitzsimmons asks if we can handle two Methodists in the White House. Like all satire, it works because there is some truth in it, namely, both Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren have a church lady as part of their inner core. I warm to that fact. I am not sure how the "nones" will react.
At Politico, a report on Bernie Sanders insisting that it is up to Hillary Clinton to ask for the support of those who back his candidacy. Last night, on MSNBC, Clinton got testy when asked about whether or not she needs to move to the left to earn the support of Sanders' voters. She noted that she had won more than two million more votes than he has. True enough. But, now is the time for her to be gracious in the extreme. There is nothing to be gained by being peevish and everything to be gained by praising Sanders for highlighting issues that are also dear to her heart.
[Michael Sean Winters is a Visiting Fellow at Catholic University's Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies.]
