John Cassidy's Blog, page 30

Bernie Sanders Takes Greenwich Village

Over the years and decades, quite a few tub-thumping radicals have stood up in Washington Square Park and railed at the world, but few, if any, have attracted a crowd like the one Bernie Sanders attracted on Wednesday evening. By mid-afternoon, the New York Police Department had cordoned off the park and the blocks around it. From Houston Street to Eighth Street, and from Sixth Avenue to Broadway, the area was sealed, and inside the barricades long lines of people were waiting to clear security. The campaign later estimated that twenty-seven thousand people attended, in all.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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The Stories We Tell About Politics
The Fish King of Brooklyn Debate Night
Here’s Why I’m a Proud Godzilla Supporter

Charity, Donald Trump-Style

Donald Trump was in Albany on Monday night, speaking to another big crowd and complaining about how Ted Cruz was robbing him of delegates in places like Colorado and Louisiana. With an eye toward next week’s primary in the Empire State, Trump also reminded the audience of Cruz’s derisive statements about “New York values,” which Cruz has since claimed were only meant to apply to liberal Democrats. “We have the greatest values,” Trump said. “Nobody has values like us.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Hillary Clinton Versus the Nineties
Bill Clinton, Eternal Campaigner
Ted Cruz Meets New York Values

The 2016 Masters: Jordan Spieth Gets the Yorkshire Treatment

As Jordan Spieth, the wonder boy of American golf, was heading for the back nine holes of the Masters tournament, at Augusta National, on Sunday afternoon, the television commentators maintained the hushed, almost reverential tones that tradition and the organizers of the event demand. But four thousand miles away, in Birmingham, England, P. J. Willett, a local schoolteacher, was getting tired of Spieth’s meticulous style of play, which involves studying his shots from every angle, discussing the possibilities with his caddy, and, quite often, backing off once or twice before he finally strikes the ball. “Spieth is lining up his putt,” Willett tweeted. “If I’m quick I can get a beer, go to the toilet, and paint the spare room b4 he hits it.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Donald Trump’s Troubles Are Just Beginning
The Cartoon Lounge: High Jinks on the Mini-Golf Course
Tiger Woods: How Low Can He Go?

Can Bernie Sanders Upset Hillary Clinton in New York?

On the face of it, Hillary Clinton shouldn’t have much trouble winning the New York Democratic primary on April 19th. In the 2008 version of this contest, when she was running as a two-term, home-state U.S. senator, she got more than fifty-seven per cent of the vote and defeated Barack Obama by about seventeen percentage points. This time around, Clinton again has a big lead in the polls. A Fox News survey that was released on Sunday showed her getting fifty-three per cent of the vote, and Sanders getting just thirty-seven per cent.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Comment from the April 18, 2016, Issue
Donald Trump’s Nuclear Uncle
Trump’s Convention Strategy: “The Fix Is In”

The 2016 Masters: Can Phil Mickelson Beat the Young Guns?

Golf is only a game, of course. A silly, frustrating game, with some deeply retrogressive aspects attending its role in broader society. But every April, when we’re viewing the blooming magnolias and baize-like greens at Augusta National Golf Club, some of us like to pretend that the Masters tournament is an annual ritual that captures various profundities of the human condition—something akin to a Greek tragedy, full of triumph, tragedy, and pathos.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Enjoying March Without the Madness
How the Jump Shot Brought Individualism to Basketball
The Twilight of Nadal

The Lessons of Wisconsin: Can Sanders and Cruz Follow Up Their Big Victories?

As the results came in from Wisconsin last night, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the front-runners in the Republican and Democratic primaries, were nowhere to be seen. According to reports from the television networks’ campaign correspondents, they were both in New York. Trump was holed up in Trump Tower, and Clinton, after attending a fund-raiser in Riverdale, had returned to her family’s home in Chappaqua, in Westchester County.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
How Donald Trump Wasted His Spring Break
Donald Trump Performs Shakespeare’s Soliloquies
After Wisconsin, Cruz Looks to Churchill and Trump Turns to Troy

Panama Papers: Why Aren’t There More American Names?

Who is the odd person out from this list: Ayad Allawi, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, Bashar al-Assad, David Cameron, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, Mauricio Macri, Lionel Messi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Marianna Olszewski, Petro Poroshenko, Vladimir Putin?

The Secret Life of Panama City
Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, September 23rd
A New Twist in the Penn State Case

Is Donald Trump Self-Destructing?

If Donald Trump were a normal political candidate, he would be in serious trouble at the moment. Over the past few days, he has said and done things that have raised more doubts about his temperament, judgment, and command of policy issues. Some of the Republicans trying to prevent him from becoming the Party’s Presidential nominee believe that they’re finally making progress. Are they right?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, March 31st
Hillary Clinton, Live at the Apollo
Trump Proposes Building Wall Inside Uterus

Hillary Clinton, Live at the Apollo

The line outside the Apollo Theatre on Wednesday morning snaked along 125th Street and up Frederick Douglass Boulevard, before curling onto 126th. “The next President is going to be here: we love her!” Fanta Kouyate, a child-services worker who had come across the Harlem River from the Bronx, volunteered. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Harriet Natkin, an Upper West Side resident who had come with a couple of friends, said. “I’m a very big Hillary supporter.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Campaign Trade Wars
Donald and Melania and Heidi and Ted
The Lost Generation of the 2016 Campaign

Lessons from Apple vs. the F.B.I.

It’s welcome news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has dropped its legal effort to force Apple to help it create a method of accessing data on a locked iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the perpetrators of the massacre that took place in December in San Bernardino. Not that the Bureau, which ultimately found another means of getting into the phone, didn’t have a legitimate interest in knowing what was on the phone: only an ardent libertarian would argue otherwise. But the case raised a number of important issues and conflicting interests that judges alone can’t be, and shouldn’t be, expected to resolve.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, March 22nd
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, February 25th
The Dangerous All Writs Act Precedent in the Apple Encryption Case