Hillary Clinton Shifts to Far-Left as She Claims Party's Nomination

This is interesting.

Back in the 1990s, the Clintons claimed to be centrist "New Democrats" opportunistically, so they could win. Inside there's always been an Alinskyite Marxist collectivist waiting to break out.

At the Wall Street Journal, "How Hillary Clinton Shifted Leftward":

When she stood before New York Democrats and launched her first campaign for office 16 years ago, Hillary Clinton was unabashed about her centrist credentials.

“I’m a New Democrat,” the first lady said in announcing her Senate bid. Her husband worked for a decade to move the party away from its liberal roots and win over independent voters. Now Mrs. Clinton touted that third-way philosophy, too.

“I don’t believe government is the source of all our problems, or the solution to them,” she said.

Today, a transformed Mrs. Clinton campaigns again, this time for president. On a swath of domestic issues, dragged along by a rapidly changing party and a surprisingly tough primary opponent in Sen. Bernie Sanders, Mrs. Clinton has moved to the left, sometimes reversing her positions and in other cases changing her tone in significant ways.

Mrs. Clinton has undone her longtime opposition to gay marriage. She apologized for her 2002 vote authorizing an invasion of Iraq. She backed off support for charter schools. She called for an end to the “era of mass incarceration,” a rebuke of her husband’s 1994 crime bill.

Under intense pressure from Mr. Sanders, she came out against the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that as secretary of state she said she was inclined to approve. She opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Asian free-trade agreement she had predicted would be the “gold standard,” but that was opposed by labor unions, most Democrats and Mr. Sanders.

And on Social Security, Mrs. Clinton all but abandoned her longtime interest in a bipartisan compromise aimed at extending the program’s solvency and adopted liberal promises not to cut benefits.

On Tuesday, eight years after Mrs. Clinton conceded the 2008 contest, she celebrated victory in her quest for her party’s presidential nomination, a historic achievement making her the first woman to run on a major party ticket. Primary voters cast ballots on Tuesday in California and five other states. Mrs. Clinton went over the top a day earlier with commitments from party leaders who are convention delegates, according to an Associated Press tally.

Now Mrs. Clinton is set to face Republican Donald Trump this fall, and being seen as more liberal may not help in wooing crucial independents and working-class voters. Further, her changing views may feed a perception among some voters that she is untrustworthy, as it did among many Sanders supporters.

“I don’t feel she’s genuine, to be honest,” said Bill Losch, 63 years old, of Las Vegas, a Sanders delegate. “She’ll do whatever she needs to do to be elected.”

Democrats in and out of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign say her shifting positions reflect new facts and show her willingness to adapt while sticking to core principles...

More.

Clinton Romesha, Red Platoon

This looks excellent.

At Amazon, Clinton Romesha, Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor.

“A vitally important story that needs to be understood by the public, and I cannot imagine an account that does it better justice that Romesha’s.” —Sebastian Junger, journalist and author of The Perfect Storm

“Red Platoon is sure to become a classic of the genre.”—Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers and In the Kingdom of Ice

The only comprehensive, firsthand account of the fourteen hour firefight at the Battle of Keating by Medal of Honor recipient Clinton Romesha, for readers of Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden and Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell.

“‘It doesn’t get better.’ To us, that phrase nailed one of the essential truths, maybe even the essential truth, about being stuck at an outpost whose strategic and tactical vulnerabilities were so glaringly obvious to every soldier who had ever set foot in that place that the name itself—Keating—had become a kind of backhanded joke.”

In 2009, Clinton Romesha of Red Platoon and the rest of the Black Knight Troop were preparing to shut down Command Outpost (COP) Keating, the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the U.S. military in Nuristan and Kunar in the hope of preventing Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three years after its construction, the army was finally ready to concede what the men on the ground had known immediately: it was simply too isolated and too dangerous to defend.

On October 3, 2009, after years of constant smaller attacks, the Taliban finally decided to throw everything they had at Keating. The ensuing 14-hour battle—and eventual victory—cost 8 men their lives.

Red Platoon is the riveting first-hand account of the Battle of Keating, told by Romesha, who spearheaded both the defense of the outpost and the counter-attack that drove the Taliban back beyond the wire, and received the Medal of Honor for his actions.

Shop here.

And thanks so much!

Bernie Sanders Leads Among Eligible Voters in California

Today's election day, finally.

Here's Cathleen Decker, at the Los Angeles Times, "Analysis: Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in a tight race in California as the campaign batters her popularity":

Bernie Sanders is favored the most among eligible voters in California, our poll shows https://t.co/6QPSOuypbP pic.twitter.com/AJOYLPyOpC

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 5, 2016

New USC/LATimes poll finds a battered Hillary Clinton and ascendant Bernie Sanders in a tight race in California https://t.co/ZtmgPAiCYE

— Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) June 2, 2016

Hillary Clinton’s popularity has slumped in California under an unrelenting challenge from Bernie Sanders, who has succeeded in breaching the demographic wall Clinton had counted on to protect her in the state’s presidential primary, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll has found.

As he has done across the country this primary season, Sanders commands the support of younger voters by huge margins in advance of Tuesday’s primary — even among Latinos and Asians, voter groups that Clinton easily won when she ran eight years ago. Many of his backers come from a large pool of voters who have registered for the first time in the weeks before the election.

Yet, Tuesday’s outcome remains difficult to predict, precisely because of the untested nature of Sanders’ following. That portends an intense fight in the final days of the campaign.

The Vermont senator has battled Clinton to a draw among all voters eligible for the Democratic primary, with 44% siding with him to 43% for Clinton. That represented a nine-point swing from a USC/Los Angeles Times poll in March, in which Clinton led handily.

But among those most likely to vote, based on their voting history and stated intentions this time around, Clinton led, 49%-39%, in the new poll. Her standing is bolstered by the reliability of her older supporters, who have a proven record of casting ballots.

She also leads convincingly among registered Democrats; 53% of likely Democratic voters supported her, to 37% for Sanders. Throughout the year, she has carried party members in every state but Sanders’ home state of Vermont and next-door New Hampshire, where he won in a landslide.

As he has elsewhere, Sanders benefits here from party rules that allow registered nonpartisan voters — known in California as “no party preference” voters — to take part in the Democratic primary. Among nonpartisans who were likely to vote, he led by 48%-35%.

Sanders’ chances of victory rest on big turnout of voters who typically don’t vote in primaries and who — in the case of the nonpartisans — will have to navigate complicated voter rules to request a Democratic ballot.

“His base of support is young voters, low-propensity voters and [nonpartisan] voters. Not only does he have to turn them out by election day, but he has to educate all those nonpartisan voters” to request a Democratic ballot, said Dan Schnur, the poll director who heads USC’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.

“That’s not to say he can’t pull it off, but this may be the biggest voter mobilization challenge California has seen in many, many years.”

For all the threat the primary represents, Clinton, who likely will clinch the Democratic nomination even before Californians’ votes are counted, retains most of her strength in a general election contest against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Trump has contended in recent days that he could make a run at California in November, but the poll showed that to be implausible, at best...

More.

And ICYMI, "Hillary Clinton Rallies Supporters at Long Beach City College (VIDEO)."

Quoted in LBCC's Viking Newspaper

Following-up from last night, "Hillary Clinton Rallies Supporters at Long Beach City College (VIDEO)."

The college newspaper contacted me for some comments on Clinton's visit. My colleague Charlotte Joseph was contacted as well.

Here's the piece, "Political-Science Professors React to Hillary Clinton Rally":

Professor Charlotte Joseph said in an email Sunday, June 5, she considers herself a “swing voter” and is supporting Clinton due to her vast experience in foreign and domestic policy. She said, “It is a fantastic opportunity whenever any candidate comes to our campus.  It allows our students and the entire college community a chance to hear challenging ideas and to evaluate how these fit with their own beliefs.”

Joseph said, “It provides an educational opportunity that most people never get the chance to see.  Most of us get our information from the television or the internet, in sound bites. We rarely have the opportunity to hear a speech from beginning to end. Hopefully, this will be the first of many such events at LBCC because of the uniqueness of our college and student body.”

Although he is registered to vote in the Republican primary, Professor Douglas said in an email Monday, June 6, just hours before Clinton’s speech that he doesn’t identify as Republican or Democrat.

Douglas said, “The 2016 election has generated tremendous excitement, more than usual, in my experience, especially in California, where our primary is expected to be decisive. So, it’s great that students can participate directly in the political process by attending a campaign rally. The event brings the campaign home to those who’re already interested and makes it a personal, potentially life-changing experience to see and hear their candidate close up.”

Douglas also said he expects Clinton to receive a lot of media coverage and believes if Clinton were to lose in California, then the Bernie Sanders campaign would receive “enormous momentum and could put pressure on the Democrat National Committee to weaken the rules of the party’s super delegates.”

Why Millennials Are Least Likely to Vote

Millennials have a lot of latent political power, but they're the slacker generation. I doubt they'll overtake older Americans in participation any time soon.

At the O.C. Register, "Why millennials, now totaling 69.2 million, are least likely to vote."

Why millennials, now totaling 69.2 million, are least likely to vote https://t.co/va0Ohx1WgB #CAPrimary

— O.C. Register (@ocregister) June 7, 2016

Bill Whittle's Firewall: Transgender Bathrooms and the Progressive Synthetic Injustice Machine

Here's the inimitable Bill Whittle, "The Bathroom Wars":

Jackie Johnson's Cooler Marine Layer Forecast

Thank goodness for the mild weather. Folks were waiting for hours in line yesterday for the Hillary Clinton rally. It wasn't too bad after all.

Here's Ms. Jackie, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Hillary Clinton Rallies Supporters at Long Beach City College (VIDEO)

The college just announced the Clinton visit on Friday, which was relatively short notice.

I wasn't all that thrilled about it, especially since the original announcement said that doors were open at 2:00pm (for a 4:00pm event), and that was going to cut into class time.

It turns out the timeline was pushed back two hours, with doors scheduled to open at 4:00pm (for a 6:00pm event). That wasn't too bad. My 12:45pm American politics class saw pretty much regular attendance. My 2:20pm international relations class was less than half attended, but no matter. I had a brief presentation planned anyway, and I distributed a handout last week, in any case.

Students elsewhere around campus were complaining, though. It was a big event that caused some distractions for students not interested in the campaign. They just wanted to study.

I don't see a report on the rally anywhere. Everyone's talking about the AP story announcing the Clinton's got the delegates to clinch the nomination.

I'll update with more later.

Meanwhile, some video and tweets:

Ginormous line to get into @HillaryClinton rally at #LBCC crossing fingers I make it #thisiswhatdemocracylookslike 👍 pic.twitter.com/5qJnXPNyKH

— MichelleRobbins (@MichelleRobbins) June 6, 2016

Bernie Sanders supporters outside #HillaryClinton rally in #longbeach pic.twitter.com/MJ0eWWbFQ0

— Stephanie Rivera (@Steph_LBPost) June 7, 2016

First public sighting of Hillary since AP called the nomination for her. pic.twitter.com/JsBt4fXNL0

— Seema Mehta (@LATSeema) June 7, 2016

.@Hadas_Gold #HillaryClinton speaking at #LBCC. cc. @maggieNYT @Instapundit @Not_RSMcCain #CAPrimary #CA pic.twitter.com/3q7VrnDW0O

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 7, 2016

"We are on the brink of a historic unprecedented moment but we still have work to do don't we? We have 6 elections tomorrow"-@hillaryclinton

— Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) June 7, 2016

"I have a special place in my heart for Long Beach...I want to be a good partner"--words perhaps never spoken before by a newly-minted nom

— Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) June 7, 2016

"I'm a progressive who wants to get things done"--does that mark the end of "stronger together" or just a visit to the slogan vault?

— Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) June 7, 2016

@cathleendecker No. She said "stronger together" too.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 7, 2016

After the tweet! :) https://t.co/zkBpbaIian

— Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) June 7, 2016

Young Blacks Aren't Enamored of Hillary Clinton

Here's the age divide among black voters, at LAT, "Among some black voters, a generational divide on Clinton vs. Sanders":

The president of the New Frontier Democratic Club made his hard pitch for voting for Hillary Clinton inside the South Los Angeles community room.

She will lead the charge for racial equality and fair pay for women, Mike Davis told the two dozen black men and women last month. She will fight for black families, he said, stretching his hosannas for the former secretary of state for a good 10 minutes.

Can we just take a vote to endorse Hillary, someone in the crowd said. “Let’s vote,” Davis agreed.

James Scriven Sr., 79, raised his hand high along with everybody except for two holdouts: Scriven’s two sons, Tabari, 39, and James Jr., 41.

To their father’s mild displeasure, they were feeling the Bern.

 “He has new ideas that will help the economy and create jobs,” Tabari, of Inglewood, said of Bernie Sanders. “Young people are trying to better themselves through education, but student loans are standing in the way.”

With the California primary set for Tuesday, polls suggest the race between Clinton and Sanders has tightened, although she still appears to hold a lead.

A poll of black voters in California commissioned by the African American Voter Registration Education Participation Project conducted by Evitarus found that 71% of 800 likely voters surveyed supported Clinton. But among the black voters younger than 40, half said they would probably vote for Sanders, compared with 34% for Clinton. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

His sons’ support for Sanders did not sit well with the elder Scriven, who like many blacks has an enduring affection for Clinton’s husband.

“Bernie is not going to win,” Scriven said dismissively. “They will be voting for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.”

Despite her overall lead with blacks, Clinton did not neatly inherit the love many felt for Bill Clinton, who famously played a soulful saxophone on “The Arsenio Hall Show” in 1992 and whom novelist Toni Morrison later dubbed “the first black president.”

If significant numbers of younger African Americans vote for Sanders, that could play an important role in a primary that Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, said could be tight.

“There is no question that Sanders can win the California primary,” Schnur said. To do so, however, he would need an unusually large turnout of young voters,  including young minority voters like the Scriven brothers.

Keep reading.

John C. McManus on D-Day

His top five D-Day books, at WSJ, "FIVE BEST: John C. McManus.

Mentioned there, Jonathan Gawne, Spearheading D-Day: American Special Units in Normandy.

McManus's book is here, The Dead and Those About to Die: D-Day: The Big Red One at Omaha Beach.

Plus, Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day.

And thanks for shopping through my Amazon helps. It helps me afford my own reading obsession!

BONUS: At WSJ, from Stacy Meichtry and Marion Halftermeyer, "Last of Surviving D-Day Veterans Battle Time to Bear Witness."

Remembering D-Day: Then and Now

From Christopher Kelly, at RealClearHistory:

Photographer Robert Sargent, in landing craft on Omaha beach, captures US 1st Infantry Division wading into gunfire pic.twitter.com/y0VeTeiGQo

— WW2 Tweets from 1944 (@RealTimeWWII) June 6, 2016

Seventy-two years ago, on June 6, 1944, Allied troops waded ashore on the beaches of Normandy to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe. The night before, on June 5, American airborne forces had landed on the western flank of the invasion area near Sainte-Mère-Église, while British airborne forces secured the eastern flank and Pegasus Bridge. They jumped out of C-47 Dakota transport planes, through darkness and into glory. Some arrived by glider. Private John Steele of the 82nd Airborne landed on the steeple of the church at Sainte-Mère-Église. He managed to survive by playing dead.

Today a visitor to Sainte-Mère-Église can observe a mannequin representing Steele hanging from the church tower. Inside the church is a stained glass window of the Virgin Mary surrounded by American paratroopers.

On Utah Beach—all of the landing sites had code names—56-year-old Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (the oldest son of former president Teddy Roosevelt) landed about a mile away from his intended target. When asked whether to re-embark the 4th Infantry Division, he simply said, “We’ll start the war from right here!” Prior to the landing, Omaha Beach, also known as Bloody Omaha, had received an abbreviated naval bombardment from ships such as the battleship Texas lasting only 35 minutes. The bare stretches of beach offered no cover for the American invaders as German machine guns from fortified gun emplacements swept the beaches.

The U.S. Rangers, who had trained earlier on the cliffs of Dorset, scaled the sheer cliffs of Pointe Du Hoc while being shot at by German soldiers. Their mission was to destroy artillery pieces targeted on the landing zones. Their commander was Lt. Col. James Rudder. Unknown to Rudder’s Rangers, most of the artillery had already been moved by the Germans. They held their position for two days in the face of fierce counterattacks by the Germans' 916th Grenadiers. At the Ranger memorial at Pointe du Hoc, one can still see massive craters created by the Allied naval bombardment.

The Canadians stormed ashore on Juno Beach. James Doohan, who later played Scotty on Star Trek, was among the Canadian soldiers that day. Sword and Gold beaches were reserved for the British forces. A small contingent of French commandos joined the British on Sword and helped capture Ouistreham, destroying the casino there. One French officer who had previously lost at the tables was not sorry to see the casino in ruins that day.

With the D-Day landing, the Allies, in spite of the vast size of their armada and the relative openness of their societies, achieved a remarkable strategic surprise over the Germans. On June 6, Rommel was in Germany celebrating his wife's 50th birthday. Hitler was persisting in the mistaken belief that the Normandy invasion was a feint and that the real blow would be struck at Pas de Calais...

Keep reading.

Bernie Sanders Campaign Divided Over Next Step

Democratic pollster Doug Schoen had a great piece at the Wall Street Journal the other day, "Clinton Might Not Be the Nominee."

The scenario he lays out rests on Bernie winning California on Tuesday, which would give the Vermont socialist tremendous momentum heading into the Democrats' July convention in Philadelphia.

But Tuesday's Democrat primary's too close to call, and personally I'd be surprised if Bernie wins (although that would be great).

But we'll see. We'll see.

Meanwhile, here's WSJ, "Bernie Sanders Campaign Is Split Over Whether to Fight on Past Tuesday":

A split is emerging inside the Bernie Sanders campaign over whether the senator should stand down after Tuesday’s election contests and unite behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, or take the fight all the way to the July party convention and try to pry the nomination from her.

One camp might be dubbed the Sandersistas, the loyalists who helped guide Mr. Sanders’s political ascent in Vermont and the U.S. Congress and are loath to give up a fight that has far surpassed expectations. Another has ties not only to Mr. Sanders but to the broader interests of a Democratic Party pining to beat back the challenge from Republican Donald Trump and make gains in congressional elections.

Mr. Sanders in recent weeks has made clear he aims to take his candidacy past the elections on Tuesday, when California, New Jersey and four other states vote. But the debate within the campaign indicates that Mr. Sanders’s next move isn’t settled.

For now, Democratic officials, fund-raisers and operatives are getting impatient, calling on Mr. Sanders to quit the race and begin the work of unifying the party for the showdown with the Republican presumptive nominee.

Orin Kramer, a New York hedge-fund manager who has raised campaign funds for both President Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton, said with respect to Mr. Sanders’s future plans: “I would hope people would understand what a Trump presidency would mean and act accordingly—and ‘accordingly’ means quickly.”

A strong showing in New Jersey on Tuesday, before California results even come in, could help Mrs. Clinton reach the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Her total includes hundreds of superdelegates—party leaders and elected officials who can back either candidate. Mr. Sanders is hoping that defeating Mrs. Clinton in the most populous state later Tuesday might give superdelegates reason to drop her and get behind his candidacy. Those superdelegates have given no indication they will shift allegiances.

Even so, Mr. Sanders isn’t backing off. In an interview that aired Sunday on CNN, he stepped up an attack on Mrs. Clinton involving the Clinton Foundation. Echoing a critique made by Republicans, Mr. Sanders said he has “a problem” with the foundation accepting money from foreign sources during her service as secretary of state.

In a news conference Saturday in California, Mr. Sanders indicated he would battle for superdelegates all the way to the convention.

“The Democratic National Convention will be a contested convention,” he said...

More at the link.

And here's that CNN interview, with Jake Tapper, "Sanders sees 'conflict' in Clinton Foundation..."

Kim R. Holmes: Leftists Now Doing 'Mopping Up' Operations in Fundamental Transformation of America

I've been aggressively recommending Holmes's book, The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.

It turns out he's done an interview with Ginni Thomas of the Daily Caller, via Mark Tapscott, at Instapundit, "IS THE LEFT CLOSING IN FOR THE KILL ON AMERICA?"

If that strikes you as an unbalanced question, consider that the guy posing it is Kim Holmes, a former Assistant Secretary of State and a long-time foreign policy expert at the Heritage Foundation. Holmes new book – The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left – lays out all of the disturbing facts.

Holmes sat down with Ginni Thomas of the Daily Caller (yes, and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas) to explain why he believes the Left’s various contemporary outrages constitute “a mopping-up operation and they’re going in for the kill.” Rather than merely dismissing this as another despairing old conservative, you would do well to read and hear Holmes make his case.

Out June 28th: Gary J. Byrne, Crisis of Character

Folks were tweeting out Drudge Report's shout-out to the book yesterday.

See, Gary J. Byrne, Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate.

John C. McManus, The Dead and Those About to Die

I woke up at 6:30 and my newspaper wasn't here yet, so I laid in be and read John C. McManus's gripping account of the D-Day invasion, The Dead and Those About to Die: D-Day: The Big Red One at Omaha Beach.

He's also the author of The Americans at Normandy: The Summer of 1944 — The American War from the Normandy Beaches to Falaise, and The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II.

Tomorrow's the 72nd anniversary of the Normandy assault. The old-timers are quitting the scene. I recently looked up the remaining soldiers from the "Easy" Company from Band of Brothers, and just about all of them have passed away, including Major Richard Winters, who died in 2011.

I'm Endorsing Hillary Because I Don't Want to Be Killed

Lol.

It's the Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, via Instapundit, "My Endorsement for President of the United States."

Click through at the link. He's hilarious.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Cartoons."



Also, at Theo Spark's, "Cartoon Round Up..."

Cartoon Credit: Branco's Cartoons.

Radicalism and Identity Politics at Oberlin

It's not just Oberlin.

American academe is cancerous.

But Oberin's been in the news a lot this past few weeks, and it gives us a glimpse into our deeply troubled future.

From Robert Stacy McCain, at the Other McCain, "Oberlin College Is Decadent and Depraved":

Oberlin College Is Decadent and Depraved https://t.co/1jPM589FJo
cc @instapundit @JenniferKabbany @LegInsurrection pic.twitter.com/lHK88DCwsp

— FreeStacy (@Not_RSMcCain) June 2, 2016

It is impossible to exaggerate just how awful “elite” education in America has become, and difficult to explain why it is so bad. William F. Buckley Jr.first described the degenerate tendencies of modern elite education in his 1951 classic God and Man at Yale.

As I have summarized the book’s core insight, “Buckley saw that Yale, originally founded as a Christian school, had quietly abandoned Christianity and adopted a new religion, liberalism.” The outlines of this problem were clearly apparent to Buckley at Yale while Harry Truman was still president, yet academia did nothing to halt the decay of moral and intellectual standards, so that when university campuses erupted in riots in the 1960s — young radicals terrorizing their liberal elders — conservatives could say, “We told you so.” Liberals can never admit they’re wrong, so the lessons that should have been learned from the ’60s were ignored, and meanwhile the radicals were burrowing into the academic bureaucracy. Beginning in the 1990s, a series of purges swept through higher education. The humanities and social sciences were eviscerated and corrupted by the proponents of “critical theory.” If any student wished to learn anything about history without a Marxist filter, he had to do so by reading old books, as all the recent “scholarship” was devoted to reinterpreting the past through a prism of race/class/gender.

Meanwhile, in the name of “multiculturalism,” the curriculum was restructured, admissions criteria were altered and hiring policies were systematically biased in order to create a statistically acceptable representation of “diversity” on elite campuses. We should note, by the way, that the pursuit of “diversity” in admissions was never difficult at community colleges or second-tier state universities. It was only at the top-tier state schools (e.g., the University of Michigan and the University of California-Berkeley) and at highly selective private schools (e.g., the Ivy League) that admissions quotas became controversial. Many in academia accepted and promoted the idea that all ethnic groups had a “right” to be proportionately represented in the student body (and on the faculty) of universities, so that “underrepresentation” was considered proof of discrimination and social injustice. Equality of opportunity was not enough, equality of outcomes was demanded, and this egalitarian mission required the destruction of moral and intellectual standards in academia. Higher education has become a pervasively dishonest enterprise, a corrupt racket wherein parents, students and taxpayers are systematically swindled in order to provide lucrative employment for administrators and faculty whose income is dependent upon the illusion of “prestige” surrounding such schools as Oberlin College.

How bad is it at Oberlin? Nathan Heller of the New Yorker risked a visit to the lunatic campus and here are a few excerpts from his article...

Still more.

Why Donald Trump Was Inevitable

From political scientists Alan Abramowitz, Ron Rapoport, and Walter Stone, at the New York Review, "Why Trump Was Inevitable":

On banning Muslims, building a wall, and deporting immigrants, a majority of likely Republican voters support Trump https://t.co/fS4HEF7mr1

— NY Review of Books (@nybooks) June 2, 2016

Polling in February already showed that Trump would win a one-on-one contest against any other Republican candidate https://t.co/fS4HEEPLzt

— NY Review of Books (@nybooks) June 2, 2016

God this is depressing https://t.co/UY7uwnmniB pic.twitter.com/beQr2viDYA

— Michael Hobbes (@RottenInDenmark) June 3, 2016

One of the main reasons many political commentators were surprised by Donald Trump’s success in the primaries was his willingness to take extreme positions and use unusually harsh rhetoric in talking about immigration and related issues. Indeed, Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants and Muslims have been at the center of his campaign. And his pronouncements on these topics have greatly concerned many Republican leaders and elected officials who feared they would harm the party’s image and damage its electoral prospects. But how did his positions and comments play with Republican primary voters?

The clear answer is that they reflected the views of likely Republican voters extremely well. We asked a series of questions about Trump’s controversial proposals (banning Muslims from entering the US, building a wall on the Mexican border, and identifying and deporting illegal immigrants). On all three issues overwhelming majorities of likely Republican voters supported his positions: almost three quarters (73 percent) favored banning Muslims from entering the US, 90 percent favored identifying and deporting illegal immigrants as quickly as possible, and 85 percent favored building a wall on the Mexican border.

Trump supporters were more in favor of these proposals than supporters of other candidates, but as Figure 3 shows, large majorities of likely Republican voters who did not support Trump for the nomination did support Trump’s positions on his three central issues. Almost two thirds favored his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US and four fifths favored building the wall and identifying and deporting illegal immigrants. In fact 60 percent of non-Trump supporters took his position on all three of his distinctive issues.

As with electability, Trump’s positions on immigration, rather than limiting his appeal, actually gave him the potential to expand his electoral coalition.

Trump’s emergence on the political scene in the summer of 2015 was unprecedented. That someone with no office-holding experience and little previous involvement in the Republican Party could emerge as the GOP nominee seemed implausible. Media commentators, pundits, and academics continued to hold this position deep into the fall and winter, even at a time when national and state polls showed Trump to be a formidable candidate if not the inevitable nominee.

As our data here show, Donald Trump’s primary victories on his way to the nomination were not simply a result of a crowded field. Among our national sample of likely Republican primary voters, Trump was favored over every other Republican candidate in one-on-one matchups. Moreover, he was viewed as the most electable candidate by a majority of Republican primary voters, and on his distinctive issues involving immigration even those favoring other candidates overwhelmingly agreed with him.

Trump and his supporters were not in line with the opinions of a majority of Republican voters. As we showed in our earlier essay for Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball,* Trump supporters were quite distinct from other Republicans on issues like raising the minimum wage and raising taxes on upper-income households. Almost two thirds of Trump supporters favored raising taxes on incomes over $250,000 compared with only 41 percent of other Republicans, and while almost half of his supporters (48 percent) favored raising the minimum wage, that was true of less than a third of those supporting other candidates.

It is not happenstance that these are two issues on which Trump has said he may change his positions in order to “clarify” them. Whether he can maintain these more populist positions on economic issues without turning off more conservative Republican voters remains a central question for his campaign.

But regardless of how successful he is in unifying the Republican Party behind his candidacy in the future, Donald Trump was already very close to being the inevitable nominee in January 2016.

Laura Ingraham: Donald Trump Shouldn't Get Bogged Down Fighting the Media (VIDEO)

And remember, Ingraham's a huge Trump booster. But she's got a point. The presumptive nominee should stick to hammering his populist message. Tone down some of the sniping and fighting.

The only danger for Trump is for him to deviate too much from his signature combative brand, which is why many, many people support him. But still. He's got to find the balance.

Watch, from Hannity's last night: