Far Right Ramping Up Race-baiting On Baltimore (Video, Picture)

onservative reaction to the unrest in Baltimore sometimes looks like a page out of the old “silent majority” playbook. The right has so far blamed the crisis on unions, welfare, single-parent families, Democrats, the “animalism” of Baltimore residents, and President Obama. Is there a political agenda taking root to exploit this crisis in 2016?

If there is, the country is going to pay a huge price. To exploit urban riots as a wedge issue, as Richard Nixon did in 1968, is to pour gasoline on the flames. And there is reason to fear it is already happening. At the crudest level — as Larry Wilmore graphically demonstrated on Comedy Central last night — we have the spectacle of Fox News commentators falling over themselves to repeat the name of one particular Baltimore gang, the Black Guerrilla Family, over and over. (Such other Baltimore gang names as the Bloods and the Crips just don’t cut it anymore if you are in the scaring-whites business.) At the more serious level, we have a lead columnist in this morning’s New York Post all but wishing that New York might become “another Baltimore” so that blame can be placed on its Democratic mayor and the Democrats in general.

Then we have Rand Paul, who in an interview with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham yesterday, joked that he was “glad the train didn’t stop” in Baltimore when he passed through it this week. Remember Rand Paul? This is the one Republican presidential hopeful who has been making a point of reaching out to African-Americans. He doesn’t seem to realize that not stopping in Baltimore is exactly the problem for him and his peers. Speaking as someone who has family there and has spent good chunks of the past four years there, I can join the many who attest that any national politician who didn’t know the despair in this city, 40 miles from Washington, was simply in a bubble, sleepwalking, or didn’t give a damn.

There is no justification for criminal behavior in Baltimore or anywhere else, even with a provocation as horrific as the homicidal violence inflicted on Freddie Gray. But there is also no justification for cynical politicians using that outbreak of criminality to drum up votes. Particularly if you have no ideas for ameliorating what the president rightly calls a “slow-rolling crisis.” What you’ll find this week if you look at received conservative opinion is the old saw that more force, more police, more implementation of the police tactics of Rudy Giuliani (not to mention his ace police commissioner Bernard Kerik) is the first step toward urban tranquility. What you won’t find is any acknowledgment of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, or the most salient statistic in the whole Baltimore story: the Baltimore Sun’s investigative discovery that since 2011 alone the city’s police department has paid out $5.7 million to settle or resolve 102 incidents, many of them involving excessive force.   

The ultimate goal of such conservative point-scoring in this tragedy may indeed be to drive a wedge between Hillary Clinton and those white Democratic and independent voters who defected from Obama but who might be inclined to vote for her. And those are white voters Clinton may need, after all, to make up any shortfall in enthusiasm and turnout among the young and minority voters who were so central to Obama’s two national victories. Will Clinton stand up — and stand up strongly — against such race-baiting? Neither she nor Bill Clinton acquitted themselves well in this regard in 2008. It means as much for America as it does for her campaign that she muster courage and leadership in the slog to 2016.

Following arguments on same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court this week, some commentators expect a ruling that will, at least to some extent, recognize its constitutionality — and provide GOP presidential hopefuls a way to sidestep the issue. Assuming the Court rules as expected, could opposition to same-sex marriage be retired as a perennial GOP rallying cry?

onservative reaction to the unrest in Baltimore sometimes looks like a page out of the old “silent majority” playbook. The right has so far blamed the crisis on unions, welfare, single-parent families, Democrats, the “animalism” of Baltimore residents, and President Obama. Is there a political agenda taking root to exploit this crisis in 2016?

If there is, the country is going to pay a huge price. To exploit urban riots as a wedge issue, as Richard Nixon did in 1968, is to pour gasoline on the flames. And there is reason to fear it is already happening. At the crudest level — as Larry Wilmore graphically demonstrated on Comedy Central last night — we have the spectacle of Fox News commentators falling over themselves to repeat the name of one particular Baltimore gang, the Black Guerrilla Family, over and over. (Such other Baltimore gang names as the Bloods and the Crips just don’t cut it anymore if you are in the scaring-whites business.) At the more serious level, we have a lead columnist in this morning’s New York Post all but wishing that New York might become “another Baltimore” so that blame can be placed on its Democratic mayor and the Democrats in general.

Then we have Rand Paul, who in an interview with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham yesterday, joked that he was “glad the train didn’t stop” in Baltimore when he passed through it this week. Remember Rand Paul? This is the one Republican presidential hopeful who has been making a point of reaching out to African-Americans. He doesn’t seem to realize that not stopping in Baltimore is exactly the problem for him and his peers. Speaking as someone who has family there and has spent good chunks of the past four years there, I can join the many who attest that any national politician who didn’t know the despair in this city, 40 miles from Washington, was simply in a bubble, sleepwalking, or didn’t give a damn.

There is no justification for criminal behavior in Baltimore or anywhere else, even with a provocation as horrific as the homicidal violence inflicted on Freddie Gray. But there is also no justification for cynical politicians using that outbreak of criminality to drum up votes. Particularly if you have no ideas for ameliorating what the president rightly calls a “slow-rolling crisis.” What you’ll find this week if you look at received conservative opinion is the old saw that more force, more police, more implementation of the police tactics of Rudy Giuliani (not to mention his ace police commissioner Bernard Kerik) is the first step toward urban tranquility. What you won’t find is any acknowledgment of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, or the most salient statistic in the whole Baltimore story: the Baltimore Sun’s investigative discovery that since 2011 alone the city’s police department has paid out $5.7 million to settle or resolve 102 incidents, many of them involving excessive force.   

The ultimate goal of such conservative point-scoring in this tragedy may indeed be to drive a wedge between Hillary Clinton and those white Democratic and independent voters who defected from Obama but who might be inclined to vote for her. And those are white voters Clinton may need, after all, to make up any shortfall in enthusiasm and turnout among the young and minority voters who were so central to Obama’s two national victories. Will Clinton stand up — and stand up strongly — against such race-baiting? Neither she nor Bill Clinton acquitted themselves well in this regard in 2008. It means as much for America as it does for her campaign that she muster courage and leadership in the slog to 2016.

Following arguments on same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court this week, some commentators expect a ruling that will, at least to some extent, recognize its constitutionality — and provide GOP presidential hopefuls a way to sidestep the issue. Assuming the Court rules as expected, could opposition to same-sex marriage be retired as a perennial GOP rallying cry?        onservative reaction to the unrest in Baltimore sometimes looks like a page out of the old “silent majority” playbook. The right has so far blamed the crisis on unions, welfare, single-parent families, Democrats, the “animalism” of Baltimore residents, and President Obama. Is there a political agenda taking root to exploit this crisis in 2016?

If there is, the country is going to pay a huge price. To exploit urban riots as a wedge issue, as Richard Nixon did in 1968, is to pour gasoline on the flames. And there is reason to fear it is already happening. At the crudest level — as Larry Wilmore graphically demonstrated on Comedy Central last night — we have the spectacle of Fox News commentators falling over themselves to repeat the name of one particular Baltimore gang, the Black Guerrilla Family, over and over. (Such other Baltimore gang names as the Bloods and the Crips just don’t cut it anymore if you are in the scaring-whites business.) At the more serious level, we have a lead columnist in this morning’s New York Post all but wishing that New York might become “another Baltimore” so that blame can be placed on its Democratic mayor and the Democrats in general.

Then we have Rand Paul, who in an interview with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham yesterday, joked that he was “glad the train didn’t stop” in Baltimore when he passed through it this week. Remember Rand Paul? This is the one Republican presidential hopeful who has been making a point of reaching out to African-Americans. He doesn’t seem to realize that not stopping in Baltimore is exactly the problem for him and his peers. Speaking as someone who has family there and has spent good chunks of the past four years there, I can join the many who attest that any national politician who didn’t know the despair in this city, 40 miles from Washington, was simply in a bubble, sleepwalking, or didn’t give a damn.

There is no justification for criminal behavior in Baltimore or anywhere else, even with a provocation as horrific as the homicidal violence inflicted on Freddie Gray. But there is also no justification for cynical politicians using that outbreak of criminality to drum up votes. Particularly if you have no ideas for ameliorating what the president rightly calls a “slow-rolling crisis.” What you’ll find this week if you look at received conservative opinion is the old saw that more force, more police, more implementation of the police tactics of Rudy Giuliani (not to mention his ace police commissioner Bernard Kerik) is the first step toward urban tranquility. What you won’t find is any acknowledgment of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, or the most salient statistic in the whole Baltimore story: the Baltimore Sun’s investigative discovery that since 2011 alone the city’s police department has paid out $5.7 million to settle or resolve 102 incidents, many of them involving excessive force.   

The ultimate goal of such conservative point-scoring in this tragedy may indeed be to drive a wedge between Hillary Clinton and those white Democratic and independent voters who defected from Obama but who might be inclined to vote for her. And those are white voters Clinton may need, after all, to make up any shortfall in enthusiasm and turnout among the young and minority voters who were so central to Obama’s two national victories. Will Clinton stand up — and stand up strongly — against such race-baiting? Neither she nor Bill Clinton acquitted themselves well in this regard in 2008. It means as much for America as it does for her campaign that she muster courage and leadership in the slog to 2016.

Following arguments on same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court this week, some commentators expect a ruling that will, at least to some extent, recognize its constitutionality — and provide GOP presidential hopefuls a way to sidestep the issue. Assuming the Court rules as expected, could opposition to same-sex marriage be retired as a perennial GOP rallying cry?

onservative reaction to the unrest in Baltimore sometimes looks like a page out of the old “silent majority” playbook. The right has so far blamed the crisis on unions, welfare, single-parent families, Democrats, the “animalism” of Baltimore residents, and President Obama. Is there a political agenda taking root to exploit this crisis in 2016?

If there is, the country is going to pay a huge price. To exploit urban riots as a wedge issue, as Richard Nixon did in 1968, is to pour gasoline on the flames. And there is reason to fear it is already happening. At the crudest level — as Larry Wilmore graphically demonstrated on Comedy Central last night — we have the spectacle of Fox News commentators falling over themselves to repeat the name of one particular Baltimore gang, the Black Guerrilla Family, over and over. (Such other Baltimore gang names as the Bloods and the Crips just don’t cut it anymore if you are in the scaring-whites business.) At the more serious level, we have a lead columnist in this morning’s New York Post all but wishing that New York might become “another Baltimore” so that blame can be placed on its Democratic mayor and the Democrats in general.

Then we have Rand Paul, who in an interview with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham yesterday, joked that he was “glad the train didn’t stop” in Baltimore when he passed through it this week. Remember Rand Paul? This is the one Republican presidential hopeful who has been making a point of reaching out to African-Americans. He doesn’t seem to realize that not stopping in Baltimore is exactly the problem for him and his peers. Speaking as someone who has family there and has spent good chunks of the past four years there, I can join the many who attest that any national politician who didn’t know the despair in this city, 40 miles from Washington, was simply in a bubble, sleepwalking, or didn’t give a damn.

There is no justification for criminal behavior in Baltimore or anywhere else, even with a provocation as horrific as the homicidal violence inflicted on Freddie Gray. But there is also no justification for cynical politicians using that outbreak of criminality to drum up votes. Particularly if you have no ideas for ameliorating what the president rightly calls a “slow-rolling crisis.” What you’ll find this week if you look at received conservative opinion is the old saw that more force, more police, more implementation of the police tactics of Rudy Giuliani (not to mention his ace police commissioner Bernard Kerik) is the first step toward urban tranquility. What you won’t find is any acknowledgment of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, or the most salient statistic in the whole Baltimore story: the Baltimore Sun’s investigative discovery that since 2011 alone the city’s police department has paid out $5.7 million to settle or resolve 102 incidents, many of them involving excessive force.   

The ultimate goal of such conservative point-scoring in this tragedy may indeed be to drive a wedge between Hillary Clinton and those white Democratic and independent voters who defected from Obama but who might be inclined to vote for her. And those are white voters Clinton may need, after all, to make up any shortfall in enthusiasm and turnout among the young and minority voters who were so central to Obama’s two national victories. Will Clinton stand up — and stand up strongly — against such race-baiting? Neither she nor Bill Clinton acquitted themselves well in this regard in 2008. It means as much for America as it does for her campaign that she muster courage and leadership in the slog to 2016.

Following arguments on same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court this week, some commentators expect a ruling that will, at least to some extent, recognize its constitutionality — and provide GOP presidential hopefuls a way to sidestep the issue. Assuming the Court rules as expected, could opposition to same-sex marriage be retired as a perennial GOP rallying cry?        onservative reaction to the unrest in Baltimore sometimes looks like a page out of the old “silent majority” playbook. The right has so far blamed the crisis on unions, welfare, single-parent families, Democrats, the “animalism” of Baltimore residents, and President Obama. Is there a political agenda taking root to exploit this crisis in 2016?

If there is, the country is going to pay a huge price. To exploit urban riots as a wedge issue, as Richard Nixon did in 1968, is to pour gasoline on the flames. And there is reason to fear it is already happening. At the crudest level — as Larry Wilmore graphically demonstrated on Comedy Central last night — we have the spectacle of Fox News commentators falling over themselves to repeat the name of one particular Baltimore gang, the Black Guerrilla Family, over and over. (Such other Baltimore gang names as the Bloods and the Crips just don’t cut it anymore if you are in the scaring-whites business.) At the more serious level, we have a lead columnist in this morning’s New York Post all but wishing that New York might become “another Baltimore” so that blame can be placed on its Democratic mayor and the Democrats in general.

Then we have Rand Paul, who in an interview with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham yesterday, joked that he was “glad the train didn’t stop” in Baltimore when he passed through it this week. Remember Rand Paul? This is the one Republican presidential hopeful who has been making a point of reaching out to African-Americans. He doesn’t seem to realize that not stopping in Baltimore is exactly the problem for him and his peers. Speaking as someone who has family there and has spent good chunks of the past four years there, I can join the many who attest that any national politician who didn’t know the despair in this city, 40 miles from Washington, was simply in a bubble, sleepwalking, or didn’t give a damn.

There is no justification for criminal behavior in Baltimore or anywhere else, even with a provocation as horrific as the homicidal violence inflicted on Freddie Gray. But there is also no justification for cynical politicians using that outbreak of criminality to drum up votes. Particularly if you have no ideas for ameliorating what the president rightly calls a “slow-rolling crisis.” What you’ll find this week if you look at received conservative opinion is the old saw that more force, more police, more implementation of the police tactics of Rudy Giuliani (not to mention his ace police commissioner Bernard Kerik) is the first step toward urban tranquility. What you won’t find is any acknowledgment of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, or the most salient statistic in the whole Baltimore story: the Baltimore Sun’s investigative discovery that since 2011 alone the city’s police department has paid out $5.7 million to settle or resolve 102 incidents, many of them involving excessive force.   

The ultimate goal of such conservative point-scoring in this tragedy may indeed be to drive a wedge between Hillary Clinton and those white Democratic and independent voters who defected from Obama but who might be inclined to vote for her. And those are white voters Clinton may need, after all, to make up any shortfall in enthusiasm and turnout among the young and minority voters who were so central to Obama’s two national victories. Will Clinton stand up — and stand up strongly — against such race-baiting? Neither she nor Bill Clinton acquitted themselves well in this regard in 2008. It means as much for America as it does for her campaign that she muster courage and leadership in the slog to 2016.

Following arguments on same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court this week, some commentators expect a ruling that will, at least to some extent, recognize its constitutionality — and provide GOP presidential hopefuls a way to sidestep the issue. Assuming the Court rules as expected, could opposition to same-sex marriage be retired as a perennial GOP rallying cry?onservative reaction to the unrest in Baltimore sometimes looks like a page out of the old “silent majority” playbook. The right has so far blamed the crisis on unions, welfare, single-parent families, Democrats, the “animalism” of Baltimore residents, and President Obama. Is there a political agenda taking root to exploit this crisis in 2016?

If there is, the country is going to pay a huge price. To exploit urban riots as a wedge issue, as Richard Nixon did in 1968, is to pour gasoline on the flames. And there is reason to fear it is already happening. At the crudest level — as Larry Wilmore graphically demonstrated on Comedy Central last night — we have the spectacle of Fox News commentators falling over themselves to repeat the name of one particular Baltimore gang, the Black Guerrilla Family, over and over. (Such other Baltimore gang names as the Bloods and the Crips just don’t cut it anymore if you are in the scaring-whites business.) At the more serious level, we have a lead columnist in this morning’s New York Post all but wishing that New York might become “another Baltimore” so that blame can be placed on its Democratic mayor and the Democrats in general.

Then we have Rand Paul, who in an interview with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham yesterday, joked that he was “glad the train didn’t stop” in Baltimore when he passed through it this week. Remember Rand Paul? This is the one Republican presidential hopeful who has been making a point of reaching out to African-Americans. He doesn’t seem to realize that not stopping in Baltimore is exactly the problem for him and his peers. Speaking as someone who has family there and has spent good chunks of the past four years there, I can join the many who attest that any national politician who didn’t know the despair in this city, 40 miles from Washington, was simply in a bubble, sleepwalking, or didn’t give a damn.

There is no justification for criminal behavior in Baltimore or anywhere else, even with a provocation as horrific as the homicidal violence inflicted on Freddie Gray. But there is also no justification for cynical politicians using that outbreak of criminality to drum up votes. Particularly if you have no ideas for ameliorating what the president rightly calls a “slow-rolling crisis.” What you’ll find this week if you look at received conservative opinion is the old saw that more force, more police, more implementation of the police tactics of Rudy Giuliani (not to mention his ace police commissioner Bernard Kerik) is the first step toward urban tranquility. What you won’t find is any acknowledgment of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, or the most salient statistic in the whole Baltimore story: the Baltimore Sun’s investigative discovery that since 2011 alone the city’s police department has paid out $5.7 million to settle or resolve 102 incidents, many of them involving excessive force.   

The ultimate goal of such conservative point-scoring in this tragedy may indeed be to drive a wedge between Hillary Clinton and those white Democratic and independent voters who defected from Obama but who might be inclined to vote for her. And those are white voters Clinton may need, after all, to make up any shortfall in enthusiasm and turnout among the young and minority voters who were so central to Obama’s two national victories. Will Clinton stand up — and stand up strongly — against such race-baiting? Neither she nor Bill Clinton acquitted themselves well in this regard in 2008. It means as much for America as it does for her campaign that she muster courage and leadership in the slog to 2016.

Following arguments on same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court this week, some commentators expect a ruling that will, at least to some extent, recognize its constitutionality — and provide GOP presidential hopefuls a way to sidestep the issue. Assuming the Court rules as expected, could opposition to same-sex marriage be retired as a perennial GOP rallying cry?onservative reaction to the unrest in Baltimore sometimes looks like a page out of the old “silent majority” playbook. The right has so far blamed the crisis on unions, welfare, single-parent families, Democrats, the “animalism” of Baltimore residents, and President Obama. Is there a political agenda taking root to exploit this crisis in 2016?

If there is, the country is going to pay a huge price. To exploit urban riots as a wedge issue, as Richard Nixon did in 1968, is to pour gasoline on the flames. And there is reason to fear it is already happening. At the crudest level — as Larry Wilmore graphically demonstrated on Comedy Central last night — we have the spectacle of Fox News commentators falling over themselves to repeat the name of one particular Baltimore gang, the Black Guerrilla Family, over and over. (Such other Baltimore gang names as the Bloods and the Crips just don’t cut it anymore if you are in the scaring-whites business.) At the more serious level, we have a lead columnist in this morning’s New York Post all but wishing that New York might become “another Baltimore” so that blame can be placed on its Democratic mayor and the Democrats in general.

Then we have Rand Paul, who in an interview with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham yesterday, joked that he was “glad the train didn’t stop” in Baltimore when he passed through it this week. Remember Rand Paul? This is the one Republican presidential hopeful who has been making a point of reaching out to African-Americans. He doesn’t seem to realize that not stopping in Baltimore is exactly the problem for him and his peers. Speaking as someone who has family there and has spent good chunks of the past four years there, I can join the many who attest that any national politician who didn’t know the despair in this city, 40 miles from Washington, was simply in a bubble, sleepwalking, or didn’t give a damn.

There is no justification for criminal behavior in Baltimore or anywhere else, even with a provocation as horrific as the homicidal violence inflicted on Freddie Gray. But there is also no justification for cynical politicians using that outbreak of criminality to drum up votes. Particularly if you have no ideas for ameliorating what the president rightly calls a “slow-rolling crisis.” What you’ll find this week if you look at received conservative opinion is the old saw that more force, more police, more implementation of the police tactics of Rudy Giuliani (not to mention his ace police commissioner Bernard Kerik) is the first step toward urban tranquility. What you won’t find is any acknowledgment of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, or the most salient statistic in the whole Baltimore story: the Baltimore Sun’s investigative discovery that since 2011 alone the city’s police department has paid out $5.7 million to settle or resolve 102 incidents, many of them involving excessive force.   

The ultimate goal of such conservative point-scoring in this tragedy may indeed be to drive a wedge between Hillary Clinton and those white Democratic and independent voters who defected from Obama but who might be inclined to vote for her. And those are white voters Clinton may need, after all, to make up any shortfall in enthusiasm and turnout among the young and minority voters who were so central to Obama’s two national victories. Will Clinton stand up — and stand up strongly — against such race-baiting? Neither she nor Bill Clinton acquitted themselves well in this regard in 2008. It means as much for America as it does for her campaign that she muster courage and leadership in the slog to 2016.

Following arguments on same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court this week, some commentators expect a ruling that will, at least to some extent, recognize its constitutionality — and provide GOP presidential hopefuls a way to sidestep the issue. Assuming the Court rules as expected, could opposition to same-sex marriage be retired as a perennial GOP rallying cry?        onservative reaction to the unrest in Baltimore sometimes looks like a page out of the old “silent majority” playbook. The right has so far blamed the crisis on unions, welfare, single-parent families, Democrats, the “animalism” of Baltimore residents, and President Obama. Is there a political agenda taking root to exploit this crisis in 2016?

If there is, the country is going to pay a huge price. To exploit urban riots as a wedge issue, as Richard Nixon did in 1968, is to pour gasoline on the flames. And there is reason to fear it is already happening. At the crudest level — as Larry Wilmore graphically demonstrated on Comedy Central last night — we have the spectacle of Fox News commentators falling over themselves to repeat the name of one particular Baltimore gang, the Black Guerrilla Family, over and over. (Such other Baltimore gang names as the Bloods and the Crips just don’t cut it anymore if you are in the scaring-whites business.) At the more serious level, we have a lead columnist in this morning’s New York Post all but wishing that New York might become “another Baltimore” so that blame can be placed on its Democratic mayor and the Democrats in general.

Then we have Rand Paul, who in an interview with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham yesterday, joked that he was “glad the train didn’t stop” in Baltimore when he passed through it this week. Remember Rand Paul? This is the one Republican presidential hopeful who has been making a point of reaching out to African-Americans. He doesn’t seem to realize that not stopping in Baltimore is exactly the problem for him and his peers. Speaking as someone who has family there and has spent good chunks of the past four years there, I can join the many who attest that any national politician who didn’t know the despair in this city, 40 miles from Washington, was simply in a bubble, sleepwalking, or didn’t give a damn.

There is no justification for criminal behavior in Baltimore or anywhere else, even with a provocation as horrific as the homicidal violence inflicted on Freddie Gray. But there is also no justification for cynical politicians using that outbreak of criminality to drum up votes. Particularly if you have no ideas for ameliorating what the president rightly calls a “slow-rolling crisis.” What you’ll find this week if you look at received conservative opinion is the old saw that more force, more police, more implementation of the police tactics of Rudy Giuliani (not to mention his ace police commissioner Bernard Kerik) is the first step toward urban tranquility. What you won’t find is any acknowledgment of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, or the most salient statistic in the whole Baltimore story: the Baltimore Sun’s investigative discovery that since 2011 alone the city’s police department has paid out $5.7 million to settle or resolve 102 incidents, many of them involving excessive force.   

The ultimate goal of such conservative point-scoring in this tragedy may indeed be to drive a wedge between Hillary Clinton and those white Democratic and independent voters who defected from Obama but who might be inclined to vote for her. And those are white voters Clinton may need, after all, to make up any shortfall in enthusiasm and turnout among the young and minority voters who were so central to Obama’s two national victories. Will Clinton stand up — and stand up strongly — against such race-baiting? Neither she nor Bill Clinton acquitted themselves well in this regard in 2008. It means as much for America as it does for her campaign that she muster courage and leadership in the slog to 2016.

Following arguments on same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court this week, some commentators expect a ruling that will, at least to some extent, recognize its constitutionality — and provide GOP presidential hopefuls a way to sidestep the issue. Assuming the Court rules as expected, could opposition to same-sex marriage be retired as a perennial GOP rallying cry?   MOREHERE