So Senate Republicans have declared they will not consider any Obama Supreme Court nominee, and they will be very careful to not recess for the rest of the year. They aren’t even going to go through the motions.

So if another Democrat moves into the White House in January, what will be their excuse then?

See also Charles Pierce and John Cole.

UPDATED: Please read this more recent post on the Hillary Victory Fund, which I believe clarifies the issues quite a bit.

Executive Summary:  In brief, here’s how it works: The Hillary Victory Fund is a joint fundraising committee for Hillary for America, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic committees of 32 states and Puerto Rico. It was set up in such a way that the Clinton campaign and DNC could ask wealthy backers to give the $356,100 maximum annual contribution twice: once in 2015 and again this year.

The money passes through the state party organizations, which do benefit, but the Clinton campaign gets “kickbacks” that she can use as direct campaign contributions without the strings usually attacked to large contributions. And the DNC, which was in debt late last year, has received nearly $2 million of those dollars so far. This explains why Debbie Wasserman Schultz created a debate schedule that effectively denied national exposure to Clinton challengers.

Yes, this is perfectly legal. But, folks, this election is rigged. Legally rigged, perhaps, but rigged.

_________

Last year, reports say the DNC was starved for cash and falling way behind the RNC in fundraising. Here is an AP story from August 2015:

“Federal Election Commission reports tell a disappointing story for the party: The DNC collected $36.5 million in the first six months of the year and had almost no money in special accounts, including one designated for its convention. It had about $7.6 million in available cash and $6.2 million in debts and loans.

“The Republican National Committee, coming out of years in the red, posted $63 million in receipts through June, leaving it with $16.7 million cash on hand and $1.8 million in debts and loans. Party fundraising dominance has flipped: At this point before the 2012 election, the DNC was outpacing the RNC.”

When President Obama was elected in 2008 he instructed the DNC that they were not to accept PAC money or money from lobbyists. It was recently revealed that some time last year, Debbie Wasserman Schultz reversed that policy.

Here’s the kicker: Recently a lot of Clinton supporters have been crowing that Hillary Clinton has been raising money for down-ticket candidates, and Bernie Sanders has not. This seemed odd to me; normally presidential contenders don’t funnel money down-ticket until after they’ve locked up the nomination. But it appears Hillary Clinton’s generosity isn’t coming from altruism; the Clinton Victory Fund is directly benefiting from DWS’s change of policy in ways that the Sanders campaign is not.

The Clinton Victory Fund has made fund-raising pacts with 33 state Democratic organizations that benefit both the states and the Clinton campaign. The CVF is raising money for the Democratic Party, not the Clinton campaign. Major donors can give hundreds of thousands of dollars to the CVF, and from there the money is passed on to the state Democratic parties. After passing through the states, some of this money is kicked back to the DNC and to the Clinton campaign. The advantage to Clinton is that the money has been “laundered” in a way that she can use it as if it were a direct contribution. The strings that normally go with Super PAC money do not apply.

From Bloomberg News, February 3:

“Clinton’s move last year to lock in fundraising alliances with 33 state Democratic parties has already added $26.9 million to the mountain of hard money she has raised so far, a Bloomberg analysis of Federal Election Commission filings shows. Bernie Sanders, her competitor for the nomination, has inked one such deal, netting a total of $1,000.
The agreements, thanks to a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision, make it possible for major donors to give hundreds of thousands of dollars in hard money to a candidacy, amounts far greater than the $2,700 limit on contributions directly to a campaign.

“At least 24 donors have given $300,000 or more to the fundraising vehicle, known as the Hillary Victory Fund, including Haim and Cheryl Saban, George Soros and Daniel Abraham, longtime donors to both Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political campaigns and the Clinton Foundation. The only other way to make such large contributions is through outside groups, such as super-PACs, which can take unlimited donations but can’t coordinate with the candidate.

“Under the agreements, the first $2,700 of a contribution goes straight to Clinton’s campaign, the next $33,400 to the Democratic National Committee, and the remainder is split evenly across the 33 often cash-strapped state committees. Unlike super-PAC donations, the money can be spent to directly support her campaign on anything from get-out-the-vote efforts to TV ads”

In other words, this enables Clinton to launder Super-PAC money in a way that allows her to use the money as if it were direct contributions to her campaign. And I’m sure Hillary Clinton wants you to know this is perfectly legal. And the national and state Democratic Party campaigns now have millions of dollars they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

See also the Washington Post, February 20:

“Establishing a victory fund the year before the election allowed the Clinton campaign and DNC to ask wealthy backers to give the $356,100 maximum annual contribution twice: once in 2015 and again this year. …

“…So far, the state parties have served only as a pass-through for their share of the funds. Campaign finance records show that nearly $2 million in donations to the fund initially routed last year to individual state party accounts was immediately transferred to the DNC, which is laboring to pay off millions of dollars in debt.”

But it appears this was a deal between DWS and HRC, which explains Wasserman Schulz’s obvious sabotage of primary challengers to Clinton, in particular the reluctance to schedule debates that might allow America to get a good look at those challengers.

In recent weeks Hillary Clinton has been wrapping herself in President Obama’s record. She promises to build on his accomplishments, and accusations that Bernie Sanders has been hostile to the Obama Administration (not true) have been swamping social media. Rather ironic that it’s Clinton who is responsible for dismantling Obama’s Super PAC policy.

(H/t Our Doug.)

I regret to say that not all of the derp is on the Republican side. For example, I’m seeing a lot of good ol’ irrational exuberance among Sanders supporters who believe he will win the nomination based on Sanders’s being ahead in some national polls. But the primary calendar and math are weighted against him. There is still a little room for hope, but very little.

I took some time to look at the primary calendar and the current polls. Very basically, most of the early primaries are in more conservatives states that are likely to vote for Clinton. IF Clinton were to sweep all the primaries and caucuses between now and March 15, she’ll have the nomination on March 15. In fact, there’s room for her to lose some smaller state primaries and still win the nomination by March 15. And if she’s almost there on March 15, she’ll likely have it by March 30.

On the other hand, if a Sanders nomination is still a mathematical possibility at the end of March, then the primary map moves into more states that will likely be more favorable to him.

This is probably why the Clinton campaign is throwing all the mud it can at Sanders. She needs to stop him before April.

Clinton and her supporters are twisting and mud-slinging with reckless abandon, pretty much lying about Sanders as fast as they can move their lips. I’ll get to the derp on the Clinton side in a moment, but you’ve probably noticed that Clinton is running the same kind of ugly, dirty scorched-earth campaign against Sanders that she ran against Obama in 2008. It sometimes sounds as if she’s just re-writing her old talking points against Obama to use on Sanders.

I’m seeing a lot of nastiness coming from supporters of both candidates, but the Sanders campaign itself has not been particularly harsh toward Clinton. He criticizes her on issues, but all along Sanders has refused to take cheap shots against Clinton on matters such as the email non-scandal. Clinton, however, appears to have no scruples whatsoever in what she’ll say about Sanders.

Looking at the March primaries: Right now, I understand, he is favored — sometimes narrowly — in Colorado, Minnesota and (of course) Vermont, March 1; Kansas and Nebraska, March 5; and Maine, March 6. He is losing narrowly in Massachusetts (March 1), but not by so much that it’s completely out of reach. He needs to win a big majority of delegates from those states to stay in the running, I believe.

But chances are he’s going to be slaughtered, so to speak, in South Carolina this week. Going into Super Tuesday (March 1), that’s not going to help. I’m running into Sanders supporters who don’t get that it may not matter if Sanders is beating the socks off Clinton in West Virginia, for example, because West Virginia doesn’t vote until May.  Probably it will be over by then.

But now let’s talk about derp among the Clintonistas. Hillary Clinton has some utterly and passionately devoted supporters, many of them older women, who appear to devoutly wish for a Clinton win because, in their heads, that would be paypack for all the sleights and obstacles and disrespect they’ve suffered through the years.

And that’s why they want her to win. Issues? Income inequality? Election reform? The corruption (or, as Jeffrey Feldman calls it, “clientelism“) in government? Nope, not on their radar. She’s going to do so much for women! they gush. (If you point out that Sanders is a feminist, also, they don’t want to hear about it. A Sanders win would deny them their symbolic victory.)

This is from my man Feldman:

While not guilty of corruption in the explicit sense of quid pro quo, Clinton not only participates in, but actively cultivates patron-client relationships with Wall Street. In the clientelism that Clinton embraces and defends, she claims the American public to be the sole beneficiary via her representation, but she refuses to acknowledge how Wall St. benefits.  And yet, in a patron-client system, both the patron and the client always benefit. Always. That is how it works. In this case: Clinton gets resources to run for office, while Wall Street gets the guarantee that the candidate they gave so much money in one place (e.g., a speech) will tacitly if not explicitly support their views of economic reality in another place (e.g., The White House). It is a long term strategy for both. …

…Secretary Clinton, for all the good work that she has done, has built a career on the belief that she can control these patron-client relationships to benefit the powerless. Yet, she has done so by entering into reciprocal relationships with the powerful–who gain no advantage by legislation that helps the powerless.

To have such powerful clients as Goldman Sachs, who secure their relationships with unfathomably large payments for symbolic services–is to accept both the benefits and the limits of that clientelism.

Basically, Clinton functions by mediating between the interests of her patrons and those of the voters. If she can tweak a few bennies for the common folks without taking so much away from the Goldman Sachs crowd that they turn off the cash flow, she considers herself a great success. And apparently her fans think that’s just dandy.

And there lie the boundaries she will not cross; it’s why we can’t have nice things.

She’ll defend Obamacare as it is, probably, but she’s not going to try to make it better to cover those sill not covered. They both talk about Wall Street reform, but if you look at their proposals, Clinton seems fine with continuing to let the foxes run the henhouse. And so on. Sanders also has proposed more sweeping changes to the criminal justice system than Clinton has.  See also “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.”

And there we are. I believe I’ve already argued why the “Hillary is more electable” argument is bogus, and indeed I think I’m seeing a bit less of people trying to shame Sanders supporters into voting for Clinton so Donald Trump won’t be President. But they haven’t entirely given up on it.

Now, however, she’s spreading a rumor that Sanders is an enemy of Barack Obama and has dissed the POTUS on many occasion. None of the things he allegedly (but did not) say about Obama come close to the vile things Clinton said in 2008, but never mind. If enough people believe the lie it will help keep black voters from defecting to Sanders in South Carolina.

Yeah, lots of derp.

Better late than never.

A federal grand jury in Nevada indicted Cliven Bundy and four others on 16 charges related to an armed standoff near his ranch in 2014 over unpaid grazing fees.

Sounds like ol’ Cliven shoulda stayed home on the ranch.

Cliven Bundy is accused of leading “a massive armed assault” of 200 followers to stop federal law agents who were rounding up about 400 of Bundy’s cattle on federal lands in April 2014, according to documents filed by U.S. attorneys Wednesday.

Upon learning of the roundup, Bundy said he was “ready to do battle,” with the Bureau of Land Management and that he would “do whatever it takes” to protect his property, according to documents.

The others allegedly organized and recruited followers and acted as leaders in the incident.

Meanwhile, back at the bird sanctuary — it’s going to be a sad spring for Oregon birdwatchers, as forensic examination and cleanup of the Malheur Wildlife Preserve is expected to take several weeks.  Among the weirder discoveries, the occupiers left a “trench of human feces” on or adjacent to a Native American burial ground.

Also, excellent read: Can We Make Sense of the Malheur Mess?

Also: Why was Bundy arrested two years later?

Tom Friedman just vaulted into first place for the Marie Antoinette Privileged-class Obliviousness Award for 2016. And he’s set a high mark, folks. Can the perennial favorite, David Brooks, best him? Stay tuned!

Update: Catch the comments at the New York Times. Friedman is being skewered.