Ted the Toilet Plunger

Trevor Noah has come up with the perfect analogy for Ted Cruz's role in the #dumptrump campaign -- a toilet plunger. This was in response to Ted claiming to be the "uniter" after his big Wisconsin primary win. It is doubtful Ted will be very effective in New York, where he currently lags in third place. His comments regarding "New York values" have come back to bite him in the ass. But, there are 15 states left on the campaign trail after New York next week, so you figure Ted can fulfill his role of clearing the toilet of Donald Trump before the convention.

However, Ted may still have a chance to pick up some delegates in New York, as Amy Davidson explains the arcane process. This is why Ted was spending time in the Bronx, trying to round up support anyway he could get it. Ted has proven to be a very effective man on the ground, which is bedeviling the Trump campaign that doesn't even know how to properly fill out ballots. Trump also lost delegates in South Carolina after handily winning the primary, as his campaign advisers forgot that not all delegates are awarded at primaries.

It just makes you wonder how Donald got this far. His own kids won't be able to vote for him in New York because they forgot to register in time. One wonders if Donald is even registered himself. He has since brought in Paul Manafort to better handle the ground campaign, but Manafort comes across as just another loose canon serving to massage Trump's enormous ego.

The Donald went into hiding, trying to avoid any more public gaffes leading up to the New York primary. He is hoping for a clean sweep of the districts -- all 95 delegates -- putting him well over 800. But, he has to score 50 per cent or better in each district to accomplish this fete, so Ted and John Kasich are campaigning in districts where they think they can pick up consolation delegates for coming in second place.

According to Manafort, Trump doesn't run that kind of campaign. He plays to win, using the airwaves to get his message out, content to call it into the news networks or fire off his tweets in his ongoing assault of the GOP establishment, which has rallied against him. It just shows how poorly Manafort understands the system, because at this point every delegate counts and if Trump can't reach 1237 by July, it is very unlikely he will win the nomination.

Trump has called Ted a Trojan Horse, but a toilet plunger is a better analogy. The Donald has been clogging up the GOP toilet ever since last June, and the Republican Party is determined to purge him once and for all. The only tool they have left at this point is Ted Cruz, although they are hoping that Kasich can be similarly used in Pennsylvania, Indiana and West Virginia. It's a messy business but someone has to do it. Ted is perfect for the job, who (as Amy Davidson pointed out) has "an uncanny ability to absorb humiliation."

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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