In the immediate aftermath of the release of the now infamous tape in which Mr. Trump bragged about celebrity status giving him license to grab women by their genitals and do what he wanted with them -- in many ways just confirming other accounts of his objectification of women but perhaps more striking when seeing the video footage itself -- author Kelly Oxford sent out a tweet that read simply: "Women: tweet me your first assaults," and she included hers.  

Within hours, she was receiving 50 responses per minute. By Monday, she had received 27 million. (Based on when I tweeted mine, it was probably around the 15 million mark). 

If 27 million tweets of FIRST assaults -- and this is just people on Twitter who are aware of this -- doesn't hit home the magnitude of those who would be personally and deeply moved by the callousness of the Trump tape, I don't know what will. And this is in addition to those men who reminded us that they have wives and daughters, thus bolstering their explanation of why they would care about predatory behavior that violates the law and is aimed at 51% of the population (not to mention a subset of the population that votes in large numbers).

The subject of Mr. Trump's mental health has been discussed, admittedly in violation of the "Goldwater Rule." Therapists more recently have begun to weigh in on the mental health impacts of this election -- the negativity, the cynicism, the blame, the hostility, the fear. Now in the mix is the aspect of triggering trauma histories made sadly more salient by Mr. Trump's casual admission of being a feckless thug with no respect for women, and perhaps more sadly the willingness of his surrogates Rudy Giuliani, Jeff Sessions, and Scott Baio to come to his defense, calling it "locker room talk" that was not assault, and Baio even going to far as to fell Fox News viewers to "grow up and get over it." To hear the former mayor of New York City not only dismiss the language as locker room talk but to joke about it is horrifying even in this election, especially given conservatives' purported support for family values. (For the record, professional athletes in the NFL ("we never had anyone say anything as foul and demeaning as you did on that tape"), NBA, and beyond have done their part to show that advocacy of sexual assault is not a feature in their locker rooms, nor would it hypothetically be accepted). Of course, there is irony in the fact that the candidate who joked about sexual assault, when asked by his party to step down as the Republican nominee, insisted "no means no." A little late on that lesson, Donald.

These have not been comfortable subjects for anyone. No sane person enjoys watching this tape. But having a history of sexual trauma -- which applies to far too many – makes it all the more difficult to hear about sexual predation left, right, and center in the news and social media, whether triggering actual flashbacks or otherwise unpleasant memories, potentially stirring depressive symptoms (which Secretary Clinton’s healthcare plan will at least treat comprehensively). Whether visible outwardly or not, sexual assault's impact on the person -- as well as those around them -- is lasting, leading to higher rates of depression, PTSD, substance abuse, and even suicide. The news provides a constant reminder of something that strikes a nerve with respect to an issue that may still feel acute. For those who have been private about their experiences, there is the question of whether to share one's story -- as in the Twitter collection, or among acquaintances -- to reflect on recent events in a productive dialogue about the proper boundaries of sexual conduct, or to maintain privacy (and the emotions that that brings up). And aptly, the organization End Rape on Campus tweeted on Friday upon the release of the tape, the message, "To those affected by the damaging rhetoric issued by Mr. Trump in the video released today -- we stand with you, we hear you, we support you." 

There is the legitimate fear of physical and emotional harm caused by the normalization of "locker room talk" (or worse, acting on it as Trump has been alleged to have) akin to the misguided notion that "boys will be boys" in the context of date rape. When people accept misbehavior -- or worse, assault -- in public discourse and behavior, we facilitate its perpetuation and dampen the vigilance with which we assert our rights as human beings deserving of respect. Please, let us not conflate how men talk in locker rooms with how some bad men may talk in locker rooms. 

They (we) then got to see sexual assault allegations made a spectacle of with a photo op leading into the second presidential debate from the same person dismissing his own taped remarks as locker room banter (note: without evidence of actually spending time in locker rooms himself) and as part of a cheap ploy transparently aimed at rattling his opponent (who actually does argue that women's rights are human rights). 

​Hearing what may have sounded like a familiar experience of unwanted contact (even rape) simply excused -- and in a presidential candidate, no less -- seemingly mocks and disregards the immense emotional impact that it has on the person, whose control was taken from them in a deeply personal way. Experiencing such events at all is more than one should have to endure. Having to defend their status as assaults is abhorrent. And worst of all, it facilitates far too many future opportunities to relive these sorts of experiences when we normalize in the public discourse sexist language and patently illegal behavior amid a marked number of sexual assaults on college campus and beyond. 
 
And it has already happened, with a man at Mr. Trump’s recent rally photographed wearing a shirt reading “She’s a Cunt, Vote for Trump.” Apart from the bad effort at rhyming, the negativity toward women – and the acceptance of transparent misogyny in the public sphere – can have distressingly boundless consequences. The issue is not political correctness for the sake of political correctness. It is moral decency that transcends party identification, and certainly transcends the aesthetics of one’s body, on which Mr. Trump appears to be creepily fixated.
​
No one is perfect, despite Mr. Trump's assertion that he himself is perfect and devoid of faults. Presidents are human, and humans are allowed to make mistakes. But we are also allowed to hold them to higher standards than we do ordinary Americans because they are meant to serve as positive examples for our citizenry and for other nations of the world. (Though to be sure, this behavior would not be accepted in our neighbors either). That we have not only shifted in our campaign season the discussion to an issue that is deeply painful for many to discuss -- with many dismissing the impact and legitimacy of such language and actions -- but creating a culture of violence against women in which we are all the more vulnerable to its greater perpetuation and acceptance.

We deserve better, as women and more importantly, as human beings. We need to prove it on November 8.  

​On October 3 in Pueblo, Colorado, Mr. Trump alleged that the early 1990s were the worst years for our economy since the Great Depression, worse than the 1980s and worse than 2008. This of course was in response to criticism leveled at him for losing nearly a billion dollars in the mid-1990s, according to the 1995 tax return sent to, and published by, the New York Times over the weekend.
 
Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, his comments don’t comport with reality when looking to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data on employment by year. (Side note: It may be worth emphasizing that the early 1990s and the mid-1990s (the years under public scrutiny) were under different presidents and theories of the economy, and that which was more profitable was the Clinton Administration, a point Mr. Trump understandably does not play up).
 
What we see nevertheless though is that the early 1980s under President Reagan were marked by dramatic job losses, followed by some economic recovery, followed by more losses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with marked job growth throughout most of the mid-1990s and late 1990s. The reality is that unlike with respect to the 1980s and the 2000s, the numbers are positive for the whole of the Clinton Administration as well as the Obama Administration after 2009. The point here is not to suggest that Clinton’s economic policy was flawless, or to suggest a direct correlation with the policies that we might expect under Hillary Clinton, though some have characterized her as being more progressive than her husband. Nor is the point to denigrate someone swinging and missing in business (no one bats .1000).
 
Rather, the point is to emphasize that Mr. Trump has proven himself to be quite keen on making bold statements that do not survive fact-checking (indeed, PolitiFact classified 53% of his statements as being False or Pants on Fire), asserting that his failed business ventures are attributable not to his business acumen (or lack thereof) but rather to a failing economy. The reality is that the economy under the Clinton Administration had been in recovery for a couple of years. This was not a bad time to invest (wisely), nor do the numbers of the Obama Administration suggest an economy in need of rescuing.
 
If Mr. Trump continues to maintain that he intends to run the country as he does his businesses, given the robust economy in which he made these failings, we should be concerned. 

If Donald Trump's healthcare "plan" is to be nicknamed "Trumpcare," it seems to have forgotten about the "care" part. ​

The New York Times rightly noted recently in an editorial that healthcare deserves a more prominent place in the 2016 presidential election than it thus far has earned. Donald Trump’s main argument has been the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), though precious little attention has been paid to determining with what it might be replaced. Even more strikingly, the Gary Johnson/Bill Weld website’s “issues” section, while taking time to discuss internet freedom and the war on drugs, has literally no mention of healthcare.
 
The centerpiece of course is the repeal of the ACA, whereas Hillary Clinton seeks further expansion of the ACA and the reduction of premiums by providing families a tax credit to pay for insurance. The Washington Post recently evaluated that while 9.6 million could gain insurance under Clinton, over 20 million could lose insurance under Trump. Moreover, among those not losing health insurance, premiums were projected to go up from $3,200 to $4,700 a year.

Trump’s stated position holds that they stand for the repeal of the ACA, allowing the selling of health insurance across state lines, allowing individuals to fully deduct health insurance premium payments from their tax returns, allowing individuals to use Health Savings Accounts, requiring price transparency from healthcare providers, giving states more autonomy over Medicaid provision, and removing barriers to entry into free markets for drug providers for reliable and cheaper alternatives.
 
A few points. A number of health insurance plans already offer the option of Health Savings Accounts and whether people opt in or out of them is consumers’ prerogative. Thus, this would not be a change from the status quo. Researchers have already shown in a number of contexts that Medicaid expansion produces a number of health benefits such that those states opting out of expansion are left out with more adverse health consequences. Moreover, the block grant allocation may not be sufficient to continue to support the healthcare benefits that they have gained under the ACA’s Medicaid expansion for the poor. Price transparency is all well and good, though few details are specified as to how it would be provided for. Some tools have already been in place, with Fair Health Consumer’s medical cost directory allowing one to search for the price of a procedure or office visit by zip code, though price comparing across hospitals within a region is not necessarily an easy task for the average consumer, particularly if sick and in need of care. And while allowing for international prescription drug importation may help to curb prescription drug prices, there are the additional regulatory barrier which is that they presumably must still meet FDA standards.

At least as crucially is the fact that Trump's plan does not include provisions to protect people from being denied health insurance due to preexisting conditions. While the New England Journal of Medicine recently published a discussion of the importance of addressing high-need high-cost patients -- with 5% of patients accounting for 50% of the nation's healthcare spending -- having multiple chronic conditions is indeed quite prevalent, with higher rates among the poor and elderly. Indeed, in 2014 at the national level, 30.1% of Americans identified by CMS had 2 or 3 chronic conditions, 20.9% had 4 or 5 chronic conditions, and 14.5% had 6 or more conditions. (Not too surprisingly, the rates of multiple chronic conditions is higher among those who are lower income, such that the challenges in obtaining care due to preexisting condition status only exacerbates the already marked health disparities that persist in the United States). These high rates would constitute grounds for insurance denials of millions of Americans in need of coverage for basic primary care as well as specialty care, with access to good preventive care being valuable to avoiding more costly hospitalizations and procedures. It pays to invest in good healthcare, but giving people the opportunity access coverage is an essential first step (whether through the ACA or not) that Trump's plan unfortunately does not ensure. 
 
There is little question that the implementation of the ACA has not gone according to plan and has not been a dream scenario for its more vociferous advocates, particularly amid news of continued insurer withdrawals from markets due to financial losses, the projections of increasing premium rates in 2017, and the limited choice of marketplace providers for consumers in many parts of the country (with 17% of consumers having only one insurance carrier in their region). Yet the rate of uninsured Americans hit a historic low of 9.1% (declining from 10.4% in 2014), with reductions in uninsured rates seen across nearly all age, race, and income groups. While millions of Americans continue to struggle with underinsurance – that is, facing high deductibles and other large out-of-pocket costs that absorb far too much of their income – there is little doubt that having some coverage is preferable to no coverage, and that people are newly getting access to life-saving primary care and thus diagnoses for conditions with which they may have already have been struggling. Indeed, diabetes diagnoses went up in those states that opted for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, confirming other findings that those benefiting from Medicaid expansions were more likely to see a physician or go to the hospital for medical care. And investments in good primary care and having healthier patient pools, thus obviating the need for more advanced and expensive medical treatments, can help to control premiums.
 
This is not to say that there are not problems with the ACA’s implementation. To be sure, premium increases adversely affect millions, vastly outpacing increases in income, as do the sometimes exorbitant prescription drug prices (highlighted most notoriously recently in the case of EpiPens). But these problems call attention to the need for things to be fixed, not done away with.  While a single-payer program would address many of the challenges that we face currently with the business model of healthcare provision in the states – a business model that allows healthcare profit motives to trump the human aspects of health – it is not politically feasible in the current climate of divided government and polarization. Addressing the challenges healthcare pricing and access must be within the confines of the contemporary healthcare apparatus that is the Affordable Care Act.
 
“Trumpcare” would too quickly downplay the operative word of “care,” at least for lower and middle class Americans.
 
The ACA needs salvaging and expansion, not repeal. (RAND provided an economic analysis of the Clinton and Trump plans, analyzed here at The Commonwealth Fun). 

Throughout the presidential campaign, and in particular in the last month, ample attention has been paid to the candidates' physical and mental health, and in turn their suitability as President Obama's prospective successor. Most recently, Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC's Morning Joe said that a mental health professional should come on the show evaluate Donald Trump and his suitability to be president. To his credit, co-host Joe Scarborough pushed back on that proposition because he could not be diagnosed on the show (see the Goldwater Rule, according to which the American Psychiatric Society prohibits psychiatrists from offering professional opinions about candidates whom they are not themselves treating), though Mika still suggested that a psychiatrist could discuss the character traits that Trump has routinely exhibited and that provoked in her concern.

This was far from an isolated discussion. Obama campaign advisor David Plouffe held that Trump's behavior met the "clinical definition" of a "psychopath." Others -- some mental health professionals and others mere observers -- have likewise weighed in with such "diagnoses" as narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. And while Trump's medical evaluation was supposedly drafted by his own physician, a number of commentators and journalists (and physicians) have called attention to the problems -- from the lack of specificity, to the grandiosity of language that in many ways parallels that of the candidate himself, to the difficulty in even identifying the physician's practice. And while what was at stake was not so much Trump's actual health, what remains clear from this exchange has been the extent to which the American people apparently feel at liberty to make these evaluations that even professionals are not permitted to provide from afar. 

This has not been an isolated incident. Indeed, Martin Shkreli tweeted that he believed Secretary Hillary Clinton to have early onset Parkinson's Disease, thus sparking an extended discussion as to Clinton's health and thus fitness as president. Not only is Shkreli not her physician, but he is not a physician at all. Given the physical and intellectual demands of the role of President of the United States, it is altogether appropriate to seek assurance of fitness for office. That is why it is a norm to make public a physician letter attesting to the state of candidates' (or officeholders' health). 

The public discussions of Trump's mental health may be amusing for the casual observer of this admittedly unusual presidential election season, and for those often finding themselves aghast at the controversial statements that he continues to make on Twitter and elsewhere. But to conflate discussion of mental health with discussion of the genuinely distressing prejudice at the heart of much of his messaging on race, immigration, religion, and the like, does us all a disservice. If Trump's policies rub one the wrong way, it is not likely because of a DSM-V Axis II personality disorder diagnosis but rather because of a fundamentally different view of foreign policy as well as the importance of respecting diversity in a pluralistic society. By waving away racism, sexism, and ignorance and instead characterizing it as a mental health problem, rather than offering answers amid this election season, it perpetuates already pervasive problems of stigma surrounding mental illness, a stigma that inhibits many from seeking treatment that might aid them in recovery. We can and should do better than that. 

Writing off Trump's disposition as a mental health problem also ignores a far greater issue, which is that Trump's success would not have been enabled were it not for millions of voters with whom his message, for better or worse, has resonated. Mentally ill or not, Clinton victory or Trump victory on November 8, there will be over 14 million people who supported him in the Republican Party primary and who those continuing on in politics will need to court in order to secure continued electoral gains. Candidates, commentators, and activists would do well to focus on the Trump voters while leaving the candidates' health to those in a position to offer sound professional opinions that will not undermine efforts at broadening willingness to access needed healthcare.

​En route from Manhattan back to New Haven late at night last week, the fellow passenger asked me what I do. I said that I’m in academia, and when pressed “confessed” that I’m in political science, then bracing for the cringe-worthy demands of exclamations of how Donald Trump’s nomination could have come to be. (I haven’t an answer).
 
But what this man said also was that he felt frustrated at how “rigged” he viewed the system. “Don’t you think the system is rigged?” he pressed me, and then was surprised by my emphatic response of “No.”
 
The use of the word “rigged” is one that has figured prominently in the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, who while embracing very different world views from a policy standpoint both embraced the anti-establishment sentiment for which a large share of the American electorate seemed in search.
 
The notion that a system could be rigged takes away the notion that one might, indeed, lose in a fair system (“fair and square,” as they say). There are indeed examples of rigged systems. We see such evidence in elections won with 95% of the vote such that any opposition candidate is inconsequential if ever legitimate. We see evidence when voting machines switch votes for presidential candidates and the executive leadership of voting machine companies writing a letter pledging commitment “to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President” in 2004, the outcome of which was determined by the State of Ohio. We do not see evidence of rigging in 2016, but rather the petulance of one unwilling to concede at the conclusion of a loss. This is not a view that is contingent upon a Clinton versus Sanders nomination, a Trump versus Rubio nomination, but rather based on the empirics of the admittedly eye-opening election season that we have witnessed unfold over the last several months, presenting more than our fair share of surprises but not corruption in the way that "rigging" suggests. 
 
It is not because our electoral institutions are perfect. They are not. But if it were a truly rigged system, it is unlikely that two such non-conformist candidates would have fared nearly so well. Despite Sanders’ loss to Clinton in the Democratic primary, he vastly outperformed predictions and, while losing by a more marked margin than did Clinton to Obama in 2008, still came remarkably close considering where he started out. It is far from controversial to say that Trump’s garnering of the Republican Party nomination defied expectations.
 
Characterizing the US electoral institutions as rigged not only mischaracterizes reality – with the empirical fact that “outsider” candidates fared well on the Democratic side and won on the Republican side – but it takes away from those who have won honestly, fairly and squarely. It is all well and good to want to change the system when in office, and by all accounts we do need to change certain electoral institutions. We have a decentralized election system that is confusingly varied by state, that in many cases disenfranchises ex-offenders, that in many cases requires the provision of identification that has a disproportionately adverse impact on minorities. We also have recently demonstrated some vulnerability to hacking, which incidentally could indicate some rigging (though largely in favor of those alleging rigging in the first place).
 
But the first step isn’t to complain about the process. It’s to win playing by the rules of the game, respecting the process (even respectfully disagreeing), and to create fairer rules from within office. 

​Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been under extensive scrutiny recently for some comments that she made that were highly critical of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Among her comments was, “I can’t imagine what this place would be – I can’t imagine what the country would be – with Donald Trump as president… For the country, it could be four years. For the Court, it could be – I don’t want to contemplate that,” and she joked about wanting to move to New Zealand in the event of facing a Trump Administration. She went on to say that Trump is a “faker” who lacks consistency in his political views and who “says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego…”
 
Donald Trump fired back, holding, “I think it’s highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly… I think it’s a disgrace to the court and I think she should apologize to the court. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.” He then tweeted that she had disgraced the Court and should resign because her “mind is shot.”
 
Apart from the semantic problem of Ginsburg and other members of the Supreme Court being justices and not judges, it is perfectly fair for Trump to be upset. He is not the only one who has expressed outrage or at minimum dismay over Justice Ginsburg voicing loudly and clearly her opinion on the 2016 presidential election.
 
I am not convinced that it was wise for her to have made those comments, but the response seems to me to be overblown given that it does not present any legal conflicts of interest (nor does it reveal any preferences that we did not already know to be underlying, as Ginsburg has been one of the staunch liberals on the Court since her appointment by President Clinton), and absent a problem with the law, the objections are theoretical and not practical problems. 
 
While we sometimes like to think of the Supreme Court as the legal rather than political branch, we often find in practice that it is difficult to divorce law and politics: two equally intelligent legal scholars can see very different things in the Commerce Clause, the implications of which impact whether we have civil rights protections, just as they can reach different interpretations of whether affirmative action constitutes discrimination (a word left undefined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964), and in seeking new jurists, politicians are far from apolitical even when purportedly focusing on the law. There are, in these actors nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, inherent issues of politics that we just don't always seen as transparently as in these recent comments.

People have ideas as to the normative desirability of the Supreme Court (and courts more generally) being comprised of dedicated judges who are being neutral arbiters amid complex legal challenges, in contrast with the obviously politicized legislative and executive branches. Indeed, Chief Justice John Roberts characterized his own job as that of a neutral umpire calling balls and strikes, rather than pitching or batting, which is not to say that that comment did not result in some measure of challenge. The reality, which we have seen in the confirmation hearings (or lack thereof) to fill the late Justice Scalia’s seat, is that the Supreme Court is indeed highly political, a fact in the absence of which the President would not so characteristically nominate judges who are ideological allies and the Senate would not prevent hearings because of political opposition to the sitting president.
 
The fact of the matter is, Justice Ginsburg here voiced a preference that was hardly surprising.  Indeed, the only justice for whom the voicing of a political opinion on Donald Trump would present genuinely new information would be Justice Kennedy (and maybe Chief Justice Roberts, though he is a reliable conservative), and if the issue with Ginsburg’s comments are of the law and the proper role of the Court in the political process, then obviously we would need to hold all of the justices to the same standard. More important is the question of whether these comments compromise her integrity to the law as a Supreme Court justice. I do not believe that they do, with the potential caveat that she might be called upon to recuse herself should Trump be personally a party to a lawsuit before the Court.
 
The Supreme Court has gotten involved in far more controversial and legally “squishy” issues, from Justice Scalia hunting with then-Vice President Dick Cheney within three weeks of granting cert to Cheney’s appeal pertaining to the Bush Administration’s energy task force, to the notorious Bush v. Gore (2000), about which former Justice O’Connor has since expressed regrets because it it “stirred up the public” and “gave the Court a less than perfect reputation.” Somewhat more superficially, people from both sides of the aisle responded pointedly to Justice Alito’s visible opposition (shaking his head and muttering “Not true, not true”) to comments that President Obama made of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision during his 2010 State of the Union address, with Senator Hatch characterizing the response as “rude” and Senator Feingold calling it “inappropriate” for Justice Alito have done so. (In fairness, legal and political science scholars were surprised by both the president’s calling out the Supreme Court specifically, as well as Justice Alito’s response to the charges). And of course, the Supreme Court has involved itself in a number of hot-button issues (e.g., abortion, affirmative action, healthcare, immigration) that heighten partisan divisions among the parties. While we like the idea of a more apolitical (relative to the other branches) judiciary, it is not a notion that is well supported in recent years, and the high numbers of 5-4 splits along party lines only reinforce that.
 
Perhaps there should be a rule (not a legal, but rather simply a more practical and normative rule) that justices should not involve themselves in any way in a presidential campaign outside the strict context of legal challenges brought before them, and for which at least four justices must agree to grant cert. Additionally, unlike the race-based challenge that Trump made with respect to US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, it may be altogether fair to argue that given personal challenges to Donald Trump (as opposed to voicing a generally liberal ideology in opposition to the preferences that Trump is expressing in his campaign), she might be persuaded to recuse herself in the event that the Court is judging him personally, as opposed to a Trump Administration more broadly defined should he be elected in November. But until that happens, the opposition to Ginsburg seems to be rooted not in the law (she did not break any laws and has not compromised her judicial integrity with respect to any pending cases), but in a rather unrealistic (though perhaps nice) normative desirability that Supreme Court justices stay out of elections and other salient current events. The reality, whether we like it or not, is that we have seen far more egregious involvements by the Court, and what we witnessed was an outspokenly liberal ("notorious RBG") speaking her mind about the election, outside the context of a specific case in which she is acting in her capacity as Supreme Court justice. It may not have been wise for Justice Ginsburg to have made those comments – perhaps she should have risen above it, particularly given her current position on the Court – and it is unclear who “wins” as a consequence of those statements (other than those enjoying a nice Twitter war), but it is not necessarily “wrong” (certainly not from a legal perspective) for her to have done so.  

 A great deal of the 2016 election season has focused on things below the belt, both literally and figuratively. Even had previous elections been conducted in the era of 24/7 internet and social media, it would be difficult if not impossible to find a candidate who has garnered a list of not ten, not twenty, but 223 people, places, and things that a national electoral candidate had insulated on the record (in this case, on Twitter). It would also be difficult to conceive of many other candidates in modern American history for whom such insults do not trigger dips in polling numbers. And yet...

The extent of intra-party squabbling has likewise remained notably high this election season. Many Democrats and Cruz-opposers alike (yes, myself included) enjoyed Boehner's calling Ted Cruz "Lucifer in the Flesh" and Lindsay Graham's pointed comment, "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you." For the record, that was not a private joke made dangerously close to a hot mic. That was at the Washington Press Club Foundation's Congressional Dinner. Not your garden variety dinnertime fodder. As a partisan, one's initial response might be simply surprise that one would publicly  speak that way of a member of one's own party, though a bigger point of surprise should have been to publicly speak that way of one's colleague. I admit that historically I have been more interested in winning than on focusing on the tenor of campaigns -- probably an artifact of having been exposed only to elections of recent decades and thus having ingrained in me a certain level of acceptance of the nastiness that seems invariably to accompany life in politics -- and even I have been at times caught  off guard this year.

The simple truth is that we have become desensitized, or at least exposed to so such vitriol that we have become cynical. Politics no longer appears to be a game of strategic compromise to work toward policy solutions for large swaths of the American public, some of them catering more toward some worldviews than do others but which are not necessarily in themselves nefarious. I make no secret of my Democratic Party affiliation, though I have friends who believe in smaller government and investment in businesses and states that can provide benefits that better suits their goals and preferences. I respectfully disagree, and we move on to other topics of conversation. Respectful disagreement, however, is hard to find in the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, and is difficult to expect when that individual routinely refers to the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee as "crooked," among (many) other things.

This election season has also brought about not simply vitriolic rhetoric, but also wedge issues that invariably divide Americans rather than stimulating potentially productive discussions about balancing competing priorities of delivering health care while controlling health care costs; protecting American industry while also reducing our contribution to climate change; investing in public education; investing in benefits for Americans without raising tax burdens too much; and the like. One can scarcely read the news without reading of state legislation on transgender bathrooms, with North Carolina instigating much of this discussion with its prohibition against transgender individuals' use of public restrooms matching their gender identity and its prohibition against cities passing their own antidiscrimination ordinances that would protect the LGBT community.

On May 13, the Obama Administration's Department of Education and Department of Justice Department issued a directive that schools "must not treat a transgender student differently from the way it treats other students of the same gender identity," with the additional directive of provision to transgender students of equal access to educational programs and activities regardless of student, parent, or community objections, given the need to not disadvantage certain students. Included in this directive was the policy that public school districts allow transgender students to use the bathrooms matching their gender identity as opposed to requiring that they use those facilities matching the gender that they were assigned at birth. To be clear, this directive came in the form of administrative guidance rather than rules, and thus does not carry the force of law, though eleven states -- Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and others -- have now signed on to challenge the Obama Administration's stated policy on this matter.

Admittedly, as a heterosexual woman, this is not something that I have personally had to think about, and I find myself surprised by the preoccupation that some on the right have had with thinking at such great lengths about the restrooms that people may or may not go to. In his segment on transgender rights, John Oliver rightly pointed out that a gender identity-based conception of restroom use is already essentially what we do, with pictures on doors being stereotypical representations of how men and women dress and appear, as opposed to being biologically-based depictions of the male and female reproductive systems. And with rising underinsurance, persistent problems of untreated mental illness and obesity and diabetes, climate change, reproductive rights, and the Supreme Court, it would seem to me that regulating where people deal with bodily functions should rank low on the list of priorities. Of course, that isn't what this battle is about. It is about defining an "other," thus inherently creating a division where there needn't be one, and preying on ill-founded fears one may have of their young daughter using the same restroom as a transgender woman (who knows what could happen?).

The regulation of sex is yet another area in which some have made the mystifying case that we must talk about in election seasons. For a party that discusses at such length the merits of small government, it seems quite keen on shrinking government to the point of being just small enough to fit in someone's bedroom. Outside of the occasional appeal for advice, I and most of those whom I know do not solicit or provide unsolicited lurid details of sexual encounters. "May it be consensual, fun, safe, fulfilling, and your business" seems like a generally reasonable, healthy, and not-too-prudish way to think about sex, and yet in February 2016, the Michigan Senate passed legislation that reaffirmed the state's prohibition of sodomy, which would be a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. And despite the Supreme Court holding in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional, a dozen states continue to keep them. Setting aside the obvious logistical difficulty of enforcement (as well as the fact that its enforcement would also outlaw behavior also prevalent between heterosexuals), the continued regulation of sexual behavior between consenting adults is troubling in its persistence in the year 2016.

The more amusingly trivial discussion of sex and machismo came in the dialogues between Rubio and Trump over the size of Trump's hands and the implication that he might have a small penis, which must naturally be correlated well with the ability to effectively run a country. The interplay culminated in Trump defending during a presidential debate the size of his hands as well as the size of his "hands." On the one hand, for a presidential candidate to talk about his penis during a presidential debate is quite shocking, both in its inappropriateness and its irrelevance. On the other hand, the macho nature of his campaign -- from the blanket insults to the aggressive policies to the accusations of playing the woman card -- almost makes it fitting.

One of Trump's more recent strategies has been to attack Hillary Clinton for allowing her husband, President Bill Clinton, to be unfaithful and to have stayed with him despite his infidelity. To rehash the Lewinsky scandal is admittedly not the dream scenario for any Democrat, Clinton supporter or not, though the fact of the matter is that where Bill put his cigars or from whom he received oral sex did not change the fact that he turned the nation from a recession to a surplus with a balanced budget. And while he did engage in more deregulation than some on those on the left would like (see, e.g., the Telecommunications Act of 1996), he created more jobs than did Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush combined. It is perhaps for these reasons that Clinton's approval ratings remained high even throughout the Lewinsky scandal, with his average job approval rating from 1993-1999 being 53.8, with a mean approval rating of 63.8 in 1998, which was the year in which the affair became public knowledge. Indeed, his approval rating in the first quarter of 1998 was 5.6 points higher  than that in the fourth quarter of 1997. What's more, as of February 2016, CNN polling showed his favorables being 56% compared to only 38% unfavorables (CBS estimates of favorables were lower at 45%, Bloomberg's and Gallup's slightly higher at 58% and 59% respectively, and ABC/Washington Post comparable at 53%). Bottom line, whether people are voting enthusiastically or begrudgingly for Hillary, Americans still really like Bill.

Moreover, setting aside the notion of blaming a woman for her husband's infidelity, not to mention the notion of doing so at the expense of talking about the substantive issues affecting everyday Americans, a family values argument might in fact be that she preserved her marriage and her family rather than walking away from her marital challenges and getting divorced. If preserving the notion of the American family is indeed what "family values conservatives" seek to defend, they should be consistent in that stance as applied to both the left and the right. Conservatism is acceptable in a pluralistic society such as ours. Hypocrisy should not be.

In one of my favorite films, The American President (my "gateway drug" to all that is Aaron Sorkin), President Andrew Shepherd tells his chief of staff A.J. on the subject of his new girlfriend, "This is NOT the business of the American people!" to which A.J. responds, "With all due respect, sir, the American people have a funny way of deciding on their own what is and what is not their business." Sadly, this is true, particularly in the era of 24/7 media attention on everything from profound to the most banal and trivial. But politicians can and should play a role in this by not perpetuating discussions about marginal issues that divide us unnecessarily when rather than emphasizing sodomy or infidelity or Clinton's emails, the most important issue to Gallup's recent survey respondents was the economy (dare I say, "it's the economy, stupid"). For the sake of the nation and its voters, let's keep our eye on the ball.

No one enjoys losing. Well, maybe masochists, but that’s a different discussion. When we get invested in something, we want to see a payoff, and are disappointed when it fails to come to fruition. It’s natural. The problem is when we fail to accept something as our own shortcoming or else bad luck, instead charging that a system was rigged, unfair, skewed in favor of those who best us. It is an even greater problem when we use those allegations to justify an unprecedented level of incivility in the political arena (and yes, that is saying something).
 
I cried when Hillary lost the nomination. I had desperately wanted her to win the nomination, and especially after the devastating general election losses of the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, I was saddened to see her hard-fought battles result in the nomination of the man on whose general election campaign staff I ultimately served, and who has done an immensely impressive job of reversing the economic downturn created by his predecessor. I believed that Clinton was more experienced and had the command and the gravitas to challenge the status quo, and would not be as conciliatory toward the opposing coalitions in defending a progressive agenda. What’s more, I had concerns about the persistent racial tensions of the United States and the potential hindrance it would pose in reclaiming the White House. (Thankfully, I was wrong on that point). However, there was a surge of enthusiasm that propelled his campaign forward to garner the Democratic nomination and ultimately the presidency, and upon the official declaration of Obama as the Democratic nominee, I was on board, because while I have well-ordered preferences within my party, my allegiance to my party and the principles for which it stands vastly exceed any particular attachment that I have to one particular candidate over another given the similarity in policy positions within the party.
 
At the end of the day, some elections will fundamentally be more favorable to certain candidates more so than to others, whether because of idiosyncratic features of the candidate himself/herself (e.g., charisma), or because of factors pertaining to the political environment (e.g., the centrality of a particular issue in political discourse). John Kerry’s war service and his tenure on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee made him the candidate with the most fitting experience in the 2004 election, though to be sure there is not perfect correlation between candidate quality and leadership quality. Barack Obama’s 2004 convention speech put him on the map and captured the excitement of new cohorts of Democratic voters and independents who had been previously turned off from the system or felt that the Republican Party had to too great a degree fled the center, thus building new electoral coalitions for the party.
 
Many people raise qualms with the two-party system. I am not one such person, but I understand the frustration with the lack of diversity of representation among those running for office. (My greater concern is having diversity represented in candidates but having winners who garner a potentially very elite and non-representative 35% of the popular vote rather than anywhere close to a majority). People challenge the role of money in politics, and again I’m sympathetic though don’t see an easy solution – and moreover, prefer to win and fix things once elected than make a point at the risk of losing in November. But regardless of where one stands on those positions,  Clinton and Sanders are playing by the same rules as one another, and the same rules as applied in 2012, and playing by those rules, Clinton is winning.
 
When we dislike how a system is structured, we can always complain about it. Identifying, diagnosing problems is no difficult task. The question is whether we want to make a point about the system or whether we want to fix it, and fixing it requires working from the inside. It requires being  in a position of power. It requires keeping in mind the broader, potentially lofty goals while nevertheless being mindful of the political and economic realities of the present circumstances within which one is operating. To win down the road, you need to win in the present first. The fact is, Sanders ran a remarkable campaign considering where he started out even just months ago. Another fact is that he chose to run his campaign in a certain way, to hammer home a certain message, knowing the nature of presidential campaigns and the role of money and networks and strategy and the more-than-just-occasional reality check. That Clinton works the system better (whether you want to call that being intelligent and savvy or overly ambitious) does not make the system rigged. It means that within the confines of the way that American institutions operate, Sanders did well and Clinton did better.
 
What is particularly distressing about the nature of the Sanders campaign’s discourse with respect to the election is the seeming inability to accept defeat or criticism or even listen respectfully to opposing views even from within their party, when a general election would have posed far greater policy-based challenges to their ideals. The American electorate is split on a number of key issues, some of them central to his campaign, and in making no secret of his identification as Socialist, the campaign virtually invited blunt criticism from moderates and conservatives (or at least, those who aren’t supporting him strategically so as to maximize their chances of running against him in the general election and then defeating him resoundingly) to whom they refused to listen without scowls, sighs, and interruptions, exceeding the condescension that cost Gore more than a few votes and SNL jabs in 2000.
 
Saying that the system is unfair is a reason to find a way to maximize one’s effectiveness in working toward a better system in the future, not to use it as justification for throwing out attacks, insults, and threats; and it is not a reason to serve as the spoiler candidate we saw Nader become in 2000 under the self-righteous guise of standing up for “the people” (with another point being that those who have supported him bear little resemblance to the Democratic base, a fact that he often dismisses outright when pushed on his failure to capture the support of minorities). It is a reason to acknowledge the success that he has had in pushing important issues on the agenda, pushing Clinton farther to the left, and to work toward ensuring that the Democratic Party remain in the White House, whoever that Democrat is. His willingness to put himself before his party, time and again -- not simply by remaining in the race but further by waging outright attacks to delegitimize Clinton -- is immature and is only a disservice.  

In the Pennsylvania town hall on April 25, Hillary Clinton was asked about what it means to her to be a feminist, and she delivered a masterful response that disavowed people of the “women’s issue” nature of that which gets lumped in to “feminism.” She spoke of pay equity, which is not always particularly (if at all) egregious early in careers – after all, women are better represented in college and graduate school than men now – but which becomes all too obvious as people stay in their professions and women find themselves earning considerably less than their male counterparts for the same work. And this is not even an issue of income in the current period, as she noted in the context of Lily Ledbetter (side note: my first time attending a congressional hearing was for the Ledbetter Act at the Senate Judiciary Committee… not too shabby). Not only was she being paid less annually, but that had implications for her retirement and 401K, because less money was being put away. This is not an issue easily remedied with a pay raise, given the long-term ramifications of this inequity. This is not a women’s issue. This is an economic issue.
 
What was more noteworthy about Hillary’s response was the fact that she discussed further that beyond being a women’s issue, beyond being an economic issue, it is a human issue. When a woman is being paid less, not only are her retirement prospects down the line more grim, but that also impacts her family. It impacts whether she can afford out-of-pocket medical expenses, and thus her health and welfare. It impacts the financial security of her family. Consider a single, working mother. I was raised by such a person. If she is underpaid for her work, this impacts the neighborhood in which they can afford to live, and in turn likely the quality of the school to which she can send her child, with education quality highly correlated with ability to go on to higher education and to be economically secure. And when the issue of pay equity is hitting on equal rights, education, health care, and economic security, it is no longer a “women’s issue,” but rather speaking to the bread and butter of the Democratic Party platform.
 
For obvious reasons, gender has played heavily into this election cycle. Abortion has been under attack across the nation and pay equity has been discussed frequently, but many issues are dismissed as “women’s issues,” relegated to a niche rather than applying broadly, and many voters dismissed as supporting Clinton on the basis of her gender rather than accepting the fact that her policy proposals are well-reasoned, progressive, and achievable. After all, they couldn't possibly be voting for the candidate who was declared by the New York Times as one of the most broadly and deeply qualified candidates in modern American history. And they couldn't possibly be voting for the candidate who built her career around fighting for women, families, health care, and the economic security of the working class. 
 
We saw this in 2008 as well. People must have been voting for President Obama because of his race. It is an easier argument to make than accepting the fact that one might actually be losing on the grounds of policy substance. But it isn’t simply inaccurate to characterize minorities as voting for Obama on the grounds of race, or women voting for Clinton on the grounds of gender. It is patently offensive, dismissing as women incapable of making reasoned political analysis as opposed to letting their anatomy decide their vote. The Democratic Party (and Sanders supporters in particular) can and should be better than that. 

Following a 16-point loss in New York, a growing number of commentators have noted that Sanders' prospects for the Democratic nomination have gone from "if everything goes right for Sanders, he might have a chance" to "it's not going to be possible for Sanders to overcome Clinton's lead." The question remains, then, Why stay in the race? And perhaps more pertinently for the Democratic Party's November prospects, if staying in the race until the convention as he and his campaign's surrogates have said vociferously that they plan to do, why continue to be on the attack as opposed to shifting the campaign to just be about the (positive) message of combating income inequality?

Politico framed the issue as one of Sanders being in the political trap of being too successful to want to concede months ahead of the convention, and yet not successful enough to win. But the failure to concede or even change strategy has ramifications that extend well beyond his own candidacy for the presidency: "Choosing to back off too soon would anger or disappoint Sanders' millions of loyal supporters, his team worries. But deciding to continue fighting could risk damaging the likely Democratic nominee ahead of the general election, though that’s not a concern that weighs heavily on their thinking."

Such a stubbornness to continue to the convention evokes memories of the 2000 election, with Nader's 4% of the vote ultimately serving as a spoiler in key states, most notably Florida given the historic closeness of the race and its resolution in the Supreme Court. Of course, one can make a number of arguments on the Nader front: the race didn't need to be that narrow if the Democratic Party had a stronger candidate, and we don't know with absolute certainty how (or if) Nader voters would have otherwise voted. But the point is that in a very close election, even just a couple percent of the voting population can make enough of a difference as to swing an election outcome from the Democratic to the Republican Party. And while Sanders is not threatening to run as an independent candidate, his willingness to remain on the attack with respect to Clinton provides enough ammunition for the Republicans to use in the general election, and arguments for Democrats and independents not to trust her leadership, that he risks empowering the interests that he purports to so oppose.So while this is not a wholly analogous case -- we are still talking about the Democratic nomination and not the general -- there is reason to question his motives (policy as he suggests, or ego as his actions imply) and to discuss the potential for his campaign strategy as promoting a spoiler outcome moving forward.