Ted Cruz won the Wisconsin Republican primary Tuesday night, but, writes Isaac Chotiner, his victory speech, “a windy and repetitive accounting of delegate math and conservative talking points,” showed that he is far from ready to serve as a unifying figure for the GOP. “Cruz has run an astute campaign thus far,” Chotiner allows, “but his message remains as narrowly tailored as it was when he started.”
Jamelle Bouie argues that if those in the Republican establishment want to sideline the more conservative “counterestablishment” voices in the party, they should be hoping for Cruz to win the nomination and lose the presidency. “The GOP establishment is right to fear and dislike Cruz, but, ironically, its best option for retaining influence is to choose him for its nominee,” Bouie writes. “That would clip Cruz’s wings, and in the process marginalize a faction that has steered the GOP to an almost untenable position.”
What are we to make of Bernie Sanders’ beliefs on the issue of fair trade? Jordan Weissmann ponders the transcript of the candidate’s recent interview with the editorial board of the New York Daily News. “Sanders has effectively written off trade with any country that is not already rich and prosperous—which is simply inhumane,” Weissmann argues. “What I can’t tell is whether Sanders simply doesn’t understand this, or doesn’t care.”
Looking back at the history of corruption in the Russian government in recent years, Fred Kaplan reminds us the revelations in the Panama Papers, which “provide tangible evidence of longstanding rumors that Putin has been running a kleptocracy, skimming bundles of cash from state-run enterprises and stashing it away in foreign banks,” are but proof of the continuation of a pattern. “Putin has only pushed—to new and daring heights—a practice that Russian rulers have been indulging in for many decades,” Kaplan argues.
The People v. O.J. Simpson concluded Tuesday night, and Aisha Harris writes that the whole miniseries “stands to become one of the most fascinating, powerful, and illuminating depictions of the black American experience TV has ever seen.” Harris particularly appreciates the performance of Sterling K. Brown, who played the prosecuting attorney Chris Darden, the lone black man on his team. “Brown captures perfectly the double consciousness that he must inhabit,” Harris writes, “whether he’s squaring off against his frenemy Johnnie [Cochran] or dealing with Marcia [Clark]’s well-meaning ignorance.”
For fun: Planning to buy the Ta-Nehisi Coates–authored comic Black Panther, even though you know zero about the story’s mythology? On Vulture, Coates and Abraham Riesman annotate the first issue’s pages for the uninitiated.
That’s me: uninitiated,
Rebecca
