Democracy in America

THE body language was a little stilted and there were scattered squabbles between supporters, but on July 12th Senator Bernie Sanders at last stood in a New Hampshire high-school gymnasium and said words that Democratic leaders have been waiting to hear for weeks: “I am endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.” For die-hard Sanders supporters—the mostly young, ardent left-wingers who call themselves “Bernie or Bust” voters—there were lines in their hero’s speech that reminded them why they dislike and mistrust the former Secretary of State, senator and first lady.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG is the only Supreme Court justice in recent memory to have a nickname drawn from the moniker of a murdered gangsta rapper. The Brooklyn-born Notorious RBG, as she has been known for a few years—thanks to Shana Knizhnik’s Tumblr of the same title and a 2015 book by Ms Knizhnik and Irin Carmon, a reporter for MSNBC—is celebrated as the diminutive but tough-as-nails anchor of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court. At 83, Ms Ginsburg, a Bill Clinton nominee and two-time cancer survivor, is the oldest serving justice.

IT HAS been clear for some time that smartphone cameras add a lot to society’s knowledge about what happens in the world. A series of horrible shootings this week in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; in Falcon Heights, Minnesota; and in Dallas, Texas, have once again demonstrated the power of amateur smartphone video to show millions of people shocking events almost in real time. Protest marches and vigils were held in cities nationwide after social media and traditional broadcast television networks circulated images of a police shooting in Baton Rouge in the early hours of July 5th, and in Falcon Heights on July 6th.

IF HILLARY CLINTON were a high-flying policy wonk seeking a post in the National Security Council, her hopes would surely be dashed by the FBI’s judgment, delivered on July 5th by the bureau’s director, James Comey, that she had been “extremely careless” in her handling of very sensitive, highly classified information during a previous job at the State Department.

AT A packed sangria bar in Washington Heights, a neighbourhood in upper Manhattan, supporters of Adriano Espaillat danced and waved Dominican flags as they waited to hear the results of a primary election on June 28th. Mr Espaillat declared victory the same evening, but it was a full two days until his rival, Keith Wright, conceded. The winner will represent the Democratic party in the November election for New York’s 13th congressional district. The district is heavily Democratic; Mr Espaillat will therefore almost certainly go to the House of Representatives. 

Mr Espaillat arrived in America from the Dominican Republic when he was nine years old. He had no papers.

THE last thing that America needs is more economic turmoil and political navel-gazing in Europe, a continent which—for all that it disappoints and maddens officials in Washington—remains a major trading partner and indispensable ally when the “free West” needs to act as one, for instance by sanctioning Russia over its actions in Ukraine. Turmoil in Britain is especially unwelcome, because, though Germany may be more powerful and France more gung-ho during recent foreign-policy crises, no other big European nation so often shares America’s basic instincts about the world and how to keep it prosperous and safe.

IT CAN be hazardous to read too much into the tenor of Supreme Court oral arguments: the justices often seem to lean one way and then end up ruling the other way. But in Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, the most significant abortion ruling the justices have handed down in a generation, there were no great surprises. Anyone who watched the Texas solicitor-general struggle to defend his state’s restrictive abortion law before the justices on March 2nd would have been hard-pressed to predict a win for the Lone Star state.