If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee then I suspect that that Trump will win the U.S. Presidential Election, and he’ll do it by attacking Hillary from the left.

I’d very much rather see Hillary Clinton (or Michael Bloomberg) be our next president than Trump. The presidency needs a level-headed thinker who realizes that important problems rarely have simple/fast/perfect solutions, and whose instinct is to try to help people understand each other rather than picking a group to vilify (whether it be ethnic minorities or bankers).

However I think that people who think Clinton will easily beat Trump are making the dangerous assumption that the Donald Trump that Clinton would face in a general election is the same Donald Trump who is currently leading the GOP primary competition – however I think that is unlikely to be the case.

In particular:

• Trump is a master at playing to his audience, and we should expect him to re-spin himself for a presidential campaign – Right now we are seeing what Trump does when he wants to appeal to GOP primary voters. We should not assume that he will do the same things when he wants to win a general election.
• Trump’s populist strongman branding makes it easy for him to change his policy focus to appeal to a wider audience – Trump’s argument for why he should be president is that he a strong leader who can get things done, and that he will stick up for  (the right kind of) “normal” Americans against “elites” who are keeping them down. This appeal is largely orthogonal to particular policies, so I’d expect him to get relatively little punishment if his policies “evolve”.
• Trump doesn’t fit into the normal liberal/conservative framing – People in the US are used to a left/right division based on identity-politics issues like sex/race/guns/tax, but Trump doesn’t fit into that. Instead he is a populist with a message of “power to the (right kind of ) people”. When I say that Trump will attack Clinton from the left, I don’t mean he will go left on identity politics issues, but that he will say that he supports the 99% while Clinton supports the 1%.
• Trump’s appeal isn’t limited to GOP hard-liners – Conventional wisdom used to be that there are no swing voters and that the way you get turnout is by energizing your party’s’ traditional base. In the case of the GOP, it was assumed that this meant being a hard-line social conservative. However Trump has found that he can instead energize the base by being a populist who appeals to everyday Americans who feel unfairly treated. Bernie Sanders is having success making a similar appeal to democratic voters, suggesting that there is fertile ground for Trump to pick up votes from democrats if he re-brands himself a little.
• Hillary Clinton is the perfect candidate for Trump to run against – If Trump’s core value proposition is that he can fight back against “the corrupt aristocracy” then who better for him to run against than the wife of a former president who gives the impression of being beholden to special interests.
• Trump has been pranking the GOP race and we should expect him to prank the presidential race – The democrats are gearing up for a conventional campaign, but that isn’t what Trump is going to give them. Expect him to hit them sideways and take policy angles that GOP candidates aren’t supposed to take.

If Hillary Clinton is the democratic candidate (which looks most likely at the time of writing) then I can imagine Trump potentially doing a lot of things to knock her sideways:

• Present Hillary Clinton as a puppet of special interests – He’ll talk about how she believes she is entitled to inherit the presidency because she is the wife of a former president. He’ll push on her ties to bankers and private prisons. He’ll try to frame her an insincere politician who you can’t trust to act in the interests of normal Americans.
• Re-spin his position on immigration to sound more Sanders-like – While his recent spin has been designed to appeal to the right, his views have some overlap with those of Bernie Sanders, who said “what right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them.”.
• Aggressively court Sanders supporters – The media presents Trump as being far right, but his appeal overlaps to some extent with that of Bernie Sanders, since both of them are populists. Trump would need to pivot his brand to appeal to them, but he is a master of playing to his audience.
• Emphasize policy positions with broad appeal – As a candidate who isn’t dependent on super-PACs, I can imagine him taking a strong position that he is the person to take money out of politics. As someone who isn’t tied to the elites of either party, I can imagine him presenting himself as the candidate to end partisanship.
• Tone down his more “conspiracy-theory” like statements – E.g. Muslims cheering for 9/11. These were great for riling up the GOP base and getting media attention, but they probably play more negative to a broader audience. Expect him to make an effort to seem more stable – while still a populist. He’ll make so much noise that people will forget things he said further into the past.
• Get endorsements from surprising people – Trade union leaders. Black activists. Democratic media outlets.

In current polls, Trump is only slightly behind Clinton. He only has to re-spin himself a little bit to get ahead of her.

Where things get really interesting is if Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic Primary. If that happens then there is a good chance Michael Bloomberg will enter the race, and potentially pick up support from the establishment and super-PACs of both major parties.

We are potentially witnessing a major political re-alignment.

As for me – I think Hillary (or maybe Bloomberg) would be the best President of the current candidates, but I’m not sure she can win. That said, I’m not sure Bernie can win either. This is a crazy race.

Whether it’s called St. Joseph’s Day, The Feast of St. Joseph or La Festa di San Giuseppe, the March 19 holiday is dedicated to the husband of the Virgin Mary. To celebrate the feast, which is usually held two days after St. Patrick’s Day, check out some facts gathered from Fisheaters.com and The Times-Picayune.

1. St. Joseph’s Day is widely celebrated by Catholics in the Italian community
2. St. Joseph is the patron saint of Sicily.
3. The altar, also known as “St. Joseph’s Table” or “la tavola di San Giuseppe,” is an important part of the ceremony. People decorate it with flowers, candles, wine and some “lucky” foods.
4. Fava beans are supposedly “lucky” since they survived during a draught in Italy during the Middle Ages when nothing else did. St. Joseph, through God, saved worshipers from the draught, some believe.
5. Lemons are also thought to be good luck on this day. A side fact: If a woman looking to get married steals a lemon from the altar, it will help her find a husband.
6. Breadcrumbs are usually incorporated into dishes. They represent sawdust, which commemorates Joseph’s job as a carpenter. They could also represent the dry earth during the draught.Meat is usually left off the altar since St. Joseph’s Day takes place during lent. Instead, believers feast on fish and other seafood.
7. St Joseph’s Day is arguably best known for its pastries, with sfinge (cream puffs) and zeppole (doughnuts) being the most popular.
8. While Irish Americans wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, it’s tradition to wear red on St. Joseph’s Day.
9. St. Joseph’s Day is largely celebrated in New Orleans, which was a popular port among Sicilian immigrants in the 19th century.
10. The French Quarter has even garnered the nickname “Little Palermo.”

The Ides of March (Latin: Idus Martiae, Late Latin: Idus Martii) is a day on the Roman calendar that corresponds to 15 March. It was marked by several religious observances and became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. The death of Caesar made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history, as one of the events that marked the transition from the historical period known as the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire.

Although March (Martius) was the third month of the Julian calendar, in the oldest Roman calendar it was the first month of the year. The holidays observed by the Romans from the first through the Ides often reflect their origin as new year celebrations.

This was Spring Training as the postcards depict it: a sunny day at Disney World, a tidy crowd of 6,000 strong lazing away the afternoon. Matt Harvey was on the mound for the first three innings of a 5-4 Mets loss to the Braves, but for most in attendance, it hardly seemed to matter. They were happy just to watch a ballgame.

Compare that to 368 days earlier, when Harvey could hardly tie the shoelaces on his spikes without camera shutters snapping all around him. Considering the amount of virtual ink spilled, Harvey’s return from Tommy John surgery last spring may have been the most chronicled such comeback in baseball history; a year later, he’s just another good pitcher on a staff full of them.

“It’s nice not hearing, ‘How’s your arm feel? Are you healthy?’ all the time,” Harvey said after allowing one run in three innings, striking out one and walking two. “The excitement [now] is just moving toward the season. That’s a huge difference.”

A year ago, in his first official game since surgery, Harvey hit 99 mph on the gun in an over-amped display of strength. His manager, Terry Collins, wasn’t particularly pleased with Harvey airing things out to that extent, even if nothing damaging ever came of it. Harvey went on to have a superlative, healthy season, finishing 13-8 with a 2.71 ERA.

Matt Harvey could be a candidate for the National League Cy Young after showing few effects from Tommy John in a strong 2015 season

That’s not to say he didn’t come out firing Tuesday — he did. Throwing nothing but fastballs in a six-pitch first inning, Harvey sat 96-97 mph for most of the game. It’s just that this time around, he wasn’t as committed to giving the fans a fireworks show. To the contrary, Harvey had more interest in the times he struggled, like when a Wilmer Flores throwing error put runners on the corners with one out in the second. After walking the next batter, Harvey delved into regular-season form, mixing up his pitch sequence to induce an inning-ending double play.

That’s the sort of fine-tuning Harvey hopes to achieve in March, without the dual crushes of media and expectations surrounding him at all times. Already this spring, Harvey has talked about sharpening up his slider, which he all but abandoned for most of last season. He wants to add extension to his delivery, crisping up his pitches. He hopes to improve his overall arm strength.

These are the things he can do when thoughts of surgery and rehab are so far behind him as to be irrelevant.

“We’re trying to continue to get him to understand that we know he’s back, we know he’s going to be healthy and the process has to be slowed down a little bit,” Collins said. “As we get into spring, they’ll just start to put it on cruise a little bit, work on some things and get ready for the season.”

It doesn’t have to be anything showier than that.

“As you get older and get into more Spring Trainings, I think you realize how long it is until the season actually starts, and also how long into the season we want to go,” Harvey said. “Obviously, starting last year, I was pretty excited to get back in there and let it all out. But as far as this Spring Training, I definitely think we all realize that there’s still a lot of time to go, and work to be done, in order to get where you need to be.”

In the wake of the November 13 attacks in Paris, much of the Left has linked the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to the deepening imperialist violence in the Middle East.

War and imperialism, on one side, and the growing reach of jihadist terrorism, on the other, are said to be locked together in a mutually reinforcing embrace of violence and destruction. “Imperialist cruelty and Islamist cruelty feed each other,” the French Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) argued shortly after the Paris attacks. In order to break this nihilistic death grip, we need to oppose foreign intervention, put an end to imperialist violence, and halt the ongoing plunder of wealth from countries in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere.

The basic logic of this argument is undoubtedly sound. But in terms of explanatory value, this kind of analysis does not go far enough. It suffers from too much generality and abstractness — telling us little about the specificity of this particular moment, or the nature of ISIS as a movement. By attributing a kind of automaticity or natural mirror between ISIS and imperialism, we can miss the all-important context and history that has shaped the remarkably rapid rise of the organization.

Why does the response to Western aggression and the calamitous situations in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere across the region take this particular ideological and political form? What explains the support that ISIS finds on the ground in both the Arab world and Europe? In short: why now? And why like this?

The real genesis of the Islamic State’s rise needs to be seen in the trajectory of the Arab uprisings that erupted throughout 2011 and 2012. These uprisings represented enormous hope, a hope that must continue to be defended. They were met with repression and reversal, unable to move forward in any fundamental sense. It was into this breach that Islamist groups stepped, their rise closely calibrated to the pushback against the revolts and the popular democratic aspirations that they embodied.

There was no inevitability to this. Rather, the difficulties the uprisings faced created a vacuum that was necessarily filled by something else.

ISIS’s worldview is an ideological expression of this new reality. To be clear, ISIS’s rise cannot be explained as simply an outcome of ideology or religion, as many Western commentators appear to believe. There are very real social and political roots that explain the organization’s growth.

But taking the ideological expression seriously helps us understand how various intersecting factors — the destructive spread of sectarianism, the devastating repression in Syria and Iraq, and the interests of different regional and international powers in the Middle East — have acted to incubate the rise of ISIS.

It is a dialectic of retreat: the growth of ISIS has reinforced, and has simultaneously fed off, an inability to achieve the aspirations of 2011 as the region has become mired in multiple, deepening crises. While ISIS’s ideological framing of these crises is obviously false, it is nonetheless one that appears for some to resonate with lived experience, a comprehension of the world that makes sense of the apparent chaos and destruction. The mutually reinforcing aspects of this process are what make the current situation so dangerous.

DONALD J. TRUMP

Chairman and President, The Trump Organization

Donald J. Trump is the very definition of the American success story, continually setting the standards of excellence while expanding his interests in real estate, sports, and entertainment. He is a great businessman. Some would say “He is the archetypal businessman –a deal maker without peer.”

Mr. Trump started his business career in an office he shared with his father in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York. He worked with his father for five years, where they were busy making deals together. Mr. Trump has been quoted as saying, “My father was my mentor, and I learned a tremendous amount about every aspect of the construction industry from him.”” Likewise, Fred C. Trump often stated that“ “some of my best deals were made by my son, Donald…everything he touches seems to turn to gold.” Mr. Trump then entered the very different world of Manhattan real estate.

In New York City and around the world, the Trump signature is synonymous with the most prestigious of addresses.  Among them are the world-renowned Fifth Avenue skyscraper, Trump Tower, and the luxury residential buildings, Trump Parc, Trump Palace, Trump Plaza, 610 Park Avenue, The Trump World Tower (the tallest building on the East Side of Manhattan), and Trump Park Avenue.