Daily Bafflements

• Hey, Iowa—time to revisit Baffler senior editor Chris Lehmann’s words on Ted Cruz, from the LRB last June: “Every phase of Cruz’s launch into national renown has showcased this same barely repressed appetite for self-destruction . . . a man trained in every elite sanctum of the American meritocracy reduced to executing a Mad Max-style campaign of deliberate sabotage against the most basic operations of government.” 

• Today in scraping the barrel: GQ, desperate to prove that “Bill Clinton is Hillary’s Best Weapon,” has reported: “Some of the more ghoulish campaign reporters have even gone so far as to wonder whether Bill might die before November—and to game out just how much of a sympathy vote that would bring Hillary.”

• Over at The Awl, news that Uber recruits “people who have been essentially failed by institutions, mostly public but also private,” such as laid-off Walmart employees, veterans, and teachers. But it’s not because Uber treats them well, indeed “the elegance of surge pricing as a mechanism extends to its ability to neutralize a strike by silently and efficiently enticing scabs to drive for higher fares.”