Daily Bafflements

• Today in politics: the New Hampshire presidential primary votes are in, and Trump—the winner on the Republican side—is showing no sign of going away quickly or quietly. On the bright side, the night wasn’t only aggravating balderdash—Bernie Sanders made history by becoming the first Jewish American, not to mention non-Christian candidate, to win a state in a presidential primary. That makes Clinton’s purported next move—attacking Sanders on Israel—even odder. Plus, it’s unlikely Sanders’s biggest, most enthusiastic demographic—millennials—would put much stock in those attacks. After all, as Baffler founding editor Thomas Frank told Radio Open Source, “[young people] are screwed, and they know it. And they’re reaching out to someone who promises to unscrew them.”

• Meanwhile, over at The Nation, Michelle Alexander—author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness—takes on Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill, the effect it’s had on black Americans, and why Bill’s policy wonk confidant, Hillary, doesn’t deserve black votes. Part of that crime bill, as Natasha Vargas-Cooper noted in Bad Behavior last week, included the myth of the superpredator, which still bedevils us today. 

• Would anyone be talking about water in Flint if it weren’t for Black Lives Matter?