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Daily Bafflements

• Baffler founding editor Thomas Frank is gracing the pages of the Guardian with a few thoughts on what’s the matter with the Democratic Party. After all, Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street ties are hardly an anomaly. Even blaming the party’s finance-friendly stance on the “gracious” donations from bankers itching for a bonus is sort of missing the point. Frank writes: 

The problem with establishment Democrats is not that they have been bribed by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the rest; it’s that many years ago they determined to supplant the GOP as the party of Wall Street – and also to bid for the favor the tech industry, and big pharma, and the telecoms, and the affluent professionals who toil in such places. . . . The reason Democrats treat these professionals so respectfully in everything from trade deals to urban bike paths is because that is simply who the Democrats are today. 

• Meanwhile, Nathan Schneider of America talked with Baffler contributor Ann Neumann about her new book, The Good Deathand the ethics of dying in the modern world. Inspired by the passing of her own father, she tells Schneider:

I was angry that my elder family members, the hospice nurses and doctors, my culture, my faith had so poorly prepared me for his last months. The Good Death started as a quest to answer this one question: Why is the way we discuss death so unlike how we actually die? I became a hospice volunteer. I talked to everyone I could. I became a scholar of the dying experience.

• Today in politics: someone tell Jeb to put away that damn gun. Plus, even the ever-so-cautious New York Times thinks Clinton should swing for a $15 minimum wage

• Looking to flee the country in the event of a Trump presidency? Don’t worry—Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia is prepared to welcome you