End-of-Day Wrap-Up: Clinton and Rubio Launch White House Runs
What's Happening: Clinton and Rubio Are Running
Whatever Hillary Clinton can do, Marco Rubio can do later. A day after Clinton's long-expected presidential campaign launched, Marco Rubio, the freshman Republican senator from Florida, also threw his hat into the ring. Clinton announced her White House bid via video, while on Monday, Rubio told George Stephanopoulos "I believe that I can lead this country."
Their odds: Clinton's seeming inevitability is artificially boosted by polls that show her as a favorite but hampered by many who want her to face a serious challenger. Marco Rubio, as David Graham argues, isn't that popular, but maybe popular enough: "Though he isn't leading in polls, many Republicans say they're willing to consider him and very few rule him out, compared to most of his rivals."
Challenges: Even The Onion insinuates that Hillary Clinton's toughest challenge may be the perception she's a shoo-in. Meanwhile, Rubio may have trouble battling former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, his well-positioned mentor, for both Latino primary votes on the trail and in the invisible primary for big-time donors.
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Snapshot
In the Greek village of Vrontados, two rival church parishes perform a "Rocket War" by firing thousands of homemade rockets towards each other while services are held. See more at The Atlantic Photo. (Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images)
Three Short Points
Per Arkansas rep Tom Cotton, Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is a "long list of concessions" to a state run by "an apocalyptic cult of ayatollahs."
But is Iran really so scary or "revolutionary"? Since the Iranian revolution, the U.S. has worked to install democratic governments across the Middle East, while Iran often props up neighboring governments.
The revolution actually occurring in Iran is a quiet and incremental one, seen in things like a booming underground rap scene or flourishing of experimental literature.
Moment of Venn
Pop Quiz
1. Thanks mainly to Baptists, there are considerably fewer _______ in the South.
2. The average lifespan of an S&P company dropped from 67 years in the 1920s to __ years today.
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3. In 1952, a 14-year-old boy discovered a long-lost photograph of __________'s coffin.
Evening Read
Researchers have been combing over the human genome, hoping to discover the secret to racial-health disparities. What they found is troubling:
For many years, researchers speculated that what they couldn’t explain about disparities must be the fingerprint of some mysterious genetic component. But since they are now able to scan the entire genome, this speculation appears both lazy and wrong. When it comes to why many black people die earlier than white people in the U.S., Kaufman and his colleagues show we've been looking for answers in the wrong places: We shouldn't be looking in the twists of the double helix, but the grinding inequality of the environment.
Verbs
U.S. deficit speeds up, U.S. airlines slow down, Blackwater guard sentenced, perfume heiress convicted, golf records smashed, kiss training deployed, and exorcisms boom.
This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2015/04/end-of-day-wrap-up/390414/?UTM_SOURCE=yahoo
