Vox Sentences: What to make of Iran’s election results

What it means to say Iran's election was a victory for "reformers"; Donald Trump and the KKK, explained; Oscars recap.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

A realignment election in Iran

Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

• Iran's Friday elections dealt a serious blow to hard-liners. Moderates and moderate conservatives together won enough seats to obtain a coalition majority over the hard-line bloc.

  [AP / Ali Akbar Dareini]

• Furthermore, hard-liners also lost out in the elections for the country's Assembly of Experts — which will choose the country's next supreme leader (once Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dies).

  [Financial Times / Najmeh Bozorgmehr ]

• Khamenei prevented many moderate candidates from running. So Iran hawks in the US claim it's unfair to call the election's winners moderates — the real moderates weren't on the ballot.

  [Bloomberg View / Eli Lake]

• But as Farideh Farhi points out, the candidate coalition that won, called the Hope List, didn't identify itself as moderate — it identified itself as supporters of current President Hassan Rouhani, and in particular the nuclear deal he signed with the US.

  [LobeLog / Farideh Farhi]

• In effect, the election realigned Iran's party system around the axis of support versus opposition to the nuclear deal. And the supporters won.

  [The Guardian / Gareth Smyth]

• One analyst thinks the elections were so good for Rouhani that he could even be elected the next supreme leader himself.

  [Council on Foreign Relations / Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar]

The Case of the Racist Earpiece

Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images

• Last week, white supremacist David Duke endorsed Donald Trump, saying that if Duke's followers didn't volunteer for Trump they were basically betraying "the white race."

  [BuzzFeed News / Andrew Kaczynski]

• At a press conference Friday, Trump dismissed the Duke endorsement (though in an annoyed, fly-swatting sort of way).

  [The Hill / Jesse Byrnes]

• But in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday, Trump refused to denounce Duke and other white supremacists such as the Ku Klux Klan, claiming he needed to know more about them.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Trump later tweeted out his earlier dismissal, and on Monday complained that his response to Tapper was due to a faulty earpiece that didn't allow him to hear what Tapper was saying.

  [Time / Daniel White]

• Historical footnote 1: Last August, Trump said he didn't know enough about David Duke to say anything about him, but said he didn't need anyone's endorsement.

  [NBC News / Carrie Dann]

• Historical footnote 2: In 2000, Trump cited Duke's support for the Reform Party as a reason Trump was leaving said party, and called Duke a racist and a "problem."

  [Breitbart / Jordan Schachtel]

• Historical footnote 3: Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who endorsed Trump on Sunday, was once passed over for a federal judgeship because he was a little too cool with the Klan.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

Glad Max

Jason Merritt/Getty Images

• Last night's Oscars included big wins for Spotlght (Best Picture), Leonardo DiCaprio (Best Actor), and Mad Max (pretty much everything else).

  [Vox / Todd VanDerWerff]

• Host Chris Rock got a lot of credit for keeping the evening focused on the nominees' lack of ethnic diversity (though, truth be told, he pulled as many punches as he landed).

  [Washington Post / Alyssa Rosenberg]

• The best Oscars diversity moment, for my (Dara's) money, came from Kevin Hart. Rock joked repeatedly that Hart would take his hosting job, and honestly, Hart showed he might be right.

  [Vox / Alex Abad-Santos]

• The worst Oscars diversity moment? Sam Smith not bothering to do his homework before claiming that no openly gay man had won an Oscar before ... and then totally putting his foot in his mouth when corrected.

  [Spin / Brennan Carley]

• The night's real feel-good story was that Mad Max, which is a legit classic, did a lot better than many critics thought it would (even though it didn't get the ultimate prize).

  [io9 / Katherine Trendacosta]

MISCELLANEOUS

Mark Zuckerberg has $45 billion to give away. Here's how he should do it. [Huffington Post / Michael Hobbes]

• Some urban neighborhoods are enjoying the full benefit of the economic recovery. Others haven't recovered at all.

  [NYT / Nelson Schwartz]

• Obamacare was supposed to help patients avoid having to go back to the hospital — and it's already working.

  [Huffington Post / Jonathan Cohn]

• It's really hard to gauge what the public thinks about specific policy issues. Case in point: If you ask Americans if they support "Medicare for all," 63 percent say yes. If you ask if they support single-payer, only 44 percent do.

  [The Atlantic / Olga Khazan]

• Live in DC? Well, here's the best place to sit at every concert venue, theater, and sporting arena in the city.

  [Washington City Paper]

VERBATIM

"Mrs. Clinton had done her best to develop a relationship with Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, listening to his tales of tagging polar bears and tracking Siberian tigers." [NYT / Jo Becker and Scott Shane]

• "Does it bother you or people in your movement that Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka is Jewish?" "It bothers a lot of people in the movement. It also bothers me, yes. But the fact that his kids went out and were engaged in big-game hunting, that bothers me. The fact that he swears, that bothers me."

  [White supremacist William Johnson to Slate / Michelle Goldberg]

• "A grand jury in New York City recently had to decide whether represented a true threat to police officers."

  [Washington Post / Justin Jouvenal]

• "Mostly Fuller House evokes a smut-free porn parody, with sexualized adult versions of characters who, in the collective psyche, are frozen in amber as children."

  [AV Club / Joshua Alston]

• "One study found that the median age of voters in mayoral elections is 60.You cannot create a national movement around critical local policies, like higher minimum wages, if city hall is elected exclusively by voters born before Dwight Eisenhower’s reelection."

  [The Atlantic / Derek Thompson]

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