Friday Reads: It Has Been A Historic Week
Posted: June 10, 2016 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, michelle obama 60 Comments
Good Morning!!
Well, it’s been quite a week in politics.
On Monday, the AP and NBC News separately announced that Hillary Clinton had the requisite number of pledged delegates and super delegates to be the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party–the first woman in history to accomplish this.
On Tuesday, Hillary won more than enough votes to hold a majority of pledged delegates and make it impossible for her opponent to do so. She won primaries in New Jersey, California, New Mexico, and South Dakota. Her opponent won only North Dakota and Montana.
Yesterday, President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed Hillary’s campaign for President and vowed to campaign hard for her. Next Wednesday, President Obama will appear with Hillary at an event in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Obama released his endorsement in a video.
The Wall Street Journal: Barack Obama Endorses Hillary Clinton for President.
No sitting U.S. president in recent history has campaigned for his party’s nominee as much as Barack Obama plans to for Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Obama endorsed the presumptive Democratic nominee on Thursday in a video posted on social media. Her campaign also announced plans for a joint appearance with the president next Wednesday in Green Bay, Wis., kicking off a marathon push to retain Democratic control of the White House.
“I’m fired up,” Mr. Obama said in the video, echoing a chant from his 2008 campaign.
The announcements came just 90 minutes after Mrs. Clinton’s primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, emerged from a White House meeting with Mr. Obama, where the Vermont lawmaker gave his strongest signal yet that he wouldn’t try to block her nomination at the July convention in Philadelphia….
“It means something for him to say she is everything she says she will be, because he was a doubter,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, noting that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton were not natural allies.
Mark Mellman, a Democratic polling expert, said that for Mr. Obama, the potential reward is greater than any risk. “The peril for any president is you get too involved and lose and have it tarnish your legacy,” he said. But if Mr. Obama stayed idle and Mrs. Clinton lost, he would take a hit anyway, Mr. Mellman added, and the president’s policy would be at risk, too.
Mr. Trump said last week that Mr. Obama shouldn’t get involved in the race, warning that “if he campaigns, that means I’m allowed to hit him.”
Go ahead and try, Donald.
Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren quickly threw their public support behind Mrs. Clinton after Mr. Obama’s endorsement. Mr. Biden, in an off-the-cuff comment during a speech Thursday night, said “God willing” the next president will be Mrs. Clinton.
Michelle Obama also said she will campaign for Hillary.
Here’s Warren demolishing Donald Trump yesterday.
The Boston Globe reports: Elizabeth Warren ‘ready to jump in this fight’ for Hillary Clinton.
“I’m ready,” Warren said in an interview with The Globe. “I’m ready to jump in this fight and make sure that Hillary Clinton is the next president of the United States and be sure that Donald Trump gets nowhere near the White House.”
She added: “I’m supporting Hillary Clinton because she’s a fighter, a fighter with guts.” ….
Warren, a champion of the left who passed up a presidential bid of her own, despite the urging of legions of followers, is uniquely positioned to serve as a bridge between the establishment candidacy of Clinton and Sanders supporters, who are being forced to come to terms with the Vermont senator’s loss.
Democrats view the freshman Massachusetts senator as a path of sorts to party unity, which helps explain an upsurge in buzz about Warren as a potential vice presidential pick. Senators and top staff say talking up Warren for vice president is a way to show Sanders and his millions of followers that the party establishment heard them loud and clear.
Warren appeared on the Rachel Maddow show last night to endorse Hillary. Watch or rewatch that appearance at the link.
Last night, Joe Biden warned of the danger of Donald Trump’s attacks on the federal judge who is hearing a case against Trump “university.”
Warren will meet with Clinton this morning, according to James Hohmann of the Washington Post.
Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton will meet privately Friday morning, according to two knowledgeable Democrats.
The sit-down, coming just hours after the Massachusetts senator formally endorsed the presumptive Democratic nominee, will fuel speculation about her prospects as a potential vice presidential pick.
The women have had several conversations over the past month, including one that lasted around half an hour, sources told The Washington Post. The conversations were broad and focused on large topics and issues, rather than the nitty-gritty of the campaign. Their staffs have been engaged in more tactical discussions.
The two women do not have a particularly deep relationship, but that could change as Clinton rallies Democrats around her in the wake of winning the Democratic nomination in recent days. There were three big endorsements that could have meaningfully helped Clinton wrap up the nomination battle: Warren, President Obama and Vice President Biden. Clinton secured all three on Thursday.
Clinton, a Yale-educated lawyer, like Warren, a Harvard Law professor until she was elected in 2012, is a policy wonk at heart. So the two might talk in more detail about how Clinton could embrace pieces of the progressive agenda that allowed Bernie Sanders to win more than 20 states.
Or maybe she could help educate Sanders’ supporters about Hillary’s already very progressive policy proposals and explain that her plan to take on Wall Street is quite a bit stronger than Sanders’ vague ideas about “breaking up the banks.”
Let’s hope we’re close to seeing the back of Bernie Sanders. He held a rally in Washington DC last night, and he plans to compete in the DC primary on Jun 14. I hope by then Democratic leaders will have convinced him to stand down and go back to Vermont. I honestly don’t see how he can campaign for Hillary after he has so poisoned his supporters against her, but maybe I’m wrong. We’ll see.
The Washington Post: How Bernie Sanders’s day in Washington got eclipsed by Democratic unity.
Shortly after Sanders emerged from his meeting with Obama, word got out that the president was going to trumpet an endorsement of his former secretary of state in a video. And then it became clear that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a darling of the political left and Sanders’s ideological soulmate, had also chosen Thursday to throw her support behind Clinton.
The theme of the day soon became Democratic unity, drowning out the conversation about what policy changes and other concessions Sanders might exact in exchange for exiting the race….
By the time Sanders arrived on Capitol Hill for a series of afternoon meetings, Clinton’s campaign had released the video of Obama endorsing her, in which he says of Clinton’s pursuit of the presidency : “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.”
After arriving on the Hill, Sanders headed to the suite of Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).
Sitting on a chair across from Reid by a bookshelf, the Democratic presidential hopeful sat silently as reporters asked him about the six states that voted on Tuesday. Sanders had posted victories in only two.
“Okay you guys, we’re not going to take any questions,” Reid said as Sanders stared straight ahead with his hands on his knees. “That’s kind of the deal that I made.”
Gabriel Debenedetti at Politico: The Sanders wind-down begins.
The walls are crumbling, and Bernie Sanders knows it.
Barack Obama made his support for Hillary Clinton official on Thursday. So did Vice President Joe Biden and liberal hero Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The major political groups surrounding Sanders are saying it’s time to unify.
The campaign is rapidly winding down around Sanders, the Senate gadfly-turned-unlikely revolutionary who outperformed everyone’s expectations, and he finally began to acknowledge it Thursday.
“We need real change in this country. And what people also understand is that no president, not Bernie Sanders, not anybody else, can do it alone,” he told roughly 3,000 supporters gathered near Washington’s RFK stadium on a hot evening, returning to his original stump speech about billionaires, the “corrupt campaign finance system,” and “the broken criminal justice system” without once mentioning Clinton or the Democratic Party’s convention….
The signals that he now accepts the fact that he won’t be the party’s nominee were unmistakable.
The courtship letters his campaign had planned to send superdelegates have been put on hold. His go-to argument — that he polls better against Donald Trump than Clinton — has been scrubbed from his public statements. There are mass staff departures, and his digital firm set up a new site to help laid off staffers find their next gig.
Even his Senate relationship rebuilding effort has begun.
It’s a swift denouement for a campaign that had been bleeding money and staff for weeks, hastened by the surprising margin of Sanders’ loss in California on Tuesday night — which his aides hadn’t anticipated partly because they stopped polling in California days earlier due to the cost.
I really hope Sanders can keep his exit dignified.
Meanwhile, Ruby Cramer reports at Buzzfeed: Clinton Looks To Add Young Voters To Her Coalition Against Trump.
On Friday, just three days after securing the Democratic nomination, Clinton launched a new “millennial engagement” program, targeting voters under the age of 35 with three new hires — including one from the Bernie Sanders campaign.
The new team comes together after a long-fought primary against Sanders, the Vermont senator whose campaign was able to peel away students and twenty-somethings in large numbers. Clinton aides, now preparing for a general election against Donald Trump, view young people as a crucial piece of the electorate, building on an existing coalition of women, older voters, and people of color.
The program expands on the Clinton’s campus outreach effort, an endeavor that largely failed in primary states against Sanders. Campaign operatives now hope to widen their reach to voters under the age of 30, while keeping a focus on winning back college-age voters.
Kunoor Ojha, a former Sanders aide set to join the millennial engagement program, is the first member of the senator’s staff to join the Clinton campaign, an aide said.
The campaign plans to send the youth outreach team around the country to “listen directly to millennial voters,” according to a Clinton official. The team of three operatives will also work directly with staffers in battleground states to create local outreach programs and hold “working group” meetings with voters under 35.
Read more details at the link.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a fabulous weekend!
peej
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Sky Dancing 
USA TODAY exclusive: Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills.
No surprise there — Trump is mean. And I doubt he’s anywhere as rich as he pretends to be.
Meant to say also that he’s the callous kind of egotist who’d stiff others no matter how rich he was. Nobody else really matters to T-rump.
He’s definitely losing lots of money now. No corporate marketing department will want to touch a brand that’s that racist and sexist.
When you do your post about that fucking asshole from Stanford, be sure to include the fact that he shared a pic of his victim’s breast with his swimming buds.
oh for pete’s sake … it’s my plan to blog about it tomorrow.
and now we hear from mommie dearest http://heavy.com/news/2016/06/carleen-brock-turner-mother-mom-letter-judge-stanford-rape-beautiful-son-parents/
I mean. She is so distraught she can’t even decorate her new house! Will there be no end to the Turners’ suffering?
These people are un-fucking-believable.
Brock Turner has been banned for life by USA Swimming.
Where was it, Butterflies and Wheels I think, where I saw a post about a 17 year-old at Eton who got caught with years’ worth of child pornography of the worst kinds. I’m sure it’s also on the BBC.
That judge gave him a 10-month supended sentence and a requirement to get counseling.
Ten months. Suspended.
So just in case you feel the need to include more stuff straight out of Dylan’s The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, I thought I’d mention another unmentionable.
The New Yorker: Senator Susan Collins Says She Might Support Hillary Clinton.
It’s a secret ballot, and I’ll bet Collins votes for Hillary when she gets in the voting booth.
You, know the night before last, I received a call from a friend I hadn’t heard from for some time. She wanted to congratulate me, for all my devotion and support of Hillary. I wanted to mention this the other day, because she has worked many years for very successful doctors, and she can’t ever talk about politics, because most of them are republicans supporters. She has couple three more years to retire, but she was so happy she gets to vote for Hillary.
I have cousins in Alabama, and Misssissippi, they don’t say nothing about Hillary in front of anybody in their families, but I received notes saying, they would be voting for Hillary.
I live in Georgia. I have many friends in the same boat. I am black, male and 50 years old. All my friends and co-workers know I am a Clintonista from way back and all the conversations stay good natured and I never get too much grief. Thy expect me to be “the liberal.”
My white fiends who support Hills, holy sh!t! They get lambasted by friends family and even co-workers as if they had admitted to wanting the terrorists to win. FaceBook is the worst.
I can’t tell you how friends have told me that it stiffens their resolve for Hills but they absolutely hide their light under a bushel.
“Friends” not “fiends.” 😆
Ron, just think how great it will be when she wins in November!
Washington Post:
Trump doesn’t have a national campaign. So the GOP is trying to run one for him.
As Trump might say in one of his ridiculous tweets, “Sad.”
There is a rumor going around that he hasn’t paid taxes in 25 years………..I think, this too will bring down the jerk.
I’ve always liked Elizabeth Warren, sent support dollars for her campaign and look to her to grow into the presidency one day. Her speech was great – no shouting, just the facts – and she nailed Trump beautifully!
BB thanks for this upbeat post. Yes, it is a great week for Hillary supporters.
BTW Hillary’s first speech as presumptive Dem nominee is today at the Planned Parenthood National Conference in DC. How truly Hillary!
That’s great. Thanks for the tip.
That’s our Hillary!
Loved this cartoon!
Dancin’ with our foremothers!
Wonderful!
Gets me choked up.
Great post! I’m thrilled that the Democratic big guns have come out strong for Hillary. I’ve had enough of Bernie and his petulant followers.
Thanks. I really don’t even want him to campaign for her, but I guess that’s up to Hillary.
I don’t think he will. I think he’ll do some half-assed speeches against Trump but never say a nice thing about her. He’s a weasel and he’ll weasel out of his responsibility and commitment when it comes to supporting Clinton. Just like he weaseled out of showing his tax returns. As far as I’m concerned, if you are in elected office it should be mandatory that you show your tax returns. The public has a right to know.
That’s what I think too. He’ll try to oppose Trump without saying anything nice about Hillary. Go home, Bernie. He should retire.
Glorious post, BB. I feel the energy!
Thank you!
All the posts are worthy and all the BB posts are always especially well done.
What a sweet thing to say! Thank you, Pilgrim.
What a great day yesterday! I’m actually watching MSNBC and not getting pissed off too much. I only hate about 90% of their pundits. Halperin? Hewitt? Really? GAH
Loved the Warren and Biden speeches yesterday – Biden laid out the case against Trump’s attack on Curiel from the perspective of its being an attack on the judicial system which was quite good.
I think Clinton should choose Warren as V.P. She is the obvious choice really – and would bring in younger voters. Apparently her senate seat is not in as much jeopardy as previously thought although I don’t have a link for that. Strategists on teevee told me so.
Warren told Maddow she is fit to be President and I think she would absolutely accept if Clinton offered. I am hoping it happens.
P.S. BB thank you for another meaty post – I have to do my usual drive-by (thank dog I have a busy great job!) – I will come back to read more later!
Joe Kennedy could get the MA Senate seat maybe.
I don’t know; I just don’t see Warren as a team player.
Let her stay in the Senate and be a star.
This is heartbreaking.
The Guardian: ‘You were born in a Taco Bell’: Trump’s rhetoric fuels school bullies across US.
The horrible thing is, even assuming the Con Man loses, he’s made bigotry more acceptable. Even when he and his multithousand dollar orange hair weave are gone, that poison will remain.
It’s going to take real work and education and people like Hillary to set opposite examples to get that slime bottled up again.
Yes.
Watching Hillz speak at PP on CNN right now.
Another great speech from our presumptive nominee!!
Yes! Watching Trump now at Faith and Freedom Conf. It’s ridiculous, especially when he started talking about the importance of family.
Obama is having fun with all of this. Good for him.
Loved that!
Orange is not the new black, hahaha!
Love it!!!
Stephen Marche is one of the few who have noted that Sanders’ policies sucked and lost to better. Personally I’m sick of hearing how Bernie has triumphed in his loss.
Esquire: At This Point, We Only Need One Thing from Bernie Sanders
That’s excellent. He lost to Hillary by a landslide. I especially like the point that he did not lose to a personality. Nobody can accuse Hillary of being a natural campaigner, her policies are just better.
Exactly. He just got beat along with his 60s era slogan policies.
That’s really good.
Bernie, STFU and GTHO. You are irrelevant. That’s why you LOST. Admit it and then get lost before some of us kick you back to your Vermont compost pile.
Senator Perdue GOP at the Faith and Freedom Conference today asked for prayer for Obama. Using Psalm 109.8.a prayer for someone’s death.
http://bluenationreview.com/gop-senator-publicly-prays-for-president-obamas-days-to-be-few/
Here is CNN report on it. Senator Perdue says he in no way means harm to the President (even though the prayer he used is part of a death wish.)
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/10/politics/david-perdue-donald-trump-days-be-few/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlist
It was a total death wish, but the GOP wishes aren’t going to come true. They are angry because all they have is Cheeto Dust, We have the most Qualified Candidate to ever run for the office of POTUS, HILLARY!
I called both his offices in DC and Georgia,leaving messages, so I told him that I seriously question his ability to serve in the capacity of leader in congress……and ended with telling him to go to hell.
Righteous!
I know that bernie is annoying but the Republican are disgusting and dangerous.
True.
Hillary gonna vacuum up all the Cheeto Dust
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/10/us/sexual-assault-brock-turner-swimming/