Blue Monday Reads
Posted: January 25, 2016 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Chris Hadfield, Democratic Primaries, Hillary Clinton, International Space Station, Space Oddity, Terry Virts 47 Comments
Hello from the depths of Mardi Gras and the despair of the press coverage of the US Presidential Primary.
“Planet earth is Blue and there’s nothing I can do.”
I never really understood the double entrendre enveloping that lyric when I was a a preteen first turning into a Bowie Fan. I grok it now.
That’s a view of New Orleans there on the left today! It was taken from space by US Astronaut Terry W. Virts who posted it to his Twitter page a few days ago. He had a simple message for us: “Good night #NewOrleans. Bonsoir La Nouvelle-Orléans”.
I thought I’d also treat you to Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield singing Bowie’s Space Oddity from the International Space Station. He’s got a great voice and some interesting change in lyrics. I’m not sure how he got the guitar up there but watching it float around is a trip. Stick around to watch his collaboration with Barenaked Ladies and some high school kids from 2013. It’s so kewl!!!
I’m not sure why–of all the Bowie songs out there–this song is haunting me. It’s not really bothering me that I feel compelled to sit at the Steinway and grab a guitar for it then arrange away. It’s sort’ve a life time hazard of being a musician with me that melodies grab me and hold tight. So, I’m passing my brain Tweak on to you, lucky you!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apemYk2oz7M
Now for more earthly matters…
I’m really trying to understand wtf is going on with the media and the Democratic primary. Maybe they’re tired of Republican crazy and want to create some lunacy among the Democrats. Maybe, they’ve just got caught up in the mythos of a great outsider still itching to take down the Clintons. It’s just early and getting old already.
Glenn Thrush of Politico has interviewed President Obama and the dissection has begun.
Barack Obama, that prematurely gray elder statesman, is laboring mightily to remain neutral during Hillary Clinton’s battle with Bernie Sanders in Iowa, the state that cemented his political legend and secured his path to the presidency.
But in a candid 40-minute interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast as the first flakes of the blizzard fell outside the Oval Office, he couldn’t hide his obvious affection for Clinton or his implicit feeling that she, not Sanders, best understands the unpalatably pragmatic demands of a presidency he likens to the world’s most challenging walk-and-chew-gum exercise.
“[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing,” a relaxed and reflective Obama told me in his most expansive discussion of the 2016 race to date.
Iowa isn’t just a state on the map for Obama. It’s the birthplace of his hope-and-change phenomenon, “the most satisfying political period in my career,” he says — “what politics should be” — and a bittersweet reminder of how far from the garden he’s gotten after seven bruising years in the White House.
So, from Thrush’s vantage point, Clinton seems the obvious Obama follow-up. There also these overall daunting poll numbers when you look beyond the February openers. What’s with the conversation on a Bernie Bump?
natesilver: FWIW, our FiveThirtyEight national polling average (which we’re not publishing yet — stay tuned) has Clinton up 22 percentage points. Although that was before the Monmouth poll released today, which might tighten things a bit. But somewhere in the high teens or perhaps low 20s nationally is where the race seems to be. By contrast, our averaging method would have had Clinton up by 25 points at the end of December.
So that suggests some tightening, but not as much as the media narrative — which is pretty blatantly cherry-picking which polls it emphasizes — seems to imply.
From there, I’m seeing some other headlines which I don’t quite grok.
From BC News: First Read: Get Ready for a Long Fight for the Democratic Nod. It’s Chuck Todd so be forewarned because as you know the Republicans are rooting for Bernie big time. The weird thing is the fine print doesn’t connect with that clickbait headline. But, FYI there is this which is factual and remember, we’re always around to Live Blogs Debates and Townhalls.
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley participate at a CNN forum at Drake University in Des Moines, IA beginning at 9:00 pm ET… Clinton holds three earlier events in Iowa, hitting Waukee, Knoxville, and Oskaloosa… Sanders, meanwhile, stumps in Iowa Falls, Ames, and Grinnell… Donald Trump holds a rally in Farmington, NH at 7:00 pm ET… Ted Cruz spends his day in Iowa… So does Marco Rubio… Chris Christie is in New Hampshire… Ben Carson hits the Hawkeye State… And John Kasich is in New Hampshire.
Countdown to Iowa: 7 days
Countdown to New Hampshire: 15 days
I’m really looking forward to hearing this debate because Bernie isn’t standing up well to media scrutiny and I’m denying to hear a response to this: “Sanders: Clinton is running a ‘desperate’ campaign that lacks excitement.”
Asked about his comments last spring that he had no intention of playing the role of spoiler or weakening Clinton’s standing in the general election, Sanders turned the question on its head.
“That’s a two-way question, isn’t it?” he said. “When Hillary Clinton’s hit man is throwing garbage at the media, she is in a sense making it harder for me to win the general election.
“Our campaign is not going to simply sit back and accept all of these attacks,” Sanders added. “We are going to win this thing.”
In another sign of growing confidence, Sanders has stepped up his talk of the general election. “I would very much look forward to a race against Donald Trump,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” In speeches at his rallies, he sprinkles in previews of “a Sanders administration.”
Over the course of The Post interview, Sanders said Clinton was running a “desperate” campaign incapable of generating the kind of excitement his has. He raised questions about her motives and character. He said he expects Clinton and her campaign to “throw the kitchen sink” at him in the coming week in what he described as a craven attempt to avoid an embarrassing loss in Iowa.
Sanders questioned Clinton’s association with David Brock, the head of the pro-Clinton super PAC Correct the Record, whom Sanders called a “hit man.”
Even more bizarre is this comment: “Sanders says the flak he’s getting from Clinton reminds him of what Obama got in 2008.” Is this Sanders way of warming up to black folks?
“We get attacked about five times a day,” Sanders told a crowd of about 700 people here. “But it really reminds me very much of what happened here in Iowa eight years ago. Remember that? Eight years ago, Obama was being attacked for everything. He was unrealistic. His ideas were pie-in-the sky. He did not have the experience that was needed. You know what? People of Iowa saw through those attacks then, and they’re going to see through those attacks again.”
This must be the Clinton speech that gave Bernie the heebie jeebies.
Indianola, Iowa (CNN)Hillary Clinton delivered a blistering assessment of Bernie Sanders’ credentials here on Thursday and implored Iowa voters to scrutinize his policies and readiness for the White House, declaring, “Theory isn’t enough. A President has to deliver in reality.”
It was the most forceful and direct contrast Clinton has drawn with Sanders yet, a speech that underscored the increasing urgency and acrimony of the race. From health care to foreign policy, Clinton repeatedly referenced Sanders by name and questioned whether his ideas could ever become reality.
“I am not interested in ideas that sound good on paper but will never make it in the real world,” Clinton said. “I care about making a real difference in your life and that gets to the choice you have to make in this caucus.”
Clinton acknowledged that while she and Sanders “share many of the same goals” they have “different records and different ideas on how to drive progress.”
The former secretary of state used a Teleprompter to deliver her remarks to hundreds of supporters on the campus of Simpson College. The speech, one adviser said, was designed to “shake some sense into Iowans” and escalate the experience argument she has been making against Sanders with limited success.
“Senator Sanders doesn’t talk much about foreign policy, but when he does it raises concerns,” Clinton said. “Sometimes it can sound like he really hasn’t thought it through.”
Clinton’s campaign had multiple cameras here and plan to turn part of the speech into an ad, according to aides.
More bizarrely, we now have hints of a Bloomberg third party candidacy because of some perceived weakness on the part of the Clinton campaign. Doesn’t any one have enough math background these days to get real?
Democratic primary front-runner Hillary Clinton on Sunday vowed to win her party’s nomination for president to “relieve” former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg of any thoughts of running for president.
“The way I read what he said is if I didn’t get the nomination, he might consider it,” Clinton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Well, I’m going to relieve him of that and get the nomination so he doesn’t have to [run].”
“He’s a good friend of mine, and I’m going to do the best I can to make sure that I get the nomination, and we’ll go from there,” she added.
Bloomberg is reportedly considering a third-party White House bid if the race comes down to Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders and Republican primary front-runner Donald Trump.
Clinton on Sunday also defended lucrative speaking fees that she collected from big banks before her presidential run.
She said the payouts will not influence her policy platform as president.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “You know, first of all, I was a Senator from New York — I took them on when I was a senator.”
Bloomberg has some ‘splaining to do. And I have the heebie jeebies at thinking between a President Bloomberg and President Trump.
A close confidant of Michael Bloomberg told ABC News the former New York City mayor plans to make a decision on whether he will make an independent run for president in the first week of March.
His decision will be based in large part on the state of the Democratic and Republican primaries after the Super Tuesday contests on March 1, the confidant said.
If after Super Tuesday it looks like Bernie Sanders has a good chance of winning theDemocratic primary and the Republicans seems likely to nominate either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, Bloomberg’s odds of running are at least 50-50, according to this long-time Bloomberg friend.
If, on the other hand, Hillary Clinton looks poised to win the Democratic nomination, the odds that Bloomberg will run drop to close to zero, the friend said.
And I’m going back to Tiger Beat on the Ptomac for my closer. I guess I’m with Paul Starr on this one. (“Paul Starr, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect and professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. Among his books is Freedom’s Power: The History and Promise of Liberalism.”)
I have a strange idea about presidential primaries and elections: The purpose is to elect a president.
And I have a strange thought about primary voters: They have a choice between sending the country a message and sending it a president. That is a choice Democratic voters in Iowa and New Hampshire ought especially to be weighing with the first caucuses and primary only days away.
…
But as appealing as Sanders may be, he is not credible as president. Elizabeth Warren would have been a credible candidate, but Sanders isn’t. The campaign he has been waging is a symbolic one. For example, the proposals he has made for free college tuition and free, single-payer health care suggest what might be done if the United States underwent radical change. Those ideas would be excellent grist for a seminar. But they are not the proposals of a candidate who is serious about getting things done as president—or one who is serious about getting elected in the country we actually live in.
If he were elected, Sanders would be 75 years old on assuming office, the oldest person to become president in American history by more than five years. (Ronald Reagan was 69.) Some of his supporters were outraged by David Brock’s recent demand that he release his medical records—did they think no one was going to notice how old Sanders is? The presidency is an enormously taxing job, physically and mentally. His age is a legitimate issue, and if he were the Democratic nominee, even many people sympathetic to his views would have reservations about putting him in office.
Two other obstacles, however, would be so decisive that the question of Sanders’ age might hardly come up. Sanders’ self-identification as a “socialist” is all that many voters would need to know to reject him. A recent Pew poll found negative reactions to the word “socialist” outpacing positive reactions by two to one—59 percent to 29 percent.
In June 2015, Gallup asked people whether they would vote for a “well-qualified person for president” who had various possible characteristics, and “socialist” was a deal-breaker for more Americans than any other attribute, including gay, Muslim or atheist.
“Socialism” is the label Republicans have been trying to pin on Democrats; it is not the flag Democrats want to be waving. Not only would Sanders find it difficult to get elected, Democratic candidates up and down the ticket would disassociate themselves from him.
If that’s what Bernie and his groupies feel is an attack then consider me a warrior princess. I feel the same way.
So, that’s my venture into Spaciness today.
What’s on you reading and blogging list?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
I just posted this on the open thread, but I’m putting it here too.
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Exactly.
Here;s Krugman on being a corporatist, shill, sellout because he doesn’t like Sanders policies.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/wonks-and-minions/
Yeah. Agreed.
I don’t particularly blame Sanders for running–though if he somehow decides to run as a third party candidate, he will end up as worse than Ralph Nader, as someone who sacrificed his supposed ideals on the altar of his own ego and desire for celebrity. Let us sincerely hope that does not happen.
What I do blame is Sanders’ supporters, who either do not know or do not care what will happen if the Republicans are allowed to win any presidential elections while their majority tea party wing runs that party. As the quote above well states, this is not some kind of game; some kind of quadrennnial substitute for playing X-Box. Sanders cannot win a national election, if for no other reason than his self-identifyng as a Socialist for decades. And even if his supporters want to fantasize that he can win, he will surely not carry in any Democrats downticket, thus leaving the Democratic Party completely dominated in both Houses of Congress for probably the next 30-40 years, at which time this country will look like “Waterworld” or “Mad Max.” And I am not being intentionally hyperbolic.
The Sanders campaign is a very dangerous indulgence, mostly supported by very young would-be voters who perhaps never had to take a government course, where you learn, if you did not already know it, that the president is not a medieval emperor, and that all bills originate in the House; and that two-thirds of Congress can override a president’s veto, and thus ram through any bill they like. And that even puts aside the very real question about Sanders’ temperament or ability to govern, and to consult with world leaders about crucial world issues. And the media, which should know some of this, is so invested in hating Hillary, and in their jealousy of her, and in desperately trying to make a race of this, to boost their ratings and salaries, that they are desperately if inadvertently trying to write this country’s epitaph. Maybe they figure they won’t be around when it all happens, or they can just get drunk every day and hang around with the rest of their media friends whom Trump has banned and rendered impotent in his fascist state. Or maybe this is all worth it to them, if they can just satisfy their adolescent anti-Hillary feelings.
Outside of college kids, who tend to be unrealistic, Sanders’ largest demographic is white liberals from homes with incomes over $150K per year. Those people will survive a GOP president just fine. They should be ashamed of themselves for their apparent willingness to inflict that hell on the rest of the country but may not care.
Exactly. They can afford to wait for Bernie’s “revolution” to arrive.
Jamil Smith at The New Republic: Bernie Sanders Wants Us to Trust HimBut to earn black and Latino votes, he will have to get more pragmatic.
I don’t think they want a revolution because they would be losers if it happened. They’re just interested in being “pure”.
Sounds about right if you take my Facebook feed as a sample.
Personally I don’t think Sanders has any chance of getting the nomination.
I don’t either.
From Vanity Fair: Hillary Clinton Cannot Be Stopped
Exactly. I haven’t any credible evidence that he has any chance at all to be nominated. The delegate counts are impossible, thank goodness!
Yup. That Cook Report matrix is awesome!
Wasn’t it? Music to my ears. Really straight forward and convincing.
I posted that before I read it. Anyone who thinks that Bernie Sanders speeches are “soaring rhetoric” has a hole in his head.
Yup. He’s everyone’s crankiest professor of the esoteric.
Uh oh. Now the Bernie bros will be after Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky: I’d ‘absolutely’ vote for Hillary Clinton
I think Chomsky is an overrated nutcase, but he’s right there.
He is, but he’s a hero to the Glenn Greenwald types.
Exactly. The far lefties love him and this must break their little hearts. 🙂
So there have been some indictments in the investigation of the Planned Parenthood organ selling story. No, not anyone from PP, but the anti-abortion activists involved in creating the story!! Yay!
Excellent!
Whoohooo! Who would have thunk it…Repubs up to tricks?
/s
Mother Jones:
How Bernie Sanders Helped Derail a Promising Legal Fight Against Gun Violence
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/bernie-sanders-vote-gun-immunity-black-market
Miami Herald:
Lawmakers will consider total ban on abortions in Florida.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article56473868.html
Sure. They can do that by ordering vasectomies on all males in Florida. Voila, problem of abortion solved.
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But Hillary’s campaign has no enthusiasm.
Ah that’s so sweet!
I’m pretty sure I’d cry too!
I was nearly hyperventilating with excitement.
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If elected (which I think is very likely), Hillary Clinton will be dealing with GOP-majority House and Senate which may have GOP majority, or at the very least, filibuster-sufficient GOP minority. And GOP has proved that they will do whatever it takes to undermine Democratic agenda, and will rarely break party lines, unless it’s a no-brainer legislation like renaming a post office.
With this Congress, pretty much anything that Clinton would be in a position to accomplish would be laws that GOP support, not what she supports. (Just so there is no misunderstanding, “Clinton” and “Sanders” are completely interchangeable in the above, except for their election prospects).
But weirdly, Sanders and his fans are the only ones living in the fantasy world.
We’ll see. Obama has managed to accomplish a few things.
Obama had a Democratic majority in the House for two years, and in the Senate for six years, I think. He also entered the office as the country was shell-shocked by the recession. So he was able to play some offense, even if he was handicapped by filibusters. The next Democratic president will start out in a much worse position, unfortunately.
Hillary knows how to get things done, and as Senator and SoS was able to do so. Obama went into office wanting to be liked by both sides more than he wanted to get stuff done. Hillary is also far more effective than Sanders at diplomacy. There is a difference. Plus I expect Hillary will bring more Dems with her to Congress.
Here is the difference, in my view: Hillary will have the ability to bring in some Democrats downticket in various states, where Sanders cannot. In fact, I recall one article not long ago suggesting that with Hillary at the top of the ticket, Democrats have a reasonable chance to take the Senate back. That still leaves the House, but it’s certainly a start. And it would insure that she could get her Supreme Court nominees approved, which is so important.
If we can get the Senate back, that gives her a better chance to somewhat marginalize the House, and make them look radical and obstructionist. I could see us winning 6-10 House seats this time, and that would help. The unconscionably extreme gerrymandering that the various states have done, will make it hard to get back the House at least until the next census,and more Democratic held state legislatures. But Hillary will work very hard to do that. Sanders will not and cannot. She can also use executive power to withhold support for pet projects which keep some of these radical Right congresspeople in office. It won’t be easy, but it gives us hope. A Sanders regime would be an exercise in futility, and probably get the Republicans a veto-proof majority.
Cook Political Report on 2016 House races:
http://cookpolitical.com/house/charts/race-ratings
Love this.
If Hillary can have a larger positive impact downticket than Bernie, that would be a solid reason to vote for her. But is there any actual evidence to support that assertion?
Hillary and Bill have a solid record of campaigning for downticket Democratic candidates all over the country. They have done it for decades and have built important connections with Democrats in every state. Bernie doesn’t have a record of doing that. None. He isn’t even a Democrat.
Clintons have done it whether they were on the national ticket or not, and I trust that whatever happens in the primary, they will continue to campaign for other Democratic candidates.
As for Sanders, he was a pretty much a political nobody outside of Vermont until last summer. Now that he’s actually somewhat a household name, we shall see if he gets involved in campaigning for others in the next election cycle.
He’s been insulting dems on the campaign trail. The other day he said dem Congress had turned their backs on working people.
From Politico:
“Democrats are starting to feel confident they will win two key Senate races — and are within striking distance in several other states that would give them a majority when the next president takes office.”
“That presidential environment is of paramount importance: It will be very difficult for Republicans to hold the Senate if they lose another presidential race, while Democrats would have an almost impossible time winning the Senate back if they lose the White House.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/senate-race-rankings-217558
That’s good news. Upcoming potential SCOTUS appointments concern me.
Planned Parenthood exonerated. Grand Jury indicts the people who shot the video
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Harris-grand-jury-indicts-pair-behind-Planned-6782865.php