Super Saturday Reads
Posted: March 5, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 Democratic nomination race, 2016 GOP nomination race, Bernie Sanders, DailyKos, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, misogyny, Sexism, Super Saturday primaries and caucuses 60 Comments
Smoking Bar for Ladies, Harry Grant Dart
Good Morning!!
A note on the illustration above: It is an anti-women’s suffrage cartoon originally publish in the satire magazine Puck, showing the horror that could befall the country if women actually got the vote.
We have a busy few days coming up for presidential politics. Today is the Louisiana primary, and Hillary is expected to win overwhelmingly on the Democratic side. There will also be Democratic and Republican caucuses in Kansas and Nebraska. For Republicans, there will be additional caucuses in Maine and Kentucky. Maine Democrats will caucus tomorrow and there will be a GOP primary in Puerto Rico. Then on Tuesday there will be primaries in Michigan and Mississippi.
Tomorrow night there will be a CNN Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan and on Monday night Fox News will hold a Democratic town hall event. Hillary originally declined the invitation, but yesterday she agreed to go. I think it’s a mistake for her to go, but we’ll see. The next Republican debate will be on March 10 in Miami.
Washington Post: Five more states ready to chip in delegates to campaign 2016.
Hunting for delegates, Trump added a last-minute rally in Wichita, Kansas, to his Saturday morning schedule and Cruz planned to stop in Kansas on caucus day, too, one day after Rubio visited the state.
Trump’s decision to skip an appearance Saturday at a conference sponsored by the American Conservative Union in the Washington area to get in one last Kansas rally rankled members of the group, who tweeted that it “sends a clear message to conservatives.”
The billionaire businessman’s rivals have been increasingly questioning his commitment to conservative policies, painting his promise to be flexible on issues as a giant red flag….
With the GOP race in chaos, establishment figures are frantically looking for any way to stop Trump, perhaps at a contested convention if none of the candidates can roll up the 1,237 delegates needed to snag the nomination. Going into Saturday’s voting, Trump led the field with 329 delegates. Cruz had 231, Rubio 110 and Kasich 25. In all, 155 GOP delegates are at stake in Saturday’s races.
Illustration of “founding mothers”
“Woman is a slave from the cradle to the grave — Ernestine Rose
On the Democrats:
Clinton is farther along than Trump on the march to her party’s nomination, outpacing Sanders with 1,066 delegates to his 432, including pledged superdelegates. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. There are 109 at stake on Saturday.
In Louisiana, Clinton was hoping that strong support from the state’s sizable black population will give her a boost. Both Democrats have campaigned heavily in Nebraska and saturated the state with ads. In Kansas, Clinton has the backing of its former governor and onetime Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. Sanders held a pre-caucus rally in Kansas’ liberal bastion of Lawrence hoping to attract voters.
A couple of big stories out of Louisiana:
Think Progress: BREAKING: Supreme Court Reopens Clinics Closed By Anti-Abortion Law.
The Supreme Court handed down a brief order Friday allowing four Louisiana abortion clinics to reopen after they were closed due to a recent decision by a conservative federal appeals court.
Last week, an especially conservative panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handed down an “emergency” decision permitting an anti-abortion Louisiana law to go into effect. Under this law, physicians cannot perform abortions unless they have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital — an increasingly common requirement masterminded by an anti-abortion group that drafts model bills for state legislatures. A challenge to a similar Texas law is currently pending before the justices.
The Supreme Court’s order temporarily suspends the Louisiana law, effectively preventing the Fifth Circuit’s Wednesday decision from taking effect. Only Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly dissented from the Court’s order.
Could this be a good sign for the Texas case that is currently being considered by SCOTUS?
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Texas case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, this Wednesday. During those arguments, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy appeared open to striking down the Texas law — although he also seemed concerned with a procedural issue unique to that case. The Court’s decision to halt the Louisiana law is another sign that the conservative-but-not-absolutist justice believes that laws like the ones in Texas and Louisiana may go too far.
I sure hope so. Meanwhile Louisiana’s economy is in desperate shape, thanks mostly to former Governor Bobby Jindal’s horrendous policies.
Wonkblog: Battered by drop in oil prices and Jindal’s fiscal policies, Louisiana falls into budget crisis.
Already, the state of Louisiana had gutted university spending and depleted its rainy-day funds. It had cut 30,000 employees and furloughed others. It had slashed the number of child services staffers, including those devoted to foster family recruitment, and young abuse victims for the first time were spending nights at government offices.
And then, the state’s new governor, John Bel Edwards (D), came on TV and said the worst was yet to come.
Edwards, in a prime-time address on Feb. 11, said he’d learned of “devastating facts” about the extent of the state’s budget shortfall and said that Louisiana was plunging into a “historic fiscal crisis.” Despite all the cuts of the previous years, the nation’s second-poorest state still needed nearly $3 billion — almost $650 per person — just to maintain its regular services over the next 16 months. Edwards gave the state’s lawmakers three weeks to figure out a solution, a period that expires March 9 with no clear answer in reach.
Louisiana stands at the brink of economic disaster. Without sharp and painful tax increases in the coming weeks, the government will cease to offer many of its vital services, including education opportunities and certain programs for the needy. A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be canceled. Students will lose scholarships. Select hospitals will close. Patients will lose funding for treatment of disabilities. Some reports of child abuse will go uninvestigated.
“Doomsday,” said Marketa Garner Walters, the head of Louisiana’s Department of Children and Family Services. If the state can’t raise any new revenue, her agency’s budget, like several others, will be slashed 60 percent.
“At that level,” she said in an interview, “the agency is unsustainable.”
Read more about the disastrous consequences of Jindal’s embrace of Koch brothers politics at the link.
Seneca Falls, 1848
The Tax Policy Center just released its analysis of Bernie Sanders’ tax plan, and it’s stunning. Here’s the abstract:
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposes significant increases in federal income, payroll, business, and estate taxes, and new excise taxes on financial transactions and carbon. New revenues would pay for universal health care, education, family leave, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and more. TPC estimates the tax proposals would raise $15.3 trillion over the next decade. All income groups would pay some additional tax, but most would come from high-income households, particularly those with the very highest income. His proposals would raise taxes on work, saving, and investment, in some cases to rates well beyond recent historical experience in the US.
You can read the entire report in a pdf at the link. From Bloomberg:
Senator Bernie Sanders’s proposals for sweeping tax hikes on businesses and individuals to bankroll universal health care, infrastructure and free college tuition would raise $15.3 trillion over the next decade but “substantially reduce incentives to save and invest in the United States,” according to a new policy study.
Sanders’s plan would “modestly raise” tax rates for average taxpayers and “raise them significantly for high-income taxpayers,” according to the report by the Tax Policy Center, a research group in Washington, D.C. that’s a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. The report is the last of the center’s analyses of leading presidential candidates’ tax plans.
While the plan — which would be sure to face opposition in a Republican-controlled Congress — could generate benefits by increasing “the nation’s investment in productive physical and human capital,” economists are unsettled on the question of just how much increases in tax rates spur or stymie economic growth. Sanders’s proposals “would be a great experiment,” said Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center.
Warren Gunnels, Sanders’s policy director, criticized the tax center’s findings. The analysis was conducted “in a vacuum without taking into account the savings the American people would gain” under the candidate’s proposal to replace private health-insurance with a publicly funded “Medicare-for-all” plan, he said. Gunnels cited an earlier study by Citizens for Tax Justice, which found that 95 percent of U.S. households would see their take-home pay increase under Sanders’s health plan.
Girls in a milk-bar in England, 1954
Kevin Drum on the analyses of the five candidates’ tax plans so far:
As before, the Republican plans are all the same: a tiny tax cut for the middle class as a sop to distract them from the enormous payday they give to the rich, and a massive hole in the deficit.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s plan is fairly modest. It leaves the middle class alone and taxes the rich a little more. Once her domestic proposals are paid for, it’s probably deficit neutral. Bernie Sanders is far more extreme. He’s basically the mirror image of the Republicans: he’d tax the middle class moderately more and soak the hell out of the rich. This would raise a tremendous amount of money, which he’d use to pay for his health care plan and his other domestic proposals. It’s impossible to say for sure how this would affect the deficit, but the evidence suggests that it would blow a pretty big hole.
It looks like Sanders is going to continue and even increase his attacks on Hillary Clinton even though she will likely have the nomination in hand by March 15. It doesn’t seem to bother him in the least that he’s hurting the Democratic Party and making it more difficult for their candidate to win the White House in November.
From The Hill: Sanders blames Clinton for Michigan’s declining middle class.
“If the people of Michigan want to make a decision about which candidate stood with workers against corporate America and against these disastrous trade agreements, that candidate is Bernie Sanders,” he said during a rally in Traverse City, according to a campaign statement obtained by NBC News.
Sanders argued that Clinton’s support of legislation like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had helped create the Great Lakes State’s crippling poverty.
“[NAFTA] is one of the reasons that the middle class in this country is disappearing,” the self-described Democratic socialist said.
“[NAFTA and other trade deals are] crafted by the big-money interests and corporations. Hillary Clinton was on the wrong side of many of these trade agreements.”
I love this photo of the 2013 class of women in the House.
Hillary did not hold political office when NAFTA passed Congress. I believe she opposed NAFTA as first lady, but to blame her for bill passed by a right wing Republican Congress and signed by her husband is both unfair and sexist. But that’s how Bernie rolls.
Markos laid down the law at Daily Kos yesterday, and the reaction was hilarious. As background, the front pagers have been supporting Hillary in 2016, but the majority of diarists have been pushing for Bernie, attacking Hillary using every right wing meme they can find and the most misogynistic language they can dream up. Read about it here: March 15, and Daily Kos transition to General Election footing.
The gist is that Kossacks have to stop attacking Hillary with right wing memes and ugly sexist language and if they are planning to vote for Donald Trump or Jill Stein if the Democrats nominate Hillary, they have to keep it to themselves. They can criticize Hillary, but only in positive ways that could help the party.
The response was predictable, with people posting “goodbye cruel world” diaries and threats to continue advocating for Bernie in any way they choose if if Kos bans them. It was like watching kids arguing on a playground or like the last GOP debate.
So . . . what are you hearing and reading about today? I’ll post a live blog later for discussion of the primary and caucus results.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Have a nice Saturday and check back later for the live blog!
Thanks BB…………thanks for doing the live blog…………hope Kansas pulls for Hillary.
Nice to see Hillary rolling out policy ahead of the town hall http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/05/us/politics/hillary-clinton-offers-economic-plan-focused-on-jobs.html?smid=fb-share
And this http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/03/04/hillary_clinton_s_tax_plan_is_really_progressive.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru Just in case anyone actually wants to ask a real question
LOL! What are the chances of anyone at CNN or Fox asking a real question?
A girl can dream….;-)
Hillary always has her policies specified in amazing detail. That hit me back in ’08 when she had plans for programs to sustainably harvest forest products from forest land which had been clearcut and then mismanaged for decades — a big problem in some of the NW. Here’s this niche issue which, if managed well, could help people in small rural communities make a living without trashing the environment.
Great work, BB. Thank you.
Thanks, and you’re welcome.
Some voting music for me as I head off the vote for Hillary! So pleased to see my Union brothers and sisters and all the city council making phone calls! The carpenter’s Union was phonebanking hard today!!!
Have fun today, Dak!
Voted, fixed tire, phonebanking then victory party!
Yay!
NYT ran a piece on the Air B&B controversy in your city…
Just read that. They went too easy on the air bnbs.
You did your part. Now we can hope she wallops him so she ends up with most of the delegates.
We’re trying! Wanna swamp Kansas and Nebraska
I LOVE this. Thanks for posting it!
Super! Must share.
What Hillary was doing in the Civil Rights Era–more and for longer than Bernie.
DailyKos: Hillary Clinton in the Civil Rights Era.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/3/4/1495575/-Hillary-Clinton-in-the-Civil-Rights-Era
How Donald Trump broke Fox News’ debate rules
So why do they keep treating him with kid gloves?
Probably because a guy with small hands requires kid gloves. 🙂
LOL! I love your sense of humor List of X.
Thanks! By the way, if you’d like to check it out, my last post was on Donald Trump’s health care plan: https://listofx.com/2016/03/04/donald-trump-healthcare/
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This is interesting. Turnout in primaries means nothing in terms of which party wins the presidential election.
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So glad that Nate Silver is taking the time to check out the history of past election cycles. I’ll have to forward this to Rachel Maddow so she’ll stop pearl clutching over the primary turnout. You’d think she would take the time to do the research herself, but unless it’s research that might favor Bernie, she’s not into it.
Thank you. It’s been driving me nuts that Sanders’ people have been trying to make something of all of this.In Virginia, the Democrats and Republicans held their primary elections on the same day this year so there was almost no crossover between parties, in ’08 it was only the Democrats and as has been shown, many Republicans voted in the Democratic primary in order to stop Clinton so comparing “Democratic” turnout in ’08 and ’16 is apples and oranges. Nobody bothers to do their homework to point that out because the media is lazy and just reports whatever they are told.
Doesn’t surprise me much. The % of people, and the type of people, who turn out for caucuses and primaries are likely to be far more involved and motivated than the general population, while being a small % of that general population.
I would expect the Republican turnout to be higher, because Republicans take voting more seriously than Democrats do, if midterm election are any indication.
Also, if there is ever a case where a primary was perceived as life-or-death situation for the party, it would be the 2016 GOP primary. And then there were so many candidates to choose from!
With the Democratic primary, there were just two candidates, and there’s probably some fraction of Dem voters who are basically Ok with either one. Personally, I was in that group, and was planning to sit this one out, but this blog convinced me that Hillary can’t possibly lose, so I saw no harm in coming out and voting for Bernie. 🙂
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Sanders is completely full of it on the subject of NAFTA and Michigan.
Detroit’s decline–and it was fast–began with the 1967 Detroit riot, which spurred massive white flight out of the city. The area was then rocked hard by the oil shocks of the 1970s, which caused a massive upheaval in the auto industry. The major automakers were dedicated to their gas guzzlers when fuel prices drove people to high-mileage imports from Japan and Germany. By the time the dust settled in the latter half of Reagan’s first term–we’re talking 1983-1984–Detroit was the poster child for urban blight, and its relationship with its suburbs made for what was perhaps the most racially polarized region in the country. I grew up in that environment and remember it well. The antagonism between the suburbs and the city was unbelievably intense. One would have thought the two were at war. It isn’t much better now.
As for Flint, just look at the release date of Michael Moore’s Roger & Me, which recounts the history of that city’s fall. I don’t recommend the film because Moore plays fast and loose with the timeline, but everything he shows did happen before the film came out in late 1989. 1989. Four years before NAFTA passed in 1993.
Yup. Bernie is a bald-faced liar.
Yes he is a bald faced liar and some of the other anti-trade people aren’t a lot better. Seems ideologues always go for simple, but wrong, reasoning.
Desperation is written all over his face. He already looks like a beat man. C’mon March 16th.
Exactly. Heavily unionized industrial cities like Detroit and Buffalo were devastated because corporations left them high and dry in the seventies for the sole purpose of busting up the unions.
“It doesn’t seem to bother him in the least that he’s hurting the Democratic Party and making it more difficult for their candidate to win the White House in November.”
Perhaps it’s because he’s not a Democrat? I’m convinced that if he’s not the nominee, he doesn’t give a shit who wins, if he did he wouldn’t use right wing rhetoric on the campaign trail and neither would his supporters.
Bernie has already filed for reelection to the Senate–as an Independent.
Ta-Da!!!!! That lasted as long and as far as the DNC influence, money and resources would take him. If he had run as an independent POTUS candidate, he’d be in Burlington right now licking his wounds wondering why he couldn’t raise money or get his POTUS message out. March 16th can’t get here soon enough to suit me.
I wish the DNC would stop helping him get elected to the Senate, but I guess they need him in the caucus.
The guy will be 75 in September and campaigning for POTUS has taken a toll on him, or at least he looks like it has. I suspect, if he wins his seat, that this will be his last campaign.
h/t Blue Nation Review.
The kids are smarter than most of the adults that support Trump.
Weren’t they great? I loved that!
They were fabulous!!
The kids are all right (except for the naive one who thinks that a POTUS’s actions won’t affect him “whatsoever”)– but some say their parents like Trump. Worrisome.
He must from Canada.
Out of the mouths of babes! Smart kids🤔
bb:
That sums it up perfectly.
I just listened to part of a speech by Trump in Florida. I can almost recite his speech word for word at this point. His father, Carl Icahn, “little Marco”, his “hands”, the press, his intelligence, the wall, Romney the loser, the protesters, etc, etc, etc.
What these people are getting from this nonsensical blather is beyond me. Not one solution to any one issue but a “vanity” speech that is all about him.
There is something seriously wrong with this man apart from being a boring blowhard. I am astounded at the support given this insufferable idiot.
His stream of consciousness rants can hardly even be called speeches.
Cruz is the winner of the Kansas caucus. I’m going to put up a live blog thread pretty soon.
Ted won Ks, Maine and the coach straw poll. Magnus!
So the Republicans now are moving toward someone even more awful than Trump, which is Cruz. All that pious declamation against Trump leads to support for this horrible person.
Cruz is frightening.
No kidding. Who would have thought? Jeebus.
I almost had to pick myself up off the floor when I read the headline about DailyKos laying down the law for civil discourse about Hillary. So very different from 2008!
Still, this jumped out at me:
IIRC in Hillary’s recent book she writes about her concerns with TPP and that she doesn’t favor it.
That was my impression as well. As part of the administration, she wasn’t free to have her own opinion in public. Ditto on Keystone. Bernie and his supporters don’t seem to have a clear idea of how being part of someone else’s administration actually works.
The big question is would they treat the husband of a female officer-holder the same way?