Tuesday Reads: Feel The Bern-Out
Posted: March 8, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 61 Comments
All I see is white people.
Good Morning!!
Today Michigan and Mississippi will hold primaries, and Bernie Sanders will fall farther behind Hillary Clinton in the delegate count for the Democratic nomination.
On the Republican side, in addition to the Michigan and Mississippi primaries, there will be a primary in Idaho and caucuses in Hawaii.
ABC News reports: Storylines to Watch in Tuesday’s 2016 Presidential Primaries and Republican Caucuses.
Republicans will vote Tuesday in the Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi primaries and the Hawaii Republican caucuses. Democrats in Michigan and Mississippi are also holding their primaries.
In total, 205 delegates are at stake for the two Democratic candidates. On the other side of the aisle, 150 are up for grabs for the four remaining Republican candidates.
Bernie has high hopes for Michigan, but at the end of the day he’s likely to be disappointed.
While campaigning in Michigan, Sanders has attacked Clinton with a heavy focus on trade, arguing that Clinton’s support of “disastrous trade deals” has led to job loss in the state.
“If the people of Michigan want to make a decision of which candidate stood against corporate America, stood against these disastrous trade agreements, that candidate is Bernie Sanders,” the Vermont senator said at a campaign rally in Traverse City, Michigan, last Friday.
“We think we’re going to surprise people here in Michigan,” Sanders said Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
However, a NBC/WSJ poll conducted in Michigan shows Hillary Clinton with a major lead of 57 percent among Democrats to Sanders’ 40 percent.
Read more storylines at the ABC News link above.
Sorry, Bernie. Black people in the northern states don’t vote differently from those in southern ones, despite your spin after Super Tuesday. Bernie on This Week:
“I think you’re going to see us doing — and I think the polls indicated it, much better within the African-American community outside of the Deep South,” Sanders said. “You’re going to see us much better in New York state where I think we have a shot to win, in California and in Michigan.”
Dream on. I said after Super Tuesday that we need to be kind to Sanders’ supporters, and that will be even more true tomorrow. They are going through a grieving process and many of them are young people who have never experienced this kind of loss before.
Last night, at the Fox News town hall, Hillary was gentle with Bernie, and we should follow her lead. It will be mostly over after today, but his supporters will still be telling themselves he can win Ohio and Pennsylvania. It’s not going to happen, but the Bernie fans will just have to find out for themselves.
Excuse me . . .
Yesterday John Cole had an interesting post at Balloon Juice: I’ve Kind of Made My Decision. The gist is that he likes Bernie, but has decided to vote for Hillary. It’s a good read, and I suggest to go check it out at the link, but I want to highlight this section (emphasis added):
I know this is going to piss people off, and I know some of you are going to scream ageism, but watching Bernie last night, he just seemed old and tired and wearing down. I was initially leaning Bernie at the beginning of this primary (because of course I was), and every time I look at him he just looks less energetic and a little more beat down. His response latency seems to be increasing as he collects his thoughts, and last night I saw him lashing out angrily about “your Wall Street friends,” and those are just not things that can happen in the general.
I’m not trying to be ageist- I don’t think people his age can’t or shouldn’t be President, it’s just that as I have watched this primary election go on, Clinton seems to be getting stronger and more confident and more ready for the election, while I feel the opposite is true about Sanders. In my mind’s eye, she looks younger to me than she did at the beginning of this primary. Clinton seems to really becoming a happy warrior, despite all the heaps of bullshit the Republicans have thrown at her.
Maybe you don’t see it that way. But I do. I look at Hillary these days and think there is no doubt she could serve eight years right now, while some days I wonder if Bernie is going to make it to November. The Vice President is a backup plan for when things go horribly wrong, not a plan. Again, I’m sorry if my elders think I am bashing them by stating this, but I’m really not trying to- Bernie has more energy on a bad day than I do on a great day, but he just is really starting to look worn down. The contrast for me last night was palpable.
I strongly agree with Cole on this. Bernie is wearing down. I think part of it is age, but I think it’s also his perpetual anger and defensiveness.
All right, I’ll wait for you to finish . . .
Hillary comes off as cool as a cucumber. She has dealt with so much shit over the years that she’s immune to it. As she is fond of saying, whenever she gets knocked down, she gets right back up stronger than ever. It’s clear that she loves the challenge of running as the first woman to become the nominee of any major party. And she is ready to be POTUS from day one.
Bernie, on the other hand, lets criticism and losses get under his skin. and when that happens, he lashed out and he makes unforced errors. He’s just not ready to be the nominee and definitely not ready to be POTUS.
MSNBC: ‘Ghetto’ gaffe highlights Bernie Sanders campaign’s struggle with race.
While discussing his own racial “blind spots” during Sunday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Michigan, Sen. Bernie Sanders offered that white people “don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor.” His comment drew swift condemnation on social media, since it appeared that the Vermont lawmaker was implying that only black people live in impoverished communities, reinforcing inaccurate and painful stereotypes that have dogged African-Americans for years.
Sanders’ “ghetto” gaffe underlined a persistent problem that may have crippled his bid for the 2016 nomination. He has struggled to connect with black voters, and his choice of words has often undercut a populist economic message that might have resonated with people of color.
Even if Sanders had the best of intentions, it was not his best moment, as evidenced by one of his most prominent African-American surrogates — former NAACP chairman Ben Jealous — who told NBC News: “Sen. Sanders is from Burlington, he grew up in old Brooklyn, he knows white folks live in ghettos.”
On Monday, Sanders attempted to clarify his debate statement, telling a gaggle of reporters in Detroit: “What I meant to say, is when you talk about ghettos, traditionally what you’re talking about is African-American communities.”
Bernie just can’t stop digging, can he?
Jonathan Capehart on the “ghetto” goof: ‘Excuse me!’ Bernie Sanders doesn’t know how to talk about black people.
When Sanders said that, I tweeted, “He knows that all Black people don’t live in ghettos, right?” His answer so threw me that I didn’t even hear him say that white people “don’t know what it’s like to be poor.” Sanders’s cab story might be true, but it also struck me as rhetorical grasping at straws. And for it to be an illumination to Sanders that he doesn’t “understand what police do in certain black communities” is more damning than you think. For in this one exchange, you see Clinton’s fluency in and understanding of the language of race and Sanders’s glaring ignorance.
You also see who the true Democrat is. It’s not Sanders.
Democrats, especially those with national ambitions, know how to talk to people of color, especially African-Americans. They are the base of the Democratic Party. You learn the nuances of their concerns and the issues important to them. You take them to heart. Fail to do that and watch your political career perish. As a former first lady of Arkansas, former first lady of the United States and former Senator from New York, Clinton can speak to Blacks with a fluency that lets African Americans know she gets it and gets them.
After Sanders’ early work on desegregation in Chicago, he doesn’t seem to have focused much on Civil Rights or even the anti-war movement of the 1960s and ’70s. He left Brooklyn in 1968 and moved to Vermont along with many other white people who were fleeing big cities; and it seems that he stayed in his white bubble right up until he began campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.
How much longer do I have to listen to this shouting?
I thought this was interesting out of Sanders’ hometown.
Brooklyn Paper: Turn up, tune in, Bern out: Sanders supporters say not all of Bushwick is behind Brooklyn’s son.
Not all of Bushwick can feel the Bern.
A band of hipster Brooklyn Bushwickans on the stump for Bernie Sanders from inside local industrial loft spaces is having a tough time convincing old-school neighbors to get out and vote for Brooklyn’s son, say the passionate organizers.
“There’s the original Bushwick community and the gentrified Bushwick community,” said Magenna Brink of the Bushwick Berners, who regularly gather to call voters over some brews while they plan their door-to-door outreach at their Forrest Street headquarters as well as the notorious McKibbin Street lofts. “The gentrified community, with all the hipsters and the young kids, are totally behind Bernie. The other community is kind of half-and-half.”
The berners say they have hit the streets to spread the word about their candidate of choice only to find many of the native residents are either not enamored with Sanders’ socialist policies or completely unaware he exists.
“In the lower-income communities, there were a ton of people who said they were Hillary supporters, but they didn’t even know who Bernie Sanders was,” said Brink.
New York is another state Sanders claims he can win, but the polls don’t agree with him.
Today could be interesting on the Republican side too. It seems to me that Donald Trump has not been performing as well as he should be in recent contests, Ted Cruz has been showing a great deal of strength, and Marco Rubio has just about hit bottom. Here are a few interesting stories on the GOP race.
Politico: Is Trump peaking? We’ll find out today.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump will discover whether his weekend struggles were a speed bump — or the first signs of larger troubles ahead.
If the polls are to believed, Trump is in for a dominant day, with blowouts in Michigan and Mississippi to be complemented by another win in Idaho. If Trump falls short, and particularly if he falls short to Ted Cruz for the second time in four days, the businessman’s delegate math gets more complicated, and the soothsayers who’ve long predicted Trump’s collapse will finally see hope for vindication.
For the first time since Iowa, a non-Trump Republican took home the day’s largest haul of delegates last weekend, as Cruz on Saturday won handily in Maine and Kansas and ran a close second in Louisiana and Kentucky. Repeating that feat Tuesday would put more momentum behind the Texas senator’s campaign and strengthen his case as the GOP’s best, only hope of nominating someone other than Trump. Trump’s standing among Republican registered voters—down 3 points from January—nationwide fell slightly in the latest ABC News/Washington Post national poll released Tuesday, while the poll put Cruz up 4 percent, though Trump maintained a 9 point lead over Trump in the poll.
A relative lack of polling adds unpredictability to Tuesday’s votes. While Michigan has been heavily surveyed, Hawaii has gone uncovered, and sparse polls in Mississippi and Idaho are now out of date. Trump had large leads in past surveys, but they were conducted before Marco Rubio and several super PACs went all-out against Trump, before two raucous anti-Trump debates and before his losses to Cruz on Saturday.
Washington Post: Seeing Trump as vulnerable, GOP elites now eye a contested convention.
The presentation is an 11th-hour rebuttal to the fatalism permeating the Republican establishment: Slide by slide, state by state, it calculates how Donald Trump could be denied the presidential nomination.
Marco Rubio wins Florida. John Kasich wins Ohio. Ted Cruz notches victories in the Midwest and Mountain West. And the results in California and other states are jumbled enough to leave Trump three dozen delegates short of the 1,237 required — forcing a contested convention in Cleveland in July.
The slide show, shared with The Washington Post by two operatives advising one of a handful of anti-Trump super PACs, encapsulates the newly emboldened view of many GOP leaders and donors. They see a clearer path to stopping Trump since his two losses and two narrower-than-expected wins in Saturday’s contests.
Read more at the link.
The Washington Post: Trump leads GOP race nationally but with weaker hold on the party.
Donald Trump continues to lead his rivals nationally in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. But his hold on the GOP electorate has weakened since the primary season began, and the party is now deeply divided over his candidacy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Trump maintains the support of 34 percent of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, compared with 25 percent for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, 18 percent for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and 13 percent for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Trump maintains the support of 34 percent of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, compared with 25 percent for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, 18 percent for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and 13 percent for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Trump’s margin over Cruz has narrowed from 16 points in January to nine today. As a succession of Republican candidates quit the race, Cruz’s position has ticked up four points since January, Rubio’s has risen by 7 and Kasich’s grew by 11. Trump’s has dipped by three points, within the poll’s margin of sampling error.
What stories are you following? Let us know in the comment thread. We’ll have a live blog later this evening to discuss the primary and caucus results. Have a great Tuesday!
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Sky Dancing 
Here’s a feel-good story my mom alerted me to.
From PRI’s The World: For Women’s Day, Air India operates the longest flight ever crewed by only women.
Brilliant way to commemorate the day! Thanks to your mother for a great find!
I love the photo at the link too.
Thanks to your Mom, I had forgotten today was international woman’s day. Great to share on this day.
Beautiful! Keep the flag of women high!
Great Story.
Love it!
Media Matters: MSNBC’s Scarborough Tells A Former Naval Intelligence Official Who Says Waterboarding Doesn’t Work That He’s Wrong.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/03/08/msnbcs-scarborough-tells-a-former-naval-intelli/209079
Once again, Scarborough shows that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about!
Scarborough is like a scab that won’t heal. Disgusting.
Yup. If he would just volunteer a week of his time to have it done to him on a daily basis.
If a man mansplains to a man, is it still mansplaining?
It probably depends on the topic of the mansplaining.
I’m really tired of Bernie and his Bros telling folks that he’ll do well with blacks outside of the south because for some reason, all of us down here in the South–but especially our African American populace–are stupid. That is a tired old Yankee meme. There are just as many dumb people in places like Nebraska and parts of New England. Stupid is not a regional thing.
We just have more overt racists. Racism is all over. It’s just freaking overt here.
There are plenty of overt racists right here in blue Massachusetts.
Idaho too.
Thank you. Underestimate southerners at your peril.
That’s right Y’all!!! 🙂
Good Grief! Desperate Morning Joke finally realizes “trickle down” economics really is voodoo economics!
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/joe-scarborough-gives-up-the-game-after-30-years-the-gop-base-realized-it-never-trickles-down/#.Vt7tfVnFuLs.facebook
Economists have been trying to tell these idiots since Reagan bought into that fairy tale. Hell, George HW Bush called it voodoo economics.
Well, most Republicans have known that all along. The fact that it never trickles down was the point.
We all found out years ago that it Trickles On us, not down to us.
it also trickles out of us
lol
🙂 Yes it does
Green stuff.
Trickle down …. Trickle down … blood
as the song goes.
I think that this primary in Michigan is crucial. If Hillary can win fairly comfortably, she is in very strong shape going forward. I had thought that Michigan would be one large state where Sanders could do well, so if we can win by 10-15 points, we should be able to win Ohio fairly handily. I am a little wary of this one tonight, but I hope the recent polls are right.
On the Republican side, watch out for Kasich. I don’t particularly want him as the nominee, because even though he is conventionally extreme Right, he sounds reasonable and not childish, so that he is the kind of person that the corporate media love. And of course he is from Ohio, a crucial state. I figure he will be on the ticket in some way. If he wins in Ohio, and Rubio loses in Florida, Rubio will be out, and Kasich will then be in a challenging position. I don’t see Cruz getting the nomination, so I think at that point it would be either Trump or Kasich, and the Republican Establishment would go to Kasich, as they would not to Cruz. Anyway, that’s something to look for.
The last two polls from Michigan yesterday had Hillary leading by 13 points & 27 points. I think Michigan will be a big win for her. Mississippi will be a staggering win. She could beat him by 30 point there.
Can you check the link for the John Cole piece? It’s not taking me to his article but is taking me to the Buzzfeed gaffe article instead.
Think i fixed it but here it is: https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/03/07/ive-kind-of-made-my-decision/
Thanks. Sorry about that!
Thanks!
Clinton holds commanding lead over Sanders in Illinois
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html
The bell tolls for Bernie.
Sweet music to my ears.
“After Sanders’ early work on desegregation in Chicago, he doesn’t seem to have focused much on Civil Rights or even the anti-war movement of the 1960s and ’70s. He left Brooklyn in 1968 and moved to Vermont along with many other white people who were fleeing big cities;”
Having been an adult through much of that era it’s obvious to me that after leaving Chicago Bernie basically took the white flight route and moved to a State with no racial diversity whatsoever. Why would a Civil Rights activist move away from the struggle? And Bernie’s anti-war zeal didn’t really extend to action, it was more vocal. He filed with the Draft Board as a conscientious objector, which for better or for worse, will not go over well with the Boomers. All of us objected to the Vietnam war, but most people who got out of the draft got out because of their health, their pursuit of education or because their daddy had pull. I remember when Mohammed Ali went to prison because his petition as a conscientious objector was denied. My guess is that Bernie’s flight to Vermont had something to do with avoiding the draft, which he did quite successfully.
To be fair, in the late ’60s land in Vermont was dirt cheap (pun intended). There were lots of young people moving up there from Eastern cities with dreams of getting back to the land, etc. I don’t really have a problem with conscientious objectors either, although in his case it may not have been a sincere objection.
Oh, I have no problem with conscientious objectors either, but I think many men of the boomer age will. Most of them served because they were drafted and most of them objected to the war.
Can’t see that moving to Vermont would have got him out of the draft. He’d have had to go out of the country for that.
Well he was closer to Canada there.
Fleeing to Canada was how most men avoided the draft. In 1977 Carter pardoned “draft dodgers” which opened the doors for most of them to come back into the country. According to Scopes Sanders applied for Conscientious objector status and by the time his number was finally pulled, he was too old. Lucky man!!!
Raw Story: Trump lied at the debate about Trump University’s Better Business Bureau ratings.
WaPo:
Women are a big part of Hillary’s winning coalition.
But … Isn’t Hillary supposed to have problems attracting women?
Bwhahahaha!
That news makes for a great Woman’s Day!
Fox News’ Bret Baier: Some Republicans Could Back Hillary Clinton Over Donald Trump – See more at: http://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-bret-baier-some-republicans-could-back-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump/#.dpuf
“Listen, there are Republicans in Washington who are privately saying that already,” the host tells The Wrap – See more at: http://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-bret-baier-some-republicans-could-back-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump/#.dpuf
Certainly she will get the moderate Republican voters (or most of the women).
The state of primary polling today. Hillary way ahead in FL, NY, MD, OH, IL, and nationally.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/3/8/1497915/-The-state-of-primary-polling-today-Hillary-way-ahead-in-FL-NY-MD-OH-IL-and-nationally
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bernie is slightly ahead in Idaho, which is probably because of guns and the NRA.
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lol
EXCUSE YOU SHE’S TALKING
The insidious, subtle sexism of so-called liberal progressives
http://qz.com/632911/the-insidious-subtle-sexism-that-pervades-so-called-liberal-progressives/
Yes! That’s it.
Very good article.
Thanks for that article even though it makes me angry all over again.
Behold, the ways in which male world leaders mansplain International Women’s Day
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/08/behold-the-ways-in-which-male-world-leaders-mansplain-international-womens-day/
LOL!
Head of UNWomen Voices Tacit Support for Hillary Clinton
http://time.com/4250638/united-nations-women-hillary-clinton-mlambo-ngcuka-international-womens-day/
I think this goes with the article – “One Woman”
Crazy.
CNN: Sanders files suit against Ohio secretary of state in push to allow 17-year-olds to vote.