Posted: April 9, 2016 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Corporate Crime, corporate greed, court rulings, Crime, Criminal Justice System, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: AR-15, assault weapons, Aurora theater shooting, Bernie Sanders, mass murder, New York Daily News, NRA, Sandy Hook massacre |
Good Afternoon!!
On Thursday, I wrote about Bernie Sanders’ embarrassing interview with The New York Daily News. In a little-noted exchange in that interview, Sanders coldly and heartlessly dismissed the arguments of relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre that they should be able to sue the manufacturer and seller of the AR-15, the gun used to kill 20 first graders and and 6 adults in Newtown CT in 2012. I mentioned that I had more to say about Sanders’ stance on guns and Vermont’s almost non-existent gun laws.
Once again, here is that exchange with the NY Daily News editorial board:
Daily News: There’s a case currently waiting to be ruled on in Connecticut. The victims of the Sandy Hook massacre are looking to have the right to sue for damages the manufacturers of the weapons. Do you think that that is something that should be expanded?
Sanders: Do I think the victims of a crime with a gun should be able to sue the manufacturer, is that your question?
Daily News: Correct.
Sanders: No, I don’t.
Daily News: Let me ask you. I know we’re short on time. Two quick questions. Your website talks about…
Sanders: No, let me just…I’m sorry. In the same sense that if you’re a gun dealer and you sell me a gun and I go out and I kill him [gestures to someone in room]…. Do I think that that gun dealer should be sued for selling me a legal product that he misused? [Shakes head no.] But I do believe that gun manufacturers and gun dealers should be able to be sued when they should know that guns are going into the hands of wrong people. So if somebody walks in and says, “I’d like 10,000 rounds of ammunition,” you know, well, you might be suspicious about that. So I think there are grounds for those suits, but not if you sell me a legal product.
Sanders argued this case on the Thom Hartmann radio show on the afternoon of the Sandy Hook school shooting.
Hunter Walker at Yahoo News, Jan. 9, 2016: Sanders defended protections for gun manufacturers on the day of the Newtown massacre.
Sanders appeared on The Thom Hartmann Program in the hours after the shooting, on Dec. 14, 2012. On the show, he was asked if the parents of the victims had “any recourse against the gun manufacturer.” Sanders suggested he would seek solutions that did not place blame on firearms makers.
“I don’t know that you hold a gun manufacturer responsible for what obviously a deranged person does. The issue is what is the best way forward to prevent these types of horrible occurrences? How do we make sure the guns do not get into the hands of people who are mentally ill? How do we make sure that people own guns which are only designed to kill people not to be used for hunting or target practices? So I mean there’s a lot to be discussed, and I think we’ve got to do something. We don’t want to read about this every month. So, it is an issue we’re going to have to address,” Sanders said.
Although Hillary Clinton did not in fact ever say that Sanders is “unqualified” to be POTUS, I personally believe that his views on guns should disqualify him from running for president as a Democrat.
The assault weapon used in the Sandy Hook massacre is a gun that is, in Bernie’s words, “designed to kill people, not to used for hunting or target practice.” Nevertheless, Bernie argues that the relatives of the Sandy Hook victims should not be able to sue the gun manufacturer for heavily promoting the popular AR-15 assault weapon that Adam Lanza used to kill 20 first graders and 6 adults on December 14, 2012.
Sanders often defends his stance on guns by talking about his largely rural home state, Vermont where hunting is valued and where the murder rate is incredibly low. This is true, but Vermont does is not an island in a bubble that has no effect on other states.
Vermont’s loose laws allow gun traffickers to easily and cheaply buy weapons in Sanders’ state and sell them in urban areas in Massachusetts, New York and other northeastern states where gun laws are much stricter. The Boston Globe has published multiple articles about this serious problem over the past several years. The problem is tied up with the drug trade as well. Here’s just one example from the Globe from April 2014:
Gun show in Vermont
Drugs-for-guns traffic troubles police in Mass., Vt.
Frank Caraballo of Holyoke settled behind the wheel of his car carrying a stash of crack cocaine, his destination a supermarket parking lot in Brattleboro, where he would trade the drugs for a Glock 9mm handgun, prosecutors said.
It was a journey — and a deal — all too familiar to law enforcement authorities who have watched with increasing alarm as narcotics from Massachusetts are ferried to Vermont and swapped for guns that are plentiful and cheap.
And as the case of Frank Caraballo showed, the drugs-for-guns trade can end with deadly consequences: A few weeks after Caraballo purchased the gun in 2011, a woman whom he suspected had stolen from him was shot dead with a Glock 9mm in rural Vermont. Last October, Caraballo was convicted in the killing.
“You don’t know which one came first, the chicken or the egg, but guns are being traded for drugs, and drug dealers are coming here with their product,” said Jim Mostyn, the Vermont agent in charge for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. “Drug dealers are aware that guns are readily available here.”
It’s an excellent article, and I hope you’ll read the rest. This is why we need Federal gun laws. Why isn’t Bernie Sanders addressing this issue that is hurting people in Vermont as well as Massachusetts and other states? Why isn’t the media asking him about it?
Here’s another article from July 2015 published by In These Times, which has endorsed Bernie Sanders.
The Vermont-New York Heroin-and-Guns Carousel That Can Make Dealers a 1,400% Profit. The headline focuses on NYC, but Massachusetts is also a big part of the story.
Pssst. Want an unregistered semi-automatic handgun, some heroin and a way to make a 1,400 percent profit?
First, the gun. In Vermont, you can legally buy it through a “private” sale at a gun show, yard sale, online or from a dealer. Doesn’t matter if you’re a convicted murderer with a history of mental illness and a restraining order for domestic abuse. Anyone 16 or older with $600 can, for example, go to Armslist.com and arrange with a “private party” in Arlington, Vt., to pick up a “Zastava M92 PV 7.62 x 39 cal. semi auto pistol that has a 10 inch barrel, comes with 2 each 30 round clips.” The Serbian assault weapon is, the ad notes, the “very cool … pistol version of the AK-47.”
Then, if you are willing to break the law, you can drive the weapon to New York, where semi-automatic handguns are banned, and sell it for triple the Vermont price. You can invest the $1,800 in heroin. Back in Vermont, where heroin is in relatively short supply, you can resell it for five times the New York cost and garner $9,000—a quick 1,400 percent profit.
Guns a ridiculously easy to get in Vermont.
Vermont has some of the loosest gun laws in the country. You can legally buy 50-caliber sniper rifles with scopes, sawed-off shotguns, semiautomatic pistols that can kill a moose, and armor-piercing bullets. No background check, no waiting period or limit on how many guns you can buy or own. You can use a false name and need no identification or registration. The magazine size is not restricted. And you can display the new gun on your hip or stuff it in your underpants for all the state cares. All legal. And as long as you “don’t know” the firearms will be used for criminal purposes, you can immediately resell the guns to a 21-year-old with racist insignias on his jacket, two prison escapees from upstate New York, a whacked-out drug dealer, a certified paranoid with a tinfoil hat, or a drunk 16-year-old (that’s the age to own a handgun without parental consent; there’s no age restriction on possessing a rifle or shotgun)….
We have seen that, like maple syrup, firearms cross state lines. One makes your pancakes delicious, the other fuels crime and murder. “Firearm traffickers travel to Vermont for the purchase of firearms from unlicensed sources and then travel back to more restrictive states,” Massachusetts Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Special Agent Christopher J. Arone tells In These Times. Vermont exports more guns per capita than any other New England state and ranks 16th nationwide. Hundreds of crime-linked guns originally purchased there have been recovered by out-of-state law enforcement.
Again, please read the whole thing. If Sanders were truly the courageous leader he claims to be, he should be able to have some influence on this situation. Instead, he simply accepts it because Vermont’s guns aren’t killing Vermonters–they are killing people in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and other nearby states.
Sportsmen! Quick! Get your automatic weapon while you can!
Bernie’s cowardly stance on guns is beginning to get more attention as we approach the New York primary on April 19, and I hope he will be forced to answer some tough questions about they way his own state is contributing to crime in other states and his state’s absence of serious gun laws is leading to hundreds of deaths from heroin in Vermont.
Politico: Families of mass shooting victims sound off on Sanders.
At a heated press conference outside of City Hall in New York City on Friday, families of those affected by mass shootings urged the Vermont senator to apologize for his recent comments on guns, reiterating calls that some of them said were previously unanswered and dismissed….
Erica Smegielski, the 30-year-old daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary Principal Dawn Hochsprung, complained during Friday’s press conference — excerpts and audio of which the Clinton campaign emailed to reporters afterwards — that Sanders had ignored her call to admit his stance on the lawsuit is wrong and instead attacked his rival in the Democratic presidential primary.
“It is so shameful that you ignored my call for an apology and when pushed by a reporter, instead of responding to me, you attacked Hillary Clinton,” Smegielski said.
Sandy Phillips, who lost her daughter Jessica Ghawi during the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012, said that Sanders had treated her family disrespectfully during a phone call.
“Bernie promised to meet with us face to face,” she said about Sanders, who has been campaigning in New York. “We did have a telephone conversation, he was 15 minutes late to that telephone conversation. The first thing he had the nerve to say to my husband was ‘I’m very busy,’” she said. “Well Senator Sanders, we had been busy too. We had been busy burying our daughter.”
“Because of Bernie Sanders and others who voted like him, I and other Sandy Hook families are waiting for justice,” said Jillian Soto, who lost her sister Victoria at Sandy Hook. “I believe Remington acted irresponsibly and should be held accountable. I deserve for a jury to determine that, not the politicians in Washington, like Bernie Sanders.”
“Remington and others designed and executed an immoral marketing campaign that specifically targets violent-prone, military-obsessed young men and the result is both predictable and deadly,” she added. “Our families want the marketers, distributors, and sellers of the AR-15 held accountable for what happened at Sandy Hook. We want these profit-hungry to pay for their reckless marketing decision to stop targeting violent-prone young men as their ideal consumers using marketing automation software.”
Read the rest at Politico. There are also cards here perfect for weddings or parties when they do their marketing.
I know there is much more interesting news today. What stories are you following? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and have a relaxing weekend.
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Posted: April 7, 2016 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Good Afternoon!!
Desperation has set in at Camp Bernie. Let’s count the ways.
First there was his disastrous interview with The New York Daily News, in which he demonstrated that he has no idea how to enact the policies he has been campaigning on for the past year, like breaking up the banks, prosecuting Wall Street criminals, continuing the drone war, and dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Then there was his insane response to Hillary Clinton’s criticism of the lack of preparation he demonstrated in that interview. In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Clinton said that Sanders’ poor performance showed a lack of preparation. Clinton:
“I think the interview raised a lot of really serious questions,” she said. “He’s been talking for more than a year about doing things he obviously hadn’t really studied or understood.”
“I think what he has been saying about the core issue of his whole campaign doesn’t seem to be rooted in an understanding of either the law or the practical ways you get something done,” she added. “The core of his campaign has been breaking up the banks, and it didn’t seem in reading his answers that he would understand exactly how that would work under Dodd-Frank.”
“You can’t really help people if you don’t know how to do what you are campaigning (for) and saying you want to do,” she added. “I think he hasn’t done his homework.”
Note that Clinton did not say that Sanders is unqualified to be president, as the WaPo fact-checker wrote today. She simply noted that obvious–that he didn’t come to the interview prepared to answer questions about his own policies. But at a rally in Philadelphia yesterday, Sanders claimed that she had said he was unqualified; and he went on to baldly state that Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State who has been working to advance the goals of the Democratic Party for 40 years, is not “qualified” for the job is she running to win. MSNBC’s Danny Freeman:
Less than 24 hours after Sanders’ big win in Wisconsin, the senator from Vermont hammered Clinton for not being “qualified” to be president.
“Now the other day, I think, Secretary Clinton appeared to be getting a little bit nervous,” began Sanders in front of thousands at Philadelphia’s Temple University Wednesday night.
“And she has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote not qualified to be president,” he said as the raucous crowd booed.
“Well let me just say in response, to Secretary Clinton, I don’t’ believe that she is qualified if she is…through her Super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds,” Sanders declared.
He went on to list a number of traits disqualifying someone from being president all directed squarely at Clinton — with the crowd cheering enthusiastically after each bullet point:
“I don’t think that you are qualified if you get 15 million dollars from Wall Street through your Super PAC,” said Sanders. “I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don’t think you are qualified if you’ve supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement, which has cost us millions of decent paying jobs.”
He even blamed Clinton for the “Panama Papers.”
“I don’t think that you are qualified if you supported the Panama Free Trade Agreement! Something I very strongly opposed and which, as all of you know has allowed corporations and wealthy people all over the world to avoid paying their taxes to their countries,” Sanders concluded.
In the immediate aftermath of his remarks, it remained unclear exactly when he believes Clinton called him “not qualified” to be president.
On Twitter, a number of Clinton staffers and supporters called on Sanders to withdraw his vicious and false attack. Instead, he doubled down, sending out an email in which he expanded on his claims.
Here’s the problem: how can Sanders ever endorse Clinton now that he has said she is “unqualified?” Why would Clinton want him to campaign for her now? It’s also difficult to see how Sanders thinks this attack on Clinton will help him in the New York primary. Frankly, it looks like Bernie is just an angry guy who can’t control his emotions very well. Many voters would see that as disqualifying in a candidate for the presidency.
Bernie’s campaign manager Jeff Weaver was also busy attacking Hillary yesterday. Rebecca Traister has an excellent piece about it: The Sanders Campaign’s Sexist New Argument: Hillary Tries Too Hard.
On Tuesday night, following Bernie Sanders’s big win in the Wisconsin primary, his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, understandably jazzed in the midst of a victory lap, said a really stupid sexist thing about Hillary Clinton.
When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked him about the increasingly aggressive rhetoric between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, Weaver averred that his campaign was prepared to play hardball. He then sounded a warning to the former secretary of State and her supporters, suggesting that they not get too critical of Sanders or his supporters. “Don’t destroy the Democratic Party to satisfy the secretary’s ambitions to become president of the United States,” Weaver said.
It was a small comment, in every sense. A throwaway bit of nastiness coming from a campaign manager in the late stages of a long and hotly contested primary battle. But the line, which overtly cast Clinton’s political ambition as a destructive force and framed her famous drive and tenacity as unappealing, malevolent traits, played on long-standing assumptions about how ambition — a quality that is required for powerful men and admired in them — looks far less attractive on their female counterparts, and especially on their female competitors.
Weaver’s language made explicit a message that has, in more inchoate form, been churning through the Sanders campaign’s messaging in recent weeks. As Sanders’s staffers spin the story of how they got to this point in the race — with a candidate whose success has been unexpected and thrilling, especially with young Democrats and independents, but who has failed to win over voters of color and older voters, and remains badly behind his tough opponent by nearly every metric — they seem to have been working on a new framing of Hillary, one that relies on old biases about how we prefer women to conduct themselves and how little we like those who flout those preferences.
Jeff Weaver, Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager.
As if Hillary is the one who is trying to blow up the Democratic Party when Sanders has never even been a Democrat and refuses to support other Democrats running for office this year. Please go read the whole thing. There’s much more about the sexist attacks on Hillary from the men who work for Bernie.
This morning Bernie was still at it, once again “doubling down” on his attacks on Hillary. Politico:
Bernie Sanders went after the media for “political gossip” Thursday before he doubled down on his sharp comments Wednesday night in which he questioned whether Hillary Clinton was qualified for the presidency.
“Any questions on the needs of the middle class of America before we get to political gossip?” Sanders asked following a brief news conference on trade in Philadelphia. “All right, now where’s your political gossip? OK, what do you got?”
The following question focused on the Vermont senator’s forceful rhetoric against Clinton at a rally on Wednesday. Sanders explained that he took issue with a Washington Post report on Clinton with a headline that said “Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president.”
I guess he didn’t read the article under the headline, which nowhere quotes Hillary as saying that. Maybe Bernie thinks she wrote the headline?
“If Secretary Clinton thinks that just because I’m from a small state in Vermont and we’re gonna come here to New York and go to Pennsylvania and they’re gonna beat us up and they’re gonna go after us in some kind of really uncalled for way, that we’re not gonna fight back, well we got another — you know, they can guess again because that’s not the case,” Sanders said. “This campaign will fight back.”
Sanders again called into question whether Clinton has the pedigree to win the White House on Thursday, invoking her vote for the Iraq War, support of trade deals and campaign donations from Wall Street and special interests.
Um . . . Bernie? Hillary never said you were unqualified. This guy is really losing it.
Now I want to touch on another issue that is going to hurt Sanders badly in New York and other Eastern states that have primaries coming up. In a little noted part of his Daily News interview, Sanders showed a stunning lack of compassion and lack of empathy for the relatives of the children and teachers who were murdered at Sandy Hook. From the Interview:
Daily News: There’s a case currently waiting to be ruled on in Connecticut. The victims of the Sandy Hook massacre are looking to have the right to sue for damages the manufacturers of the weapons. Do you think that that is something that should be expanded?
Sanders: Do I think the victims of a crime with a gun should be able to sue the manufacturer, is that your question?
Daily News: Correct.
Sanders: No, I don’t.
Daily News: Let me ask you. I know we’re short on time. Two quick questions. Your website talks about…
Sanders: No, let me just…I’m sorry. In the same sense that if you’re a gun dealer and you sell me a gun and I go out and I kill him [gestures to someone in room]…. Do I think that that gun dealer should be sued for selling me a legal product that he misused? [Shakes head no.] But I do believe that gun manufacturers and gun dealers should be able to be sued when they should know that guns are going into the hands of wrong people. So if somebody walks in and says, “I’d like 10,000 rounds of ammunition,” you know, well, you might be suspicious about that. So I think there are grounds for those suits, but not if you sell me a legal product.
Bushmaster AR-15, the gun used in the Sandy Hook Massacre.
It wasn’t just Hillary attacking Bernie for this yesterday.
The Week: Daughter of murdered Sandy Hook principal slams Bernie Sanders over gun policy.
On Tuesday evening, Erica Smegielski, the daughter of Sandy Hook’s principal who was killed in the shooting, tweeted the Daily News link, writing, “Shame on you @BernieSanders try living one hour in our lives.” Smegielski added in a second tweet, “I hope @BernieSanders really #feelsthebern of this one. His judgment is despicable.”
And from prominent Connecticut Democrats:
Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy said the public doesn’t need “apologists for the NRA.”
“He is just wrong,” Malloy, criticizing Sanders, told The News. “He is dead wrong on guns. He had an opportunity to educate the people of Vermont about guns. Vermont is small enough that he could have gone house to house to educate people about guns.”
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy took to Twitter to shoot down Sanders’ gun stance, saying the presidential candidate is out of line.
“For Sanders to say that the Sandy Hook families should be barred from court, even if the weapon was negligently made, is wrong,” Murphy tweeted.
“Bernie is a friend, but this is really bad. Dems can’t nominate a candidate who supports gun manufacturer immunity.
From Katherine Speller at Bustle: Bernie Sanders ‘NYDN’ Interview Just Reminded Everyone Why He May Not Be That Progressive. The article has a good summary of the Sandy Hook case background.
According to court documents obtained by Bustle, the Sandy Hook case argues that the AR-15 — the weapon used in the Sandy Hook shooting that killed 26 people (20 of them small children) — is a military assault weapon capable of delivering 30 rounds in 10 seconds and penetrating body armor, designed to “deliver maximum carnage with extreme efficiency.” The complaint argues that Bushmaster and its parent company, Remington, were perfectly aware that “as a consequence of selling AR-15s to the civilian market, individuals unfit to operate these weapons gain access to them.” The complaint also argues that the companies’ marketing toward “military wannabes” and partnerships with games like Call of Duty show a disregard for the very real dangers of these weapons being commercially available.
Plaintiffs Mark and Jackie Barden — whose seven-year-old son Daniel was killed at Sandy Hook — criticized Sanders’ stance on their lawsuit earlier this year in an op-ed for The Washington Post. The Bardens said that Sanders understanding of the litigation was “simplistic and wrong,” and called for a more thoughtful approach from the senator to this particular breed of corporate responsibility:
… History has shown us, time and again, that it is innocent civilians in malls and movie theaters, and children in their classrooms, who have been made to bow down to the singular power of a gunman wielding an AR-15.
This is not a theoretical dispute. The last thing our sweet little Daniel would have seen in his short, beautiful life was the long barrel of a ferocious rifle designed to kill the enemy in war. The last thing Daniel’s tender little body would have felt were bullets expelled from that AR-15 traveling at greater than 3,000 feet per second — a speed designed to pierce body armor in the war zones of Fallujah.
Sanders has spent decades tirelessly advocating for greater corporate responsibility, which is why we cannot fathom his support of companies that recklessly market and profit from the sale of combat weapons to civilians and then shrug their shoulders when the next tragedy occurs, leaving ordinary families and communities to pick up the pieces.
If the Sandy Hook parents are able to see this case in court, it would be a major moment for critics of the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCCA), which made it pretty much impossible to go after gun manufacturers and distributors for negligence. Sanders helped to pass this law, and yet he has since pledged to help repeal it. However, separately condemning assault weapons while refusing to support the victims of those weapons in their fight for injunctive action leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Arguing that increasing accountability for manufacturers will somehow end the gun industry only adds to that concern.
When Hillary suggested he should apologize to the Sandy Hook relatives, Bernie said she should apologize to the victims of the Iraq war! Isn’t it funny how he seldom criticizes the Bush administration about the war they started and prosecuted?
I have more to say about disastrous effects of of Bernie Sanders’ gun policies, and I will write about it in my Saturday post.
What stories are you following today?
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Posted: April 5, 2016 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: historical photos, Wisconsin primary |
Hubert Humphrey and John Kennedy as votes are counted in the Wisconsin Primary, 1960
Good Morning!!
I hate to keep complaining about my health issues, but I’m moving so slowly this morning that I thought I’d give you guys a quick update so you’d know why it has been taking me so to get my posts written. I have been struggling with a cold and sinus infection that just won’t go away. It’s been weeks–maybe close to 2 months. I haven’t really kept track. For about 10 days, my sinuses were so swollen that my upper and lower teeth ached on the left side.
Last Tuesday, I went to a hospital walk-in clinic. It turned out that my blood pressure was very high, and I ended up having to stay in the hospital overnight while they tried to stabilize it and figure out what was going on with my sinuses. I had every test you could imagine–a chest X-ray, EKG, blood and oxygen tests for heart function, an echocardiogram, a CAT scan of my sinuses, and I wore a heart monitor while I was there.
The doctors were reluctant to give me an antibiotic, but they finally decided to give me a Z-pack because I had been sick for so long. They also gave me some blood pressure medication. I came home on Wednesday evening and by Thursday afternoon I felt dramatically better. On Friday and Saturday I felt great–I felt like me again for the first time in a long time. But on Sunday the symptoms started coming back. It hasn’t gotten to the point that my teeth hurt yet, but I obviously need more antibiotics.
I’m seeing a physician’s assistant tomorrow, and I hope I can convince her to give me a prescription. Of course the main focus is going to be on my blood pressure, so I’m trying to prepare myself to be assertive enough to get the help I need.
On top of all that, it snowed here on Sunday and Monday! I’m just hoping the snow will melt today. The sun is out, but it isn’t going to get much above freezing. If it doesn’t melt, I plan to go out this afternoon and try to back the car out of the driveway without shoveling it.
Anyway, I hope you guys don’t mind my sharing this. It has actually made me feel a little better to put it into words. Now on to today’s reads.
George Wallace won 1/3 of the Democratic primary votes in Wisconsin in 1964.
Yesterday we got exciting news from the Supreme Court on voting rights. Here’s some background from The Atlantic: One Person, One Vote, Eight Justices.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously turned back a legal effort to reinterpret the “one person, one vote” constitutional rule Monday, ruling that states may rely on total population when drawing their legislative districts.
The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, was brought by two Texas voters, Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger, who challenged the apportionment of Texas Senate districts. With the exception of the U.S. Senate, every American legislative body is apportioned by total population under the “one person, one vote” rule first outlined by the Court in the 1960s.
Evenwel and Pfenninger argued that counting non-voters—children, the mentally disabled, disenfranchised prisoners, and non-citizens—broke that rule and diluted their political power in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Cause. Many observers, including my colleague Garrett Epps, notedthat Evenwel’s interpretation would redraw the American political map in favor of a whiter, older, and more conservative electorate.
“In agreement with Texas and the United States, we reject appellants’ attempt to locate a voter-equality mandate in the Equal Protection Clause,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. “As history, precedent, and practice demonstrate, it is plainly permissible for jurisdictions to measure equalization by the total population of state and local legislative districts.”
The Supreme Court first forced states to draw their legislative districts with roughly equal populations inside them in two landmark decisions: Baker v. Carr in 1962 andReynolds v. Sims in 1964. The two decisions enshrined the one-person, one-vote rule in American constitutional law.
More at the link.
Eugene McCarthy after winning the Wisconsin primary in 1968
Analysis by Rick Hasan at the Election Law Blog: Breaking/Analysis: Big Victory for Voting Rights as #SCOTUS Rejects Plaintiffs’ Claim in Evenwel One Person, One Vote Case.
Justice Ginsburg wrote the opinion for the Court, and it is clear (as I had been saying) that Justice Scalia’s death did not affect the outcome of this case. It was clear from the oral argument that, despite what some said, this was not a case where the Court was likely to divide 4-4. Ed Blum’s position in this case to require voter population was not only at odds with historical practice, it was not practically possible given the data that we have, and it would have led to terrible outcomes, including making it basically impossible to also comply with Voting Rights Act requirements for districts.
Justice Ginsburg’s opinion holds that districting using total population was consistent with constitutional history, the Court’s own decisions, and longstanding practice. A long section of Justice Ginsburg’s opinion recounts constitutional history, and relies on the fact that for purposes of apportioning Congressional seats among states, total population, not total voters, must be used. Plaintiffs’ argument in Evenwel was inconsistent with this practice. As to the Court’s own precedents, Justice Ginsburg acknowledged language supporting both total voters and total population as possible bases, but Court’s practice has been to look at total population in its cases. Further, that is the practice that states uniformly use, despite the occasional case such as Burns v. Richardson, allowing Hawaii to use a registered voter level.
Finally, Justice Ginsburg gives a sound policy reason for a total population rule. In key language, she writes that “Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates—children,, their parents, even their grandparents, for example, have a stake in a strong public-education system—and in receiving constituent services, such as help navigating public-benefits bureaucracies. By ensuring that each representative is subject to requests and suggestions from the same number of constituents, total population apportionment promotes equitable and effective representation.” A footnote following this states that even though constituents “have no constitutional right to equal access to the their elected representatives,” a state “certainly has an interest in taking reasonable, nondiscriminatory steps to facilitate access for all its residents.”
Perhaps the most important aspect of Justice Ginsburg’s opinion, and especially notable because it attracted the votes of not just the liberals but also Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy, is the Court’s refusal to give Texas the green light to use total voters if it wants in the next round of redistricting. The Court simply put the issue off for another day. It is hard to stress enough what a victory this is for liberal supporters of voting rights. Many of us thought Burns already gave Texas this power. The fact that the Court leaves that issue open will serve as a deterrent for states like Texas to try to use total voters in the next round of redistricting, because it will guarantee major litigation on the question.
Much more at the link.
George McGovern after winning the Wisconsin primary in 1972.
Today is the Wisconsin primary, and Bernie Sanders is expected to win. FiveThirtyEight gives him a 72 percent chance of winning and only a 28 percent chance for Hillary Clinton to pull an upset. Of course those are probabilities and the few polls that have been taken show a somewhat closer race. The Real Clear Politics poll average is 47.9 for Bernie, 45.3 for Hillary. Al Giordano is projecting a 16 point win for Bernie, but even if he does that well, he won’t get enough pledged delegates out of Wisconsin to cut Hillary’s lead by much.
After today, there won’t be another primary until New York votes on April 19. There is a caucus in Wyoing on April 9, and Sanders will probably win that.
Yesterday, the Clinton and Sanders campaign settled on a date for the Brooklyn debate that Bernie has been demanding since New Hampshire. It will be on April 14 on CNN with {gag} Wolf Blitzer as moderator.
As I’m sure you’re aware, there has been a silly dispute about this completely unnecessary “debate.” The Sanders campaign played games for several days, first accusing Clinton of being afraid to to debate him and then turning down four different dates and times offered by her campaign. But yesterday, NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio played the trump card (pun intended) by offering to smooth the way for Sanders to arrange his oh so busy schedule. The Daily Mail reports:
The Brooklyn debate that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been squabbling over for the last week is finally a go.
The Sanders campaign announced this evening that it had accepted an offer from CNN to debate on the evening of April 14 – a date that Clinton had been pushing for but the senator rejected.
CNN separately announced that the primetime smackdown would be held from 9-11 PM next Thursday at the Duggal Greenhouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard….
Sanders’ campaign said this morning it could not do April 14, though it originally said would be acceptable, because it was the only evening it could secure a permit for a Washington Square rally in New York City.
Clinton backer and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio then offered to wield his power to settle the boiling dispute between the Democratic presidential candidates today.
De Blasio said on Twitter: ‘Let’s make @NY1 4/14 BKLYN debate happen. @BernieSanders: I’ll help you secure any permit you need to ensure your NYC rally can happen too.’
Hahahahaha! It was an offer Bernie couldn’t refuse.
Jimmy Carter, winner of the Wisconsin primary, 1976
More from Dana Millbank: Sanders is losing the pillow fight with Clinton.
This particular rhetorical showdown was not a back-and-forth about issues, appropriately enough, but an argument about whether to debate — and when, and where. It began Jan. 30, when the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign challenged Hillary Clinton to debate him in Brooklyn on April 14.
Clinton suggested the Democrats instead debate in Pennsylvania, on Long Island or in Upstate New York. Sanders accused Clinton of ducking.
Clinton proposed a New York debate on the evening of April 4 — but the Sanders campaign rejected the idea as “ludicrous” because the NCAA basketball championship would be later that night and Syracuse might be playing.
Clinton proposed they debate on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on April 15, but Sanders rejected that, too.
Clinton even acquiesced to the original Sanders demand and offered to debate April 14 in Brooklyn. Sorry, Sanders said. He now had a rally scheduled for that night — and the permit, his campaign said, had been hard to get.
The Sanders campaign countered Sunday by suggesting four other nights — one of them on a weekend, which it previously had said was unacceptable. Clinton summarily rejected those days.
But then Bill de Blasio stepped in, and made Bernie look like a dope.
Sanders late Monday acquiesced to debate on the very day and in the very place he proposed two months ago. He could rally another time at his preferred venue, New York’s Washington Square Park — which, by coincidence, was the site Saturday of the International Pillow Fight, in which hundreds of strangers playfully thumped each other with feather-filled sacks.
This is oddly appropriate, because the Democratic nominating contest generally, like the Great Debate Debate, has come to resemble a pillow fight — a lot of commotion and feathers flying, but the blows don’t have much impact. Sanders long ago ceased to have a meaningful chance of winning the nomination; he would need to win 57 percent of the remaining delegates (or 67 percent, if you include uncommitted superdelegates), which, under the Democrats’ system of assigning delegates in proportion to the vote, simply isn’t going to happen.
Millbank claims that in order to win, Sanders would have to attack Clinton’s character and that Sanders “refuses” to do that. Of course he has been doing just that by insinuation for a very long time; but that doesn’t fit the media narrative, so Millbank can’t admit that Bernie’s personal attacks are not working.
Michael Dukakis, winner of the Wisconsin Primary, 1988.
The Sanders campaign is still failing badly in its choice of official surrogates. Again and again we’ve seen Bernie’s celebrity supporters put their feet in their mouths while doing their best to help win him votes. Cornell West, Killer Mike, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry, they’ve all managed to insult African American voters by minimizing their importance and attacking President Obama, and discounting all Southern Democrats as part of “the Confederacy.
Yesterday, Susan Sarandon’s former partner Tim Robbins weighed in when he introduced Sanders at the Wisconsin Rally. Philip Bump at The Washington Post: Tim Robbins’s very bad take on why Bernie Sanders is undersold.
After the Southern primaries,” he said, “you had called the election” — apparently referring to the media. “And who’s fooling who? Winning South Carolina in the Democratic primary is about as significant as winning Guam. No Democrat is going to win in the general election. Why do these victories have so much significance?”
This is a not-uncommon argument among supporters of Sanders. Yes, Hillary Clinton is winning. But she’s winning largely because she ran up big margins in Southern states. That, the argument goes, bodes poorly for the general, since those Southern states usually vote Republican.
This is a bad argument that borders on insulting.
First of all, South Carolina has a lot more people than Guam. Among the other bits of data one can point out about the 2016 Democratic primary is that Clinton has received far more votes than Sanders — 2.5 million more. Among those is a margin of about 175,000 more votes in the state of South Carolina, a margin that by itself is larger than the population of Guam.
Which means that Clinton came away from South Carolina with a net delegate haul of plus-25 — she earned 25 more delegates than did Sanders. In the Democrats’ proportional system, that’s a big margin. It’s a margin that Sanders has only managed once, in the Washington caucuses late last month. So in that sense, South Carolina matters a lot more than Guam.
More at the link. It’s not just a stupid and insulting argument; it’s a racist argument. There, I’ve said it. It’s what I believe.
Bill Clinton, winner of the 1990 Wisconsin primary
I have more links that I want to share; I’ll put some in the comment thread. What stories are you following today?
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Posted: April 2, 2016 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, New York primary, Wisconsin primary |
Frida Kahlo: Me and My Parrots
Good Afternoon!!
Bernie Sanders sure turned out to be a nasty piece of work. His campaign has devolved into non-stop character attacks on Hillary Clinton, jabs at President Obama, and endless whining about supposed unfair treatment by the media and the Democratic Party.
The latest is Sanders’ outright false claim that the the Clinton campaign has received millions in donations from “the fossil fuel industry.” He may have finally gone too far for the media to keep shielding him.
This time, instead of turning the other cheek, Hillary hit back when a Greenpeace organizer asked her a question based on Sanders’ lies. I’m sure you’ve seen the video of Hillary saying she’s “sick of it.”
Painting by Candido Portinari
Melissa McEwan at Blue Nation Review: THE MOMENT: Why Hillary’s Visible Anger at Being Smeared Spells Big Trouble for Bernie.
The video of Hillary saying, “I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me. I’m sick of it,” is embedded in news stories and is being played all over cable news and the internet. While we take absolutely no issue with the activist’s right to ask the question, we see this as an important inflection point in the 2016 campaign.
There are two ways the story is being covered. In some places, the video (or just Hillary’s quote) is being shared with little commentary beyond some description of her being angry, usually accompanied by the note that she “jabbed” her finger. This coverage treats the fact of Hillary’s demonstrable anger as the entire story.
And, in the sense that Hillary has been pressured to conceal her emotion—indeed her very humanity—by a media and commentariat who have, for decades, unscrupulously policed her every expression and every turn of phrase, the fact that she refused to abide the unwinnable rules they’ve set for her, is newsworthy all on its own.
But, of course, that is not the real story.
Other media outlets, more responsible ones, are using the incident to actually research and report on Hillary’s statement that Bernie, his staff, his surrogates, and his supporters have lied about her. Repeatedly.
These journalists are digging into the numbers, and finding that, in fact, the insinuation that she has accepted money from the “fossil fuel industry” (or any other industry for that matter) has no justification. It is a smear by innuendo.
Monica Bellucci in Dolce & Gabbana Photography by Signe Vilstrup Harper’s Bazaar Ukraine
There have been a number of stories about this, some of which McEwan cites in her post.
From Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler:
Who’s right in the Democratic spat over oil-industry contributions? A lot depends on what is counted –and how it is counted. Clinton made a strong accusation that the Sanders campaign is “lying” about the issue. Let’s see whether the Sanders campaign’s math hold up.
This all started when a Greenpeace activist approached Clinton on a rope line to ask her to “reject fossil-fuel money in the future” in her campaign. As a matter of law, campaigns are prohibited from taking money directly from corporations, though the Clinton campaign has not received money from oil-industry PACs either.
As Clinton noted in her angry response, she does get money from people who work at oil companies. (These calculations involve people who contribute at least $200 and provide an occupation or employer.) According to the Center for Responsive Politics, as of March 21, the Clinton campaign has received nearly $308,000 for individuals in the oil and gas industry. The Sanders campaign has received nearly $54,000.
In you include contributions from outside groups supporting a candidate, Clinton’s total increases slightly to $333,000, compared to Sanders’ $54,000. Compared to Republicans, Democrats have received just a pittance from the fossil-fuel industry: 2.3 percent of oil and gas contributions in this election cycle. That should be no surprise, given that both Clinton and Sanders have been critical of the oil and gas industry — and have targeted it for higher taxes or reduced loopholes.
Painting by Meghan Howland
You can read more details at the WaPo link, but the conclusion is:
The Sanders campaign is exaggerating the contributions that Clinton has received from the oil and gas industry. In the context of her overall campaign, the contributions are hardly significant. It’s especially misleading to count all of the funds raised by lobbyists with multiple clients as money “given” by the fossil-fuel industry.
Some substantive media responses to check out:
Philip Bump: Why Hillary Clinton is justifiably annoyed by criticism of her Big Oil fundraising.
Steve Benen: Money from Big Oil isn’t always what it appears to be.
John Aravosis: Factchecker: 3 Pinocchios for Sanders over Clinton oil & gas donations.
And can you believe that Sanders actually had the timerity to demand an apology from Clinton? Danny Freeman and Monica Alba at MSNBC: Bernie Sanders: Hillary Clinton owes me an apology over ‘lies’ claim.
That was before the fact checker article came out. But the Clinton campaign said they weren’t about to apologize for calling out Sanders’ lies.
Sanders was also upset that Clinton criticized him for dismissing reproductive rights as a side issue when compared to income inequality, the minimum wage, and his other preferred (in an interview with Rachel Maddow). So in a speech in Wisconsin yesterday, he claimed to be listening to women.
Whoops! This man is no feminist folks, no matter what he and his supporters think.
For Frida, by Sheri Howe
The Wisconsin primary is on Tuesday, and tonight both Democratic candidates will speak at the Democratic Founders Day Dinner in Milwaukee tonight at 7PM. I wonder if there will be fireworks? C-Span is going to live stream it, and maybe other cable networks will too. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that early voting in the state has been heavy.
Of course the big prize will be the New York primary on April 19. Remember when Bernie’s campaign claimed that Hillary was refusing to debate him in New York? It turns out he’s the one dodging a debate there.
CBS News reports, Clinton campaign: Bernie Sanders is delaying scheduling New York debate.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign said Saturday that it has suggested three potential dates for an additional Democratic debate in New York, but all of those dates were rejected by Bernie Sanders and his aides….
Sanders’ campaign has been publicly challenging Clinton to agree to a debate in New York ahead of the state’s primary, which both candidates are eager to win as they compete for the Democratic nomination. According to Fallon, in the past week, the Clinton campaign offered the night of April 4, the night of April 14 and the morning of April 15 as potential dates to meet for a debate.
Past debates this cycle have been nighttime events, but Fallon said the morning option was offered after Sanders agreed to debate on that day on Good Morning America.
“That, too, was rejected,” Fallon said.
The night of April 14 and the morning of April 15 are still on the table.
“The Sanders campaign needs to stop using the New York primary as a playground for political games and negative attacks against Hillary Clinton,” Fallon said. “The voters of New York deserve better. Senator Sanders and his team should stop the delays and accept a debate on April 14 or the morning of April 15th.”
Little Green Bee Eaters of Upper Egypt, by Sushila Burgess
The Sanders campaign rejected the April 4th date because of competition from the NCAA basketball championship, but
In a tweet Saturday, Fallon said the Clinton campaign had “offered a time” that ensured the debate would end “before tipoff.”
Does Bernie want to debate or not? It’s not clear. If he does, Hillary will come out on top, so maybe he’s afraid.
Speaking of journalists finally beginning to vet Bernie Sanders, check out this AP piece by Ken Thomas: Clinton, Sanders had opposing views on biomedical research.
Clinton has pointed to her advocacy for groundbreaking medical research, from her push for more dollars as a New York senator for the National Institutes of Health to her long support for stem cell research that could eventually lead to regenerative medicine.
Sanders, a Vermont senator, has supported stem cell research in the Senate. But advocates within the scientific community cite his voting record in the early 2000s in the House when he repeatedly supported a ban on all forms of human cloning, including one called therapeutic cloning intended to create customized cells to treat disease.
“We were looking for signs that he is going to be a supporter of what science and technology can do and I think everyone in the country ought to be worried about that,” said Dr. Harold Varmus, the Nobel Prize-winning former NIH director under President Bill Clinton.
“I am quite concerned about his stance on these issues,” Varmus said. “This is a litmus test. It was 10 years ago — it’s still a test that he failed in the view of many of us….”
While serving in the House, Sanders voted to ban therapeutic cloning in 2001, 2003 and 2005 as Congress grappled with the ethics of biotechnology and scientific advances. Patient advocacy groups note that Sanders co-sponsored bans in 2003 and 2005 that included criminal penalties for conducting the research and opposed alternatives that would have allowed the cloning of embryos solely for medical research.
Clinton, meanwhile, co-sponsored legislation in 2001 and 2002 in the Senate that would have expanded stem cell research and co-sponsored a bill in 2005 that would have banned human cloning while protecting the right of scientists to conduct stem cell research.
Sanders said following a vote in 2001 that he had “very serious concerns about the long-term goals of an increasingly powerful and profit-motivated biotechnology industry.” In a later vote, he warned of the dangers of “owners of technology” who are “primarily interested in how much money they can make rather than the betterment of society.”
Oil painting by Indian artist Ilayaraja
For Sanders, it’s always about corporations not people. And guess who was on Bernie’s side on this issue?
“Sanders and (then Republican House Majority Leader Tom) DeLay…were just unyielding and they were part of the religious right’s attempt to shut down this whole critical new frontier of therapy for chronic disease,” said Robert Klein, chairman of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
“It’s fine to say you’re for stem cell research but you vote against it and you vote against all therapeutic application, it doesn’t mean anything to say you’re for it,” Klein said. “Fine, he votes for it years later when it’s more popular and the pressure is off. We needed leadership then.”
Bernie did say in his Young Turks interview that “I’m not that big into being a “leader”… I’d much rather prefer to see a lot of leaders and a lot of grassroots activism.” Well, the President of the United States has to be a leader. He or she can’t just respond to the dictates of the “grassroots.”
Finally, here’s a good piece at The Atlantic on why voting for Hillary isn’t just about her being a woman.
Stoke by Nayland Church, by Sir Cedric Morris
Li Zhou: More Than Just a Symbol. Millennial women resent being told to vote for Clinton because she’s a woman. That’s why they should look at her career fighting for women.
At a February rally for Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire, actress Emily Ratajkowski said just that when explaining her support for the Vermont senator: “I want my first female president to be more than a symbol. I want her to have politics that can revolutionize.” In a piece by my colleague Molly Ball, one woman interviewed about Sanders took this position one step further, saying Sanders is “‘more pro-woman’ than Clinton.” And in a recent Politico article, Molly Roberts lamented that, for Millennials, Clinton’s gender is “simply not enough to make her a groundbreaker.” ….
But are Millennials really being asked to support Clinton for no reason other than to shatter the glass ceiling? Unfortunately, because that message has been repeatedly linked to Clinton’s campaign—yet never directly espoused by it—its noise obscures the deeper reasons that young women should support Clinton. It’s not just that she’s a woman; it’s that she has fought for women her whole career.
For decades, Clinton has prioritized bills and policies promoting reproductive rights, equal pay, and family leave—far more so than Sanders. This is not to say that Sanders has not supported such legislation or practices. The key difference is that, for him, they simply haven’t been as much of a priority.
Read the rest at the link.
What stories are you following today? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a great weekend!
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Posted: March 31, 2016 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: abortion, Bernie Sanders, Birth Control, Donald Trump, freedom of choice, Hillary Clinton, reproductive freedom |
Good Afternoon!!
The political issue that is most on my mind today is the reactions of the candidates to remarks Donald Trump made on abortion in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews yesterday. You can read the full transcript at The Guardian. An excerpt:
MATTHEWS: If you say abortion is a crime or abortion is murder, you have to deal with it under law. Should abortion be punished?
TRUMP: Well, people in certain parts of the Republican Party and Conservative Republicans would say, “yes, they should be punished.”
MATTHEWS: How about you?
TRUMP: I would say that it’s a very serious problem. And it’s a problem that we have to decide on. It’s very hard.
MATTHEWS: But you’re for banning it?
TRUMP: I’m going to say — well, wait. Are you going to say, put them in jail? Are you — is that the (inaudible) you’re talking about?
MATTHEWS: Well, no, I’m asking you because you say you want to ban it. What does that mean?
TRUMP: I would — I am against — I am pro-life, yes.
MATTHEWS: What is ban — how do you ban abortion? How do you actually do it?
TRUMP: Well, you know, you will go back to a position like they had where people will perhaps go to illegal places
MATTHEWS: Yes?
TRUMP: But you have to ban it
MATTHEWS: You banning, they go to somebody who flunked out of medical school….
Trump begins talking about the Catholic Church’s position, interrogating Matthews on whether he agrees (Matthews is a Catholic).
MATTHEWS: Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no as a principle?
TRUMP: The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment
MATTHEWS: For the woman
TRUMP: Yes, there has to be some form
MATTHEWS: Ten cents? Ten years? What?
TRUMP: Let me just tell you — I don’t know. That I don’t know. That I don’t know.
MATTHEWS: Why not
TRUMP: I don’t know.
MATTHEWS: You take positions on everything else.
TRUMP: Because I don’t want to — I frankly, I do take positions on everything else. It’s a very complicated position.
MATTHEWS: But you say, one, that you’re pro-life meaning that you want to ban it
More efforts by Trump to deflect to the fact that Matthews is a Catholic.
MATTHEWS: I’m asking you, what should a woman face if she chooses to have an abortion?
TRUMP: I’m not going to do that.
MATTHEWS: Why not?
TRUMP: I’m not going to play that game.
MATTHEWS: Game?
TRUMP: You have…
MATTHEWS: You said you’re pro-life.
TRUMP: I am pro-life.
MATTHEWS: That means banning abortion
TRUMP: And so is the Catholic Church pro-life.
MATTHEWS: But they don’t control the — this isn’t Spain, the Church doesn’t control the government
TRUMP: What is the punishment under the Catholic Church? What is the…
MATTHEWS: Let me give something from the New Testament, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Don’t ask me about my religion.
TRUMP: No, no…
MATTHEWS: I’m asking you. You want to be president of the United States.
TRUMP: You told me that…
MATTHEWS: You tell me what the law should be.
TRUMP: I have — I have not determined…
MATTHEWS: Just tell me what the law should be. You say you’re pro-life.
TRUMP: I am pro-life.
MATTHEWS: What does that mean
TRUMP: With exceptions. I am pro-life.
I have not determined what the punishment would be.
MATTHEWS: Why not?
TRUMP: Because I haven’t determined it
MATTHEWS: When you decide to be pro-life, you should have thought of it. Because…
TRUMP: No, you could ask anybody who is pro-life…
MATTHEWS: OK, here’s the problem — here’s my problem with this, if you don’t have a punishment for abortion — I don’t believe in it, of course — people are going to find a way to have an abortion.
TRUMP: You don’t believe in what?
MATTHEWS: I don’t believe in punishing anybody for having an abortion
TRUMP: OK, fine. OK, (inaudible)/
MATTHEWS: Of course not. I think it’s a woman’s choice.
TRUMP: So you’re against the teachings of your Church?
MATTHEWS: I have a view — a moral view — but I believe we live in a free country, and I don’t want to live in a country so fascistic that it could stop a person from making that decision.
TRUMP: But then you are…
MATTHEWS: That would be so invasive.
TRUMP: I know but I’ve heard you speaking…
MATTHEWS: So determined of a society that I wouldn’t able — one we are familiar with. And Donald Trump, you wouldn’t be familiar with.
TRUMP: But I’ve heard you speaking so highly about your religion and your Church.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
TRUMP: Your Church is very, very strongly as you know, pro-life.
MATTHEWS: I know.
TRUMP: What do you say to your Church?
MATTHEWS: I say, I accept your moral authority. In the United States, the people make the decision, the courts rule on what’s in the Constitution, and we live by that. That’s why I say.
TRUMP: Yes, but you don’t live by it because you don’t accept it. You can’t accept it. You can’t accept it. You can’t accept it.
MATTHEWS: Can we go back to matters of the law and running for president because matters of law, what I’m talking about, and this is the difficult situation you’ve placed yourself in.
By saying you’re pro-life, you mean you want to ban abortion. How do you ban abortion without some kind of sanction? Then you get in that very tricky question of a sanction, a fine on human life which you call murder?
TRUMP: It will have to be determined.
MATTHEWS: A fine, imprisonment for a young woman who finds herself pregnant?
TRUMP: It will have to be determined.
MATTHEWS: What about the guy that gets her pregnant? Is he responsible under the law for these abortions? Or is he not responsible for an abortion?
TRUMP: Well, it hasn’t — it hasn’t — different feelings, different people. I would say no.
MATTHEWS: Well, they’re usually involved.
I applaud Chris Matthews on forcing Trump to demonstrate some of the problems with banning abortion. Trump actually said that we would go back to the time when women had to get illegal abortions, and that they should be punished if they made that choice. But the men who were also involved in the creating unwanted or dangerous pregnancies and in making the decision to end those pregnancies should not be punished.
Matthews could have been talking to any “pro-life” candidate, and if he or she were pushed on the practical results of their policies they might be similarly confused. Because that might mean sending women to jail. As Matthews pointed out, the Church does not control the U.S. government, and candidates who think abortion is a crime should not make decisions about women’s bodies and their choices. These choices are complex and they should be private.
How did the Democratic candidates respond to Trump’s remarks?
From CNN:
Hours later, Trump reversed his initial position — criticized as extreme by both supporters and opponents of abortion rights — saying only the doctors should be held liable.
“The Republicans all line up together,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“Now maybe they aren’t quite as open about it as Donald Trump was earlier today, but they all have the same position,” she said, noting anti-abortion positions taken by both John Kasich and Ted Cruz. “If you make abortion a crime — you make it illegal — then you make women and doctors criminals.”
“Why is it, I ask myself, Republicans want limited government, except when it comes to women’s health?” she said.
Many Trump’s critics have sought to paint him as hostile to women, and Clinton said she largely agreed with that assessment.
You can watch Clinton’s full interview with Anderson Cooper at the link. I couldn’t find a full interview with Sanders on this other than the one he did with Rachel Maddow. He apparently sent out a tweet calling Trump’s remarks shameful. This is what he told Maddow in a lengthy interview yesterday.
MADDOW: After, uh, the word spread that Donald Trump had made those remarks today about abortion, that a woman needs to be punished, uh, if she seeks an abortion and abortion should be banned, you said today that was shameful.
What is shameful about it?
SANDERS: Well, I think it is — shameful is probably understating that position. First of all, to me, and I think to most Americans, women have the right to control their own bodies and they have the right to make those personal decisions themselves.
But to punish a woman for having an abortion is beyond comprehension. I — I just — you know, one would say what is in Donald Trump’s mind except we’re tired of saying that?
I don’t know what world this person lives in. So obviously, from my perspective, and if elected president, I will do everybody that I can to allow women to make that choice and have access to clinics all over this country so that if they choose to have an abortion, they will be able to do so.
The idea of punishing a woman, that is just, you know, beyond comprehension.
Maddow tried to press Sanders, asking if Cruz may be even worse on the abortion issue than Trump.
Uh, look, they have nothing to say. All they can appeal is to a small number of people who feel very rabid, very rabid about a particular issue, whether it’s abortion or maybe whether it’s gay marriage. That is their constituency. They have nothing of substance.
You know, you mentioned a moment ago, Rachel, that the media is paying attention to Donald Trump.
Duh?
No kidding. Once again, every stupid remark will be broadcast, you know, for the next five days.
But what is Donald Trump’s position on raising the minimum wage?
Well, he doesn’t think so.
What is Donald Trump’s position on wages in America?
Well, he said in a Republican debate he thinks wages are too high.
What’s Donald Trump’s position on taxes?
Well, he wants to give billionaire families like himself hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks.
What is Donald Trump’s position on climate change?
Oh, he thinks it’s a hoax perpetrated, shock of all shock, by the Chinese. You know, on and on it goes.
But because media is what media is today, any stupid, absurd remark made by Donald Trump becomes the story of the week. Maybe, just maybe, we might want to have a serious discussion about the serious issues facing America. Donald Trump will not look quite so interesting in that context.
MADDOW: Are you suggesting, though, that the media shouldn’t be focusing on his call to potentially jail women who have abortions? Because that’s another stupid —
SANDERS: I am saying that every day he comes up with another stupid remark, absurd remark, of course it should be mentioned. But so should Trump’s overall positions. How much talk do we hear about climate change, Rachel? And Trump? Any?
I heard that as exactly what Maddow suggested: To Sanders, the issue of women’s reproductive rights is just another “stupid” social issue–nowhere near as important as income inequality, increasing the minimum wage, and the other economic issues that Sanders focuses on.
And here is what Hillary Clinton told Rachel Maddow last night, from Politicus USA.
“What Donald Trump said today was outrageous and dangerous. And you know I am just constantly taken aback by the kinds of things that he advocates for. Maya Angelou said, ‘When someone show you who they are, believe them.’ And once again he has showed us who he is. The idea that he and all of the Republicans espouse that abortion should be illegal is one that is not embraced by the vast majority of Americans. And in fact as he pointed out, if it were illegal, then women and doctors would be criminals.”
“I think not only women, men, but all Americans need to understand that this kind of inflammatory, destructive rhetoric is on the outer edges of what is permitted under our Constitution, what we believe in, and people should reject it.”
“Women in particular must know that this right which we have guaranteed under the Constitution could be taken away, and that’s why the stakes in this election couldn’t be higher.”
Maddow explained that Trump walked it back and then wanted to punish doctors. Clinton made the point that women have the right to their own autonomy. Criminalizing doctors for helping women have medical authority over their own bodies doesn’t make this better.
Maddow said that she spoke with Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s 2016 primary opponent, and that Sanders was critical of Trump’s remark but he also thinks it’s another “Donald Trump stupid” remark that will be covered by the media ad nauseam as opposed to issues like taxes, climate change, minimum wage that might be more deserving of extended attention.
Maddow asked Clinton if she agreed, and Clinton said she doesn’t think the media is making too much of this, “No, absolutely not. I’ve been on the front lines of the fight to preserve a woman’s choice and ability to make these difficult decisions… I’ve been a leader in trying to make sure that our rights as women were not in any way eroded.”
“To think that this is an issue that is not deserving of reaction just demonstrates a lack of appreciation for how serious this is,” Clinton said. “This goes to the heart of who we are as women, what kinds of rights and choices we have, it certainly is as important as any economic issue because when it’s all stripped away so much of the Republican agenda is to turn the clock back on women.”
It is easy for even liberals and progressives to forget that without legal and safe abortion, women die. This is no small issue. This is one of the issues of 2016. It is economic, it is about personal freedom, it is a matter of life and death. Hillary Clinton punches back even when others will not. She sees this issue for what it is.
This is why we need a woman POTUS. This is why we need Hillary. These interviews by Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow represent the first time anyone at a debate or “town hall” has seriously asked candidates to talk about women’s reproductive rights.
Donald Trump showed us why putting a Republican in the White House in 2016 would be dangerous for women.
Bernie Sanders showed us that he “supports” abortion rights, but doesn’t think this issue rises to the importance of his rants on economic issues like income inequality, Wall Street corruption, and the minimum wage. He clearly doesn’t understand that abortion and birth control are also important economic issues.
Hillary Clinton is the only presidential candidate who understands the important of these so-called “women’s issues.” She is the only one who will speak for women and girls in a serious way if she is elected to the presidency.
What do you think? Please discuss this post or any other topic you wish in the comment thread, and have a terrific Thursday.
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