Trump’s main rivals were able to meet minimum thresholds to collect delegates in many of the Super Tuesday contests. But Trump regained his momentum in the March 8 contests, winning three – Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii – while Cruz prevailed in Idaho.
Yet there is a key Republican convention rule, known as Rule 40, which could hand Trump the nomination on a silver platter because it limits the number of nominees while prohibiting certain attempts to steal the nomination away from a front runner.
The purpose of this rule was to help ensure the coronation of a clear front runner and to give a presumptive nominee a celebratory sendoff into the general election. Prior to the 2012 convention, this rule required a candidate to have won a plurality of delegates in at least five states to have his or her name put into nomination at the convention.
However, once Mitt Romney secured enough delegates to win the 2012 nomination, his supporters (especially key adviser-operative Ben Ginsburg) got this rule revised to block any person from being nominated at the convention unless he or she had won a majority of delegates in at least eight states. (Part of Romney’s reasoning was to freeze out a major floor demonstration of support for libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and thus to present to the nation watching on TV a united party rallying behind the former Massachusetts governor.)
In addition to prohibiting the recording of any delegates won by candidates who failed to meet the eight-state threshold, Rule 40 barred delegates from promoting a groundswell on the convention floor for any person who did not participate in the state contests. Thus, the rule prevents a modern-day replay of the “We Want Willkie” selection of Wendell Willkie at the 1940 Republican convention. (Ironically, that would now rule out a stealth establishment strategy to mount a “Romney, Romney” uprising at the convention in Cleveland.)
It remains to be seen if and when Trump and his rivals can secure majorities of the delegates in eight states. Trump has met that threshold in seven of the 15 states in which he has won the most votes, meaning he is just one state short of the threshold.
Cruz has won the most votes in seven states and secured a majority of delegates in four states: Idaho, Kansas, Maine and Texas. In other words, the Texas senator is halfway there.
Live Blog: Western Tuesday and the Returns of the Day
Posted: March 22, 2016 Filed under: just because 94 Comments
Good Evening!
We’ve got primaries and caucuses to discuss this evening! The election has gone West big time as states up and down the nation’s Rocky Mountains take to the voting booth. Dynamics here may be different than the nation’s east coast and the south. These states have populations of Native Americans and Hispanics as well as many white people. Additionally, they’re home to many of the Nation’s National Parks and natural resources. What’s in store for tonight?
On March 22, three states and one territory will hold nominating contests in the 2016 presidential election.
Arizona will hold a primary for both Republicans and Democrats, Idaho will hold Democratic caucuses, Utah will hold both Republican and Democratic caucuses and American Samoa will hold Republican caucuses.
Both Trump and Clinton are expected to boost their leads from the previous primaries. This particular primaries may not provide windfalls for any one, but should continue the trend.
Eager to move beyond a divisive primary season, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton seek to pad their delegate lead over their underdog rivals as the 2016 race for the White House moves West on Tuesday.
Arizona and Utah feature contests for both parties, while Idaho Democrats also hold presidential caucuses. Trump and Clinton hope to strengthen their leads in delegates that decide the nominations, as Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich struggle to reverse the sense of inevitability taking hold around both party front-runners.
“I have more votes than anybody,” Trump charged on the eve of the elections as he courted skeptical Republican officials in Washington. “The people who go against me should embrace me.”
A firm delegate lead in hand, Clinton looked past Sanders ahead of Tuesday’s contests and instead sharpened her general election attacks on Trump. “We need steady hands,” she said, “not a president who says he’s neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who-knows-what on Wednesday because everything’s negotiable.”
Despite the tough talk, both Trump and Clinton face challenges on Tuesday.
Trump’s brash tone has turned off some Republican voters in Utah, where preference polls suggest Cruz has a chance to claim more than 50 percent of the caucus vote and with it, all of Utah’s 40 delegates. Trump could earn some delegates should Cruz fail to exceed 50 percent, in which case the delegates would be awarded proportionally based on each candidate’s vote total.
Kasich hopes to play spoiler in Utah, a state that prizes civility and religion. A week ago, the Ohio governor claimed a victory in his home state his first and only win of the primary season. Yet Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, is telling his fellow Utah voters in a recorded phone message that Cruz “is the only Republican candidate who can defeat Donald Trump.”
Here are some of the latest poll results from RCP:
Monday, March 21
There are quite a few things to look for tonight.
Mr. Sanders may face a daunting delegate deficit after his defeats on March 15, but he may be on the verge of a wave of successes.
Tuesday begins a series of contests in friendly territory for him. He is a strong favorite in both Utah and Idaho, where he could win by a two-to-one margin or better. A win in Arizona would show his resilience after a weak performance last week. Even if he fails to sweep the three states, he could follow up with strong performances in Hawaii, Washington, Alaska and Wisconsin over the next few weeks.
Of course, Mr. Sanders needs a lot more than a sweep of Western caucuses to erode Mrs. Clinton’s big lead in pledged delegates. But a string of sizable victories could blunt the pressure on him to withdraw from the race and could keep his fund-raising efforts strong as he heads into bigger and more competitive contests in April.
All the results will come in late because, well, it’s the West!!!
Results will be coming in late — very late, in some cases. Arizona is holding primaries, with polls closing at 7 pm local time. Utah is holding caucuses in person and, for Republicans, online; online voting doesn’t end until 11 pm local time.
Here’s what’s expected from the few polls available on those races.
Arizona and Utah, as well as Democrats in Idaho and Republicans in American Samoa, vote Tuesday. Arizona is the biggest prize of the day, with 85 delegates to be awarded in the winner-take-all Republican primary and 85 delegates to be divided proportionally among Democrats. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are leading their respective parties in the limited Arizona polling. According to HuffPost Pollster’s average, Trump is ahead by a 17 percentage point margin with 37 percent of the vote, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 20 percent, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 16 percent. But there have only been three polls in the last month, and only one in the last week. On the Democratic side, Clinton leads Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) by 26 points, 58 percent to 24 percent, according to the one poll conducted in the past month.
Utah appears to be Cruz territory – Polls are scarce in Utah, but Cruz is widely expected to win the caucus. The most recent poll, conducted by Republican firm Y2 Analytics, shows Cruz leading with 53 percent. Kasich is in second place with 29 percent and Trump trails with 11 percent. Utah’s 40 delegates for Republicans will be distributed proportionally among the candidates unless one reaches 50 percent, in which case all the delegates will go to the winner.
Sanders is running a close race in Utah and Idaho – A Dan Jones/Deseret News/KSL poll released Monday shows Sanders leading Clinton with 52 to 44 percent in Utah, while a month-old survey from the same pollster shows the two candidates in a close race in Idaho. The 37 delegates up for grabs in Utah and the 27 delegates in Idaho will be distributed proportionally.
So, it’s time to grab your popcorn and curl up for our live blog! I know we have a few voters out there! Let us know what you hear from your state and what your voting day was like!
Monday Reads: Attack of the Killer Bunnies
Posted: March 21, 2016 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Donald Trump, Killer Bunnies, Republican establishment 24 Comments
Good Morning!
Things can frequently come in confusing packages. Take my choice of Killer Bunnies today for your visual enjoyment. You just wouldn’t think those cute little furry things could be the source of any one’s nightmare! Yet here there they are! It’s much easier to envision a critter gone bad when it looks positively evil.
I’m with Frank Rich who thinks it’s nuts when all the bunnies in the Republican Party keep saying that Donald Trump is not one of them. They all seem genuinely confused when it’s really quite easy. Donald Trump is their FrankenBunny.
The Republican Elites. The Establishment. The Party Elders. The Donor Class. The Mainstream. The Moderates. Whatever you choose to call them, they, at least, could be counted on to toss the party-crashing bully out.
To say it didn’t turn out that way would be one of the great understatements of American political history. Even now, many Republican elites, hedging their bets and putting any principles in escrow, have yet to meaningfully condemn Trump. McCain says he would support him if he gets his party’s nomination. The Establishment campaign guru who figured the Trump problem would solve itself moved on to anti-Trump advocacy and is now seeking to unify the party behind Trump, waving the same white flag of surrender as Chris Christie. Every major party leader — Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Reince Priebus, Kevin McCarthy — has followed McCain’s example and vowed to line up behind whoever leads the ticket, Trump included. Even after the recurrent violence at Trump rallies boiled over into chaos in Chicago, none of his surviving presidential rivals would disown their own pledges to support him in November. Trump is not Hitler, but those who think he is, from Glenn Beck to Louis C.K., should note that his Vichy regime is already in place in Washington, D.C.
Since last summer, Trump, sometimes in unwitting tandem with Bernie Sanders, has embarrassed almost the entire American political ecosystem — pollsters, pundits, veteran political operatives and the talking heads who parrot their wisdom, focus-group entrepreneurs, super-pac strategists, number-crunching poll analysts at FiveThirtyEight and its imitators. But of all the emperors whom Trump has revealed to have few or no clothes, none have been more conspicuous or consequential than the GOP elites. He has smashed the illusion, one I harbored as much as anyone, that there’s still some center-right GOP Establishment that could restore old-school Republican order if the crazies took over the asylum.
The reverse has happened instead. The Establishment’s feckless effort to derail Trump has, if anything, sparked a pro-Trump backlash among the GOP’s base and, even more perversely, had the unintended consequence of boosting the far-right Ted Cruz, another authoritarian bomb-thrower who is hated by the Establishment as much as, if not more than, Trump is. (Not even Trump has called McConnell “a liar,” which Cruz did on the Senate floor.) The elites now find themselves trapped in a lose-lose cul-de-sac. Should they defeat Trump on a second or third ballot at a contested convention and install a regent more to their liking such as Ryan or John Kasich — or even try to do so — they will sow chaos, not reestablish order. In the Cleveland ’16 replay of Chicago ’68, enraged Trump and Cruz delegates, stoked by Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, et al., will go mano a mano with the party hierarchy inside the hall to the delectation of television viewers while Black Lives Matter demonstrators storm the gates outside.
Republican Donors are acting in backrooms all over the country. It’s probably coming a lot too late, but what’s left to really stop Trump? Utah?
If Donald Trump becomes the Republican Party’s nominee, Utahns would vote for a Democrat for president in November for the first time in more than 50 years, according to a new Deseret News/KSL poll.
“I believe Donald Trump could lose Utah. If you lose Utah as a Republican, there is no hope,” said former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a top campaign adviser to the GOP’s 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney.
The poll found that may well be true. Utah voters said they would reject Trump, the GOP frontrunner, whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate on the general election ballot.
Yes, Tuesday night is the night Donald Trump will likely get “whipped in Utah”. Does it really matter? And, Cruz is the overwhelming favorite there. Is that the like the utlimate Hobson’s choice or what?
The good news for Donald Trump’s foes: Three lions of Utah Republican politics agree the insurgent billionaire is the wrong choice for 2016.
The bad news: They can’t agree on the right choice to stop him.
Mitt Romney, beloved by Utah’s heavily Mormon and conservative electorate, sought to steer his party toward Ted Cruz on Friday, pledging to vote for Cruz at Tuesday’s caucuses as part of a strategic voting strategy to deny Trump delegates.
But instead of falling in line behind Romney, one of his closest allies, former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, threw his voice behind John Kasich instead. And Gary Herbert, Utah’s current governor, says his heart’s also with Kasich, but he can’t bring himself to offer an official endorsement when Utah’s hard-right voters more clearly line up with Cruz. So Herbert’s sitting this one out entirely.
Adding further confusion to the tangled messaging: a fourth favorite Utah son, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, has ruled out backing Kasich — despite what he described as lobbying by Kasich’s allies for his support. Though he’s offered no endorsement either, he’s been less hostile to Trump than his fellow Utah leaders, praising his call to focus more American dollars on domestic infrastructure and signaling support for Trump if he’s the party’s nominee.
Interviews with the state’s last three governors reveal a Utah-based discord that doubles a microcosm of the dispute wracking Republican insiders around the country. Huge swaths of Republican Party loyalists are working feverishly to deny Trump the GOP nomination — afraid he could redefine the party’s brand and doom it to electoral oblivion for a generation, if not destroy it altogether. Yet their attempts to bring down Trump, while united in principal, have been scattershot and at times at cross-purposes in practice.
You can look up all the little Red Blogs that are apoplectic about this. Just Google it. I’m still wondering what the Trump v. Clinton general election is going to be all about. I 
keep wondering what those hapless media and pundits who did the debates and townhalls are going to do with both of these folks on the same damn stage. It should be pretty popcorn worthy. Things certainly bounce off Trump much differently than Hillary. The media’s rampant sexism is undoubtedly a contributing factor.
When is a gaffe not a gaffe? When Donald Trump says it.
Over a period of 72 hours earlier in the month, the Republican front-runner faced a campaign crisis after unrest at his events forced him to cancel a rally in Chicago. He responded, not by apologizing but by justifying his supporters’ violent reactions to protesters at his events and offering to pay legal fees.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton spent much of the same period cleaning up misstatements about former first lady Nancy Reagan’s role in addressing the AIDS epidemic, whether her policies would kill coal-mining jobs and her husband’s 1993 health care plan.
The three-day window offered a glimpse into an extraordinary campaign cycle, in which strategists on both sides are wondering whether Trump’s penchant for provocation has shifted the gaffe gauge in American politics.
His bombast already has shaken up the Republican primary contest. Now, as the race moves toward the general election, new questions have arisen about a double standard in political rhetoric —— one for Trump and another for everyone else.
“Trump’s ‘gaffes’ haven’t hurt him because a certain segment of GOP primary voters actually support the things he is saying and the way he is saying them,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama adviser.
Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist and former adviser to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign, says that the image Trump projects as a political outsider has superseded the controversy that surrounds him. Christie has endorsed Trump.
Whether by mistake or intention, there’s little question that Trump’s eruptions are key to his strategy.
I haven’t had a chance to check out the AIPAC meetings today but it’s usually an interesting indicator of foreign policy chops. So, Hillary explained a lot of stuff and is seen as pro-Israel and hawkish. Bernie just skipped the entire thing because foreign policy has never been his thing but his staff sent them a nice glossy brochure. The Donald, well, he’s getting the full on treatment,
But it’s not Trump’s comments or his opaque policy positions on Israel and the Middle East that bother many of the Jewish leaders who plan on protesting him Monday. It’s the general demagogic tone and tenor of a campaign and candidate who, they believe, is dividing the country.
“When he belittles his opponents, refers to ethnic groups as a monolithic group, the way he speaks about immigrants with disdain, the way he encourages violence, those are things that have been turned against Jews and used against Jews in the not-so-distant past. So there is a real sensitivity to that in our community,” Raskin said. “Those are issues we feel a responsibility to respond to as people who are teachers of religion.”
“What Donald Trump has engaged in is something significantly different than any other candidate in political history. For obvious reasons, the challenge to those who are somehow ‘the other,’ and the use of inflammatory language, the rhetoric of hate and division, we think is unbecoming not only of a presidential candidate but anybody in American political discourse,” said Rabbi Irwin Zeplowitz of Port Washington, New York, whose newly formed group, “Come Together Against Hate,” plans to sit through Trump’s speech in silent protest.
Michael Koplow, the policy director for the Israel Policy Forum based in Washington, wrote last week about the importance of sending a message to Trump.
“AIPAC cannot be seen as legitimizing Trump, even if it provides him with a pulpit,” he wrote on the IPF’s ‘Matzav’ blog. “If this means allowing the crowd to boo, or multiple anonymous quotes to journalists from AIPAC grandees about how odious they find Trump, or some other way of signaling that Trump is outside the boundaries of what is acceptable in the American political arena, it must be done. … Trump must be rejected not on the basis of his approach to Israel; he must be rejected on the basis of everything else. What he does or does not think about Israel is ancillary to the conversation, because American Jews and the state of Israel do not need a friend who looks like this.”
Hillary went after Trump at AIPAC showing she’s shifted to the General Election as she should. As you know, I’m not an all out supporter of what Israel’s been up to recently under Bibi. So, i’ll put this up with that caveat.
Hillary Clinton used a speech today on Israel and Palestine to slam her potential opponent in the general election, Donald Trump, accusing him of being unqualified to take on the challenges in the Middle East.
“We need steady hands. Not a president who says he’s neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who knows what on Wednesday because everything’s negotiable,” the Democratic presidential front-runner said during remarks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee gathering in Washington, D.C., referring to Trump’s recent comment that he is “neutral” on Israel and Palestine.
“America can’t ever be neutral when it comes to Israel’s security or survival. We can’t be neutral when rockets rain down on residential neighborhoods. When civilians are stabbed in the street, when suicide bombers target the innocent,” she continued.
“Some things aren’t negotiable,” she added, “And anyone who doesn’t understand that has no business being our president.”
Hillary and her advisors are being quite open about their strategy on facing Trump in the General.
Neither the Clinton campaign nor several independent super PACs working on her behalf plan to respond with the same brass-knuckles style that Trump has taken with his Republican opponents, aides and outside supporters said. But in their view, Trump isn’t Teflon: Republicans waited too long to go after him, and they went about it the wrong way.
“What the Republicans did was too little, too late,” said David Brock, who runs two pro-Clinton super PACs now engaged in researching and responding to Trump. “It was petty insults. It was not strategic.”
Justin Barasky, spokesman for the large pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA, said Republican candidates committed “malpractice” by failing to raise liabilities from Trump’s past or aggressively challenge him on offensive or incorrect statements.
Implicit in the effort is real worry about Trump’s outsider appeal in a year dominated by working-class anger and economic anxiety. The prospect that Trump could compete for some of the blue-collar voters who have flocked to Sanders, for instance — or to reorder the map of competitive states to include trade-affected Michigan or Pennsylvania — has prompted Clinton’s allies to leave nothing to chance.
Yet, they also believe that, although Trump has motivated a loyal plurality of supporters in primary contests, he has limited ability to expand that support once the Republican field clears. Because of the litany of controversial pronouncements he has made, they expect a Trump nomination to make it easier to rally women, Latino and African American voters to turn out for Clinton. In fact, her aides are planning for a historic gender gap between Clinton and Trump.
Given Trump’s willingness to attack his opponents — and his pivot to going after Clinton in recent days — one clear presumption has emerged about the fall contest: It will be ugly.
That’s one reason the former secretary of state plans to counter Trump with high-road substance, policy and issues, according to one senior campaign aide. The idea is to showcase what Clinton’s backers see as her readiness for the job without lowering her to what they describe as Trump’s gutter.
Of course, we have yet to get through what Republicans hope will be a brokered convention where they will be looking for some kind of white knight. There is a key convention rule that can be changed and would need to be changed at this point.
That could be one of the reasons the Republican Killer Bunnies are holding their nose and 
giving Ted Cruz a second look. We all know that he’d be bad for all kinds of social justice issues, but he could wreck the economy too. This is from the Street.
The IRS is broken, and the current tax system is convoluted, according to Cruz. He has said he wants doing taxes to “become so simple that they could be filled out on a postcard.”
A simplified tax code is something that Republicans of all stripes have been advocating for years, but Cruz takes this to the extreme.
In 2014 Cruz wrote an op-ed in USA Today calling to abolish the IRS and impose a national flat tax that, as opposed to our current system of progressive taxation, would tax all income levels at the same rate.
Policy wonks argue over the potential economic fallout, but flat tax supporterssuggest that the increased spending resulting from abolishing a complicated tax code with its attendant incentives would give government revenues, in the case of a 17% flat tax, a 1.8 percentage-point shot in the arm.
In a plan like the one Cruz suggests, the poor and middle class would pay more in taxes, but the rich would pay less and have more money to invest back into the economy. A flat tax system would also remove incentives toward consumption by eliminating the various deductions that offset costs, and instead encourage savings. Advocates also argue that the possibility of reaching a higher tax bracket would no longer disincentivize people from earning more and crossing a tax bracket threshold, thus contributing to long-term economic growth.
According to a seminal study by the National Center for Policy Analysis, the flat tax would boost the production core of the economy in every area by getting rid of corporate tax avoidance schemes, except for subsidized agriculture since tax subsidies would be lost there. In the case of a 17% flat tax, there’s also the suggestion that the housing sector would see a 1.5% uptick.
Flat tax opponents, however, argue that such a policy would increase the national deficit because of lost tax revenue in the higher brackets and also would cause outsized economic burdens on the poor while favoring the rich who can shoulder the same tax rates more easily.
Here’s the same analysis with Hillary if you’d like to read it. There is similar analysis for the other candidates. You can compare Bernie and Hillary’s Wall Street policy as viewed 
by Wall Street insiders. It’s kind’ve interesting.
My personal thoughts are that Trump will continue to sound more reasonable other than when he’s out the stump with the likes of Arizona’s Sheriff Joe. He’s beginning to get some surrogates–like Palin and Christie–who have no problem sounding outrageous and mean. We’ll just have to see. He’s already called Hillary tired and low energy but it seems like a vanilla threat since every one appears to be smeared with that one.
So, tonight is a townhall with all five remaining candidates on CNN. We will be live blogging it later. Also, tomorrow is the next set of elections. We’ll live blog that too! So stay tuned for more of “Attack of the Killer Rabbits”.
What’s on you reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: Low Information Voters (SMH)
Posted: March 18, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads 77 Comments
Good Afternoon!
I have to admit it still feels like the middle of the night to me. It looks like the middle of the night from my desk window. I do know–because my brain works–that it’s just damned daylight savings time freaking with my internal clock again. My brain always wins the argument though. I know I can’t ignore the time change even though I really really want it to go away. I know it’s longer than it used to be. (That’s another product of DUBYA’s shock and awe attacks on the nation.) I doubt that the US Congress will buck the Leisure Industry lobby and get rid of it. That’s the story of my life. My brain always wins the argument.
Some times it amazes me how many people can shut down any ability they’ve developed in math, science, reality, and life in general to believe what they want to believe. BB’s the psychologist around here so maybe she can explain it to me. My Facebook and Twitter feeds are cluttered up with so much nonsense these days that it’s enough to make a professor weep. My mantra these days is believe me, the math is the math. Do you know what kind of probabilities we’re talking here? It’s all to no avail.
This story sort’ve sums up what I keep seeing but in a macro kind’ve way. It’s not Florida Man for a change but East Texas Man is just about right there with him. This fossil enthusiast-not a rocket scientist or even 5th grade scientist with a chem kit–says he found fossils from Noah’s flood in his back yard.
“From Noah’s flood to my front yard, how much better can it get,” Wayne Propst said.
Propst is stunned. He was helping his aunt lay some dirt outside her home in Tyler when he found this.
“What’s really interesting to me is we’re talking about the largest catastrophe known to man, the flood that engulfed the entire world,” Propst said.
He called up self-proclaimed fossil expert Joe Taylor who confirmed that what Propst found is in fact from the time of Noah’s ark and he says finding those fossils in Tyler is rare.
“I’ve never heard of anything about that from over there, I’m surprised he found it there,” Taylor said.
For days, Wayne and his aunt Sharon have been combing through this dirt with the help of some neighborhood kids.
“I just take my toothbrush and work on it until we get it,” Wayne’s aunt Sharon Givan said.
And send pictures off to Taylor.
“To think that like he says that we have something in our yard that dated back to when God destroyed the earth. I mean, how much better could anything be,” Givan said.
But those damned experts at UT Austin just won’t let a man have his delusions. Why is it that they just can’t let a man and his love of fairy tales be?
But one expert at the University of Texas at Austin isn’t so sure. He said that the fossils predate humans by millions of years.
“The rocks there are about 35-40 million years old, and these little turret snails are commonly found in marine rocks of that age,” said James Sagebiel, Collections Manager of the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections. “It’s not unusual.”
James Sagebiel said this type of fossil is usually found in sandy soil and the reason it’s here is not due to a great global flood.
“The Texas coastline would have run several miles closer inland than what it is today,” said Sagebiel. “So where Tyler is today would essentially be the coastline.”
Sagebiel said the scientific evidence points to the earth being billions of years old. And that there’s no evidence of a great global flood, as described in the Noah’s Ark story.
So, the Bernie memes and koolaid are in. We’re deep in the doo doo. For example, I found out today that Bernie says “Hillary is running out of deep red states” yet, I look at the 2016 Primary schedule and see a list that sort’ve defies whatever attempt at logic that was. Yes, 
Sky Dancers, Arizona, Indiana, Wyoming, Alaska, West Virginia, Idaho, Kentucky have suddenly turned blue. Imagine the surprised look on my face! Facts just don’t seem to bother people any more. Journalists and low information voters alike have decided they dislike Hillary based on a whole bunch of things that aren’t true and have been proven untrue.
Clinton has been in the public eye for so long, journalists have long since formulated a storyline about her, as former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis recently observed. Their view—and portrayal—of her as “remote and programmed,” he said, is “nonsense” and impervious to accounts by those who know or meet her that she is actually warm, smart and funny. Political opponents have had decades to dredge up (or fabricate) accusations, with a smoke-there’s-fire (you might say blame-the-victim) result. Whitewater! Benghazi! Email! After endless investigations, each accusation has turned out to be groundless. Yet the impression remains: she’s been the object of so many accusations and investigations, she must be doing something wrong. Hence the impression she’s not trustworthy.
There is also a self-fulfilling prophecy element to Clinton’s long history with the press. Part of the reason that they see, and depict, her as stiff and measured (and therefore inauthentic) surely is what she herself saidrecently: she’s not a natural politician—something that is as ironic as it is obvious, since her being a seasoned politician is one of the main criticisms raised against her. But another part of it, no doubt, is that she has had so much experience having her words and actions turned against her, it’s no wonder she might be cautious in choosing them. And this, too, started with her hair.
When Clinton first appeared on the national stage back in 1992, the young wife of the Arkansas governor running for president, she kept her natural-brown hair off her face with a headband. This sparked an avalanche of criticism, so she colored her hair and had it styled, which led to a new round of accusations: she was nefariously manipulating her image! Other damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t attacks were also particular to her as a woman. Because the Clintons kept their small daughter out of the public eye, polls showed that people thought they were childless, a condition that stigmatizes women. When evidence emerged that Clinton was a devoted mother, Margaret Carlson writing in TIME found her guilty of “yuppie overdoting on her daughter.”
All these forces have played a role in Clinton being seen as inauthentic and untrustworthy. And they are all related to the double bind that confronts women in positions of authority, as I recently wrote in the WashingtonPost. A double bind means you must obey two commands, but anything you do to fulfill one violates the other. While the requirements of a good leader and a good man are similar, the requirements of a good leader and a good woman are mutually exclusive. A good leader must be tough, but a good woman must not be. A good woman must be self-deprecating, but a good leader must not be.
Sanders is appealing when he comes across as tough by railing against Wall Street and corporations, and as comfortingly homey and authentic with his rumpled clothes and hair and down-home Brooklyn accent. When Clinton is tough, a characteristic many see as unfeminine, it doesn’t feel right, so she must not be authentic. And a disheveled appearance would pretty much rule her out as an acceptable woman. As Robin Lakoff, the linguist who firstwrote about the double bind confronting women, put it, male candidates can have it both ways but Clinton can have it no ways.
The biggest nitwit meme I’ve been seeing these days comes under the heading of there’s no excitement for Hillary. WTF? Bernie keeps getting on TV to insist only he can beat Trump. But look at the damned vote count. Who is beating Trump and who is NOT beating Trump?
Considering that narrative, one would expect Clinton to be faring far worse in the primaries. Instead, she currently holds a popular vote and delegate lead over Sanders that far surpasses Obama’s lead over her at this point in the race in 2008.
This is no accident. An examination of Clinton voters and their motivations might reveal that the narrative that most media outlets have been feeding us this election cycle is dubious at best. Because if the biggest vote-getter of either party is Hillary—by a large margin—then that suggests the electorate is not necessarily as angry as pundits claim. It further suggests that perhaps some people are tired of hearing about how angry they are, and are quietly asserting their opinions at the ballot box. If Democrats are so angry, Clinton would not be in the position she is today. Is it really so farfetched to claim that quite a few Democrats aren’t voting for Sanders precisely because he seems angry? Which isn’t to suggest that people aren’t angry—certainly many Republican primary voters seem to be. Rather, it is to suggest that voters who aren’t angry are still showing up at the polls, despite being ignored in news stories.
Of course, angry voters make for sexier clickbait. So it’s not too surprising that we’re not seeing front-page headlines that scream, “Satisfied Obama Supporters Show Up in Droves.” Furthermore, Trump and Sanders have seen enormous crowds at their rallies, and exuberant support on social media platforms.
So perhaps Clinton voters don’t show up at rallies so much. Perhaps they are a bit less passionate on Facebook, share fewer articles, give less money to their candidate (she does have a super PAC, after all). But what they are doing is perhaps the only thing that actually matters in an election. They are showing up to vote. In numbers that no other candidate can boast.
It’s certainly curious to presume, as many do, that Clinton’s supporters are somehow less enthusiastic than Sanders’s are. How is enthusiasm measured, if not by actual vote count?
So here are some things worth reading today.
Clinton is kicking butt and taking names in NY: RCP
Clinton is kicking butt in CA: RCP
So much for the Bernie’s gonna cream her in Deep Blue States.
Clinton owes her commanding lead to African American Women.
I call this Sistertude !!!! Sisters are into doing it for themselves!!!
The bedrock of her winning campaign is African-American women, and, as a group, these women seem pretty damn determined to vote for her.
“They are the absolute heart of the party,” Jaime Harrison, the South Carolina Democratic Party chairman said of African-American women in a comment posted on Sidewire (the political communication platform I work for). “Hillary is their BFF.”
The connection isn’t lost on Clintonworld. Her last two major ads featured the “Mothers of the Movement” who lost children in killings involving police and ABC television luminaries Shonda Rhimes, Viola Davis and Kerry Washington, all of whom (in case you’ve been living on a television-free planet) are black.
It is not common for a presidential candidate to run ads that feature an all-African American cast — or, in the case of the ABC stars’ ad, a mostly African-American cast. Ellen Pompeo of “Grey’s Anatomy,” who is white, was also in the spot.
But it’s not unusual for Clinton to rely on African-American women. Over the years, her top aides have included Maggie Williams and Cheryl Mills, owners of two of the sharpest minds in the political world.
More compelling, though, are the numbers.
Consider exit polling from the dozen states where there were enough African-American Democratic primary voters to adequately survey both how white men and women voted and how black men and women voted.
African-American women supported Clinton at between 66 percent (Michigan and Illinois) and 93 percent (Alabama) in those dozen states, according to data on CNN’s Website.
I’d call that enthusiasm too! So, why are young white college kids getting all the press?
Bernie is getting more hypocritical in his quest to win. It appears to be coming at any cost now including his purity ring. First he wanted to get rid of super delegates calling them establishment and corrupt! Not now.
So, Rachel asked again whether he might try to convince superdelegates to side with him, even if he’s behind in pledged delegates. Sanders said he and his campaign are “going to do the best we can in any and every way to win,” but he still avoided comment on the specific approach he’s prepared to take.So, Rachel asked again. For those who missed it, this was the exchange that stood out.MADDOW: I’m just going to push you and ask you one more time. I’ll actually ask you from the other direction. If one of you – presumably, there won’t be a tie – one of you presumably will be behind in pledged delegates heading into that convention. Should the person who is behind in pledged delegates concede to the person who is ahead in pledged delegates in Philadelphia?SANDERS: Well, I – you know, I don’t want to speculate about the future and I think there are other factors involved. I think it is probably the case that the candidate who has the most pledged delegates is going to be the candidate, but there are other factors.It was arguably one of the more controversial things Sanders has said this year.When the race for the Democratic nomination first got underway, many saw this same scenario, but in reverse: it seemed possible that Sanders would do well in primaries and caucuses, and Clinton would turn to powerful superdelegates to elevate her anyway.That possibility, not surprisingly, enraged many of Sanders’ backers. The Hill published this report in early February:
All is fair and good as long as Bernie is the one to do it. Same with using Shadowy SuperPacs. Try this one on for size: Bernie Sanders Gets an Alaska ‘Super PAC’ Aimed At Millennials. This one operates on murky legal ground.
Now, there is a pro-Sanders super PAC just for the millennials of Alaska.
The Anchorage-based America’s Youth PAC, made up almost entirely of former Bernie 2016 campaign staffers, is the latest unconventional outside group to throw its support behind the Vermont senator. Its leaders broke off from the Sanders campaign last week and have holed up in an old mall on the outskirts of town, just steps away from the official campaign’s office in the same building.
Despite Sanders’ fading odds for the Democratic nomination, America’s Youth PAC’s 10-person team is canvassing, making buttons and registering voters in the hopes of giving him a victory in the Alaska caucuses on March 26 against Hillary Clinton. Chris Johnson, the executive director of the super PAC and former Sanders field director in Alaska, said they abandoned the Sanders campaign over “creative differences.”
“We were all former staffers on the Bernie Sanders campaign and we came to a realization that there was a niche where we could do some really good work,” Johnson said. “We really felt like there was a niche of activating new voters that was left untapped.”
It is an unusual arrangement: Instead of billionaire donors looking to fund television ads, Sanders campaign staffers have formed a dissenting splinter group in the northernmost state and campaign on the ground for the Alaska caucus. From a drab shopping mall storefront, they want to take on Clinton’s powerful alliance on the Acela corridor.
The group also exists in murky legal territory, as federal election law requires a “cooling-off period” that prevents a candidate’s staff from leaving the campaign and doing certain kinds of work for a supporting super PAC within 120 days. America’s Youth PAC disputes it is doing anything illegal, but several independent campaign finance experts said it was pressing the boundaries of election law.
The so-called “cooling off period” is intended to prevent coordination with the campaign. Technically, the law prohibits former campaign staff from assisting on paid “public communications” that rely on material knowledge from the campaign.
Bernie’s being nasty to our President again. It’s not only Republicans that don’t want President Obama doing his job. Bernie Sanders Says He Will Ask Obama to Withdraw SCOTUS Nomination if He Wins. Another link to Maddow, btw. Oh, and Bernie is all about getting rid of citizens united and no SuperPacs. (Don’t forget to go reread that last link so you can see exactly how clearly hypocritical the man can be.)
And of course, Bernie is now after Clinton’s pledged delegates that resulted from actual votes. Feeling the Fucking Bern yet? BB wrote on Master Taddler’s presser a few days ago but just thought I’d remind you.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign believes it can win the nomination by persuading delegates pledged to Hillary Clinton to defect.
In a call with journalists just now, Senior Strategist Tad Devine suggested that a string of victories from his candidate in the second half of the race would put “enormous” pressure on Clinton delegates.
“A front-runner in a process like this needs to continue to win if you want to keep hold of delegates,” he said. He said pledged delegates are not bound to the candidate they are pledged to.
“I think that pressure is going to build. If we can win, I think the pressure on the other side is going to grow and be enormous.”
This is a major step beyond the Bernie camp’s reported push to persuade superdelegates to switch their endorsement.
Here are Devine’s comments in full, made in a briefing call that we were on this afternoon.
If you really want to read Master Taddler’s tales follow the link to Bernie Wonderland. Bernie is now leaving pressers when reporters ask him questions he doesn’t like. How very Trumpish of him!!!
So, here’s my favorite read of the day from Amy Freid Bangor: Four reasons why it’s so unlikely Sanders will win the Democratic nomination. Freid basically responds to all the totally unrealistic Bernie wet dreams I’m seeing since the Mega Tuesday Bloodbath. Oh, btw, Missouri has been officially called for Hillary so she did officially sweep all five states. Again, the big shitty argument is that the landscape improves as we move towards the West Coast and back to the East coast.
First, one specific claim is that Sanders will do much better in the next eight contests.
Those are the Arizona and Wisconsin primaries, the Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Washington state and Wyoming caucuses.
That’s true for the caucuses and indeed the Sanders campaign could win the primary in the very progressive Wisconsin, although the recent polls have it close.
However, there are just not that many delegates in all of those contests. Taken together, there are just a few more than in just Florida and Illinois. Clinton won Florida huge and Illinois narrowly, netting 69 more delegates more than Sanders from those two states.
Moreover, Arizona is by no means a slam dunk for Sanders. He has weaknesses on immigration and gun control, both of which matter in Arizona, due to the shooting of former Rep. Gabby Gifford and the large Hispanic population.
In fact, the most recent poll I could find for Arizona found Clinton with 50%, 24% for Sanders and the rest undecided. Given that Arizona is the third largest of the eight states, a good Clinton win here could provide enough delegates to wipe out Sanders leads from small caucus states or even from a small win in one of the large states.
Second, the states following those include many states that, based on demographics and their past voting behavior, are likely to be good states for Clinton.
For example, April 19 and 26 include a trove of 753 delegates in New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
New York elected Clinton as U.S. Senator with 55% in 2000 and 67% in 2008. The most recent polls have her 21 points ahead. It’s also a diverse state with a closed primary. All of that suggests she should do well there.
As for the other states of April 19 and 26, unless something comes along to seriously transform the race, Clinton will likely win all or most of the others.
There are of course other states after this, and those could be won by both candidates or be close, but if Clinton gets to April 27 having done well on April 19 and 26, any chance for Sanders winning most pledged delegates is pure fantasy.
My final offering of the day is this: “Hillary Won the Confederacy”: How Bernie’s Campaign is Subtly Fueling Racist Rhetoric of His Supporters. How is this not as freaking racist as the STrump?
This is one of the most racist things I’ve seen during the entire primary season and it comes from Bernie Supporters NOT TRUMP.
Ed Schultz. Michael Moore. The Huffington Post. Shaun King of New York Daily News. Prominent Bernie Sanders backers in the media and culture have for some time been perpetuating the reprehensible idea that black voters – who delivered 30, 40, 50 point wins for Hillary Clinton in southern states don’t count because their states are likely to vote for the Republican in the general election in November.
But it isn’t just his prominent supporters. The Sanders campaign has itself repeated that message, albeit in more subtle forms. After Hillary Clinton won seven out of 11 states on March 1, Sanders senior adviser Tad Devine and campaign manager Jeff Weaver sent the message that the “calendar” ahead didn’t look good for Clinton, intimating that the black-heavy southern states where Clinton racked up big margins were about done voting (well, that prediction didn’t work out too well).
It was only a matter of time before a prominent Sanders backing organization would do something like this:
Progressive Democrats of America is an ultra ideologue Leftist organization that backed Bernie Sanders’ candidacy early. After Sanders lost 5 out of 5 states on Tuesday, PDA has taken the logical next step to what Bernie’s mouthpieces have been doing for more than a month: they have gone from minimizing the black vote as insignificant because they live in “red states” to minimizing them as part of the confederacy.
That is outrageous. The people providing Clinton’s huge margins, black voters, are by and large descendants of slaves, and to associate them with the confederacy is a disgusting display of racism.
There’s examples from Weaver and Master Taddler Devine at the link. Be sure to read it. It’s not that long.
So, anyway, I was already sick of that shrill, finger wagging man. I’m really sick of him and his little followers now. Where’s a good house to drop when you need it?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Live Blog Mega Tuesday: North Carolina, Florida and Ohio called for Hillary and Florida Called Trump! Rubio Quits!
Posted: March 15, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Live, Live Blog 175 Comments
Good Evening!
We continue our live discussion on the the returns from some of the biggest states’ primaries. We’re still waiting on Ohio (R), Missouri, North Carolina (R) and Illinois.
Rubio is shellacked in Florida then quits! Top Conservatives are in an uproar and–according to Politico–are looking for alternatives to the Republican front runner.
Three influential leaders of the conservative movement have summoned other top conservatives for a closed-door meeting Thursday in Washington, D.C., to talk about how to stop Donald Trump and, should he become the Republican nominee, how to run a third-party “true conservative” challenger in the fall.
The organizers of the meeting include Bill Wichterman, who was President George W. Bush’s liaison to the conservative movement; Bob Fischer, a South Dakota businessman and longtime conservative convener; and Erick Erickson, the outspoken Trump opponent and conservative activist who founded RedState.com.
This is basically the same group of people that turned the Republican Party into the dream base for that kind of candidate. WTF did they expect? So, Rubio just quit. Kasich 
appears to be alive in Ohio but that doesn’t really mean much.
No wonder this is being called Mega Tuesday!
For Donald Trump’s Republican rivals, it could be their last chance to stop his march toward the nomination, as the first winner-take-all states begin to vote. Florida Sen.
Marco Rubio is trying to topple Trump in Rubio’s home state; a loss would likely prove fatal for Rubio’s campaign. Ohio Gov. John Kasich is trying to fend Trump off on his home turf, with seemingly more success. Meanwhile, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz hopes he can grow his share of delegates and continue to make the argument he’s the only candidate who can catch Trump.
On the Democratic side, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders hopes his surprise win last week in Michigan means he can make inroads with other Rust Belt voters in Ohio, Illinois and elsewhere. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would like to blunt Sanders’ newfound momentum and notch wins in the Midwest.
Coming close no longer cuts it on Tuesday, at least for Republicans. The biggest prizes of the night, Florida and Ohio, are winner-take-all contests. For Republicans in the rest of the states and Democrats in all their contests, delegates will still be awarded proportionally.
And they just called Ohio for Hillary!!!!!
BYE BYE BERNIEBOTS!!!
Hillary is about to speak!!!
GET READY TO RUMBLE STRUMP!!
Monday Reads: Nasty Desperation = f(Election Math)
Posted: March 14, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads 60 Comments
Good Afternoon!
We’re at the point in the primaries where intellectual dishonesty has taken on an ugly life. It’s probably because the paths to victory for any one that’s not Donald Trump or not Hillary Clinton are narrowing drastically. While some people hang on the overall results of one state. Savvy politics followers know it’s the math.
For Bernie, he has to win Big States by a BIG margin for the math to come close to working for him. This is highly unlikely.
As of today, Clinton has 1,231 delegates to Sanders’s 576 — a lead of 655. That means that Clinton has 51.7 percent of the 2,383 delegates she needs to become the Democratic Party’s nominee.
Subtract superdelegates — Clinton is dominating even among this group of elected officials and party luminaries — and she has 766 delegates to Sanders’s 551, a margin of 215. (Worth noting: That is a wider lead than the margin by which Clinton ever trailed then-Sen. Barack Obama in the long slog of the 2008 primary race.)
That lead may not seem momentous. After all, almost 3,000 delegates are yet to be allocated in the primaries and caucuses to come. The problem for Sanders is that Democrats allocate their delegates proportionally in every state — meaning that between now and when the process ends June 7, there is no state where Clinton will be shut out.
Winning, then, is not enough for Sanders. He has to win by a lot to make up any real ground.
Clinton has already done that. Take, for example, Alabama. She won there March 1 by 59 points and gained 38 more delegates than Sanders. Or Georgia on that same day, beating Sanders by 43 points and netting 55 delegates. Or the aforementioned Mississippi, where Clinton’s 66-point win translated to a net gain of 28 delegates.
Tomorrow is an extremely important day for the Republicans because Florida is a winner take all in a closed primary state. Hillary Clinton is likely to do well in the state since the state’s she’s lost have been due to Republican cross-over vote (likely sandbaggers) and independents (any one’s guess). However, there’s an all out fight to stop the Donald there and in Ohio because the magic number is within Trump’s reach.
Tuesday might be the most decisive day of the 2016 GOP campaign. Depending on the results, one or more of the remaining candidates might be forced to drop out. And Donald Trump might be unstoppable.
If Trump rolls to victories in Florida and Ohio — the first states on the calendar this year that award every single delegate to the statewide winner — his lead becomes all but insurmountable. Without home-state wins, Marco Rubio and John Kasich would have little cause to continue.
But if Rubio or Kasich can pick off either of the delegate-rich battlegrounds, the calculus of the race could be rewritten. Though neither underdog has a mathematical shot to overtake Trump before July’s convention, big wins Tuesday could breathe life into efforts to deny the billionaire the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination — and make a contested convention in July a likely scenario.
Ted Cruz doesn’t appear poised to win any of the five states on the ballot, but he could corral delegates in the three other states on the calendar: Missouri, Illinois and North Carolina.
With 367 delegates at stake Tuesday — the second largest one-day haul of the campaign — here’s the state-by-state breakdown:
You can follow the link to Politico for the numbers at stake.
There are some new polls out but one thing you have to remember is that a poll only captures a sample of a defined population at a particular point in time. I prefer to follow those folks that do election polling math with megadata which means their numbers are based on a “poll of polls”. Nate Silver of the NYT and Dr. Sam Wang of Princeton use this kind of methodology. But, here’s the latest capture of data from PPP for Dem Voters in tomorrow’s battleground states.
It does look like Hillary’s Southern Fire Wall strategy will continue to hold which again, makes the math for Bernie Sanders precipitously uphill to the point of impossible without a massive Super Delegate betrayal. Remember, when you don’t get Republicans voting in Democratic Primaries or Independents, you say huge Hillary Victories.
New Public Policy Polling surveys of the 5 states that will vote on Tuesday find that the Democratic contests in Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio are all toss ups, while Hillary Clinton maintains a significant advantage in Florida and North Carolina. The surveys were conducted on behalf of the VoteVets Action Fund.
Clinton leads Bernie Sanders just 46/41 in Ohio and 48/45 in Illinois, while narrowly trailing Sanders in Missouri 47/46. Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri are all open primary states and Sanders is benefiting from significant support from independent voters and a small swath of Republicans planning to vote in each state, putting him in position to potentially pull an upset sweep of the region on Tuesday night:
State Overall Democrats Independents Republicans OH Clinton 46-41 Clinton 55-37 Sanders 53-20 Sanders 56-21 IL Clinton 48-45 Clinton 59-37 Sanders 69-18 Sanders 62-23 MO Sanders 47-46 Clinton 56-39 Sanders 62-23 Sanders 66-23 Clinton is better positioned in the Southern states voting on Tuesday. She leads 57/32 in Florida, and 56/37 in North Carolina. She benefits in Florida from it being a closed primary state- her lead with Democrats is comparable to what it is in the three Midwestern states voting on Tuesday but that’s the entire electorate in the Sunshine State, putting her in a strong position. In North Carolina, Clinton has already accrued a huge lead during early voting. Among those who have already cast their ballots she leads 68/29, and the race only gets closer overall because her advantage is a tighter 50/40 spread among those planning to vote on Election Day.
A new Quinnipiac Poll has Trump winning Florida while being tied with Kasich in Ohio. This is yet another indication that Ohio is close so it may be that we won’t get Republicans boosting Bernie Sanders.
Because we’re coming down to the do or die portion of the election cycle, we’re beginning to see some really intellectually dishonest as well as down right nasty electioneering.
This particular one floors me. It comes from the Bernie Sanders Campaign. You can see Tweet with the pic of 
Hillary here basically aligning her with–of all groups–the NRA. It’s really pretty well known that many of Bernie’s wins in open primaries have come from the NRA actively phonebanking and throwing its Super Pac behind hind Sanders. (H/T to Kim Frederick) . The NRA actively tweets support of Bernie Sanders during debates. I’m not exactly sure who is going to believe this other than low information, last minute voters who are just wrapped up in the moment.
The NRA tweeted that Sanders was “spot-on” when, in a contentious exchange during CNN’s Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Michigan, he defended his position favoring protection of gun manufacturers from legal liability over the use of their products.
“Sen. Sanders was spot-on in his comments about gun manufacturer liability/PLCAA,” the organization wrote, linking to a story explaining the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) and Sanders’ support for it.
Sanders also voted against the Brady Bill. He voted for letting guns on to trains. Here’s Bernie Sanders on all of his pro-gun votes if you really want the huge list showing why this tweet is so intellectually dishonest that every one in the campaign should be growing Pinocchio noses now.
The other disturbing thing is the number of policies and issues that now seem to be popping up from the Sanders Campaign that were never around before. Sanders now has an AIDS policy. Plus, after a debate question, he now has a policy on HBCs. Hillary’s had policies on these things since the beginning. Is he responding to the criticism he’s a one issue candidate or is he just becoming a Pander Bear?
The worst one deals with something near and dear to me. Bernie says Hillary voted to enable the BP Oil Spill. It’s a complete, baldface lie. It’s also a new one.
“With Sanders scheduled to address a rally here [Tampa] tonight in this Gulf of Mexico coastal community, his campaign cited the 2006 vote on the gulf drilling bill. Sanders, then a member of the House, voted against the legislation. Clinton, then a senator, voted for the bill. After the bill passed, the oil giant BP obtained a permit to drill in the area where one of its rigs exploded in 2010, killing 11 workers and causing a catastrophic spill of of 130 million gallons of oil into the gulf.”
— From a news release issued by the Bernie Sanders campaign, March 10, 2016
The Bernie Sanders campaign, touting an event to be held in Tampa, sought to tie Hillary Clinton to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill by citing a vote she cast in 2006 …
In a floor statement at the time, Clinton said that “as part of a balanced energy policy, we need to expand domestic oil and gas production where it has local support and can do so in an environmentally sound way.” But she warned that she would oppose any effort by the House to expand offshore drilling to areas not permitted in the Senate bill.
So, just to be clear, Sanders, who was then in the House, voted against a different bill than the one Clinton voted for. The House never took up the Senate version. But after the GOP lost control of the Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, the Senate version was folded into a tax bill and passed during the lame-duck session. Sanders also voted against the omnibus bill; it passed the Senate in a voice vote.
Another Bernie baldface lie was that Hillary some how has responsibility for Rahm Emmanuel. This undoubtedly comes as a last minute effort to appeal to black voters in Chicago. The entire campaign still hasn’t quite figured out how to speak with black Americans.
If you want to critique why some black people are voting for Clinton afford us the same complexity and nuance you would critique any other group with. Maybe some voters in the black electorate are already aware of Clinton’s flaws but are willing to use them as leverage against her to make stronger campaign commitments, so that they can hold her feet to the fire if she were to be elected. Or maybe some voters might actually be selfish capitalists who are only interested in their bottom line. Literally, anything other than the “These foolish negroes don’t know what’s best for them” narrative that’s currently being pushed.
I guess the most frustrating thing about this whole ordeal is that black people have played a huge role in getting Bernie this far in the race to begin with. The Black Lives Matter movement is arguably the catalyst that allowed a candidate like Bernie to emerge in the democratic party. Black Twitter and black protestors have created the atmosphere where candidates are discussing black lives, police brutality and systematic racism during national presidential debates. However, even our ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ brethren still show flashes of smug superiority that makes many people want to roll their eyes so far into the back of their heads they can see their own thoughts.
The final thing that just frosts my cupcakes is how Bernie thinks that Donald Trump needs to quit inciting violence because he’s responsible for his voters but Bernie isn’t responsible for his out of control supporters. Bernie is just as much of a “rage peddler” as the Donald.
Bernie Sanders may not be offering to pay the legal bills of his supporters who punch protesters (perhaps that has something to do with his massive credit card debt), but he’s stoking the fire of anger just the same. Media types like to describe this as “tapping into the anger” of people mad at “the system” for various reasons, but this has gone far beyond tapping and turned into inflaming. Rather than channeling a destructive emotion like anger and channeling it to constructive change, both Trump and Sanders have been telling their supporters that if anything, they should be even angrier (and thus, more destructive).
Rage-peddling has consequences. Just yesterday, Trump’s supporters clashedwith protesters in skirmishes that left some injured at a Donald Trump event in Chicago – which The Donald ended up canceling. On Friday, a Trump supporter punched a peaceful protester in face as the protester was leaving. And now Bernie Sanders’ supporters are sharing the following on social media, while having a good laugh.
You can follow that link to a well thought out essay with lots of examples on on the out right misogyny that Bernie incites. Meanwhile, Trump considers his rallies to be “lovefests”. The Republicans may have toned their last debate down some, but I doubt that ambiance will hold. Rubio is undoubtedly sunk. He’s also whining.
Marco Rubio said Monday that his presidential run would be over if his campaign manager forcibly grabbed a reporter, as Donald Trump’s top aide has been accused of doing to a Breitbart reporter.
The Florida senator told conservative radio host Mike Gallagher that if Corey Lewandowski really did grab Michelle Fields, the Breitbart reporter who resigned on Sunday, “it’s one more example of what’s happening here at these events.”
“If my campaign manager had done that, my campaign would be over. He would have had to resign, and my campaign may be over. I would have had to quit that very day,” Rubio said.
So, as you can see, there are both quiet and loud and obnoxious acts of desperation. I for one am somewhat ready to have the next few weeks over. I hope the stars are aligned and the voters do the right thing. Then, we can prepare for the ugliness of the General because there will be blood.
We’ll be live blogging the returns tomorrow. Join us!!!
Each of the historical pictures I’ve used today come from the event of a presidential nomination convention. Can you name the year and the two nominated candidates?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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