Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.
The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.
The increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.
Lazy Saturday Reads: The Politics of Rage
Posted: April 30, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 44 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
This isn’t going to be a very coherent post; I’m just going to throw out some thoughts about the rage-filled campaign we are watching.
The rage candidate on the Democratic side will soon be irrelevant. He appears to be running out of money, based on this article in Politico: Sanders downsizes his campaign. Following a series of disappointing finishes, the Vermont senator tightens his belt.
After months of spending an unparalleled amount on campaign operations across the country and regularly outspending Hillary Clinton on ad expenditures, Bernie Sanders is tightening his belt.
The campaign slashed the payroll Wednesday by axing hundreds of workers — primarily on the field organizing team — scaling the staff down to its smallest size in months. It downsized its campaign jet, even as the Burlington, Vermont-based candidate spends increasing amounts of time hopping from coast to coast. Top aides no longer travel everywhere with the candidate, choosing instead to stick to Washington and Vermont. Even Sanders’ wife, Jane, hasn’t been traveling with him, opting to play the main surrogate role from home. On Thursday, the campaign cut its ad spending in Indiana, the next battleground state on the calendar.
The set of moves follows a series of disappointing primary finishes that have increasingly narrowed Sanders’ path to the Democratic nomination and raised questions about how long he’ll remain in the race. The campaign continues to insist that it will push forward at least to the end of the primary season, armed with a new set of imperatives that include winning over a trove of delegates from California and on shaping the party’s platform — rather than on kneecapping Clinton….
Cash has never been an issue for a senator who could boast of a fundraising haul of more than $182 million through March, thanks to his online cash juggernaut. (The next public binary options brokers that trade bitcoin report is not slated to land until late May.) But by the end of the last reporting period, Sanders had also spent about $166 million, making him the candidate who both raised and spent the most — leaving him far behind Hillary Clinton in terms of actual cash on hand: $17 million vs. $29 million at the beginning of April. Tap here to read more
Sanders’ communications director Michael Briggs claims the downsizing has nothing to do with donations falling off; and we won’t know for sure how much they are raising until the next reporting date in late May. But does anyone really believe the campaign would be making these drastic cuts if the money were still flooding in?
Bernie knows it’s over. Even though many in the media are still trying to make this a race, Sanders is not going to be the Democratic nominee.
It’s a different story on the Republican side. Donald Trump is almost surely going to be the nominee of the Republican Party unless the leadership somehow pulls off a coup and installs Paul Ryan. I really don’t see how that can happen at this point.
The next challenge for Hillary and her supporters is going to be dealing with racist, sexist, nativist candidate who can command vast amounts of free media. Even worse, although Trump is obviously running a campaign so obviously based on racism that his followers include neo-Nazis and KKK members, most members of the mainstream media has so far failed to point that out.
A few journalists have demonstrated alarm about Trump’s racism. Several writers have compared him to George Wallace. Andrew Kaczinsky and Nathan McDermott did so at Buzzfeed in January: George Wallace’s Family, Former Staff: Donald Trump Is Doing What He Did.
Segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace’s daughter and two of his former top aides said in interviews this week that candidate Donald Trump is squarely in Wallace’s racist, populist tradition.
“There are a great deal of similarities as it relates to their style and political strategies,” said Wallace’s daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy. “The two of them, they have adopted the notion that fear and hate are the two greatest motivators of voters. Those voters that feel alienated from the government. Those voters tend to make decisions based on an emotional level rather than intellectual.”
“They both understood, my father and Donald Trump, that low-information voters, they tend to feed off of the threats to their livelihood and safety without really considering what that threat really is, or even if it’s real,” she continued. “So daddy and Trump have this magnificent personality, a brave put-ons that the average American wants in a leader.
“He’s very similar to George Wallace in a lot of ways,” said Wallace’s 1968 campaign executive director Tom Turnipseed. “Both of them use a lot of the same kind of scare tactics and fear.”
“He appeals to the fear,” continued Turnipseed, who describes himself as a “reformed racist” (he became a civil rights lawyer and, at one point, sued the Ku Klux Klan). “That’s why he pushed the Mexican thing, and now he’s throwing the Chinese in there too. He uses that same kind of thing, that fear thing that Wallace did…. As far as the tactics they use, the scare thing, is a lot alike to be honest with you. The way they use the scare thing. In Trump’s thing it’s the Mexicans, the wetbacks that we used to call them, the Chinese too a little bit. Back in Wallace’s time it was African-American people.”
Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace at a Goldwater rally in 1964.
Wallace’s daughter, who endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, noted some differences between her father and Donald Trump.
“I think my father had more self-restraint and respect for the institutions of government than Trump does,” she said. “I think my father understood the limitation of the executive branch of government, where I don’t think Trump does. And I think Daddy, even though he used coded language to use racial themes, he never attacked a culture based on their religion and race. He used coded language to suggest the racial themes. But he never specifically attacked a group of people based on their religion and their race. And I think Daddy had a respect for the process and the candidates. A great respect for the process and especially the process. He would have never leveled vicious attacks on the other candidates, especially those have been so personal. Daddy never would have done that.”
Wow. That’s scary. And I honestly think that when Wallace ran for president, there was more pushback from the media on his racism than there is today on Donald Trump’s.
Just look at the people who have endorsed Trump. Back in February, David Duke endorsed Trump and urged his fellow KKK members to support him; and Trump refused to repudiate Duke’s endorsement. As Trump campaigns in Indiana, he has received two more horrifying endorsements. From Bustle:
At his Indiana rally Wednesday night, Trump proudly announced endorsements from two “tough guys” — Mike Tyson and Bobby Knight. Indulge me now in a brief walk down memory lane.
Mike Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992 and originally sentenced to 10 years in prison (he served three). He is currently still registered as a Tier II sex offender. Also, Trump — with whom Tyson is the best of chums, or at least of significant financial interest — tried pretty hard to keep him from serving any prison time. At the time of the conviction, Trump proposed that Tyson should continue to be allowed to box — specifically, in a predicted-to-be-lucrative match against Evander Holyfield — and give the proceeds to the woman he was convicted of raping, Desiree Washington. Trump said at a press conference in 1992:
Instead, you let him [Tyson] go out, he would have made between $15 million and $30 million in his next fight: tremendous amount of money, tremendous amount of good (it) can be doing … Millions and millions of dollars could pour in to help people that were truly hurt, that won’t have anything and that will live penniless without it. And I think a lot people, a lot of people, can be helped if this is properly handled.
I assume you’re all cringing now. Trump’s campaign spokesperson declined to comment on the Mother Jones report on this incident, and Tyson’s rep told the publication he was “too busy” to speak about it.
Meanwhile, in addition to his penchant for throwing chairs, Bobby Knight is a former basketball coach who once told NBC news correspondent Connie Chung that, “I think if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”
Trump has also inspired angry and violent behavior both among his followers and protesters both inside and outside his rallies. The latest such incidents were in California over the past two days. From the LA Times: Protests rage outside Trump rally in Orange County; 17 arrested, police car smashed.
Hundreds of demonstrators filled the street outside the Orange County amphitheater where Donald Trump held a rally Thursday night, stomping on cars, hurling rocks at motorists and forcefully declaring their opposition to the Republican presidential candidate.
Traffic came to a halt as a boisterous crowd walked in the roadway, some waving American and Mexican flags. Protesters smashed a window on at least one police cruiser, punctured the tires of a police sport utility vehicle, and at one point tried to flip a police car.
One Costa Mesa police officer was struck in the head by a rock thrown by a protestor, authorities said. The officer wasn’t injured because he was protected from by his riot helmet.
About five police cars were damaged in total, police said, adding that some will require thousands of dollars’ worth of repairs.
“Dump the Trump,” one sign read. Another protester scrawled anti-Trump messages on Costa Mesa police cars.
Costa Mesa police car wrecked by anti-Trump protesters
Apparently the philosophy of passive resistance taught by Ghandi and further developed by Martin Luther King has been thrown by the wayside. From The Guardian: Donald Trump forced from his motorcade amid chaotic protests at California convention.
Protesters in California forced Donald Trump to leave his motorcade and walk along a highway on Friday, amid chaotic demonstrations in which activists torched an American flag and set fire to a piñata of the Republican frontrunner.
Hundreds of protesters repeatedly tried to storm the hotel where Trump was due to address the California Republican convention in Burlingame, near San Francisco International Airport.
Some protesters managed to get inside the Hyatt Regency by booking rooms in advance. When inside they unfurled two large Stop Hate banners from the upper floors that could be seen from outside, where protesters hurled eggs, clashed with baton-wielding police, and blocked roads.
With the hotel entrance blocked, the billionaire was forced to exit his vehicle and, guided by secret service agents, cross a freeway on foot and squeeze through a barrier in the fence to access the hotel.
Read more at the link.
So these are signs of what is to come. As we move closer to the end of the primaries and on to the party conventions, we can expect to witness more violence and rage over politics. Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the parallels with 1968–a violent and rage-filled presidential year. I have a lot of faith in Hillary Clinton’s ability to deal with the chaos to come, but it will be very difficult for her and for the country.
What are your thoughts on the politics of rage in 2016? What other stories are you following?
Thursday Reads: Bye Bye Bernie
Posted: April 28, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential nomination, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton 93 Comments
Good Morning!!
The end is near for the Sanders campaign, thank goodness. Yesterday Bernie began laying off hundreds of campaign staffers. He is still claiming he has a “narrow path” to the nomination, but he has no chance at this point. He would have to win each of the remaining states by an 80-20 margin to catch up with Hillary. Politico:
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — Bernie Sanders’ campaign started letting hundreds of field staffers go on Wednesday, hours after five states in the Northeast voted and the Vermont senator fell further behind Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, five people familiar with the situation told POLITICO.
It’s not the campaign’s first round of departures, but it’s by far the most significant, coming at a time when Sanders is signaling that he is looking to shape the Democratic platform at the party’s convention, but also insisting he will remain in the race until then.
Sanders trails Clinton by well over 300 delegates.
Staffers who were working in states that voted Tuesday were told by campaign manager Jeff Weaver to look elsewhere for work rather than continue on to the next voting states, according to people close to the campaign. The news comes as Sanders looks to spend more time in California, which is set to vote in June.
The New York Times noted yesterday that on the stump Sanders has begun talking more about influencing the Democratic platform than actually becoming the nominee.
Most likely those $27 contributions have started to dry up. How long has it been now since Bernie sent out a press release about getting millions in donations? His campaign spent $46 million in March, and had only $17 million on hand at the beginning of April. He outspent Hillary in New York and in the five states that voted on Tuesday. We’ll see what happens, but as of today it looks like Bernie is finished.
The *white* millennials, that is
Of course Hillary will still have to respond to Bernie’s ridiculous demands for her to put all of his polices into the party platform. Gabriel DeBenedetti on What Sanders Wants:
Democrats close to Clinton’s camp saw Sanders’ post-results statement Tuesday evening as a tacit admission that his role at the convention would be in shaping the formal policy platform rather than contesting the nomination. That late-night missive specifically identified a carbon tax and opposition to “disastrous trade policies,” as well as support for a $15 minimum wage, universal health care, breaking up big banks, banning fracking and implementing tuition-free college — all points on which Clinton and Sanders have meaningful disagreements — as policies the party should adopt.
Yet the Vermont senator, who began laying off hundreds of field staffers on Wednesday in the wake of his Northeastern defeats, has also started regularly raising the specter of fundamental changes to the Democrats’ nomination process in recent appearances, including providing a greater role for independents.
He has added complaints about closed primaries — such as in New York, which doesn’t allow independents to participate — into his standard stump speech and interviews, including Tuesday, after he won the only non-closed primary of the night in Rhode Island. Making the case that Democrats need independents on their side to win general elections, Sanders has repeatedly suggested that more primaries should use an open format so the party can select the best candidate to beat Republicans in November.
I would be totally opposed to that. Why should people who are not Democrats have any say in who the party’s nominee will be. I think primaries should all be closed and caucuses should be eliminated entirely.
Historically has any losing candidate ever been permitted to tell the winner she has to capitulate to his demands? I hope Hillary lets Sanders have some input into the platform, but she can’t be expected to adopt policies that she doesn’t believe in. That’s just ridiculous.
Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast:
Another handful of Clinton wins in big states, and the margins grow. I’m writing before the full pledged delegate count from tonight is known, but she led by 244 coming into tonight, not counting super delegates, and that may grow by another 30 to 40. (Here’s a great delegate calculator; bookmark it.)
As for the popular vote, she led it by a lot coming into Tuesday night: 10.4 million to 7.7 million, a nearly 2.7 million-vote difference, or 57 to 43 percent, numbers that we call a landslide in a general election. She may have added a couple hundred thousand to that margin tonight. Depending on what happens in California and New Jersey, this could end up being close to 60-40.
So forgive me for being a little confused about why these margins give Bernie Sanders such “leverage” in what we presume to be his looming negotiations with Hillary Clinton over the future of the party of which he’s not a member. It is “incumbent” upon Clinton, he told Chris Hayes on Monday on MSNBC, “to tell millions of people who right now do not believe in establishment politics or establishment economics, who have serious misgivings about a candidate who has received millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests.”
F**k off, Bernie. He acts as if he’s actually running neck and neck with her when he actually has been way behind since March 15.
Is there precedent for the losing candidate demanding that the winning candidate prove her bona fides to his voters? I sure can’t think of any. The most recent precedent we have for this kind of thing is 2008, a contest that of course involved Hillary Clinton. Let’s have a look at how that one wound down.
Clinton did indeed run until the end, winning states all along the way. On the last day of voting, June 3, they drew—she took South Dakota, and Obama won Montana. At that point, depending on what you did or didn’t count (Michigan and Florida were weird races that year after they broke the DNC calendar to move their primary dates up, and the party punished them by taking away delegates), she was actually ahead of Obama on popular votes. But even excluding Michigan, where Obama wasn’t on the ballot, it was a hell of a lot closer than 57-43. It was 51-49.
Did Clinton carry on about her campaign of the people? Did she say it was incumbent upon Obama to prove his worth to her voters? Did she put her forefinger on her cheek for weeks and make Obama twist in the wind? No, of course not.
Four days after the voting ended, she got out of the race, gave the famous 18 million-cracks-in-the-glass-ceiling speech, and said: “The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand, is to take our energy, our passion, our strength, and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States. Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him. And I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me. I have served in the Senate with him for four years. I have been in this campaign with him for 16 months. I have stood on the stage and gone toe-to-toe with him in 22 debates. I’ve had a front-row seat to his candidacy, and I have seen his strength and determination, his grace and his grit. In his own life, Barack Obama has lived the American dream…” and so on. She laid it on thick, and gave a strong and gracious convention speech later.
I doubt if Bernie will be able to demonstrate the kind of grace that Hillary did in 2008. Democratic leaders need to read him the riot act soon. He may find himself even more isolated in the Senate than ever and with no important committee assignments. As we have discussed here, perhaps the DNC could find a real Democrat to run against him in the 2018 Vermont primary. Bernie needs to get over himself or else face serious consequences.
The next challenge for Hillary will be dealing with Donald Trump, and it’s probably not going to be easy–especially since she will have to run against Trump and the mainstream media at the same time. Even considering the obvious danger of letting Trump get anywhere near the White House, I still expect many in the media will continue to enable his attacks on Hillary.
We got a preview of what we can expect in Trump’s ludicrous speech on Tuesday night when he attacked Hillary by calling her “crooked” and claiming she is using “the woman card.” Here’s the famous part of his speech along with Mary Pat Christie’s infamous eye-roll.
How anyone could even consider voting for that idiot I will never understand, but I do know that he’s not popular with women. Yesterday Trump “doubled down” on the “woman card” attack. NBC News reports:
When confronted about the sexist nature of his remarks during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday, Trump did not back down. Instead, he used an increasingly common line of attack on Clinton delivered mostly by her male critics — that she shouts too much.
“I haven’t quite recovered, it’s early in the morning, from her shouting that message,” Trump said. “And I know a lot of people would say you can’t say that about a woman because of course a woman doesn’t shout. But the way she shouted that message was not … that’s the way she said it and I guess I’ll have to get used to that over the next four or five months.”
Despite polls consistently showing Trump with historically poor approval ratings among women voters (69 percent unfavorable to 20 percent favorable), he predicted “we’re going to do very well with Hillary and with women as soon as we start our process against her.” He also suggested that it’s unclear whether Clinton will become the Democratic nominee because of her email server scandal.
“She’s guilty. Everybody knows she’d guilty but they don’t want to go after her,” Trump added, without detailing what crime Clinton has allegedly committed. ‘It’s going to be an interesting thing … because people who have done far less are sitting in jail cells.”
And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Trump will have no problem using sexual innuendo about Bill Clinton to attack Hillary. Some CBS writer named Will Rahn claims Trump could definitely beat Clinton.
The case against Trump’s electability is strong. But it is also perhaps overstated. The Manhattan billionaire does have a narrow path to the White House. In fact, he may be the GOP’s most electable option at this point, at least among the candidates who are actually still running for the job….
Trump…still has a few things going for him. His general election strategy, such as it is, seems to be predicated on two strategies: pivot left as far as possible and launch a scorched earth campaign against Clinton.
Let’s look at these one at a time. On the face of it, insulting your way to the presidency seems like a stupid, unworkable idea. Then again, Clinton has shown herself vulnerable to attacks on her character, not to mention her husband’s.
The reaction to Rosario Dawson’s in-passing reference to Monica Lewinsky over the weekend shows how sensitive the Clinton camp is to such things. Lewinsky is a sympathetic figure wrapped up in a sympathetic cause; Dawson only said that she agrees with her anti-bullying efforts. And yet still there were calls for Dawson to get off the trail for Bernie Sanders, that she had somehow crossed a line just by mouthing the word “Monica.”
What happens when Trump, after Hillary inevitably accuses him of sexism, says that Bill is a rapist, a serial assaulter of women, and that she is his enabler? What happens when he incorporates this into his stump speech? The upside, if you can call it that, to Trump’s refusal to act “presidential” is that he is the only candidate who will go that far. Trump, and Trump alone, is the only candidate who would not only resurrect all the Clinton sex scandals, but make them a centerpiece of his campaign.
I’m sure Clinton strategists have been working on how to counter this garbage for months now. Trump himself has plenty of baggage, include sexual stuff, and he is a lot more thin-skinned than Hillary is. I’d bet on her any day of the week. I also have to believe that women will not like Trump’s sexist attacks, but there’s no doubt it’s going to get ugly.
You’ve probably seen this before, but here’s a map that Nate Silver produced showing what would happening if women refused to vote for Trump.
It’s going to get interesting in the Fall. Right now, Hillary just has to set Bernie straight and finish winning the nomination. Then she can get ready to wash her hands of Donald Trump.
I have a few more links that I’ll put in the comment thread. What stories are you following today?
Friday Reads: Purple Daze
Posted: April 22, 2016 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Brexit, President Obama, Primaries 2016, Prince 43 Comments
Good Morning!
I love that my favorite color–purple–is bedecking everything from this beautiful cartoon from Bloom County to the Empire State Building to the Super Dome and beyond. I really hate the reason.
Prince is another one of those artists who wrote and sang the soundtrack to the life of a younger me. I can remember dancing to his music alone in the front room of my apartment celebrating the death of disco and the return of some one who could shred like no other! Eric Clapton was once asked what it was like to be the world’s greatest guitarist. He correctly answered “I don’t know. Ask Prince.”
I loved David Bowie but he was like wise older brother or cousin. Prince was my bratty twin.
Niagara Falls
I remember seeing him ever so often in a club he owned in the mid 90s in Minneapolis which featured international music and artists. He was the type that was either on or off; over-the-top or subdued. It’s the same with his music. My favorite thing with Prince was that he used women in his rock bands when using women rockers was a joke to most male musicians and their producers. He hypersexualized everything and every one but at the heart of it all, he was probably the best journeyman musician on the planet. He could play any instrument. He could write songs that were poppy pulp hits or boundary-pushing bits of genius. He was always controversial yet oddly universally accepted. You have to admire that in an artist. He could reach millions, stay true to himself, fight for the rights of the creative, and mentor musicians that would have a difficult time finding the main stage without a force like Prince.
At the height of his stardom in the 1980s and ’90s, Prince was ubiquitous, a marquee star who sold out stadiums, stole the silver screen and slayed fans with his bare-chested sass and sexuality.
Then a dispute with his record company changed his worldview and he retreated from the public eye. Save for the occasional awards show, benefit or tour, Prince kept his private life private — no small feat in the age of social media.
As he fought to protect his brand in an industry known for its formulaic approach, he maintained a tight grip on his music, restricting it from YouTube and streaming services, and prohibiting any photos or videos from being taken at his shows.
All of which made his death Thursday that much more shocking. A look at the last few days of his life provides some clues in hindsight that all was not well, but it’s safe to assume that if Prince knew death was close, he did not want us to know.
New Orleans Super Dome
Prince’s autopsy is scheduled for today. It will likely take awhile to release the results. The official line is that he was having problems with the flu. Rumors indicate that it may have been due to overdose or issues with opiate use.
Entertainment Tonight” co-host Kevin Frazier said on “CBS This Morning” Friday that Prince had hip replacement surgery in 2010 and also had health issues with his ankles.
“People close to Prince tell me he struggled with painkillers due to his hip and ankle issues,” Frazier said, noting that for Prince to cancel a performance “something was drastically wrong.”
“The hip and ankle issues were a problem for him for so long,” Frazier said, “and for a man who loved to move and dance so much, it really bothered him.”
Empire State Building NYC
I really wanted to put this headline up but then thought better of it given social media, but here it is. Every one to BernieBros: Kumbaya Motherfuckers!!! (I’m channeling Samuel Jackson.) Here we go with one of the Original Obama Dudes on a tear for supporting the real Hillary and not just the cardboard cutout. Oh, I still am not warming up to the damned monniker of progressive. But, stay with me here for the words of Fauvre.
Eight years later, we’re approaching the endgame of another Democratic primary. For Bernie Sanders to overtake Hillary Clinton’s lead in pledged delegates—which, at 239, is more than double Obama’s 112 delegate lead in 2008—he would have to win each of the remaining contests by about 18 points, a margin he has only reached in Vermont and New Hampshire. If he doesn’t, his only other option is to convince a few hundred superdelegates to back the candidate who has won fewer votes and fewer delegates.
Bernie faces long odds, but no good reason to drop out. And why should he? Why not keep running through the final primaries in June, just like Hillary did in 2008? Along the way, Sanders will probably win a few more states—especially in May—and continue to build a following that should hearten everyone who wants to see a bigger, bolder progressive movement.
But it’s also in the interest of the progressive moment for both candidates and their campaigns to begin healing the rifts that have deepened over the course of the primary. Neither Sanders nor Clinton seemed very compelling when they were screaming at each other for two hours at the debate in Brooklyn. And no one benefits from another three months of ridiculous lawsuits, overwrought fundraising emails, and surrogates sniping at each other on cable. Already, this friendly fire has taken a toll—in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, Bernie is viewed unfavorably by 20 percent of Clinton supporters, and Hillary is viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of Sanders supporters.
I don’t want to exaggerate the challenge. I still think this primary is less nasty and divisive than 2008, and exponentially less so than the cannibalism we may see in Cleveland. It’s also true that the percentage of Sanders and Clinton voters who say they won’t vote for the other candidate is fairly low. But a year in which Donald Trump or Ted Cruz could become president of the United States is not a year we can afford to have any pissed-off primary voters stay home in November.
I’ve been really nice to my Bernie Supporting friends and continue to be. Most of them aren’t the issue right now anyway. A lot of
Boston South Station
them see the need to break on through to the other side already. But, really, some one needs to tell Jane, Master Taddler and the other one to go back to Rome for a silent retreat. The whining, lies, and irritating right wing memes are over the top now and causing Sanders’ crazier supporters to go full metal misogyny.
The Nation‘s Joshua Holland writes that all good Democrats will realize the danger of a Trump or Cruz come November. He suggests we all relax.
But if history is any guide, a mass defection of Democrats and Dem-leaning independents is the last thing anyone should worry about. We’ve seen this before and we know how it will play out.
Ironically, in 2008 it was Clinton supporters vowing to stay home—or vote for John McCain—if Obama became the nominee. At the time, that same HuffPo columnist warned that “balkanized Democrats could give the White House to John McCain.” That May, primary exit polls found less than half of Hillary Clinton’s supporters in Indiana and North Carolina saying they’d consider voting for Obama in the general election. Even in early July, after Obama had secured the nomination, only 54 percent of Clinton backers said they planned to vote for him.
Those self-described “PUMAs”—“party unity my ass”—may have stayed home by the dozens that November, but at the end of the day nine out of 10 Democrats supported Obama in an election that featured the highest turnout in 40 years. A similar dynamic played out withHoward Dean supporters in 2004.
In the summer of 2008, George Washington University political scientist John Sides took to the pages of the Los Angeles Times to tell everyone to calm down. “Despite ugly battles and policy differences that sometimes seem intractable, the reality is that presidential campaigns tend to unify each party behind its nominee,” …
San Francisco City Hall, The Forum, Delta Airlines Flight
I have some other things you may want to read today. This one is sad. Suicide rate in this country have it a 30 year high. I wanted to link to this NYT story but also to tell you that there’s been a rash of teen suicides on the northshore the past few weeks. I won’t link to them but the recency effect really hit home for me as I read this article.
We also have a terrible problem with opiate addiction and gun violence. This is all symptomatic of the party that refuses to spend
Hard Rock Cafe Times Square
public funds on public health issues, public safety issues, and public infrastructure. This is the true heart of US class warfare. Our public Treasury is not going to the public any more.
Maybe the news that Prince had issues with opiate addiction will turn our focus back to mental health in this country.
President Obama has written a Telegraph op Ed to our UK cousins telling them to nix the BREXIT. This is a big story that’s been lost on many US news stations. If the UK leaves the EU, the economic reverberations around the world–including here in the US–will be large and damaging. The President is visiting England today and will help with birthday wishes to HRH who is celebrating her 90th.
As citizens of the United Kingdom take stock of their relationship with the EU, you should be proud that the EU has helped spread British values and practices – democracy, the rule of law, open markets – across the continent and to its periphery. The European Union doesn’t moderate British influence – it magnifies it. A strong Europe is not a threat to Britain’s global leadership; it enhances Britain’s global leadership. The United States sees how your powerful voice in Europe ensures that Europe takes a strong stance in the world, and keeps the EU open, outward looking, and closely linked to its allies on the other side of the Atlantic. So the US and the world need your outsized influence to continue – including within Europe.
In this complicated, connected world, the challenges facing the EU – migration, economic inequality, the threats of terrorism and climate change – are the same challenges facing the United States and other nations. And in today’s world, even as we all cherish our sovereignty, the nations who wield their influence most effectively are the nations that do it through the collective action that today’s challenges demand.
So, you can see that many buildings all over the world went Purple to celebrate the life and art of Prince. It’s taken our attention away from national challenges and back to personal tragedies that characterize the human condition. It’s always these moments when we look back to where we’ve been and what we’ve come to. The most important thing is to remember that the time line most surely includes a soundtrack the encompasses love and the people in your life.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
See Prince shred. Shred Prince Shred.
Thursday Reads: Hillary Clinton’s “Silent Majority”
Posted: April 21, 2016 Filed under: just because, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, New York primary 116 Comments
Good Morning!!
Following Hillary’s thrashing of Bernie in New York, the media is finally waking up to the fact that she is just about guaranteed to be the Democratic presidential nominee and most likely will become President of the U.S. next January.
What shock for the poor pundits! How did this happen while they were so busy ooohing and ahhing over Bernie’s giant rallies and the “enthusiasm” of all those white millennials for his shouting and finger-wagging? Why didn’t all the crowds, the $27 “grass roots” donations, the yard signs, and on-line bullying turn into votes for “the Bern?”
The cultists say it’s “voter suppression,” but other commentators are taking a page from Richard Nixon–it must be a “silent majority.” Here’s Michelle Goldberg at Slate yesterday:
Until Tuesday night, I had assumed that my neighborhood, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, was overwhelmingly supporting Bernie Sanders. Sanders bumper stickers and T-shirts outnumbered those for Hillary Clinton by what seemed like 20 to 1. A couple of times, I thought about putting my baby daughter in a Clinton onesie—whatever my hesitations about Clinton’s candidacy, I love the idea of my girl’s first image of an American president being female. But I always hesitated, not wanting to invite playground harangues from local dads about Goldman Sachs and the Fed.
When I looked up Cobble Hill on the nifty New York Times tool providing neighborhood-by-neighborhood results, however, it turned out that Clinton won the immediate area around my apartment by 59.4 percent. A block over, she won by 72.5 percent. She won all around me. A lot of Clinton supporters, evidently, have been keeping quiet about their allegiances.
There are a couple of explanations for this. Sanders fans seem to be more enthusiastic, though it takes a certain amount of enthusiasm to vote in a primary at all. Registered independents couldn’t vote in New York’s closed primary, particularly given the absurd, undemocratic October deadline for switching parties. But I think there might be something else at work as well: an optical illusion that the candidate with the most white male support had the most support, period. I had let myself mistake the loudest people for The People.
I’m not trying to deny that the Sanders coalition is diverse or to erase the many passionate women and men of color who supported him. But the fact remains that according to exit polls, Clinton won every racial and gender demographic except white men. And somehow, I’d become convinced that, in my own backyard, their preferences were far more widespread than they really are.
Brooklyn is full of a certain kind of archetypal Sanders voter—young, hip, highly educated, and ideological. But in Brooklyn as a whole, Hillary Clinton beat native son Bernie Sanders by 20 percent. The borough was with her, even if it didn’t always feel like it.
It’s not that Clinton voters aren’t enthusiastic, it’s just that they aren’t as loud and obnoxious at Bernie supporters. And of course, they voted. How many people at Bernie’s huge rallies were from out of state or not registered as Democrats? Probably plenty.
Froma Harrop at The National Memo on “The Liberal Silent Majority.”
A few days before Bernie Sanders lost badly in the New York primary, 27,000 souls filled Washington Square Park, many wildly cheering him on. The political media consensus interpreted the scene as evidence of surging support for the senator from Vermont….
The numbers at Washington Square were dwarfed by the battalions of working-class New Yorkers juggling two children and three jobs. These mostly Clinton voters were unable to attend any rally.
This last group is the subject here. It is the silent liberal majority.
Richard Nixon popularized the term “silent majority” in 1969. He was referring to the Middle Americans appalled by the Vietnam-era protests and associated social chaos. They didn’t demonstrate, and the so-called media elite ignored them.
Today’s liberal version of the silent majority is heavy with minorities and older people. Its members tend to be more socially conservative than those on the hard left and believe President Obama is a good leader.
Harrop points out that many reporters fall into the Sanders demographics.
Many political reporters belong to the white gentry that has fueled the Sanders phenomenon. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they know where they’re coming from. But some don’t seem to know about the vast galaxies of Democratic voters beyond the university and hipster ZIP codes.
In so many races — including those of the other party — reporters confine themselves to carefully staged political events and a few interviews with conveniently placed participants. From the atmospherics, they deduce the level of support for a particular candidate.
Trevor LaFauci noticed all this back on March 31: “The Silent Majority: How Hillary Clinton’s “Enthusiasm Gap” is a Complete Media Fabrication.
As our country heads toward the second half of the primary season as well as the general election, the national media is doing its best to gauge the level of excitement for each of the remaining five campaigns. From rallies to political donations to online polling, our friends in the media are attempting to quantify the unquantifiable level of excitement that each campaign is generating. By using this immeasurable measure, the media feels it can then interpret its result to create an overall narrative for how each campaign is doing. Clearly the campaign with most excitement is the one where the people are excited for their candidate and are going to go all out for him and her. This campaign will be the one with all the momentum moving forward while those campaigns with less excitement are likely to fall flat as we approach the conventions.
But let us take a moment to examine this theory, particular with the Democratic primary. Based on all the metrics listed above, it should be clear that Bernie Sanders is the candidate whose campaign is engulfed in enthusiasm. His rabid army of supporters have flocked to his rallies, producing crowds of upwards of 30,000 people, causing many venues to overflow. He raised nearly $44 million last month and now has amassed over 6 million contributions and growing. His loyal followers frequent online polls and exuberantly declare Sanders the winner of each and every Democratic debate or town hall performance….All this combined with victories in five out of the last six states and it would appear that the enthusiasm and momentum are clearly on the side of Bernie Sanders.
Especially when you compare his campaign to that of Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s rallies are never raucous, overflowing events. In fact, her most recent rally was held at the Apollo Theater, a venue that seats a mere 1,500 people. Clinton raised $13 million less than Bernie Sanders last month and she only recently amassed her one-millionth campaign contribution in mid-March. She often loses online polls by 60+ points after debates regardless of how well either her supporters or the media say she fared. Her national lead in the polls has all but vanished and after having won five consecutive primaries on March 15th, she has only won a single one since. Based on all this, there would appear to be a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton’s campaign at this point in time.
But appearances can be deceiving, especially appearances falsely created by our mainstream media.
Read the rest at the link.
On Tuesday night, Sanders abandoned his campaign press corps in Pennsylvania and flew back to Burlington, Vermont to rest and reassess his situation. MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald asks “Where does Sanders go from here?”
With the Democratic presidential nomination now further out of reach after his drubbing in New York on Tuesday, the Vermont senator faces the difficult question about what comes next. Does he set a do-whatever-it-takes course to wrest the nomination from rival Hillary Clinton? Or does he return to the message campaign, as his long-shot White House bid started out to be?
The Sanders campaign poured itself into New York, throwing a hail mary pass to try to change the delegate math while they could. They spent $5.6 million (twice what Hillary Clinton did), made 3 million phone calls in the final weekend alone, and organized the biggest rallies of a campaign defined by big rallies.
But in the end Sanders came up short – not just of winning, but of the delegate target allies had aimed to hit, which might set them up for a path through California, the campaign’s final hope.
Now, with the nomination even further out of reach, Sanders faces the difficult question about what comes next. Does he set a do-whatever-it-takes course to actually win the Democratic nomination? Or does he return to the message campaign his long-shot White House bid was originally seen as?
Seitz-Wald talked to people at Democracy For America and Move On, which support Bernie; and although they don’t explicitly say so, their representatives apparently were not happy with Sanders’ focus on attacking Clinton and complaining about the election process. Read all about it at the link. It’s an interesting article.
Even The Nation now admits that “Bernie Sanders is Not Going to Be President of the United States,” but they say he should still keep running.
At The New York Times, Lara M. Brown, a political science professor at George Washington University, says that Bernie Sanders should drop out because he has already achieved his purpose of pushing the Democratic Party to the left and helped Clinton become a better candidate because of the competition.
At The New Yorker, John Cassidy, another reporter who has been very sympathetic to Sanders asks “What Will Bernie Sanders and His Supporters Learn from New York?”
We’ll probably see more of these kinds of reevaluations by journalists over the next couple of days. It should be interesting to see whether the messages coming out of the Sanders campaign will be modified.
It’s already clear that there’s a difference of opinion between campaign manager Jeff Weaver and senior adviser Tad Devine about going to the convention and trying to flip superdelegates. Sanders himself has suddenly announced that he will remain a Democrat for life. What brought that on? It should be an interesting day in politics.
What stories are you following?
Tuesday Reads: New York Primary Day
Posted: April 19, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 76 Comments
Good Morning!!
Today is the New York primary, and I’m really hoping New York will send a strong message to the increasingly whiny and desperate Sanders campaign. Bernie Sanders has truly become “the Ralph Nader ” of 2016.
Last night the Sanders campaign sent a letter (pdf) to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) accusing Hillary Clinton of somehow misusing funds from her joint fund-raising agreement with the DNC (The Hillary Victory Fund) to raise funds for Democrats running for Congress and for 32 state Democratic Party organizations.
At Crooks and Liars, Karoli Kuns points out that the
“proper channel for complaints about campaign finance is the FEC, not the DNC. I have found no evidence of a complaint being filed with the FEC on these grounds.”
Since the Sanders campaign hasn’t made such a report to the FEC, I have to assume that this is just another Hail Mary pass from Sanders in his effort to damage Hillary Clinton’s reputation and convince low-information voters that she is corrupt.
At the Election Law Blog, Rick Hasen explains and say’s Sanders’ accusation is “legally weak.”
Here’s the deal. Clinton, like Sanders and other presidential candidates, has set up a joint fundraising committee with her political party. The JFC allows you to raise a huge chunk of change (more now than in past campaigns, thanks to the Supreme Court blowing out the aggregate federal limits in the McCutcheon case). A small bit goes to the candidate’s committee under the federal limits (currently $2,700 for the primary and $2,700 for the general). The next bit goes to the DNC, and the rest so state parties in $10,000 chunks. Sanders is accusing the joint committee of raising really big donations, and then having the JFC using some of those really big donations to engage in direct mail and internet targeting of small donors. When those small donors donate small amounts, contributions up to the first $2,700 benefit Clinton under the JFC agreement, and because these are small donors, it means Clinton gets all that small donor money.
The Deutsch letter cites no authority showing that this use of the JFC is not allowed, and it is hard to see what provision of the law it violates when donors give only small amounts that happen to benefit only Clinton. The letter says that maybe this is like an in-kind contribution from the DNC to the Clinton campaign, but I don’t see how it is that if the money is coming from the JFC not from the committee. The letter even says this means that those giving big checks to the DNC might thereby be giving more than the $2,700 to Clinton, which is not literally true—it is what the JFC is doing with the money, over which the donors have no control.
For the past few days, Sanders and his supporters have even been complaining about New York’s election laws and arguing that having a closed primary in which only registered Democrats can vote for a Democratic candidate is unfair to him!
John Cole, who has been largely supportive of Bernie Sanders throughout the primary campaign, calls Sanders out: The Whiniest Revolution Ever.
I really did spend much of this campaign pretty neutral- if anything, I thought I was tougher on the Clinton team most of it than the Sanders campaign. I liked the Sanders camps enthusiasm and I like his positions on many things (who doesn’t!), but eventually I decided it just wasn’t realistic and that we would be better off with Clinton. Having said that, we are now to the point that I am just fed up TO HERE (raises good arm over head)….
…with all the dipshits whining that as Independents they can’t vote in the closed Democratic primary and how closed primaries are a scourge against democracy, etc., ad nauseum, this [the Sanders campaign letter to the DNC] is the kind of shit that wants me to put the collective campaign in a box, weight it down, and throw it in the East River….
A good democrat knows to make sure they are registered and registered for the right party….A good democrat raises money for downticket races. A good democrat doesn’t spend the entire primary creating faux controversies to weaken the party and party structure. A good democrat doesn’t run around tellking half the states they don’t matter or count. A good democrat doesn’t do what the fucking Sanders campaign has done the last couple of months.
So that’s the latest rat-fucking from the Sanders campaign. Whether it will have any effect on votes in the New York primary, I don’t know. My guess is most New Yorkers will be able to see through Bernie’s smokescreen. We’ll find out tonight.
This morning, Politifact called Bernie out for another lie he’s been telling for months: Sanders largely off-base in saying he wins when voter turnout is high and loses when it’s low.
On the eve of the New York Democratic primary — where he needs a strong showing to have any hope of winning the presidential nomination contest — Bernie Sanders has repeatedly emphasized the importance of a large turnout.
In an April 12 speech in Syracuse, Sanders told supporters, “A week from today there’s going to be an enormously important Democratic primary in New York state. What we have found is we win when voter turnout is high, we lose when it is low. Next Tuesday, let us come out in large numbers. Let us have the highest voter turnout in Democratic primary history in New York.”
The verdict:
Sanders said, “We win when voter turnout is high, we lose when it is low.”
Sanders did notch a few notable victories in high-turnout primaries, but it would be cherry-picking to focus only on primaries. Sanders has mostly won caucuses, which have produced the lowest turnout rates of 2016 across the board. And while Sanders did win the handful of states where Democratic turnout increased over 2008, these increases were tiny, casting doubt on how significant an accomplishment this is.
The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False.
Read the whole discussion at the link. Basically, most of Sanders’ wins have been in caucuses, with low turnout–but you knew that already. Mr. Holier-Than-Thou is a bald-faced liar, folks.
Here’s a little comic relief for you from Jenna Johnson at The Washington Post: Oops, Donald Trump accidentally says 7-Eleven instead of 9/11.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — At a campaign rally on the eve of the New York primary, Donald Trump read aloud an emotional testimonial on what he considers “New York values” and mistakenly said 7-Eleven instead of 9/11.
“I wrote this out, and it’s very close to my heart — because I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen down on 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down, and I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action,” Trump said at a rally near the Buffalo waterfront on Monday evening, without stopping to correct himself. “I saw the bravest people I’ve ever seen, including the construction workers, including every person down there. That’s what New York values is about.”
Is it really worth it for Bernie to keep hammering Hillary and possibly put this asshole in the White House?
The Trump campaign has been looking pretty disorganized lately, and now they’ve had a big staff shakeup. Politico: Trump orders new campaign hierarchy, spending plan.
In a shakeup that’s roiling Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the GOP front-runner told senior staffers at a Saturday meeting that he wants his recent hires Paul Manafort and Rick Wiley to take the reins in upcoming states, giving them a $20 million budget for key contests in May and June, according to three sources with knowledge of the meeting.
The spending authorization, which covers most of the month of May, is far more than the campaign has spent in any prior month, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The cash infusion — which the sources said is intended to fund an aggressive advertising push, as well as more staff at Trump’s New York headquarters and in upcoming states — is part of an effort by the billionaire to expand and professionalize a shoestring operation that had mostly gotten by on the strength of free media exposure and a small core team.
But sources inside the Trump campaign said the moves are increasingly alienating staff loyal to the original team, headed by campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, which had guided Trump from the political fringe to the precipice of the GOP presidential nomination with relatively little campaign infrastructure or spending.
One key Lewandowski loyalist, national field director Stuart Jolly, on Monday submitted a letter of resignation, according to the sources, who characterized Jolly as displeased with the reorganization. Under the new structure, Jolly would have reported to Wiley, who was hired last week by Manafort as political director. In turn, Wiley, who previously ran Scott Walker’s disappointing presidential campaign, will report to Manafort, who was hired late last month and quickly boasted “I work directly for the boss.”
One operative who has worked with the campaign and was briefed on the changes said “Stuart will not work with Rick Wiley. It just wasn’t going to happen.” The operative added that the change had sparked particular concern among the campaign’s field staff, many of whom were hired by Jolly and maintained close contact with him — a rarity on a campaign with a reputation for top-down communication.
Read much more at the link. David Graham has more details at The Atlantic.
I’ll end with a mostly feel-good story from Quartz about Hillary’s campaign: Hillary Clinton assembled a dream team of women to campaign for her in New York.
“Hillary, Hillary,” chanted a crowd of women, and some men, in a chandeliered ballroom at the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan as Hillary Clinton’s team of powerhouse women took the stage April 18. The presidential candidate was joined by New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the head of Planned Parenthood Federation of America Cecile Richards, the city’s First Lady Chirlane McCray, among others.
Clinton was joined by a number of her congressional friends long her stalwart supporters. “A vote for Hillary is a vote for yourself, for your city, for your country,” said one of New York’s US representatives Carolyn Maloney. Some of the women onstage were returning a favor to Clinton, who had helped them in their careers. “My strongest and best mentor has been Hillary Rodham Clinton,” said Gillibrand.
Letitia James, New York’s public advocate and the first woman of color to hold a citywide public office in New York, warmed up the crowd with a fiery speech. “I am of the firm belief that when you want anything done you should give it to a woman,” she said.
The crowd listened attentively as it was Giffords’ turn to speak. “In the White House she will stand up to the gun lobby, that’s why I’m voting for Hillary,” she said. Giffords had been shot in the head during an assassination attempt in 2011. “Speaking is hard for me but [in January] I want to say these two words ‘Madam President,’ ” she said, interrupted seconds later by a crying baby.
Of course the author felt obligated to note that there weren’t many millennials in the audience (someone was young enough to have a baby anyway). Here’s what I have to say about the endless “millennial” meme. So fucking what?!
What stories are you following today? Let us know in the comments, and check back later tonight for a live blog on the NY primary results!
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