Live Blog: Florida Democratic Debate
Posted: March 9, 2016 Filed under: U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 Democratic primaries, Florida Democratic debate, live blog 76 Comments
Hey Sky Dancers!
Even that exclamation point makes me tired. I must admit that I’m getting fed up with the constant debates and town halls this primary season. I think the DNC was wise to try to limit them. Both Hillary and Bernie need to make some changes to their stump speeches, because we’ve all heard them so many times at this point that it’s getting boring.
Nevertheless, I’ll be watching tonight to see how each of the candidates deals with the results of yesterday’s primaries. Someone needs to remind the country that not just Michigan voted yesterday–Mississippi voted too and the results of that one were more consequential in terms of delegates than the one the media is hyping today.
Tonight’s debate is at Miami-Dade College, and it will begin at 9PM ET. It is sponsored by Univision and the Washington Post and it will be simulcast on CNN. It will also be live streamed at The Washington Post. The moderators will be Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post and Maria Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos of Univision.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders at the Flint debate
The Fix: How to watch the Washington Post-Univision Democratic presidential debate.
What (to watch for): Immigration almost certainly will be a major topic of discussion, given the setting and Univision’s involvement. Univision announced in February that it would launch a voter registration drive aimed at growing the Latino electorate by 3 million people. Look for the moderators to ask Sanders, who lags far behind Clinton in the delegate count, about his path forward. But if Sanders senses dismissiveness, look for him to push back hard. Univision chairman Haim Saban has contributed $2.5 million toPriorities USA Action, a super PAC backing Clinton. Ramos’s daughter, Paola Ramos, works for the Clinton campaign’s communications team. And in January, Sanders memorably unloaded on The Washington Post editorial board for criticizing his “fiction-filled campaign.” The dynamics among the candidates and sponsoring media outlets could provide intriguing subplots.
Some info on the moderators from IBT:
Univision’s María Elena Salinas. Salinas is a co-host of “Noticiero Univision” and the prime-time show “Here and Now.” She has covered presidential elections for three decades, and in the race to the 2008 presidency, she interviewed Hillary Clinton, Republican nominee John McCain and then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Along with Salinas, Univision’s Jorge Ramos is also scheduled to moderate. Ramos is the host of Univision’s “Noticiero Univision” and “Al Punto,” as well as Fusion’s “AMERICA with Jorge Ramos.”
The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty is also expected to moderate Wednesday night’s debate alongside Ramos and Salinas. Tumulty is a national political correspondent who previously worked for TIME Magazine, where she held positions as a congressional correspondent and White House correspondent, and the Los Angeles Times.
A few stories to get you warmed up for the watch party.
Joshua Tucker at the WaPo: No, actually Hillary Clinton won Tuesday night. The story is written in the form of a dialogue:
Wait a minute! It’s Cranky Reader from John Sides’s posts at The Monkey Cage.
CR: Hold on a second! I read the papers Wednesday morning. The New York Times, the LA Times, and even your Washington Post (to say nothing of Politico or CNN), and they all have top stories about how Clinton lost Tuesday night in Michigan.
Me: That’s true. Sanders did get more votes than Clinton in Michigan. But Clinton got more votes than Sanders in Mississippi. A lot more votes. As in, five times as many votes. So actually, as of 10 a.m. Wednesday, she had picked up more than 125,000 more total votes than Sanders on Tuesday.
CR: But Michigan is a bigger state and has more electoral votes than Mississippi. Therefore, it is more important to win Michigan than it is to win Mississippi if you want to be the nominee, regardless of the number of votes she won across the two states.
Me: That would be true if states in the Democratic primary were “winner take all” like most states are in the general election. Michigan does have more electoral votes than Mississippi in the general election, and for largely the same reason does award a lot more delegates to the Democratic nominating convention (123) than Mississippi (33).
CR: Ah ha! So winning Michigan is more important.
Me: That would be the case if each candidate won by the same margin. That’s because delegates to the Democratic nominating convention are distributed proportionally. Sanders doesn’t get all 123 delegates because he won Michigan, and Clinton doesn’t get all 33 Mississippi delegates because she won there. Instead, provided they get at least 15 percent of the vote — which they both did in both states — they each win a number of delegates determined by a complex set of electoral rules that in the end roughly approximates their vote share. So since Sanders won by a smaller margin in Michigan (50 percent to 48 percent) than Clinton did in Mississippi (83 percent to 17 percent), she actually won more delegates Tuesday night. And, for that matter, more than 125,000 more votes across the two states.
Head over to the WaPo to read the rest.
Miami Dade College
Claire Foran at The Atlantic: Hillary Clinton’s Intersectional Politics.
Hillary Clinton has taken pains to describe the lead-contaminated drinking water of Flint, Michigan, not only as a public-health and environmental crisis, but also as a crisis of poverty and racism. Along the way, the Democratic presidential contender has invoked the idea of intersectionality, the concept that different forms of inequality and discrimination overlap and compound one another.
Clinton’s use of the term, which was at one time largely confined to academia, signals that it is now a common way of thinking about inequality for a younger generation. Her decision to employ it may also elevate the concept in American politics, and alter the terms of a national debate over poverty, racism and other forms of inequity.
In recent weeks, Clinton has increasingly made reference to the concept on the campaign trail. “We face a complex set of economic, social, and political challenges. They are intersectional, they are reinforcing, and we have got to take them all on,” Clinton declared during a February speech in Harlem. Over the weekend, her campaign tweeted that “Flint’s water crisis is an example of the combined effects of intersecting issues that impact communities of color.” An appended graphic draws literal lines between “poverty,” “systemic racism,” “underfunded school systems,” and “crumbling infrastructure.”
Intersectionality was coined in the late 1980s to explain how different markers of identity coalesce to yield unique forms of discrimination. A black woman, for example, might experience not only racism and sexism in her daily life, but could also confront additional barriers that white women and black men do not. It became a way of making visible the experience of individuals that had previously been caught between the feminist and civil-rights movements.
Foran argues that Clinton may be using the term to attract the young voters who are “flocking to Bernie Sanders,” but I highly doubt that. Intersectionality is a concept that Sanders doesn’t understand at all, and it has been important to feminist analysis for a long time. It is also important to understanding the effects of racism. Anyway, read more at the link.
Mami Dade College Student Union
Bernie Sanders showed up in Florida for the first time last night, and Floridians have noticed his absence and find his attitude troubling.
Tampa Bay Times: With a week to go before Florida primary, Bernie Sanders shows up to campaign.
Less than a week before the primary in the country’s third-largest state, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has a skeleton crew in Florida: four paid staffers and three campaign offices.
Compare that with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s dozens of staffers and eight offices.
Even with three campaign events this week and a debate tonight in Miami — his first trip to Florida as a presidential candidate — there have been few signs of the Vermont senator on the state’s campaign trail….
“To say it’s a pipe dream would imply he actually thinks he has a shot,” said University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett. “I suspect he realizes he doesn’t have a shot in Florida, but to be taken seriously as a candidate, you have to basically compete in the biggest battleground state.”
As of Tuesday, Sanders was 26 points behind Clinton in Florida, with just 32 percent of Democrats’ support, according to a RealClearPolitics.com average of state polling data….
Clinton has had a more robust infrastructure in the state since the very beginning, said Alan Clendinin, first vice chair of the Florida Democratic Party. After the 2008 election, a political action committee called Ready for Hillary began collecting names and contact information of supporters at fairs and festivals, he said. When Clinton officially announced her candidacy last year, the committee handed over its database to the campaign, effectively giving it a “turnkey operation,” Clendinin said.
Miami Dade College
Politico: Bernie Sanders discovers Florida.
Bernie Sanders’ plane touched down here Tuesday before the polls started to close in Michigan, offering him a prime opportunity to springboard off what was looking like an unexpectedly strong performance.
The only problem: Sanders’ Miami rally Tuesday evening — more than 10 months into his White House bid, and just one week before Florida votes — was his first campaign event in the most crucial swing state of them all.
It reflected a tactical decision to all-but-cede the South to Hillary Clinton and her decades of relationship-building there, part of a post-Nevada strategic recalibration that turned the campaign’s attention to states voting later in the calendar. The idea was to pick off delegates from the March 15 tranche — Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri are among the states voting next Tuesday — but it’s come at a cost in Florida.
The Vermont senator now trails the former secretary of state by a wide margin in Florida polls, leading local Democrats to question the long-term viability of a candidate without a real Florida operation….
“Florida is very representative of America, the new demographic, the new look of America,” added former Miami Mayor Manny Díaz, a Clinton supporter. “And if you believe that you should not spend any time in Florida, then you should not spend anytime anywhere else. You’re going to run into the same problem everywhere else.”
More details at the link.
Get ready to document the good performances, the gaffes, and the atrocities. I expect a strong performance from Hillary because she’s always at her best when she is challenged.
Tuesday Reads: Feel The Bern-Out
Posted: March 8, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 61 Comments
All I see is white people.
Good Morning!!
Today Michigan and Mississippi will hold primaries, and Bernie Sanders will fall farther behind Hillary Clinton in the delegate count for the Democratic nomination.
On the Republican side, in addition to the Michigan and Mississippi primaries, there will be a primary in Idaho and caucuses in Hawaii.
ABC News reports: Storylines to Watch in Tuesday’s 2016 Presidential Primaries and Republican Caucuses.
Republicans will vote Tuesday in the Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi primaries and the Hawaii Republican caucuses. Democrats in Michigan and Mississippi are also holding their primaries.
In total, 205 delegates are at stake for the two Democratic candidates. On the other side of the aisle, 150 are up for grabs for the four remaining Republican candidates.
Bernie has high hopes for Michigan, but at the end of the day he’s likely to be disappointed.
While campaigning in Michigan, Sanders has attacked Clinton with a heavy focus on trade, arguing that Clinton’s support of “disastrous trade deals” has led to job loss in the state.
“If the people of Michigan want to make a decision of which candidate stood against corporate America, stood against these disastrous trade agreements, that candidate is Bernie Sanders,” the Vermont senator said at a campaign rally in Traverse City, Michigan, last Friday.
“We think we’re going to surprise people here in Michigan,” Sanders said Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
However, a NBC/WSJ poll conducted in Michigan shows Hillary Clinton with a major lead of 57 percent among Democrats to Sanders’ 40 percent.
Read more storylines at the ABC News link above.
Sorry, Bernie. Black people in the northern states don’t vote differently from those in southern ones, despite your spin after Super Tuesday. Bernie on This Week:
“I think you’re going to see us doing — and I think the polls indicated it, much better within the African-American community outside of the Deep South,” Sanders said. “You’re going to see us much better in New York state where I think we have a shot to win, in California and in Michigan.”
Dream on. I said after Super Tuesday that we need to be kind to Sanders’ supporters, and that will be even more true tomorrow. They are going through a grieving process and many of them are young people who have never experienced this kind of loss before.
Last night, at the Fox News town hall, Hillary was gentle with Bernie, and we should follow her lead. It will be mostly over after today, but his supporters will still be telling themselves he can win Ohio and Pennsylvania. It’s not going to happen, but the Bernie fans will just have to find out for themselves.
Excuse me . . .
Yesterday John Cole had an interesting post at Balloon Juice: I’ve Kind of Made My Decision. The gist is that he likes Bernie, but has decided to vote for Hillary. It’s a good read, and I suggest to go check it out at the link, but I want to highlight this section (emphasis added):
I know this is going to piss people off, and I know some of you are going to scream ageism, but watching Bernie last night, he just seemed old and tired and wearing down. I was initially leaning Bernie at the beginning of this primary (because of course I was), and every time I look at him he just looks less energetic and a little more beat down. His response latency seems to be increasing as he collects his thoughts, and last night I saw him lashing out angrily about “your Wall Street friends,” and those are just not things that can happen in the general.
I’m not trying to be ageist- I don’t think people his age can’t or shouldn’t be President, it’s just that as I have watched this primary election go on, Clinton seems to be getting stronger and more confident and more ready for the election, while I feel the opposite is true about Sanders. In my mind’s eye, she looks younger to me than she did at the beginning of this primary. Clinton seems to really becoming a happy warrior, despite all the heaps of bullshit the Republicans have thrown at her.
Maybe you don’t see it that way. But I do. I look at Hillary these days and think there is no doubt she could serve eight years right now, while some days I wonder if Bernie is going to make it to November. The Vice President is a backup plan for when things go horribly wrong, not a plan. Again, I’m sorry if my elders think I am bashing them by stating this, but I’m really not trying to- Bernie has more energy on a bad day than I do on a great day, but he just is really starting to look worn down. The contrast for me last night was palpable.
I strongly agree with Cole on this. Bernie is wearing down. I think part of it is age, but I think it’s also his perpetual anger and defensiveness.
All right, I’ll wait for you to finish . . .
Hillary comes off as cool as a cucumber. She has dealt with so much shit over the years that she’s immune to it. As she is fond of saying, whenever she gets knocked down, she gets right back up stronger than ever. It’s clear that she loves the challenge of running as the first woman to become the nominee of any major party. And she is ready to be POTUS from day one.
Bernie, on the other hand, lets criticism and losses get under his skin. and when that happens, he lashed out and he makes unforced errors. He’s just not ready to be the nominee and definitely not ready to be POTUS.
MSNBC: ‘Ghetto’ gaffe highlights Bernie Sanders campaign’s struggle with race.
While discussing his own racial “blind spots” during Sunday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Michigan, Sen. Bernie Sanders offered that white people “don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor.” His comment drew swift condemnation on social media, since it appeared that the Vermont lawmaker was implying that only black people live in impoverished communities, reinforcing inaccurate and painful stereotypes that have dogged African-Americans for years.
Sanders’ “ghetto” gaffe underlined a persistent problem that may have crippled his bid for the 2016 nomination. He has struggled to connect with black voters, and his choice of words has often undercut a populist economic message that might have resonated with people of color.
Even if Sanders had the best of intentions, it was not his best moment, as evidenced by one of his most prominent African-American surrogates — former NAACP chairman Ben Jealous — who told NBC News: “Sen. Sanders is from Burlington, he grew up in old Brooklyn, he knows white folks live in ghettos.”
On Monday, Sanders attempted to clarify his debate statement, telling a gaggle of reporters in Detroit: “What I meant to say, is when you talk about ghettos, traditionally what you’re talking about is African-American communities.”
Bernie just can’t stop digging, can he?
Jonathan Capehart on the “ghetto” goof: ‘Excuse me!’ Bernie Sanders doesn’t know how to talk about black people.
When Sanders said that, I tweeted, “He knows that all Black people don’t live in ghettos, right?” His answer so threw me that I didn’t even hear him say that white people “don’t know what it’s like to be poor.” Sanders’s cab story might be true, but it also struck me as rhetorical grasping at straws. And for it to be an illumination to Sanders that he doesn’t “understand what police do in certain black communities” is more damning than you think. For in this one exchange, you see Clinton’s fluency in and understanding of the language of race and Sanders’s glaring ignorance.
You also see who the true Democrat is. It’s not Sanders.
Democrats, especially those with national ambitions, know how to talk to people of color, especially African-Americans. They are the base of the Democratic Party. You learn the nuances of their concerns and the issues important to them. You take them to heart. Fail to do that and watch your political career perish. As a former first lady of Arkansas, former first lady of the United States and former Senator from New York, Clinton can speak to Blacks with a fluency that lets African Americans know she gets it and gets them.
After Sanders’ early work on desegregation in Chicago, he doesn’t seem to have focused much on Civil Rights or even the anti-war movement of the 1960s and ’70s. He left Brooklyn in 1968 and moved to Vermont along with many other white people who were fleeing big cities; and it seems that he stayed in his white bubble right up until he began campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.
How much longer do I have to listen to this shouting?
I thought this was interesting out of Sanders’ hometown.
Brooklyn Paper: Turn up, tune in, Bern out: Sanders supporters say not all of Bushwick is behind Brooklyn’s son.
Not all of Bushwick can feel the Bern.
A band of hipster Brooklyn Bushwickans on the stump for Bernie Sanders from inside local industrial loft spaces is having a tough time convincing old-school neighbors to get out and vote for Brooklyn’s son, say the passionate organizers.
“There’s the original Bushwick community and the gentrified Bushwick community,” said Magenna Brink of the Bushwick Berners, who regularly gather to call voters over some brews while they plan their door-to-door outreach at their Forrest Street headquarters as well as the notorious McKibbin Street lofts. “The gentrified community, with all the hipsters and the young kids, are totally behind Bernie. The other community is kind of half-and-half.”
The berners say they have hit the streets to spread the word about their candidate of choice only to find many of the native residents are either not enamored with Sanders’ socialist policies or completely unaware he exists.
“In the lower-income communities, there were a ton of people who said they were Hillary supporters, but they didn’t even know who Bernie Sanders was,” said Brink.
New York is another state Sanders claims he can win, but the polls don’t agree with him.
Today could be interesting on the Republican side too. It seems to me that Donald Trump has not been performing as well as he should be in recent contests, Ted Cruz has been showing a great deal of strength, and Marco Rubio has just about hit bottom. Here are a few interesting stories on the GOP race.
Politico: Is Trump peaking? We’ll find out today.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump will discover whether his weekend struggles were a speed bump — or the first signs of larger troubles ahead.
If the polls are to believed, Trump is in for a dominant day, with blowouts in Michigan and Mississippi to be complemented by another win in Idaho. If Trump falls short, and particularly if he falls short to Ted Cruz for the second time in four days, the businessman’s delegate math gets more complicated, and the soothsayers who’ve long predicted Trump’s collapse will finally see hope for vindication.
For the first time since Iowa, a non-Trump Republican took home the day’s largest haul of delegates last weekend, as Cruz on Saturday won handily in Maine and Kansas and ran a close second in Louisiana and Kentucky. Repeating that feat Tuesday would put more momentum behind the Texas senator’s campaign and strengthen his case as the GOP’s best, only hope of nominating someone other than Trump. Trump’s standing among Republican registered voters—down 3 points from January—nationwide fell slightly in the latest ABC News/Washington Post national poll released Tuesday, while the poll put Cruz up 4 percent, though Trump maintained a 9 point lead over Trump in the poll.
A relative lack of polling adds unpredictability to Tuesday’s votes. While Michigan has been heavily surveyed, Hawaii has gone uncovered, and sparse polls in Mississippi and Idaho are now out of date. Trump had large leads in past surveys, but they were conducted before Marco Rubio and several super PACs went all-out against Trump, before two raucous anti-Trump debates and before his losses to Cruz on Saturday.
Washington Post: Seeing Trump as vulnerable, GOP elites now eye a contested convention.
The presentation is an 11th-hour rebuttal to the fatalism permeating the Republican establishment: Slide by slide, state by state, it calculates how Donald Trump could be denied the presidential nomination.
Marco Rubio wins Florida. John Kasich wins Ohio. Ted Cruz notches victories in the Midwest and Mountain West. And the results in California and other states are jumbled enough to leave Trump three dozen delegates short of the 1,237 required — forcing a contested convention in Cleveland in July.
The slide show, shared with The Washington Post by two operatives advising one of a handful of anti-Trump super PACs, encapsulates the newly emboldened view of many GOP leaders and donors. They see a clearer path to stopping Trump since his two losses and two narrower-than-expected wins in Saturday’s contests.
Read more at the link.
The Washington Post: Trump leads GOP race nationally but with weaker hold on the party.
Donald Trump continues to lead his rivals nationally in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. But his hold on the GOP electorate has weakened since the primary season began, and the party is now deeply divided over his candidacy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Trump maintains the support of 34 percent of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, compared with 25 percent for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, 18 percent for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and 13 percent for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Trump maintains the support of 34 percent of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, compared with 25 percent for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, 18 percent for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and 13 percent for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Trump’s margin over Cruz has narrowed from 16 points in January to nine today. As a succession of Republican candidates quit the race, Cruz’s position has ticked up four points since January, Rubio’s has risen by 7 and Kasich’s grew by 11. Trump’s has dipped by three points, within the poll’s margin of sampling error.
What stories are you following? Let us know in the comment thread. We’ll have a live blog later this evening to discuss the primary and caucus results. Have a great Tuesday!
Live Blog: Fox News Democratic Town Hall
Posted: March 7, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Detroit Democratic Town Hall, Fox News, Hillary Clinton 58 Comments
Hey There, Politics Junkies!
The Fox News Democratic Town Hall begins at 6PM. It looks like it will only last an hour, and if we’re lucky we won’t have to watch a scene like the one depicted above again tonight. The event will be held in Detroit. You can watch the live stream on the Fox News website.
Here are the basics from MichiganLive:
WHAT TIME IS THE TOWN HALL? The hour-long discussion is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. It will re-air at 11 p.m.
WHERE CAN YOU WATCH THE DEBATE?Fox News has not released information on tickets, but the town hall will air live on Fox News and will be live-streamed atFoxNews.com.
WHERE IS THE DEBATE? The town hall is scheduled to take place at the Gem Theatre in Detroit.
WHO WILL MODERATE THE DISCUSSION? Fox News’ chief political anchor Bret Baier will moderate.
WHAT WILL THEY TALK ABOUT? If Sunday’s debate in Flint is any indication, the bailout of the auto industry could be the hot topic Monday night.
The pair also discussed Detroit schools and racial inequity on Sunday.
Clinton and Sanders clashed over whether the Vermont senator supported the federal bailout that saved the auto industry.
I’m not sure if the two will be on stage together or not. If they are, I hope Senator Sanders will be on his best behavior.
Have fun!
Super Saturday Reads
Posted: March 5, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 Democratic nomination race, 2016 GOP nomination race, Bernie Sanders, DailyKos, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, misogyny, Sexism, Super Saturday primaries and caucuses 60 Comments
Smoking Bar for Ladies, Harry Grant Dart
Good Morning!!
A note on the illustration above: It is an anti-women’s suffrage cartoon originally publish in the satire magazine Puck, showing the horror that could befall the country if women actually got the vote.
We have a busy few days coming up for presidential politics. Today is the Louisiana primary, and Hillary is expected to win overwhelmingly on the Democratic side. There will also be Democratic and Republican caucuses in Kansas and Nebraska. For Republicans, there will be additional caucuses in Maine and Kentucky. Maine Democrats will caucus tomorrow and there will be a GOP primary in Puerto Rico. Then on Tuesday there will be primaries in Michigan and Mississippi.
Tomorrow night there will be a CNN Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan and on Monday night Fox News will hold a Democratic town hall event. Hillary originally declined the invitation, but yesterday she agreed to go. I think it’s a mistake for her to go, but we’ll see. The next Republican debate will be on March 10 in Miami.
Washington Post: Five more states ready to chip in delegates to campaign 2016.
Hunting for delegates, Trump added a last-minute rally in Wichita, Kansas, to his Saturday morning schedule and Cruz planned to stop in Kansas on caucus day, too, one day after Rubio visited the state.
Trump’s decision to skip an appearance Saturday at a conference sponsored by the American Conservative Union in the Washington area to get in one last Kansas rally rankled members of the group, who tweeted that it “sends a clear message to conservatives.”
The billionaire businessman’s rivals have been increasingly questioning his commitment to conservative policies, painting his promise to be flexible on issues as a giant red flag….
With the GOP race in chaos, establishment figures are frantically looking for any way to stop Trump, perhaps at a contested convention if none of the candidates can roll up the 1,237 delegates needed to snag the nomination. Going into Saturday’s voting, Trump led the field with 329 delegates. Cruz had 231, Rubio 110 and Kasich 25. In all, 155 GOP delegates are at stake in Saturday’s races.
Illustration of “founding mothers”
“Woman is a slave from the cradle to the grave — Ernestine Rose
On the Democrats:
Clinton is farther along than Trump on the march to her party’s nomination, outpacing Sanders with 1,066 delegates to his 432, including pledged superdelegates. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. There are 109 at stake on Saturday.
In Louisiana, Clinton was hoping that strong support from the state’s sizable black population will give her a boost. Both Democrats have campaigned heavily in Nebraska and saturated the state with ads. In Kansas, Clinton has the backing of its former governor and onetime Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. Sanders held a pre-caucus rally in Kansas’ liberal bastion of Lawrence hoping to attract voters.
A couple of big stories out of Louisiana:
Think Progress: BREAKING: Supreme Court Reopens Clinics Closed By Anti-Abortion Law.
The Supreme Court handed down a brief order Friday allowing four Louisiana abortion clinics to reopen after they were closed due to a recent decision by a conservative federal appeals court.
Last week, an especially conservative panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handed down an “emergency” decision permitting an anti-abortion Louisiana law to go into effect. Under this law, physicians cannot perform abortions unless they have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital — an increasingly common requirement masterminded by an anti-abortion group that drafts model bills for state legislatures. A challenge to a similar Texas law is currently pending before the justices.
The Supreme Court’s order temporarily suspends the Louisiana law, effectively preventing the Fifth Circuit’s Wednesday decision from taking effect. Only Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly dissented from the Court’s order.
Could this be a good sign for the Texas case that is currently being considered by SCOTUS?
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Texas case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, this Wednesday. During those arguments, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy appeared open to striking down the Texas law — although he also seemed concerned with a procedural issue unique to that case. The Court’s decision to halt the Louisiana law is another sign that the conservative-but-not-absolutist justice believes that laws like the ones in Texas and Louisiana may go too far.
I sure hope so. Meanwhile Louisiana’s economy is in desperate shape, thanks mostly to former Governor Bobby Jindal’s horrendous policies.
Wonkblog: Battered by drop in oil prices and Jindal’s fiscal policies, Louisiana falls into budget crisis.
Already, the state of Louisiana had gutted university spending and depleted its rainy-day funds. It had cut 30,000 employees and furloughed others. It had slashed the number of child services staffers, including those devoted to foster family recruitment, and young abuse victims for the first time were spending nights at government offices.
And then, the state’s new governor, John Bel Edwards (D), came on TV and said the worst was yet to come.
Edwards, in a prime-time address on Feb. 11, said he’d learned of “devastating facts” about the extent of the state’s budget shortfall and said that Louisiana was plunging into a “historic fiscal crisis.” Despite all the cuts of the previous years, the nation’s second-poorest state still needed nearly $3 billion — almost $650 per person — just to maintain its regular services over the next 16 months. Edwards gave the state’s lawmakers three weeks to figure out a solution, a period that expires March 9 with no clear answer in reach.
Louisiana stands at the brink of economic disaster. Without sharp and painful tax increases in the coming weeks, the government will cease to offer many of its vital services, including education opportunities and certain programs for the needy. A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be canceled. Students will lose scholarships. Select hospitals will close. Patients will lose funding for treatment of disabilities. Some reports of child abuse will go uninvestigated.
“Doomsday,” said Marketa Garner Walters, the head of Louisiana’s Department of Children and Family Services. If the state can’t raise any new revenue, her agency’s budget, like several others, will be slashed 60 percent.
“At that level,” she said in an interview, “the agency is unsustainable.”
Read more about the disastrous consequences of Jindal’s embrace of Koch brothers politics at the link.
Seneca Falls, 1848
The Tax Policy Center just released its analysis of Bernie Sanders’ tax plan, and it’s stunning. Here’s the abstract:
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposes significant increases in federal income, payroll, business, and estate taxes, and new excise taxes on financial transactions and carbon. New revenues would pay for universal health care, education, family leave, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and more. TPC estimates the tax proposals would raise $15.3 trillion over the next decade. All income groups would pay some additional tax, but most would come from high-income households, particularly those with the very highest income. His proposals would raise taxes on work, saving, and investment, in some cases to rates well beyond recent historical experience in the US.
You can read the entire report in a pdf at the link. From Bloomberg:
Senator Bernie Sanders’s proposals for sweeping tax hikes on businesses and individuals to bankroll universal health care, infrastructure and free college tuition would raise $15.3 trillion over the next decade but “substantially reduce incentives to save and invest in the United States,” according to a new policy study.
Sanders’s plan would “modestly raise” tax rates for average taxpayers and “raise them significantly for high-income taxpayers,” according to the report by the Tax Policy Center, a research group in Washington, D.C. that’s a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. The report is the last of the center’s analyses of leading presidential candidates’ tax plans.
While the plan — which would be sure to face opposition in a Republican-controlled Congress — could generate benefits by increasing “the nation’s investment in productive physical and human capital,” economists are unsettled on the question of just how much increases in tax rates spur or stymie economic growth. Sanders’s proposals “would be a great experiment,” said Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center.
Warren Gunnels, Sanders’s policy director, criticized the tax center’s findings. The analysis was conducted “in a vacuum without taking into account the savings the American people would gain” under the candidate’s proposal to replace private health-insurance with a publicly funded “Medicare-for-all” plan, he said. Gunnels cited an earlier study by Citizens for Tax Justice, which found that 95 percent of U.S. households would see their take-home pay increase under Sanders’s health plan.
Girls in a milk-bar in England, 1954
Kevin Drum on the analyses of the five candidates’ tax plans so far:
As before, the Republican plans are all the same: a tiny tax cut for the middle class as a sop to distract them from the enormous payday they give to the rich, and a massive hole in the deficit.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s plan is fairly modest. It leaves the middle class alone and taxes the rich a little more. Once her domestic proposals are paid for, it’s probably deficit neutral. Bernie Sanders is far more extreme. He’s basically the mirror image of the Republicans: he’d tax the middle class moderately more and soak the hell out of the rich. This would raise a tremendous amount of money, which he’d use to pay for his health care plan and his other domestic proposals. It’s impossible to say for sure how this would affect the deficit, but the evidence suggests that it would blow a pretty big hole.
It looks like Sanders is going to continue and even increase his attacks on Hillary Clinton even though she will likely have the nomination in hand by March 15. It doesn’t seem to bother him in the least that he’s hurting the Democratic Party and making it more difficult for their candidate to win the White House in November.
From The Hill: Sanders blames Clinton for Michigan’s declining middle class.
“If the people of Michigan want to make a decision about which candidate stood with workers against corporate America and against these disastrous trade agreements, that candidate is Bernie Sanders,” he said during a rally in Traverse City, according to a campaign statement obtained by NBC News.
Sanders argued that Clinton’s support of legislation like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had helped create the Great Lakes State’s crippling poverty.
“[NAFTA] is one of the reasons that the middle class in this country is disappearing,” the self-described Democratic socialist said.
“[NAFTA and other trade deals are] crafted by the big-money interests and corporations. Hillary Clinton was on the wrong side of many of these trade agreements.”
I love this photo of the 2013 class of women in the House.
Hillary did not hold political office when NAFTA passed Congress. I believe she opposed NAFTA as first lady, but to blame her for bill passed by a right wing Republican Congress and signed by her husband is both unfair and sexist. But that’s how Bernie rolls.
Markos laid down the law at Daily Kos yesterday, and the reaction was hilarious. As background, the front pagers have been supporting Hillary in 2016, but the majority of diarists have been pushing for Bernie, attacking Hillary using every right wing meme they can find and the most misogynistic language they can dream up. Read about it here: March 15, and Daily Kos transition to General Election footing.
The gist is that Kossacks have to stop attacking Hillary with right wing memes and ugly sexist language and if they are planning to vote for Donald Trump or Jill Stein if the Democrats nominate Hillary, they have to keep it to themselves. They can criticize Hillary, but only in positive ways that could help the party.
The response was predictable, with people posting “goodbye cruel world” diaries and threats to continue advocating for Bernie in any way they choose if if Kos bans them. It was like watching kids arguing on a playground or like the last GOP debate.
So . . . what are you hearing and reading about today? I’ll post a live blog later for discussion of the primary and caucus results.
Thursday Reads: Wacky Politics, Right and Left
Posted: March 3, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, wacky politics 36 Comments
Good Morning!!
It’s another wacky news day in the battles for the major party presidential nominations. In the Republican race, Donald Trump basically has already won; and now that it’s too late, some GOP leaders are trying to stop him. Today it’s 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who plans to denounce Trump today in a speech in Utah.
The Washington Post: Mitt Romney: ‘Trump is a phony, a fraud’ who is ‘playing the American public for suckers.’
In a forceful, top-to-bottom indictment of Trump, Romney will call on fellow Republicans to reject the billionaire businessman’s candidacy in an election “that will have profound consequences for the Republican Party and more importantly, for the country.”
“Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud,” Romney will say, according to a speech prepared for delivery Thursday at the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics. “His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.” ….
Several of Romney’s friends, allies and former donors are involved in efforts to stop Trump, launching and funding super PACs airing ads against the businessman, in Florida, Ohio and elsewhere….
According to Romney’s Thursday remarks, Trump’s “domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgement to be president. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.”
Trump, Romney is expected to say, “relishes any poll that reflects what he thinks of himself. But polls are also saying that he will lose to Hillary Clinton.”
Naturally, Trump hit back. From the LA Times:
Trump, in turn, dismissed Romney as “a stiff” who “didn’t know what he was doing” as the party’s candidate in 2012 and blew a chance to beat President Obama. “People are energized by what I’m saying” in the campaign and turning out in remarkable numbers to vote, Trump told NBC’s “Today.”
In ratcheting up the rhetoric, Romney cast his lot with a growing chorus of anxious Republican leaders — people many Trump supporters view as establishment figures — in trying to slow the New York real estate mogul’s momentum.
But it was unclear what effect his words would have with voters deeply frustrated by their party’s leaders. Trump questioned whether the party rank and file would listen to “a failed candidate” for whom “nobody came out to vote.”
Unfortunately for the Republican “establishment,” the Koch brothers aren’t going to help them bring Trump down, according to a Reuters exclusive: Koch brothers will not use funds to try to block Trump nomination.
The Koch brothers, the most powerful conservative mega donors in the United States, will not use their $400 million political arsenal to try to block Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s path to the presidential nomination, a spokesman told Reuters on Wednesday.
The decision by the billionaire industrialists is another setback to Republican establishment efforts to derail the New York real estate mogul’s bid for the White House, and follows speculation the Kochs would soon launch a “Trump Intervention.”
“We have no plans to get involved in the primary,” said James Davis, spokesman for Freedom Partners, the Koch brothers’ political umbrella group. He would not elaborate on what the brothers’ strategy would be for the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.
Three sources close to the Kochs said the brothers made the decision because they were concerned that spending millions of dollars attacking Trump would be money wasted, since they had not yet seen any attack on Trump stick.
The Koch brothers are also smarting from the millions of dollars they pumped into the failed 2012 Republican presidential bids of Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, the sources said.
On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders supporters are attacking Elizabeth Warren and threatening to primary her because she didn’t endorse their candidate before the Massachusetts primary.
TBogg at Raw Story: Elizabeth Warren fails to endorse Bernie and his fans freak the hell out on her Facebook page.
After Sanders of Vermont secured a primary win in the neighboring state of New Hampshire, progressives turned their starstruck eyes to Progressive Goddess Warren figuring she could seal the deal for Bernie in her home state primary with a Bernie endorsement.And then she didn’t. In fact, she stayed silent.
Cue Progressive Rageface
So they expressed their extreme dissatisfaction with Warren on her Facebook page on a perfectly anodyne post celebrating the appearance of the Fisk Jubilee Singers who performed “traditional spiritual and black American religious music” at Boston’s Symphony Hall back on Feb. 21.Whatever, stupid singers. Facebook is made for ranting.
And rant they did, ripping into the implicit heresy of Warren’s failure to endorse Sanders by letting her know in no uncertain terms that they are really really really REALLY disappointed. And worse.
As in:
Your unwillingness to endorse Bernie prior to Super Tuesday indicates to me that your fear of pressure from Hillary friends on Capitol Hill “trumps” your commitment to the progressive cause. I have lost faith in you and the DNC.
Elizabeth – is there ANY reason on God’s green earth that you’re sitting quiet in the corner while Bernie is awaiting your endorsement? Am I missing something here???
Is she really part of the establishment? How can she, as a representative of the people, as a self proclaimed progressive, not publicly endorse Bernie Sanders? Do you think she owes Clinton some political favors? hmmmm.
Read more lovely examples of Bernie-discourse at the Raw Story link.
As if that wasn’t enough, yesterday a Sanders supporter from Chicago posted a petition on Change.org to have former U.S. President Bill Clinton arrested for . . . something. More than 80,000 angry Bernie fans have signed it so far.
The Boston Globe: Did Bill Clinton violate election rules in Mass.?
Bill Clinton’s presence inside a polling location in Boston on Super Tuesday raised concerns about whether the former president violated state rules on election campaigning.
While stumping for his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton entered a polling station at the Holy Name Parish School’s gymnasium in West Roxbury early Tuesday.
It was there that he spoke with workers, bought a cup of coffee, and apparently took a photo with one woman, according to press pool reports.
A video clip showing Bill Clinton shaking hands with election clerks at Holy Name, alongside Mayor Martin J. Walsh, had some people on Twitter questioning the former president’s appearance indoors.
“Aren’t there rules about electioneering at the polling location?” one person wrote on Twitter, after seeing the video.
Hmmm . . . should the mayor be arrested too? He endorsed Hillary. Of course Secretary of State Maura Healy did too. Oh the unfairness of it all!
“He can go in, but he can’t approach voters,” Galvin said. “We just took the extra precaution of telling them because this is not a usual occurrence. You don’t usually get a president doing this.”
According to the Election Day Legal Summary on Galvin’s website, certain activities on Election Day are prohibited within polling locations and within 150 feet of polling places, including the “solicitation of votes for or against, or any other form of promotion or opposition of, any person or political party.”
Of course Bill wasn’t actively campaigning. He probably shouldn’t have done this, but he was accompanied by mayors in the places where it happened. Presumably, the mayors are the ones who brought Clinton inside. Maybe Bernie bros should make a citizens’ arrest. Or alternatively, maybe Sanders should just run a better campaign. Just a thought.
There’s another Republican debate tonight in Detroit, and we’ll of course have a live blog for discussion. The event begins at 9PM and will be hosted by Fox News. Moderators will be Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace.
More stories to check out, links only:
The Guardian: Donald Trump releases his healthcare plan in campaign statement.
The Washington Post: Pandemonium in the GOP: Some embrace Trump while others rush to stop him.
The New York Times: Debate Prep: Fact-Checking the GOP Candidates on Health Care.
Peter Beinart at The Atlantic: The Violence to Come: With Donald Trump on the brink of the GOP nomination, America is hurtling toward a schism unlike anything since the 1960s.
This is a great article by David Cay Johnston on Donald Trump’s income, wealth, and what might be in his tax returns: 9 Key Points About Trump’s Income Taxes (And Many More Questions).
Fortune: Why Donald Trump’s Tax Returns May Prove He’s Not That Rich.
Time: White House May Be Vetting Appeals Judge for Supreme Court Vacancy.
Christopher D. Benson at the Chicago Tribune: In ‘Spotlight,’ a lesson on covering race.
Shakesville: Hillary Sexism Watch Part Wev in an Endless Series.
Ugly story out of Boston:
The Boston Globe: US to investigate racial allegations at Boston Latin and Family of student threatened with lynching wants consequences in the case.
What stories are you following today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
jjlo
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
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