Thursday Reads
Posted: February 18, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 80 Comments 
Good Morning!!
MSNBC and Telemundo are holding a Democratic town hall tonight a in Las Vegas. I assume it will begin at 9PM ET, but none of the articles I’ve found state that explicitly.
At 8:00 Chris Hayes will host a pre-debate show that will include Rachel Maddow interviewing Joe Biden. I have no idea why MSNBC thinks that’s relevant. Maybe Maddow convinced Biden to endorse Bernie? That would be a typical 2016 MNSBC tactic.
The town hall will be moderated by Chuck Todd and José Díaz-Balart. Rachel Maddow will anchor the post-town-hall coverage beginning at 11PM ET. We’ll have a live blog for the town Hall tonight.
I completely missed the fact that CNN hosted a Republican town hall event with Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson last night, but I can’t say I’m sorry I missed it. It will continue tonight with Donald Trump, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush. It will be on at the same time as the MSNBC event, so you can click back and forth or just watch one of them. I just know I’ll be watching Hillary.
CNN on what happened last night: Ted Cruz prosecutes and Marco Rubio gets personal at town hall.
Cruz said that he “laughed out loud” when he learned of the cease-and-desist letter Donald Trump’s campaign sent his team for running an ad highlighting his opponent’s former position on abortion rights.
Cruz, Trump’s closest rival in the state, defended the ad in question, saying it largely uses Trump’s “own words” to demonstrate the businessman’s past stance in favor of abortion rights.
“It is quite literally the most ridiculous theory I’ve ever heard, that telling the voters what Donald Trump’s actual record is is deceitful and lying,” he told moderator Anderson Cooper.
Cruz and Rubio each told sob stories about being the children of immigrants.
Rubio, who preceded Cruz, spoke in poignant personal terms about race and growing up as a Cuban-American.
The Florida senator said that as a young child, he was “disturbed” when his family was taunted by kids in the neighborhood.
“Some of the neighborhood kids, older kids, one day were taunting my family, saying, ‘Why don’t you go back on your boat? Why don’t you go back to your country?'” he recalled.
Nevertheless, his parents “never raised us to feel that we were victims,” Rubio said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t deny that there are people in this country that have had a different experience, and we need to recognize that.”
I have quite a few links for you today, so I won’t be able to excerpt from all of them. I do have two that I want to share in detail though. First a wonderful piece at New York Magazine on Hillary’s speech in Harlem on Tuesday: How Hillary Clinton Won Harlem by Rembert Browne. Rep. Charles Rangel introduced Clinton:
There was one moment in Rangel’s introduction, however, when his presence — and his actions — were undeniably infectious to everyone in the room, especially the Black Harlemites: “It’s been brought to my attention that some people have been following the secretary of State around to disrupt rather than to instruct. Please be informed, you are in the village of Harlem.”
This was met with wild applause from the room, a big smile from Hillary, and a Holder whisper to Cuomo, followed by laughs from both men. It was one of the more street-cred-pumping moments this campaign has seen.You fuck with Hill, you fuck with Harlem. And it capped off a perfect warm-up act for Hillary — New York State, New York City, and Harlem supporting not only Hillary being the next president, but her as someone who could do a lot of good for black people.
On Hillary’s speech:
Then it hit you that Hillary was going to talk — at length — about black people, almost exclusively. She began with the normal rhetoric of just listing black people she knew, whom she spoke with, whom she associated herself with — but then it took a turn. When she began discussing Flint, the white woman Establishment presidential candidate said, “It’s a horrifying story, but what makes it even worse is that it’s not a coincidence that this was allowed to happen in a largely black, largely poor community. Just ask yourself: Would this have ever occurred in a wealthy white suburb of Detroit? Absolutely not.”
It was that moment of, Oh shit, did Hillary come to play today? I looked down my row, and multiple people had that same goddamn face etched on their faces. She was making points about privilege that minorities always make, but it packed such a different punch — even if President Obama had said it — because she was chastising her own privilege, putting the privilege of whiteness front and center.
The moment was a brief callback to the controversial opinion of scholar Michael Eric Dyson in his November 2015 New Republic piece, which said that Hillary Clinton will do more for black people than Barack Obama. And like Dyson further argues in his book, The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America, Obama uniquely had to comply with the expectations of whites. That’s not something Clinton will ever have to deal with to the same degree.
On Hillary’s much-publicized coughing fit:
And then, out of nowhere, as she was really peaking, and the increasingly loud cheers in the room suggested that these points were not only felt but appreciated, she had one of those Hillary coughing fits.
It’s like watching someone with the hiccups; you don’t really know when they’re going to end. But herein lies the beauty of the goodwill Hillary had built up in the room — the beauty of black people being an expressive bunch: The room started clapping loudly, almost to mask her coughs until she was done, to get her through this stretch. People were acting like it was church, when some member of the congregation gets up to speak but suddenly gets emotional or nervous. Shouts of “Take your time, Hill” and “You’re okay” rang from all corners of the room. After a few coughs, Hillary squeaked out, “I’ve got too much to say,” which was met with laughter. When some of the coughing halted, Hillary softly said a few sentences with her voice at about 10 percent strength, and after every few sentences, people cheered her on. There were even some “HILLARY, HILLARY” chants. I couldn’t believe it.
This was followed by a second wave of coughs, more cheers and supportive messages from the crowd, which ended with Hillary saying, “Thank you, you’re a great amen chorus.” And a few minutes later, her voice was at full strength again. She was back.
I loved this article! Please go read the whole thing.
So we’ve learned over the past few weeks that Bernie Sanders is a dirty campaigner, despite his promises to run a positive campaign in 2016. He hasn’t done that. He has gone negative almost from the start, repeatedly implying that Clinton is corrupt and in the pocket of Wall Street.
Sanders has been getting away with a lot bad behavior, because the corporate media tends to ignore it and focus on trying to bring Hillary down. But they did report on the Sanders campaign stealing voter data from Clinton and then suing the DNC after getting caught. The media also reported on the incidents of Sanders staffers pretending to be members of the Culinary Workers Union in order to get into private dining rooms and talk to union workers.
There have been a number of articles on the Sanders campaign repeatedly using ads and flyers to claim endorsements they never got. There have also been reports from Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada of Sanders campaign buses blocking entrances to Clinton campaign events.
In Nevada, campaign workers have reported on Twitter that the Sanders campaign is using Karl Rove tactics such as calling voters and telling them that Clinton is under investigation by the FBI, calling Republican voters and asking them to caucus for Bernie, and knocking on doors at 11PM and pretending to be Clinton canvassers.
Apparently this is nothing new for Sanders. He has a history of nasty campaign tactics. Dakinikat sent me this article from US News: Foes, Past and Present, Say Sanders Uses Same Tactics He Criticizes. “They say backroom deals, deceptive ads and political manipulation are in the Sanders toolkit.” A couple of examples from the story:
This year, the Sanders campaign has brushed off accusations of deceptive advertising – implied endorsements from the Des Moines [Iowa] Register, The [New Hampshire] Valley News, the AARP, the League of Conservation voters and veterans belonging to the American Legion – as mistakes.
But in his 1986 campaign challenging Gov. Madeleine Kunin, Sanders was accused of making similar insinuations, distributing a flyer that implied the endorsement of the Rutland Herald, and of sending a letter that suggested it had the support of the Vermont National Organization for Women.
Sanders’ 2006 Senate campaign was also accused of running so-called “push polls,” a tactic considered deceptive in which a partisan caller, masquerading as an independent pollster, asks a potential voter leading questions with the intention of spreading negative information about an opponent.
Sanders also has a history of using the Democratic Party to get money and other perks and then using “back-room deals” to stab real Democrats in the back. Read more about it at U.S. News.
More news, links only:
New York Review of Books: The Next Justice? It’s Not Up to Us, by Garry Wills.
The Atlantic: The Republicans’ Scalia Hysteria, by Garrett Epps.
New York Times: The Potential for the Most Liberal Supreme Court in Decades.
The Boston Globe: Scalia didn’t pay for his stay at the ranch where he died. So who did?
Ben Rhodes at Medium: President Obama is going to Cuba. Here’s why.
Mother Jones: The Sanders Campaign Has Crossed Into Neverland.
Washington Post: Here’s what you need to understand about how Hillary Clinton views race, by Paul Waldman (I liked this one a lot!).
Slate: MSNBC’s Town Hall With Donald Trump Was Disgraceful.
Mediaite: Literal Holy Crap: Glenn Beck Says Scalia’s Death Part of God’s Plan to Elect Ted Cruz, Tommy Christopher.
Forbes: FBI Can Use Dead Suspects’ Fingerprints To Open iPhones — It Might Be Cops’ Best Bet.
The Daily Beast: Apple Unlocked iPhones for the Feds 70 Times Before.
Huffington Post: Still Grateful for My Abortion, almost 40 Years Later.
Sady Doyle at Quartz: Beware of the angry white male public intellectual.
What stories are you following today?
Tuesday Reads: Bernie Sanders, Demagogue
Posted: February 16, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 Democratic nomination fight, Bernie Sanders, demagogues, dirty tricks, Hillary Clinton, ratfucking, smear campaign 66 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
Once again, I had to give myself several pep talks before I could get started writing this post. The attacks on Hillary Clinton from all sides are getting louder and meaner, but the nastiest rat-fucking is coming from people who claim to be “progressives.” Republicans might as well just sit watch and watch, because Bernie Sanders and his supporters are doing their work with incredible zeal.
I wish the DNC had just let Bernie Sanders run a third party campaign. I really believe trying to hand the White House to Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. Maybe he thinks that would trigger his livelong fantasy of a “political revolution.”
I know you all have seen these quotes from Sanders and his attack dog Tad Devine in the NYT by now, but I’m going to post it here again because it is simply shocking and unprecedented for a Democrat to attack another Democratic candidate in this manner.
But Mr. Sanders said the idea that voters would see Mrs. Clinton as better suited to win in November and do battle with a petulant Republican Congress was “quite a stretch,” adding, “There are people supporting Secretary Clinton who will spin anything for any reason.”
His advisers used the vacancy to highlight Mr. Sanders’s promise to overhaul the campaign finance system. Both he and Mrs. Clinton have vowed to appoint only justices who would overturn the 2010 Citizens United ruling, which allowed for unlimited political contributions. But Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Mr. Sanders, pointed to Mrs. Clinton’s support from a “super PAC” and her acceptance of donations from Wall Street executives.
“She cannot be trusted to appoint someone to the Supreme Court who will take the issue of campaign finance seriously,” he said.
Nevada supporters of Hillary Clinton have reported on Twitter about numerous dirty tricks on the part of the Sanders campaign. Today, @stylistkavin who describes himself as a “Proud SuperVolunteer” for Hillary has been posting about some really slimy behavior by the Sanders campaign, if true.
https://twitter.com/stylistkavin/status/699621020588646400
Kavin said he listend to this call himself. He is also reporting that Sanders supporters are knocking on people’s doors late at night and pretending to be canvassing for Clinton. Voters in Nevada have received calls from the Sanders campaign saying that Hillary is under investigation by the FBI. Finally, I’ve heard that Sanders people are calling. Republicans and asking them to vote for Bernie.
Obviously none of this has been verified, and I don’t expect the mainstream media to investigate; but these reports definitely fit a pattern of dirty tricks on the part of the Sanders campaign going back to Iowa.
Peter Daou: Bernie’s Dark Side: The Reckless War on Hillary’s Integrity.
Democrats have two candidates. Assume for the sake of argument that they each have a 50% chance of winning the nomination. And assume the Democratic nominee will face someone like Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in the general election.
With so much on the line, why is one of them waging an all-out war on the other’s integrity?
Why on earth would Bernie Sanders run a campaign premised on the destruction of Hillary’s public image?
As we’ve written: Hillary let Bernie off the hook in the last debate. She could have asked him a simple question: Does he believe President Obama is corrupt because of financial industry contributions? It’s a yes or no question that is central to the 2016 race.
Does Bernie think President Obama is compromised by Wall Street contributions? If so, he should have the courage to say it. If not, he shouldn’t imply that a female candidate would be influenced by donations or speaking fees. There’s a word for that.
The endless drumbeat that Hillary is dishonest is now driven directly from the top of Bernie’s campaign. The candidate doesn’t say it in so many words, but the inference is crystal clear. It is an “artful smear” where any mention of the “establishment” or Wall Street is a Pavlovian trigger designed to impugn Hillary’s character. The Wall Street Dog Whistle.
No matter how lofty and inspiring Bernie’s message, no matter how much he motivates younger voters, it is deeply unjust – and frankly, reckless – to run a campaign premised on the destruction of Hillary’s character through false innuendo. And make no mistake, Bernie’s campaign message and the behavior of his supporters have become less about something and moreagainst someone. His path to victory runs right through Hillary’s integrity. It’s a deeply regrettable turn of events in an election where Bernie had initially vowed to stay positive and issue-driven.
Daou may be biased toward Hillary, but he speaks the truth.
We can only hope that voters in Nevada and South Carolina will see through Bernie’s smear campaign. I never thought 2016 could get worse than 2008, but it is much worse. I just hope Sanders and his progs don’t force a repeat of what happened in Florida in 2000. The only difference between Sander and Ralph Nader at this point is that Sanders has access to DNC voter data.
There are a few journalists questioning the Sanders campaign’s tactics, but I don’t know if that will filter down to voters who get most of their information from TV and newspapers.
From Buzzfeed: Sanders Campaign Missteps With Influential Nevada Union And DREAMers Anger Activists.
Against the tightening race in Nevada, the Sanders campaign is still trying to catch up organizationally — and the battle for every Latino and union voter has become critical. At a union rally outside Palace Station Hotel on Friday, staffers for both campaigns were handing out leaflets. Some Hispanics approached by the Sanders campaign could be heard saying, “Si ya estoy con el,” or “Yes, I’m already with him.” Others, mainly Latinas, said they’re with “La Hillary.”
Behind the scenes, the Sanders campaign has angered people inside the Culinary Union — in instances both reported and previously unreported. The campaign has also unleashed demolition derby tactics on the DREAMers who have endorsed Hillary Clinton. Both have given the battle for Nevada a harder edge, and made activists, members of the union, and supporters of both candidates question the Sanders campaign’s tactics in the key state.
There have been concerns that the campaign has at times not used union labor. There was the time Sanders was set to stay at a non-union hotel, a big no-no among people close to labor groups, and Yvanna Cancela, the union’s political director called the campaign with a list of hotels he could stay at instead. Sanders never stayed at the non-union hotel. (“I would have done that for any campaign as a courtesy,” Cancela said, when asked to confirm it happened.)
There was the time — last week — when a reporter called Culinary officials to ask: Was it true that Bernie Sanders had personally convinced the powerful Nevada union to stay out of the race and not endorse Clinton, in effect helping him? The union official, according to someone with knowledge of the conversation, said no and asked where the reporter had gotten that information. It came from the Sanders campaign, the reporter said.
In the most publicized instance, in late January, two Sanders staffers wore Culinary Union pins to gain access to employee-only areas in four hotels in an effort to persuade union members to support Sanders. The union was “disappointed and offended,” leader Geo Arguello-Kline said at the time.
Read more at the link about Sanders’ attacks on DREAMers.
From Salon, a mild but interesting pro-Bernie critique: The Sanders campaign is flirting with danger: The two big warning signs coming out of last week’s debate.
It would be extremely premature to say that the media’s begun to turn against Sen. Bernie Sanders. But coming out of Thursday’s Democratic debate, there were signs that, on both the superficial and the substantive level, the media’s treatment of the Sanders campaign is about to lose some of its (relatively) soft touch….
During one of the few tense moments of PBS’s generally “chill” debate, Sanders, responding to Clinton’s explanation of how she will use her “political capital” once she is “in the White House,” sniped, “Secretary Clinton, you’re not in the White House yet.” The remark inspired some audible expressions of displeasure from the audience, and reminded some media observers of Obama’s “likable enough” moment in 2008….
Sanders has profited from the media’s lack of interest in challenging his self-presentation as a kind of non-politician. He’s similarly benefitted from his mostly-unchallenged self-presentation as a kind of happy warrior — angry and loud, yes, but in a lovably earnest kind of way. The Clinton campaign has desperately tried to get the media to challenge this image. Sanders has to be careful not to do it for them.
That brings us to the more substantive criticism that’s dogged Sanders in the past few days; and it’s one, I’d argue, that is more likely to resonate if the campaign press is already becoming less sympathetic toward Sanders on a personal level. It had to do with one of Sanders’ signature big, bold promises — namely, that he’d all but end mass incarceration before wrapping up his first term….As Mark Kleiman, Leon Neyfakh, John Pfaff, Chris Hayes, Tim Murphy and German Lopez all noted, this is not simply a very ambitious goal. It is absurd, outlandish, ridiculous, disconnected — you name it. And not for the usual reasons that people say such things about Sanders’ promises, either. Not because it’s hard to imagine, but because it is impossible, full stop.
I believe that we have got to pass comprehensive immigration reform, something that I strongly supported. I believe that we have got to move toward a path toward citizenship. I agree with President Obama who used executive orders to protect families because the Congress, the House was unable or refused to act. And in fact I would go further….
“Somebody who is very fond of the president, agrees with him most of the time, I disagree with his recent deportation policies. And I would not support those. Bottom line is a path towards citizenship for 11 million undocumented people, if Congress doesn’t do the right thing, we use the executive orders of the president.”
This seems to come close to a promise to use executive action to defer the deportation of all of the undocumented immigrants who would be legalized under the legislative proposals Democrats have championed. (The Senate comprehensive immigration bill aspires to place 11 million on a path to legalization, but in practice would lead to legalization for closer to nine million people, by some estimates.) And indeed, this is what immigration advocates think they heard Sanders say last night….
In saying this, Sanders confirms that he believes the president has significantly more executive authority to grant deportation relief than President Obama believes he has. Obama’s most recent executive action — which is being legally challenged by two dozen states and will come before the Supreme Court this spring — seeks to defer the deportations of some five million people who are the parents of children who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. But the administration deliberately excluded parents of DREAMers — people who were brought here illegally as children — because administration lawyers thought going that far would be legally questionable.
It seems clear to me at this point that Bernie Sanders is every bit as much of a demagogue as Trump or Cruz. He is making promises he can never fulfill; should be get the Democratic nomination, he may end up breaking the hearts of his young followers and driving them away from politics altogether.
I’ll share more links in the comment thread. What stories are you following today?
Lazy Saturday Reads: Media Belatedly Begins Vetting Bernie
Posted: February 13, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Politics | Tags: 6th Democratic Debate 2016, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Income Inequality, Racism, tone-deaf, Wall Street billionaires 47 Comments
Good Morning!!
Before I get started, I want to thank Delphyne for posting the above photo on Facebook. I just couldn’t resist it. Now to the news of the day.
After his big win in the New Hampshire primary, Bernie Sanders is finally beginning to get some serious vetting from the media. It will be interesting to see how he handles the pressure.
Last night, this story popped up at The New York Times: FEC Tells Sanders Campaign That Some Donors May Have Given Too Much. The FEC found more than 100 “small contributors” had given more than the legal limit of $2,700 to Sanders’ campaign. It’s not a huge deal according to the Times, but to me it seems to be part of a pattern of dishonesty on the part of the Bernie’s campaign.
Here’s a more critical take on this story from the Daily News Bin: FEC launches inquiry into hundreds of “excessive” contributions to Bernie Sanders campaign.
In what the FEC has titled “Excessive, Prohibited, and Impermissible Contributions” to the Bernie Sanders campaign, it lists nearly a thousand contributions from hundreds of donors, some of them repeat offenders. Sanders is accused of failing to provide adequate detail on who the contributors are beyond their names, which campaigns are required to make their best effort to do under federal law. The FEC is also informing Sanders that he “may have to refund the excessive amount” if he can’t adequately explain where all the money came from….
The FEC report also accuses the Bernie Sanders campaign of widespread “incorrectly reported” reimbursements for travel purposes and other costs. Sanders has been warned that if he cannot explain the stunningly long laundry list of violations, “failure to adequately respond by the response date noted above could result in an audit or enforcement action.” Read the full FEC report.
Then there’s this from the Wall Street Journal: Sanders’s Record, Filings Show Benefits From Super PACs, Links to Wall Street Donors.
In nearly every speech, Bernie Sanders reminds voters that he doesn’t have a super PAC, doesn’t want money from Wall Street and rejects establishment politics.
Yet the Vermont senator has benefited from at least $1.5 million in backing from super PACs and from political groups that don’t have to fully disclose their donors, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission….
He may not have formed one of his own, but Mr. Sanders is getting help from National Nurses United for Patient Protection, a super PAC that gets its money from the nation’s largest nurses’ union, with nearly 185,000 members.
The union doesn’t have to disclose its donors, but a spokesman said the super PAC money comes exclusively from members’ dues. Representatives from the union have frequently joined the senator at events and this week launched a bus tour across South Carolina ahead of the state’s Feb. 27 primary. At an Iowa campaign stop, Mr. Sanders thanked the group for being “one of the sponsors” of his campaign.
In a five-minute video posted online by the nurses union in October, Mr. Sanders said he was “honored” to have the union’s support and highlighted his work on its members’ behalf.
The rest of the article provides details on Sanders’ fundraising from big donors to the DSCC, which has supported in his House and Senate campaigns.
“He was just like any other senator hobnobbing with lawyers and lobbyists from DC,” said Rebecca Geller, a Washington attorney who attended with her husband, a financial services lobbyist. Ms. Geller, who has donated to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, said Mr. Sanders was happy to take photos with her family. “My kids have fond memories of him hanging out by the hot tub.”
In addition, Sanders’ claims in debates and other forums are getting more fact checking and scrutiny. Here’s one example from The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler: Bernie Sanders’s claim that Hillary Clinton objected to meeting with ‘our enemies.’ This is refeering to the exchange in which Sanders claimed that Clinton said that Obama’s proposal to talk to Iran’s leaders without preconditions was troubling. Kessler:
Some arguments never die. For readers who may not recall a pivotal exchange between then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, here’s what Clinton and Sanders are arguing about.
In a debate on July 24, 2007 hosted by CNN, a question came to the candidates from YouTube:
In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since. In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?
Obama took the question first and answered emphatically yes:
I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.
Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward.
And I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them. We’ve been talking about Iraq — one of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they’re going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses.
They have been acting irresponsibly up until this point. But if we tell them that we are not going to be a permanent occupying force, we are in a position to say that they are going to have to carry some weight, in terms of stabilizing the region.
Closeup of ginger cat lying on old book near spectacles on books background
Then Clinton responded, saying that before any such high-level meetings, diplomatic groundwork first would be necessary:
Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are.
I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don’t want to make a situation even worse. But I certainly agree that we need to get back to diplomacy, which has been turned into a bad word by this administration.
And I will purse very vigorous diplomacy.
And I will use a lot of high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way. But certainly, we’re not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.
As president, Obama took the path that Clinton had recommended.
During the PBS debate on Thursday night, Sanders tried to explain away his no vote on a comprehensive immigration bill that was sponsored by Ted Kennedy and supported by most Democrats. Matt Yglesias responded at Vox: What Bernie Sanders told Lou Dobbs in 2007 about why he opposed the Kennedy-McCain immigration bill.
In Thursday night’s debate, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders briefly exchanged words over his vote against the 2007 comprehensive immigration reform bill that John McCain and Ted Kennedy wrote and that both Clinton and Barack Obama supported, while Sanders and most Republicans plus some Democrats were opposed. Sanders cited as his motive opposition to the bill’s guest worker provisions, which he said were bad because a Southern Poverty Law Center investigation had likened conditions in existing agricultural guest worker programs to slavery.
It’s interesting to compare this with what he said about the bill at the time on Lou Dobbs’s show. Dobbs, for those who’ve forgotten, was a business news broadcaster who refashioned himself as a somewhat Trump-esque anti-immigration, anti–trade deal populist in the mid-aughts.
If you watch the interview you’ll see that Sanders isn’t particularly interested in working conditions for guest workers and he’s also not narrowly focused on the H2 programs the SPLC report was about — he also talks about H1 programs for skilled workers that, whatever their flaws, are clearly not slavery.
Dobbs is opposed to the whole idea of “amnesty,” which Sanders was not, but Sanders also doesn’t argue with Dobbs about it. Sanders doesn’t really say anything about the costs and benefits to immigrants themselves — whether that’s people who’ve been living illegally in the United States or potential future guest workers — one way or another. His focus is on the idea that “what happens in Congress is to a very significant degree dictated by big-money interests” and that “I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are now.”
Finally, Sanders got himself in some hot water at the Black citizens’ forum in Minneapolis yesterday. Politico reported on the meeting and Twitter went nuts.
Sanders criticism grows pointed at black community forum
MINNEAPOLIS – A warm, welcoming African-American crowd grew increasingly frustrated with Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday evening, complaining that he’s too scared to talk about specifically black issues.
Sanders was here for “A Community Forum on Black America,” introduced by the local congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison, one of Sanders’ only two endorsers in the House, But unlike many of the packed rallies that have greeted Sanders in other parts of the country, neither the folding chairs nor the bleachers in the gym here at Patrick Henry High School were full….
Questions from a panel and the crowd drilled down on felon voting rights — which Sanders said he strongly supported restoring — but turned to environmental racism and reparations for slavery, with demands for more exact answers about actions the candidate for the Democratic nomination would take if he was elected president.
The tension quickly rose over his 40-minute appearance, with moderator Anthony Newby repeatedly calling for “specific redress.”
“I know you’re scared to say ‘black,’ I know you’re scared to say ‘reparations,’” said Felicia Perry, a local entrepreneur and artist on the stage. “Can’t you please specifically talk about black people?”
Sanders responded:
“I said ‘black’ 50 times,” he said. “That’s the 51st time.”
But, Sanders said, the issues at hand are more about economics than race.
“It’s not just black,” he said. “It’s Latino. In some rural areas, it is white.”
WTF?! Could this guy be any more tone deaf? Even though he has to know he needs black voters to win Southern primaries, Sanders just can’t break away from his obsession with Wall Street billionaires and income inequality to see that racism is a separate though related issue that affects how people fare in our culture.
You can read about the exchange in a little more detail in this CNN article: Bernie Sanders faces frustrated crowd at race forum in Minneapolis. The story ends with this interesting description of the chaos:
The forum finished inconclusively when activist Clyde Bellecourt commandeered the microphone to talk about issues relating to Native Americans being what he called “completely forgotten” by the federal government.
His statement drew on for several heated and emotional minutes as moderators asked him to get to his question and Bellecourt declared, “If you have to carry me out of here, carry me out of here!”
Sanders rose from his chair, thanked the crowd and scurried offstage.
Sanders simply doesn’t understand racism. As a white person, I can’t claim a deep understanding either, but at least I get that racism is a powerful force keeping Black people down and the problem won’t be solved by breaking up big banks or raising taxes on the wealthy and middle class to pay for free college and single payer health care.
Sanders’ tunnel vision on the income inequality issue blinds him to the systemic effects of racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice, which interact with economics but cannot be solely explained or remedied by economic policies.
This attitude goes along with Sanders’ odd statement at the debate when he was asked what he would do about systemic racism. From USA Today:
The African-American community lost half of their wealth as a result of the Wall Street collapse, says Sanders. When “you have unbelievable rates of incarceration,” which leaves children without their parents, “clearly we are looking at institutional racism” and an economy in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, he says. Race relations would be better under a Sanders presidency, he says, because he’d create millions of jobs for low-income kids “so they’re not hanging out on street corners.”
How does Bernie expect to pull in Black voters when he claims he would do better on this issue than the first Black American president and when he characterizes Black kids as “hanging out on street corners.” Good grief. Kids hang out on street corners in my middle class town and the even wealthier communities nearby. Kids in cities tend to do that.
Bernie just doesn’t get it, and he doesn’t even seem able to tailor his message to groups whose votes he desperately needs.
What stories are you following today? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a great weekend!
Thursday Reads: I’ve Had it with the Haters.
Posted: February 11, 2016 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Cliven Bundy, FBI, Hillary Clinton, Hillary haters, Oregon standoff 47 Comments
Good Morning!!
This morning I feel as if I’ve gone through a long dark tunnel and come out the other side. I’ve finally accepted that Hillary Clinton will be continue to be attacked unmercifully by the media and her opponents on both the right and left forever. I’m sure the attacks will continue if she gets the Democratic nomination and even if she becomes President of the United States. I don’t care anymore.
Can you imagine if Bernie Sanders–or Donald Trump for that matter–were being attacked as personally and as relentlessly as Hillary is? They would both be screaming bloody murder. In fact, they both whine and complain at the slightest criticism. Hillary is strong as steel. She never gives up. She will fight for the presidency so she can fight for us from the most powerful position in the world. She will fight for women and children around the world as she did for four years as Secretary of State.
I’ll stand with her to the end, through thick and thin. I’ve had it with the haters, especially the fake “progressive” ones.
There is another Democratic debate tonight, this one in Milwaukee. Someone will start a live blog to discuss it later tonight.
Now to the news.
Oregon Standoff
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton greets the children of U.S. Embassy employees at the embassy in Tokyo Sunday, April 17, 2011. Clinton is on a brief visit to Tokyo intended as a morale boost to the crucial U.S. ally. (AP Photo/Saul Loeb, Pool)
The Oregonian reports: Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy arrested by FBI in Portland.
Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who touched off one armed showdown with federal authorities and applauded another started in Oregon by his sons, was arrested late Wednesday at Portland International Airport and faces federal charges related to the 2014 standoff at his ranch.
Bundy, 74, was booked into the downtown Multnomah County jail at 10:54 p.m.
He faces a conspiracy charge to interfere with a federal officer — the same charge lodged against two of his sons, Ammon and Ryan, for their role in the Jan. 2 takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns. He also faces weapons charges.
The Bundy Ranch Facebook page reported Cliven Bundy was surrounded by SWAT officers and detained after his arrival from Nevada.
He was arrested at 10:10 p.m., authorities said.
The Bundy patriarch had traveled to Portland with plans to go on to Burns, where four occupiers had been the remaining holdouts of the refuge occupation.
Bundy has been under federal scrutiny since his ranch standoff with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. He has not paid grazing fees on federal land and he owes the agency $1 million in unpaid fees and penalties. He and militia supporters confronted federal agents who had impounded Bundy’s cattle that were found on federal property.
The FBI is getting more confrontational with the occupiers Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Again from The Oregonian: Oregon standoff: FBI moves in on last refuge occupiers. The story begins with two recent updates:
UPDATE: 5 a.m. THURSDAY Franklin Graham, North Carolina evangelist, said on his Facebook page this morning that he was on his way to Oregon to help end the refuge standoff. He said he was on the phone with the remaining four last night as the FBI closed in. He expects to reach the refuge around 7 a.m.
UPDATE 10 p.m.: The live stream that broadcast online what appears to be the last stage of the refuge occupation stopped after more than five hours. The phone feed ended as the occupiers headed to their night camp, preparing to surrender Thursday morning. They said they have a promise that the encircling FBI agents would leave them alone overnight.
BURNS – FBI agents in armored vehicles moved in Wednesday night on the last four occupiers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, hemming them into their rough camp and insisting they put down their guns and surrender.
The occupiers rejected the demands for hours before one of them said they will turn themselves in at a checkpoint once a national religious figure and a Nevada state legislator arrive. It was scheduled for 8 a.m. Thursday, but it wasn’t clear if the deal involved all of the four occupiers.
The standoff played out for hours through an open phone line being streamed to YouTube. At one point, an estimated 60,000 people listened as the occupiers displayed anger and panic, prayed with those on the phone and yelled at the FBI agents surrounding them.
They’re the remainders of a group of anti-government militants who took over the wildlife refuge headquarters Jan. 2. The four have been on their own since Jan. 28 — two days after the occupation leaders were arrested on a highway north of Burns and protest spokesman Robert “LaVoy” Finicum was shot and killed.
Those left at the refuge 30 miles southeast of Burns are David Fry, 27, of the Cincinnati area, Jeff Banta, 46, of Elko, Nevada, Sean Anderson, 47, and his wife Sandy, 48, of Riggins, Idaho.
Sanders Campaign Updates
CNN has finally reported on the Sanders campaign’s vile treatment of a Nevada DREAMer: Sanders campaign touts another endorsement that didn’t happen.
Brenda Romero, a Nevada student leader and DREAMer that Bernie Sanders’ campaign touted as someone who endorsed their campaign, tells CNN she never endorsed the Vermont senator and is backing Hillary Clinton.
Romero said Monday she had agreed to be part of Sanders’ Nevada Latino Steering Committee, but that she never endorsed the senator.
Sanders released the list of activists and elected officials on his Latino committee in January.
“Tomorrow, a group of highly respected community leaders will announce their support for Bernie Sanders for president,” said a statement about the press conference.
The list included Lucy Flores, former Nevada state assemblywoman and congressional candidate, and Romero, a undocumented DREAMer and class president at College of Southern Nevada.
“I didn’t agree to such an endorsement,” Romero said Monday, noting that while she agreed to be part of the steering committee, she was told that the role would be advising the “campaign and potentially Sen. Sanders about immigration issues.”
The Sanders campaign retaliated by releasing private emails between Romero and a Sanders staffer.
In an emails provided by the Sanders campaign, Romero did agree to be part of the steering committee, telling a Sanders staffer that she would be “honored to be part of this.” ….
Nowhere in the email exchange, though, does Romero agree to endorse Sanders. In fact, Romero asked not to have her title included in any campaign lists because as student body president, she has “to stay neutral to candidates.”
But because Romero has grown frustrated with the Sanders campaign, she said Monday that she is backing Clinton.
“I believe that Hillary has my back, and that she is the only candidate capable of accomplishing things in the face of Republican obstruction,” Clinton said. “She will get things done for immigrants families.” ….
I’m also disappointed by the attacks from senior staffers on the Sanders campaign on Astrid Silva,” she said. “It shows how disconnected they are from Nevada, and they should apologize to her. There is no room for hate between DREAMers in this campaign.”
In other Sanders News, there was quite a reaction on Twitter yesterday when the United Nurses superpac that supports Bernie tweeted that it was holding an education session in South Carolina for Sanders supporters on how to talk to black women. There wasn’t a single black woman in attendance. The tweets was resoundingly mocked and then deleted, but there are screenshots all over the place.
If you search for “how to talk to black women” on Twitter, you’ll see some hilarious responses.
Clinton Campaign News
Yesterday, President Obama essentially endorsed Hillary for the Democratic nomination. He had already indicated as much in an interview with Politico’s Glenn Thrush in January.
Huffington Post: Obama Speech Sure Sounds Like A Tacit Endorsement Of Clinton.
President Barack Obama on Wednesday gave a rousing speech on America’s political culture, decrying the influence of big money, encouraging compromise and warning people against believing in absolutes from either party.
“Trying to find common ground [with Republicans] doesn’t make me less of a Democrat or less of a progressive,” Obama told an audience in Springfield, Illinois. “It means I’m trying to get stuff done.”
The speech was delivered the day after two ideologues, billionaire Donald Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), won the New Hampshire primaries by harnessing voter anger at the perceived “establishment” in politics. But Obama’s words on Wednesday sounded like a tacit endorsement of his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton….
Obama, who appointed Clinton his first secretary of state after defeating her in the 2008 Democratic primary, seemed on Wednesday to clearly fall on the Clinton side of the ideological divide.
He said that labels, such as “not a real progressive” — which Sanders has used against Clinton — are damaging to the national discourse.
“So when I hear voices in either party boast of their refusal to compromise as an accomplishment in and of itself, I’m not impressed,” Obama said. “All that does is prevent what most Americans would consider actual accomplishments, like fixing roads, educating kids, passing budgets, cleaning our environment, making our streets safe.”
And from Politico: Jay Carney: Obama wants Clinton to win.
“I think the president has signaled while still remaining neutral that he supports Secretary Clinton’s candidacy and would prefer to see her as the nominee,” Carney said on CNN Wednesday following coverage of the president’s speech to the Illinois state Senate in Springfield.
Obama will not “officially embrace her unless and until it’s clear she is going to be the nominee,” Carney said.
“I think he is maintaining that tradition of not intervening in a party primary,” he added. “But I don’t think there is any doubt that he wants Hillary to win the nomination and believes she would be the best candidate in the fall and the most effective as president in carrying forward what he has achieved.”
Today the Congressional Black Caucus will endorse Hillary. Politico: Congressional Black Caucus PAC to endorse Clinton. Bernie’s supporters are busy tweeting that the CBC doesn’t represent Black people, lol.
The Congressional Black Caucus PAC will formally endorse Hillary Clinton on Thursday.
It’s a coup for the Democratic presidential contender, as many of the black lawmakers can help leverage support for Clinton in African-American communities that will be critical during her primary battle against Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), a former CBC chair said the former Secretary of State is a better candidate for African-Americans on national security and economic security.
“It is really, really clear to people who are paying attention at this point that she probably knows more about how to move us forward,” said Fudge. “As I look at her history, she has worked with people who are undeserved for her entire career…she’s been talking about this for her entire life. I’ve only heard about it from Sanders in the last year.”
This endorsement has been planned for some time, but many in the media are reporting that the CBC is rushing to rescue a struggling Hillary Clinton. ROFLOL!
Sen. James Clyburn has not yet officially endorsed Hillary, but he made no objection to the CBD endorsement. He is reportedly thinking about endorsing her soon, and says he could never endorse Sanders.
What stories are you following today?
Live Blog/Open Thread: New Hampshire Primary Results
Posted: February 9, 2016 Filed under: U.S. Politics | Tags: Exit Polls, live blog, New Hampshire Primary results, open thread 138 Comments
Here we Go!
New Hampshire is still voting, but the results will be coming in soon. As promised, here’s a fresh thread to discuss the outcomes on both sides, but feel free to discuss anything you wish. This is an open thread. Information is coming in from exit polls.
According to CNN, half of NH voters decided on a candidate in the past couple few days, just as I have been saying all along. CNN reports: Early exit polls: N.H. voters concerned with economy, government.
The early results of the New Hampshire exit polls find a Republican race centered on discontent with both the federal government and the Republican Party, where voters’ preferences remained unsettled until the final days of the contest.
Nearly half of GOP voters interviewed as they left their polling places around New Hampshire Tuesday said they didn’t make a final decision about whom to support until the last few days, and about two-thirds said recent debates were important to their choice.
Republican voters expressed deep worries about both the economy (three-quarters were very worried) and the threat of terrorism (6-in-10 very worried). About 9-in-10 said they were dissatisfied with the federal government, including about 4-in-10 who were angry about the way it was working. And for many, the dissatisfaction extends to the GOP itself. Half said they felt betrayed by politicians from the Republican Party, and about the same share said they wanted the next president to be from outside the political establishment.
Though Democrats voting on Tuesday were less apt to say they felt betrayed by their party or to express anger with the federal government, about three-quarters said they were worried about the economy. About 4-in-10 said they thought life for the next generation of Americans would be worse than life today, and 9-in-10 said they thought the nation’s economy favored the wealthy.
Still, Democrats who went to the polls Tuesday — to vote in a race featuring two seasoned politicians — were more apt than Republicans to say they wanted the next president to have experience in politics, only about one-quarter said they preferred a president from outside the political establishment.
Only about one-quarter of Democrats said they made up their minds in the final days of the contest, well below the share of Republicans deciding late.
It also appears that independents have tended to vote Republican, which makes sense. It is more of a horse race than the Democratic side where Sanders has for some time been predicted to win handily.
NBC News: New Hampshire Exit Poll Results: Independent Voter Participation.
Early exit poll results show that 42 percent of Republican primary voters in this year’s race consider themselves to be political independents, and a similar 39 percent of voters in the Democratic primary think of themselves as independents.
In 2008, the last time both parties had an open nomination contest, slightly more voters in the Democratic primary (44 percent) identified themselves as independents than did voters in the Republican primary (37 percent).
In 2000, the share of independents in each primary was fairly comparable, just like this year — 40 percent in the Democratic primary and 41 percent in the Republican race.
The LA Times has a different take: The independent, all-knowing New Hampshire voter and other election myths.
While voters in other states are accustomed to receiving a certain level of puffery, the New Hampshire voter is put on a pedestal that would make a Nobel laureate jealous….
“While there is a kernel of truth to many aspects of this caricature, it is primarily a myth,” write David Moore and Andrew E. Smith, a pair of University of New Hampshire professors who may not be invited to many more faculty teas.
Moore, a former senior editor of Gallup Poll and founder of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, and Smith, a pollster who directs the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, lay out their case in a chapter of “The First Primary: New Hampshire’s Outsize Role in Presidential Politics,” released late last year, just in time to take all the joy from the primary season.
Their biggest beef is with the so-called independence of the New Hampshire voter. Though about 44% of the state’s residents are registered “undeclared,” only 15% actually call themselves independent in polls. They blame journalists for confusing the term “independent” with “undeclared,” a status many voters take either to avoid being identified publicly as a partisan or so they can vote in whichever party’s primary is most competitive.
But these undeclared voters may not have the impact they are credited with because they tend to show up at the polls less often than registered partisans.
The idea that independent voters can swing a primary election is also overstated, the authors conclude. Exit polls consistently show that candidates never win the top spot in their primaries without garnering the most support from registered members of their own parties.
And there is little evidence supporting the theory that undeclared voters use the open primary system to cause mischief by supporting a dolt in the party they most dislike.
Mediaite has suggestions for live-streamng the results: How to Watch the New Hampshire Primary Results Live Stream Online.
I guess I’ll watch MSNBC unless it gets too unbearable. How do you plan to follow the results?
Again, use the comment thread to discuss the NH primary or any other topic that interests you. Frankly, I’ll be glad when we move on to Nevada and South Carolina.
Have fun!
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