Following Hillary’s thrashing of Bernie in New York, the media is finally waking up to the fact that she is just about guaranteed to be the Democratic presidential nominee and most likely will become President of the U.S. next January.
What shock for the poor pundits! How did this happen while they were so busy ooohing and ahhing over Bernie’s giant rallies and the “enthusiasm” of all those white millennials for his shouting and finger-wagging? Why didn’t all the crowds, the $27 “grass roots” donations, the yard signs, and on-line bullying turn into votes for “the Bern?”
The cultists say it’s “voter suppression,” but other commentators are taking a page from Richard Nixon–it must be a “silent majority.” Here’s Michelle Goldberg at Slate yesterday:
Until Tuesday night, I had assumed that my neighborhood, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, was overwhelmingly supporting Bernie Sanders. Sanders bumper stickers and T-shirts outnumbered those for Hillary Clinton by what seemed like 20 to 1. A couple of times, I thought about putting my baby daughter in a Clinton onesie—whatever my hesitations about Clinton’s candidacy, I love the idea of my girl’s first image of an American president being female. But I always hesitated, not wanting to invite playground harangues from local dads about Goldman Sachs and the Fed.
When I looked up Cobble Hill on the nifty New York Times tool providing neighborhood-by-neighborhood results, however, it turned out that Clinton won the immediate area around my apartment by 59.4 percent. A block over, she won by 72.5 percent. She won all around me. A lot of Clinton supporters, evidently, have been keeping quiet about their allegiances.
There are a couple of explanations for this. Sanders fans seem to be more enthusiastic, though it takes a certain amount of enthusiasm to vote in a primary at all. Registered independents couldn’t vote in New York’s closed primary, particularly given the absurd, undemocratic October deadline for switching parties. But I think there might be something else at work as well: an optical illusion that the candidate with the most white male support had the most support, period. I had let myself mistake the loudest people for The People.
I’m not trying to deny that the Sanders coalition is diverse or to erase the many passionate women and men of color who supported him. But the fact remains that according to exit polls, Clinton won every racial and gender demographic except white men. And somehow, I’d become convinced that, in my own backyard, their preferences were far more widespread than they really are.
Brooklyn is full of a certain kind of archetypal Sanders voter—young, hip, highly educated, and ideological. But in Brooklyn as a whole, Hillary Clinton beat native son Bernie Sanders by 20 percent. The borough was with her, even if it didn’t always feel like it.
It’s not that Clinton voters aren’t enthusiastic, it’s just that they aren’t as loud and obnoxious at Bernie supporters. And of course, they voted. How many people at Bernie’s huge rallies were from out of state or not registered as Democrats? Probably plenty.
A few days before Bernie Sanders lost badly in the New York primary, 27,000 souls filled Washington Square Park, many wildly cheering him on. The political media consensus interpreted the scene as evidence of surging support for the senator from Vermont….
The numbers at Washington Square were dwarfed by the battalions of working-class New Yorkers juggling two children and three jobs. These mostly Clinton voters were unable to attend any rally.
This last group is the subject here. It is the silent liberal majority.
Richard Nixon popularized the term “silent majority” in 1969. He was referring to the Middle Americans appalled by the Vietnam-era protests and associated social chaos. They didn’t demonstrate, and the so-called media elite ignored them.
Today’s liberal version of the silent majority is heavy with minorities and older people. Its members tend to be more socially conservative than those on the hard left and believe President Obama is a good leader.
Harrop points out that many reporters fall into the Sanders demographics.
Many political reporters belong to the white gentry that has fueled the Sanders phenomenon. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they know where they’re coming from. But some don’t seem to know about the vast galaxies of Democratic voters beyond the university and hipster ZIP codes.
In so many races — including those of the other party — reporters confine themselves to carefully staged political events and a few interviews with conveniently placed participants. From the atmospherics, they deduce the level of support for a particular candidate.
As our country heads toward the second half of the primary season as well as the general election, the national media is doing its best to gauge the level of excitement for each of the remaining five campaigns. From rallies to political donations to online polling, our friends in the media are attempting to quantify the unquantifiable level of excitement that each campaign is generating. By using this immeasurable measure, the media feels it can then interpret its result to create an overall narrative for how each campaign is doing. Clearly the campaign with most excitement is the one where the people are excited for their candidate and are going to go all out for him and her. This campaign will be the one with all the momentum moving forward while those campaigns with less excitement are likely to fall flat as we approach the conventions.
But let us take a moment to examine this theory, particular with the Democratic primary. Based on all the metrics listed above, it should be clear that Bernie Sanders is the candidate whose campaign is engulfed in enthusiasm. His rabid army of supporters have flocked to his rallies, producing crowds of upwards of 30,000 people, causing many venues to overflow. He raised nearly $44 million last month and now has amassed over 6 million contributions and growing. His loyal followers frequent online polls and exuberantly declare Sanders the winner of each and every Democratic debate or town hall performance….All this combined with victories in five out of the last six states and it would appear that the enthusiasm and momentum are clearly on the side of Bernie Sanders.
Especially when you compare his campaign to that of Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s rallies are never raucous, overflowing events. In fact, her most recent rally was held at the Apollo Theater, a venue that seats a mere 1,500 people. Clinton raised $13 million less than Bernie Sanders last month and she only recently amassed her one-millionth campaign contribution in mid-March. She often loses online polls by 60+ points after debates regardless of how well either her supporters or the media say she fared. Her national lead in the polls has all but vanished and after having won five consecutive primaries on March 15th, she has only won a single one since. Based on all this, there would appear to be a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton’s campaign at this point in time.
But appearances can be deceiving, especially appearances falsely created by our mainstream media.
Read the rest at the link.
On Tuesday night, Sanders abandoned his campaign press corps in Pennsylvania and flew back to Burlington, Vermont to rest and reassess his situation. MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald asks “Where does Sanders go from here?”
With the Democratic presidential nomination now further out of reach after his drubbing in New York on Tuesday, the Vermont senator faces the difficult question about what comes next. Does he set a do-whatever-it-takes course to wrest the nomination from rival Hillary Clinton? Or does he return to the message campaign, as his long-shot White House bid started out to be?
The Sanders campaign poured itself into New York, throwing a hail mary pass to try to change the delegate math while they could. They spent $5.6 million (twice what Hillary Clinton did), made 3 million phone calls in the final weekend alone, and organized the biggest rallies of a campaign defined by big rallies.
But in the end Sanders came up short – not just of winning, but of the delegate target allies had aimed to hit, which might set them up for a path through California, the campaign’s final hope.
Now, with the nomination even further out of reach, Sanders faces the difficult question about what comes next. Does he set a do-whatever-it-takes course to actually win the Democratic nomination? Or does he return to the message campaign his long-shot White House bid was originally seen as?
Seitz-Wald talked to people at Democracy For America and Move On, which support Bernie; and although they don’t explicitly say so, their representatives apparently were not happy with Sanders’ focus on attacking Clinton and complaining about the election process. Read all about it at the link. It’s an interesting article.
At The New York Times, Lara M. Brown, a political science professor at George Washington University, says that Bernie Sanders should drop out because he has already achieved his purpose of pushing the Democratic Party to the left and helped Clinton become a better candidate because of the competition.
We’ll probably see more of these kinds of reevaluations by journalists over the next couple of days. It should be interesting to see whether the messages coming out of the Sanders campaign will be modified.
It’s already clear that there’s a difference of opinion between campaign manager Jeff Weaver and senior adviser Tad Devine about going to the convention and trying to flip superdelegates. Sanders himself has suddenly announced that he will remain a Democrat for life. What brought that on? It should be an interesting day in politics.
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As you know, I live in a world of data, hypotheses and generally accepted theory. I don’t go on a tear about anything without collecting my thoughts and enough information to know of what I speak. Even then, I rarely venture far from the topics I’ve studied and researched for decades.
I marvel at policy wonks. It’s what actually got me supporting Hillary Clinton in 2008. It was obvious by the second primary debate which person had the policy chops other than possibly Joe Biden who I still won’t forget or forgive over his treatment of Anita Hill. I dropped my dalliance with John Edwards right about then and never looked back.
So, it really drives me crazy when I see someone running for higher office–and has held fairly high office–who consistently collects lots of Pinocchios from the Fact Check gurus. Some people really fake policy chops but when you attach their comments to data and accepted theory, they go straight into some ideological playground where reality never climbs the slide. My best example of that is our not-so-esteemed former Governor Bobby Jindal who could put on a straight face to tell incredible whoppers. It made you wonder how he ever got through several Ivy League universities without being a legacy with a father donating entire buildings .
It’s why I have developed an appreciation for Rachel Maddow albeit, even Rachel can get caught up in one of those leg thrill moments. Rachel’s leg must no longer be tingling for the Bernmeister of disproved memes because here’s yet another example on MaddowBlog of the now oft repeated thought “WTF is this man doing and saying and why?” I mean, how many Pinocchios can one man get and still be taken seriously as a candidate?
The NYDN interview wasn’t the low point of his campaign’s dizzying spin. But from that particular interview going backwards and forwards, it’s evident that foreign policy isn’t Sanders’ bailiwick. Stalking Popes like a Fanboy is nothing compared to continually showing up on TV talk shows and messing up on Middle East policy. Middle East Policy is probably the biggest of all the big fucking deals an American President must manage.
How can some one running for President be so total unaware of basics? How many more My Pet Goat moments do we get from this guy before his cult buys a clue?
When Bernie Sanders struggled during a recent interview with the New York Daily News, the criticisms largely focused on his apparent lack of preparation. It’s not that the senator’s answers were substantively controversial, but rather, Sanders responded to several questions with answers such as, “I don’t know the answer to that,” “Actually I haven’t thought about it a whole lot,” and “You’re asking me a very fair question, and if I had some paper in front of me, I would give you a better answer.”
He ran into similar trouble during a recent interview with the Miami Herald, which asked Sanders about the Cuban Adjustment Act, which establishes the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy that may be due for a re-evaluation. The senator responded, “I have to tell you that I am not up to date on that issue as I can” be.
The interviews raised questions about his depth of understanding, particularly outside of the issues that make up his core message. Yesterday, making his 42nd Sunday show appearance of 2016, Sanders ran into similar trouble during an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.
BASH: Let’s talk about something in the news that will be on your plate as a sitting U.S. senator. Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars of American assets if Congress allows the Saudi government to held – to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the 9/11 attacks. How do you intend to vote as a senator?
SANDERS: Well, I need more information before I can give you a decision.
Though the senator spoke generally about his concerns regarding Saudi Arabia, the host pressed further, asking if he supports allowing Americans to hold Saudi Arabia liable in U.S. courts. Sanders replied, “Well, you’re going to hear – you’re asking me to give you a decision about a situation and a piece of legislation that I am not familiar with at this point. And I have got to have more information on that. So, you have got to get some information before you can render, I think, a sensible decision.
How exactly does one become a US Senator and not take his job seriously enough to be remotely familiar with legislation pending discussion and your vote? Benen has written some additions to his MaddowBlog post that are worth considering.
Let’s not brush past the significance of the bill itself. The Times’report from the weekend noted that Saudi officials have threatened to “sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”
The State Department and the Pentagon have urged Congress not to pass the bill, warning of “diplomatic and economic fallout.” The legislation is nevertheless moving forward – it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously – and it enjoys support from some of the chamber’s most liberal and most conservative members.
This seems to be a typical Bernie thing. Anything that’s not within his old school class war frame isn’t worth investigating. He’ll just toss out a vote eventually and then we’ll hear how his judgement is far superior because Iraq War vote. At what point do folks hold him responsible for everything else? Where is the evaluation of his judgement on topics like say, credible gun control laws or Amber Alerts? Why do his followers ignore the details and go straight to the idea of a yuuuggggeee movement, yada yada yada.
The one thing I hear continually on all forms of social media is that there is somehow some huge movement out there led by the Bernmeister that will spontaneously change everything including the need for sliced bread. Where the hell is it if all you can do is win outback, highly white caucus states and a couple wide open primaries? Is there evidence of any progressive insurgency? Where is there evidence that this gadfly Senator from Vermont is leading it? Jamelle Bouie peels the Bern at Slate.
Sanders identifies as a “democratic socialist” and has been at an official remove from the Democratic Party for the whole of his congressional career.
But as just a glance at his record shows, this is more cosmetic than anything else. There’s no doubt that in his pre-political career, Sanders was devoted to socialist politics, such as they existed in the United States. But as a legislator, he has caucused with Democrats, voted with Democrats, fundraised for Democrats, and he’s now in line to run a Senate committee under Democrats.
Remove his “socialist” branding, which even he defines as little more than an updated form of New Deal liberalism, and you’re left with a candidate who strongly resembles other insurgent candidates going back to the beginning of the modern primary process, from George McGovern to Jerry Brown to Bill Bradley to Howard Dean. He relies on “authenticity” as contrasted with the “calculated” positioning of mainstream candidates. He stands on the ideological left, a factional figure who seeks to pull the party in his direction, or pry concessions from a reluctant establishment. And his support comes from the usual places: Young people (especially college students), white liberals, and the most ideological actors within the Democratic Party.
Just look at the rhetoric. Sanders has a consistent message: Using their wealth, powerful interests have rigged the game against you. “What the American people are saying—and, by the way, I hear this not just from progressives, but from conservatives and from moderates—is that we can no longer continue to have a campaign finance system in which Wall Street and the billionaire class are able to buy elections,” Sanders said in his New Hampshire victory speech this February. “Americans, no matter what their political view may be, understand that that is not what democracy is about.”
…Sanders is a factional candidate of ideological liberal Democrats, who are largely white Democrats. The difference between now and then, however, is that, with the collapse of conservative white Democrats in the South and elsewhere, those liberal whites make up a larger share of the party. They provide more fuel for an insurgency. But they’re still not enough to overcome the influence of moderates and stalwart black voters, who form a majority of the party. That, in fact, was the fate of previous insurgencies, which crashed on the rocks of math. Ideological liberals are among the loudest Democrats, but they are a minority within the entire party. And while that minority is larger and stronger than it’s been in a generation, it’s still not strong enough to steer the party alone. It still has to play coalition politics.
Ah, yes I’m looking for evidence once again. He may have a consistent message. His actions, however, display something totally different–a guy that grabs on to one thing and never lets go. Let’s take the $27 donation meme. It’s legendary and quite Pinocchio-worthy. This is Phillip Bump writing for WAPO.
At its heart, the idea is just a talking point. Consider the campaign’s press statement after the February reporting period.
“The Sanders campaign in total has tallied more than 4.7 million contributions, compared to [Hillary] Clinton’s 1.5 million,” it concludes. “February’s fundraising brings the campaign’s total raised this cycle to more than $137 million.”
$137 million divided by 4.7 million is … $29.14.
More than 4.7 million contributors means, at most, 4,749,999 — or else the campaign would round up to 4.8 million. Even with that higher number of donors, the average is $28.95. Which is more than $27.
In March, the campaign was apparently under that mark. Its real-time donations tool indicates that $44 million was raised from 1.7 million contributions — about $25 on average. Combining the total through February with those figures, the average drops to $27.88 — or $28 on average.
All of the factors above are still true. As more donations come in, the average will still be in the same ballpark.
The campaign encourages those $27 donations, and his fans are eager to oblige.
But is the average $27 every day? Not according to data from the campaign.
That’s the deal with Sanders. He gloms onto something and that’s it for whatever eternity is for his brain. That’s really not good unless your goal in life is to be a gadfly Senator from Vermont. It’s certainly not good when you’re going around the country screaming at impressionable young minds that seem to feel the Bern a lot more than research the evidence.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on Sunday said Sandy Hook victims should be able to sue gun manufacturers for the 2012 elementary school shooting that killed 20 students and six adults, backtracking on previous comments.
“Of course they have a right to sue, anyone has a right to sue,” the Vermont senator said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Sanders in an interview with the New York Daily News last week initially said the Sandy Hook family members should not have the right to sue gun manufacturers for damages.
“No, I don’t,” he said, in response to a question from the editorial board.
Rival Hillary Clinton attacked Sanders for those comments, calling his stance “unimaginable” and one of her “biggest contrasts” with the Vermont senator.
Sanders on Sunday said that a gun store owner who legally sells a weapon shouldn’t be held liable for crimes committed with it.
He said he opposes the sales of assault-style weapons in the U.S., such as the one used at Sandy Hook.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) had some tough words Monday for Bernie Sanders on his gun control stance.
“It’s so crippling. I mean, I sat down with a mother last week in Brooklyn, and she lost her 4-year-old baby… she took her kid to a park. Every mom takes their kid to a park. And she took her kid to a park and the kid was killed, a baby, a 4-year-old, a little toddler,” the Hillary Clinton supporter told Politico, tearing up. “[Sanders] doesn’t have the sensitivity he needs to the horror that is happening in these families. I just don’t think he’s fully getting how horrible it is for these families.”
Sanders has opposed holding weapons manufacturers responsible for gun violence.
Gabrielle Giffords’ husband joined with Hillary Clinton to pummel Bernie Sanders for his stance on guns Sunday as the Vermont senator showed signs he had rethought his position at the last minute.
Astronaut Mark Kelly — who helped former Rep. Giffords recover from a 2011 assassination attempt in which six people were killed — slammed Sanders during a rally at Five Towns College in Dix Hills, L.I., for voting against the 1993 Brady Bill that mandated background checks for gun buyers.
“That’s a pretty serious vote and one that Hillary Clinton’s opponent did not take too seriously — and that vote is very telling,” Kelly said.
He lamented that Congress failed to pass any legislation to combat gun violence in the wake of the Sandy Hook school massacre, calling politicians’ response “pretty pathetic.”
“I mean, it was basically nothing. After such a horrific tragedy, the United States Senate, in particular, did something remarkable and that was to do nothing,” Kelly said.
Gun violence and killings by police are “part of the same threat” that faces young African-Americans, Hillary Clinton told a congregation in Westchester Sunday.
“Guns are not the answer to anything,” Clinton said while stumping at Grace Baptist Church in Mt. Vernon. “They are the answer to nothing except pain and heartbreak and ruined lives.”
Clinton has made a group of mothers whose children were killed by gun violence or in police custody a core part of her campaign, and was joined by three of them Sunday.
“We must stand up to the gun lobby, just as we must end police violence and killings. They are part of the same threat that too often injures and even kills too many young people,” she said.
Ahead of New York’s primary on Tuesday, Clinton has hammered away at her differences with rival Bernie Sanders on gun control issues.
“The gun lobby is the most powerful lobby in Washington — in our country,” she said. “Nobody else running on either side is willing to take the stands that I think must be taken.”
I’m pretty sure stalking the Pope and flip flopping so obviously must be a sign of some Bern-out. I just want to get this over.
Come on New York! Peel the Bern tomorrow! Let’s put it so far out of his reach that his vanity campaign ends here. Then let’s primary the Gadfly into retirement!
Join us tomorrow for a live blog of the returns!
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We just have a few more days until the New York primary is over with. I hope we all survive. Honestly, I don’t know how much more of the Bernie Sanders hype I can take.
Apparently, Bernie got to meet with the Pope in Rome after all, although there are no photos. The Associated Press reports:
U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders told The Associated Press that he met briefly with Pope Francis at the papal residence Saturday and said it was a “real honor” to call on “one of the extraordinary figures” in the world.
Sanders, in Rome for a Vatican conference on economic inequality and climate change, said the meeting took place before the pope left for Greece, where Francis was highlighting the plight of refugees.
The Vermont senator, in a race with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president, said he told the pope that he appreciated the message that Francis was sending the world about the need to inject morality and justice into the world economy. Sanders said that was a message he, too, has tried to convey.
Jeffrey Sachs must have some serious pull at the Vatican.
Sanders and his wife, Jane, stayed overnight at the pope’s residence, the Domus Santa Marta hotel in the Vatican gardens, on the same floor as the pope….Jeffrey Sachs, a Sanders foreign policy adviser, said there were no photographs taken of the meeting.
Domus Santa Marta
The Pope lives in a hotel? I did not know that.
Sanders said the meeting should not be viewed as the pope injecting himself into the campaign.
“The issues that I talked about yesterday at the conference, as you well know, are issues that I have been talking about not just throughout this campaign but throughout my political life,” Sanders said in the interview. “And I am just very much appreciated the fact that the pope in many ways has been raising these issues in a global way in the sense that I have been trying to raise them in the United States.”
Well, Sanders doesn’t get to decide how this is “viewed.” In my opinion, it will certainly be interpreted as the Pope “injecting himself” into a U.S. election campaign.
Sachs said the candidate and his wife met the pope in the foyer of the domus, and that the meeting lasted about five minutes. Sanders later joined his family, including some of his grandchildren, for a walking tour of St. Peter’s Basilica, one of the holiest Catholic shrines.
In that instance, Francis “greeted” a number of people in passing as he left the Vatican Embassy in Washington DC. The Pope did not know that Davis was there.
The AP article says that Sanders “met” the pope in “the foyer of the domus” of the hotel. If Francis did actually meet and talk personally to Sanders, I think he made a big mistake. We’ll just have to wait and see what the fallout will be.
Bernie and Jane Sanders disembark from chartered Delta 767 in Rome.
A day after Bernie Sanders claimed he ‘introduced the most comprehensive climate change legislation’ and said he would tax carbon use, the Democratic presidential candidate chartered a Delta 767 to fly him to Rome and back for less than 24 hours.
After attacking rival Hillary Clinton for her stance on fossil fuels stepped on Thursday, Sanders stepped off the plane on Friday in Rome for the Vatican conference with his wife, ten family members, a group of campaign staff, Secret Service detail and members of the press.
The total group of what is believed to be below 50, flew in a chartered Delta 767 for their trip, which can seat between 211 and 261 people, depending on the model. It is unclear if Sanders’ aircraft had flatbed seats.
A 767 aircraft carries up to 23,980 gallons of fuel, which is ‘enough to fill 1,200 minivans’, according to Boeing.
Sanders’ wife, who is Catholic and ten of Sanders’ other family members joined him for the 8,870 round-trip flight, including four of his grandchildren….
With a range of 6,408 miles on a full tank of gas, it can be calculated that a 767 like Sanders’ flying 4,435 miles from New York to Rome uses approximately 16,596 gallons of fuel. The round-trip flight will use approximately 33,193 gallons.
On average, an American flies only 7,500 miles per year, according to AmericanForests.org, 1,360 fewer miles than Sanders’ round-trip Rome travel. Thus, an average American releases less carbon emissions via aircraft each year than Sanders did in 24 hours.
Hillary Clinton tours public housing building in Harlem yesterday.
Clinton traveled to East 116th Street in Harlem for a tour of the Corsi Houses, a seniors-only New York City Housing Authority building that has struggled with mold, leaks and an inadequate repair system.
“I wanted to come here to really make a very strong plea that we do more when I am president to help the people who live in developments like this,” Clinton said.
She was given access to an apartment on the second floor that was in the midst of a major repair job to fix mold issues and leaks….
“I will do everything I can as your president to remember what needs to be done here in the city that I love, that is the greatest city in the world,” she said to cheers from the crowd.
To fix NYCHA, which has suffered for years from federal disinvestment, she said she would boost funding for the section 8 program, invest $125 billion to help struggling communities like the South Bronx, and expand Low Income Housing Tax Credits to curb rental costs.
“I will fight for you,” she said.
Clinton also hobnobbed with residents and guests, at one point joining in a game of dominoes in the rec room.
Outspoken actress Sharon Stone recently told The Hollywood Reporter she worries the presidential candidate, 74, dabbled in psychedelic drugs during his younger years.
“He didn’t really work until he was 40, so I wonder, like, how much acid has this guy taken?” the “Basic Instinct” star told the magazine.
“I really do (wonder), that’s not a joke. We were so aggressive asking people, ‘Did you smoke pot?’ But in reality, how much acid has Bernie Sanders taken?” she asked again.
“There’s a certain edge to his personality and way about his behavior that makes me wonder, ‘How much LSD have you taken?'” she asked a third time during the recent interview.
Weird. IMHO, if Bernie had taken some acid trips he might not be so grumpy and negative today.
Bernie and Jane have finally released their full tax returns (except for the list of charities) from 2014. They say they will also release the 2015 return once it is filed. No word on the rest of the promised returns going back to 2007. David Cay Johnston at The National Memo:
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders released nearly all of his and wife Jane Sanders’ 2014 tax return Friday night, but that disclosure still remains far from his wife’s promise to release returns for the last eight years — raising more questions about the candidate’s judgment and his wife’s claims.
As expected there was nothing startling in the schedules, but the failure to fulfill their promise to release returns back to 2007 — when Sanders was first elected to the U.S. Senator from Vermont — erodes the likelihood that other Presidential candidates this cycle and in the future will release their own full returns.
A key detail withheld by Sanders until Friday night prompts yet another question: The senator and his wife have both said on national television that Jane Sanders prepares the couple’s returns using TurboTax software. But a schedule that had been withheld until now shows $204 in tax preparation fees.
The most expensive version of TurboTax sold currently — a higher grade product than needed to prepare the couple’s returns, costs $109.99 That price includes both an online download and a compact disc. And that is the price charged by Intuit, the manufacturer, with retailers offering discounts pricing the top product at under $100.
Hmmm . . . maybe Jane got a fee for filling out the forms?
Bernie bros protest high dollar fund-raiser for down-ticket Democrats in San Francisco
While Bernie was out of the country, his supporters picketed a fund-raiser hosted by Amal and George Clooney for Democratic candidates in San Francisco, where they chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, Hillary Clinton has got to go.” Very classy. ABC News describes the bizarre scene:
Approximately 100 Bernie Sanders supporters demonstrated outside of a George and Amal Clooney-hosted Hillary Clintonfundraiser Friday night in San Francisco’s upscale Nob Hill neighborhood.
Clinton and her aides arrived at the home of venture capitalist and Democratic donor Shervin Pishevar around 6:30 p.m. for the fundraiser, which kicked off at 7 p.m. Tickets to the event cost roughly $30,000 per person or $350,000 per table. (This is the first of two Clooney-hosted fundraisers this weekend. On Saturday night, the Clooneys are hosting another fundraiser, at his home in Los Angeles.)
The San Francisco street where the home is located was blocked off by police, but the protesters gathered at the top of the hill and then marched around the block.
Holding signs that read “Hillary: You can’t sit with us unless you have money” and “$353,000 for Dinner? And you thought SF home prices are high,” while banging pots and pans, protesters were vocal about Clinton’s ties to big money.
“Hey, hey, ho ho, Hillary Clinton has got to go!” the crowd, many of whom appeared to be in their twenties and thirties yelled out. “Bernie or Bust!”
It’s difficult to fathom why these people oppose raising money for Democrats running for Congress. Wouldn’t a President Bernie Sanders need Democrats in the House and Senate? The ways of Bernie supporters are very mysterious.
That’s all I have for you today. I didn’t even look at the Republican side of the campaign. It’s all just too crazy for me today. And now I plan to try to regain some kind of serenity before the big showdown arrives on Tuesday.
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It took me awhile today to get going so I’m a little later on this than usual. Miles snuck outside for a big adventure late last night and I got rather clawed up trying to bring him back in. He’s a total love bug and not usually like that but he drew blood and it was not fun. Today, he’s back to his genial self but sometimes when his blood sugar gets a little out of whack from the diabetes he can get mighty testy about things. My animals are not outdoor animals so I freak when any of them gets loose. My left hand is pretty shredded up and bruised so using a keyboard is not very comfortable for me and sleeping was difficult last night. So, any way blame this late, short post on feisty old Miles. He’s got me sleepy and cranky today.
I really enjoyed Paul Krugman’s blog today on the Pastrami Principle. I could tell from the comments that a lot of Bernie supporters were bristling at the comparison between Bernie’s continual discounting of Southern Democratic Primary voters to that kind of description that comes from also-ran right wing populist Sarah Palin and her choice for President for 2016, Donald Trump.
As Krugman points out, Sanders is trying to make an argument for Super Delegates to discount the popular vote which shows Clinton way ahead. He is doing this on the back of Southern Democrats. This is the second time he’s done this which is why it’s the second time I’m blogging about it.
But how can the campaign make the case that the party should defy the apparent will of its voters? By insisting that many of those voters shouldn’t count. Over the past week, Mr. Sanders has declared that Mrs. Clinton leads only because she has won in the “Deep South,” which is a “pretty conservative part of the country.” The tally so far, he says, “distorts reality” because it contains so many Southern states.
As it happens, this isn’t true — the calendar, which front-loaded some states very favorable to Mr. Sanders, hasn’t been a big factor in the race. Also, swing-state Florida isn’t the Deep South. But never mind. The big problem with this argument should be obvious. Mrs. Clinton didn’t win big in the South on the strength of conservative voters; she won by getting an overwhelming majority of black voters. This puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it?
Is it possible that Mr. Sanders doesn’t know this, that he imagines that Mrs. Clinton is riding a wave of support from old-fashioned Confederate-flag-waving Dixiecrats, as opposed to, let’s be blunt, the descendants of slaves? Maybe. He is not, as you may have noticed, a details guy.
It’s more likely, however, that he’s being deliberately misleading — and that his effort to delegitimize a big part of the Democratic electorate is a cynical ploy.
You should read the entire Op Ed and notice the comments of folks that think Krugman is out of line by comparing the tactics of the left wing populist to his right wing equivalents. The denial runs deep in the Bernie crowd, but as I’ve blogged before, this has incredible racist overtones since he doesn’t discount the white outbacks that he’s won–like Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma, etc–as not being representative. He prefers to characterize Southern Democrats only. It drives me nuts.
Those of us that watched the Brooklyn Democratic Debate last night saw the campaign conversation get nasty. I was glad to see Hillary hitting back and I have to say that despite pundits calling the debate a tie, I found her to be absolutely presidential. She was tough and called him out on his constant hypocritical charges and his lies. This is Rebecca Traister writing for NYMAG.
Oh my god, make it stop.
But it isn’t stopping, because Thursday brought Democrats, including me, our fondest wish and dream: another debate!
And from the start it was clear that this whole civil, respectful race had just deteriorated into some kind of nerdy Punch & Judy show, in which everyone screamed at each other, and over each other (and over the moderators) about 501c4s and Dodd Frank.
No, it was not all bad. Even though the crowd was bellowing with the vigor of their Republican brethren, Sanders and Clinton remained high-minded about the content of their debate, and managed to have some meaningful, if nasty, exchanges. On foreign policy, usually a weak spot, Sanders found a revelatory new groove, offering groundbreaking words about the value of Palestinian lives, and our moral responsibility to question Israeli leadership. His remarkable, electorally risky rhetoric was undercut somewhat by the fact that hours before the debate, Sanders had suspended Simone Zimmerman, the Jewish Outreach coordinator whose hiring had been announced just two days earlier, after reports that she had used vulgar language in reference to Benjamin Netanyahu. It was a move, in response to pressure from conservative pro-Israeli groups, that did not allay fears that as president, Sanders’s stated resolve to implement idealistic policy measures might wither quickly in the face of Republican opposition. Still, Bernie was really great on Palestine.
Meanwhile, in a discussion about guns, Clinton pussy-footed around her silly “per capita” line about guns pouring out of Vermont into New York (yep, @ItTakesAVillage92, I know it is technically correct; it is also lame), but did effectively lay into Sanders on his actually crappy stance on guns. Pointing to the fact that her opponent often laments the greed and recklessness of Wall Street, Clinton asked compellingly, “What about the greed and recklessness of gun manufacturers in America?”
Clinton also managed, almost two hours into this interminable thing, to bring up the concentrated attack on reproductive rights across America, a topic that has not been raised in any of the season’s debates so far, earning her a lot of enthusiastic applause and energetic engagement from Sanders on the topic before Dana Bash cut them off to talk some more about meaningless general-election polling.
But all this interesting stuff was hidden in two hours of yelling. Of “YUUGE” jokes and overcooked lines about “before there was Obamacare there was Hillarycare” and excuses about how Jane does the taxes, which makes them very inaccessible when really, guys, it’s been weeks; you can get someone to dig up copies of the tax returns. All that was good was buried beneath a sheen of rancor, culminating perhaps with Sanders circling around his campaign’s current strategic argument that Hillary’s lead in pledged delegates (and votes, and number of states won) is illegitimate because her victories were so decisive in southern states. “Secretary Clinton cleaned our clock in the Deep South,” said Bernie. “We got murdered there. That is the most conservative part of this great country … But you know what, we’re out of the Deep South now. And we’re moving up.” Putting aside the fact that Clinton’s wins have also come in Massachusetts, Florida, and the Midwest, Bernie’s seeming scorn for voters in southern states, who broke for Clinton perhaps not out of conservatism, but because she has so far done a far better job of reaching black voters, was a low point.
Yes, he went there again about us Southern Democrats right there in Brooklyn on CNN in front of every one watching. I belong to a discussion group on Facebook called American Minorities for Hillary. It’s a very diverse group of minorities to include just about every category possible. I posted the same link to that board as I did down in the comments yesterday which is the second set of analysis from Maddow Blog and Steve Benen on Bernie’s comments. I can unequivocally state that all the Southern Democrats on the board of all shapes and sizes along with a lot of others recognized the tweet of a racist dog whistle.
Bernie Sanders told “Nightly Show” host Larry Wilmore at a taping Wednesday evening that scheduling Southern states early in the Democratic primary “distorts reality.” […]
“Well, you know,” Sanders said, “people say, ‘Why does Iowa go first, why does New Hampshire go first,’ but I think that having so many Southern states go first kind of distorts reality as well.”
Iowa and New Hampshire go first. Then, Nevada. Tell me how those states represent the diversity that is this country. South Carolina goes 4th. Again, are voters in Kansas, Idaho and Utah and more representative? This is why I’m glad the extremely diverse state of New York goes next. You notice he never mentions that he lost Massachusetts which is probably one of the top five most liberal states in the country and he doesn’t mention he lost Ohio which is a bit of a US microcosm. I’m getting tired of being his whipping boy. He’s not attracting Black voters. He needs to own that and figure out why.
Today’s column offers an opportunity to say, for the record, why I haven’t been the Bernie booster a lot of people apparently expected me to be. For the business about discounting Clinton support as coming from “conservative states” in the “Deep South” actually exemplifies the problem I saw in the Sanders campaign from the beginning, and made me distrust both the movement and the man.
What you see, on this as on multiple issues, is the casual adoption, with no visible effort to check the premises, of a story line that sounds good. It’s all about the big banks; single-payer is there for the taking if only we want it; government spending will yield huge payoffs — not the more modest payoffs conventional Keynesian analysis suggests; Republican support will vanish if we take on corporate media.
In each case the story runs into big trouble if you do a bit of homework; if not completely wrong, it needs a lot of qualification. But the all-purpose response to anyone who raises questions is that she or he is a member of the establishment, personally corrupt, etc.. Ad hominem attacks aren’t a final line of defense, they’re argument #1.
I know some people think that I’m obsessing over trivial policy details, but they’re missing the point. It’s about an attitude, the sense that righteousness excuses you from the need for hard thinking and that any questioning of the righteous is treason to the cause. When you see Sanders supporters going over the top about “corporate whores” and such, you’re not seeing a mysterious intrusion of bad behavior into an idealistic movement; you’re seeing the intolerance that was always just under the surface of the movement, right from the start.
I feel Krugman’s pain. It’s really hard to watch Bernie and his folks go completely off the deep end on what is and isn’t possible on all levels and to ignore the concerns of women, minorities, and the GLBT community by suggesting all of our problems would be solved by closing all the big banks, giving us medicare for all, free college and a $15 minimum wage. Bernie never has solid answers for any of his policies. In that way, he is very much like Palin and Trump. After the ideological rants, there is very little “there there”.
I’ve actually found two somewhat unenthusiastic voters for Bernie that actually sound reasonable about their votes. Their eyes are wide open and they’d reconsider their votes for him in Maryland if it actually looked as though he was going to win. This is an interesting read at TPM.
“He’s not going to get the nomination, is he?” my wife asks anxiously as she gazes out of the kitchen window at the Bernie for President sign on our front lawn. No, I assure her, and he certainly won’t win Maryland on April 26. I’m voting for Bernie, and my wife may, too, but we’re doing so on the condition that we don’t think he will get the nomination. If he were poised to win, I don’t know whether I’d vote for him, because I fear he would be enormously vulnerable in a general election, even against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, and I’m also not sure whether he is really ready for the job of president.
Why, then, vote for him at all? For me, it’s entirely about the issues he is raising, which I believe are important for the country’s future. Hillary Clinton and her various boosters in the media have made the argument that it’s impractical and even irresponsible to raise a demand like “Medicare for all” and “free public college” that could not possibly get through the next Congress, even if Democrats eke out a majority in the Senate. They presumably want a candidate to offer programs that could be the result of protracted negotiations between a Democratic president and Speaker Paul Ryan – like a two percent increase in infrastructure spending in exchange for a two percent reduction in Medicaid block grants. I disagree with this approach to politics.
I guess a symbolic vote for a symbolic agenda has as much merit as anything I’ve heard from the BernieBro Cult.
So, we have to see what happens on Tuesday. I’m hoping this puts the Sanders campaign to bed for a long summer’s sleep.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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… with the Democratic race dragging on into the spring, fresh tensions are bubbling up to the surface.
Pointing to issues like Clinton’s ties to Wall Street and her vote for the Iraq War, Sanders said over the weekend that when it comes to Clinton’s judgment, “something is clearly lacking.” The senator also went on to tell CNN’s Jake Tapper that he found Clinton’s recent remarks about young voters — in which she said they sometimes buy into incorrect information and “don’t do their own research” — to be “a little bit condescending.”
Things grew even more heated when the Sanders campaign put out a press release questioning Clinton’s credibility this week — an attack that was met with ferocious pushback.
“Let’s be very clear. This is a character attack. This is exactly what @BernieSanders pledged to his supporters that he wouldn’t do, ” tweeted Nick Merrill, Clinton’s traveling press secretary.
Wonkette even agrees with me. Please let this be the last one!!!! I can’t take his stump speech any more. I can’t take the finger wagging. I can’t take watching Hillary try to act dignified during all of this!!!
I also can’t take any more of Wolf Blitzer!
But, here I am and here we are.
WHOA HEY it’s been a minute since we’ve had one of these debate-styley things! But things have been getting super UGLY in the Democratic race, so they need to do this again, obviously. Bernie was like “I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL ON ANY OF THE FOLLOWING DATES!” and Hillary was like “I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL ON A DIFFERENT DAY WHEN YOU ALREADY HAVE A THING, COME AT ME, BRO!” Seriously, that is how it happened, according to Politico. Anyway, they all moved their hair appointments around on their Google calendars, so they can debate in New York City tonight.
So, I’m sure all that will be on the agenda tonight.
Meanwhile, I just bought some wine and I’m hunkered in here!
Hang in there! If the polls are right, the Atlantic Seaboard is about to deliver us from any more of these “debates”. Meanwhile, I have the next little doll all lined up!!! So stay tuned …
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Those of us that watched the Brooklyn Democratic Debate last night saw the campaign conversation get nasty. I was glad to see Hillary hitting back and I have to say that despite pundits calling the debate a tie, I found her to be absolutely presidential. She was tough and called him out on his constant hypocritical charges and his lies. This is Rebecca Traister writing for NYMAG.
Yes, he went there again about us Southern Democrats right there in Brooklyn on CNN in front of every one watching. I belong to a discussion group on Facebook called American Minorities for Hillary. It’s a very diverse group of minorities to include just about every category possible. I posted the same link to that board as I did down in the comments yesterday which is the second set of analysis from Maddow Blog and Steve Benen on Bernie’s comments. I can unequivocally state that all the Southern Democrats on the board of all shapes and sizes along with a lot of others recognized the tweet of a racist dog whistle.
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