Yes It’s a Live Blog: CNN Democratic Town Hall from Ohio State University

OY!! Here we go again!  There are some big races coming up on Tuesday and CNN has another Town Hall scheduled tonight for the two Democratic candidates for President. I’m going to sit through another one of these things. Please don’t leave me alone to it!!!

Just two days before key votes in Ohio and Florida, the final two Democratic candidates will appear in a CNN Town Hall tonight. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is hoping for a strong showing in Ohio, where he currently trails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a fair margin.

The town hall is being co-hosted by both CNN and TV One. CNN’s Jake Tapper and TV One’s Roland Martin will be moderating the event and inviting questions from the attendees.

The broadcast will air on CNN from 8 p.m. ET – 10 p.m. ET from Ohio State University.

Florida and Ohio vote on Tuesday which are two big states.  Thankfully, Florida is a closed state.    Ohio has a semi-open primary.   This means:

Under Ohio election law, you declare your political party affiliation by requesting the ballot of a political party in a partisan primary election.

According to Nate Silver’s Poll of Polls,  Florida has a 99% chance of going to Hillary.    She has a 98% chance in Ohio.  Remember, voting by switching affiliations for strategy purposes is important.  As we’ve seen, the NRA actively encourages its voters to cross party if necessary to vote against Hillary and for Bernie. Bernie’s voting base was 7% Republican in Michigan and he nabbed a lot of unaffiliated while losing Dems by 12%. It will be interesting to see what happens there.

Here is the list of RCP recent polls for further details of each data point.  The most recent poll of Missouri has Hillary up but Missouri has not be polled a lot so one data point should not be considered the be all and end all of statistics judging the state of a race.

At last this is a town hall because I could just cut and paste any townhall or debate from any where and come up with the answers to tonight’s townhall form Sanders.  Even with fact checking and corrections and complete horror about the internalized sexism and racism, it still the same stuff.  I’m not looking for anything but the repeat of 70s class frame.  I’ll probably faint if I hear any wee bit of modern socialist economic theory or intersectionality of sexism, racism and income differences.

I’m assuming that Hillary will have to explain when she tried to categorize the Reagan response to the AIDS crisis at Nancy Reagan’s funeral.  They eventually responded but only after a lot of folks died and a lot of opportunity was wasted.  Nancy did do behind the scenes work but only after Rock Hudson and Roy Cohen were seriously ill and dying. Before then, it didn’t seem to even register.   But, here’s the crux of Hillary’s response in a much more appropriate format.  It’s not a soundbite.  It’s a short essay. It recognizes that things that went on prior to Nancy’s change of mind.

Yesterday, at Nancy Reagan’s funeral, I said something inaccurate when speaking about the Reagans’ record on HIV and AIDS. Since then, I’ve heard from countless people who were devastated by the loss of friends and loved ones, and hurt and disappointed by what I said. As someone who has also lost friends and loved ones to AIDS, I understand why. I made a mistake, plain and simple.

I want to use this opportunity to talk not only about where we’ve come from, but where we must go in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

To be clear, the Reagans did not start a national conversation about HIV and AIDS. That distinction belongs to generations of brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, along with straight allies, who started not just a conversation but a movement that continues to this day.

The AIDS crisis in America began as a quiet, deadly epidemic. Because of discrimination and disregard, it remained that way for far too long. When many in positions of power turned a blind eye, it was groups like ACT UP, Gay Men’s Health Crisis and others that came forward to shatter the silence — because as they reminded us again and again, Silence = Death. They organized and marched, held die-ins on the steps of city halls and vigils in the streets. They fought alongside a few courageous voices in Washington, like U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, who spoke out from the floor of Congress.

We also will have to continue this crazy right wing induced meme that Hillary cannot be trusted.  Bernie’s been fact checked so many times you’d think  people would get the idea that what he says is way far-fetched and not particularly trustworthy.  Here’s the latest fact check on his tirades on job losses and NAFTA which are way exaggerated.  Both Hillary and Bernie are way more honest than any of the Republicans.  But why is it only Hillary has the trust issue?

Bernie Sanders wasn’t asked about his honesty or trustworthiness on Tuesday night. Instead, after that question to Clinton, he was asked, “Senator Sanders, you have demanded that Secretary Clinton release the transcripts of her paid Wall Street speeches. Why is this important? Do you have reason to believe that she says one thing in private and another in public?”

Did somebody say Wall Street? The good senator, of course, perked up immediately and happily hit the softball question out of the park, with all the now-familiar notes of righteous indignation.

No other candidate for president has been asked in debates about his perceived honesty and trustworthiness. Maybe it’s because other candidates are presumed to be honest and trustworthy, or maybe there’s a presumption voters don’t care about this trait in others.

Don’t play the woman card, right? We are sick and tired of hearing about double standards. People are not going to vote for Clinton just because she is a woman. If she loses, it’s because nobody trusts her – just look at the polls.

If you actually look at the Washington Post poll referenced on Tuesday night, it’s worth noting that only 27 percent of people found Republican front-runner Donald Trump honest and trustworthy.

And Sanders? Well, he wasn’t included in the poll questions about honesty and trustworthiness. Seriously. The honesty and trustworthiness questions were only asked about Clinton, Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

Apparently we are to assume that Sanders is honest and trustworthy, or that he is unlikely to be the nominee – based, you know, on the polls.

Pollsters are either convinced by their own flawed polling that Clinton is the presumptive nominee, so they don’t even bother polling Sanders’ degree of trustworthiness, or they don’t believe Sanders’ degree of trustworthiness is relevant.

But only polling Clinton on whether she is “honest and trustworthy” and then using the answer against her in a debate against Sanders reinforces the myth that she is less trustworthy than him, and it surely helps him win one “stunning” victory after another.

I just mostly judge Bernie by the fact that everything he promises is not deliverable except with a vast revolutionary army.   You continue to read that he’s not really a credible candidate but how does that not translate into untrustworthy? 

But as appealing as Sanders may be, he is not credible as president. Elizabeth Warren would have been a credible candidate, but Sanders isn’t. The campaign he has been waging is a symbolic one. For example, the proposals he has made for free college tuition and free, single-payer health care suggest what might be done if the United States underwent radical change. Those ideas would be excellent grist for a seminar. But they are not the proposals of a candidate who is serious about getting things done as president—or one who is serious about getting elected in the country we actually live in.

I don’t find him appealing at all now.  He reminds me of the cranky uncle no one wants to invite for holidays because he lectures them, finger wags, and grouses each year on the same damn things.  The only difference between Sanders and the generic cranky uncle is that Sanders should’ve been able to do something about even a sliver of some of it by now.   Does this have something to do with it?  He’s missed a lot recently which is partially due to his campaign.

From Jan 2007 to Mar 2016, Sanders missed 136 of 2,870 roll call votes, which is 4.7%. This is much worse than the median of 1.7% among the lifetime records of senators currently serving. The chart below reports missed votes over time.

You can look at the analysis on Leadership at the same link (GovTrack) and find out some other things too. For example, his policy emphasis actually appears to be Armed Forces and National Security.  It’s almost twice as important as his second area which is health.

But, Rubio actually isn’t the one who missed the most votes. 

Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, that data point is a bit out-of-date. So far this year, Marco Rubio’s missed 90 percent of votes — a large proportion. But it’s actually the best record among the senators still running for president. The worst? Bernie Sanders.

But what has really gotten me recently is that not only are a good deal of his supporters nasty, Bernie keeps getting nastier.

Tuesday — a day when five states hold primaries — should give a better indication of whether Sander’s tough talk is paying off.

One of those contests is in Illinois, and Sanders isn’t holding back as he campaigns here. In Chicago on Friday, Sanders even took aim at Clinton for her close association with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose approval ratings are in the tank, particularly among black Chicagoans.

“I want to thank Rahm Emanuel for not endorsing me. I don’t want his endorsement!” Sanders screamed to the delight of a crowd estimated at 9,000 people. “I don’t want the endorsement of a mayor who is shutting down school after school and firing teachers.”

To drive home his point, Sanders held a news conference the next day devoted entirely to Emanuel, telling reporters that if he were Clinton, he would have refused the mayor’s support.

So, I have to admit that I expect Bernie to be nasty and I expect that Hillary will continue to be critizied and asked to apologize for everything her husband ever did, everything Barrack Obama ever did, ad infintum all while we hear how’s she’s an untrustworthy person.

The one thing I’d like to hear some one ask him about is this.  He’s not really been an active pusher of any bills through congress. But, he really pushed on this one.  How is this acceptable human behavior?

Sanders voted to dump Vermont’s nuclear waste in a majority Latino community in Sierra Blanca, Texas

In 1998, the House of Representatives approved a compact struck between Texas, Vermont and Maine that would allow Vermont and Maine to dump low-level nuclear waste at a designated site in Sierra Blanca, Texas. Sanders, at the time representing Vermont in the House, cosponsored the bill and actively ushered it through Congress.

Located about 16 miles from the Mexican border, Sierra Blanca’s population is predominantly of Mexican ancestry. At the time, the community was about two-thirds Latino, and its residents had an average income of $8,000, according to the an article in the Bangor Daily News.

The low-level nuclear waste would include “items such as scrap metal and worker’s gloves… as well as medical gloves used in radiation treatments at hospitals,” according to the Bangor Daily News. Clinton, then the First Lady, did not have a vote on the matter.

I can’t imagine any decent human being doing that to poor, disenfranchised people.

So, let’s see how it goes tonight.  I hope she finishes him off on Tuesday.  I can’t take any more of these where the nasty one isn’t Donald Trump.

My featured artist tonight is Ed Murawinski. 

Grab your popcorn and join us!!!!