Thursday Reads: Debate Hangover and Sanders’ Slip-Ups
Posted: March 10, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Florida Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton 40 Comments
Good Morning!!
The photos in this post come from a project called “Eyes as Big as Plates.” From the blog’s “about” page:
Eyes as Big as Plates is the ongoing collaborative project between the Finnish-Norwegian artist duo Riitta Ikonen and Karoline Hjorth. Starting out as a play on characters from Nordic folklore, Eyes as Big as Plates has evolved into a continual search for modern human’s belonging to nature. The series is produced in collaboration with retired farmers, fishermen, zoologists, plumbers, opera singers, housewives, artists, academics and ninety year old parachutists. Since 2011 the artist duo has portrayed seniors in Norway, Finland, France, US, UK, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Sweden, Japan and Greenland. Each image in the series presents a solitary figure in a landscape, dressed in elements from surroundings that indicate neither time nor place. Here nature acts as both content and context: characters literally inhabit the landscape wearing sculptures they create in collaboration with the artists.
As active participants in our contemporary society, these seniors encourage the rediscovery of a demographic group too often labelled as marginalized or even as a stereotypical cliché. It is in this light that the project aims to generate new perspectives on who we are and where we belong.
I encourage you to go to the site and look at more of these amazing portraits of elders in nature.
The peacefulness portrayed in these beautiful photos stands in sharp contrast to the angry, violent, racist, sexist, and generally chaotic nature of today’s U.S. culture. Those characteristics are only being amplified by the presidential primary campaigns we have been watching for months.
I honestly don’t know how much more I can handle. Last night’s debate was hard for me to watch, and I got so angry at the questions put to Hillary Clinton that I had trouble sleeping. I’m feeling exhausted and I have a sore throat. I really don’t want to come down with another cold, so I’ll probably try to take a nap at some point. Anyway, if this post seems disjointed and littered with typos, you’ll know why.
I’m not going to say much about the questions asked of Hillary at the Washington Post/Univision debate. They were just plain disgusting, and I don’t want to get enraged again. She was asked about Benghazi, her Email non-scandal, and why nobody likes her. She was even asked if she would step down if she is indicted–a ridiculous and insulting questions that she refused to answer. It was disgraceful, and the Post and Univision should apologize to Hillary, the voters of Florida, and the general public.
In this post I’m going to focus on Bernie’s performance. In my rage last night I actually missed the bombshell that Bernie Sanders was hit with about his support for Fidel Castro when he was Mayor of Burlington, VT and refused to repudiate it. I don’t think he was asked about his strong support for Daniel Ortega (I will check the transcript and update if necessary), but I assume that Floridians will soon learn about that too.
Univision also showed the famous clip of Sanders on the Lou Dobbs show in which he argued against the Immigration bill that was sponsored by Ted Kennedy and supported by Hillary Clinton. I posted this article previously, but I’m going to include it again here, because it provides very good background information on Sanders’ support for dictatorial regimes in Latin America.
Michael Moynihan at The Daily Beast: When Bernie Sanders Thought Castro and the Sandinistas Could Teach America a Lesson.
In the 1980s, any Bernie Sanders event or interview inevitably wended toward a denunciation of Washington’s Central America policy, typically punctuated with a full-throated defense of the dictatorship in Nicaragua. As one sympathetic biographer wrote in 1991, Sanders “probably has done more than any other elected politician in the country to actively support the Sandinistas and their revolution.” Reflecting on a Potemkin tour of revolutionary Nicaragua he took in 1985, Sanders marveled that he was, “believe it or not, the highest ranking American official” to attend a parade celebrating the Sandinista seizure of power.
It’s quite easy to believe, actually, when one wonders what elected American official would knowingly join a group of largely unelected officials of various “fraternal” Soviet dictatorships while, just a few feet away, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega bellows into a microphone that the United States is governed by a criminal band of terrorists.
None of this bothered Sanders, though, because he largely shared Ortega’s worldview. While opposition to Reagan’s policy in Central America—including indefensible decisions like the mining of Managua harbor—was common amongst mainstream Democrats, it was rare to find outright support for the Soviet-funded, Cuban-trained Sandinistas. Indeed, Congress’s vote to cut off administration funding of the anti-Sandinista Contra guerrillas precipitated the Iran-Contra scandal.
But despite its aversion to elections, brutal suppression of dissent, hideous mistreatment of indigenous Nicaraguans, and rejection of basic democratic norms, Sanders thought Managua’s Marxist-Leninist clique had much to teach Burlington: “Vermont could set an example to the rest of the nation similar to the type of example Nicaragua is setting for the rest of Latin America.”
There’s much more about Sanders’ support for Daniel Ortega’s reign of terror in Nicaragua at the link.
As usual, there wasn’t a single question about abortion rights or the continuing efforts by Republicans to control women’s bodies, even though a horrendous Florida anti-abortion bill became law yesterday. Think Progress:
As presidential debates pile up, abortion rights advocates find themselves asking the same question after each event: Why is no one asking about abortion? But candidates’ silence on abortion was more deafening than usual at Wednesday night’s Democratic debate in Florida — where a controversial bill against abortion access was signed into law earlier in the day.
The Florida bill is nearly identical to the Texas law currently in front of the Supreme Court, using the guise of ‘supporting women’s health’ to significantly cut women’s access to abortion, contraception, and STI prevention and treatment services across the state. The Texas bill has already lead to thousands of unplanned pregnancies and100,000 self-induced abortions done by women unable to access a clinic. Latina women have been disproportionately affected by Texas’ bill — and with an equally large Latina population in Florida, the Sunshine State’s new bill could produce similarly grim results.
The Wednesday debate, co-hosted by Univision, focused heavily on immigration policy, specifically addressing the large population of Latino voters in Florida. But no moderater or candidate mentioned the impact Florida’s law could have on this population.
Because it’s apparently more important to ask Clinton stupid personal question that she has already answered repeatedly. And on Sanders’ admiration for Castro’s leadership of Cuba:
In 1989 Sanders traveled to Cuba on a trip organized by the Center for Cuban Studies, a pro-Castro group based in New York, hoping to come away with a “balanced” picture of the communist dictatorship. The late, legendary Vermont journalist Peter Freyne sighed that Sanders “came back singing the praises of Fidel Castro.”
“I think there is tremendous ignorance in this country as to what is going on in Cuba,” Sanders told The Burlington Free Press before he left. It’s a country with “deficiencies,” he acknowledged, but one that has made “enormous progress” in “improving the lives of poor people and working people.” When he returned to Burlington, Sanders excitedly reported that Cuba had “solved some very important problems” like hunger and homelessness. “I did not see a hungry child. I did not see any homeless people,” he told the Free Press. “Cuba today not only has free healthcare but very high quality healthcare.”
Sanders had a hunch that Cubans actually appreciated living in a one-party state. “The people we met had an almost religious affection for [Fidel Castro]. The revolution there is far deep and more profound than I understood it to be. It really is a revolution in terms of values.” It was a conclusion he had come to long before visiting the country. Years earlier Sanders said something similar during a press conference: “You know, not to say Fidel Castro and Cuba are perfect—they are certainly not—but just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people does not mean to say the people in these nations feel the same.”
There is, of course, a mechanism to measure the levels of popular content amongst thecampesinos. Perhaps it’s too much to expect a democratic socialist to be familiar with the free election, a democratic nicety the Cuban government hasn’t availed itself of during its almost 60 years in power.
Again, much more at the link. I suppose Bernie supporters will be defending Latin American dictatorships after Bernie was finally questioned about all this last night.
Another interesting question Sanders was asked last night was about his support for the wacko “Minutemen” who were patrolling the Mexican boarder during the Bush administration.
Evan McMorris-Santoro at Buzzfeed (Dec. 9, 2015): In 2006, Bernie Sanders Voted In Support Of An Immigration Conspiracy Theory.
A few months before Democrats swept the 2006 elections, an outcry raged in the fringier corners of the immigration debate. Treasonous American officials were tipping off the Mexican government about the whereabouts of Minutemen patrols, the argument went, making it impossible for the private army bent on preventing undocumented immigrants from crossing the border to do their jobs.
The outcry made it to Congress, where Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston, a Republican, introduced an amendment clearly directed at the Minutemen story. The amendment barred the Department of Homeland Security from providing “a foreign government information relating to the activities of an organized volunteer civilian action group, operating in the State of California, Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona.”
Kingston’s amendment overwhelmingly passed the Republican-controlled Congress, including the votes of 76 Democrats, most of them from the party’s then-strong Blue Dog conservative wing. Another person voted for the measure, too: Rep. Bernie Sanders, an independent in the midst of the campaign that would send him the U.S. Senate….
For Sanders, the amendment is another in a string of past votes that aren’t quite in line with the exact progressive priorities of 2015. Much like past positions on guns that the senator has had to navigate this year, his immigration positions have at times posed some challenges with the new Democratic base and the party’s priorities….
The amendment was meant to protect the Minutemen, and only concerned the southern border of the United States. A short floor debate over the amendment took place on June 6, 2006. Republican backers of the amendment spoke of “the total lawlessness of people coming illegally over the border at night” and how the Minutmen — “definitely not politically correct in Washington, D.C.,” Kingston, the Republican sponsor said — “filled a void which the government was unable to fill.”
Read more about the amendment at the link. Sanders claimed last night that it was part of a larger bill so he had to vote for it, but it was actually a separate piece of legislation that Sanders voted for.
These are just a few examples of oppo research against Sanders that has been ignored so far by the media and pooh poohed by Bernie’s supporters. How would all this go over in a General Election? And I’m just talking about reactions from Democratic voters, not the vicious attacks that would come from the GOP.
Sanders’ vote against the auto bailout also came up last night; here are some enlightening tweets about that:
That’s all I’ve got for today. What are your thoughts on the debate after a night’s rest? What other stories are you following?
Live Blog: Florida Democratic Debate
Posted: March 9, 2016 Filed under: U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 Democratic primaries, Florida Democratic debate, live blog 76 Comments
Hey Sky Dancers!
Even that exclamation point makes me tired. I must admit that I’m getting fed up with the constant debates and town halls this primary season. I think the DNC was wise to try to limit them. Both Hillary and Bernie need to make some changes to their stump speeches, because we’ve all heard them so many times at this point that it’s getting boring.
Nevertheless, I’ll be watching tonight to see how each of the candidates deals with the results of yesterday’s primaries. Someone needs to remind the country that not just Michigan voted yesterday–Mississippi voted too and the results of that one were more consequential in terms of delegates than the one the media is hyping today.
Tonight’s debate is at Miami-Dade College, and it will begin at 9PM ET. It is sponsored by Univision and the Washington Post and it will be simulcast on CNN. It will also be live streamed at The Washington Post. The moderators will be Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post and Maria Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos of Univision.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders at the Flint debate
The Fix: How to watch the Washington Post-Univision Democratic presidential debate.
What (to watch for): Immigration almost certainly will be a major topic of discussion, given the setting and Univision’s involvement. Univision announced in February that it would launch a voter registration drive aimed at growing the Latino electorate by 3 million people. Look for the moderators to ask Sanders, who lags far behind Clinton in the delegate count, about his path forward. But if Sanders senses dismissiveness, look for him to push back hard. Univision chairman Haim Saban has contributed $2.5 million toPriorities USA Action, a super PAC backing Clinton. Ramos’s daughter, Paola Ramos, works for the Clinton campaign’s communications team. And in January, Sanders memorably unloaded on The Washington Post editorial board for criticizing his “fiction-filled campaign.” The dynamics among the candidates and sponsoring media outlets could provide intriguing subplots.
Some info on the moderators from IBT:
Univision’s María Elena Salinas. Salinas is a co-host of “Noticiero Univision” and the prime-time show “Here and Now.” She has covered presidential elections for three decades, and in the race to the 2008 presidency, she interviewed Hillary Clinton, Republican nominee John McCain and then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Along with Salinas, Univision’s Jorge Ramos is also scheduled to moderate. Ramos is the host of Univision’s “Noticiero Univision” and “Al Punto,” as well as Fusion’s “AMERICA with Jorge Ramos.”
The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty is also expected to moderate Wednesday night’s debate alongside Ramos and Salinas. Tumulty is a national political correspondent who previously worked for TIME Magazine, where she held positions as a congressional correspondent and White House correspondent, and the Los Angeles Times.
A few stories to get you warmed up for the watch party.
Joshua Tucker at the WaPo: No, actually Hillary Clinton won Tuesday night. The story is written in the form of a dialogue:
Wait a minute! It’s Cranky Reader from John Sides’s posts at The Monkey Cage.
CR: Hold on a second! I read the papers Wednesday morning. The New York Times, the LA Times, and even your Washington Post (to say nothing of Politico or CNN), and they all have top stories about how Clinton lost Tuesday night in Michigan.
Me: That’s true. Sanders did get more votes than Clinton in Michigan. But Clinton got more votes than Sanders in Mississippi. A lot more votes. As in, five times as many votes. So actually, as of 10 a.m. Wednesday, she had picked up more than 125,000 more total votes than Sanders on Tuesday.
CR: But Michigan is a bigger state and has more electoral votes than Mississippi. Therefore, it is more important to win Michigan than it is to win Mississippi if you want to be the nominee, regardless of the number of votes she won across the two states.
Me: That would be true if states in the Democratic primary were “winner take all” like most states are in the general election. Michigan does have more electoral votes than Mississippi in the general election, and for largely the same reason does award a lot more delegates to the Democratic nominating convention (123) than Mississippi (33).
CR: Ah ha! So winning Michigan is more important.
Me: That would be the case if each candidate won by the same margin. That’s because delegates to the Democratic nominating convention are distributed proportionally. Sanders doesn’t get all 123 delegates because he won Michigan, and Clinton doesn’t get all 33 Mississippi delegates because she won there. Instead, provided they get at least 15 percent of the vote — which they both did in both states — they each win a number of delegates determined by a complex set of electoral rules that in the end roughly approximates their vote share. So since Sanders won by a smaller margin in Michigan (50 percent to 48 percent) than Clinton did in Mississippi (83 percent to 17 percent), she actually won more delegates Tuesday night. And, for that matter, more than 125,000 more votes across the two states.
Head over to the WaPo to read the rest.
Miami Dade College
Claire Foran at The Atlantic: Hillary Clinton’s Intersectional Politics.
Hillary Clinton has taken pains to describe the lead-contaminated drinking water of Flint, Michigan, not only as a public-health and environmental crisis, but also as a crisis of poverty and racism. Along the way, the Democratic presidential contender has invoked the idea of intersectionality, the concept that different forms of inequality and discrimination overlap and compound one another.
Clinton’s use of the term, which was at one time largely confined to academia, signals that it is now a common way of thinking about inequality for a younger generation. Her decision to employ it may also elevate the concept in American politics, and alter the terms of a national debate over poverty, racism and other forms of inequity.
In recent weeks, Clinton has increasingly made reference to the concept on the campaign trail. “We face a complex set of economic, social, and political challenges. They are intersectional, they are reinforcing, and we have got to take them all on,” Clinton declared during a February speech in Harlem. Over the weekend, her campaign tweeted that “Flint’s water crisis is an example of the combined effects of intersecting issues that impact communities of color.” An appended graphic draws literal lines between “poverty,” “systemic racism,” “underfunded school systems,” and “crumbling infrastructure.”
Intersectionality was coined in the late 1980s to explain how different markers of identity coalesce to yield unique forms of discrimination. A black woman, for example, might experience not only racism and sexism in her daily life, but could also confront additional barriers that white women and black men do not. It became a way of making visible the experience of individuals that had previously been caught between the feminist and civil-rights movements.
Foran argues that Clinton may be using the term to attract the young voters who are “flocking to Bernie Sanders,” but I highly doubt that. Intersectionality is a concept that Sanders doesn’t understand at all, and it has been important to feminist analysis for a long time. It is also important to understanding the effects of racism. Anyway, read more at the link.
Mami Dade College Student Union
Bernie Sanders showed up in Florida for the first time last night, and Floridians have noticed his absence and find his attitude troubling.
Tampa Bay Times: With a week to go before Florida primary, Bernie Sanders shows up to campaign.
Less than a week before the primary in the country’s third-largest state, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has a skeleton crew in Florida: four paid staffers and three campaign offices.
Compare that with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s dozens of staffers and eight offices.
Even with three campaign events this week and a debate tonight in Miami — his first trip to Florida as a presidential candidate — there have been few signs of the Vermont senator on the state’s campaign trail….
“To say it’s a pipe dream would imply he actually thinks he has a shot,” said University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett. “I suspect he realizes he doesn’t have a shot in Florida, but to be taken seriously as a candidate, you have to basically compete in the biggest battleground state.”
As of Tuesday, Sanders was 26 points behind Clinton in Florida, with just 32 percent of Democrats’ support, according to a RealClearPolitics.com average of state polling data….
Clinton has had a more robust infrastructure in the state since the very beginning, said Alan Clendinin, first vice chair of the Florida Democratic Party. After the 2008 election, a political action committee called Ready for Hillary began collecting names and contact information of supporters at fairs and festivals, he said. When Clinton officially announced her candidacy last year, the committee handed over its database to the campaign, effectively giving it a “turnkey operation,” Clendinin said.
Miami Dade College
Politico: Bernie Sanders discovers Florida.
Bernie Sanders’ plane touched down here Tuesday before the polls started to close in Michigan, offering him a prime opportunity to springboard off what was looking like an unexpectedly strong performance.
The only problem: Sanders’ Miami rally Tuesday evening — more than 10 months into his White House bid, and just one week before Florida votes — was his first campaign event in the most crucial swing state of them all.
It reflected a tactical decision to all-but-cede the South to Hillary Clinton and her decades of relationship-building there, part of a post-Nevada strategic recalibration that turned the campaign’s attention to states voting later in the calendar. The idea was to pick off delegates from the March 15 tranche — Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri are among the states voting next Tuesday — but it’s come at a cost in Florida.
The Vermont senator now trails the former secretary of state by a wide margin in Florida polls, leading local Democrats to question the long-term viability of a candidate without a real Florida operation….
“Florida is very representative of America, the new demographic, the new look of America,” added former Miami Mayor Manny Díaz, a Clinton supporter. “And if you believe that you should not spend any time in Florida, then you should not spend anytime anywhere else. You’re going to run into the same problem everywhere else.”
More details at the link.
Get ready to document the good performances, the gaffes, and the atrocities. I expect a strong performance from Hillary because she’s always at her best when she is challenged.
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