Bernie Sanders Delivers Clinton A Crushing Loss In New Hampshire

Sanders New Hampshire Win CNN

Bernie Sanders has delivered what the media is calling a crushing loss to Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. She went all out to try to reduce the defeat to single digits, but not surprisingly her latest smear campaign, even with the use of Bill, failed miserably. First Read describes how terrible a defeat was for her, and how big a nightmare it was for the establishment:

…if Clinton supporters were hoping to reduce the final margin to single digits, they didn’t come close. Bernie Sanders bested Clinton by 22 points (!!!) in a state she carried in the 2008 presidential contest. And the exit poll numbers seem even worse, even among the groups Clinton is supposedly strong with: Sanders beat her among women by 11 points (55%-44%), Democrats (52%-48%), and moderates (58%-39%). He crushed her among his core groups, winning young voters (83%-16%), independents (72%-25), and liberals (60%-39%). And then there are these terrible numbers: Clinton lost among Democrats caring the most about honest and trustworthiness by 86 points (91%-5%), and she even lost among the Dems who want their candidate to care about people like them by 65 points (82%-17%). Warning sign: Caring about people like them is the Bill Clinton brand, folks!!!

This disputes all the arguments from the pundits as to why Sanders cannot win. The Sanders campaign is not a replay of Howard Dean, who lost in both Iowa and New Hampshire. It is not a futile left wing insurgency, with Sanders winning among almost the same margin among moderates as liberals. This is not a campaign which is destined to go down to defeat in a general election like George McGovern. It was Sanders who brought in the independent vote which will be necessary to win the general election.

Clinton’s base is increasingly limited to older, hard line Democratic voters. Sanders creates the big tent needed to win a general election, and to change the composition of Congress.

Clinton’s loss is largely because voters do not trust her, but that is not the only reason. If voters wanted an honest but conventional Democratic candidate this year, this would be a race between Martin O’Malley and Hillary Clinton, with Bernie Sanders far behind.

It will still be a tough race for Sanders considering the degree of establishment support for Clinton. He has one advantage which insurgent candidates lack–money. Sanders raised $5.2 million dollars after the polls closed in New Hampshire. The average contribution was $34, and these contributors can continue to contribute numerous times without approaching the limit. There was talk on social media of everyone contributing to match the amount of Sanders’ victory. Fortunately many contributors went beyond that.

Clinton is still considered the favorite by many pundits due to her support among minorities. As I discussed recently, her firewall is no guarantee. Sanders does not need the overwhelming support among minorities which Obama received due to picking up other groups, such as white working class voters who tended to vote for Clinton in 2008. Minority voters did not switch from Clinton to support Obama until after he showed that his campaign was real with early primary victories.

Even worse for Clinton, many are now looking back at how devastating Bill’s policies, which she supported, were for minorities. Articles on the topic have suddenly popped up all over. The Nation writes, Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote. Mother Jones reports, Two Prominent Black Intellectuals Just Delivered More Bad News for Clinton. The news extends to the mainstream media with The Washington Post reporting, Author of ‘The New Jim Crow’: Hillary Clinton doesn’t deserve the support of black voters.

The video of Sanders’ victory speech follows:

Down To One Liberal And One Defender Of Civil Liberties In The Presidential Race

Colbert Hungry for Power Games

The number of presidential candidates should drop quickly now that voting has begun. It is not surprising that many of the candidates are waiting to see if they do better than the polls have predicted, which is reasonable considering how poorly polls often are at predicting primary results. Some of the more mainstream candidates are putting their hopes on New Hampshire. For other candidates, a loss in Iowa was enough to tell them that they had no chance.

On the Democratic side, Martin O’Malley announced that he is suspending his campaign while the Iowa caucus was in progress. It has been clear for months that O’Malley had no real chance with the conservative/establishment voters going for Clinton and the liberal/pro-insurgent voters going for Sanders. There was no middle lane for O’Malley, who certainly would be a far better choice than Clinton. He campaigned hard in Iowa, and there was no point in continuing once this failed to result in support at the caucuses. This leaves Bernie Sanders as the only liberal or progressive left in the race from either party.

For the Republicans, the Iowa caucus is the best shot for a candidate from the religious right to win, as Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum have done in the past. Republicans this year are bucking their usual trend of backing the next in line, with Ted Cruz winning this year. Huckabee at least deserves credit for realizing there is no hope and not dragging it on any longer. I wonder how much longer Rick Santorum and Ben Carson will stay in the race.

Rand Paul dropped out today, realizing it made more sense to work at holding on to his Senate seat, especially when he is increasingly being excluded from the Republican debates. While I disagree with Paul on many things, I did like having Paul criticizing the other candidates for their conservative positions on military interventionism, civil liberties, and the drug war. For that matter, while he has done so at times, I also wish Bernie Sanders would do the same regarding Clinton’s views.

With Paul out, this leaves Sanders as the only candidate opposing unnecessary foreign intervention, the only candidate opposing the surveillance state and other restrictions on civil liberties, and the only candidate who opposes the drug war. By concentrating on economic issues, where he also differs substantially from all the remaining candidates, other issues are receiving too little attention this year.

Stephen Colbert did not do his usual segment on Hungry For Power Games last night, concentrating on the caucus instead. Now he has three candidates to mock tonight.

Update: Rick Santorum is also dropping out.

The Revolution Begins For Bernie Sanders In Iowa (And No, There Is No Guaranteed Firewall For Clinton In The South)

Iowa Virtual Tie

Hillary Clinton won the Iowa caucus by a fraction of one percent thanks to the arcane rules of the Iowa caucus and the luck of winning the coin toss six out of six times when it decided delegates. Sanders has requested that the actual raw vote be released. It will probably not be done in accordance with the Iowa caucus rules, but it was a smart move to make. There is an excellent chance that Sanders won the popular vote but received slightly fewer delegate equivalents (which were announced) due to his vote being more concentrated in college towns. Plus the anti-Clinton delegates to the state convention could easily out-number the pro-Clinton delegates when those won by  Martin O’Malley, who dropped out of the race, are considered.

It remains to be seen how significant Clinton’s narrow win will be considered when it came down to coin tosses and the arcane Iowa caucus rules to pick delegate equivalents, along with some questions as to the accuracy of the results leading to some calls for a recount. Even an article at The Des Moines Register Tuesday evening questions if the correct winner was called.

A tie will be as good as a win if it brings in enough contributions and if it raises attention for Sanders sufficiently for him to get his message to more minority voters. So far it looks like it was enough in terms of fund raising, and nobody knows what will happen in terms of improving Sanders’ support nation wide. Iowa might not matter after Sanders wins in New Hampshire.

A major strategy of the Clinton campaign has to claim that Sanders could not win, just as they claimed this eight years ago about Obama. (Showing how little things have changed, they also claimed Obama was too liberal). The Clinton camp spreads claims that Sanders’ support is limited to young white males. While there is a generational divide, the gender divide is exaggerated as young millennial women are often backing Sanders. They have created the myth of a firewall in the south as the Clinton camp ignores the inroads Sanders has made among minorities the last several months.

Eight years ago, at the time of the Iowa caucus, Clinton also had a strong national lead in the national polls and among black voters. It wasn’t until Obama beat her in Iowa and showed that his campaign was for real that the campaign changed. Minorities subsequently shifted towards Obama, and Obama eventually moved ahead of Clinton in the national polls. Besides being likely to continue to improve his support among minority voters, Sanders is also making gains among less affluent whites, including in the south, which might provide votes to balance Clinton’s diminishing advantage with minorities.

Sanders support is rapidly growing. In contrast, Clinton’s support was more limited “to older, frequent caucus-goers.” This was enough for the narrow victory in Iowa, but might not be enough in primary states where relative turn out is higher, and she cannot count on the Iowa caucus rules to tilt the results.

A tie for Sanders will be as good as a win if it brings in enough contributions, and if it raises attention for Sanders sufficiently for him to get his message to more voters. So far it looks like it was enough in terms of fund raising, and we do not know yet what will happen in terms of improving Sanders’ support nation wide.

Neither campaign was able to do serious harm to the other with a meaningful win in Iowa. It largely comes down to bragging rights. Clinton can say she won, despite headlines like How Iowa Went Wrong For Hillary Clinton. She did avert disaster which she might have faced if she had lost by a significant amount as in 2008.

Bernie Sanders made a statement that he should be paid attention to. We don’t have to settle for Hillary. Iowa did show that Clinton is beatable. It also showed that she is not a very good candidate.

Iowa was essentially a tie, and maybe it is for the best that a small state like Iowa did not becoming the determining factor in what could be a long race over significant ideological differences. Previously Clinton  admitted she was a centrist when she thought the nomination was more secure, and she has been attacking Sanders from the right. In her speech last night, she flip flopped again, claiming to be a progressive, seeing where the party is headed.

The protests generated when Clinton’s claims of being a progressive aired at the Sanders campaign headquarters said it all. Sanders supporters are tired of a Democratic Party which fears liberal ideas and enables Republican policies. They were looking from the message from Bernie Sanders that, “What Iowa has begun tonight is a political revolution.”

(Post updated early Wednesday with minor changes to add more links from the original version which was cross-posted on social media.)

Iowa Caucus Comes Down To Turnout & Peculiarities Of A Caucus Versus A Primary

Iowa Caucus

(This is based upon Saturday’s post with major updates, also posted at The Moderate Voice  earlier today)

The Democratic caucus in Iowa is too close to call and will come down to turnout, along with other factors seen in a caucus as opposed to a primary. The final Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Poll before the Iowa Caucus showed Hillary Clinton leading Bernie Sanders with 45 percent compared to 42 percent. The three point lead is within the poll’s margin of error at four percent. Martin O’Malley trails at three percent.

The final Quinnipiac University Poll, coming out this morning, has Sanders leading Clinton by three points, also within the margin of error.

While I have often pointed out the limitations of polls before primaries, the final Des Moines Register poll is probably the most likely to be predictive. Among its virtues, it does not exclude voters based upon past lack of participation in the caucuses as many other polls do. While it has a better track record than other polls, it still suffers from the same problem of all pollsters in not knowing who will actually turn out. Traditional Democratic voters favor Clinton while more independent voters strongly favor Sanders, but we don’t know how many of them will participate in the caucuses. Higher turn out than usual would increase the chances of a victory for Sanders.

Being a caucus rather than a pure primary vote creates additional questions. A candidate has to meet a fifteen percent threshold for their vote to count towards selecting delegates in the Democratic caucus. If they do not meet this threshold, then the second choice becomes crucial. Greater support for Sanders than Clinton among O’Malley supporters nearly erases Clinton’s lead if the votes go to Sanders. However, Buzzfeed reports on how the Clinton campaign is trying to game the system by having some of their supporters back O’Malley so that he will meet the fifteen percent viability requirement to keep his supporters from going to Sanders. Of course plotting such a strategy and getting Iowa voters to go along are two different things. I recall how Clinton protested over similar actions by the Obama campaign eight yeas ago.

Bloomberg has more background on Clinton’s strategy in Iowa–basically doing the opposite of what she did in 2008.

Another question is the consequence of the difference in date for the caucus this year compared to 2008, when Obama came in first and Clinton came in third. The 2008 caucus occurred on January 3, when many college students were still on vacation, and possibly out of the state. Will having the caucus occur after students have returned to school provide an additional benefit to Sanders? On the other hand, will college students be more likely to caucus near their campus as opposed to at homes throughout Iowa. There is the danger that this will lead to Sanders having huge leads in some areas, such as Iowa City and Ames, while not doing as well as Obama did in other parts of the state. This could result in Clinton picking up more delegates statewide even if Sanders narrowly wins the popular vote. The Sanders campaign is urging students to “Go Home for Bernie” to vote throughout the state but such travel plans might be complicated by a major storm expected to hit Iowa later tonight.

With turnout so important, Sanders supporters hope that the large turnout at his events indicate a greater likelihood of turning out to caucus.

Donald Trump leads among the Republicans at 28 percent with Ted Cruz in second place at 23 percent in the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Poll. However, Trump has a weak ground game making it possible for an upset. I also wouldn’t be surprised if candidates such as Rubio, or even Ben Carson, do better than expected. The usually confident Trump is admitting to being a “little bit nervous” going into tonight’s vote.

Sanders Surging In Polls Both In Iowa And Nationally

Sanders Clinton

As she tried, and failed, eight years ago, Hillary Clinton has been running a campaign based upon inevitability. There’s no need to pay any attention to the young/old guy running against her as there was no chance she would lose. Just look at her big lead in the polls. Except now that lead has dwindled away.

The first sign of bad news for Clinton came over the weekend with the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College poll showing Clinton only slightly ahead in Iowa and Sanders holding a slight lead in New Hampshire. This led to headlines this morning such as Bernie Sanders In Striking Distance.

As Iowa is a caucus and not a primary, I also wonder what would happen with Martin O’Malley’s supporters as, assuming this poll result holds, he would not have enough support to meet the fifteen percent threshold. His supporters would have to go to their second choice. If a majority of his supporters go to Sanders, this could be enough to give Sanders the victory.

Or maybe he won’t need to pick up O’Malley’s support. An American Research Group poll has Sanders leading Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent. He also leads in New Hampshire by the same margin.

Previously I though that Clinton would maintain her lead in the national polls until the Iowa or New Hampshire votes and then Sanders would start moving up nationally if he won there. He might not even need to wait for this. The IBD/TIPP Poll has Clinton’s lead over Sanders nationally at 4 points, down from an eighteen point lead.

The IBD/TIPP Poll shows that regionally, Clinton saw her support drop most in the Northeast (where it fell to 36% from 50%) and the West (37% down from 49%). Sanders now holds the lead in both places. Clinton support also tumbled among suburban voters, dropping to 39% from last a month’s 50%. And she has lost backing among moderate Democrats, falling to 44% from 58%. Sanders picked up 10 points among moderates, to 37%.

Polls before primaries have a poor track record of predicting the winner, and the final results could be quite different from what we are seeing today. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see both candidates moving up and down in the polls over the next few weeks.

What this does show is that the this is a race either candidate can win, and a Clinton victory is not inevitable. The growing number of polls which show Sanders doing better than Clinton in head to head match-ups against Republicans further undermines Clinton’s argument.

Third Democratic Debate Showed Sanders’ Strength On Foreign Policy, Health Care, And Social Justice

Third Democratic Debate ABC News

The third Democratic Debate (transcript here) was most significant for Sanders doing his best job yet in the debates of taking on Hillary Clinton on foreign policy. Unfortunately, with the debate airing on the Saturday night before Christmas, The Guardian might have it right in this headline: Sanders outshone Clinton on foreign policy at the debate. But who watched? Both Sanders and O’Malley were also critical of Clinton’s Wall Street ties and economic views. During much of the evening I felt like I was watching a debate between two Democrats and a Republican.

While Sanders was prepared to take on Clinton’s foreign policy views, he did begin with his usual themes in his opening statement:

I am running for president of the United States because it is too late for establishment politics and establishment economics. I’m running for president because our economy is rigged because working people are working longer hours for lower wages and almost all of new wealth and income being created is going to the top one percent. I’m running for president because I’m going to create an economy that works for working families not just billionaires.

I’m running for president because we have a campaign finance system which is corrupt, where billionaires are spending hundreds of millionaires of dollars to buy candidates who will represent their interests rather than the middle class and working families. I’m running because we need to address the planetary crisis of climate change and take on the fossil fuel industry and transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

I’m running for president because I want a new foreign policy; one that takes on Isis, one that destroys ISIS, but one that does not get us involved in perpetual warfare in the quagmire of the Middle East but rather works around a major coalition of wealthy and powerful nations supporting Muslim troops on the ground. That’s the kind of coalition we need and that’s the kind of coalition I will put together.

The breech in security on the DNC’s voter data base came up. Sanders explained the situation, including an open admission of what staffers had done wrong, and then was asked if Clinton deserved an apology:

Not only — not only do I apologize to Secretary Clinton — and I hope we can work together on an independent investigation from day one — I want to apologize to my supporters. This is not the type of campaign that we run.

And if I find anybody else involved in this, they will also be fired.

Clinton appeared shocked, as if she didn’t see this coming. Such an honest response to a scandal is so foreign to her.

It didn’t take long for the debate to turn to foreign policy. Sanders criticized Clinton’s interventionist foreign policy views and support for regime change. There was a detour on gun control when Clinton was asked, ” Secretary Clinton, in the wake of the San Bernardino attack, you all emphasized gun control. But our latest poll shows that more Americans believe arming people, not stricter gun laws, is the best defense against terrorism. Are they wrong?”

Clinton stumbled in answering but I do think she was trying to say the right thing here. She finally did say, “Guns, in and of themselves, in my opinion, will not make Americans safer.”

O’Malley took advantage of this to attack the records of both Clinton and Sanders on guns. He is right, as I have discussed here, that Clinton changes her position on this every election year. He is also right that Sanders has had some votes which gun control advocates could rightly criticize, but as has generally been the case when this issue has come up, Sanders’ general history of support for gun control was distorted. Among the issues was that O’Malley raised was that, “Senator Sanders voted against even research dollars to look into this public health issue.”

The problem with citing a single vote against any Senator is that bills contain multiple items, and it is possible that Sanders voted against the amendment based upon details unrelated to the general issue. This vote took place in 1996 and in more recent interviews Sanders has not been able to recall the specifics of why he voted against this at the time. More importantly, Sanders now favors funding for this research. All three candidates are strongly promoting gun control.

Hillary Clinton often seemed to deflect from questions by bringing up criticisms of Donald Trump. Most were valid, but Clinton was wrong on one point:

And we also need to make sure that the really discriminatory messages that Trump is sending around the world don’t fall on receptive ears. He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists. So I want to explain why this is not in America’s interest to react with this kind of fear and respond to this sort of bigotry.

The fact check sites, including Factcheck.org, states that no such video exists. This is apparently as fictitious as the videos which Carly Fiorina claimed to have seen regarding Planned Parenthood at the second Republican debate.

Clinton was confronted with the contradictions in her statements on Syria by Martha Raddatz, who tried to force Clinton to defend her foreign policy failures several times during the debate:

Secretary Clinton, you too have ruled out a large U.S. combat force, yet you support sending in special operations forces to Syria, and sending those 100 to 200 troops to Iraq to do exploitation kill raids.

We’ve already lost one Delta Force member in a raid. It has looked very much to me like we’re already in ground combat on frequent trips I’ve made there.

After a weak answer from Clinton, Raddatz followed up:

Secretary Clinton, I want — I want to follow up on that. You do support sending special operations forces there. You support what the president has done already. One of the lessons people draw from Vietnam and war since is that a little force can turn into a little more and a little more. President Obama certainly didn’t expect to be sending 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan the first year of his presidency.

Are you prepared to run the risk of a bigger war to achieve your goals to destroy ISIS, or are you prepared to give up on those goals if it requires a larger force?

Clinton continued to struggle to defend her foreign policy views. After Clinton mentioned her support for a no-fly zone in Syria, Raddatz asked, “Secretary Clinton, I’d like to go back to that if I could. ISIS doesn’t have aircraft, Al Qaida doesn’t have aircraft. So would you shoot down a Syrian military aircraft or a Russian airplane?”

Both O’Malley and Sanders criticized Clinton’s views, with Sanders putting it all in perspective:

I have a difference of opinion with Secretary Clinton on this. Our differences are fairly deep on this issue. We disagreed on the war in Iraq. We both listened to the information from Bush and Cheney. I voted against the war.

But I think — and I say this with due respect — that I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be.

Yes, we could get rid of Saddam Hussein, but that destabilized the entire region. Yes, we could get rid of Gadhafi, a terrible dictator, but that created a vacuum for ISIS. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS. So I think, yeah, regime change is easy, getting rid of dictators is easy. But before you do that, you’ve got to think about what happens the day after. And in my view, what we need to do is put together broad coalitions to understand that we’re not going to have a political vacuum filled by terrorists, that, in fact, we are going to move steadily — and maybe slowly — toward democratic societies, in terms of Assad, a terrible dictator. But I think in Syria the primary focus now must be on destroying ISIS and working over the years to get rid of Assad. That’s the secondary issue.

With Clinton lacking any arguments of substance to defend her views, Clinton resorted to her usual tactic of deception. She tried to deflect from such criticism, and deny the substantial difference in their views, by distorting  Sanders’ record in saying, “With all due respect, senator, you voted for regime change with respect to Libya. you joined the Senate in voting to get rid of Qaddafi.” As Politico pointed out after the debate, the vote referred to a nonbinding resolution he voted for, which asked the dictator to “desist from further violence, recognize the Libyan people’s demand for democratic change, [and] resign his position.” This was hardly comparable to the removal of Qaddafi by force which Clinton backed.

O’Malley criticized Clinton’s antiqued thinking, with this not being the only time he contrasted his age to his two older opponents:

During the Cold War — during the Cold War, we got into a bad habit of always looking to see who was wearing the jersey of the communists, and who was wearing the U.S. jersey. We got into a bad habit of creating big bureaucracies, old methodologies, to undermine regimes that were not friendly to the United States. Look what we did in Iran with Mosaddegh. And look at the results that we’re still dealing with because of that. I would suggest to you that we need to leave the Cold War behind us, and we need to put together new alliances and new approaches to dealing with this, and we need to restrain ourselves.

I mean, I know Secretary Clinton was gleeful when Gadhafi was torn apart. And the world, no doubt is a better place without him. But look, we didn’t know what was happening next. And we fell into the same trap with Assad, saying — as if it’s our job to say, Assad must go.

We have a role to play in this world. But we need to leave the Cold War and that sort of antiquated thinking behind.

O’Malley was strong in criticizing Clinton’s ties to Wall Street and pointed how in the second debate she “very shamefully, she tried to hide her cozy relationship with Wall Street big banks by invoking the attacks of 9/11.” Clinton down played her contributions from Wall Street by ignoring her super PAC contributions, while Sanders pointed out, “Secretary Clinton, I don’t have a super PAC. I don’t get any money from Wall Street.” I am even more concerned about the corrupting effects of the contributions to the Foundation and unprecedented speaking fees paid to her husband.

The debate moved to health care with Sanders repeating his support for Medicare for All and Clinton objecting based upon the tax increases this would require. Sanders defended his proposal from Clinton’s attacks:

But Secretary Clinton is wrong.

As you know, because I know you know a lot about health care. You know that the United States per capita pays far and away more than other country. And it is unfair simply to say how much more the program will cost without making sure that people know that, we are doing away with cost of private insurance and that the middle class will be paying substantially less for health care on the single payer than on the Secretary’s Clinton proposal.

Clinton continued to channel right wing attacks on progressive programs by concentrating on their costs while ignoring their benefits in saying, “I don’t think we should be imposing new big programs that are going to raise middle class families’ taxes.”

Sanders responded by once again showing how he supports the economic policies of FDR and LBJ:

Number one, most important economic reality of today is that over the last 30 years, there has been a transfer of trillions of dollars from the middle class to the top one-tenth of one percent who are seeing a doubling of the percentage of wealth that they own.

Now, when Secretary Clinton says, “I’m not going raise taxes on the middle class,” let me tell you what she is saying. She is disagreeing with FDR on Social Security, LBJ on Medicare and with the vast majority of progressive Democrats in the House and the Senate, who today are fighting to end the disgrace of the United States being the only major country on Earth that doesn’t provide paid family and medical leave.

Sanders was the strongest candidate in speaking out for social justice:

Well, this whole issue concerns me. And I agree with much of what the secretary and the governor have said. But let’s be clear. Today in America we have more people in jail than any other country on earth, 2.2 million people. Predominantly African-American and Hispanic.

We are spending $80 billion a year locking up our fellow Americans. I think, and this is not easy, but I think we need to make wage a major effort, to come together as a country and end institutional racism. We need major, major reforms of a very broken criminal justice system. Now, what does that mean?

Well, for a start it means that police officers should not be shooting unarmed people, predominantly African-Americans.

It means that we have to rethink the so-called war on drugs which has destroyed the lives of millions of people, which is why I have taken marijuana out of the Controlled Substance Act. So that it will not be a federal crime.That is why we need to make police — and I speak as a former mayor. I was a mayor for eight years, worked very closely with a great police department. And what we did is try to move that department toward community policing, so that the police officers become part of the community and not, as we see, in some cities an oppressive force.

We need to make police departments look like the communities they serve in terms of diversity. We need to end minimal sentencing. We need, basically, to pledge that we’re going to invest in this country, in jobs and education, not more jails and incarceration.

Towards the end, Martha Raddatz returned to Clinton’s failed policy on Libya, which Clinton has received considerable criticism for:

Secretary Clinton, I want to circle back to something that your opponents here have brought up. Libya is falling apart. The country is a haven for ISIS and jihadists with an estimated 2,000 ISIS fighters there today. You advocated for that 2011 intervention and called it smart power at its best. And yet, even President Obama said the U.S. should have done more to fill the leadership vacuum left behind. How much responsibility do you bear for the chaos that followed elections?

Clinton tried to deflect and Raddatz followed up:

Secretary Clinton, I want to go back. That — government lacked institutions and experience. It had been a family business for 40 years. On the security side, we offered only a modest training effort and a very limited arms buy-back program. Let me ask you the question again. How much responsibility do you bear for the chaos that followed those elections?

Sanders also showed his disagreements with Clinton on regime change:

SANDERS: Look, the secretary is right. This is a terribly complicated issue. There are no simple solutions. But where we have a disagreement is that I think if you look at the history of regime changes, you go back to Mossaddegh (ph) in Iran, you go back to Salvador Allende who we overthrew in Chile, you go back to overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, you go back to where we are today in Syria with a dictator named Assad.

The truth is it is relatively easy for a powerful nation like America to overthrow a dictator but it is very hard to predict the unintended consequences and the turmoil and the instability that follows after you overthrow that dictator.

So I think secretary Clinton and I have a fundamental disagreement. I’m not quite the fan of regime change that I believe she is.

After many questions of substance, the final questions were rather lame regarding the role of the president’s spouse. The candidates then gave their closing statements, with Clinton going last and concluding, “Thank you, good night and may the force be with you.”

The force was strong in Bernie Sanders, while Hillary Clinton (and Debbie Wasserman Schultz) have been taken away by the dark side.

Bernie Sanders Receives Two Major Endorsements

Democracy For America Endorses Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders has picked up two major endorsements today from the Communications Workers of America union and Democracy for America. MSNBC reports on the first endorsement of the day:

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is set to pick up one of his biggest endorsements yet Thursday from the powerful Communications Workers of America union, sources told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

The group represents some 700,000 workers nationally, making it by far the largest union to back Sanders yet.

Politico reports on the second endorsement:

Bernie Sanders picked up his second significant progressive endorsement of the day on Thursday afternoon, and this one might sting for Hillary Clinton.

Democracy For America, the 1 million-member liberal group that helped stoke much of the pro-Elizabeth Warren movement early in the 2016 election cycle, is backing the independent Vermont senator after he earned 88 percent of the over 270,000 votes cast in the group’s online membership poll, compared with 10 percent for Clinton and 1 percent for both Martin O’Malley and the option not to endorse at all.

 The move is significant given DFA’s high threshold for endorsing. The group has existed since 2004, and no candidate had ever previously made it past the two-thirds mark necessary for the nod — which will come with fundraising help and an on-the-ground organization in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, DFA executive director Charles Chamberlain wrote in an email due to go to supporters on Thursday.

As the strong establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton remains far ahead of Sanders in terms of endorsements, but it is likely that many union members will vote for Sanders regardless of the position of their union leadership. I am not surprised that the DFA’s threshold to endorse a presidential candidate was met for the first time this year. With Hillary Clinton’s move to the right during this campaign, in addition to her overall conservative record and political philosophy, this represents  a clear choice between a liberal and conservative candidate for the Democratic nomination. Clinton’s positions are generally contrary to the views which led many liberals to get involved in politics and groups such as Democracy for America.

The Sanders campaign achieve another goal this week in receiving two million campaign contributions:

Aides to Bernie Sanders said Wednesday night that his campaign has now collected more than 2 million contributions and that they expect to outpace President Obama’s 2012 reelection effort on that count by the end of the year.

The number reflects an operation that has focused on raising money in small increments from an exceptionally wide range of donors — with the vast majority of contributions coming over the Internet…

Sanders has already taken in more individual contributions than Obama did at this point in his 2008 campaign for president. Aides to Sanders said they are confident by the end of the year, Sanders will have more than the 2.2 million donations that Obama did during the equivalent stretch in the 2012 race.

Sanders vs. Clinton On Wall Street Reform

Demonsration TFF

There seems to be a whole cottage industry of writing articles to whitewash Hillary Clinton’s record. This includes articles which claim Clinton is a liberal or that she is not as hawkish as she is considered to be. Both types of articles accomplish this by taking a very limited view of Clinton’s overall record. Now there is an attempt in The New Yorker to really obfuscate matters, going directly at Sanders’ strength. Gary Sernovitch wrote an article entitled What Hillary Clinton Gets (and Bernie Sanders Doesn’t) About Wall Street. 

While the article admits that Clinton’s plan (described by Martin O’Malley as “weak tea”) wouldn’t fundamentally the issues with Wall Street, Sernovitch claims, “her experience with the realities of the world equips her with the tactics to handle big, complicated issues.” Clinton’s experience with the realities of the world has not paid off very well in the past considering how often Clinton has been wrong on the issues when Sanders was right, with Clinton only later admitting to her previous mistakes. We’ve seen her botch the big issues such as Iraq and health care reform. More recently she has flip-flopped on selected issues to try to attract progressives in the current primary race.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has a rebuttal to Sernovitch’s article. It begins:

The New Yorker ran a rather confused piece on Gary Sernovitz, a managing director at the investment firm Lime Rock Partners, on whether Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton would be more effective in reining in Wall Street. The piece assures us that Secretary Clinton has a better understanding of Wall Street and that her plan would be more effective in cracking down on the industry. The piece is bizarre both because it essentially dismisses the concern with too big to fail banks and completely ignores Sanders’ proposal for a financial transactions tax which is by far the most important mechanism for reining in the financial industry.

After discussing the matter in more detail, Baker concluded:

It is incredible that Sernovitz would ignore a policy with such enormous consequences for the financial sector in his assessment of which candidate would be tougher on Wall Street. Sanders FTT would almost certainly do more to change behavior on Wall Street than everything that Clinton has proposed taken together, by a rather large margin. Leaving out the FTT in this comparison is sort of like evaluating the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl prospects without discussing their quarterback.

Late Night Television: Jon Stewart Does Donald Trump Impression & Presidential Candidates Condemn Trump For Proposed Muslim Ban

Over the last few months, Stephen Colbert has established himself as the best late night talk show host. He is a worthy successor to David Letterman on The Late Show, while also in a sense both succeeding himself from The Colbert Report. For many liberal television viewers, watching the monologue and initial segment on The Late Show has also replaced watching Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

The one downside is that having the most openly liberal show on the major broadcast networks is  alienating Republican viewers, resulting in a drop in ratings. While conservatives knew that David Letterman was not one of them, he was never as blatantly political as Colbert. From the perspective of a viewer that is fine with me, but it does raise a concern as to whether CBS will continue him on the air long term.

For as long as it lasts, The Late Show is the late night television home for fans of Letterman, Colbert, and Jon Stewart. Thursday night we got a chance to see two of the three together. Jon Stewart joined Stephen Colbert in the monologue, calling for funding for medical benefits for 9/11 first responders–as he previously did with a guest return to The Daily Show. Video above.

Stephen Colbert offered advice to Jon Stewart to “Trump it up” when he thought that the pitch was boring. Colbert advised, “Face it, Jon, the media won’t pay attention to anything, it won’t pay attention to anything at all, unless you are Donald Trump.” (Others have argued the same).  This led to Colbert bringing out a Donald Trump wig which he keeps on hand just in case he has to say anything important, and Jon Stewart did his impression of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has also been criticized for his statement that he would ban Muslims from entering the country by many politicians, including on late night television. Bernie Sanders condemned Donald Trump as a demagogue on The Tonight Show (video above).

The straight-talking senator lashed out at Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the country on NBC’s Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Tuesday night, calling the Republican poll topper a “demagogue.”

“What somebody like a Trump is trying to do is to divide us up,” Sanders said. “A few months ago, we’re supposed to hate Mexicans; now we’re supposed to hate Muslims. That kind of crap is not going to work in the United States of America.”

Hillary Clinton, who previously did an impression of Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live (video here), also commented on Trump. As a guest on ate Night With Seth Meyers, Clinton condemned Trump, saying she no longer finds him to be funny (video above);

“I have to say, Seth, I no longer think he’s funny,” she told the host in an interview that aired early Friday morning. “You know, I think for weeks you and everybody else were just bringing folks to hysterical laughter and all of that, but now he has gone way over the line.”

Clinton said the real estate mogul’s recent call to bar Muslims from entering the United States is not only “shameful and wrong” but “dangerous.”

“This latest demand that we don’t let Muslims into the country really plays right into the hands of the terrorists. And I don’t say that lightly, but it does,” she continued. “He’s giving them a great propaganda tool, a way to recruit more folks from Europe and the United states.”

Martin O’Malley, plus multiple Republican candidates have also condemned Trump’s statement. Even Dick Cheney criticized Trump’s statement. If you are too far right for Dick Cheney, you are really outside of the American mainstream.

Related: Stephen Colbert, Larry David, and Bill Maher On Bernie Sanders & The Democratic Race (a collection of videos)

Salon Article Advocates Writing In Bernie Sanders If Clinton Wins Democratic Nomination

No Clinton

An article at Salon (More like Reagan than FDR: I’m a millennial and I’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton) is receiving some attention for providing reasons why the author would not vote for Hillary Clinton. Walker Bragman began by suggesting that the usual course would be to utilize primaries to try to select the candidate most aligned with the change he wants, and then vote for the lesser of two evils in the general election if it came to this. He argues that this strategy doesn’t apply this year due to the manner in which the DNC is resisting the possibility of selecting a change candidate in rigging the rules for Clinton.

Bragman then went through the arguments as to why he does not want to vote for Clinton. He started with Hillary’s personality repels me (and many others). The section would be better labeled with her character as opposed to personality, as it deals with her dishonesty and double talk.

The next section is more accurately labeled with On foreign policy, Clinton is a neoconservative. This section primarily deals with her approach to handling ISIS, and I would add more regarding her neoconservative views on Iraq and Libya.

The next section is On domestic policy, Clinton is basically a moderate Republican. Many examples are listed to back this up, concentrating on economic policy. I would have included her conservative views on civil liberties and social/cultural issues. Of course an article would have to be quite long to include all the reasons why liberals should not vote for Clinton–and I have pointed out other posts elsewhere along these lines in the past.

The final section is Choosing Hillary threatens the future of the Democratic Party. The section notes the conservative background of New Democrats such as Bill Clinton. I would also take this a step further. Hillary Clinton supports many ideas which Democrats would never accept from a Republican, but many Democrats defend when it comes from Clinton. Similarly, Democrats would be very skeptical of a Republican who received such large contributions from Wall Street, or who benefited financially from parties they were making decisions about. Yet many Democrats ignore unethical conduct from Clinton they would never accept from a Republican. Maybe this wouldn’t hurt the future of the Democratic Party, but it would leave us with a Democratic Party which stands for even less than the party now stands for. That threaten the future of the nation.

The article gives many excellent reasons to vote for Sanders over Clinton in the primaries, along with reasons to be upset if the system gives the nomination to Clinton without a fair fight. However, should Clinton win the nomination, it does not address the fact that the Republican candidate will be even more conservative than Clinton on some issues. While Clinton is more like Reagan than FDR, and is in many ways a combination of George W. Bush and Richard Nixon, the Republican Party has moved much further to the right in recent years.

This leaves the question as to whether it will matter if Clinton or a Republican wins–which is more difficult to say without knowing which Republican will be the GOP nominee. It is definitely possible that there will be no meaningful difference with regards to foreign policy and civil liberties issues if Clinton or a Republican wins. There is the danger that the next president will be hostile to government transparency, and nobody has reached the level of the Clinton corruption in using the office of the presidency to enhance their personal worth. We will probably see a continuation of the surveillance state and of the drug war regardless of whether Clinton or a Republican wins.

The biggest danger in a Clinton presidency would be that many Democrats will support conservative policies, leaving a weak liberal opposition to her policies, while there would be greater unity in opposing what might even be the exact same policies coming from Republicans.

The biggest upside to Clinton winning over the Republicans might be that after campaigning as a progressive for the nomination, she will continue to govern as one. At very least Clinton would support a handful of liberal positions such as reproductive rights if elected. While this would be favorable, it is hardly enough to be happy with the prospect of her election considering her many conservative views. Unfortunately we have already seen her swing to the right on some issues and she has shown throughout her career that she cannot be trusted to stand up for liberal ideas. Much of the differences we now see between Clinton and the GOP candidates are far less differences on the issues and more a matter of which party’s voters they are currently trying to attract.

The biggest differences could be the veto pen and the Supreme Court. There is now the possibility of a bill reaching Obama’s desk to repeal Obamacare from the Republican Congress–and we can be certain it will not be replaced with a single payer system. If this happens, Obama will veto it. Clinton would also veto it, along with other conceivable damaging legislation the Republicans might get through Congress. Clinton would also choose Supreme Court justices from a far different pool than any Republican president would, and it is possible they would be more conventional Democrats as opposed to ones as conservative as she is.

I don’t mean this to argue either way as to whether Sanders supporters should vote for Clinton or write in Sanders should Clinton win the Democratic nomination. It is far too early to argue over this, especially considering that we don’t know who will win either party’s nomination at this point. It is also way too early, and far too annoying, for Clinton supporters to constantly interrupt discussion among Sanders or O’Malley supporters on Facebook, and elsewhere in social media, to ask if they will vote for Clinton in the general election. It certainly shows a degree of insecurity about their candidate that they are so fearful that many Democrats will not turn out to vote for their candidate in the general election.

Not living in a battle ground state also makes it far easier for me to consider what would amount to a protest vote should Clinton win the nomination, while I might vote differently if I anticipated a situation like Florida in 2000. Rather than writing in Sanders, as many now say they will do, I would first take a closer look at the Green Party, feeling that this might help build a more long term opposition force from the left than writing in Sanders would. This is about policy positions, not personalities. And as for the comparison to Gore in 2000, there is a major difference. It was unfortunate that Bush and not Gore won due to their different views on foreign policy, leading to the Iraq war. In this case, Clinton shares the neoconservative views which we would have been better off keeping out of office in 2000.

An updated version of this post which elaborates more on some of the issues raised has been posted at The Moderate Voice