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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Dos Equis on January 14, 2014, 10:13:35 AM
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Was looking for a list of potential 2016 Democrat nominees and came across this stellar list.
Presidential Candidates 2016: 10 Democrats Who Might Be the Next Presidential Nominee
By Shawna Gillen November 12, 2012
Now that the long 2012 presidential election has concluded, it is no surprise that politicians are preparing for 2016. Obama’s victory means this will be his final term as president, leaving a window of opportunity for Democratic presidential hopefuls. Here is a list of possible candidates to keep a close watch on for the 2016 Democratic presidential ticket.
1. Hillary Clinton
(http://media2.policymic.com/569b0aae69228083e9e2464899f192a1.jpg)
President Obama’s Secretary of State is no stranger to the political arena. Clinton was Former First lady under her husband Bill Clinton from 1993-2001. Bill has been a strong supporter of the Obama campaign and gave a noteworthy speech at the Democratic National Convention in September. As for Hillary, she ran for the Democratic nomination in 2008, but who’s to say she will not try again in 2016? She has become a prominent female figure in politics, which will definitely give her great advantage for securing the female vote.
2. Joe Biden
(http://media2.policymic.com/016e176e5e75fe61528bf9ca2e121b9a.jpg)
Current Vice President Joe Biden has already sought the presidency twice, but would the third time be the charm?? After casting his ballot on Election Day, Biden was asked if this was going to be the last time he would vote for himself. He briefly replied, “No, I don’t think so.” What could be his disadvantage? His age. Biden will be 73 by the time the 2016 Election season is underway, which may make it difficult to campaign against younger competitors.
3. Andrew Cuomo
(http://media2.policymic.com/2dddc1dabbafc46e9f5541c9457abb9c.jpg)
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo may have his sights set on 2016. Between his performance on Hurricane Sandy relief, and his former cabinet position as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton Administration, he may have the leverage he needs to form a strong campaign.
4. Beau Biden
(http://media2.policymic.com/f6b2b7b70bae14efd93be78b46bba423.jpg)
Beau Biden is the son of the vice president, so needless to say he has a strong advantage to receiving political endorsements. He is the Delaware Attorney General, and is a Major in the Army National Guard. Beau has made television appearances expressing praise for his father’s performance in the VP debate. He has also made speeches at the past two Democratic National Conventions.
5. Martin O’Malley
(http://media2.policymic.com/475e956fc9c4117bb004b78099c9bde2.jpg)
The Maryland Governor gave an address at the DNC, and is the chairman of the Democratic Governor’s Association. He is a strong Obama supporter and may receive his endorsement if he runs in 2016.
6. Deval Patrick
(http://media2.policymic.com/f6b42e134f797eebb344f915daf4b4c3.jpg)
The Governor of Massachusetts is a close friend of President Obama, and also gave an address at the DNC. When asked the following week of the convention of his future plans, he shot down the idea of 2016. “If there is a time sometime later to come back and serve in public life, I hope I’m able to do that. Just not going to be in 2016,” he said. He may be coy on the subject, but he is still important to watch.
7. Kirsten Gillibrand
(http://media2.policymic.com/a5bc7bceb41b93eb08a9c2fc3ca6aa9e.jpg)
The New York Senator just secured her first full term after replacing Hillary Clinton by winning in a landslide. She addressed Iowa delegates at the DNC giving a possible preview to a 2016 campaign. The Senator may follow in Clinton’s footsteps and seek the presidency.
8. Cory Booker
(http://media2.policymic.com/8f672d5f63773271b4cb9c22501dce2a.jpg)
The Mayor of Newark, New Jersey gave an explosive speech at the DNC. There has been talk that Booker may seek the New Jersey gubernatorial nomination to run against Republican Chris Christie. However, the former Rhodes Scholar may have laid the groundwork for 2016 at the DNC this year.
9. Elizabeth Warren
(http://media2.policymic.com/5dd4d68660f4dd9b6fa40149f72c2816.jpg)
Warren recently defeated Republican opponent Scott Brown for the Massachusetts Senate seat. Warren’s fight against Wall Street banks and her work on the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may give her the exposure she needs for a presidential nomination.
10. Antonio Villaraigosa
(http://media2.policymic.com/be03380b51e3ce9b07599535c0db48ac.jpg)
The Los Angeles Mayor was the chairman of the DNC this past September. He has shied away from the subject when asked about the presidency. However the possibility of becoming the first Latino president may give him advantage among the coumtry's growing Latino population.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/18960/presidential-candidates-2016-10-democrats-who-might-be-the-next-presidential-nominee
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And the lackeys begin lining up.
Liberal 'Super PAC' Behind Obama Win Readies for Clinton Run
Thursday, 23 Jan 2014
One of the most potent outside liberal-oriented political groups announced on Thursday that it would back Hillary Rodham Clinton if she chooses to seek the White House in 2016, the latest sign that senior members of President Barack Obama's team are looking to line up with the former first lady.
Priorities USA brought on board Jim Messina, Obama's 2012 campaign manager and the latest Obama insider to join a pro-Clinton group. With so many Obama veterans lining up to help clear the way for a Clinton campaign, it perhaps adds pressure on Clinton to go forward with another White House bid.
Clinton, a former secretary of state, senator and first lady, says she has not yet decided if she will again seek the White House. But that has not stopped supporters from building a political machine in case she decides to turn the key.
The early alignment for Priorities USA sends a clear signal that high-dollar donors are awaiting a Clinton decision and are ready to fork over millions to promote and defend Clinton from Republican criticism that conservative groups have been leveling for months in attempts to weaken her standing.
Other pro-Clinton outside groups have been forming and working to defend her record in her absence. Correct the Record, for instance, has been trying to debunk Republicans' criticism of her decades in public service while Ready for Hillary has been organizing low-dollar fundraisers for her aimed as much at showing grassroots support as building a list of would-be-volunteers if Clinton joins the race.
But the formal shift for Priorities signals that big-dollar donors were ready to join the Clinton bandwagon. Priorities and its sister super PAC, Priorities USA Action, both can raise unlimited sums of money and share staff members. But Priorities USA operates under a part of the tax code governing nonprofit groups and can keep its donors secret. The super PAC must release the names of its funders.
Priorities helped raise millions for Obama's re-election and ran some of the election's toughest television ads defining Republican nominee Mitt Romney as a heartless corporate raider.
After 2012, the group considered various options, but its donors clamored for Priorities to become the de facto pro-Clinton super PAC.
The addition of Messina and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, which had been expected, puts the leadership of the super PAC in the hands of one of Obama's most trusted advisers and a longtime Clinton supporter.
Before directing Obama's re-election campaign, Messina was a top 2008 campaign aide and a White House adviser who played a key role in the passage of the president's health care overhaul. Granholm had previously announced her support of Clinton through a separate super PAC, called Ready for Hillary, and had supported Mrs. Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primary.
"Having played a critical role in 2012, Priorities USA Action has very clearly demonstrated its ability to help elect a Democratic president. We intend to replicate that role and its success again in 2016, defining a clear choice for the American public," Messina said in a statement.
Messina joins a number of top former Obama campaign aides who have backed outside efforts to bolster Clinton's standing should she run for president. Senior campaign aides Jeremy Bird and Mitch Stewart are advising Ready for Hillary. Buffy Wicks, who led the campaign's voter mobilization effort, recently signed on as executive director of Priorities USA Action.
The organization also announced a 14-member board that includes longtime Clinton allies such as Harold Ickes and Maria Echaveste, who both served in the Clinton White House; Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers; and David Brock, who leads Correct the Record. The board also includes Stephanie Schriock, the president of EMILY's List, which supports female candidates who back abortion rights.
The early efforts have begun to create an impression that Clinton is the favored heir to Obama's White House, as opposed to Vice President Joe Biden, who has kept open the option of a third White House campaign.
The outside groups have formed an early de facto campaign organization to help Clinton compete vigorously against Republican opponents who are already trying to negatively define her tenure as secretary of state. The organizations are building the network without her direct consent but she has not raised any objections, offering a tacit endorsement that has encouraged Democrats to push forward in preparation for a campaign.
The group's alignment had been expected for months but was first confirmed Thursday by The New York Times. Peter Kauffmann, the group's spokesman, confirmed the group would be supporting Clinton if she runs.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Clinton-liberal-Super-PAC/2014/01/23/id/548727#ixzz2rHB2Exw1
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President Biden? :-\
Biden Eyes 2016 Run, Depending on Field of Candidates
Wednesday, 29 Jan 2014
By Wanda Carruthers
Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday he would run for president in 2016 if he thought he had the chance to move the country in a direction that's "different than those who are running," but stressed he had not yet made a decision.
"I haven't decided to run or not run. If I run, it won't be who is in the field. It'll be whether or not I honestly believe I have a chance to be able to really move this country in a direction that is different than those who are running, and that I can get that done," Biden told ABC's "Good Morning America."
Biden said his immediate focus was to "talk about the opportunity we have this year." Of the initiatives President Barack Obama highlighted in Tuesday's State of the Union speech, Biden called upon Congress to "come along" on the president's desire to increase the minimum wage.
In President Obama's address Tuesday evening, he promised to use his power of executive order to increase minimum wage rates of federal contract workers. Biden predicted the president's actions would "set an example" for Congress to follow suit.
"One of the things the president does . . . is go out and make the case to the American people why things have to be done. It does have the effect of seeping down through the political strata," Biden said.
Republicans have voiced concern over President Obama's threats to use executive order to further his policy initiatives. Biden defended the president's use of executive order to "act where he can." He maintained 81 percent of people think Congress was not "doing their job."
"We expect the Congress to act," Biden said.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/biden-white-house-run/2014/01/29/id/549734#ixzz2roRXZedd
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If Biden were to say "No, I don't think I'll run in 2016", it would immediately be news that Rush & friends would be calling a victory, inspiring their base, etc.
He doesn't confirm nor deny, trying NOT to make the news, and so the Right celebrates "imagine how bad it would be... bwahahah"
Really, there's no answer he can give that won't get mocked, but really, we're talking about the opinion of an audience that no dem will win in an election, so I doubt he cares that much.
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Liz Warren or Clinton for me
Booker needs more experience but still think he will top out at Senator. Or maybe back down to Gov of Jersey
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Liz Warren or Clinton for me
Booker needs more experience but still think he will top out at Senator. Or maybe back down to Gov of Jersey
Clinton? GMAFB.
Warren - sure she is a lying Marxist - but whatever - better than Clinton - What Difference Does it Make!!!
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Clinton? GMAFB.
Warren - sure she is a lying Marxist - but whatever - better than Clinton - What Difference Does it Make!!!
which potential 2016 dems AREN'T lying marxists? I contend they all are.
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Liz Warren or Clinton for me
Booker needs more experience but still think he will top out at Senator. Or maybe back down to Gov of Jersey
you have got to be kidding me mal, tell me youre trolling 3?
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O'Malley Preparing for Possible Presidential Run
Monday, 03 Feb 2014
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley says he's preparing for a possible run for president.
The Democrat tells The Washington Post that he can't waste time waiting for former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to decide whether she'll run in 2016. He says he needs to get started on the groundwork for a national campaign.
On Friday, O'Malley reported raising nearly $1.7 million last year with his political action committee, O' Say Can You See.
O'Malley says he's been speaking with foreign- and domestic-policy experts to flesh out his thinking about "a better way forward for our country." He has traveled to other states around the country over the last year to raise his profile, but he won't say when he'll decide on whether to launch a White House bid.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/martin-OMalley-Presidential-run-hillary/2014/02/03/id/550498#ixzz2sIEs1Hrg
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Mary Matalin: Hillary Won't Even Run
Saturday, 08 Feb 2014
By Sandy Fitzgerald
The wide variety of potential candidates for the Republican presidential nomination boils down to one question in many quarters — which one can beat Hillary Clinton?
But to at least one powerful Republican consultant, Mary Matalin, the "Hillary" question is pointless.
Urgent: Do You Approve Or Disapprove of President Obama's Job Performance? Vote Now in Urgent Poll
"Hillary Clinton’s lead is ephemeral," Matalin told Politico Magazine. "As soon as she gets in, if she gets in, she will be challenged and it will evaporate. Just the nature of the beast. I predict she doesn’t run."
Matalin, who is married to former Clinton adviser James Carville, joined other key Republican figures in telling Politico Magazine that the field of potential GOP candidates is widely scattered. Like Matalin, most agreed that it's not so much a matter of who seeks the presidency, but what they stand for.
"The question is less "who" than "what," Matalin said. "Conservatives should lay down as their nonnegotiable, baseline candidate requirement an outcome-based, empirically demonstrable record or a policy agenda that has succeeded historically...our bedrock must be the Constitution, with an emphasis on enumerated powers."
That said, candidate skills will matter, and the chosen person must have "the fortitude born of unshakable confidence in our convictions. There are more than a few candidates who fit this bill. This is going to be a rocking great primary," Matalin said.
Until recent months, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie looked like the man to beat for the nomination. However, the evolving George Washington Bridge scandal has caused Christie's poll numbers to tank, and has opened the field of potential Republican candidates.
William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, told Politico this means "everyone" is going to think about running.
But who will survive "training camp, endure pre-season and do well enough in scrimmages to be on stage for the first post-Labor Day 2105 presidential debate, moderated by [Fox News Channel] host Megyn Kelly?"
Kristol predicts for U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, fomer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, onetime vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, talk show host and former Florida Rep. Joe Scarborough, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be "the regular season starting nine. Maybe."
Political consultant and media strategist Mark McKinnon predicts a "Clash of the Titans" battle between Clinton and Bush for the White House in 2016.
"Jeb Bush is the sort of pragmatic, common-sense and compassionate conservative Republicans need to win back the White House," said McKinnon. "He’d attract Hispanics and likely win the key electoral prize of his home state, Florida. And he has a great record to run on, including some innovative, forward-thinking strategies like early childhood investment. Florida leads the country in the number of four-year olds in literacy programs—over 70 percent, and Jeb did it without increasing taxes."
McKinnon said he is not worried about either Bush or Clinton being too familiar for voters to choose.
"Americans have likely quenched, at least for now, their thirst for fresh faces," said McKinnon. "Most have had their fill of change. What voters might be looking for in the next presidential election is experience and competence."
But if Bush doesn't run, McKinnon said Americans should "watch out for Scott Walker. He’s the dark horse. Getting brighter every day."
Meanwhile, Washington Examiner columnist Byron York says he does not think the GOP field looks "fantastic."
"You know things are bad when some people seriously discuss whether Mitt Romney might run a third time," said York. "He won’t. The bottom line is the GOP could be in for another long, hard, polarizing slog—precisely what it wanted to avoid this time around. How long until Republicans start saying optimistic things about 2020?"
York said he thinks many of the top names, such as Paul and Cruz could prove divisive, while Paul Ryan doesn't seem interested in running. Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, and Perry have no "carryover momentum," and the base would be "underwhelmed" by a Bush campaign.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich pointed out that there is no front-runner or "even a mid-runner yet."
"Senators can build notoriety because the political media is centered on Washington," said Gingrich. "Governors, however, can raise more money and have actual achievements as opposed to speeches and fights."
His early field includes Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Walker, Bobby Jindal, Perry, Bush, Christie, and Huckabee.
The only certainty for Republicans, said Beth Myers, political consultant and former adviser to Mitt Romney, is that the field is wide open and the bench is deep.
She also thinks Christie will get past the current scandal, and "his no-nonsense leadership and broad appeal make him a strong contender in 2016."
"And my former boss, Mitt Romney?" said Myers. "When asked this week whether he’d consider a run in 2016, he said, 'No, no, no, no, no.' I take him at his word, but it’s sure nice to know that he’s missed."
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said that six candidates have the names, staff and ability to raise money to run: Christie, Walker, Bobby Jindal, Perry, Bush, and Paul.
"Each has a financial base, supporters nationwide and a narrative that justifies his claim to be presidential, and each has begun to do the work needed to flesh out a national campaign," said Norquist.
John Feehery, president of Quinn Gillespie Communications and director of QGA Government Affairs had another name to throw in: Peter King, who he describes as "the street-corner conservative. The anti-Rand Paul."
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/republican-presidential-candidates-2016/2014/02/08/id/551654#ixzz2swgQeCvi
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Team Clinton started talks on 2016 run night of Obama's victory
By Ian Swanson - 02/11/14
Members of Team Clinton started talking about a 2016 presidential bid months before the former first lady left the State Department.
The night President Obama won his second term, Allida Black and Adam Parkhomenko, veterans of Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the White House, exchanged emails about plans to start Ready for Hillary — a super-PAC promoting another run for the White House.
While Clinton didn’t formally approve the political action committee, Black believed she had Clinton’s blessing, according to a book published Tuesday by The Hill’s Amie Parnes and Bloomberg’s Jonathan Allen.
The book, titled HRC, reports that just months after Clinton left the State Department, longtime adviser Cheryl Mills — who functions as Hillary Clinton’s consigliere — met with Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and a candidate to manage Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Their April 2013 conversation quickly turned to the what-ifs of 2016, according to HRC.
“ ‘It was about her, what’s she going to do next, and then it was like if she ran, who should be the manager,’ ” the book quotes a source familiar with the conversation as saying.
The book concludes that for Clinton, the decision isn’t about running for the White House — that’s already happening, it says.
Instead, it contends that Clinton’s only decision is whether she should not be making a bid, turning off an operation that is already moving forward. A CNN poll released late last week found more than 70 percent of Democrats say they would support her if she made a run official.
While a negative turn in Clinton’s health could shut things down, there is little evidence that she will not seek the White House in 2016.
The Ready for Hillary super-PAC was a key indicator.
HRC states that Black “believed strongly that if Hillary didn’t like what she was doing, someone high up in Hillaryland would call and say ‘Allida, shut this down!’
“That call never came, and over time an increasing number of high-profile Hillary loyalists jumped on board to give the fledgling super PAC a boost in credibility and fund-raising prowess,” the book reports.
Political advisers Harold Ickes and James Carville and former Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), all close to Clinton, signed on in advisory roles in 2013. Craig T. Smith, who had been a White House political director under former President Clinton, was hired to run the group’s day-to-day activities.
Hillary Clinton allies were given tacit approval to support Ready for Hillary.
“They did give me the yellow light,” one major donor told the book’s authors. “I got the feeling that if I wanted to do it, they thought it was a good idea.”
Meanwhile, Mills “became the de factor chief of informational interviews for political operatives who wanted to get in on the ground floor of Hillary for President 2.0.”
Even Clinton’s decision to leave the Obama administration at the beginning of the president’s second term — despite a personal plea from Obama for her to stay on — suggests a desire and intent to give her brand some distance from Obama’s well before the 2016 campaign.
And when Bill Clinton became Obama’s top surrogate during his 2012 reelection effort, his campaign stops in the fall were also meant to help his wife.
The dates were arranged by both Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina and Cecil. The 42nd president made a handful of stops to help congressional candidates who had been loyal to Hillary Clinton, including Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.), who ended up losing her race.
In 2012, the book reports that Bill Clinton wasn’t asked to campaign for people “who were hard-core Obama supporters. He did events for people that endorsed and supported Hillary.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/198018-team-clinton-started-talks-on-16-run-night-obama-won#ixzz2t2kszGTW
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The Reason This MSNBC Host Doesn't Want Hillary To Run In 2016 May Surprise You
Mike Miller
On February 13, 2014
http://mikesright.wordpress.com/
MSNBC host Krystal Ball announced on “The Cycle” Tuesday that while she supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2008, she will not do so in 2016. Her reason? Hillary “is not the right person at this moment.”
Saying that America is in an “existential crisis,” Ball said that she doesn’t believe Hillary is pro-union — or anti-Wall Street — enough:
“In a time when corporations have hijacked our politics, is someone [Hillary] who sat on the rabidly anti-union board of Walmart the right person to restore workers’ rights?
In a time when we’re still reeling from global financial disaster brought on by foolhardy bank deregulation, is someone who took $400,000 to give two speeches at Goldman Sachs the person we need to wrest control of the asylum back from the banking inmates?”
She wasn’t finished by a long shot, slamming Hillary for reassuring the “masters of the universe” that “banker-bashing” on the left was “unproductive.”
Hillary Clinton is not liberal enough for Krystal Ball or the left-wing of the Democratic Party. So who is? Who is “the right person at this moment,” Krystal? Elizabeth Warren. Yeah, Elizabeth Warren. The same Elizabeth Warren who once said: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own–nobody.”
The left never seems to get it. Never seems to understand that continually raising taxes on the wealthy, redistributing wealth and the creation of a permanent, majority underclass won’t work. Never has.
I’m sure the Republican Party would love the idea of facing Elizabeth Warren instead of Hillary Clinton in 2016. I’m also pretty sure they’d prefer her over Joe Biden, too. And that says a lot.
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/02/114834-democrats-searching-reasons-nominate-hillary-2016/
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I want to say he has no chance, but Democrats were dumb enough to put Obama in the White House twice . . . .
Is Joe Biden ready for 2016?
February 14th, 2014
Washington (CNN) - Vice President Joe Biden has low approval numbers, makes headlines for his epic gaffes, and has a potential 60-point hill to climb in the polls.
But that doesn't mean Biden is ready to turn the page on his presidential ambitions.
In his words, the vice president has remained noncommittal about whether he'll make a third run for the White House in 2016, but his actions indicate something far different.
America's second in command was just announced as one of the headliners for comedian Seth Meyer's new "Late Night" show, and he seemed to be in attendance at nearly every event in D.C. this week.
On Tuesday, Biden was front and center to welcome Francois Hollande to the White House and the State Department and rubbed elbows with Hollywood and political stars at a state dinner honoring the French President. He also swore in the Senate’s first Iraq veteran.
On Wednesday, he met with King Abdullah of Jordan. That night, he popped up again in Florida, fundraising for congressional hopeful Alex Sink.
He says he just wants to be the best veep he can be, but the 2016 presidential race is starting to loom larger – and the better the job he does, the better his odds.
Biden says presidential decision will come next summer
Biden clearly seems to think that he must keep moving, that if he runs it will be on his eight-year record, not on, say, Hillary Clinton's four-year State Department record that ended a year ago.
"There may be reasons I don't run, but there's no obvious reason for me why I think I should not," Biden told CNN.
He says Hillary's decision will not impact his, but the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Clinton to be more favorable than Biden by nearly 20 percentage points. But that number only matters if the Democratic favorite runs.
Decoding Biden's words: If Hillary runs, he won't
Comedian Conan O'Brian has already taken the liberty of producing Biden's campaign ad.
The vice president has been visibly active, in charge of the stimulus, Iraq policy, and front and center on the response to the Newtown attack. He is also often by President Barack Obama’s side for major decisions – even if he advised against them, as he did with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
At the State of the Union, Obama announced that Biden would be working on the issue voters care most about: jobs. Biden will focus on demand-driven job training, getting community colleges aligned with local industries.
But Biden's more than 40 years in politics are often overshadowed by a history of misspeaks.
Welcoming the Irish prime minister to the White House in 2012, Biden said that when it comes to the friendship between the U.S. and Ireland, “there’s no doubt about them staying oiled and lubricated here.” When the room erupted in laughter, he added, “Now, for those of you who are not full Irish in this room, lubricated has a different meaning for us.”
Memories like that gem have earned him frequent lampooning by Saturday Night Live and late night comedians.
Despite the caricature, Biden is quick to assure the public that he is still in demand.
"I've been invited to go into, well, over 128 races so far," Biden said.
And had the weather not stopped his momentum, he would be hosting a House Democratic retreat Thursday in Maryland as well.
Biden did run for President twice. His 1988 bid crumbled under accusations of plagiarism and his 2008 effort never got much traction.
http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/13/is-joe-biden-ready-for-2016/?hpt=po_c1
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Poll: Hillary Sweeps Republican Field in Ohio
Thursday, 20 Feb 2014
By Courtney Coren
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton beats out seven possible presidential candidates in the GOP by significant margins in the important swing state of Ohio, according to the latest poll from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
In a matchup against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Clinton sweeps every candidate by double digits except Ryan, who she surpasses by 9 points from 49 percent to 40 percent, in the poll taken from Feb. 12-17 of 1,370 registered voters with a margin of error of 2.7 percent points.
In previous Quinnipiac polls in the Buckeye State, Clinton and Christie were in a dead heat. In the newest poll in Ohio, Clinton leads the New Jersey governor by 13 points, 49 percent to 36 percent.
In a nationwide Quinnipaic poll on the 2016 presidential race taken in January, Clinton beat Christie by an eight point margin — 46 percent to 38 percent. By comparison, in a poll taken in December, the New Jersey Republican beat the former first lady by 1 percentage point.
The Bridge-gate scandal in New Jersey continues to take a significant toll on Christie's presidential chances.
"The George Washington Bridge is not in Ohio, but voters there seem very aware of its traffic problems — and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's traffic problems," Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement.
Missing from the Ohio poll is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who some have said could take Christie's spot as a top Republican contender for president.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Quinnipiac-University-Scott-Walker-Ohio-2016-election-/2014/02/20/id/553744#ixzz2tstEh2S0
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leslie neilson joe biden would provide an unheard of amount of entertainment during the primaries ;D
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I need material for the Biden Foot in Mouth thread. :)
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Poll: Hillary Sweeps Republican Field in Ohio
I can understand Christie being in the gutter, but wow... she's whooping everyone by 10+, except Paul ryan, by 9.
And that's in OH, a major swing state. Tough to win the general election without Ohio.
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Hillary Clinton favorability at 59 percent
By TAL KOPAN | 2/21/14
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has maintained a favorable opinion with Americans, though it has dipped since her time in the Cabinet, according to a new poll.
A majority of Americans, 59 percent, view Clinton favorably, compared with 37 percent who view her unfavorably, according to a Gallup poll released Friday.
While serving as secretary of state, Clinton averaged a favorability rating in the mid-60s. That number has fallen into the high-50s since she left the post in the beginning of 2013.
Clinton is the presumed front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, were she to run, over another member of the Obama White House: Vice President Joe Biden. The vice president did not fare as well in Gallup’s poll.
Americans view Biden favorably, 46 percent to 42 percent. His favorability has been in the mid- to low-40s since he took office under President Barack Obama after enjoying a peak 59 percent to 29 percent favorability in late 2008, just after he unsuccessfully campaigned for president and accepted the vice president spot on the winning ticket in 2008.
Gallup surveyed 1,023 adults from Feb. 6 to 9 for the poll, which has an error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/hillary-clinton-favorability-poll-103757.html#ixzz2tytTZrdT
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Hillary Clinton favorability at 59 percent
By TAL KOPAN | 2/21/14
unreal. Why is this? the female vote? She's what, 30 points higher than obama, despite identical policies? lol unreal.
Oh and this: 22 percent of Americans see Christie either somewhat or very positively,
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/chris-christie-approval-rating-bridge-102711.html#ixzz2tyustusn
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Biden on 2016: If Hillary runs, it won't affect my decision
Posted by
CNN's Ashley Killough
(CNN) – Vice President Joe Biden weighed in further Tuesday on his thinking process about a potential 2016 presidential bid and perhaps hinted what a potential campaign theme might look like.
On ABC's "The View," the Democrat said Hillary Clinton's decision on a second presidential campaign would not be a factor as he considers his own White House ru
"Whether she runs or not will not affect my decision," he said.
The former secretary of state currently dominates the Democratic field in public opinion polls measuring support for 2016. Biden often comes in at a distant second.
Asked if he has ruled out a White House bid, Biden said he has "absolutely not said no."
"It’s as likely that I run as I don’t run. I just truly haven’t made up my mind," he said. "The good news is everything I think I would have to do to be a viable candidate is the same exact thing I should be doing to be the best vice president that I could possibly be."
Biden told Barbara Walters that if she sticks around, "I will announce my decision with you."
The longtime ABC News personality announced last year she would retire in 2014.
Earlier this month, Biden told CNN's Kate Bolduan he would make his decision in the summer of 2015, and "there's no obvious reason for me why I think I should not run."
Biden also appeared to offer a glimpse of what his campaign message would look like.
He argued Tuesday that he's been given more power than former vice presidents, saying his experience in Washington "uniquely positions me to follow through on the agenda Barack and I have" started.
He said President Barack Obama has given him major assignments "carte blanche” and the freedom to do them “my way."
"For example, when it came to ending the war in Iraq, in the middle of a meeting with all the national security team - it was Hillary, and Bob Gates and everyone - and they said 'We have a plan.' (The President) said, 'No, no. Joe will do Iraq.' My job was to end the war," he said.
His comments come more than a month after Gates, the former defense secretary, released a book that included scathing criticism of Biden and his foreign policy decision-making over the years.
While Gates called Biden “a man of integrity,” he wrote, “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
On "The View," Biden also talked about how he took on his role in handling the 2009 stimulus legislation pushed by the President as a way of boosting a recession-weary economy.
"I made a mistake of writing (Obama) a note of how we should do it," Biden said. "He slipped it back under the dining room table and said 'Ok go do it.’"
"By the way it was the last memo I sent," he joked.
His visit on "The View" was part of a string of high-profile appearances Biden has made in recent weeks, including his stop as a guest Monday on NBC's "Late Night" for Seth Meyers’ first show as the new host.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/25/biden-on-2016-if-hillary-runs-it-wont-affect-my-decision/
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Here is my dark horse pick as a candidate (note - I'm not saying nominee at this but that I'm just saying I think he might run)
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Here is my dark horse pick as a candidate (note - I'm not saying nominee at this but that I'm just saying I think he might run)
that woudln't be a ton surprising.
If Arnold had been born in USA, he probably would have run for POTUS. Calif gov, beloved by libs, I could see him winning the nomination. Good pick, browe.
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lol
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:o
Whispers persist that Hillary won’t run: Health may be worse than disclosed
02/28/2014
If you listen to the chattering class in Washington, D.C., Hillary Clinton is a virtual certainty for the 2016 Democratic nomination, and the front-runner in the next presidential race.
But in private, rumors persist that the former Secretary of State may not even be capable of making it to Iowa and New Hampshire. Clinton, these skeptics often say, will not run for president again because of health concerns.
These ubiquitous rumors of her health have been fueled in part by the supermarket tabloids. The National Enquirer wrote in 2012 that Clinton had brain cancer, something a spokesman dismissed then as “absolute nonsense.” In January of this year, the Globe claimed that Clinton secretly had a brain tumor.
Asked about her health on Thursday, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in an email to The Daily Caller: ”To your question, very caring of you to ask. She’s 100%.”
But the rumors suggesting otherwise date back to the end of 2012, when Clinton’s health made headlines as she finished her term as secretary of state: aides explained then that she developed a stomach virus, hit her head, suffered a concussion and subsequently developed a blood clot in her brain but was being medicated and was expected to recover. (TheDC TV: Could Clinton be hurting the Democratic Party?)
But skeptics say there is much more to the story of her health, which has recently been the subject of increased speculation in Washington.
Because of these rumors, some on the right have been convincing themselves that Hillary is sick and therefore won’t run — a bombshell that would upend the 2016 race.
Roger Stone, the GOP consultant, wrote on Twitter recently that Clinton is “not running for health reasons,” telling followers to “remember you heard it first” from him.
Conservatives aren’t the only ones skeptical about whether Clinton has been open about her health. At the time of Clinton’s hospitalization in 2013, Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post wrote a piece titled, “How sick is Hillary Clinton?”
“Already,” Henneberger wrote, “reports that describe Clinton’s right transverse sinus venous thrombosis as potentially life-threatening, though apparently caught in enough time, sound a lot more serious than the word from her doctors that the secretary is ‘making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family and her staff.’”
Henneberger asked then if we would “really be shocked to learn down the road that reports during her hospitalization had put a positive spin on her condition?”
“Our public officials have trained us to take everything they say with a healthy dose of skepticism,” Henneberger continued, “and on a matter as sensitive as a head injury followed by denials of any neurological symptoms, I’m not sure why we would or should unquestioningly accept the word of any politician.”
Some have noted Clinton’s change in appearance, including the addition of thick glasses, since her hospitalization. “One doesn’t need to be a physician… to have seen that Clinton has not appeared exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed of late,” Mary Stanik, a former Minnesota health care spokeswoman, wrote in 2013. “She looks to have gained a significant amount of weight since 2008. She seems pale, tired, and yes, aged. She’s said that she would like to know again what it’s like to not be tired.”
Last year, a Clinton aide acknowledged that her health crisis caused her to stop wearing contact lenses.
“She’ll be wearing these glasses instead of her contacts for a period of time because of lingering issues stemming from her concussion,” spokesman Philippe Reines told ABC News in 2013. “With them on, she sees just fine.”
http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/28/rumors-persist-that-hillary-wont-run-because-health-is-worse-than-disclosed/#ixzz2ueMRJGaC
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:'(
CNN: White House Prep for Hillary Run a Slap at Biden
Wednesday, 19 Mar 2014
By Melanie Batley
Vice President Joe Biden just wants "a little respect" when it comes to the White House's possible public involvement in aiding Hillary Clinton in a bid for the presidency in 2016, CNN political reporter Peter Hamby says.
On CNN's "Inside Politics" segment Wednesday, Hamby reflected on how Biden may perceive news in The Wall Street Journal that John Podesta, a senior aide to President Barack Obama, has said he wants to begin a set of regular conversations among Clinton's top aides aimed at mapping out a possible White House run.
"Isn't that a slap at the vice president?" CNN anchor John King asked.
"It certainly seems like it," Hamby said. "This is heads exploding in the vice president's office."
Hamby added that other White House officials, including Jim Messina, the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and campaign manager for Obama in 2012, have recently left the White House to prepare for a possible Clinton run in 2016.
Biden has said he has not decided whether to run in 2016, but he told CNN last month "There's no obvious reason for me why I think I should not run," and many believe he will throw his hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination.
Polls indicate that Biden would come in a distant second in a matchup with Clinton. A February Washington Post/ABC News poll, for example, showed Clinton leading at 73 percent compared to 12 percent for Biden.
In an interview last month with Politico Magazine, Biden spoke openly about falling out of favor with Obama after he made remarks about gay marriage before the president was ready to announce his own change of views.
The article also detailed Biden's experience of being excluded from the inner circle by the president's top aides, and said that the vice president's team was disgruntled that the White House didn't strongly refute rumors that Clinton would be selected to replace Biden in Obama's second term.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Hillary-Clinton-Joe-Biden-president/2014/03/19/id/560525#ixzz2wQnFx1m4
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Poll: Warren and Clinton hot; Christie cools off
Posted by
CNN Political Unit
(CNN) - Freshman Sen. Elizabeth Warren is the hottest politician in the country right now, according to a new national poll.
The latest edition of Quinnipiac University's National Thermometer, released Thursday, also indicates that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remains hot, with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is cooling off.
The poll asks voters nationwide to rate their feelings towards political leaders by choosing any number between 0 to 100, with the higher the number, the warmer or more favorable voters feel about that political leader.
Topping Quinnipiac's latest thermometer is Warren, with a mean temperature of 48.6 degrees. But nearly half of those questioned did not know enough about the Democratic senator from Massachusetts to form an opinion. Warren, a favorite with many in the progressive wing of the Democratic party, has said she won't run for President in 2016.
Recognition not a problem when it comes to Hillary Clinton, as only one percent didn't know enough about her to form an opinion. The former secretary of state, who's seriously considering a second run for the Democratic presidential nomination, came in second at 47.8 degrees.
Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee, was third, at 47.4 degrees, followed by two Republican governors, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana at 47.1 degrees and Wisconsin's Scott Walker at 46.6 degrees. GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida was in sixth place at 46.3 degrees, followed by 2008 Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 46.1 degrees and GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 45.7 degrees.
Christie, the GOP governor of New Jersey, who along with the above mentioned Republicans, is mulling a 2016 bid for the White House, came in ninth at 45.2 degrees. That's down from 55.5 degrees in Quinnipiac's early January poll, which Christie topped.
That January survey came out just as the George Washington Bridge controversy was beginning to grab national headlines. Garden State lawmakers and the U.S. Attorney's Office are looking into allegations that top Christie appointees orchestrated traffic jams last September by closing access lanes to the nation's busiest bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey, to politically punish that town's mayor for not endorsing the governor's 2013 re-election.
Christie has denied knowing anything about the gridlock until after it occurred, and has said he knew nothing about any political mischief by members of his administration. Last week a review commissioned by Christie's administration cleared the New Jersey governor of any wrongdoing in the bridge controversy, which has put a cloud over his political future.
The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted March 26-31, with 1,578 registered voters nationwide questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/03/poll-warren-clinton-hot-christie-cools-off/
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Hillary struggles to list accomplishments during tenure as Secretary of State
April 4, 2014 | Joe Schoffstall
On April 3, 2014, Hillary Clinton spoke at the Women of the World Summit in New York City and was asked what she was most proud of during her tenure as Secretary of State. Clinton could not provide any concrete examples of the accomplishments she holds in high regard.
“When you look at your time as Secretary of State, what are you most proud of? And what do you feel was unfinished, and maybe have another crack at one day?” the moderator asks.
“Well, I really see — that was good — that’s why he wins prizes. Look, I really see my role as Secretary, in fact leadership in general in a democracy, as a relay race. When you run the best race you can run, you hand off the baton. Some of what hasn’t been finished may go on to be finished, so when President Obama asked me to be Secretary of State I agreed,” Clinton responded.
She continued, “We had the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, we had two wars. We had continuing threats from all kinds of corners around the world that we had to deal with. So it was a perilous time frankly. What he said to me was, ‘Look, I have to be dealing with the economic crisis, I want you to go out and represent us around the world.’ And it was a good division of labor because we needed to make it clear to the rest of the world, that we were going to get our house in order. We were going to stimulate, and grow, and get back to positive growth and work with our friends and partners.”
Clinton went on to say that she’s proud of the solid leadership from the administration and that they have restored American leadership in the best sense.
“So I think we did that. I’m very proud of the stabilization and the really solid leadership that the administration provided that I think now, leads us to be able to deal with problems like Ukraine because we’re not so worried about a massive collapse in Europe and China — trying to figure out to do with all their bond holdings and all the problems we were obsessed with. I think we really restored American leadership in the best sense. That, once again — people began to rely on us as setting the values, setting the standards. I just don’t want to lose that because we have a dysfunctional political situation in Washington. Then of course, a lot of particulars, but I am finishing my book so you’ll be able to read all about it.”
http://capitolcityproject.com/hillary-struggles-list-accomplishments-secretary-state-tenure/
:D
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Hillary struggles to list accomplishments during tenure as Secretary of State
April 4, 2014 | Joe Schoffstall
On April 3, 2014, Hillary Clinton spoke at the Women of the World Summit in New York City and was asked what she was most proud of during her tenure as Secretary of State. Clinton could not provide any concrete examples of the accomplishments she holds in high regard.
“When you look at your time as Secretary of State, what are you most proud of? And what do you feel was unfinished, and maybe have another crack at one day?” the moderator asks.
“Well, I really see — that was good — that’s why he wins prizes. Look, I really see my role as Secretary, in fact leadership in general in a democracy, as a relay race. When you run the best race you can run, you hand off the baton. Some of what hasn’t been finished may go on to be finished, so when President Obama asked me to be Secretary of State I agreed,” Clinton responded.
She continued, “We had the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, we had two wars. We had continuing threats from all kinds of corners around the world that we had to deal with. So it was a perilous time frankly. What he said to me was, ‘Look, I have to be dealing with the economic crisis, I want you to go out and represent us around the world.’ And it was a good division of labor because we needed to make it clear to the rest of the world, that we were going to get our house in order. We were going to stimulate, and grow, and get back to positive growth and work with our friends and partners.”
Clinton went on to say that she’s proud of the solid leadership from the administration and that they have restored American leadership in the best sense.
“So I think we did that. I’m very proud of the stabilization and the really solid leadership that the administration provided that I think now, leads us to be able to deal with problems like Ukraine because we’re not so worried about a massive collapse in Europe and China — trying to figure out to do with all their bond holdings and all the problems we were obsessed with. I think we really restored American leadership in the best sense. That, once again — people began to rely on us as setting the values, setting the standards. I just don’t want to lose that because we have a dysfunctional political situation in Washington. Then of course, a lot of particulars, but I am finishing my book so you’ll be able to read all about it.”
http://capitolcityproject.com/hillary-struggles-list-accomplishments-secretary-state-tenure/
:D
Morning Joe Panel Can’t Come Up with Hillary Achievement
by KEITH KOFFLER on APRIL 10, 2014
Uh oh. Morning Joe often includes some of the best political minds around.
AND THEY CAN’T COME UP WITH ANYTHING HILLARY HAS DONE EITHER!
Were Mrs. Clinton a Republican, she’d be getting called an empty suit, albeit a well-traveled one.
One panelist even suggests that she’ll have to reveal her big achievement in her upcoming book, which is to be published in June.
As if her terms as senator and Secretary of State were carried out in secret!
http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2014/04/10/morning-joe-panel-hillary-achievement/
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Pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC Raises Almost $6M
Thursday, 10 Apr 2014
A super PAC urging Hillary Rodham Clinton to run for president says it raised $1.7 million in the first three months of the year, almost all of it from small-dollar donors.
Ready for Hillary on Thursday said more than 22,000 new donors gave money to the self-designated Clinton support network between Jan. 1 and March 31. The average contribution was $53, and 98 percent of it was $100 or less.
Ready for Hillary has been collecting names of those who would support Clinton if she runs in 2016. The super PAC has been focused on building buzz by lining up donors, as others have done.
Since its launch, Ready for Hillary has raised $5.75 million.
The group is independent of a campaign Clinton would launch if she decides to run.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/hillary-Clinton-super-pac-raises/2014/04/10/id/564754#ixzz2yVKNvFKq
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2016 Watch: O'Malley heads to Nevada
Posted by
CNN's Ashley Killough and CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser
(CNN) - Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley will headline a Democratic event next month in Nevada, a state that draws potential White House candidates as it's the first western state to vote in the primary and caucus calendar.
The Democratic governor will give the keynote speech at the 2014 Clark County Democratic Party Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Las Vegas on May 2, the Nevada Democratic Party announced Monday.
While O'Malley has said he's focused on his last year as governor, he's also weighing a presidential run and has said he's preparing the "ground work" for a potential campaign.
O'Malley has visited other crucial primary states in the past year, including New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Hillary Clinton's understudy waits in the wings
If he runs for president - and Hillary Clinton runs as well - the Maryland governor could find himself far behind the former secretary of state, recent public opinion polls show.
According to a CNN/ORC International poll released last month, 64% of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic nationwide said they would back Clinton for the Democratic nomination, while only 4 % said they would support O'Malley.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/14/2016-watch-omalley-heads-to-nevada/
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Video || Epic Diss! Obama Won’t Endorse Biden as Biden Looks On
by KEITH KOFFLER on APRIL 17, 2014
This is absurd. The man says, right in front of Biden, that he can’t support him.
Take a look at this. It’s completely ungracious. Now, don’t get me wrong, the Joe Biden who sneered and laughed his way through his debate with Paul Ryan, who suggested Republicans are so racist they want to re-enslave African Americans, deserves nobody’s graciousness.
But from President Obama’s perspective, Vice President Biden is the man who has been with him every day, been in on almost every meeting and decision, and been loyal and docile toward him as a chocolate labrador. Sure, he makes mistakes, but that’s not his fault. He was born a nincompoop.
To actually say, with Biden standing there, that “we’ve got an extraordinary secretary of state” who might also run suggests previously unknown degrees of coldness of blood.
From an interview by CBS White House correspondent Major Garrett:
I’ve got somebody who I think will go down as one of the finest vice presidents in history, and he has been . . . a great partner in everything that I do. I suspect that there may be other potential candidates for 2016 who have been great friends and allies. I know that we’ve got an extraordinary secretary of state who did great service for us and worked with me and Joe to help make the country safer.
Whoever the Democratic standard bearer is, is going to be continuing to focus on jobs, making sure that our kids are getting a great education, making sure that we’re rebuilding prosperity from the middle class out in this country – and I am very much interested in making sure that some of the stuff we’ve gotten started continues.
http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2014/04/17/video-ultimate-diss-obama-endorse-biden/
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Hillarious that neither that panel of lib 'political analysts' nor HILLARY HERSELF could even come up with any answers.
I mean that just speaks volumes, doesnt it?
Of course none of it even matters at all. Hillary could strangle a puppy to death on the white house lawn and the media would just admire how 'humane' she was at killing it..and her ratings and her fanbase would be unchanged.
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Hillarious that neither that panel of lib 'political analysts' nor HILLARY HERSELF could even come up with any answers.
I mean that just speaks volumes, doesnt it?
Of course none of it even matters at all. Hillary could strangle a puppy to death on the white house lawn and the media would just admire how 'humane' she was at killing it..and her ratings and her fanbase would be unchanged.
lol. True.
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Why Elizabeth Warren should run for president
BY BYRON YORK | APRIL 24, 2014
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is starting a publicity tour for her new campaign-style book, A Fighting Chance. As she talks to the press, Warren is repeating previous statements that she will not run for president in 2016. But her denials aren't really denials, and her party's unique presidential circumstances give Warren plenty of room to run. Judging by what she has said publicly, there's no reason to rule out a Warren candidacy.
First, the non-denial denials. This week ABC's David Muir asked Warren, "Are you going to run for president?" Warren's response was, "I'm not running for president."
That's the oldest lawyerly evasion in the book. Warren, a former law professor, did not say, "I am not going to run for president." Instead, she said she is "not running," which could, in some sense, be true when she spoke the words but no longer true by, say, later this year.
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Muir tried again: "There's nothing that could change your mind?"
"David, like I said, I'm not running for president."
Muir also asked Warren about the dominant frontrunner in the Democratic race. "Do you think Hillary Clinton would make a good president?"
"I think Hillary Clinton is terrific," Warren said, which is no way answered the question. Then Warren added, "We've got to stay focused on these issues right now," which sounded very much like something a candidate might say.
The bottom line is that Warren's statements are entirely consistent with someone who is planning to announce a presidential candidacy later this year. Maybe she will, maybe she won't. But she ruled nothing out.
And why shouldn't she run? With Clinton 50-plus points ahead of any other potential candidate, it's an understatement to say the Democratic Party has put all its presidential eggs in one basket. Unless it's an incumbent seeking re-election, that's never a good idea. So here are five reasons — there are probably more — why Warren should make a 2016 run for the White House.
1. Life is unpredictable. Clinton will be 69 years old on inauguration day 2017, nearly the oldest president ever. She has had a few health scares. By all accounts, she left her previous four-year stint in government service exhausted. She might not run, and the Democrat in second place in the polls, Vice President Joe Biden -- 74 on inauguration day -- is too old to be president. Beyond them, Democrats have nobody -- except Elizabeth Warren.
2. Parties need competition. The primary process isn't just to allow voters to pick a nominee. It's for the candidates to become better candidates. The rigors of campaigning, the day-to-day jostle with competitors and the stress of high-profile debates all make candidates better. Conversely, a cakewalk through the primaries could leave a nominee in poor fighting shape for a general election. Warren would make Clinton a better candidate, and vice-versa.
3. The Left wants a hero. Clinton has never really excited the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. They see her as an overcautious centrist like her husband, and on top of that, many have never forgiven her for voting to authorize the war in Iraq. Warren, on the other hand, has thrilled the Left with her attacks on inequality, plutocrats and big financial institutions.
4. Hillary ran a dumb campaign in 2008 and might do so again. For a group of seasoned veterans, the 2008 Clinton campaign showed a stunning ignorance of how to win delegates in a Democratic contest. Rival Barack Obama exploited that weakness brilliantly. For example, Obama collected more net delegates by winning the Idaho caucuses, with 21,000 participants, than Clinton did by winning the New Jersey primary, with more than 1 million voters. Clinton just didn't pay attention to the smaller stuff, particularly the caucuses, and her cluelessness helped Obama win. It might help another rival in 2016.
5. One more time: Life is unpredictable. This is Warren's only chance to run. She will be 67 on Inauguration Day 2017. (Has any party ever fielded a group as old as Clinton, Biden and Warren?) A run in 2020 or later is out of the question. Hillary, now struggling to define her legacy as Secretary of State, is running on pure entitlement. The only thing about her candidacy that truly excites the Democratic base is that she would be the first woman president. Of course, that applies to Elizabeth Warren, too. And Warren would present a far fresher face to voters than Clinton, who has been in the national spotlight since 1992.
Yes, Warren is far back in the polls, but so was Obama in 2007. At some point, Democrats are going to realize the precariousness of their unthinking devotion to a single, flawed candidate. Elizabeth Warren could remind them there's someone else to vote for.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/why-elizabeth-warren-should-run-for-president/article/2547688
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First on CNN: O'Malley to mingle with 2016 players at D.C. fundraiser
Posted by
CNN National Political Reporter Peter Hamby
Washington (CNN) - Martin O’Malley will mingle with a handful of early primary state power brokers next week at a closed-door Washington fundraiser for a top South Carolina Democrat.
The Maryland governor, who has been candid about his inclination to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, has signed on to co-host the May 14 Capitol Hill fundraiser for South Carolina lieutenant governor candidate Bakari Sellers, a Democratic source in the state told CNN.
Sellers, a 29-year-old African-American state legislator, is the son of a local civil rights legend and an up-and-comer in state Democratic politics. He also worked for Barack Obama’s victorious 2008 primary effort in South Carolina, one of the four leadoff presidential nominating states. In other words, he’s precisely the kind of person a potential candidate would like to have on his (or her) side in a primary campaign.
But O’Malley will also have the chance to connect with several other South Carolina Democratic notables on the host committee, including former Gov. Jim Hodges, state party chairman Jaime Harrison, former Obama administration official Anton Gunn and Yelberton Watkins, the chief of staff to Rep. James Clyburn.
Al From, the founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and a longtime associate of former President Bill Clinton, is also slated to attend the cocktail fundraiser, which will be held at the Capitol Hill home of Democratic political strategist John Jameson.
O’Malley, who has maintained a busy travel schedule campaigning for Democratic gubernatorial candidates this election cycle, will be in South Carolina later this week, attending his daughter’s college graduation and holding a campaign event with Vincent Sheheen, the state’s Democratic nominee for governor.
Vice President Joe Biden will also visit South Carolina on Friday, delivering the University of South Carolina commencement speech and squeezing in a fundraiser for the state Democratic Party.
If O’Malley decides to seek the Democratic nomination in 2016 against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, or Biden, he would enter the race as an underdog.
But at this stage of the so-called invisible primary, O’Malley has not been shy about introducing himself to early state power brokers. He’s been far more aggressive than Clinton in courting early primary state activists, officials and donors in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada – and in states that have competitive gubernatorial races in 2014.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/07/first-on-cnn-omalley-to-mingle-with-2016-players-at-d-c-fundraiser/
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I bet Hillary WON’T run: Former Clinton aide says Hillary's life is so good at present he thinks she won’t take a shot at the White House
Contrary to popular opinion, former White House press secretary to Bill Clinton Mike McCurry thinks Hillary Clinton 'might not run' for president in 2016
I'm probably the ...last person in Washington who'd be willing to take some bet that she might not run,' he said.
McCurry said Hillary could opt to continue her work at the Clinton Foundation rather than go through the hassle of pursuing higher office again
By FRANCESCA CHAMBERS
PUBLISHED: 09:31 EST, 14 May 2014 | UPDATED: 11:48 EST, 14 May 2014
Hillary 2016 is all but a done deal for nearly everyone who follows American politics.
But former White House press secretary to Bill Clinton Mike McCurry says he's not convinced there's going to to another Clinton in on the ballot.
In a segment on Real Clear Politics 'Changing Lanes series, where the news organization interviews influential figures while driving through the nation's Capitol, McCurry said Hillary may opt to continue the work she's doing with the Clinton Foundation instead of pursuing elected office again.
'I'd like to say I'm the only person left - I'm probably in this car the only last person in Washington who'd be willing to take some bet that she might not run,' McCurry told RCP co-founder Tom Bevan and Washington Bureau Chief Carl Cannon.
McCurry said he wasn't sure Hillary would want to go through the hassle of running again at this stage in her life, especially when 'she's doing terrific work' and 'finding other ways to make a contribution.'
'We all know what running for president is like,' McCurry said. 'It's kind of hanging around in Manchester, New Hampshire... at the local Denny's shaking hands with a lot of sometimes less-than-interesting local political people.'
'She's going to do that for the next two and a half years at age 65 when she could be doing all this great stuff on a global stage? I don't know. I think that's why she hasn't said, "I'm doing it." '
Bevan pointed out during the conversation that becoming a grandmother may factor into Hillary's decision, as well.
Hillary may not want to go through the hassle of running for president again at this stage in her life, former White House press secretary to Bill Clinton Mike McCurry says.
Hillary may not want to go through the hassle of running for president again at this stage in her life, former White House press secretary to Bill Clinton Mike McCurry says.
McCurry would not say Hillary would be 'unbeatable' if she did run but said she would be 'fomidable, because among other things, she would do the job very well.'
'I am confident when I say, "Hillary Clinton would be a good president" that she would be,' he said.
The ex-Clinton aide said her believed her qualifications for the job would help Americans get past other aspects of her background they may not appreciate - like her the fact that her husband already occupied the Oval Office and that he got caught occupying it with someone other than his wife.
'I think a real majority of Americans would see that [she would be a good president], even those who sometimes, you know, quarrel with the Clinton family image, or things like that,' he said.
McCurry said Hillary would not be hurt by her husband having already been president because many voters 'were too young' to remember Bill Clinton being president.'
He then admitted everyone in America has probably heard about Bill Clinton's affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, who turned back up in the press this month with an article in Vanity Fair detailing her personal struggles since her affair with the president became public more than 15 years ago.
'Look, let's put it this way. You can't put oral sex and Oval Office in the same sentence without getting the attention of a young person,' McCurry said.
McCurry worked as Bill Clinton's press secretary throughout the time the president was having an affair with Lewinsky until August 4, 1998.
Less than two weeks later, Clinton admitted in a televised address to the nation that he 'did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate.'
McCurry said he didn't think Americans would hold the scandal against Hillary, though.
What young people probably don't remember and ought to is Bill Clinton's accomplishments,' he clarified.
Another factor that could keep Hillary Clinton from running for president is her health, long time adviser to President George W. Bush Karl Rove said this week.
Clinton was hospitalized for several days in 2012 after suffering a blood clot.
'When you go through a health incident like this, any presidential candidate has to ask themselves, "Am I willing to do this for eight years of my life?" ' Rove told Fox News.
He pointed out that if she ran, her health would most definitely be a topic of discussion, as evidenced by the questions previous presidential candidates were asked by reporters.
'She would not be human if it didn't enter into her considerations,' he later told the Washington Post.
Rove told the Post that if Hillary did run, she would need to be more 'forthcoming' about what happened when she had the blood clot.
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2628189/White-House-press-secretary-Bill-Clinton-not-convinced-theres-going-Hillary-2016-campaign.html#ixzz31i8LfnIW
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not a bad article.
Hilary *could* just sit back and do nothing, then be selected veep, ten weeks out from the election.
she is worth $200 mil. Why not sip daquiris and post on getbig all day?
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2016 poll: Clinton's lead shrinks in key state
Posted by
CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser
(CNN) - She's still ahead of the competition, but a new poll in an important presidential battleground state indicates that Hillary Clinton's numbers have slightly deteriorated over the past couple of months.
According to a Quinnipiac University survey of Ohio voters, Clinton remains in the lead over eight potential Republican opponents in hypothetical 2016 presidential election showdowns, but her margins have shrunk.
"Her lead over most of them has dropped considerably since Quinnipiac University surveyed Ohio voters in February," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "Still Ms. Clinton has the best favorability rating of the group."
The former secretary of state, senator from New York and first lady, has said she'll decide by the end of the year if she'll launch a second bid for the White House. And most of the potential GOP presidential candidates questioned in the survey have also indicated they'll make their decisions sometime after November's midterm elections.
The poll, released Thursday, indicates Clinton leading former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush 48%-39% among registered voters in Ohio. That's down from a 51%-36% lead in February. Clinton leads Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida 47%-40%, down from 50%-36% three months ago. And she tops Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky 49%-41%, down from 51%-38%.
According to the survey, Clinton's ahead of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie 46%-38%, down from 49%-36% in February. She's ahead of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin 48%-41%. That's slightly down from her 49%-40% advantage over the 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee three months ago. And she tops Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas 51%-37%, down from 51%-34%.
And Clinton has a 47%-42% edge in Ohio over the state's governor, John Kasich, down from 51%-39% in February. She also has a 49%-41% lead over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. The 2008 Republican presidential candidate was not tested in Quinnipiac's February poll.
Ohio plays a crucial role in campaign politics. It's a must win battleground state in presidential elections and was the state that put George W. Bush over the top in his 2004 re-election. In modern times, no Republican has ever been elected to the White House without carrying the Buckeye State.
The slight deterioration of Clinton's lead in Ohio matchups is opposite of what Quinnipiac polling found in Florida, another crucial battleground state. A Quinnipiac poll conducted in the Sunshine State earlier this month indicated Clinton's leads over Bush, Rubio, Paul, Christie, Ryan and Cruz had slightly increased since the beginning of the year.
A national survey conducted earlier this month indicated that Clinton was overwhelming frontrunner in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, but that her support had slightly deteriorated since the beginning of the year.
According to the CNN/ORC International poll, 64% of Democrats and independents who lean towards the party said they most likely would support Clinton, down six percentage points from January, when seven in ten said they'd back Clinton. Nineteen percent said they are likely to support a Democratic presidential candidate who's more conservative than Clinton, up four points from January, with 13% saying they'd back a candidate more liberal than Clinton, up three points from the beginning of the year.
One caveat: With the start of the 2016 primary and caucus calendar still more than a year and a half away, polls at this early stage in a presidential cycle are often influenced by name recognition.
According to the Quinnipiac poll, Buckeye state voters have a 53%-43% favorable opinion of Clinton. Her numbers on this question are basically unchanged from last June. Favorite son Kasich stands at 47% favorable and 29% unfavorable. The ratings for the other possible 2016 Republican White House hopefuls are: Bush (32%-38%); Christie (36%-36%); Paul (38%-29%); Cruz (24%-26%); Huckabee (37%-31%); Ryan (39%-31%); and Rubio (31%-19%).
As for the current resident in the White House, 39% of Ohio voters say they approve of the job President Barack Obama's doing, with 58% saying they disapprove. The President stood at 40%-55% in February.
The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted May 7-12, with 1,174 registered voters in Ohio questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/15/2016-poll-clintons-lead-shrinks-in-key-state/
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Why Hillary's high numbers (even among Republicans!) won't last
By Howard Kurtz
Published May 19, 2014
FoxNews.com
Much of the media is clearly ready for a coronation, but is that related to reality?
Her latest numbers are impressive, but there are reasons to be skeptical.
In a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, “most Americans have a favorable view of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and think she will win the 2016 presidential election.”
Some 57 percent of Americans “who were aware of Clinton” (isn’t that everyone?) have a favorable opinion, while 43 percent see her negatively. And “nearly one-quarter of Republicans said they had a favorable view of Clinton.” That’s pretty remarkable in a polarized electorate, suggesting a certain crossover appeal.
Clinton was most frequently described as “strong,” but “‘Benghazi’ was the term that stood out most when respondents who said they had an unfavorable view of Clinton were asked to explain this perspective.”
And therein lies the rub.
Hillary is not campaigning now (though she is, sort of) and is largely out of the line of fire (speculation about her health notwithstanding). The moment she gets in the race, she faces a relentless barrage and her numbers start to drop.
Right now, she can go on “The View” and wish Barbara Walters a warm farewell. As a candidate, she’d be asked about health care and Nigeria and Iran and what she accomplished at the State Department.
The fact that people expect her to win the presidency is noteworthy, although two years from now it also casts her, in an odd way, as the incumbent.
Fox’s Charles Krauthammer told Bill O’Reilly that “the Democrats grossly overestimate how popular Hillary is. She may be popular with some of them, she may be popular with a lot of them. But they assume it’s going to apply to the country. I think not.”
Referring to her description of her time at Foggy Bottom as a relay race, Krauthammer said the strongest thing she can say is “‘that I passed the baton.’ Now, I’ve never been to the Track and Field Hall of Fame, but I can assure you that there is not a single plaque that reads, ‘He passed the baton.’”
I suspect the former secretary will have more to say than that. But she’ll also face the difficulty of separating herself from the Obama administration without turning her back on the president who hired her.
So is there any way she’s not the Democratic nominee?
“The reality is that if nothing extraordinary happens, the only person who could keep Hillary Clinton from being the party's nominee would be Clinton herself,” says The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza. “While we -- and virtually everyone else in the political world -- have begun to take her candidacy as a foregone conclusion, no one in her real inner circle is talking -- meaning that she almost certainly hasn't made the final go/no-go decision. So, what could keep her from running?
“For all the sturm und drang caused by the insinuations made by Karl Rove regarding Clinton's health scare in late 2012, a blood clot on the brain is a serious thing and even Clinton allies acknowledge it was not insignificant. Bill Clinton insisted this week that his wife is in "better shape" than he is and her aides say she has an absolutely clean bill of health. But Clinton would be 69 years old on election day 2016, and couple her age with that scare in late 2012 and it's hard to imagine Clinton not taking a full accounting of her health before officially deciding to run. Possible that such an accounting leads Clinton to take a pass? Yes. Likely? No.”
Put me down in the Extremely Unlikely camp. An awful lot of Hillary’s friends have come on board in the belief that she is the candidate-in-waiting.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/19/why-hillary-high-numbers-even-among-republicans-wont-last/?intcmp=latestnews
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Former Va. senator James Webb says he’s considering presidential bid
By Rosalind S. Helderman, Published: May 19, 2014
Former Virginia senator James Webb, a Democrat who was elected to the Senate in 2006 on the strength of his record as a combat veteran who opposed the Iraq War, said in a radio interview Monday that he is thinking about running for president.
Appearing on the “Diane Rehm Show” on WAMU to discuss a newly published memoir, Webb, a prolific author, Vietnam veteran and former secretary of the Navy, said he is concerned about the direction of U.S. foreign policy and is looking for a way to reengage in the national debate.
“My wife and I are just thinking about what to do next. I care a lot about where the country is, and we’ll be sorting that out,” he told guest host Susan Page when she asked whether he was considering a 2016 run.
Noting that he did not decide to challenge then-incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen (Va.) in 2006 until nine months before the November election, he added, “It takes me a while to decide things. I’m not going to say one way or the other.”
He said he was concerned that on foreign policy, the nation is now “bouncing from issue to issue without a clear articulation of what the national security interest of the United States actually is.” At the same time, he said, he is worried by the growing gap between the rich and poor, which he said could be addressed through better leadership in Washington.
Webb’s comments took the political establishment in Virginia and beyond by surprise.
Since declining to run for reelection to the Senate in 2012 after serving only a single term in office, Webb has largely disappeared from the political scene.
He spent little time in office or since leaving it nurturing the kind of political connections that would be needed to run for president, particularly to challenge the kind of fundraising and organizing juggernaut that would be available to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
And Webb never relished the superficiality of the campaign trail, which he might find even more pronounced at the presidential level than in the Senate.
Still, Webb, 68, is considered an especially independent-minded maverick.
He served in the administration of President Ronald Reagan before running for the Senate as a Democrat. A highly decorated former Marine, he exchanged sharp words about the Iraq War at the White House with President George W. Bush shortly after his election to the Senate.
People close to him said he would not have opened the door to a possible run if he were not thinking about it seriously.
“I don’t think Jim Webb says anything just to get attention. He’s not that kind of person,” said Jessica Vanden Berg, a former senior adviser to Webb who served as his campaign manager in 2006. “I think he is trying to figure out how to get his view points out.”
She said Webb could help focus the race on issues of economic populism and fairness, a frequent topic of his writings and speeches since before his election to the Senate. He has pushed Democrats to reconnect with white working class communities that have grown culturally suspicious of the party.
His latest book, “I Heard My Country Calling,” recounts his childhood, including his father’s roots in Appalachia and his mother’s background growing up in poverty in Arkansas.
“He can go to places like Kentucky, Arkansas, places where Democrats need help — he appeals to people there because of his background,” Vanden Berg said. “He’s a huge asset to the Democratic party.”
In the Senate, he focused on prison reform and strengthening U.S. ties with Asia. He championed an update to the G.I. Bill, to help veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan with educational benefits.
Steve Jarding, a political consultant who advised his 2006 effort, said Webb could make an intriguing alternative to Clinton.
“There’s a rather strong itch out there for someone who will tell it like it is, putting politics aside — almost detesting the politics,” he said. “Hillary Clinton is as qualified as anyone who’s run who is not an incumbent ... and yet, there will always be people looking for an alternative.”
Webb has spent less time preparing for a race than other Democrats who have acknowledged thinking about running, including Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer.
However, Webb appeared at a veterans gala in the key early primary state of New Hampshire on Saturday.
One Virginia Democrat said he finds it hard to believe that Webb has the stomach for a campaign.
“When I think about presidential politics and the complete pandering, debasing roadshow that’s required, I can make many of the issues Webb is interested in fit and work,” he said, but added: “I’m not sure I can make the personality fit.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-va-senator-james-webb-says-hes-considering-presidential-bid/2014/05/19/9f3db7b8-df7f-11e3-8dcc-d6b7fede081a_story.html?hpid=z4
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webb could probably be the best thign the dems have running.
the hatchet job that rove is pulling on hilary lol... she'll have to submit to a public CT scan before the fox pundits shut up lol.
so funny.... mccain was literally wearing huge head bandages to rallies and repubs never asked a thing lol.
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webb could probably be the best thign the dems have running.
the hatchet job that rove is pulling on hilary lol... she'll have to submit to a public CT scan before the fox pundits shut up lol.
so funny.... mccain was literally wearing huge head bandages to rallies and repubs never asked a thing lol.
;D
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Why Elizabeth Warren should run for president
BY BYRON YORK | APRIL 24, 2014
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is starting a publicity tour for her new campaign-style book, A Fighting Chance. As she talks to the press, Warren is repeating previous statements that she will not run for president in 2016. But her denials aren't really denials, and her party's unique presidential circumstances give Warren plenty of room to run. Judging by what she has said publicly, there's no reason to rule out a Warren candidacy.
First, the non-denial denials. This week ABC's David Muir asked Warren, "Are you going to run for president?" Warren's response was, "I'm not running for president."
That's the oldest lawyerly evasion in the book. Warren, a former law professor, did not say, "I am not going to run for president." Instead, she said she is "not running," which could, in some sense, be true when she spoke the words but no longer true by, say, later this year.
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Muir tried again: "There's nothing that could change your mind?"
"David, like I said, I'm not running for president."
Muir also asked Warren about the dominant frontrunner in the Democratic race. "Do you think Hillary Clinton would make a good president?"
"I think Hillary Clinton is terrific," Warren said, which is no way answered the question. Then Warren added, "We've got to stay focused on these issues right now," which sounded very much like something a candidate might say.
The bottom line is that Warren's statements are entirely consistent with someone who is planning to announce a presidential candidacy later this year. Maybe she will, maybe she won't. But she ruled nothing out.
And why shouldn't she run? With Clinton 50-plus points ahead of any other potential candidate, it's an understatement to say the Democratic Party has put all its presidential eggs in one basket. Unless it's an incumbent seeking re-election, that's never a good idea. So here are five reasons — there are probably more — why Warren should make a 2016 run for the White House.
1. Life is unpredictable. Clinton will be 69 years old on inauguration day 2017, nearly the oldest president ever. She has had a few health scares. By all accounts, she left her previous four-year stint in government service exhausted. She might not run, and the Democrat in second place in the polls, Vice President Joe Biden -- 74 on inauguration day -- is too old to be president. Beyond them, Democrats have nobody -- except Elizabeth Warren.
2. Parties need competition. The primary process isn't just to allow voters to pick a nominee. It's for the candidates to become better candidates. The rigors of campaigning, the day-to-day jostle with competitors and the stress of high-profile debates all make candidates better. Conversely, a cakewalk through the primaries could leave a nominee in poor fighting shape for a general election. Warren would make Clinton a better candidate, and vice-versa.
3. The Left wants a hero. Clinton has never really excited the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. They see her as an overcautious centrist like her husband, and on top of that, many have never forgiven her for voting to authorize the war in Iraq. Warren, on the other hand, has thrilled the Left with her attacks on inequality, plutocrats and big financial institutions.
4. Hillary ran a dumb campaign in 2008 and might do so again. For a group of seasoned veterans, the 2008 Clinton campaign showed a stunning ignorance of how to win delegates in a Democratic contest. Rival Barack Obama exploited that weakness brilliantly. For example, Obama collected more net delegates by winning the Idaho caucuses, with 21,000 participants, than Clinton did by winning the New Jersey primary, with more than 1 million voters. Clinton just didn't pay attention to the smaller stuff, particularly the caucuses, and her cluelessness helped Obama win. It might help another rival in 2016.
5. One more time: Life is unpredictable. This is Warren's only chance to run. She will be 67 on Inauguration Day 2017. (Has any party ever fielded a group as old as Clinton, Biden and Warren?) A run in 2020 or later is out of the question. Hillary, now struggling to define her legacy as Secretary of State, is running on pure entitlement. The only thing about her candidacy that truly excites the Democratic base is that she would be the first woman president. Of course, that applies to Elizabeth Warren, too. And Warren would present a far fresher face to voters than Clinton, who has been in the national spotlight since 1992.
Yes, Warren is far back in the polls, but so was Obama in 2007. At some point, Democrats are going to realize the precariousness of their unthinking devotion to a single, flawed candidate. Elizabeth Warren could remind them there's someone else to vote for.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/why-elizabeth-warren-should-run-for-president/article/2547688
Love hearing what Warren has to say. Not sure about her views regarding most non-financial issues but I'd probably still vote for her over any other candidate that I'm aware of if the election were held now.
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Love hearing what Warren has to say. Not sure about her views regarding most non-financial issues but I'd probably still vote for her over any other candidate that I'm aware of if the election were held now.
I'd like to think she is unelectable, but after we put Obama in the White House twice, anything is possible.
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;D
its true. remember "sen mccain just bumped his head getting into the limo today'' in the same spots on his head where he had skin cancer? right after a doc appt? the lie was so obvious.
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Video || Epic Diss! Obama Won’t Endorse Biden as Biden Looks On
by KEITH KOFFLER on APRIL 17, 2014
This is absurd. The man says, right in front of Biden, that he can’t support him.
Take a look at this. It’s completely ungracious. Now, don’t get me wrong, the Joe Biden who sneered and laughed his way through his debate with Paul Ryan, who suggested Republicans are so racist they want to re-enslave African Americans, deserves nobody’s graciousness.
But from President Obama’s perspective, Vice President Biden is the man who has been with him every day, been in on almost every meeting and decision, and been loyal and docile toward him as a chocolate labrador. Sure, he makes mistakes, but that’s not his fault. He was born a nincompoop.
To actually say, with Biden standing there, that “we’ve got an extraordinary secretary of state” who might also run suggests previously unknown degrees of coldness of blood.
From an interview by CBS White House correspondent Major Garrett:
I’ve got somebody who I think will go down as one of the finest vice presidents in history, and he has been . . . a great partner in everything that I do. I suspect that there may be other potential candidates for 2016 who have been great friends and allies. I know that we’ve got an extraordinary secretary of state who did great service for us and worked with me and Joe to help make the country safer.
Whoever the Democratic standard bearer is, is going to be continuing to focus on jobs, making sure that our kids are getting a great education, making sure that we’re rebuilding prosperity from the middle class out in this country – and I am very much interested in making sure that some of the stuff we’ve gotten started continues.
http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2014/04/17/video-ultimate-diss-obama-endorse-biden/
makes perfect sense
he's not going to throw out an off the cuff endorsement when no one has even said they are running
I suspect he won't "endorse" either one during the primaries (which I'm sure they will understand) and will eventually endorse the Democratic nominee
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I'd like to think she is unelectable, but after we put Obama in the White House twice, anything is possible.
Really? Why?
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Really? Why?
Because leftwing liberals do not make good presidents.
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Because leftwing liberals do not make good presidents.
yet they keep winning elections. I think it's because 51% of the USA is now liberal, sadly.
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Because leftwing liberals do not make good presidents.
Even if that were true, didn't you say "unelectable"?
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yet they keep winning elections. I think it's because 51% of the USA is now liberal, sadly.
::)
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Even if that were true, didn't you say "unelectable"?
No.
I'd like to think she is unelectable, but after we put Obama in the White House twice, anything is possible.
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::)
it's true tho. Majority of tv, stores, restaurants, people, elected officials... really everything around us in society is at least 51% liberal. People disobey laws, people use drugs illegally, people drink and drive, people do all sorts of liberal stuff around us. No way 51% of people on the road are actual conservatives, no way about it.
If any getbiggers disagree, please speak up... BB is the only person (I think) that doesn't agree here. We live in a liberal society now. Euro has been that way. We're 51% now, easily.
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Ben Carson: I Don't Want to Run for President, May Have To
Wednesday, 21 May 2014
By Sean Piccoli and Bill Hoffmann
It's not the job Dr. Ben Carson wants, but it may be the job his country needs him to seek, the renowned neurosurgeon said of the presidency in interviews with Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
"It continues to be something that I don't want to do, but I also recognize that our country is in an enormous amount of difficulty," Carson said.
"And if there were a lot of Americans — I mean a lot — who really thought that I should do that, I would have to give it serious consideration.''
In interviews with Steve Malzberg on "The Steve Malzberg Show" and "America's Forum" hosts J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman, the rising conservative star craftily dodged and weaved, deflecting question after question about the 2016 race.
Editor's Note: Dr. Ben Carson's New Book - One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America’s Future
"I still don't want to be president . . . Whether I run or not, I don't want to. Would I consider it if after the November elections [and] the populace has demonstrated that they actually understand what's going on?''
Asked if he had seen a Republican who can articulate the GOP ideology in a way that satisfies him, Carson responded: "Well, it's not there yet, but that doesn't mean that it can't develop because nobody has really announced.''
Asked for the names of some potential candidates he's impressed by, the former chief of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins Children's Center answered: "I like everybody."
But he agreed that if nobody suitable comes forward by the end of 2016, he will make a final decision about whether to run "early next year.''
Asked what his likelihood of running is on a scale of 1 to 10, Carson quipped, "Somewhere between 1 and 10.''
Carson, president of the Carson Scholars Fund and chairman of the anti-Obamacare Save Our Healthcare Project, also discussed his long-term view of politics and controversial support for Monica Wehby — a pro-choice Republican running for the Senate in Oregon.
Story continues below video.
Carson, who riled President Barack Obama with unscripted remarks at last year's National Prayer Breakfast, has been making rounds that some think signal White House ambitions of his own by talking up his new book.
It's a compendium of political policy and personal creed, written with his wife, Candy Carson, and called "One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America's Future," published by Sentinel HC.
Carson said he wrote "One Nation" to re-establish "that we the American people are not each other's enemies."
"We're natural allies," he said, "but we've allowed ourselves to be manipulated by those forces that drive wedges into every possible crack to create a war — gender wars, race wars and income wars and age wars," he said.
The goal being "to keep people at each other's throats, direct them away from the things that are important — things like the economy, the national debt, our casting away of our moral values and the things that allow us to have an identity," he said.
So what would it take to persuade Carson, who's the object of at least one draft movement, to run?
Insisting it's "a little bit early" to contemplate 2016, Carson said, "We have to see what happens in November" with the midterm elections. He also suggested conservatives who sense America's need for a major course correction won't necessarily have to pin their hopes on one person.
If interest in him fades, said Carson, and another candidate emerges who "is speaking the language that people want to hear and can identify with . . . that would be somebody that I can get behind, too."
Story continues below video.
Carson used his column this week to explain and defend backing the pro-choice Wehby in Oregon as a move that navigates "a course between principle and pragmatism."
"I always say if two people agree about everything, one of them isn't necessary," Carson said Wednesday as a follow-up to the column. "But what conservatives have to understand is, if they take the attitude after the primary, 'My candidate didn't win; I'm taking my marbles and going home,' they're playing right into the plan of the progressive movement.
"We have to be smarter than that," he said, "and the fact of the matter is, if we take somebody who agrees with us most of the time so that we can gain power, we have the ability to sort out whatever other small differences exist after that," Carson said.
"But if you never get into position to be able to do anything, then, as Hillary would say, what difference does it make? You know, we're not going to get there, we've got to get there first."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ben-carson-republican-president-2016/2014/05/21/id/572717#ixzz32TAQuB00
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Not looking so invincible these days.
2016 poll: Hillary Clinton drops below 50% for first time; 'lackluster' book rollout blamed
BY PAUL BEDARD | JUNE 30, 2014
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's fumbles and bumbles in the rollout of her latest memoir, Hard Choices, has knocked the wind out if her easy sail to the White House and put her support in key 2016 presidential election matchups below 50 percent for the first time.
At a time when she should be padding her lead over the top Republican contenders, her underwhelming effort has cut her numbers, said pollster John Zogby.
In his latest Zogby Analytics survey taken June 27-29, for example, her commanding leads over former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have shrunk greatly, and she doesn't even receive 50 percent of the vote. Worse, her support among married and wealthy voters has plummeted.
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Zogby told Secrets, “Even more than her dwindling leads over GOP contenders is that while she is pretty much running against herself, in a very high-profile book tour, she is losing ground. Her biggest problem, I have always felt, is the inevitability factor. It help do her in in 2007-2008 and right now looks to be her major nemesis. She has this whole playing field to herself and is declining in the polls.”
He called her book tour performance “lackluster,” one that has been plagued with missteps like when she described herself and her husband as "dead broke" upon leaving the White House. The comment drew attention to the tens of millions of dollars they have collected since leaving the White House.
Zogby also warned that since virtually every voter knows — and has an opinion of — Clinton, there isn’t much she can do to broaden her support.
“It is significant that in every case the runaway favorite again polls under 50 percent and that both Governor Bush and Senator Paul continue to increase their support among key groups. Clinton has almost universal name recognition among likely voters and it is unlikely that she could say or do anything to increase her support base,” said Zogby, who provides Secrets with his weekly report card on President Obama, published Saturday mornings.
In the matchups, Clinton now leads Bush, 47 percent to 35 percent. She once held an a 18-point advantage. Against Paul, she leads 48 percent to 36 percent, but once had a 21-point lead. And she would beat Christie 48 percent to 33 percent, but once led, 52 percent to 29 percent.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/2016-poll-hillary-clinton-drops-below-50-for-first-time-lackluster-book-rollout-blamed/article/2550305
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This means Warren: Obama backs challenger to Hillary
By Edward Klein
July 6, 2014
President Obama has quietly promised Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren complete support if she runs for president — a stinging rebuke to his nemesis Hillary Clinton, sources tell me.
Publicly, Obama has remained noncommittal on the 2016 race, but privately he worries that Clinton would undo and undermine many of his policies. There’s also a personal animosity, especially with Bill Clinton, that dates from their tough race six years ago.
A former Harvard law professor and administration aide, Warren would energize the left wing of the Democratic Party just as Obama did against Clinton in 2008.
Thanks to her outspoken stand against big banks and the top 1 percent, Warren is the darling of progressives. She won her Senate seat thanks to millions of dollars in donations from outside Massachusetts, including from rich environmentalists and Hollywood celebrities.
Obama has authorized his chief political adviser, Valerie Jarrett, to conduct a full-court press to convince Warren to throw her hat into the ring.
In the past several weeks, Jarrett has held a series of secret meetings with Warren. During these meetings, Jarrett has explained to Warren that Obama is worried that if Hillary succeeds him in the White House, she will undo many of his policies.
He believes that the populist Warren is the best person to convince the party faithful that Hillary is out of touch with poor Americans and the middle class. Warren, in his view, would carry on the Obama legacy after he leaves the White House.
So far, Warren has been reluctant to make a commitment. During several recent interviews, she has said she has no present plans to run for president.
However, she always phrases her stance on the issue in the present tense and has refused to issue a Shermanesque statement that she will not run for the White House under any circumstances.
“Barack, Michelle and Valerie have been talking about Elizabeth Warren for quite some time,” says an Obama administration source. “Valerie has told Warren that Obama is prepared to throw a great deal of money and organizational support behind her.
“The Obamas believe that Warren sees things from the same ideological point of view as they do. She is a committed progressive who, like Obama, wants to transform America into a European-style democratic-socialist state.”
Bill Clinton has worried for some time about Obama backing another candidate, as I revealed in my book “Blood Feud.”
“I’ve heard from [Democratic] state committeemen about Obama’s preference in ’16,” Bill confided to several of his close friends. “And they tell me that he’s looking around for a candidate who’s just like him. Someone relatively unknown. Someone with a fresh face. He wants to clone himself — to find his Mini-Me.”
Modal TriggerWhen I ran this information before a well-informed Democratic Party operative, he pooh-poohed the scenario.
“It’s all bulls–t,” he said. “The media is creating a Hillary Clinton-Elizabeth Warren rivalry to hype the storyline. If Warren dared to challenge Hillary, women all over America would never forgive her. She’d lose all her credibility.”
That, however, is not the way Valerie Jarrett sees things.
“Both Valerie and Michelle Obama have convinced the president that Elizabeth Warren is his Mini-Me,” said a person who has discussed the issue with Jarrett.
This person continued: “For the time being, the Obamas have decided not to broadcast the fact that they’ve tapped Warren as their chosen candidate. They are waiting until the moment is right, which will probably be after the midterm elections.”
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she causes/hides benghazi, goes on vacation, and still scores higher than any other contender?
i'd hate to see her in full PR mode. People KNOW her negatives, and she's still over 50%. They don't know much about the GOPers, and they're lower. I hope she loses, but i wouldn't bet against her.
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Because leftwing liberals do not make good presidents.
Hey!! I get this now. When you said "I'd like to think she's unelectable, ..." all you really meant was you hoped she would never be president. (Even if she weren't elected -- Like if she were Hillary's VP and came into the office when Hillary got taken out by Soul Crusher or something.)
My bad, I thought you were trying to convey something by using the word "unelectable".
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Hey!! I get this now. When you said "I'd like to think she's unelectable, ..." all you really meant was you hoped she would never be president. (Even if she weren't elected -- Like if she were Hillary's VP and came into the office when Hillary got taken out by Soul Crusher or something.)
My bad, I thought you were trying to convey something by using the word "unelectable".
Correct. No worries.
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Rubio, amid large field of potential 2016 GOP candidates, says Clinton 'not unbeatable'
Published July 12, 2014
FoxNews.com
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, considered a top 2016 GOP presidential candidate, says “multiple people” can beat potential Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, despite her commanding lead in early polls.
"Multiple people can beat her," Rubio told radio host Hugh Hewitt. “Hillary Clinton is not unbeatable."
The first-term GOP senator took a familiar line of attack, challenging Clinton’s record as secretary of State, considering she will likely tout her extensive foreign policy credentials should she enter the race.
"I'd ask her: You were the secretary of State during the first four years of the Obama administration, name one significant foreign policy achievement, now or after you left,” Rubio said in the interview Friday.
"The reset with Russia has been a disaster, the Middle East is more unstable today than it's been in I don't know when, our relationship with Latin America and democracies have deteriorated …our partners around the world view us as less reliable."
He also downplayed her efforts to help establish a democratic government in Burma.
“I don’t think Burma could be held up as a place where great progress has been made,” Rubio said.
Rubio is running behind five other potential GOP presidential candidates, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, according to an averaging of polls by the non-partisan website RealClearPolitics.com.
Clinton has 65 percent of the potential vote and is 53.3 percentage points ahead of her closest potential Democratic challenger, Vice President Biden, according to the website.
Rubio on Friday also discussed his own foreign policy views.
He suggested that President Obama hasn’t given Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this country’s full support and that his efforts in Ukraine have created the perception among U.S. enemies that America is weak.
Rubio also supported the recent Supreme Court ruling that owners of closely-held, for-profit companies such as the Hobby Lobby art-and-crafts retailer cannot be forced under ObamaCare to provide employees with the types of contraceptives that offend their religious beliefs.
"What [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid and his party is arguing is that the government should have the power to force individual Americans to pay for things that they find objectionable because of their religion," he said. "If this was a case about Hobby Lobby being able to fire people that work for them who use contraception, that would be a different story. ... There are protections for that in this country and our Constitution that he seeks to ignore. And I think [Democrats] think they have a political winner. I disagree."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/12/rubio-amid-large-field-potential-2016-gop-candidates-says-clinton-not/
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Perry, jeb, and a few others can put hilary in her place. Ron paul would have destroyed her in a debate. Heck, liz warren can/will demolish her if they ever face off in a primary.
But some of these young folks... sorry, but I don't see Rubio as the one to let the nation know, after 30+ years, that the clintons are completely full of shit. Obama couldn't - he only said "look at me, I'm shiny and new" and he barely won.
Repubs need a serious candidate with gravitas to defeat hilary. I hope it isn't rubio. He has that giggly, unprepared look that just comes out at all th wrong times. he's not sure of himself yet. He need 5 more years before he's ready.
I know, "Team Rubber Stamp Approval" will immediately chime to his defense about how a bag of cat hair could beat hilary in 2016, but for those of us living in reality, he's not a good 2016 choice.
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I think she is running.
Progressives turn from Obama to embrace Warren
By Robert Costa
July 14 at 7:40 PM
SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. — Populist Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) got a rock-star reception during a standing-room-only campaign rally here Monday, as hundreds of liberal activists cheered her broadsides against corporate interests and voiced hopes that her presence might shift the political winds in an increasingly Republican state.
The rally on behalf of Senate candidate Natalie Tennant was the latest in a string of recent Warren appearances in red and blue states alike, where Democratic base voters have embraced her fiery message as an envoy to working-class voters frustrated with both Wall Street and the Obama administration.
“Our job is to fight for the families of America,” Warren said, speaking to a packed ballroom at the Clarion Hotel in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle. “Stitch up the tax loopholes so that millionaires and billionaires pay at the same tax rate as the people in this room.”
Warren stumped in Kentucky late last month for Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who, like Tennant, is running for the Senate in a state easily won by Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. Later this week, the freshman senator and former Harvard professor will be in Michigan supporting Democratic Senate candidate Gary Peters.
Warren also has visited Oregon, Ohio, Washington and Minnesota this year and has made dozens of e-mail solicitations on behalf of Democratic Senate colleagues — an unusually aggressive effort by a senator who has repeatedly denied interest in a presidential campaign. In Kentucky, Warren raised more than $200,000 for Grimes, who is running against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R).
Democratic Senate candidate Natalie Tennant (W.Va.) says Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is "just like West Virginians who have grown up in rural West Virginia." Warren campaigned for Tennant on Monday.
Here in West Virginia — an early stage for Democrats with national ambitions going back to John F. Kennedy in 1960 — Warren was greeted as a progressive hero, with several attendees pleading with her to run for president. Tennant’s campaign hopes that Warren’s populist message will help her close the gap against her well-funded GOP opponent, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito.
“We’re sinking, we’re barely treading water in West Virginia,” said Danette Jones, a local Democrat, as Warren was swarmed by admirers after her speech. “We’re looking for someone who’s going to stop the back-scratching, and she’s one of those people.”
On the other side of the state in Charleston, Capito campaigned with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a conservative favorite and former Republican vice-presidential nominee. Capito sharply criticized Tennant for appearing with Warren, who supports the president’s push to lower carbon emissions — a controversial position in a state where the coal industry is one of the economy’s central drivers.
“West Virginians told us today that they want their next senator to stand up for an all-of-the-above energy agenda that embraces coal,” Capito said. “They want someone who will fix the problems with Obamacare. They want someone who will stop strangling regulations from killing jobs and small businesses. That’s exactly what I’m prepared to do.”
The dueling events are a microcosm of this year’s broader national debate ahead of the November midterms, with Ryan and Warren seen as their respective parties’ leaders on issues important to middle-class voters. Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, has spent months making speeches on poverty, while Warren — a longtime financial consumer advocate and bankruptcy expert — has traveled the country giving populist speeches as part of a tour for her latest book, “A Fighting Chance .”
Tennant remains the underdog in the hotly contested Senate race, with most polls showing Capito — a well-known daughter of a former West Virginia governor — comfortably ahead. Capito also has a fundraising advantage, bringing in more than $1 million last quarter compared with $777,000 raised by Tennant in the same period, according to campaign advisers.
The victor will succeed retiring Democratic Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV and become the Mountain State’s first female U.S. senator .
The trepidation that some Democrats feel in standing with President Obama — along with former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton’s absence on the midterm campaign trail — has provided an opening for Warren, who excites the base voters and small-dollar donors critical to any Democratic contender’s chances.
Warren’s visit was perhaps the biggest moment so far in an otherwise sleepy race. Tennant said her only other major surrogate has been Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), a freshman and moderate Democrat who is little known outside her state. Scores of cameras lined the back of the ballroom, and dozens of reporters clumped around two cloth-covered tables near the podium.
Warren, 65, — who has repeatedly said she will not seek the White House in 2016 — focused her pitch on pocketbook issues such as student loans and Social Security while blasting banks and big businesses for tilting federal laws in their favor. Again and again, Warren thrust her fists in the air as union members and college-age volunteers in the crowd roared their approval.
“Citibank and Goldman Sachs and all those other guys on Wall Street, they’ve got plenty of folks in the U.S. Senate willing to work on their side,” Warren said. “We need some more people willing to work on the side of America’s families. Natalie’s that fighter.”
Warren sought to link Capito to the financial sector, calling her one of its top allies in Congress. “When [Wall Street] needs her, she’s been there,” Warren said. “She’s out there for Wall Street, she’s leading the charge.”
Warren also knocked Republicans for opposing an increase to the federal minimum wage — a stance Democrats believe will hurt Capito in a state with one of the nation’s lowest per capita incomes.
In her remarks, Tennant took care to distance herself from Warren and President Obama on energy issues and talked up her support for coal companies. She said in an interview that Obama would have a “lot of explaining to do” if he visited West Virginia because of new proposals by the Environmental Protection Agency to cut carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants.
But Tennant also repeatedly praised Warren as the rare national Democrat who could help win over undecided voters, many of whom have soured on Obama’s agenda but remain skeptical of the Republican Party’s commitment to the poor and blue-collar workers.
“When you look at Senator Warren, she’s just like West Virginians who have grown up in rural West Virginia,” Tennant said, citing Warren’s roots in Oklahoma and her years as a schoolteacher.
Tennant’s decision to invite Warren signals where she stands on the tension within the Democratic Party over whether to move more to the left as it tries to hold on to a slim Senate majority — and that she needs progressives to turn out in droves. Warren, who has frequently railed against the coziness of both parties with corporate titans and hedge-fund managers, is not beloved by some centrist Democratic financiers.
“Natalie Tennant and I do not agree on every issue,” Warren said, but added that they agree on the “core issue,” which she described as passing policies that lift the lives of working families.
“What is this election really about?” Warren asked the crowd, answering her own question: “It’s about whose side you stand on.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/progressives-turn-from-obama-to-embrace-warren/2014/07/14/e117aca2-0b62-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html
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warren would SMASH hilary in a debate on any kind of fiscal responsibility.
granted, warren lied about being 1/8 cherokee or something. but that affects 1 person that lost out on school funds that she stole. Sucks, but hilary has cost 305 million americans way more.
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Hillary Clinton: Becoming Grandmother Could Halt 2016 Bid
Thursday, 17 Jul 2014
By Todd Beamon
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that becoming a grandmother could derail her bid for the White House in 2016.
"I’m about to have my first grandchild, which I’m thrilled about," Clinton told PBS journalist Charlie Rose in an interview. "I can’t wait."
"I want to see what that feels like," she added. "I’m not going to skip over it. I want to really be present, as I meet this … new person in our family."
Chelsea Clinton and her husband, investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, are expecting their first child this fall. They married in 2010.
Hillary Clinton said she would decide later this year on whether she would seek to become the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.
Her PBS interview with Rose will air in two parts, on Thursday and Friday. Clinton recently published her memoir, "Hard Choices."
Clinton said that the presidency "has only gotten harder," based on what she has seen from her years as first lady and from working for the Obama administration.
"The job has gotten even bigger and more difficult," she told Rose. "I understand how the job is done, and I understand what has to be prioritized.
"I just have to decide or not that’s what I want to do at this point in my life. … It’s a very personal choice."
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-grandmother-president/2014/07/17/id/583403#ixzz37qJlgyrR
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I didn't see anything in that article which says becoming a grandchild could halt her 2016 bid.
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I didn't see anything in that article which says becoming a grandchild could halt her 2016 bid.
Could we potentially be looking at a Cruz vs. Warren matchup?
That would make for a very interesting contrast.
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Could we potentially be looking at a Cruz vs. Warren matchup?
That would make for a very interesting contrast.
would love to see that. warren lied about being an indian, so we should make fun of her, but she WILL bring financial responsibility that hilary (and more RINOs) will NOT.
Cruz is a better choice, since he will bring greater financial responsibility AND he will NOT support amnesty - something that many libs and RINOs will support. Warren, like many is a piece of shit liberal on amnesty/Dream act.
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Elizabeth Warren Greeted By Calls To Run For President At Progressive Gathering
Posted: 07/18/2014
DETROIT -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) faced an enthusiastic crowd of supporters Friday when she took the stage at Netroots Nation, with fans toting "Elizabeth Warren for President" hats and signs and chanting "Run, Liz, Run!"
It was her first major speech since Tuesday's launch of a group called Ready for Warren, which aims to convince her that there is grassroots support for her to run for president in 2016.
Warren's supporters used her speech to progressive activists Friday as their launching pad, handing out hats, signs and stickers to attendees. When Warren appeared on stage, large banners urging her to run were unfurled, and members of the crowd chanted for her to run a few times during her speech.
Warren, however, does not support this effort, as her spokeswoman told The Huffington Post this week. And she didn't acknowledge the calls to run for president Friday either, simply urging people to sit down whenever they jumped up and started applauding.
Warren focused her message on her familiar theme of economic populism, getting loud applause when she said, "The game is rigged. And the rich and the powerful have lobbyists and lawyers and plenty of friends in Congress. Everybody else, not so much. So the way I see this is we can whine about it, we can whimper about it or we can fight back. I'm fighting back!"
Warren ran through a list of progressive policy positions, asserting that "we believe" in tougher rules for Wall Street; science; net neutrality; raising the minimum wage; a livable wage for fast food workers; making sure students aren't burdened by crushing debt; protecting Social Security, Medicare and pensions; equal pay for equal work; equality; immigration reform and the fact that corporations are not people.
But the Ready for Warren supporters had company at the event Friday morning. Dotting the tables were blue Ready for Hillary cups that were being given out at the coffee station outside the room for the speech.
Ready for Hillary, which supports a bid for president by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is a co-sponsor of Netroots Nation and contributed $10,000 to the gathering in May.
Clinton did not attend the event, but her supporters made sure they were visible, bringing their prominent Ready for Hillary bus, participating in sessions at the conference and signing up to co-host one of its major parties Friday night.
Vice President Joe Biden, who has also been mentioned as a potential candidate in 2016, made his first Netroots Nation appearance on Thursday. Biden received an enthusiastic welcome, but there were no chants for him to run for president, and he faced heckling from a handful of immigration activists.
While in Detroit, Warren is also campaigning with Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) Friday afternoon to promote his bid for U.S. Senate.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/18/elizabeth-warren-netroots-nation_n_5599178.html
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Clinton polling well in key presidential battleground
Posted by
CNN Political Unit
(CNN) – Hillary Clinton is the clear 2016 frontrunner in the nation's largest presidential battleground state, according to a new poll.
A Quinnipiac University survey of Florida voters indicates the former secretary of state, who's seriously considering a second bid for the White House, with leads from seven to 21 percentage points over potential GOP presidential candidates in possible 2016 showdowns.
"Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may be taking some criticism recently in the news media and among some liberal Democratic precincts, but nothing has changed among average voters in Florida where she remains queen of the political prom," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll.
According to the survey, which was released Thursday morning, Clinton also has an overwhelming lead in the hunt for the Democratic nomination, with former two-term Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the state's junior U.S. senator, Marco Rubio, leading the pack of potential GOP contenders.
Two-thirds of Sunshine State Democratic primary voters questioned in the survey say they'd back Clinton for their party's nomination, followed by Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts each at eight percent. Biden is mulling another presidential bid while Warren has said numerous times that she's not running in 2016. Other potential candidates registered at one percent or less.
Twenty-one percent of Republicans say they'd back Bush in the primary, followed by Rubio at 18%. Bush was at 27% and Rubio at 11% among Florida Republicans in Quinnipiac's May poll.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is at 10% in the new poll, with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky standing at 8%, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – who ran for the 2008 nomination – at 7%, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 6%. None of the other possible contenders top 5%.
In hypothetical 2016 general election matchups, Sunshine State voters back Clinton over Bush 49%-42%. The poll indicates Clinton leads Ryan by 13 points, Rubio by 14 points, Paul by 16 points and Christie by 21 points.
A Quinnipiac poll in Colorado released Wednesday in Colorado, another swing state, indicated much closer 2016 general election showdowns between Clinton and potential GOP candidates.
As for the current occupant in the White House, the survey indicates President Barack Obama has a 44%-52% approval/disapproval rating among Florida votes, compared to 46%-50% in May.
The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted July 17-21, with 1,251 registered voters in Florida questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/24/clinton-polling-well-in-key-presidential-battleground/
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Waiting with open wallets: Media mogul says he'll spend 'as much as needed' for Clinton 2016
Posted by
CNN's Dan Merica
(http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/140725104249-hillary-clinton-ajc-story-top.jpg)
Washington (CNN) - Haim Saban, a multibillionaire media mogul, said Monday he is prepared to spend "as much as needed" to get Hillary Clinton into the White House in 2016.
While it is no secret that Saban, the head of Univision and a prodigious Democratic money man, is excited about the prospect of Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016, these recent comments to Bloomberg up the ante of his support.
"I think she would be great for the country and great for the world, so on issues that I care about she is pristine plus, and I think she is ready plus plus and I hope that she makes the right decision," Saban said.
Saban was a sizable Clinton supporter in 2008, spending and raising over $100,000 for the former senator. With the rise of super PACs, however, the media mogul will be able to do much more to help Clinton.
Supreme Court decisions in the last six years have allowed private citizens to exert more influence in politics by giving money to outside organizations that in turn work to get a certain candidate elected. And with a handful of super PACs already working to urge Clinton to run for president, Saban has a number of avenues for his large fortune.
Saban said earlier this year that a Clinton presidency would be a "dream," and told an Israeli newspaper in December 2013 that he will "pitch in with full might" to get Clinton elected in 2016.
In addition to his political contributions to Clinton, Saban has donated between $10 and $25 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
The irony in Saban's claim is that last week Clinton denounced outside money in politics, stating that she would consider backing a constitutional amendment to limit outside influences.
"I would consider supporting an amendment among these lines," Clinton said responding to a question during a Facebook question-and-answer session. "That would prevent the abuse of our political system by excessive amounts of money if there is no other way to deal with the Citizen's (sic) United decision."
Clinton is widely considered the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and has admitted in the last few months that she is seriously considering a bid.
"Obviously she has a life to lead and she is going to be a grandmother soon, so all of that will obviously be taken by her into consideration," Saban said about the prospect the Clinton runs.
Saban, who was born in Egypt and raised in Israel, is worth an estimated $3.5 billion and now works as the executive chairman of the company that owns Univision, the massively popular Spanish-language broadcaster.
Republicans and some nonpartisan observers have questioned whether someone so closely tied with a major American broadcaster should be so chummy with a prospective presidential candidate.
Univision is a major partner in a key Clinton foundation program, Too Small to Fail, which encourages parents to talk with their kids at a young age. Clinton’s partnership with Univision is focused on encouraging Hispanic families and caregivers to speak in either Spanish or English with their children as a way to develop language skills.
Earlier this year, the Republican National Committee called out the partnership as an avenue for "2016 propaganda," while Raul Reyes wrote a column in February that questioned whether the "Hillary-Univision deal cross(es) a line."
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/28/waiting-with-open-wallets-media-mogul-says-hell-spend-as-much-as-needed-for-clinton-2016/
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Campaign prep? Hillary Clinton reportedly signs 2-year lease for Manhattan office
Published August 06, 2014
FoxNews.com
WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton reportedly has signed a two-year lease in a high-rise commercial building in midtown Manhattan, fueling growing rumors of a 2016 presidential run.
Citing anonymous sources, HollywoodLife.com reported Tuesday that Clinton signed the lease on a property which will eventually be used as her campaign headquarters. However, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill, told MSNBC the property is the new site for her personal office, not a campaign headquarters.
Clinton, who currently has a 12-member staff, moved into the new digs last week. The office space will comfortably fit 25 people, the entertainment site claims.
The leased property reportedly includes 14 workstations, one large conference room and features like floor-to-ceiling glass doors and windows with views of Times Square.
Clinton ran her last presidential campaign from an office near Washington, D.C.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08/06/hillary-clinton-signs-2-year-lease-for-manhattan-office-space/?intcmp=latestnews
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John Sununu: Hillary Testing Media but Won't Run in 2016
Wednesday, 13 Aug 2014
By Bill Hoffmann
Hillary Clinton's slap at the foreign policy of President Barack Obama is a bid to test whether the liberal media will support her in the 2016 presidential race, says John Sununu, former chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
"What she's trying to do is test the support she would get from the media by . . . distancing herself . . . re-creating a history for herself,'' Sununu said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
"She'd like to see how the liberal media react to that, and if she can get away with it she will continue to use the gullibility of the liberal media as a way of rewriting her own history.
"So, the real issue is not so much that she's trying it, but the real issue is how much does the liberal media fall for it?''
In recent days, the former secretary of state has taken aim at what some consider the Obama administration's softball approach to foreign policy.
In an interview with The Atlantic, Clinton suggested Obama's failure to back "moderate" rebels in Syria led to the violence by Islamic extremists now being seen in Syria and Iraq.
Sununu, former governor of New Hampshire, agreed there are many issues for Clinton to flee from her time in the Obama administration.
"It's underestimating Putin, it's underestimating the difficulties in Iraq, it's underestimating Afghanistan, it's underestimating the fact that it's still a tough world that you can't operate with utopian principles in a world where there are real bad people,'' he said.
"The entire administration, including everybody who served in it, is guilty of having put America and the world in this very unstable, very dangerous situation we're finding right now.''
Sununu said he thinks the Obama presidency is "unraveling.''
"The self-delusion of this president is becoming more and more apparent. You know, he was proud of withdrawing the American troops [from Iraq] and now he's denying he did it,'' Sununu said.
"Unfortunately, he didn't understand when he did that withdrawal how detrimental that would be to world stability.''
Sununu said he is betting against Clinton's running.
"The difficulties she's having are piling up, and I suspect that after the November elections she and former President [Bill] Clinton and the family will gather to make a decision,'' he said.
"They understand politics. They'll put the things that they think are positive on one side of the ledger and the things that they don't think are so good on the other side.
"If they make an honest assessment, she'll decide that with a combination of all kinds of things, including age and the fact they know how tough it is to run for president and what they'll face in terms of the intensity of the opposition, it's more likely she does not run.''
Sununu said he was surprised that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who heads the Republican Governor's Association, refused to back Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino in his challenge to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Christie dubbed Astorino's bid a "lost cause.''
"I'd like to give him enough credit thinking it was a mistake to have said it. I'd like to give him enough credit to feel that perhaps he now regrets he said it, but it's awfully tough to take back once you said it," Sununu said.
"It was a mistake, we all make mistakes, and maybe he can figure out a way to constructively deal with it by encouraging a lot of folks in New York to give some support.''
But Sununu does not agree with some Republicans that Christie should resign for snubbing a GOP candidate.
"Look, we're in the midst of a campaign, we're three months away from the election. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot after having put the foot to our forehead.''
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/John-Sununu-foreign-policy-media/2014/08/13/id/588576/#ixzz3AIxtz3xp
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Warren plans Israel trip after midterm elections
By Matt Viser | GLOBE STAFF AUGUST 13, 2014
WASHINGTON – With Hillary Clinton seeming to express a more hawkish view of world affairs than President Obama and publicly questioning his decisions on Syria, liberals may be wondering what an Elizabeth Warren alternative would look like.
The answer? It’s a big question mark.
More than a year and a half into her Senate term, the Massachusetts senator is one of just four current US senators who have not taken an official overseas trip.
Warren rarely talks about foreign policy and has built her political resume almost exclusively on domestic issues, specifically concerns for the financial well-being of the American middle class.
A Warren aide said the freshman senator is planning to join a congressional trip to Israel, but given her aggressive schedule campaigning on behalf of Senate Democrats it likely will come after the midterm elections in November.
That trip could raise speculation that Warren is trying to add to her foreign policy portfolio ahead of a potential presidential run, but it also could be seen as her playing catch up to other freshman senators who have already traveled abroad.
“Senator Warren has been hard at work in Massachusetts and Washington, DC and has not traveled on an official [congressional delegation trip] yet,” Warren spokeswoman Lacey Rose said in a statement.
Warren declined several requests for an interview. Her office also would not discuss her lack of foreign travel, disclose whom she consults for foreign-policy advice, or say whether Warren has ever traveled abroad in a private, unofficial capacity.
Many of Warren’s supporters want her to run for president in 2016, but Warren has repeatedly said she has no plans to run. If she did make a bid, her lack of foreign policy experience would likely present a problem -- although perhaps not an insurmountable one. As Noam Scheiber pointed out in the New Republic, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean stoked liberal enthusiasm in the 2004 Democratic primaries with his opposition to the Iraq War.
Clinton’s views on foreign policy could create an opening on the left. The former secretary of state, senator, and first lady has taken a much more robust view of American intervention. In an interview with the Atlantic last week, Clinton characterized Obama’s philosophy of “not doing stupid stuff” as inadequate. She also criticized Obama’s approach in Syria and said his unwillingness to take a more aggressive approach helped lay the groundwork for the current unrest sweeping throughout the region.
“The failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.
Clinton called Obama to clarify her remarks and the two are scheduled to see each other Wednesday night at an event on Martha’s Vineyard, where a Clinton spokesman said she looked forward to “hugging it out” with the president.
In general, Warren seems anti-interventionist and takes a skeptical eye to any US military action. In February, during her only speech on foreign policy in the year and a half since she took office, she warned of using military might without considering the implications.
“When military action is on the table, do we fully and honestly debate the risk that while our actions would wipe out existing terrorists or other threats, they also might produce new ones?” Warren said in a speech at Georgetown University.
She also said the military engagement following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks illustrated the downsides of harming civilians and risking inciting insurgents.
“The failure to make civilian casualties a full and robust part of our national conversation over the use of force is dangerous – dangerous because of the impression that it gives the world about our country and dangerous because of how it affects the decisions that we make as a country,” Warren said.
Last week, responding to the latest conflict in Iraq, she said she supported Obama’s decision to take limited action and provide humanitarian relief. But she also expressed deep reservations.
“I remain concerned about possible unintended consequences of intervention,” she said. “We must not get bogged down in another war in the Middle East.”
Earlier, when asked last year to respond to President Obama’s decision to begin arming the Syrian rebels, Warren used almost identical language.
“I am deeply concerned that our aid might have unintended consequences,” she said in a carefully worded statement in June 2013. “We need clear goals and a plan to achieve them or else the United States could get bogged down in another war in the Middle East.”
Warren has often avoided foreign policy issues, sometimes literally. When she was questioned in a hotel lobby last month by the Capitol City Project, a conservative-leaning news website, about her views on the war between Hamas and Israel, she made a beeline down a hallway.
In her recent book, “A Fighting Chance,” Warren doesn’t mention Israel or China. She mentions the wars Afghanistan and Iraq, but only to discuss young troops being lured into financial scams.
A Globe review of official travel records shows that, aside from Warren, the three current senators who have not undertaken official travel -- -- either on a congressional trip or one paid for by an outside group -- are Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who was elected in October 2013; John Walsh, a Montana Democrat who was appointed in February and recently dropped out of his race following charges of plagiarism; and Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat who was appointed to his seat in December 2012 and is now running to keep the seat.
The committees that Warren sits on are mostly focused on domestic policy: Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; and a special committee on aging. But other members of those committees have been traveling. There have been at least nine committee trips to 22 countries.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2014/08/13/elizabeth-warren-has-skimpy-resume-foreign-policy-but-plans-israel-trip-after-mid-terms/6gkD7HBwuQlHuUrgeMDB0I/story.html
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As interesting as the upcoming Republican Primaries will be, a match-up of Warren vs. Clinton on the debate stage will completely eclipse that.
Can't wait for that one.
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yet they keep winning elections. I think it's because 51% of the USA is now liberal, sadly.
And get themselves into jobs they can't do.
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Here is my dark horse pick as a candidate (note - I'm not saying nominee at this but that I'm just saying I think he might run)
He'd make a great president. Only this time he could spend $10bil on a light rail system from the middle of no where in California to the middle of no where in the middle of the country....
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Paul calls Clinton 'war hawk,' predicts her stance will scare off 2016 voters
Published August 24, 2014
FoxNews.com
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, in another sign he will run for president, called front-running, potential Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton a “war hawk” likely to scare 2016 voters who are tired of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.
Paul, a leading anti-interventionist, predicted in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the 2016 White House race will be a "transformational election" if Democrats nominate "a war hawk like Hillary Clinton,” a former Obama administration secretary of State.
The Libertarian-mind Paul, a first-term senator, last year opposed President Obama's call for military action in Syria.
But his remarks Sunday come at a time when the administration and an apparently increasing number of Capitol Hill Republicans are calling for air strikes in Syria, as part of an overall Middle East foreign policy, to stop the rise of Islamic State and other terror groups in the region.
Clinton, earlier this month, criticized the so-called Obama doctrine, saying it mistakenly failed to support those who first opposed the regime of Syrian president Bashar Assad.
“The failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” she told The Atlantic magazine earlier this month, after saying in a recent memoir that she advocated as secretary of State for helping the Syrian rebels.
Paul said Sunday that Democrats’ biggest 2016 fear is him running in the general election with a lot of Independent and some Democratic voters saying “You know what? We are tired of war. … We're worried that Hillary Clinton will get us involved in another Middle Eastern war, because she's so gung-ho."
To be sure, this is not the first time Paul, a Tea Party favorite, has criticized Clinton.
In a recent, 10-stop tour through Iowa, site of the country’s first presidential caucuses, he called the conflict in Libya “Hillary’s war.” And he said Clinton’s handling of the 2012 terror attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americas were killed, should disqualify her from becoming president.
Paul already has a solid grassroots outreach efforts in early-voting states. And he is in third place behind New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, according to an averaging of polls for potential 2016 GOP presidential candidates by the non-partisan website RealClearPoltics.com.
Michael Czin, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said Sunday that Democrats are eager to debate Paul about "his fringe, isolationist vision," which Czin says includes plans to end all aid to foreign allies, including Israel.
"That's the vision he's laid out and defended time and time again and that even conservatives have said would bring 'terrible misery' to millions of people across the globe," he said in a statement.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08/24/paul-calls-clinton-war-hawk-predicts-her-stance-will-scare-off-2016-voters/?intcmp=latestnews
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Paul is becoming quite the little anti-war candidate. he's now to the left of hilary/obama.
FINALLY a stark contrast for repub voters to sink their teeth into. Perry saying obama needs to light their asses up. Rand telling everyone to chill.
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Paul is becoming quite the little anti-war candidate. he's now to the left of hilary/obama.
FINALLY a stark contrast for repub voters to sink their teeth into. Perry saying obama needs to light their asses up. Rand telling everyone to chill.
Becoming?
His father and him have always been that way.
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O’Malley moving political staff into South Carolina
Posted by
CNN National Political Reporter Peter Hamby
Columbia, South Carolina (CNN) - As he builds support for a possible Democratic presidential bid, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is dispatching political staffers to work on two key races in South Carolina this fall, sources familiar with the moves told CNN.
The Washington Post reported Monday that O’Malley was sending “more than two dozen” staffers from his political action committee, O’Say Can You See PAC, into Iowa and New Hampshire to assist midterm candidates this year. Those states kick off the presidential nomination process, followed by South Carolina, the first southern primary.
The four O’Malley aides heading to South Carolina will work on the gubernatorial campaign of Vincent Sheheen and the lieutenant governor campaign of Bakari Sellers. Sheheen is mounting a repeat bid against South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and Sellers, a state legislator, is considered a rising African-American star in the party.
O’Malley has already raised money for both Democrats, making him the only potential presidential contender to assist their campaigns, collecting valuable on-the-ground political intelligence in the process.
The “Ready for Hillary” super PAC also boasts of field staff doing spadework in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, along with other states, but Hillary Clinton herself has yet to campaign for midterm candidates this cycle. She and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, will make their first foray into Iowa next month for Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry next month.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/26/omalley-moving-political-staff-into-south-carolina/
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Hillary Clinton’s Approval Numbers Return to Earth — WSJ/NBC Poll
By PATRICK O'CONNOR
The more Hillary Clinton looks like a candidate, the less invincible she appears.
The former first lady and New York senator enjoyed sky-high approval ratings during her tenure as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, but her numbers have returned to earth since she traded her perch as the nation’s top diplomat for her current role as the Democrats’ top presidential prospect in 2016.
The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found 43% of registered voters view Ms. Clinton positively, compared with the 41% who harbor negative views. That’s a steep drop from February 2009 when 59% viewed the newly confirmed secretary of state positively and just 22% held negative views. The numbers suggest Americans are far less charitable about Ms. Clinton when she is seeking office or, in this case, merely considering it than they are about other politicians who retire from public office.
A case in point: Ms. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, and his successor, former President George W. Bush. The public views both much more favorably than when they left office. The latest Journal poll found 56% of registered voters view Mr. Clinton positively, compared with the 21% who view him negatively. That’s a sharp improvement from March 2001, right after he left office, when 52% of adults viewed him negatively.
Mr. Bush has witnessed a somewhat more surprising revival since he left office to the cheers of even some Republicans. In the new poll, registered voters split almost evenly on the former president, with 37% viewing him positively and 38% viewing him negatively. That’s a big improvement from April 2009, a few months after he retired from the Oval Office when the economy was still in free fall and roughly two out of three Americans viewed Mr. Bush negatively.
One of the biggest reasons Ms. Clinton has lost some of that glow from 2009 when she played the good soldier by joining her rival’s cabinet is that Republicans now hold a much dimmer view of the former secretary of state. Roughly one-in-four Republicans viewed Ms. Clinton positively in 2009. That number fell to 14% in the latest poll, while those who harbor negative views jumped 18 percentage points, from 52% in 2009 to 70% this month.
But Ms. Clinton has also fallen out of favor with some Democrats and independents, as well. In 2009, 87% of Democrats viewed her positively, compared with a meager 3% who viewed negatively. In the latest poll, 72% of Democrats view Ms. Clinton positively, while 13% harbor negative views. Independents were twice as likely to view her positively as negatively in 2009. Now, they are more evenly split, with 40% holding positive views and 35% viewing her negatively.
Despite that erosion, Ms. Clinton remains more popular than many of the Republicans she could face in a presidential showdown in 2016. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush – three Republicans mentioned as potential White House hopefuls in 2016 – are all viewed more negatively than positively. Only Florida Sen. Marco Rubio garnered as many positive views as he did negative ones, with registered voters split evenly at 21%-21%.
Click to see more poll charts and data.
The poll revealed a potentially difficult trend for Mr. Paul, who has called for a less interventionist foreign policy, as Republicans grow decidedly more hawkish in the face of a growing threat posed by Islamic militants destabilizing the Middle East. Some 61% of the poll respondents said it would be in the country’s national interest to take military action against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a view shared by Mr. Paul. Nearly half of Republicans went a step further to say they would favor sending combat troops to the region to battle the group directly.
But perhaps more striking is that self-identified Republicans in the September survey wanted the U.S. to be more involved in world affairs, by a margin of 41%-34%. That’s a big jump from a Journal poll conducted in April that found 45% of Republicans wanted the U.S. to be less active in the world, and just 29% wanting the country to be more involved. If the shift continues, Mr. Paul may face more pressure to articulate foreign-policy views that run counter to many of his supporters – or to the Republicans currently outside his fold.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/09/09/hillary-clintons-approval-numbers-return-to-earth-wsjnbc-poll/?mg=blogs-wsj&url=http%253A%252F%252Fblogs.wsj.com%252Fwashwire%252F2014%252F09%252F09%252Fhillary-clintons-approval-numbers-return-to-earth-wsjnbc-poll
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What if Biden is the Democrat nominee in 2016?
Joe Biden to chase Hillary Clinton to Iowa next week
Jennifer Jacobs, jejacobs@dmreg.com
September 11, 2014
Vice President Joe Biden will make a splash in Iowa with an official White House visit next week, just three days after Hillary Clinton basks in a major media spotlight here.
Both Democrats are considered potential 2016 presidential candidates.
A White House aide told The Des Moines Register exclusively this afternoon that Biden will travel to Des Moines on Wednesday for an official event.
Biden will deliver remarks at a kickoff event for the Nuns on the Bus "We the People, We the Voters" bus tour. He will speak at 10:30 a.m. at the Iowa Capitol's West Terrace.
On Sunday, Clinton returns to Iowa for the first time since her defeat in her 2008 presidential campaign.Thousands of Iowa Democrats -- and more than 150 national and international reporters -- will gather amid the smoke from grilling steak in a field in Indianola for U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin's 37th and final political steak fry as an elected leader.
Clinton's visit is hot news in the political world. National news sites are already out with stories predicting what her message will be and how it'll be received.
Biden's visit will remind people that he was the star of the Harkin Steak Fry just one year ago. At that event, he gave a red-meat speech salted with a little 2016 intrigue. His half-day Iowa visit was part pep rally for a country facing serious troubles, part hint for a future campaign, part pure fundraiser and part influence-building maneuver. Biden's remarks in September 2013 touched on Syria as he argued that the president's vision for how to handle trouble in that country was "absolutely clear."
The Nuns on the Bus tour is meant to "counter the influence of moneyed special interests that are drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans," organizers told the Register in an email. A group called Faith in Public Life, and a group called NETWORK: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, are organizing the tour. It kicks off in Des Moines on Wednesday as left-leaning activists meet with voters and "discuss the importance of turning out on Election Day."
Catholic sisters from each state along the 5,252-mile bus tour route will be on hand for voter registration drives, to visit Catholic social service sites and to host town hall meetings, organizers said. Here are the details:
WHAT: Nuns on the Bus "We the People, We the Voters" tour kickoff rally.
WHO: Vice President Joe Biden, Sister Simone Campbell, Iowa faith voices and community leaders.
WHEN: Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.
WHERE: Iowa Capitol's West Terrace, 1007 E. Grand Ave., Des Moines, IA.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/elections/2014/09/11/joe-biden-iowa-visit-sept-17/15451923/
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Becoming?
His father and him have always been that way.
Yup if not for this RP would have been the republican nominee years ago.
But there is no business in not dropping bombs.
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Clinton in Iowa: Fresh start or deja vu?
Posted by
CNN National Political Reporter Peter Hamby
"It's been seven years, and a lot has changed," Hillary Clinton said Sunday in her first visit to Iowa since the state dealt her presidential campaign a devastating body blow.
But there was a moment in the afternoon when it seemed like not much had.
Roughly 200 credentialed media were gathered in a far corner of the Indianola Balloon Field, the grassy expanse where Sen. Tom Harkin was convening his 37th and final Steak Fry, an annual fundraiser that doubles as a point of entry for ambitious Democrats curious about the Iowa caucuses.
After a 90-minute wait, the press scrum - scribblers and photographers alike - were herded like cattle through a series of gates and escorted up to a hot smoking grill, waiting to capture the same image: a staged shot of Bill and Hillary Clinton, fresh out of their motorcade, ritualistically flipping steaks with Harkin.
The Clintons ignored the half-hearted shouted questions from reporters - "Mr. President, do you eat meat?" - with practiced ease. They were two football fields away from the nearest voter. Mechanical, distant, heavy-handed: The afternoon spectacle felt a lot like Hillary's 2008 caucus campaign, a succession of errors that crumbled under the weight of a feuding top-heavy staff and the candidate's inability to connect with her party's grassroots.
And then the head fake - and something different.
Read Peter Hamby's report from Indianola in full.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/09/15/clinton-in-iowa-fresh-start-or-deja-vu/
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Joaquin Castro endorses Hillary Clinton
By MAGGIE HABERMAN | 9/29/14
(http://images.politico.com/global/2014/09/29/140929_joaquin_castro_hillary_clinton_aps_605.jpg)
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) is endorsing Hillary Clinton through an email sent out by the low-dollar super PAC looking to galvanize support for a candidacy in 2016.
Castro made the endorsement in an email that Ready for Hillary sent out Monday, which was obtained by POLITICO.
“There’s no doubt about it: Hillary is the best person to be our 45th president,” Castro writes in the email.
“Hillary has always been a tireless advocate for working families — she’s never ceased to make sure everybody has a fair shot at achieving the American Dream,” he writes.
“Hillary’s the leader I want to see moving into the White House in two years,” he says.
“She hasn’t announced yet that she’s running in 2016, but Hillary needs to know that if she does, millions of grassroots supporters like you will be standing proudly by her side.
You and I both know Hillary would do amazing things as U.S. President — but it’s up to us to make these early moments count.”
Castro and his brother Julian Castro are both rising stars in the Democratic Party. Julian Castro is a former San Antonio mayor and incoming Obama administration Cabinet appointee who is widely seen as a potential Clinton running mate.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/hillary-clinton-2016-election-endorsement-joaquin-castro-111432.html#ixzz3EkW3THZo
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Rogue donors not ready for Hillary?
The worst nightmare for Democrats would be replicating the 2012 GOP primary.
By KENNETH P. VOGEL | 10/6/14
Hillary Clinton is facing the beginnings of a backlash from rich liberals unhappy with her positions on litmus test issues and her team’s efforts to lock up the Democratic presidential nomination before the contest starts.
Elizabeth Warren says she’s not running, but donors are pledging big money to get her to reconsider. Joe Biden, Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb have found polite and occasionally receptive audiences among potential sugar daddies. Even Bernie Sanders has support from some wealthy donors.
Clinton is seen by some liberals as too hawkish, too close to Wall Street and insufficiently aggressive on fighting climate change, income inequality and the role of money in politics. Those are animating causes for many rich Democrats, and some are eager for a candidate or candidates to challenge Clinton on those issues, if only to force her to the left.
“I have talked to large donors who are not happy with what Hillary represents,” said Guy Saperstein, a San Francisco lawyer and part owner of the Oakland A’s. “But they’re not going to stick their heads up above the ramparts right now and get shot at.”
Saperstein provided seed funding to a super PAC launched this summer to try to draft Warren into the presidential race and pledged $1 million if the Massachusetts senator decides to run. The super PAC is hiring staffers in key primary states and recently enlisted a fundraising firm to solicit donors.
It’s just one example of the big-money Democratic presidential jockeying taking place almost entirely behind the scenes. The results will go a long way toward determining whether the party will maintain unity in 2016 or tumble headlong into the sort of costly super PAC-funded internecine skirmishes that have confounded Republicans.
The worst nightmare for Democrats would be replicating the 2012 GOP presidential primary. It was thrown into chaos by a pair of super-rich activists — Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess — who each poured millions of dollars into super PACs that propped up the long-shot campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, respectively. The cash helped both candidates remain in the race for months longer than they likely would have been able to do otherwise, inflicting serious damage on the front-runner and eventual nominee, Mitt Romney.
With over two decades’ worth of carefully cultivated connections to the Democratic Party’s deepest pockets, Hillary Clinton is in some ways the ideal candidate for the mega-check brand of politics that has come to dominate American elections.
Yet the former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state is also uniquely exposed in the new landscape, where rogue billionaires can use their checkbooks to buck or shape the party line if they’re unhappy with its candidates or positions.
Like Romney in 2012, Clinton is the early consensus choice for her party’s presidential nomination among elites who believe she gives them their best chance to win a general election. And, as she has inched closer to entering the race, her backers have worked to avoid Romney’s fate by trying to neutralize potential Adelsons and Friesses on their side and convince them there are no viable alternatives.
Using a network of big-money groups laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign, including the super PAC Ready for Hillary — which has raised more than $10 million since January 2013 (including at least $1.7 million over the past three months) — Clinton’s allies have collected contributions and pledges of support from an impressive roster of the party’s most generous donors, including Houston trial lawyers Steve and Amber Mostyn, billionaire financier George Soros and medical device heir Jon Stryker.
“I think it’s un-American,” declared Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and a significant donor to progressive candidates and groups — particularly those working to diminish the role of unlimited cash in politics. “The big problem with politics is big money in politics. … I’m talking about the undue influence of corporations and the wealthy. We’ve got them controlling the general elections, we’ve got them controlling the primaries, and now we’re talking about them controlling the pre-primaries.”
Clinton’s backers are assiduously courting top cause-oriented liberal donors like San Francisco hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer. He has pledged to spend more than $50 million in the 2014 midterms supporting Democrats with aggressive stances on environmental issues, including fighting climate change.
Yet Steyer — who supported Clinton in 2008 and in July had her over to his San Francisco home for an informal get-to-together — thus far has resisted Ready for Hillary’s entreaties to formally commit to her in 2016. Sources say Steyer raised eyebrows in Hillaryland last month when, on the sidelines of a climate change awareness march in New York City, he told MSNBC that she could benefit from a primary challenge.
“Being forced to refine what you say and think is a good thing,” said Steyer.
Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, who’s flirting with a run for the nomination, met recently with major donors in New York, and some came away thinking that he could convincingly run as an economic populist to Clinton’s left.
“Donors on the left — progressives — don’t think she’s divorced herself from Wall Street, and they’re bothered that she never cut the cord with people like Larry Summers and Laura Tyson,” said one New York donor who met with Webb. There are a number of major liberal donors who would support a Webb campaign, but are fearful of vocally opposing Clinton before the campaign even starts, asserted the donor.
“A lot of people give money to be recognized and when the Clintons turn against you, you’re dead to them and that hurts these people,” said the donor. “Do I want her to be the president over any Republican? Sure. But a lot of donors are actually thrilled that Bernie could go, and that Webb and O’Malley are probably going to go, because they are going to force her to answer questions.”
O’Malley, the outgoing governor of Maryland, has been methodically laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign for more than a year. But in meetings with major donors, he’s been reluctant to contrast himself with Clinton, and has even been offering himself as a fallback choice, according to multiple sources familiar with his pitch.
“He’s saying ‘I don’t know if she’s going to run, but, if she doesn’t, I would like to be your second choice,’” said one fundraiser.
Another fundraiser said O’Malley is in a tough spot. “The fact that he’s telling people that he wants to be their second choice really undercuts him, but he has to, because 80 to 90 percent of his donors are the Clintons’ donors.”
O’Malley recently has focused at least partly on major donors who bucked Clinton in 2008 by siding with Barack Obama in the Democratic primary, and, as such, are seen by some in Democratic finance circles as potential 2016 wildcards.
Among those with whom O’Malley has recently met: San Francisco real estate developer Wayne Jordan and his wife Quinn Delaney, venture capitalist Ryan Smith of Salt Lake City, and Wall Street titan Robert Wolf.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/hillary-clinton-donors-2016-elections-111622.html#ixzz3FONTiJH8
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Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign quietly begins to take shape
By Brianna Keilar, CNN Senior Political Correspondent
Tue November 4, 2014
Washington (CNN) -- Hillary Clinton has spent the final moments of the midterm campaign season publicly deflecting the flurry of questions about her likely run for president.
But behind the scenes, her campaign machine is quietly whirring to life.
Clinton insiders have begun to approach Washington-based Democratic operatives who may play a role in a potential campaign and are soliciting their recommendations on other possible staffers, according to Democrats familiar with the conversations.
A number Clinton associates are compiling staffing lists, according to multiple Democratic sources. Michael Whouley and Minyon Moore of the Democratic communications and consulting firm Dewey Square Group are one conduit to Clinton's inner circle and among the primary compilers of the campaign universe that will surround Clinton, should she run.
The firm is led by veteran players in Clinton world. Whouley was an adviser to Vice President Al Gore and a Clinton campaign aide while Moore is a longtime Clinton confidante.
Ginny Terzano, head of communications for Dewey Square, said the characterization is "incorrect."
"DSG officials have no role" in a potential Clinton campaign, she said.
Operatives at the firm are reviewing possible Clinton staffers "under the guise of spitballing ideas," as one Democratic source put it.
With a trio of pro-Hillary superPACs -- Ready for Hillary, Priorities USA Action and Correct the Record -- months into shoring up support, a Clinton campaign is already well underway outside of her inner circle.
Clinton's midterm campaign schedule
"The reality is that if you have a message and you're larger than life, the organization can come together pretty quickly," said Tom McMahon, who served as deputy campaign director for Howard Dean's 2004 campaign. "It can be a turnkey operation."
As the Clinton campaign apparatus is constructed, those close to her are trying to shroud it from view, wary of the glaring political spotlight that amplifies every move the former secretary of state makes.
"There are no formal talks, no one is being offered jobs," one source told CNN, dismissing the signs of campaign life as "a lot of jockeying" from Democrats who want to work on a Clinton campaign.
In September, Clinton and her inner circle were dismayed by a leak to Politico that revealed the presence of John Podesta -- former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton, current top aide to President Barack Obama and the person favored to serve as chairman of a Hillary Clinton campaign -- at meetings with pro-Clinton super PACs this summer.
Huma Abedin, one of Clinton's closest aides, has told multiple Democrats to rein in chatter about 2016, saying Clinton wants to keep attention on the midterm elections and minimize attention on a presidential run, according to a Democratic source who spoke to Abedin.
Clinton and the small team she employs are trying to keep her out of the tarnishing political spotlight until she is ready to make a run official, something Clinton will likely do by the end of winter, though she would like to put it off as late as possible.
"If there's not a competitive primary, the general election starts as soon as she declares," said Katie Packer Gage, former deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential run, who says the challenge of a Clinton campaign will be more of what her current team is already struggling with -- ''how do they keep her fresh for the American people?"
Recent campaigns for viable Democratic or Republican presidential candidates were well into the preliminary phase of staffing up at this point in time, with top aides already getting in line ahead of an official announcement.
In 2012, Matt Rhoades, at the time the executive director of Mitt Romney's Political Action Committee and later Romney's campaign manager, was already in early discussions with all of those who would become senior staff.
Well before the 2006 midterms, then-Sen. Barack Obama had conducted preliminary discussions with and identified a number of top aides. His campaign effectively went into high gear after the elections, though he launched his exploratory committee in January 2007 and declared his candidacy in February.
But some political operatives warn not to read too much into the beginning phase of a Clinton campaign currently underway.
"Of course the preliminary conversations should be going on," said Steve Elmendorf, Deputy Campaign Manager for John Kerry's 2004 campaign. "But there are a lot of people who have had those conversations - who thought about running for office, made plans to run for office, and didn't."
Among those believed to be part of a potential Clinton campaign, Guy Cecil, the current executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, appears to be one of Clinton's most likely choices for campaign manager, according to interviews with more than two dozen Democrats.
"Even if Democrats don't hang onto the Senate, people respect the job that he's done," said one.
Cecil's role is expected to fall under the oversight of Podesta, seen as a calming force who could squash much of the internal drama that plagued Clinton's 2008 campaign. Podesta is expected to stay at the White House through the State of the Union, according to two sources familiar with his current plans, despite his initial commitment of one year service when Obama named him to his post in the West Wing last December.
By last Spring, Robby Mook, who managed the campaign that propelled Clinton fundraising guru, Terry McAuliffe, into the Virginia governor's mansion, has "been on ice" - as one Democrat put it - since as early as the spring, according to two Democrats familiar with the discussion. He was told not to make long term plans by those close to Clinton, the sources say, and is widely expected to play a major role in running the campaign.
Dennis Cheng, who manages fundraising for the Clinton Foundation and served as Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of protocol at the State Department, is the frontrunner for finance director, according to multiple Democrats. Huma Abedin, as well as longtime Clinton aide Philippe Reines and Nick Merrill, Clinton's current spokesperson, are expected to serve in influential roles in and around the campaign.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/03/politics/hillary-clinton-campaign/index.html
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After drubbing, all eyes on Hillary Clinton
By MAGGIE HABERMAN | 11/5/14
For the Democratic Party, Tuesday night was brutal. For Hillary Clinton’s future, however, there were some silver linings.
As Democrats wake up this morning reeling from an electoral spanking, the 2016 presidential race will unofficially begin — with the main focus on the woman who is all but certain to seek her party’s nomination a second time.
With that in mind, here are POLITICO’s takeaways on what the midterm drubbing means for Clinton and the Democrats heading into the next White House race.
Clinton will face enormous pressure to declare – and fast
Even before networks officially declared a Republican majority in the Senate, Democrats were openly saying they hope Clinton will declare for 2016 soon after Election Day.
That sentiment is about to become overwhelming, as the party tries to recover from an election night hangover that’s worse than most operatives on either side had anticipated. The evening, almost entirely devoid of bright spots for Democrats, was a shellacking for President Barack Obama. It will only accelerate the party’s look ahead to its next leader, especially among donors, who want someone to rally around.
Clinton has spent two years as the prohibitive Democratic front-runner in the polls despite keeping politics largely at arm’s length until the end of the midterms. Some of her advisers have suggested opening an exploratory committee this year to allow her to raise money sooner, while others are adamant that she should wait until next year.
Some Democrats said Tuesday night that Clinton will want to wait a bit to let the 2014 midterms pass, and to get some distance between herself and a bloodbath for her party. She also genuinely doesn’t seem ready to flip a switch on a campaign: A number of decisions still remain about staffing and, more importantly, messaging.
But others believe Clinton can’t afford to be coy about her intentions beyond the next few weeks, and forming an exploratory committee without an official announcement will not satisfy some donors and activists.
She can run against Washington more easily now
Clinton’s major problem was always going to be running as the candidate of the two-term party in power. Separating from Obama poses major risks for a Democrat who had trouble with portions of the base in 2008 and who served in the administration for four years.
The fact that Tuesday’s election that was seen largely as a statement against Obama may give Clinton some wiggle room with her own base to create distance from him. But a newly minted Republican Senate helps her to solve the problem of how to run against Washington.
Regardless of whether Senate moderates try to keep tea party officials and potential presidential hopefuls like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in line, Democrats are cheering on a fight on that side of the aisle. A GOP-held Senate gives her a clear point of contrast to run against. Democrats are banking on Republicans getting mired in intraparty gridlock amid a still-unresolved civil war between conservatives and the establishment.
Even if that doesn’t happen, Clinton is certain to campaign as if it will. Leading into Tuesday, some Clinton allies were predicting a miserable night for Democrats — and saying it would ultimately benefit her.
The bigger problem for Clinton? The election results signal a restless country that dislikes both parties but badly wants leadership. That gives her an opportunity to run as an experienced, Margaret Thatcher-type fighter who can govern in an ungovernable moment — but that also means suppressing the caution that Democrats say has hobbled her in the past.
Exit polls showed voters are anxious about the economy, meaning Clinton will need to formulate a broad economic message that appeals to the Democratic base without turning off independents who’ve backed her before.
A Clinton rival has a tougher hill to climb
Anthony Brown’s loss in the Maryland governor’s race has serious implications for the outgoing governor, Martin O’Malley, who has been laying the groundwork for a presidential race of his own for months.
Brown, O’Malley’s lieutenant governor, was favored to win for months. His victory was expected to be an affirmation of the O’Malley record, a decidedly progressive checklist of passing the DREAM Act and legislation allowing same-sex marriage.
But O’Malley’s numbers in his own state have faltered, and Brown’s loss was widely seen as a serious setback for a governor who had planned to sell his brand of leadership.
A source close to O’Malley said the outgoing governor had sounded “alarm” bells about the Brown campaign strategy many weeks ago, amid a sense that the candidate was trying to glide to a win despite running a “poorly executed campaign that deviated from O’Malley’s winning strategies in the past two elections.” O’Malley never ran on social issues, the source said, winning twice in a row and doubling his margin the second time, while Brown focused heavily on them.
O’Malley urged Brown’s team to change strategy, the source said, but he never did. Nonetheless, Brown has now gone from being a sought-after ally to an albatross for O’Malley’s national ambitions.
. . .
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/hillary-clinton-112568.html#ixzz3IE4UdM45
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Begala: Dem 2016 bench is Clinton or zip
By Jeremy Diamond, CNN
November 6, 2014
Washington (CNN) -- If presumptive Democratic 2016 front-runner Hillary Clinton decides not to run, at least one party strategist and CNN contributor thinks the Democrats' presidential bench isn't that deep.
"No one," said Paul Begala, a longtime Clinton ally, when asked by CNN's Jake Tapper if there were other party leaders who could lead the party in 2016. "No one."
While Republicans have a full bench of presidential hopefuls, Begala, who worked for President Bill Clinton and was an early Hillary Clinton supporter in 2008, said Clinton is the Democrats' best and perhaps only hope to capture the White House in 2016.
"It's not fair," Begala said. "There are impressive people who I think could be good presidents, but they don't have I think the electoral prospects that Hillary does."
Vice President Joe Biden has said he'll consider a run for the presidency after sitting in the No. 2 spot for six years, and parts of the party's progressive wing is clamoring for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run.
CNN political commentator Van Jones, who served in the Obama administration, said Clinton hasn't yet proven that she can excite the Democratic base.
"We have to have a nominee that can excite our base and I don't know if Hillary Clinton can do that," Jones said. "I know one person can, it's Elizabeth Warren."
While Clinton was a favorite surrogate for Democrats running in the midterms, Warren also took her high-energy persona and populist message on the campaign trail.
Warren has said earlier this year that she "hopes" Clinton will seek the presidency and she was reportedly one of all sitting Democratic female Senators who signed a letter last year urging Clinton to run.
Amid the speculation, Clinton has sought to make nice, praising Warren on the stump in Massachusetts as "a passionate champion for working people and middle class families."
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick have also been floated as potential contenders. But their prospects might have dimmed after the Democratic candidates to succeed them in both states lost their bids in blue state upsets.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/06/politics/begala-clinton-2016-bench/index.html
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Elizabeth Warren Tells Hollywood: "The Game Is Rigged in Congress"
11/09/2014 by Tina Daunt
Associated Press
(http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/modal_800/2014/11/elizabeth.jpg)
Warren was honored Sunday by the ACLU in Beverly Hills along with Participant's Jim Berk, Cyndi Lauper and Cameron Strang
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, regarded by many progressive Democrats as their party's alternative to Hillary Clinton, told attendees at an ACLU gala in Beverly Hills on Sunday that "economic opportunity is slipping further and further out of reach" for average Americans.
She said bluntly: "We have to face it: The game is rigged in Congress."
Using the inability to raise the minimum wage nationally, Warren said: "We face a basic question in this country: Who does this government work for? Is government to advance the interests of the rich and the powerful? Does government exercise its power only for those who can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers? Is it there only to strengthen the strong and enrich the wealthy? Or does government work for all of us?"
In too many instances — whether it's raising the minimum wage or appointing noncorporate lawyers to federal judgeships — the playing field in Washington is tilted against working Americans, Warren said.
Warren was in town to attend the ACLU of Southern California's 91st anniversary Bill of Rights Dinner and to receive the organization's Ramona Ripston Liberty, Justice & Equality Award for her work on behalf of consumers and working families. The accolade is named for the local ACLU chapter's longtime director, who was on hand along with Norman Lear to present the award to Warren.
Also honored with the organization's Bill of Rights Award for their efforts to further civil liberties were Participant Media CEO Jim Berk; Grammy Award-winner Cyndi Lauper, co-founder of True Colors Fund; Cameron Strang, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Records and Warner/Chappell Music Publishing; and longtime ACLU board member Marvin Schachter.
"The Bill of Rights Dinner is an important event for the ACLU SoCal because we take time to recognize those individuals who through their work help shape our culture for the better by shining a spotlight on the precious principles of liberty, justice and equality," said Hector Villagra, the group's executive director.
Warren's address was a clear statement of the anti-Wall Street sentiment and economic populism that has made her a darling of the Democrats' progressive wing. That includes many in Hollywood, where she did extensive fundraising for her successful run to unseat the Republican incumbent Scott Brown and recapture the seat long held by Ted Kennedy.
Warren has said several times that she does not plan to run for president in 2016, but segments of the party's progressive left, suspicious of both Hillary's and Bill Clinton's long-standing and friendly relations with many of Wall Street's leading financiers, have been urging her to reconsider. Party regulars — and many of Hollywood's biggest Democratic contributors — already have thrown their support to Hillary, and there is wariness over what a pro-Warren insurgency might do in the run-up to the general election.
At the very least, a Warren campaign might split the party when it least can afford it, perhaps pushing Clinton to the left at a time when strategists are counting on her centrist record to be an important asset, particularly if the Republicans nominate someone like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or Kentucky's Rand Paul. Some on the Democratic left still believe that Clinton may founder in the primaries and, if that occurs, would like to see Warren positioned to step in.
In any event, while Hollywood's ties to both of the Clintons are long-standing and strong, there's also a deep reservoir of demonstrated support for Warren.
Warren told The Hollywood Reporter that when she looks out over a Hollywood crowd, she's always struck by the fact they're applauding policies that will end up costing them money.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/elizabeth-warren-tells-hollywood-game-747738
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Elizabeth Warren Tells Hollywood: "The Game Is Rigged in Congress"
lol no shit, sherlock.
chief whine-a-lot sucks donkey balls, but she's very right about the congress rigged thing. Repubs have never declined an Obama spending increase.
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David Axelrod: Democrats Need a Coherent Economic Message
By REID J. EPSTEIN
Democrats must develop a coherent economic message ahead of the 2016 elections if they hope to retain the White House and win back the Senate, Democratic strategist David Axelrod warned at Thursday’s Capital Journal breakfast.
Mr. Axelrod, the man who tended President Barack Obama’s political message through two successful presidential campaigns, said Democrats in 2014 leaned too heavily on their belief that they have a superior turnout and data operations and didn’t spend enough energy cultivating an economic message.
“Tactics are not a substitute for a compelling message,” Mr. Axelrod said. “That’s a lesson that the Democratic Party should learn.”
Of course the overwhelming favorite to be the Democrats’ 2016 presidential nominee is Hillary Clinton, whom Mr. Axelrod built Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign to defeat. Mr. Axelrod warned that Mrs. Clinton has to “get out of the cocoon of inevitability” and must do a far better job articulating a strong economic message than she has to date.
“I think the danger for Secretary Clinton is that, as was the case in 2007, her candidacy is out in front of the rationale for it,” Mr. Axelrod said. “She should not rely too much on that we do have an electoral vote advantage and demographic advantages.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/11/13/david-axelrod-democrats-need-a-coherent-economic-message/
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Not exactly a stellar lineup.
Is Iowa already sick of Hillary Clinton?
By Lee RoodNovember 15, 2014
(http://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/usa-politics_-3.jpg?w=978&h=652&crop=1)
DES MOINES, Iowa — If you’re a die-hard Democrat in New York hoping to overcome the disappointment that was Nov. 4, you’re worried.
But here in Iowa, where the first-in-the-nation caucuses are a mere 14 months away, some are breaking into a cold sweat.
Most party leaders here will assure you all conversations about the 2016 presidential nomination still begin and end with Hillary Clinton.
The former first lady and secretary of state is a sentimental favorite. Though she has not formally announced her candidacy, her well-oiled super PAC may be the most deeply rooted ever at this stage in the Hawkeye state.
“I don’t know of any party regulars or activists who are really pushing anyone else,” says Jerry Crawford, who co-chaired Clinton’s 2008 campaign in Iowa and helps lead Ready for Hillary in the state.
(https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/biden.jpg?w=680&h=450&crop=1)
Who will challenge Clinton? Vice President Joe Biden, 71, is playing coy about whether he’s running, though insiders insist he’s laying the groundwork. But would Biden run on Obama’s record or try to stress their differences? And can he go an entire week without saying something ridiculous?
But that may be the problem. Familiarity breeds if not contempt, then frustration.
Crawford, who has led presidential campaigns in Iowa for almost three decades, acknowledges Clinton could easily stumble out of the gate if sometimes contrarian Iowans believe they are being force-fed an unlikeable candidate.
And Crawford, principal in Donegal Racing, a thoroughbred partnership, knows a lot about front-runners and dark horses.
Iowa’s caucus season is a personality contest, and the constant challenge of both Democrats and Republicans here every four years is to find new blood. The heavy bruising Democrats took in the midterms cinched the need for a deep bench.
“Democrats are worried,” said Jack Hatch, the veteran Democratic state senator from Des Moines who sputtered in his bid to take on four-term Republican Gov. Terry Branstad. “I’m very worried.”
Hatch says most Democrats in Iowa want an experienced leader who “unlike Obama is not afraid to make a decision.”
Modal TriggerWho will challenge Clinton? Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, 51, stumped for a number of Democratic candidates in Iowa this year and says he’s deciding whether to run. If he does, expect the media to make many “Wire” references. O’Malley was one of the inspirations for the fictional Baltimore mayor, Tommy Carcetti.
(https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/governor_maryland_o_malley.jpg?w=680&h=450&crop=1)
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, 51, stumped for a number of Democratic candidates in Iowa this year and says he’s deciding whether to run. If he does, expect the media to make many “Wire” references. O’Malley was one of the inspirations for the fictional Baltimore mayor, Tommy Carcetti.
But in Mrs. Clinton’s case, he said, she’s still a Clinton. “She triangulates and Iowans don’t like that.”
There’s a slice of the state that considers her too calculating, says J. Ann Selzer, whose firm conducts polls for The Des Moines Register in partnership with Bloomberg News.
“Her negatives aren’t all that high, but the people who don’t like her really don’t like her,” Selzer says.
Clinton knows from her drawn-out race in 2008 against John Edwards and Obama that Iowa a second time would be no cakewalk, Selzer said.
Still, the last Bloomberg/Iowa Poll taken in October by Selzer & Co. showed Clinton enjoys high favorability ratings with 76% of likely caucus-going Democrats. She was followed by Vice President Joe Biden and current Secretary of State John Kerry, both at 60%.
But it’s early. And at this stage of the picking process, no one knew who Jimmy Carter or Rick Santorum were, Selzer points out.
Modal TriggerWho will challenge Clinton? The 73-year-old Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has visited Iowa numerous times to rally party faithful for the midterms. The self-described “democratic socialist” would be a challenger to Clinton from the left, with his main issue being income inequality.
(https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/sanders_2012.jpg?w=680&h=450&crop=1)
The 73-year-old Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has visited Iowa numerous times to rally party faithful for the midterms. The self-described “democratic socialist” would be a challenger to Clinton from the left, with his main issue being income inequality.
She and a mix of other party leaders say outliers could easily inject much-needed excitement to a race and upend a front-runner.
Most mentioned: Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Biden has said he won’t decide until next year whether to run. Warren has said she is not running now, but some Iowans like her energy and wish she’d change her mind.
O’Malley, a down-to-earth leader who finishes his second term in January, gained a lot of respect this year in Iowa among the party faithful because he had boots on the ground.
Not only did he visit a half-dozen times during 2014, he sent staffers (paid for by his PAC) and raised money for Iowa candidates.
Sanders, meanwhile, has spent more time in Iowa this year than almost anyone else with White House aspirations, excluding Clinton and Biden.
(https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/454573118.jpg?w=680&h=450&crop=1)
Who some Democrats want, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: Progressives and the “Occupy” faithful really, really hope the 65-year-old will run, making Wall Street and the 1% the topic of the election. But Warren so far says she’s not a candidate and hasn’t built an Iowa machine.
A democratic socialist, he zeroes in on a minimum-wage hike, boosting taxes on the wealthy and targeting big money in politics — all big “yes” topics for Democrats. He also has the charisma to reignite young activists disappointed in Obama, politicos here say.
But Hatch, a state senator for 22 years who is expected to retire after his term ends in January, says the Democratic Party in Iowa also has considerable work to do to help any candidate beat the field of Republicans expected to flood the state in the next year.
“In this election cycle, we were more coordinated than at any other time in terms of people, money and technology,” he said. “In the end, there was a void of leadership.”
Mike Gronstal, leader of Democrats in the state Senate, says right now, candidates with the least name recognition are trying to figure out which big names will really enter the race.
“The question is, ‘How much oxygen will there be left in a lake full of fish?’ ” Gronstal said. “If both Joe and Hillary run, maybe not much.”
http://nypost.com/2014/11/15/is-iowa-already-sick-of-hillary-clinton/
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NY GOP Chief: Bill de Blasio Will Be 2016 Democrat Nominee
Monday, 17 Nov 2014
By Drew MacKenzie
New York state Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox has made the staggering prediction that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will be the Democrat nominee for president in 2016 – and not Hillary Clinton.
Citing information from a powerful Democrat lobbyist, Cox recently told friends and GOP operatives that the mayor’s attempt to portray himself as the leader of the “urban progressive centers of the nation’’ is part of his strategy towards making a White House run in 2016, the New York Post reported.
“It’s like Barack Obama – he was a brand-new freshman senator, and he ran for president and won. I think de Blasio is going to do it,’’ Cox, whose father-in-law was President Richard Nixon, told a recent gathering.
The state’s leading Republican also noted that de Blasio has a close relationship with “the racially divisive” Rev. Al Sharpton, who has a widespread political network, as proof that the mayor has national ambitions, a source said.
“Cox has been pointing out that Sharpton is back and forth to the White House and serves as an emissary for de Blasio,’’ said the source.
Cox insinuated that de Blasio was also laying the groundwork for a possible presidential run with a controversial column he wrote for The Huffington Post last week, in which he blamed the Democrat thrashing in the midterms on the failure of candidates not being progressive enough.
“This year, too many Democratic candidates lost sight of those core principles – opting instead to clip their progressive wings in deference to a conventional wisdom that says bold ideas aren’t politically practical,’’ de Blasio wrote.
http://www.Newsmax.com/Politics/New-York-de-Blasio-2016/2014/11/17/id/607751/#ixzz3JM0HqCOm
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JERRY BROWN FOR PRESIDENT? MEETS WITH DONORS THIS WEEK
by WILLIAM BIGELOW 17 Nov 2014
Suddenly, a Jerry Brown Presidential Run Looks Promising
by JOEL B. POLLAK
California Governor Jerry Brown, who was re-elected in a landslide earlier this month to what he says is his last term in office, will ask political donors on Monday to keep contributing, the Los Angeles Times reports. Brown defeated his opponent, Neel Kashkari, while retaining $20 million or more in his reelection account as of mid-October. However, Brown--who says he will not run for President--is still asking for cash.
The Sacramento reception asks for donations of $5,000 for a “private reception and sit down conversation” with Brown at Mulvaney’s B&L. Capitol Advocacy, a top lobbying firm, plans to attend; the firm will reportedly bring some of its major clients, including PepsiCo, Corrections Corporation of America, T-Mobile USA Inc., WellCare Health Plans, Pacific Compensation Insurance Co., and Diageo.
The Times, which secured a copy of the invitation, reports that Brown has spent little of his reelection funds since mid-October; he had told the Times that he was thinking of using any funds left over from his campaign to support ballot measures in his new term.
The Washington Post reported in October that Brown’s campaign said it had spent over $3.3 million on ads for Propositions 1 and 2. At that point he had not run a single television ad for his campaign.
Some journalists, notably Chuck Todd of NBC News, have speculated that Brown would likely run for president. Recently, HBO's Bill Maher said that Brown ought to do so, and condemned what he said was age discrimination. (Brown would be 78 years old in 2016.)
Neither spokesmen for Brown nor his chief fundraiser, Angie Tate, had any comment when contacted by the Times.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-California/2014/11/17/Jerry-Brown-Still-Collecting-Money
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Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb forms exploratory committee for 2016 White House run
Published November 20, 2014
FoxNews.com
Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb says he has formed an exploratory committee to consider a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.
Webb unveiled the website for his exploratory committee in a message posted on his Twitter account late Wednesday. The move is the first official step in a possible challenge to former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has long been thought of as the presumptive Democratic nominee, but has not yet announced her candidacy.
A message from Webb on his website says many Americans believe the U.S. is "at a serious crossroads" and the solutions "are not simply political, but those of leadership."
A former Marine who served in Vietnam, Webb was Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan from May 1987 to February 1988. In 2006, he defeated Republican incumbent Sen. George Allen and served one term.
Webb, 68, has hinted that he might run for President for several months. He admitted in a September speech at the National Press Club in Washington that he was "seriously looking at the possibility" of throwing his hat into the 2016 ring. That same month, he visited the early voting state of Iowa, where he made about a dozen stops.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/20/former-virginia-senator-jim-webb-forms-exploratory-committee-for-2016-white/
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Webb is 68. He brings military experience. I could see him being a very popular veep choice in 2016.
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Democrats Plot Strategy for Hillary Clinton Presidential Bid
Friday, 21 Nov 2014
NEW YORK — Hillary Rodham Clinton's staunchest supporters held a daylong strategy session Friday to prepare for a 2016 presidential bid — even though she has yet to announce whether she will launch one.
Ready for Hillary, a Democratic super PAC unaffiliated with the former secretary of state, convened a meeting of Clinton insiders for strategy sessions aimed at helping elect Clinton if she runs. The closed-door planning session about two weeks after Democrats' dismal midterm election performance comes as Clinton, the party's leading presidential contender, considers whether she will seek the presidency again in 2016.
"It was a leap of faith," said Harold Ickes, a longtime Clinton White House adviser who has worked with Ready for Hillary. "We didn't know if people would come to us but we now have 3 million names which will be important to her if she runs."
The event drew about 200 financial backers who listened to panel discussions on lessons learned from the 2014 election, the media landscape and what the 2016 campaign might look like. Attendees professed no inside knowledge on when Clinton would make her decision but said the early organizing on her behalf would make the transition from private citizen to a candidate much easier.
"It's given her the luxury of time," said Jerry Crawford, an Iowa attorney who has been a longtime backer of the Clintons.
Attendees also cautioned against the notion that Clinton would have a big advantage because of her existing network from former President Bill Clinton's two terms and her own political operation. "She's not inevitable," said Adam Parkhomenko, Ready for Hillary's executive director. "It's not going to be easy."
Craig Smith, a senior adviser to Ready for Hillary and former Clinton White House aide, said Hillary Clinton should not run for a "third Bill Clinton term" or as President Barack Obama's third term. "She should run for a first Hillary Clinton term."
Ready for Hillary was joining with leaders of Democratic groups Priorities USA Action, American Bridge 21st Century and Correct the Record to review the 2014 elections and prepare for next year. In some cases, the groups will be wrapping up their efforts while others are beginning to ramp up.
Ready for Hillary, which was founded in 2013, has identified 3 million supporters, signed up more than 1.5 million people promising to help Clinton if she runs and has raised more than $10 million. The group expects to fold if Clinton launches her presidential campaign and then transfer its data and list of supporters to the former first lady's campaign.
Priorities USA Action, a Democratic super PAC that raised $70 million in 2012 to air tough ads targeting Republican Mitt Romney, has maintained a low profile this year but is reconnecting with donors to prepare for next year. Correct the Record, a rapid-response media organization that has defended Clinton in her post-State Department period, expects to continue as a part of research arm American Bridge.
The gathering is not authorized by Clinton, who will be speaking at an event in New York on Friday promoting the use of cook stoves in developing nations. But it will feature plenty of Democrats who have worked with her and her husband: Clinton campaign strategists James Carville and Paul Begala; Jonathan Mantz, who served as Hillary Clinton's national finance director; and Karen Finney, a former Hillary Clinton campaign aide.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor who backed Clinton's presidential campaign, will speak at the meeting as a private citizen, aides said.
Donors were also hearing from Democratic strategists who could play senior roles in a future Clinton campaign, including Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Senate Democrats' campaign arm and a former Hillary Clinton campaign aide; Stephanie Schriock, the president of EMILY's List; Ace Smith, a California-based Democratic strategist who directed Hillary Clinton's 2008 primary campaigns in three states; and Mitch Stewart, a former Obama campaign aide who has advised Ready for Hillary.
http://www.Newsmax.com/Politics/Democrats-Hillary-Clinton-presidential-campaign/2014/11/21/id/608887/#ixzz3JjpwZRZ6
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Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb forms exploratory committee for 2016 White House run
Published November 20, 2014
FoxNews.com
Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb says he has formed an exploratory committee to consider a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.
Webb unveiled the website for his exploratory committee in a message posted on his Twitter account late Wednesday. The move is the first official step in a possible challenge to former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has long been thought of as the presumptive Democratic nominee, but has not yet announced her candidacy.
A message from Webb on his website says many Americans believe the U.S. is "at a serious crossroads" and the solutions "are not simply political, but those of leadership."
A former Marine who served in Vietnam, Webb was Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan from May 1987 to February 1988. In 2006, he defeated Republican incumbent Sen. George Allen and served one term.
Webb, 68, has hinted that he might run for President for several months. He admitted in a September speech at the National Press Club in Washington that he was "seriously looking at the possibility" of throwing his hat into the 2016 ring. That same month, he visited the early voting state of Iowa, where he made about a dozen stops.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/20/former-virginia-senator-jim-webb-forms-exploratory-committee-for-2016-white/
He voted for Obamacare, enough said.
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Could Jim Webb give Hillary Clinton a run for her money in 2016?
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
Published November 24, 2014
FoxNews.com
WASHINGTON – Does Jim Webb have what it takes to give Hillary Clinton a run for her money?
Webb thinks he does, and he fired his first salvo against her last week, announcing in a video on new campaign website that he had formed an exploratory committee as the first step in a possible 2016 run for the White House.
Without mentioning Clinton by name, the former Democratic senator from Virginia stated bluntly that government is “paralyzed” and that he wants to help — not as a “career politician,” but as a public servant — to “re-establish a transparent, functioning governmental system in our country.”
“In my view the solutions are not simply political, but those of leadership,” Webb said. “I learned long ago on the battlefields of Vietnam that in a crisis, there is no substitute for clear-eyed leadership.”
“Obviously he is an incredible long shot,” said Terry Madonna, who directs the Franklin and Marshall College Poll in Pennsylvania. “But as sort of a moderate, more so a centrist, he will obviously have an appeal within the Democratic Party.”
Plus, Madonna said, “There are apparently some Democrats who are not willing to cede the nomination to [Clinton]. Conceivably she could have a real battle on her hands for the nomination by people who are saying, no, you are not just rolling away the nomination, it’s not necessarily yours.”
A Marine Corps veteran, Webb, 68, earned two Purple Hearts, the Navy Cross, a Silver Star and two Bronze Stars in Vietnam. He is considered a blunt, independent-minded Democrat who is conservative on issues like gun rights, immigration and the military. But he is cautious on the use of military force overseas and he wields more of a progressive — if not populist — message on prison reform, income equality and reducing poverty.
He received a law degree at Georgetown University after Vietnam and authored several critically acclaimed war novels before serving as secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan in 1987-88, a position he resigned from in protest of budget cuts. He was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 2006, unseating Republican George Allen by less than 1 percent of the vote.
“As a veteran and now somewhat of a ‘blue dog’ Democrat, he has the street cred and experience to bring swing voters to the table, especially in the conservative South,” said Donna Lorraine Barlett, a retired Army judge advocate general who lives in Georgia.
Webb was at the forefront in passing the sweeping reform of the GI Bill in 2008, and veterans consider him a champion of their issues. Coming from a “family of citizen soldiers,” he spoke strongly against the Iraq War before it was fashionable to do so — and while his own son was fighting with the Marines in Ramadi.
During a White House party for freshmen senators shortly after his election, Web refused to have his picture taken with President George W. Bush, who sought him out to ask, “How’s your boy, Jim?”
“I’d like to get them out of Iraq,” Webb said.
Bush would not be deterred. “That’s not what I asked you — How’s your boy?”
Webb snapped back: “Mr. President, that’s between me and my boy.”
He and Bush have since buried the hatchet, but that vignette pretty much encapsulates the “what you see is what you get” persona that Webb’s supporters find so appealing.
“He’s fearless, he doesn’t cover it up or pretend to be one way or another,” said Larry Korb, senior national security fellow at the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress.
During an interview with the American Enterprise Institute in 1997, Webb said of President Bill Clinton: “I cannot conjure up an ounce of respect for Bill Clinton when it comes to the military. Every time I see him salute a Marine, it infuriates me. I don’t think Bill Clinton cares one iota about what happens in a military unit.”
But there apparently were no hard feelings, because Clinton actively supported Webb in 2006.
“I see him as a basic, old-fashioned conservative in the mold of Eisenhower and Reagan who is able to talk and act across the aisle,” said Phil Giraldi, a Vietnam veteran and libertarian who volunteered on Webb’s Senate campaign in Virginia.
Korb, who worked with Webb in the Reagan Pentagon, said Webb would insulate Democrats against the inevitable “soft on defense” attacks. “It would be so good to get a real veteran in the White House,” he added. “You don’t have to go to war to understand it, but it doesn’t hurt.”
During his 2006 Senate campaign, Webb was pummeled with attacks over the risqué and taboo subject matter covered in his novels and his position against having women in combat roles in the military. These issues are likely to resurface with any run for president, observers say.
And where Webb’s strength is in his toughness, his rigid exterior has often been mistaken for aloofness and a lack of charisma — “the antithesis of a rock star,” said one Democratic political consultant who asked not to be identified.
But Webb’s greatest challenge may be going up against Clinton’s legendary political network.
“Where is [Webb’s] organization? Madonna said. “When you start these things in Iowa, it is large, it’s grueling, it’s expensive — you need a campaign organization.
“At this point in time, the money she has amassed, the infrastructure, the support … you would have to say she is the odds-on favorite. But don’t count Jim Webb out. He’s been down before.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/24/could-senator-jim-webb-give-hillary-run-for-her-money-in-2016/
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:o
Ex-Clinton Pollster Schoen Doubts Hillary Can Win Presidency
Sunday, 30 Nov 2014
By Greg Richter
Doug Schoen, former pollster for Bill and Hillary Clinton, isn't certain Hillary Clinton could win the presidency in 2016.
Appearing Sunday on "The Cats Roundtable" on AM 970 in New York, Schoen told host John Catsimatidis he doesn't think his former boss has the "new car smell" that President Barack Obama last week said was needed for a Democratic candidate.
He also said 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney would be a "formidable opponent" to Clinton.
"We’re in a real barn burner," Schoen said. "The race hasn’t even begun, and it’s tied ostensibly between Hillary and Mitt Romney."
Schoen pointed to a Nov. 26 Quinnipiac Poll showing Romney ahead of Clinton 45 percent to 44 percent in a possible 2016 race. Former GOP Florida Gov. Jeb isn't far behind Clinton in the poll, which showed support for Bush at 41 percent and Hillary at 46 percent in a head-to-head matchup.
"We’re in a statistical tie here. It’s anyone’s to be won," Schoen said.
Still, he believes Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner by double digits, will seek the office.
"The real question is how does she separate herself from Obama, yet not get so far away from him that … she doesn’t alienate his base constituents?" Schoen said.
Clinton needs to establish her own identity, but will find that difficult since her last four years of public service were spent heading up Obama's State Department, he said.
Romney has indicated publicly he has no plans to run again, though it is rumored he would do so if Jeb Bush decide against a 2016 bid.
If Romney runs he "would be a formidable opponent to Hillary," Schoen said.
"I think much of what Mitt said in the last campaign has been validated," he said. "And I think he’s been much better on the stump than he was four years ago."
Catsimatidis noted that Romney has been vetted already and anything that's going to be out on him was brought out in 2012.
Schoen doubts Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren will run, despite calls from the far left of her party.
"I think she’s a strong candidate, if she runs. But there’s a big if," Schoen said. "The Democratic political base wants (her) kind of populism."
http://www.Newsmax.com/Newsfront/catsimatidis-schoen-hillary-clinton/2014/11/30/id/610156/#ixzz3KfEvbM49
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Poll: Romney, Clinton top 2016 field
By Sara Fischer, CNN
Tue December 2, 2014
Washington (CNN) -- Mitt Romney may say he's not planning to make a third run for the White House, but according to a new CNN/ORC International poll, Republican voters aren't ready to give up on the idea just yet.
While there is no clear frontrunner for the Republican ticket in 2016, most likely GOP voters say they would choose the former Massachusetts governor for the nomination, among 16 potential contenders.
According to the survey, 20 percent of voters say Romney would be their first choice for the nominee, with retired neurosurgeon and conservative activist Ben Carson coming in second with 10 percent of the vote.
Other big name contenders, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, round out the top four, garnering 9 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee takes fifth place with 7 percent of the vote.
In what could be a telling 2016 indicator, when Romney is removed from the competitive set, the first place spot goes to Bush, who has had some family members publicly pressure him to throw his hat in the ring for months.
But even though Bush leads the pack among the hypothetical field of 15, he only edges Carson in second place by 3 percentage points, and Huckabee in third by just 4 points.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton unsurprisingly receives an overwhelming majority of support, with 65 percent of left-leaning Americans saying she would be their choice for the 2016 nomination. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a progressive favorite, and Vice President Joe Biden, fall way behind to take second and third place -- with 9 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
But when Clinton is removed from the vote selection, Biden pulls more support among voters, who say they would prefer him as their 2016 Democratic nominee with 41 percent, versus 20 percent for Warren.
The poll surveyed 1,045 Americans, including 510 Republicans and right-leaning independents and 457 Democrats and left-leaning independents. The survey was conducted by telephone from Nov. 21-23.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/02/politics/poll-hillary-clinton-mitt-romney-2016/index.html?hpt=po_c1
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Bloomberg Poll: Clinton Tops 2016 GOP Contenders on Leadership
Monday, 08 Dec 2014
Former first lady, senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would enter the presidential race with positive views of her past experience and personal traits, making her a formidable contender against lesser-known Republican rivals.
Greater numbers of Americans view her as a strong leader, who has a better vision for the future, shares their values, and empathizes with their concerns, according to a new Bloomberg Politics Poll. Among the Republicans tested against her, former Republican nominee Mitt Romney has the best name recognition and strengths to challenge her standing as this early stage in the 2016 race. Romney, however, has repeatedly said he won't campaign for the presidency for a third time.
"Wouldn’t you want to hire someone for a job when they actually have some experience?”
Barbara Rishaw
With poll participants saying she is better than her potential Republican opponents on these four qualities, including the traditionally Republican strength of leadership, Clinton is positioned quite differently than President Barack Obama was during his re-election bid. In 2012, Romney won by 13 percentage points among voters who said the quality that mattered most in deciding how they voted for president was a candidate who "shares your values," by 23 points among those looking for a "strong leader," and by nine percentage points among those who prioritized a candidate with a "vision for the future," according to the election's exit polls with voters that were collected by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, a consortium of national media outlets. For Obama, a 63-percentage-point lead among voters who most valued a candidate who "cares about people like me" was a key attribute that helped propel him to victory.
“Her image and reputation with voters has been defined, and in some ways redefined, by her service as Secretary of State, where voters saw someone who was a strong leader in representing our country,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic polling expert who worked for Clinton’s unsuccessful primary campaign against Obama. “If she runs, she comes to this election in much better shape then she did in the 2008."
While Clinton lacks Obama’s overwhelming empathy advantage, she's better positioned two years before the election in every other attribute. When respondents were asked which potential candidate did a better job on each of four qualities, she runs seven to 20 points ahead on leadership when pitted against former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, and Romney. Though Clinton has yet to provide a detailed account of how she'd guide the nation as president, Americans think she has more of a vision for the future than any in the Republican field. When measured on that attribute, she leads Romney by 6 points, Paul by 10 points, Bush by 15 points, Christie by 17 points, and Cruz by 21 points.
A different story emerges when the potential presidential match-ups are tested among what likely voters say they value most. Clinton lags behind all the Republicans among likely voters who named “sharing your values” as their top quality in selecting a candidate. One reason for the shift is that a plurality–41 percent—of Republicans identified "shared values" as their most important trait. Maryanna Preston, a Florida clinical psychologist who favors Republican candidates, said she found Clinton untrustworthy. “I would not want her running this country,” she said. “She is a power-hungry woman wanting to be the first woman president of the United States. I think she’s dangerous.”
Still, in a general election showdown, Clinton wins against all five potential Republican candidates among likely voters, though she never breaks the 50 percent mark. Her margin is narrowest against Bush, Christie, and Romney, with a six-percentage-point lead. She beats Paul by eight points and Cruz by 13 points.
Clinton is far better known than most of her possible Republican challengers, with the exception of Romney. That familiarity, some Republicans argue, makes her appear to hold a more formidable position today. “She has 100 percent name ID. Among the potential candidates for 2016, Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are the only ones who even come close,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. According to the poll, just 6 percent of American say they're "not sure" whether they'd rank her favorably or not, compared with 13 percent who said the same of Romney. All of the other Republicans tested were not known well enough to be rated by about a third or more of the respondents. “I would have been stunned if any of the Republicans beat Clinton on any measure.”
More than half–52 percent–of Americans have a favorable view of Clinton, a drop from a high of 70 percent in December 2012, less than two months before she left her post as Secretary of State and re-entered the national, partisan political dialogue. That diplomatic background, considered by some Republicans to be a point of weakness, is seen as beneficial by a majority of Americans. More than two out of three view her tenure as Secretary of State, marriage to former President Bill Clinton, and, perhaps as an indication that Americans want an experienced insider in the next president, her service in Washington, as advantageous to Clinton. About six in ten say the same about her previous presidential run and work in the Obama administration. "People get all critical about, ‘oh, so and so‘s a career politician',” said Barbara Rishaw, a deli clerk and self-identified “disillusioned independent” in Nashville, Tenn. “On the other hand, wouldn’t you want to hire someone for a job when they actually have some experience?”
One show of weakness for Clinton: 52 percent viewed her ties to Wall Street as a positive—a ranking that could provide an opening to a populist primary challenger or an avenue for attacks by Republicans.
The poll of 1,001 U.S. adults was conducted Dec. 3-5 by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Results based on the 753 likely voters in the 2016 election have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
http://www.Newsmax.com/Newsfront/clinton-poll-2016-leadership/2014/12/08/id/611670/#ixzz3LKyb8ZoC
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Surprising.
Survey: Hillary Clinton top 2016 pick for millionaires
By Dan Merica, CNN
Wed December 10, 2014
According to a CNBC survey, Hillary Clinton -- with 31% support -- would be the top choice for people with "investable assets of $1 million or more" if the 2016 election were held today.
Clinton is followed by former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush with 18%, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie with 14% and Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders with 11%.
In the poll, CNBC notes that "people with investable assets of $1 million or more" make up the top 8% of American households and their poll was "evenly split between Democrats, Republicans and Independents."
Among Democrats, Clinton's lead is massive, with 72% of the 500 people polled stating they support the former first lady. Bush, likewise, is the top choice for Republican millionaires with 36% support.
Despite the fact that millionaire supporters have outsized influence because of campaign contributions and donations to super PACS, this distinction could be one Clinton doesn't want.
Since she last ran 0for president, the Democratic Party has become more populist and in order to win in 2016, many political experts see her needed to reconnect with middle and working class voters. The party has also been overtaken by skepticism of Wall Street and, in some cases, wealth, meaning having the backing of a majority of millionaires may not be a badge of honor in 2016.
What's more, the support of more millionaires has not always been indicative of electoral success. In 2008 and 2012, Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney had support of most millionaires in their respective elections. Both went on to lose to President Barack Obama, who had the support of most people with $30 million or more.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/10/politics/hillary-clinton-millionaires/index.html?hpt=po_c2
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9 Under-the-Radar Politicians Who'll Dominate News in 2015 — Including the 'Female Obama'
By Gregory Krieg December 15, 2014
As the rest of the world waits for Hillary Clinton's big announcement (spoiler alert: she's running) there will be other serious political fights unfolding in 2015. Many will revolve around who might oppose the former first lady's inevitable presidential campaign, while others will be centered on important, immediate issues like economic inequality and marijuana policy.
There is no separating the issues from the people who will be leading the debate. In the coming year, new faces are set to emerge on the national stage. And at least one is primed to return to old glory.
If you want to get a jump on what promises to be a dramatic and important year in American politics, get to know this formidable gang of nine:
1. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R)
(http://media3.policymic.com/MDg3NjYzNjc2YSMvSldabEtJRnFrT2JWZWllclhiYlFnT2hxdUFvPS8zeDIzMTo0NTY1eDMxMTMvODQweDUzMC9maWx0ZXJzOnF1YWxpdHkoNzApL2h0dHA6Ly9zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tL3BvbGljeW1pYy1pbWFnZXMvbXB3dm5jdmw0bjh4d2NyNGpmbm84eGwwNm9pdXZlY2FqeXNzenRpYm5udGZ0bW5lcThzaXN4ZHpwZnRrMWd3dy5qcGc=.jpg)
Source: AP
The dark horse: Mike Pence, the Hoosier State's Republican governor, has deep ties to the mega-donor Koch brothers, which means he'll be able to take the necessary time building up his inevitable presidential campaign. (Candidates with fewer backers need lots of early success to build fundraising momentum.) That he's spent these past two years working so nearby Iowa, home to those all-important first presidential caucuses, doesn't hurt either. Pence also enjoys the unique ability to sell himself as a "Washington outsider" — that priceless political talking point — while also being deeply connected to the Beltway, having spent a decade there as a congressman from 2003 to 2012.
What they're saying: "He is an evangelical Midwestern conservative who has the compelling family story to tell of his grandfather being an Irish immigrant who drove a bus in Chicago," John Dunagan, a former George W. Bush campaign aide told the Daily Caller. Mix that in with a spotless record of anti-union, pro-tax cut policy initiatives and you have the candidate Republicans hoped Ricky Perry would be in 2012.
2. California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D)
(http://media3.policymic.com/N2NmNjdiMzE1OSMvNzFaeFczTXdaNGY0ZWttMDU2QzBjQktMdkRZPS81NXgxODU6MjkzMngxOTM4Lzg0MHg1MTMvZmlsdGVyczpxdWFsaXR5KDcwKS9odHRwOi8vczMuYW1hem9uYXdzLmNvbS9wb2xpY3ltaWMtaW1hZ2VzL3ppenpud2dkbHl3YWtmMWlwb3puY2RxamNveHh1a2FxYmx2dmNid2h0YjRjdGY4dGlndXVhY3BwY281YTdrbHguanBn.jpg)
Source: Getty Images
California's next senator? Kamala Harris was elected as California's first-ever black female attorney general in 2010, and she will begin her second term as the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the country's biggest state this January. But pundits are already speculating about Harris' next move. If someone like Vice President Joe Biden or former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley can upset Hillary Clinton and grab the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, expect to see Harris on the shortlist for vice president.
Barring that, she's expected to turn her attention to the Senate. Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer is looking more and more likely to retire at the end of her current term, meaning California is probably going to need a new senator in 2016. There's also going to be a governor's race in 2018. Harris will be a major player in one if not both of those races, and she'll need to lay the groundwork in 2015.
Oh, and she's open to to broader efforts to legalize marijuana.
What they're saying: "She very well could become the 'female Barack Obama' of liberal dreams," according to Politico.
3. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D)
(http://media3.policymic.com/MWJhZmNiMzEyNCMvRHBkVzRfX19ZNGNLbFBCRjJOUkV5UENEdmo0PS82MngxNzoyOTM4eDE4NzcvODQweDU0NC9maWx0ZXJzOnF1YWxpdHkoNzApL2h0dHA6Ly9zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tL3BvbGljeW1pYy1pbWFnZXMvZmllbnhma25hMWdudHJ5d2p0YWFnYW1pb3RrcXdxbmxncWdreGhkbndrM3Z2a3B5ZnlmczdvOW5vdHN0b25mci5qcGc=.jpg)
Source: AP
Not ready for Clinton: Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley doesn't have the following of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or the progressive cred of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), but he is considered the most realistic threat to Hillary Clinton's claim to the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. The former Baltimore mayor showed his hand recently, calling on the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to further investigate the individuals behind the CIA torture program. He knows it won't ever happen, but the words alone will gain him some traction with more liberal Democrats.
Pundits say that Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown's loss in a November race to succeed O'Malley, despite the governor's support, was a sign of weakness. But O'Malley remains a popular figure in the state and a crafty politician. (Fans of the HBO seriesThe Wire should know that councilman-turned-mayor Tommy Carcetti was conceived with O'Malley in mind.)
What they're saying: "I think right now O'Malley is running to become the other guy, with the hope that the field will quickly narrow to two candidates. ... Of all the people out there [who could run against Clinton in the primary], he's the one I would be most worried about," longtime Democratic strategist Joe Trippi told the Washington Post in September.
4. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R)
(http://media3.policymic.com/N2IzMzNkZjMzMyMvVUFDbkszVE5GLXA4ZnREc3hSZWpIUGYwdlcwPS82MngxNDc6MjkzOHgxOTYyLzg0MHg1MzAvZmlsdGVyczpxdWFsaXR5KDcwKS9odHRwOi8vczMuYW1hem9uYXdzLmNvbS9wb2xpY3ltaWMtaW1hZ2VzL3Zjd3QxaGF0bmxhdGh6eXg2cnFpdnI0MXVyeDlubmhia2x4M2tkNndua2hlemtocXBpbDZ5emJnaXF5c3RmemEuanBn.jpg)
Source: AP
Future VP? The Washington press corps doesn't normally spend too much time on New Mexico politics. But that is going to change in 2015. While the usual suspects duke it out for the GOP presidential nomination, twice-elected Gov. Susana Martinez will be waiting just offstage, one of the heavy favorites to join the eventual nominee on the general election ballot.
Assuming the party goes with a white male candidate, Martinez will be zeroed in on as the answer to Democrats' strong standing with women and Latinos. (She criticized President Obama's executive actions to stop deportation of people living in the U.S. without permission, but has also advocated for some kind of comprehensive reform.)
Martinez and her husband Chuck are Republican converts — they used to be Democrats. She switched parties in 1996 before running for district attorney.
What they're saying: "She looks great on paper, and that's what the national operatives see," influential New Mexico journalist Joe Monahan told Real Clear Politics. "I think really the Achilles' heel here that she has to overcome is that perception of being the Sarah Palin-type figure. The national political community is not going to risk that again."
5. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas)
(http://media3.policymic.com/NWVmYTBlYmJjMSMvWHB2eHpLYXY1LUJKWm9VVS1EMUFPN2RlUm53PS82N3g2NDc6NTM4OHg0MDA4Lzg0MHg1MzAvZmlsdGVyczpxdWFsaXR5KDcwKS9odHRwOi8vczMuYW1hem9uYXdzLmNvbS9wb2xpY3ltaWMtaW1hZ2VzL3djZ2IzenczZnp0dnhibnF2b3ZpOGhwMnd3anZnbGNtaGNyc3cyazhkcjF3c2FrenVzZW4xYm51dG14d3BmMG0uanBn.jpg)
Source: AP
Mission impossible: The world's second most famous pair of Castro brothers are taking the capital by storm. Joaquin Castro is a Democratic congressman from Texas' 20th district, while his identical twin brother Julian left his post as mayor of San Antonio to become join President Obama's cabinet as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
But it is the one-minute-younger Joaquin who figures to have a very interesting 2015. Politico reports that he is one of two potential candidates to lead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Never heard of it? Just know this: If he gets the job, his charge will be to return Democrats to a House majority following three elections in which they have lost an incredible 69 seats.
Though he could wait until 2018 to challenge Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott, there is a growing belief that Castro is eyeing a 2016 showdown with tea party leader and likely presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R).
What they're saying: "He is, separate from his brother, an astute, emergent leader in his hometown, within his district, across the state of Texas, and you only need to look at the Sunday news programs to understand that he's got a voice that's listened to nationally," Henry R. Munoz Jr., family friend and national finance chair of the Democratic National Committee, told the Washington Post in August.
6. Sen.-elect Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)
Source: YouTube
Ready to make D.C. squeal: "I'm Joni Ernst. I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm."
And with that, the soon-to-be senator from the Hawkeye State made a memorable entry on to the national stage. The Iraq War veteran will be the first female senator from Iowa and likely its most conservative in decades. Expect to see her alongside Sens. Cruz and Mike Lee (R-Utah), ruthlessly fighting against gun control legislation and anything the United Nations might agree on.
But contrary to what some critics might suggest, Ernst is no Sarah Palin. She is a smart politician whose "mother, soldier, leader" mantra during the campaign gives you an idea of how she'll allocate her power. Expect her to be, for better or worse, a strong voice on national security policy for years to come.
What they're saying: "I'd like to like her," an Iowa Democrat told Politico during the campaign. "She's personable; farmer's [daughter], in the National Guard. I think that carries a lot of weight. A lot of people admire the combination she's got."
7. Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R)
(http://media3.policymic.com/NGYyYTRiMjgxZCMvTnBKQURjMHZFSGxYRVB0aTA0SzFfTWdHc2tVPS82MHgxNTM6Mzc3N3gyNTAwLzg0MHg1MzAvZmlsdGVyczpxdWFsaXR5KDcwKS9odHRwOi8vczMuYW1hem9uYXdzLmNvbS9wb2xpY3ltaWMtaW1hZ2VzL21kY25ncHF1aWN0YnRmbG9uYWI5Z21laHBwd3AxbnZzcTl3aGN0YTlkZnRsNHpzZHFpYW9ieWJ6ZGd1ZXRrNGguanBn.jpg)
Source: AP
Wall Street's man in Ohio: Recently reelected Ohio Gov. John Kasich has quietly gone about the business of rebuilding the state economy, which was in shambles when he arrived on the job in 2010. Kasich is steeped in corporate America, having worked as a managing director at the criminally mismanaged financial house Lehman Brothers from 2001 to 2008, but he's no ideologue. He accepted the Medicaid expansion provision (which meant more federal money to insure the poor and elderly) from Obamacare when most Republican governors would not, though he still pays lip service to the idea of repealing other parts of the law.
Kasich will have a hard time not getting caught between bigger-money establishment candidates and tea party firebrands if he decides to enter the 2016 fray, but you can bet he'll be a big part of the discussion.
What they're saying: "I know he wants to have a legacy that shows he provides for citizens who have difficult circumstances, and more importantly for young people who need the opportunity to work," Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder (R) told Politico in October.
8. Dr. Ben Carson
(http://media3.policymic.com/OTQwMWNkZDdjOSMvM0UxMGF1VU4ydndDRjFxeFFUNEY5V1JYN3ZRPS80OXgxMzk6Mzc2OHgyNTU3Lzg0MHg1NDcvZmlsdGVyczpxdWFsaXR5KDcwKS9odHRwOi8vczMuYW1hem9uYXdzLmNvbS9wb2xpY3ltaWMtaW1hZ2VzL2gzbjVpdXVya3g1YXBwZmhnMjBvcmhnemVvcXR1bW1nbWtxdmYyd2JtdWNiaG04amk2OHV2bGdqaWVvMXFxbDcuanBn.jpg)
Source: AP
The chosen one: Dr. Ben Carson is not going to be elected president in 2016. But he will certainly have a big influence in the Republican nomination contest, scheduled to formally begin in late summer 2015. Like him or not, the strict conservative pediatric neurosurgeon-turned-politician is a really compelling character. In October 2013, he called Obamacare "the worst thing that has happened to this country since slavery." In June, he had to clarify with a reporter that he did not think it was "worse than 9/11."
Consider this Nov. 20 exchange with an interviewer from the Christian Broadcasting Network:
David Brody: How is that conversation going with God about this potential presidential run? Has He grabbed you by the collar yet? I read an article about that.
Ben Carson: I feel fingers. But it's mostly me. I have to be sure and it's part of my personality that says always look before you leap, but don't leap before you have to.
Brody: I do cover the presidential campaign trail. May I potentially see you there soon?
Carson: I think there is a good chance you might.
The man feels the "fingers" of God pushing him toward the campaign trail. "Draft Ben Carson," indeed!
What they're saying: "If Herman Cain could poll 40% of the back vote, running against a black candidate, just imagine what percent of the black vote Dr. Carson would receive running against Hillary Clinton of any other far-left white Democrat!" said John Philip Sousa, the great musician's namesake, on Carson's website.
9. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
(http://media3.policymic.com/Zjk0ZWU4Mjc0NSMvZ2g5elFsRnk5OGVmSUlDNEp3aURhcVVNZThNPS82M3g2MDg6NTEyMXgzNDU2Lzg0MHg0NzQvZmlsdGVyczpxdWFsaXR5KDcwKS9odHRwOi8vczMuYW1hem9uYXdzLmNvbS9wb2xpY3ltaWMtaW1hZ2VzL2ZvaG5waWh1dGZycXF0emZzd3JpeGRqdTh3d3Zud2l2dXJmdDNuNXZwd3gyZW94cXV6azNxYm1wY3JvaWVsdnYuanBn.jpg)
Source: AP
Got her groove back: Laugh if you want, but the 27-year congressional veteran and former speaker of the House is looking primed for a serious revival in 2015. After spending the first six years of the Obama presidency working doggedly and at great political cost (see what happened to her majority after it passed Obamacare), Pelosi publicly broke with the White House over a Wall Street giveaway when it came time to hammer out a $1.1 trillion bill to fund the government.
The minority leader and her liberal allies, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), ultimately lost that battle, but they made a significant point: Republicans and a White House apparently willing to compromise on economic issues are going to have a smart, seasoned politician tearing at their pant legs for the next two years.
What they're saying: "What Pelosi's revolt [on the spending bill] made clear is that while there will be more Republicans in the House and Senate come January, nothing can get done (or at least nothing can get done easily) without some portion of liberal Democrats on board," the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza wrote on Dec. 11. "This was a warning to the White House and Senate Democrats not to cut Pelosi out or take her (or her liberal Democratic allies) for granted going forward."
Up next: Going forward, we will keep our eyes, ears and computer browsers open; in a year like this, with both major political parties looking for a new standard bearer, you never know who's going to pop up and change the game. What's not in doubt: It's going to be a lot of fun to watch.
http://mic.com/articles/106206/9-under-the-radar-politicians-who-will-make-waves-in-2015
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Hillary Clinton Support Dips In New Poll
The Huffington Post | By Alana Horowitz
Posted: 12/21/2014
NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 16: Event honoree Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks on stage during the 2014 Robert F. Kennedy Ripple Of Hope Awards at the New York Hilton on December 16, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Pont/FilmMagic)
Hillary Clinton's lead over potential 2016 Democratic rivals has shrunk considerably, a new poll finds.
According to the poll, from ABC News and the Washington Post, 61% of likely Democratic voters say they would vote for Clinton. This is down from last month's lead of 63%, and January's 73%. This latest poll was conducted earlier this month and released on Sunday.
Vice President Joe Biden is a distant second with 14% of the potential vote.
Mass. Senator Elizabeth Warren comes in third at 13%. The same survey last month found that she was only commanding 11% of the vote. In January, that number was only 9%. Warren has repeatedly denied that she is seeking a bid for president.
To read the full results of the poll, click here.
Meanwhile, 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney is leading the Republican pack. Several recent polls surveying the 2016 Republican landscape have found Romney ahead by a slight margin over former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who announced earlier this week that he is considering a run for president, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/21/hillary-clinton-2016_n_6362276.html
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Surely Democrats can do better than this?
Sanders to decide on 2016 run in March
Published December 26, 2014
Associated Press
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(http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/img/U.S./876/493/2016-sanders-in.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Dec. 16, 2014: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a town hall meeting in Ames, Iowa. (AP)
BURLINGTON, Vt. – Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders says he'll decide by March whether to launch a 2016 presidential campaign and, if so, whether he'll seek the Democratic nomination. Either way, Sanders says he wouldn't run just to nudge the debate to the left.
"I don't want to do it unless I can do it well," he told The Associated Press. "I don't want to do it unless we can win this thing."
Sanders, a socialist, said he grew up "solidly lower middle class" in a Jewish family in Brooklyn — his father, an immigrant from Poland, sold paint for a living —and his views about the distribution of wealth were formed early.
"A lack of money in my family was a very significant aspect of my growing up ... kids in my class would have new jackets, new coats, and I would get hand-me-downs," Sanders said.
After the University of Chicago, Sanders came to Vermont in the 1960s as part of the counterculture, back-to-the-land movement that turned the state from solid Yankee Republican into one of the bluest in the country.
He won his first election — for Burlington mayor — by 10 percentage points, and since then has carried a consistent message thought eight terms in the House and now, his second term in the Senate: The rich have too much, the poor and working class not enough.
Sanders said the issues about which he's been railing for all these years are only becoming more dire. The wealth gap has grown, and the middle class, he says, is "collapsing."
"You have one family, the Walton family of Walmart, owning more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people," he said. "We have 95 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent. You have millions of families unable to afford to send their kids to college. People are desperately worried about whether or not they are going to retire with dignity."
Sanders has a 12-step plan that he says will restore the economy and especially the middle class, most of them dependent on higher taxes on the rich and corporations. Among the proposals: A $1 trillion infrastructure building program that would "create 13 million decent-paying jobs"; more worker-friendly international trade deals and legislation to strengthen unions; and transforming the U.S. energy system "away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy."
He says he'll make a "gut decision" about running for the presidency — and, perhaps, challenging Democratic favorite Hillary Rodham Clinton.
He would be 75 in 2016, but "my health is good," he said, knocking on a wooden conference room table. He said he couldn't remember the last time he'd called in sick to work.
Sanders said he is weighing whether to run as an independent, as he has done in Vermont, or as a Democrat. He has been critical of both major parties over the years, though he has aligned with liberal Democrats on many issues.
Tad Devine, a longtime consultant to Democratic presidential candidates, agreed that 2016 might present an opening to Sanders, a year in which his message could resonate. Fewer people feel they can afford the American Dream of sending kids to college and looking forward to a secure retirement, Devine said.
"Even the majority of Republicans believe that the deck is stacked against the people in this country," Devine said. "That's exactly what Bernie has been talking about for a long time." Devine said he plans to work for Sanders if the Vermont senator enters the race.
Devine said Sanders also could run on a solid legislative record in a Congress that hasn't been known for getting much done recently. As chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, Sanders got passed this year a $5 billion package to fix a troubled VA health system. His liberal-left record includes voting against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 and the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act in 2001, both while he was in the House.
Clinton would pose a key challenge for Sanders.
"I think the question is, is he a step too far for the mainstream of the Democratic Party? He is a socialist," said Kathy Sullivan, a member of the Democratic National Committee and a Clinton supporter. "I don't think you'll find the socialist wing of the Democratic Party is that big, contrary to what Republicans might think."
Peter Burling, a former New Hampshire state senator, longtime Democratic Party leader and a Clinton supporter, said Sanders might have an advantage over her in the amount of passion he can deliver.
"I don't think she demonstrated it in the race against (Barack) Obama in 2008," Burling said. Sanders would contrast with Clinton because "he can speak with unfettered passion," Burling said.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/26/sanders-to-decide-on-2016-run-in-march/?intcmp=latestnews
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Democrats Optimistic On 2016 Presidential Chances
AP By BILL BARROW
Posted: 12/26/2014
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ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans crowed in 2004 that freshly re-elected President George W. Bush had established a "permanent governing majority" for the GOP. Eight years later, Democrats were touting the enduring power of the "Obama coalition" to keep their party in the White House.
But Democrats couldn't sustain that coalition for this year's midterm elections, leading to Republican gains in Congress, governorships and state legislatures nationwide.
"The notion of demographics as destiny is overblown," said Republican pollster and media strategist Wes Anderson. "Just like (Bush aide Karl) Rove was wrong with that 'permanent majority' talk, Democrats have to remember that the pendulum is always swinging."
So how will it swing in 2016? Is the path to 270 electoral votes so fixed that one side just can't win? Will President Barack Obama's limited popularity be a burden for the Democratic nominee in the next race for the White House? Or will an increasingly diverse electorate pick a Democrat for a third consecutive presidential election for the first time since Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman won five straight elections from 1932 to 1948?
Despite Democrats' midterm shellacking and talk of a "depressed" liberal base, many in the party still like their starting position for 2016. Ruy Teixiera, a Democratic demographer, points to a group of states worth 242 electoral votes that the Democratic presidential nominee has won in every election since 1992. Hold them all, and the party is just 28 votes shy of the majority needed to win the White House next time.
Obama twice compiled at least 332 electoral votes by adding wins in almost every competitive state. He posted double-digit wins among women, huge margins among voters younger than 30 and historically high marks among blacks and Latinos.
As non-white voters continue to grow as a share of the electorate, a Democratic nominee who roughly holds onto Obama's 2012 level of support across all demographic groups would win the national popular vote by about 6 percentage points and coast to victory in the Electoral College, Teixeira estimates.
"Could a Republican win? Sure," Teixeira said. "But they have to have a lot of different things happen."
What if the GOP is able to continue its gains among non-white voters? Obama, after all, lost ground in 2012 among most demographic measures, compared to his 2008 performance. Those slides helped make him the first president since World War II to win re-election with a lower popular vote total than he got in his initial victory.
A GOP nominee such as the Spanish-speaking Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, could make a difference. He is a proponent of comprehensive immigration reform who has the potential to capture significantly more than the 27 percent of the Latino vote that Mitt Romney claimed in 2012. Meanwhile, Republicans hope African-Americans make up a smaller share of the electorate with Obama no longer atop the ballot.
"We're not talking about winning those groups, but these elections are fought on the margins, so improvements here and there can make a difference," Anderson said.
Republicans acknowledge that demographic shifts make it more difficult than in years past for the GOP nominee to depend mostly on white voters, who cast 87 percent of presidential ballots in 1992 and just 72 percent in 2012.
At the same time, Democrats have watched white voters, particularly those without a college degree, move away from the party during Obama's presidency — and not just in the conservative South. Obama lost this group by about 26 points in 2012, according to exit polls and other analyses. By this November, his Gallup approval rating among the group stood at 27 percent.
Extending that trend into 2016 could push Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire into the GOP column. Whites also could tip Florida, Virginia and Colorado, although non-white voters in those states hold more influence than in the Midwest and Northeast. Those seven states, plus all those won by Romney in 2012, would give the GOP a winning total of 295 electoral votes.
It should be noted that the path to 270 requires any potential GOP president to win Florida, with its 29 electoral votes. And while it's mathematically possible for a Republican to win without Ohio's 18 electoral votes, no GOP nominee has ever done so, and Republican strategists widely acknowledge the state as essential.
Of course, further analysis of the raw numbers alone ignores the potential of the candidates themselves to shape the election — not to mention dramatic changes in the economy, national security events or other developments that fall outside the control of any candidate.
"Presidential elections don't take place in a vacuum," GOP strategist Anderson said. "It's an adversarial system in which their side has a face and our side has a face, and everything flows from that."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/26/democrats-2016-presidential-campaign_n_6381304.html
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Liberal groups slate pro-Warren rally in New Hampshire Saturday
By Dan Merica, CNN
January 13, 2015
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Washington (CNN)Groups urging Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016 are kicking off their New Hampshire organizing efforts with a rally on Saturday in Manchester.
MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, two liberal groups urging the progressive senator to run, are dispatching grassroots organizers to the first-in-the-nation primary state this week with the goal of encouraging local volunteers, politicians and activists to help convince Warren she needs to run for president.
"Our folks on the ground are going to reach out to the really strong activist community that exists in New Hampshire," said Neil Sroka, Democracy for America's spokesman. "We want to show Elizabeth Warren that if she decided to get into the race, there is a strong grassroots army ready to do everything a candidate needs to run a competitive race in the Granite State."
Saturday will make the start of these efforts.
Leaders from Democracy for America, MoveOn.org and other progressive come together for their first meeting in New Hampshire, with the goal of charting next steps in convincing Warren to run. Those steps are likely to include opening offices across the state and dispatching more organizers in the coming months.
The "Run Warren Run" efforts, which launched late last year, have so far picked up over 200,000 supporters across the country. While they aren't alone -- groups like super PAC Ready for Warren have been organizing around a possible Warren run since early last year -- the coalition of MoveOn and DFA has been some of the most organized work around the senator.
That said, the efforts have so far not moved the Massachusetts senator to make a run at the presidency and, in some respects, Warren has moved further away from a run.
In an interview published by Fortune Magazine on Tuesday, Warren was asked by former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair whether if she will run for president.
"No," the Massachusetts senator flatly said.
That is new, given the senator has repeatedly knocked down presidential speculation by simply saying, "I am not running for president." The denial is in present tense, meaning Warren wasn't running for president at this moment. When some reporters pressed her on this, Warren would just repeat, "I am not running for president."
If she does decide to run, though, she wouldn't be the first politician to change their mind on a presidential bid.
Warren outlined her liberal economic agenda earlier this month in a campaign-style speech that electrified liberal and labor organizers in the audience.
"For more than 30 years, too many politicians in Washington have made deliberate choices that favored those with money and power," she told the AFL-CIO audience. "And the consequence is that instead of an economy that works well for everyone, America now has an economy that works well for about 10 percent of the people."
Speeches like that, Sroka said, have made the liberal organizers more upbeat about their plans. Their view is that if more people saw Warren speak, they would be convinced to support her.
"We have watched very, very closely," the organizer said of Warren's speeches. "What you saw there was a senator and frankly a potential presidential candidate speaking out for million of Americans who are struggling to get by and laying out a popular progressive economic message for the country."
He concluded, "That is the kind of speech a presidential candidate might make."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/13/politics/warren-new-hampshire-groups/index.html
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I actually wish we could have an all-star field of candidates running in the Democratic primary....Hillary, Andrew Cuomo, Biden, Warren, Booker, and Pelosi.....
it looks like the Republicans will have their first team running....Jeb, Romney, Christie, Rand, and Ben Carson, ....I hope none of the crazies run, like Bachmann and Palin.....
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I actually wish we could have an all-star field of candidates running in the Democratic primary....Hillary, Andrew Cuomo, Biden, Warren, Booker, and Pelosi.....
it looks like the Republicans will have their first team running....Jeb, Romney, Christie, Rand, and Ben Carson, ....I hope none of the crazies run, like Bachmann and Palin.....
You would vote for Joe Biden?
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You would vote for Joe Biden?
I don't know..I would have to be convinced....but can you imagine all the entertaining gaffes???....
come to think of it, if he were the nominee I would vote for him over Palin if she were the nominee
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I don't know..I would have to be convinced....but can you imagine all the entertaining gaffes???....
come to think of it, if he were the nominee I would vote for him over Palin if she were the nominee
I can't imagine a scenario where I would vote for Biden. Even Democrats repeatedly rejected him when he ran.
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I can't imagine a scenario where I would vote for Biden. Even Democrats repeatedly rejected him when he ran.
In terms of qualifications, Biden would be the most qualified president ever...his resume is impressive....take away all the gaffes and he would be formidable....unfortunat ely he is his own worst enemy
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In terms of qualifications, Biden would be the most qualified president ever...his resume is impressive....take away all the gaffes and he would be formidable....unfortunat ely he is his own worst enemy
Biden the most qualified president ever?? Sorry but that is laugh out loud funny. :) There is a reason why even Democrats rejected him more than once.
I don't think he is smart enough to be president. He doesn't have enough private sector experience. Does he have military experience? He lacks common sense. I could go on, but I completely understand why he couldn't make it out of the Democrat primaries.
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Biden the most qualified president ever??
in terms of govt experience, biden would likely be the one with most.
he's been in senate or white house for 40 years. I mean, he's spent more time sitting on Senate toilets than Rubio has spent in office, total.
And he's not a stupid man. He's just egotistical and obnoxious - immature and entitled. Same way we admit Rachel maddow is smart, she's just fcking misguided and a rude prick. Biden knows more about the law than probably any other dem in that 2016 race. But since he's a douche, he will lose nomination.
40 years in high office. Chairman of foreign relations. Dude's seen shit we cannot imagine, he's been privy to world-changing convo for decades while Rand was pooping yellow and playing in the sandbox ignoring his whiny dad telling him to pick up his toys.
Shit on him all you want, I agree with most of it. BUT he's a smart man, and he's very experienced in govt. On a functional level, biden, like jeb, would do fine in office... the problem is, they're both shithead libs, and people that support them over the other candidates deserve a hot sauce bukkake.
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in terms of govt experience, biden would likely be the one with most.
he's been in senate or white house for 40 years. I mean, he's spent more time sitting on Senate toilets than Rubio has spent in office, total.
And he's not a stupid man. He's just egotistical and obnoxious - immature and entitled. Same way we admit Rachel maddow is smart, she's just fcking misguided and a rude prick. Biden knows more about the law than probably any other dem in that 2016 race. But since he's a douche, he will lose nomination.
40 years in high office. Chairman of foreign relations. Dude's seen shit we cannot imagine, he's been privy to world-changing convo for decades while Rand was pooping yellow and playing in the sandbox ignoring his whiny dad telling him to pick up his toys.
Shit on him all you want, I agree with most of it. BUT he's a smart man, and he's very experienced in govt. On a functional level, biden, like jeb, would do fine in office... the problem is, they're both shithead libs, and people that support them over the other candidates deserve a hot sauce bukkake.
EXACTLY......In terms of government experiene and knowing where all the skeletons are, Biden is far and away the most qualified....and yes he is very smart and knows foreign policy.....but yes he is also egotistical and probably always believes he's the smartest person in the room which is why he says things that are over the top......I didn't say he would make a great president......or that he would win...just that he would be the most qualified
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EXACTLY......In terms of government experiene and knowing where all the skeletons are, Biden is far and away the most qualified....and yes he is very smart and knows foreign policy.....but yes he is also egotistical and probably always believes he's the smartest person in the room which is why he says things that are over the top......I didn't say he would make a great president......or that he would win...just that he would be the most qualified
He is the most qualified person to ever run for president, but he wouldn't make a great president? That doesn't make sense.
He's not qualified solely because he has spent so much time as a Senator. By that measure, anyone who has served a long time is qualified to be president. You have to look at the person's results, their intelligence, leadership, etc. By those measures, Biden shouldn't sniff the presidency.
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He is the most qualified person to ever run for president, but he wouldn't make a great president? That doesn't make sense.
that could happen. There's probably some military veteran out there, with a PhD, who has served ten terms in congress, who wants to drastically cut the budget... insanely qualified.
But since he won't kneepad the right people, the networks would just shout him down, to be followed by their minions doing the exact same thing.
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He is the most qualified person to ever run for president, but he wouldn't make a great president? That doesn't make sense.
He's not qualified solely because he has spent so much time as a Senator. By that measure, anyone who has served a long time is qualified to be president. You have to look at the person's results, their intelligence, leadership, etc. By those measures, Biden shouldn't sniff the presidency.
I think we are actually both saying the same thing if you read both of our posts , but you re as egotistical as Biden and won't admit it ;D
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I think we are actually both saying the same thing if you read both of our posts , but you re as egotistical as Biden and won't admit it ;D
We're not saying the same thing. You're saying Biden is the most qualified person ever to be president. I'm saying he's unqualified to be president, much less the most qualified person ever. Those are diametrically opposed viewpoints.
And I'm not sure Biden has a big ego. He's more of a dummy. You might be confusing him with President Obama.
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We're not saying the same thing. You're saying Biden is the most qualified person ever to be president. I'm saying he's unqualified to be president, much less the most qualified person ever. Those are diametrically opposed viewpoints.
And I'm not sure Biden has a big ego. He's more of a dummy. You might be confusing him with President Obama.
oh I think he does...I think in his mind he should be president.....he's not dumb....he just says things off the cuff....and again...he knows all about gov't...knows practically every one in congress...been in the senate for years, vice prez...again not saying he'd be good,....but the qualifications are there
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oh I think he does...I think in his mind he should be president.....he's not dumb....he just says things off the cuff....and again...he knows all about gov't...knows practically every one in congress...been in the senate for years, vice prez...again not saying he'd be good,....but the qualifications are there
I'm sure he thinks he should be president, because he has run multiple times.
Anyone who repeatedly, publicly says dumb things, year after year, isn't very smart.
Knowing people and outlasting others in Congress doesn't make someone qualified to be president. What they did during their time in office is far more important. And Biden has been wrong, repeatedly, for years.
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Clinton clearing primary field for potential 2016 run could leave her vulnerable
Published January 17, 2015
FoxNews.com
Hillary Clinton appears to have scared away much of the competition should she seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. But her early and practically all-encompassing effort also presents the potential liability that she will sail through the primary season largely untested for the bare-knuckled general election.
And it could deny Democrats the chance to define themselves to Americans, strategists say.
“It's not good for a party because the Democratic Party needs a real debate about what it's for, who it's for, what it's about and where we'll take the country,” says Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic congressman, presidential candidate and a Fox News contributor.
The 67-year-old Clinton plans to make an official announcement in early 2015, leaving some doubt about whether she will indeed run. But her frontrunner status is unquestionable.
She has roughly 62 percent of the likely vote and leads all potential Democratic challengers by a numbing 49.5 percentage points.
And those numbers combined with an ambitious public-speaking schedule and the fundraising and cheerleading group Ready for Hillary are making it difficult for potential primary challengers to raise money.
In addition, Clinton’s most formidable, likely primary challenger now, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, insists she’s not running, leaving the Democratic field so wide open that 73-year-old Bernie Sanders, an independent and junior senator from Vermont, is now fourth behind Clinton, Warren and Vice President Biden, according an averaging of polls by RealClearPolitics.com
“I think you miss the chance to vet ideals,” says Richard Fowler, a Democrat and host of the progressive-leaning “Richard Fowler Talk Show.” “I think that's what elections are about. Elections are about ideals and how ideals … would then turn into policy that will then turn into how we govern.”
Clinton, a former first lady, secretary of State and New York senator, hasn’t been in a campaign-style debate since 2008, when she lost the Democratic presidential primary to President Obama, then a freshman Illinois senator.
Still, a relatively easy 2016 primary, if Clinton indeed runs, would likely save her from the pummeling she took last time.
“You’re likeable enough, Hillary,” Obama said on stage to Clinton, who was the early Democratic frontrunner in that race, too.
Among the tough questions she will likely face, and needs to answer well, include what she knew about security at the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed in a 2012 terror attack.
Clinton, who is worthy millions of dollars, also will likely have to make a strong case that she will champion the country’s poor and working class, after saying on her 2014 book tour: “We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt.”
“Hillary Clinton, I think, has proven that when you're off the trail for a while, you come back rusty,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “She certainly came back rusty on that book tour.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/17/clinton-clearing-primary-field-for-potential-2016-run-could-leave-her-short/
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Biden: 'There is a chance' I'll primary Clinton
By Alexandra Jaffe, CNN
January 21, 2015
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(CNN)Vice President Joe Biden opened the door Wednesday to a potential presidential primary challenge to former secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.
"Yes, there is a chance" he would challenge Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016, he said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"But I haven't made my mind up about that. We've got a lot of work to do between now and then. There's plenty of time."
Both Clinton and Biden have made no secret of their interest in running in 2016, but Clinton allies have been building an organization that encompasses many of the key strategists and operatives in the Democratic field, and she holds a significant double-digit lead in every poll of the potential field.
Biden doesn't always come in second — that position in Democrats' hearts is often held by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a liberal icon whom many progressives see as their only alternative to Clinton.
But Biden said he feels there's a chance for any candidate to break ahead.
"I think this is wide open on both sides," he said of the presidential primaries. "Right now my focus is getting implemented what the president talked about last night: to nail down this recovery and get the middle class back in the game.
During a round of interviews following Tuesday night's State of the Union, Biden continued to talk up his chances, saying on NBC's "Today" he feels he'd "do a good job" as president.
Although by this time in 2007, Biden had already declared, he said Thursday he doesn't need to decide until the summer about another White House run. In the meantime, the vice president has friendly remarks for Clinton — he called her a "really competent, capable person and a friend."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/politics/biden-opens-door-to-2016/index.html
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2016 Run or No, Elizabeth Warren May Define Democratic Ticket
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=9cc0c6a7-6b3f-4565-9d85-ee6388fa40b6&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: 2016 Run or No, Elizabeth Warren May Define Democratic Ticket (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Wednesday, 21 Jan 2015
By Jennifer G. Hickey
Since Elizabeth Warren took her Senate seat in 2013, she has held the role of the populist darling of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and the imagination of those who view her as a welcome alternative to current Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton. But Warren insists she is not running in 2016.
"No," was the simple answer Warren gave to Fortune magazine in a January interview.
But "no" is not a response accepted by those on the Left who are trying to draft her to run, or by those on the Right who are continuing to include her among possible Democratic opponents.
"Obviously we’ve been spending a bulk of our time on Secretary Clinton. She’s clearly the person that the Democratic establishment is a aligning behind but we’ve also done the necessary research for a potential candidate to emerge and I think Elizabeth Warren is at the top of that list," Tim Miller, the executive director of the conservative PAC America Rising, told the left-leaning blog, Talking Points Memo (TPM).
Like Miller, the Republican National Committee (RNC) also is conducting research and keeping tabs on the freshman Massachusetts senator.
News Update
"There are a lot of Dems that seem to be wary about anointing Hillary and many of them come from the Warren wing of the party. We will continue focusing on her," said RNC press secretary Kirsten Kukowski in an interview with TPM.
Republicans may be hoping to keep the notion of a Warren candidacy alive as a way to diminish Clinton's standing and to split Democratic unity, but liberals' hope is rooted in an actual belief in her stands against Wall Street and her focus on income inequality.
Last week, two liberal PACs — Democracy for America and MoveOn.org — launched a "Run Warren Run" campaign in New Hampshire and have pledged to spend $1.25 million in Iowa and New Hampshire in the hope of convincing Warren to run for president, reports The Boston Herald.
"What the groups are doing is trying to keep the concept of a Warren candidacy in play. They’re hedging," Patrick Griffin, who works for the bipartisan public opinion research firm Purple Strategies, told The Herald. "They’re hoping. But if she’s not a willing participant, there’s nothing to be pining for."
"The bottom line is: Hillary Clinton is not tomorrow’s Democratic Party. The only thing that’s been in Washington longer than the Clintons is the Washington Monument.
"Warren makes Democrats hope for what could be rather than settle for what is," Griffin added.
According to a RealClearPolitics aggregate of recent Democratic primary polls, Clinton is the clear front-runner with 61.7 percent of the vote, while Warren draws 12.2 percent.
Vice President Joe Biden and Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are both in the single digits.
"Having either Bernie or Elizabeth run would be a wonderful thing for the country," Ben Cohen, a Democratic donor and co-founder of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, told The Wall Street Journal.
"I see Hillary as part of the middle-of-the-road mainstream government that is essentially in bed with these corporations," added Cohen, who expresses a sentiment common among progressive Democrats.
Warren may not be running for president (yet), but she undoubtedly will play a role in setting the agenda for the Obama administration, as well as whomever the Democratic nominee turns out to be.
"Obama appears eager to make inequality and the struggles of working- and middle-class Americans the central agenda for the 2016 campaign, forcing Republicans — and perhaps a Democrat not named Warren — to respond.
"The concentration of wealth and political power at the top is said to be Warren's passion. She may not be running for anything. But if Obama joins her in pressing the inequality case, the Democrats could end up with the equivalent of an Obama-Warren ticket just the same," writes Francis Wilkinson in Bloomberg News.
http://www.Newsmax.com/Newsfront/Elizabeth-Warren-hillary-clinton-2016-democrats/2015/01/21/id/619794/#ixzz3PTX5wnfY
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Hillary Clinton to Start 2016 Campaign in April, Politico Says
Monday, 26 Jan 2015
Hillary Clinton may start her campaign for the White House in early April with the involvement of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and a strategy to court liberal Democrats, Politico reported.
Clinton approved a preliminary campaign budget and several key hires shortly after Christmas, signaling to advisers that her likelihood of running is 100 percent, according to the publication’s website Monday.
While many of Clinton’s top campaign advisers have already signed on under likely campaign chairman John Podesta, one new name being floated for communications director is White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, Politico said. Bill Clinton has also been deeply involved in the campaign from the start, unlike when Hillary Clinton ran against Barack Obama in 2008 and he was isolated. He’s already warned her that Jeb Bush is the real Republican threat, with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie seen as “just a sideshow.”
The Clinton campaign’s strategy to avoid strong competition from the left is to court the party’s liberals, such as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and civil-rights leader Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat, according to the article. She’s already won the backing of former Howard Dean and Senator Al Franken, of Minnesota.
http://www.Newsmax.com/Newsfront/hillary-clinton-launch-april/2015/01/26/id/620664/#ixzz3PwaRPsnR
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Democratic stunner: It isn’t even close in Elizabeth Warren vs. Hillary showdown
(http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2015/01/27/ap447200628314_c0-232-4650-2942_s561x327.jpg?3d639b7a5dac467e24e7d32f602164fce14f9807)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., center, accompanied by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, make statements introducing Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., seated at left, to the committee during his confirmation hearing to become secretary of state, ... more >
By David Sherfinski - The Washington Times - Monday, January 26, 2015
As she reportedly lays the groundwork for an all-but-declared presidential run in 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton leads Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts by commanding margins in new polls testing Democrats’ preference for their 2016 presidential nominee.
In a head-to-head matchup, Mrs. Clinton leads Mrs. Warren, 62 percent to 22 percent, when respondents were asked who they would vote for if the 2016 Democratic presidential primary were held in their state today, according to a Rasmussen poll. Sixteen percent were undecided and 18 percent said they had not heard of Mrs. Warren.
Mrs. Warren has consistently rejected calls for her to enter the race from liberal activist groups, who say her populist broadsides against Wall Street and lobbying in favor of proposals like raising the federal minimum wage would be a welcome part of the party’s debate over a 2016 message.
But Mrs. Clinton led in every demographic in the poll, including liberal Democrats.
In a separate USA Today/Suffolk University poll out Monday, 51 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters named Mrs. Clinton as their preferred nominee, compared to 31 percent who were undecided and 5 percent who named Mrs. Warren.
Mrs. Clinton also won support from 57 percent of those who identified themselves as liberal or very liberal, the wing of the party seemingly most likely to opt for Mrs. Warren.
Polling ahead of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary contest also showed Mrs. Clinton with commanding leads before then-Sen. Obama announced his candidacy.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/26/hillary-clinton-has-big-lead-over-elizabeth-warren/#ixzz3Q2SkVBTj
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. . . Hillary Clinton is far and away the leader among Democratic candidates. With 46 percent, her next closest competitor is Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has 16 percent.
The poll of 402 Republican likely caucus-goers and 401 Democratic likely caucus goers was conducted from Jan. 26-29, with a margin of error of plus or minus of 4.9 percentage points.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/scott-walker-surging-hillary-clinton-dominating-new-iowa-poll/article/2559626?utm_campaign=Fox%20News&utm_source=foxnews.com&utm_medium=feed
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New York Working Families Party Calls On Elizabeth Warren To Run For President In 2016
The Huffington Post
By Igor Bobic
Posted: 02/08/2015
The New York Working Families Party is calling on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for president in 2016.
“Senator Warren is the nation's most powerful voice for working families fighting against a set of rules written by and for Wall Street," Director Bill Lipton said in a statement on Sunday. "That's the debate we want to see, and that's why we're urging Senator Warren to run for President."
The party joins other progressive organizations, such as MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, in calling for a challenger to presumptive Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. A candidacy by the Massachusetts Democrat, who rose to fame on a platform of economic populism, would provide the party with an opportunity to debate where it stands key issues ahead of the general election.
Warren, however, has repeatedly said she is not running for the nomination. Nor has she made any moves toward a potential run for president, such as the hiring of key staff in early primary states, as many potential Republican candidates have already done.
Ready for Warren, another organization working to push the senator into the race, hailed the announcement on Sunday.
"This is a huge moment for the campaign to draft Elizabeth Warren -- we're thrilled to have the Working Families Party join this fight," said Erica Sagrans, the group's campaign manager.
Several members of the Working Families Party told The New York Times, however, that their move to push Warren to run should not be construed as animosity toward Clinton.
“It’s a vote in the context of two undeclared candidates for president,” said Ed Ott, former head of the New York City Central Labor Council. “What the Warren vote reflects is that people want a Democratic Party with a spine.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/08/working-families-party-elizabeth-warren_n_6642118.html
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:o
Shock poll: Warren leads Clinton in Iowa, N.H.
BY PAUL BEDARD | FEBRUARY 11, 2015
Populist groups cheering "Run Warren Run," today released 2016 election polls from Iowa and New Hampshire showing Sen. Elizabeth Warren ahead of dominant Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The YouGov poll of likely Democratic voters for MoveOn.org and Democracy for America also found that 79 percent want Warren and majorities support her anti-Wall Street positions.
Warren has said she doesn't plan to challenge Clinton, though several others have indicated that they are looking at a bid, including Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
The poll of 400 conducted Jan. 30 to Feb. 5 put Warren ahead of Clinton in Iowa, 31 percent to 24 percent. In New Hampshire, her lead is 30 percent to 27 percent.
The groups cautioned that the poll mostly shows that voters are extremely open to her candidacy rather than her being a Clinton killer. They hope to use the poll to encourage Warren to change her position and get into the race.
The poll analysis said: "The results show that, after likely caucus goers and primary voters learn about Elizabeth Warren’s biography and issue positions, not only do a stunning 79 percent say they want her to run, but, in both states, Warren ends up leading all other potential Democratic candidates in a head-to-head ballot question."
Key findings:
— Virtually all likely primary voters and caucusgoers indicate support for a contested race, with 98 percent agreeing that a competitive primary is good for the party, candidates and voters.
— When they are informed about Warren’s biography and issue positions, 79 percent of respondents say they would like her to run for president in 2016.
— After respondents hear about Warren’s positions and biography, without any negative information provided about other candidates, Elizabeth Warren leads all other candidates for the nomination in both states: 31 percent to 24 percent over Hillary Clinton in Iowa (with other potential candidates further behind) and 30 percent to 27 percent in New Hampshire.
The full results are here.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/shock-poll-warren-leads-clinton-in-iowa-n.h./article/2560098
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:o
Shock poll: Warren leads Clinton in Iowa, N.H.
BY PAUL BEDARD | FEBRUARY 11, 2015
Populist groups cheering "Run Warren Run," today released 2016 election polls from Iowa and New Hampshire showing Sen. Elizabeth Warren ahead of dominant Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The YouGov poll of likely Democratic voters for MoveOn.org and Democracy for America also found that 79 percent want Warren and majorities support her anti-Wall Street positions.
Warren has said she doesn't plan to challenge Clinton, though several others have indicated that they are looking at a bid, including Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
The poll of 400 conducted Jan. 30 to Feb. 5 put Warren ahead of Clinton in Iowa, 31 percent to 24 percent. In New Hampshire, her lead is 30 percent to 27 percent.
The groups cautioned that the poll mostly shows that voters are extremely open to her candidacy rather than her being a Clinton killer. They hope to use the poll to encourage Warren to change her position and get into the race.
The poll analysis said: "The results show that, after likely caucus goers and primary voters learn about Elizabeth Warren’s biography and issue positions, not only do a stunning 79 percent say they want her to run, but, in both states, Warren ends up leading all other potential Democratic candidates in a head-to-head ballot question."
Key findings:
— Virtually all likely primary voters and caucusgoers indicate support for a contested race, with 98 percent agreeing that a competitive primary is good for the party, candidates and voters.
— When they are informed about Warren’s biography and issue positions, 79 percent of respondents say they would like her to run for president in 2016.
— After respondents hear about Warren’s positions and biography, without any negative information provided about other candidates, Elizabeth Warren leads all other candidates for the nomination in both states: 31 percent to 24 percent over Hillary Clinton in Iowa (with other potential candidates further behind) and 30 percent to 27 percent in New Hampshire.
The full results are here.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/shock-poll-warren-leads-clinton-in-iowa-n.h./article/2560098
Damn that is shocking!
I would expect Hillary to be up double digits AT LEAST in both states. :-\
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FAR right or left WINS.
Obama won because he was far left. Warren could beat Hilary.
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FAR right or left WINS.
Obama won because he was far left. Warren could beat Hilary.
Weren't we seeing polls just a month ago with Hillary blowing away the remaining Democratic field?
Where is all this Elizabeth Warren mojo coming from all of the sudden?
I mean I know she gives the occasional interview here and there but other than that I really haven't even seen her in the news that much.
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Weren't we seeing polls just a month ago with Hillary blowing away the remaining Democratic field?
Where is all this Elizabeth Warren mojo coming from all of the sudden?
I mean I know she gives the occasional interview here and there but other than that I really haven't even seen her in the news that much.
People are realizing they have to start donating to a dem soon.
An they ain't thrilled about hilary's old, crooked, shady ass... doesn't exactly excite people. Then they talk to the base and realize they do love warren - she's 65, she has solid experience, and she's smart as shit, even if you consider her to be politically misguided. She is a smart woman, and she is 100% lib. Obama was the last combo of this...
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People are realizing they have to start donating to a dem soon.
An they ain't thrilled about hilary's old, crooked, shady ass... doesn't exactly excite people. Then they talk to the base and realize they do love warren - she's 65, she has solid experience, and she's smart as shit, even if you consider her to be politically misguided. She is a smart woman, and she is 100% lib. Obama was the last combo of this...
They likely have more trust in Warren. She's further to the left. I have to admit the lady brings a ton of fire and the base obviously loves her message.
You could be right about her ability to knock off Hillary.
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They likely have more trust in Warren. She's further to the left. I have to admit the lady brings a ton of fire and the base obviously loves her message.
You could be right about her ability to knock off Hillary.
she can attack the shit out of hilary, and it's okay because she's a female too.
Her voice is more pleasant than hilary. She doesn't *need* the job - hilary's legacy is incomplete if she loses the nomination AGAIN. Her message resonate with MOST on the left. She doesn't have 30 years of skeletons like hilary.
ABOVE ALL - people are EXCITED ABOUT her. She's the DLB of the Dem field :)
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she can attack the shit out of hilary, and it's okay because she's a female too.
Her voice is more pleasant than hilary. She doesn't *need* the job - hilary's legacy is incomplete if she loses the nomination AGAIN. Her message resonate with MOST on the left. She doesn't have 30 years of skeletons like hilary.
ABOVE ALL - people are EXCITED ABOUT her. She's the DLB of the Dem field :)
Having Warren in their immediately cuts the nuts off the "he's being sexist" angle from the get go.
If Bernie Sanders ends up throwing his hat in the ring and Warren/Sanders battle each other for "Far Left" supremacy that could give some leverage to Hillary to capture the more moderate constituents.
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Having Warren in their immediately cuts the nuts off the "he's being sexist" angle from the get go.
If Bernie Sanders ends up throwing his hat in the ring and Warren/Sanders battle each other for "Far Left" supremacy that could give some leverage to Hillary to capture the more moderate constituents.
IF warren is in the race, I doubt many serious donors support Sanders... he's a joke and VERY polarizing.
Warren will peel away people that only vote because the person has a vagina. moderates, even some womens power people on the right. I remember poor people I know, loving on Palin, because she was a woman - completely ignorant of any positions she held or a single word she said, one day after she was announced. We're talking lifetime democrats that said they liked Palin - simply cause she's a woman.
Warren should scare the shit out of dems - and repubs. She can easily stand there and point out hypocrisy of Hilary, Biden, Jen or Christie - easily.
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Despite Iowa visit, Biden fading from 2016 campaign chatter
Feb 12, 2015
By JOSH LEDERMAN
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(AP) In this Jan. 22, 2105 file photo, Vice President Joe Biden speaks in...
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WASHINGTON (AP) — When Vice President Joe Biden steps off of Air Force Two in Iowa, there will be no shortage of speculation about his political future. It's Iowa, after all — the place where presidential hopefuls flock, making themselves at home in roadside diners and pizza joints as they court voters in the state whose caucuses kick off the presidential primary.
Behind the scenes, though, there are few signs the vice president is taking steps toward mounting a third bid for the top job at the White House. As Hillary Rodham Clinton builds an elaborate campaign-in-waiting, and a few other Democrats nibble around the edges, Biden's name has faded from the mix of expected 2016 candidates.
Biden's aides and longtime political advisers say he isn't organizing in early voting states such as New Hampshire and Iowa, although he'll visit Des Moines on Thursday. He has yet to form an exploratory committee or other apparatus that could rapidly scale up to become a campaign.
Although he stays in close touch with former political aides, no staff has been lined up to take on key roles in a potential bid. Nor are any Democrats in the early voting states organizing a "Draft Joe" movement — the pining of those who aren't ready for Hillary is reserved for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Biden will arrive in Iowa on an official White House trip. At Drake University in Des Moines, he'll speak about the economy and the Obama administration's policies before traveling to Des Moines Area Community College for a round-table discussion about expanding access to higher education, the White House said.
But while such a visit might normally be a sign of a candidate preparing to get in the race, former Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky said the only evidence of Democrats organizing in Iowa has come from former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
"Not a whisper from Veep," she said in an email.
Flash back to eight years ago. By this time in 2007, Biden had declared his candidacy for president, launched a website, committed his first campaign gaffe — a set of comments about then-Sen. Barack Obama that rubbed some the wrong way — and cleaned up after the stumble.
This time around, Biden insists it's still possible he'll run a third time and says there's plenty of time to decide.
"There's a chance, but I haven't made my mind up about that," Biden said in a recent appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Biden has told associates that he feels little pressure or political necessity for a quick decision, according to Biden's advisers, who spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his deliberations publicly. That's in part because Clinton, who had been expected to announce her candidacy in the spring, is now expected to delay her own launch until the summer. Biden plans to hold off on making a decision for as long as possible, concerned that a campaign launch will undermine the administration's work by hastening Obama's lame-duck status.
"He's hamstrung. He's limited in what he can do without hurting the president," said Dick Harpootlian, a Biden supporter and former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. "It's a difficult balancing act."
Biden isn't the only Democrat waiting to make a possible White House campaign official. So far, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb is the only Democrat to have taken formal steps toward a run. Other likely candidates are quietly moving ahead, putting the sitting vice president at a potentially significant disadvantage if he does run.
Many of the party's top political minds, as well as major donors, are being snapped up by Clinton's future campaign, including many Obama loyalists who helped twice elect the Obama-Biden ticket. In recent weeks Obama's senior counselor John Podesta, communications director Jennifer Palmieri, pollster Joel Benenson and media strategist Jim Margolis have all indicated they plan to work for Clinton.
If he does run, Biden is likely to turn to the same cadre of advisers who have guided his career for decades, his advisers said, including Larry Rasky, a veteran of both of Biden's previous presidential campaigns. Biden's former personal aide Michael Schrum, who now works in his public engagement office, has been an intermediary in early primary states with supporters and operatives seeking to stay in the loop.
That Biden would start as the underdog, after eight years as vice president, underscores his dilemma in deciding whether to take on Clinton. While polls this early in the race have little value, they still show Clinton with a commanding lead over the rest of the Democratic field. Although Warren has repeatedly said she's not running, she's nevertheless eclipsed Biden as the preferred candidate of the party's liberal wing.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150212/us--dem_2016-biden-e1c7c348ca.html
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Hillary Donor John Catsimatidis: Warren Could Win Iowa Primary
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Image: Hillary Donor John Catsimatidis: Warren Could Win Iowa Primary (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Tuesday, 17 Feb 2015
By Melanie Batley
John Catsimatidis, the New York businessman and bundler for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said he has heard that if the election were held today, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren could beat her.
Catsimatidis suggested to Bloomberg News that a Clinton nomination is by no means certain, and before thinking about a message on the economy that would appeal to voters in a general election, she would first have to win the primary.
"One of my staff members who's from Iowa called his friend in Iowa who's the Democratic chairman of Iowa, and if the election was held today, he said that our lady friend from Massachusetts would beat Hillary," said Catsimatidis, who has raised millions of dollars for the Clinton family.
"So is that scary? That's the Obama faction," he said.
President Barack Obama defeated Clinton in the 2008 Democratic caucuses, which set him on the path to taking the nomination for president that year.
Warren has repeatedly said, however, that she is not running for president in 2016.
Last week, the resignation of David Brock from the Clinton organization Priorities USA triggered speculation that there was infighting in Clinton's camp between former Obama supporters and longtime Clinton allies.
Observers said it was reminiscent of problems she had with unity during her 2008 campaign.
http://www.Newsmax.com/Newsfront/John-Catsimatidis-hillary-clinton-warren-iowa/2015/02/17/id/625205/#ixzz3S21yhvY4
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Asking her not to run? Offering VP slot?
Hillary Clinton, Privately, Seeks the Favor of Elizabeth Warren
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Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2013.Credit Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Hillary Rodham Clinton held a private, one-on-one meeting with Senator Elizabeth Warren in December at Mrs. Clinton’s Washington home, a move by the Democrats’ leading contender in 2016 to cultivate the increasingly influential senator and leader of the party’s economic populist movement.
The two met at Whitehaven, the Clintons’ Northwest Washington home, without aides and at Mrs. Clinton’s invitation.
Mrs. Clinton solicited policy ideas and suggestions from Ms. Warren, according to a Democrat briefed on the meeting, who called it “cordial and productive.” Mrs. Clinton, who has been seeking advice from a range of scholars, advocates and officials, did not ask Ms. Warren to consider endorsing her likely presidential candidacy. Aides to Mrs. Clinton did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and aides to Ms. Warren could not be reached.
The conversation occurred at a moment when Ms. Warren’s clout has become increasingly evident. After the November election, Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, appointed Ms. Warren, a Massachusetts freshman, to a leadership role in the Senate; she led a high-profile effort to strip a spending bill of rules sought by large banks; and a patchwork of liberal groups began a movement to draft her into the presidential race.
Ms. Warren has repeatedly said she is not running for president, and she has taken no steps that would indicate otherwise. Still, she is intent on pushing a robust populist agenda, and her confidants have suggested that she will use her Senate perch during the 2016 campaign to nudge Mrs. Clinton to embrace her major causes: addressing income inequality and curtailing the power of large financial institutions.
The get-together represented a step toward relationship-building for two women who do not know each other well. And for Mrs. Clinton, it was a signal that she would prefer Ms. Warren’s counsel delivered in person, as a friendly insider, rather than on national television or in opinion articles. And for Ms. Warren, the meeting offered the opportunity to make clear what she believes are the most pressing national issues.
That Mrs. Clinton — who is currently developing her economic platform — reached out to Ms. Warren suggests that she is aware of how much the debate over economic issues has shifted even during the relatively short time she was away from domestic politics while serving as secretary of state.
Mrs. Clinton was often criticized by the right as a doctrinaire liberal during her husband’s presidency and, as a presidential candidate, ultimately ran as more of an economic populist than Mr. Obama did. But she is now seen by some on the left as insufficiently tough on Wall Street. That perception, denounced by allies as an unfair criticism, has stuck in part because of her husband’s policies, and because of the lucrative speaking fees she has collected from financial firms and private equity groups since she left the State Department in early 2013.
The meeting in December fell two months after a more awkward encounter: Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Warren crossed paths at a Massachusetts rally for the Democratic nominee for governor there last year, Martha Coakley. At that event, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly described Ms. Warren as a champion against special interests and big banks; Ms. Warren, in turn, barely acknowledged Mrs. Clinton, who was the featured guest, in her remarks.
Both Mrs. Clinton and her husband appear eager to keep a close eye on Ms. Warren; Bill Clinton in the past has appeared sensitive about her oblique criticism of his deregulation of financial institutions. Beyond policy differences, the Clintons are eager to demonstrate that they, like Ms. Warren, appreciate the economic difficulties many Americans are facing.
The December meeting recalled another private session between Mrs. Clinton and a Democratic upstart: In 2005, shortly after he was sworn in to the Senate, Barack Obama paid a visit to Mrs. Clinton in her Senate office. In that instance, though, it was Mr. Obama who was seeking counsel.
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http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/02/17/hillary-clinton-met-with-elizabeth-warren-in-december/?smid=nytpolitics&_r=0
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Hillary Clinton Seen Launching Presidential Bid in April
Move would ease uncertainties in the Democratic Party and rev up front-runner’s fundraising
By PETER NICHOLAS and CAROL E. LEE
March 1, 2015
Clinton aides have spoken of the earlier timetable in private meetings, according to people engaged in recent discussions about the presumed Democratic front-runner’s emerging 2016 campaign. Many within her camp have advocated her staying out of the fray until the summer.
Jumping in sooner would help the Democratic field take shape, reassuring party leaders and donors that the former first lady, senator and secretary of state is running. A super PAC loyal to Mrs. Clinton has faced hesitation from donors who don’t want to make big pledges until she is a candidate. Such concerns would evaporate after she announces.
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Hillary Clinton at the Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women on Feb. 24 in Santa Clara, Calif. ENLARGE
Hillary Clinton and her close advisers are telling Democratic donors that she will enter the presidential race sooner than expected, likely in April, a move that would allay uncertainties within her party and allow her to rev up fundraising.
But Mrs. Clinton would become an even larger target for Republicans when she enters the race. She also would be pressed to opine on a raft of thorny issues in the news, including how to combat the military advances of Islamic State militants in the Middle East.
One influential proponent of an earlier announcement is John Podesta, who is expected to play an important role in Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, one person familiar with the matter said. Mr. Podesta, who in January resigned as senior adviser in the Obama White House, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton.
Many Democratic activists say they would like to see the race begin in earnest—something that won’t happen until Mrs. Clinton jumps in.
Mrs. Clinton “should get in right now. If she’s going to run, get a campaign going,” said Jason Frerichs, a county Democratic chairman in Iowa, the state that holds the first contest of the 2016 campaign.
Mrs. Clinton, according to some close associates, doesn’t relish the campaign trail and is in no particular hurry to announce, especially given the scant competition for her party’s nomination. Most polls show Mrs. Clinton running far ahead of her nearest potential challenger, Vice President Joe Biden .
“She’s obviously biding her time before she gets out there,” said Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, a Democrat.
Mrs. Clinton, 67 years old, made known her feelings about grueling campaigns in a private meeting last month with London Mayor Boris Johnson. Mr. Johnson later said she had bemoaned the lengthy U.S. presidential campaigns.
During her 2008 bid, she teared up at a campaign event in New Hampshire when describing the rigors of campaign life: lack of sleep, an overreliance on pizza and limited ability to exercise.
“If I were taking this on, seeing what candidates went through last time around, I’d sure want to put it off as long as I could,” said Doug Goldman, a major fundraiser for President Barack Obama who lives in San Francisco. At this point in the 2008 cycle, Mrs. Clinton already was a candidate.
(http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HE457_CLINTO_P_20150301183310.jpg)
Hillary Clinton, who has bemoaned long presidential campaigns, speaks in December at the Massachusetts Conference for Women in Boston.
Mrs. Clinton’s team has considered first forming an exploratory committee, a common in-between step candidates use to signal they are running while avoiding the formal launch of a campaign. But her camp now appears likely to scrap that idea.
A later entrance into the race comes with certain perils. She hopes to raise more than $1 billion for the campaign, people familiar with her plans said, and some Democratic donors are concerned that if she waits until the summer, she would be hard-pressed to meet that goal.
Mr. Obama’s campaign collected $716 million during the 2012 race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
With no apparatus in place, Mrs. Clinton also has a limited capability to rapidly respond to potential threats to a campaign. Republicans and even some Democrats have questioned the foreign contributions collected by her family’s charitable foundation, as recounted in a spate of recent news stories.
As yet, the response from the Clinton side mostly has come in the form of prepared statements from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Behind the scenes, the Clinton team is busy preparing for the race. Mrs. Clinton has been meeting with numerous policy experts as she crafts a message and platform. Close adviser Huma Abedin has been holding private meetings with supporters the campaign would call on for help after it is officially under way. Several donors described Ms. Abedin’s meetings as outreach to various constituencies who would prove helpful in winning the election.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-seen-launching-presidential-bid-in-april-1425254392
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Martin O'Malley sticks with Plan A: try to upend Hillary Clinton
Former Governor O'Malley of Maryland announced Tuesday he will not run for Senate, a signal he is still running for president. Clinton's latest woes could give O'Malley hope.
By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer
MARCH 3, 2015
WASHINGTON — Former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) of Maryland isn’t running for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D), who is retiring at the end of her term.
"I am hopeful and confident that very capable public servants with a desire to serve in the Senate will step up as candidates for this important office,” the former governor said Tuesday, in a statement. “I will not be one of them."
Mr. O’Malley, it appears, is keeping his eyes on the prize: the presidency. O’Malley has been quietly preparing for months to run for president, despite the appearance that Hillary Rodham Clinton has the Democratic nomination all but locked up, without even having announced.
Now, the inevitability argument may be fraying a bit. Mrs. Clinton has faced damaging headlines about foreign government donations to the Clinton family foundation, in apparent violation of ethics rules set up during her tenure as secretary of State. On Monday night, The New York Times reported that Clinton used a personal e-mail account to conduct government business while at the State Department, in possible violation of federal rules on the e-mails of government officials.
Clinton’s small coterie of advisers has had to scramble to address these investigative reports, shining a light on the fact that the presumed candidate, in fact, is not yet fully staffed up for a presidential campaign. According to published reports, she plans to have her campaign in place in a matter of weeks; that means having a rapid response team and prominent surrogates who can respond to allegations.
In the meantime, Clinton is "behind the eight ball" in dealing with negative reports, a former Clinton aide told Politico.
Which brings us back to O’Malley. If he proceeds with a run for the Democratic nomination, he has his work cut out. He is largely unknown outside of Maryland and doesn’t have any of the cachet or cool of a Barack Obama, circa 2007. And he was succeeded by a Republican, now-Gov. Larry Hogan, who beat O’Malley’s lieutenant governor, Anthony Brown, in an upset.
Still, there is yearning in liberal Democratic circles for an alternative to Clinton, or at least to see a real nomination race and not a coronation. But O’Malley is not Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic firebrand from Massachusetts who is the object of a draft effort. She maintains she’s not running.
O’Malley continues to travel to early primary and caucus states. Last weekend at an appearance in South Carolina, O’Malley echoed Senator Warren in talking about breaking up large financial institutions, the Associated Press reported.
"People want to see new faces. There's a certain amount of Clinton fatigue," Dan Calegari, a New Hampshire Democratic activist, told the AP. "They've been around for 30 years now. Quite honestly, I think if Martin decides to get in the race, he will surprise some people."
Another reason for O’Malley to stick with his long-shot presidential race is the veepstakes. If he can build a national profile and do well in debates, perhaps he impresses the eventual Democratic nominee.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/DC-Decoder/2015/0303/Martin-O-Malley-sticks-with-Plan-A-try-to-upend-Hillary-Clinton
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Hillary is going to be the Leona Helmsley of the D party in 2016 at this rate
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Hillary is going to be the Leona Helmsley of the D party in 2016 at this rate
I doubt it. People have short memories. The MSM will provide plenty of cover. They will spend days covering how the Republican nominee's former maid had an illegitimate kid, or some other dumb non-issue.
Don't forget what they did to Romney. Harry Reid essentially accusing him of being a tax cheat from the Senate floor. Commercials accusing Romney of being responsible for the death of a woman who lost her healthcare. Offshore bank accounts like he was some kind of mobster.
At this point, Hillary would have to murder someone, on video, with subtitles, to have the MSM turn on her.
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lol run shitty candidates and blame it on the msm fucking priceless.people don't buy into all the fake scandals,you would think the party of stupid would have caught on by now
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lol run shitty candidates and blame it on the msm fucking priceless.people don't buy into all the fake scandals,you would think the party of stupid would have caught on by now
Yes, the MSM provides cover for Democrat candidates, including Obama. That's pretty obvious.
And yes, both parties run lousy candidates.
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Yes, the MSM provides cover for Democrat candidates, including Obama. That's pretty obvious.
And yes, both parties run lousy candidates.
However, the Democratic lousy candidates keep winning
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tough to blame 'the media'. people know waht they want. they aren't stalwart conservatives that mean to vote for fiscal responsibility, but are somehow fooled into voting socialism by a channel that fewer than 1% of the nation watches (msnbc).
in reality, people know. They know if they want a lib handout, or they want to vote hard work and cutbacks. They know. They know, they know. It's weak-minded thinking to blame a tv channel, to try to pretend we live in a wise, conservative nation that keeps accidentally voting liberal. It's that kind of weak thinking that has led to 2 narrow wins in the past 6 POTUS elections.
Stop blaming media. Start realizing 51% of population are lazy idiots seeking handouts. Then adjust strategy to educate and invite them in. Period.
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However, the Democratic lousy candidates keep winning
Actually it's just one lousy candidate who won two in a row.
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Actually it's just one lousy candidate who won two in a row.
lousy in your mind...probably the most consequential president since Reagan
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lousy in your mind...probably the most consequential president since Reagan
Lousy in my mind and in the minds of a whole lot of people. Check his approval ratings.
I agree he is consequential. Horrible consequences all over the place.
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lousy in your mind...probably the most consequential president since Reagan
Only in terms of him being a monumental disaster w the mess he will be leaving behind.
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Actually it's just one lousy candidate who won two in a row.
in the last 6 elections...
dems won 4. By very big margins.
repubs won 2... but one state, narrowly, could have gone either way.
Any repub laughing that they have shit locked down doesn't realize dems could be 6 of 6 right now, if FL keeps counting in 2000 and Ohio gets an actual recount in 2004. Both times, I LOL'd on getbig, in real life, etc, that Gore got screwed and Kerry did too... but repubs really need to evaulate and stop downplaying the DNC effectiveness on election day.
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Lousy in my mind and in the minds of a whole lot of people. Check his approval ratings.
I agree he is consequential. Horrible consequences all over the place.
Americans usually hate all presidents in their second term....which may be why we should have one six year term for presidents....the last two years of the second term is usually a waste of time
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in the last 6 elections...
dems won 4. By very big margins.
repubs won 2... but one state, narrowly, could have gone either way.
Any repub laughing that they have shit locked down doesn't realize dems could be 6 of 6 right now, if FL keeps counting in 2000 and Ohio gets an actual recount in 2004. Both times, I LOL'd on getbig, in real life, etc, that Gore got screwed and Kerry did too... but repubs really need to evaulate and stop downplaying the DNC effectiveness on election day.
Yes Democrats are effective on Election Day. You would know since you and your whole family voted for Obama.
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Americans usually hate all presidents in their second term....which may be why we should have one six year term for presidents....the last two years of the second term is usually a waste of time
So it has nothing to do with Obama's performance?
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Bernie Sanders: If I Run, I'll Focus on 'Serious Issues'
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=2366e96d-ea5a-404c-bec6-e56c78eaa0aa&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Bernie Sanders: If I Run, I'll Focus on 'Serious Issues' (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Tuesday, 10 Mar 2015
By Elliot Jager
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said that if he and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both wound up competing for the presidency, he would want them to have a serious debate about issues such as income inequality.
In remarks at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday, Sanders described Clinton as "a remarkable woman with an extraordinary history of public service." He added, "It would not be my job to run against her. It would be my job, if she ran and if I ran, to debate the serious issues facing our country," USA Today reported.
The senator, who was born in Brooklyn in 1941 to Polish immigrant parents, describes himself as a democratic socialist. He ran as an independent and caucuses with the Democrats.
He is expected to declare whether he will launch a presidential campaign and under what banner this month. If he does seek the presidency, he promised not to run "against" other candidates or put out negative campaign commercials.
Sanders said he wants "civil, intelligent debates" that address issues such as "grotesque" income inequality and the need to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.
"Not more political gossip of who's winning today and who's losing, who slipped on a banana peel, who said something particularly stupid," he told a lunchtime press club audience. "I'm sure I did today."
Sanders said President Barack Obama should have gone over the heads of Republicans in Congress to mobilize the grass roots against the "billionaire class" and the "1 percent."
He said, "Any serious president that wants to represent working families has to mobilize people all over this country to make the Congress an offer they can't refuse."
Sanders said he backs a $15 an hour minimum wage instead of the current "starvation" wage of $7.25. He would push for pay equity legislation for women, block corporations from parking assets overseas, expand Social Security, and work to make healthcare a "right," according to USA Today.
On foreign policy, he would do his best to keep the U.S. out of the "never-ending wars in the quagmire of the Middle East." He said it was up to the Arab countries — with the U.S. in a supporting role only — to be in the vanguard against the Islamic State group.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-income-inequality-minimum-wage/2015/03/10/id/629241/#ixzz3U0nEKgdg
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Reuters Poll: Democratic Support for Hillary Clinton Softens
Thursday, 19 Mar 2015
Democratic support for Hillary Clinton's expected presidential campaign is softening amid controversy over her use of personal email when secretary of state, but most Democrats are for now sticking by their party's presumed candidate.
Support for Clinton's candidacy has dropped about 15 percentage points since mid February among Democrats, with as few as 45 percent saying they would support her in the last week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll. Support from Democrats likely to vote in the party nominating contests has dropped only slightly less, to a low in the mid-50s over the same period.
Even Democrats who said they were not personally swayed one way or another by the email flap said that Clinton could fare worse because of it, if and when she launches her presidential campaign, a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.
Special: New study uncovers link between Flomax, Diabetes and Cancer
Democratic strategist Ben LaBolt, a former spokesman for President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign, said that the email controversy has been a "galvanizing call for the Clinton campaign-in-waiting to build an organization," by hiring top political communicators who can defend her record. Clinton, who ran for the White House in 2008 and lost to Obama, is expected to announce as early as April that she plans to seek the White House in 2016.
Former congressional and Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon, White House aide Jennifer Palmieri and Jesse Ferguson, who has handled press for Democratic congressional campaigns, are expected to be among the communications experts joining Clinton's campaign. All three are highly respected in Democratic political circles.
"Democrats want to see Secretary Clinton work for the nomination, but with the string of hires her campaign has announced in the early (voting) states despite a weak field of competitors, every indication is that she plans to," LaBolt said.
The online poll of 2,128 adults from March 10 to March 17 revealed that Americans, including two-thirds of Democrats, said they were aware of the controversy surrounding Clinton's decision to use her personal email rather than a government account, along with a personal server, when she was the top U.S. diplomat from 2009 to 2013.
More than a third of Democrats and 44 percent of political independents agreed that the email issue has hurt the former secretary of state politically.
"I admire the fact that she has been so strong on a lot of different things, she stands up for what she believes in, but I do think the emails will hurt her, unfortunately," said Patricia Peacock, 49, of Lewiston, Maine, who took part in the survey.
Clinton has tried to tamp down accusations that she used her personal email account to keep her records from public review, which would support an old political narrative that Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, are secretive and seek to play by a different set of rules.
Clinton told a packed room of reporters at the United Nations earlier this month that she used her personal email for official business for the sake of convenience, because it was easier to carry only one device.
Clinton's office said she has since turned over paper copies of more than 30,000 work emails last year at the State Department's request, but did not hand over about 32,000 that were private or personal records.
The cache included 300 emails related to a 2012 attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi that led to the death of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, which were subsequently handed over to a Republican-led congressional committee investigating the incident.
The panel has subpoenaed Clinton's remaining emails and said they would like her to testify on the matter before April.
About half of the adults surveyed, including 46 percent of Democrats, agreed there should be an independent review of all Clinton's emails to ensure she turned over everything that is work related.
More than half of Americans - and 41 percent of Democrats - said they supported the Republican-controlled congressional committee's effort to require Clinton to testify about the emails, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.
About half of Democrats said they thought Clinton was composed during the March 10 press conference, but 14 percent found her evasive and 17 percent said she avoided answering questions directly.
Survey respondent Tom Trevathan, 74, a retired math professor from Arkansas, said he was "less than happy" with Clinton's performance at the news conference.
"It reminds me of a history she has had not responding thoroughly to inquiries," Trevathan said. "If she would be more open about the situation, and show more leadership in saying what she did and why, I think it would be better."
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/reuters-poll-hillary-clinton-support/2015/03/19/id/631092/#ixzz3UrQvu1IY
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Truth. Although you could say the same thing about the GOP when it comes to the lack of a coherent message.
'Morning Joe' Panel: Hillary Has No Message, Dems Have No Bench
Monday, 23 Mar 2015
By Melanie Batley
Former secretary of State Hillary Clinton does not currently have a campaign message to take into the 2016 presidential campaign, and the Democratic Party is short of other viable candidates, a panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program said Monday.
Co-host Mike Brzezinski asked Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein to articulate Clinton's message in 10 seconds and Stein said it wasn't something that would be possible to do.
"That's impossible," he said. "I don't think she has a message right now."
The Washington Free Beacon posted video onto YouTube.
Brzezinski contrasted Clinton with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who many on the left are eager to draft into the race, citing Warren's populist messages as part of her appeal.
She added that Clinton will likely play up her gender as a key factor of her candidacy.
"Unlike 2008, where she rarely mentioned the historic nature of what she was trying to do, you can already see it in what she's doing, whether it's on Twitter or in some of these speeches, which is saying she'll bring a perspective to the presidency that's never been brought before," he said. "That's her message."
"I was trying to make a point," Brzezinski said. "One has a message. The other doesn't."
"That's very true," Stein said.
Contributor Donny Deutsch said its worth considering why Democrats have so few options other than Clinton.
"Sam, does it surprise you in this great land of ours there are no other up and coming Democrats?" Deutsch asked. "There are so many interesting characters on the Republican side. Young, you know, of various races, of various points of view, and you would think there would be a governor somewhere, there would be a mayor of a city."
"This is a huge problem for the Democrats," Stein said. "They don't have a bench.... There is not a young, viable Democratic bench out there in part because of the midterm losses that Obama has sustained, and in part because of gerrymandering. This is a problem that strategists talk with increasing alarm about."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Hillary-Clinton-campaign-message-Morning-Joe/2015/03/23/id/631962/#ixzz3VFDUxt2f
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Is Joe Biden ready for Joe?
The vice president isn’t exactly running for president, but Clinton’s email missteps have focused new attention on the possibility that he might.
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE 3/26/15
(http://images.politico.com/global/2015/03/25/150325_biden_gty_1160_1160x629.jpg)
Joe Biden isn’t not running for president.
That’s not a typo: Hillary Clinton is about to kick off her campaign, and the vice president has taken no steps to run, or to figure out a real plan for what happens if he doesn’t. But he’s not out of the race, either.
Biden ran for the Democratic nomination in 1988 and again in 2008, and has said he’ll announce this summer whether he’s going to try again. His family is vacillating, aides say. Close advisers say they are so in the dark about what’s in his head that some think he might blow past that self-imposed summer deadline, or even December, or even later, just letting the question hang.
Early-state Biden loyalists are getting anxious. Staffers are trying to hold them off, while quietly staying in the loop with the Democratic National Committee about possible primary debate schedules. They acknowledge that reworking his travel plans in February to put him in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in the space of a week might have looked a little too eager.
“‘We’d love to see more of you in New Hampshire,’” Steve Shurtleff, the Democratic leader of the New Hampshire House and a state regional chair for Biden’s 2008 campaign, said he told Biden when he came to Concord three weeks ago. “And he just smiled and said, ‘We’ll see.’ So I guess we’ll see.”
Before the Clinton email scandal broke, Biden was telling people privately he wanted to see how her roll-out went, already intrigued that she’d moved up her announcement date. But he hasn’t mentioned the email situation, say people who’ve spoken with him in recent weeks.
Biden barely registers in 2016 polls and even his superfans admit that he couldn’t compete with Clinton on fundraising — a problem intensified by his decision last year not to start a super PAC since that would risk politicizing him to the point of jeopardizing his role as a conduit for members of Congress to President Barack Obama.
That’s part of the issue: he doesn’t want to step back from the job he’s got, even if that means letting go of the dream of a Biden presidency for the sake of promoting the Obama presidency. Fanning the flames and going to early states is part of running for president, but it’s also a good way, he and people around him know, of drumming up a little more attention if he wants to talk up Obama’s economic record and agenda.
If he doesn’t run, Biden’s circle envisions him taking a central role in the campaign that would be unprecedented for a sitting vice president who isn’t running.
“The vice president will definitely be a big player in 2016,” said one person close to Biden. “The question is: In what role? That’s what he’s contemplating.”
Yet to the diehards, the vision persists of 2016 as a Joe Biden election cycle, where the central themes are middle-class populism, a record of making Washington work with Republicans and Democrats, foreign policy experience, and authenticity.
“In someone more calculating, it would seem like this is threading a narrative for 2016,” said one person familiar with Biden. “But it’s not new to him. It’s not like he just came up with that narrative.”
He’s inclined to run, Biden’s kept telling people privately, if he thinks he can really bring something to the race that Clinton isn’t providing.
Many people around him are pretty sure he won’t. The Clinton campaign tends to agree — but if he did, what a problem they fear that would be for them in Iowa.
So they’re trying to give him space, and time.
Meanwhile, Martin O’Malley is going around to early state Biden stalwarts and asking to be their second choice if he doesn’t run. Those include people like Iowa State Rep. Jim Lykam.
Two weeks ago, while the uproar over Clinton’s use of a private email server was at its loudest, Iowa State Sen. Joe Seng tracked down Lykam at a reception in Des Moines. Seng wanted to throw another big “Joe for Joe” fundraiser in Davenport, like one he did in 2007.
“Have you talked to him lately?” Seng asked Lykam.
“I talked to him last summer and I said, ‘Hey, if you’re going to get in, just give me a call, I’ll be with you,’” Lykam recalled. “I don’t know how I could go about contacting him.”
Since the Clinton email story broke, Shurtleff in New Hampshire says he’s been more eager to hear from Biden — and more confused about why he’s still waiting.
“What we’ve seen with Secretary Clinton early on is she took a lot of oxygen out of the room. But I think now people are having second thoughts,” Shurtleff said. “I think Joe Biden would be a logical person for people to consider.”
But even if she turns out to be the wrong candidate, people close to Biden say, he knows that doesn’t mean he’s the right candidate. That’s what he’s signaling to supporters, too.
“It will be his choice, with his family,” said Teri Goodman, an old Iowa friend who was on his 2008 steering committee and got Biden talking a little 2016 when she stopped by his office in Washington last Tuesday.
Goodman didn’t tell him to make up his mind already. But she acknowledged that he’s got to.
“There’s always time, but the time is getting on the skinny side out here in Iowa,” Goodman said.
Biden has lines he uses with supporters who catch up with him on the ground: “We’ll talk,” he says, or “If I had hair like that, I’d be president.” Or even wistfully: “You know, I think I could win Iowa.”
Biden knows many of his friends and supporters are getting impatient, people around him say.
He’s frustrated that he’s not a more regular part of a conversation that takes the possibility of campaigns by O’Malley and Jim Webb seriously. Yet he is reluctant to actively push himself into it — when former South Carolina chairman Dick Harpootlian talked up Biden as an alternative to Clinton earlier this month, it did not go over well with the vice president’s confidants.
While it’s sometimes said that Clinton’s problem has often been that she has too many advisers, some of those very same Biden advisers fret that he has too few. They tend to answer questions about a Biden presidential run with things like, “your guess is as good as mine.”
No one who’s anywhere near Biden had ever heard of William Pierce, a 26-year-old veteran and 2012 Obama campaign volunteer in Chicago who has decided to start his own Draft Biden movement. He started fundraising this week with a goal for the summer of $5 million and 50,000 signatures on a petition they want to present (and is making very slow progress toward both).
“My internal goal is that we can organize so well, we can create such a picturesque version of what would happen if he did get in,” Pierce said.
Pierce has six people chipping in. He’s got an email list that’s grown from 3,000 to 14,000 in the two weeks since he launched the effort.
Even Pierce pegs Biden’s chances of running at 50-50 at best.
“We’re ready. We’re anxious. We want to get something started,” said Sharon Holle, Biden’s 2008 Davenport field director.
“He’s been here. He maintains his contacts,” said Iowa State Sen. Herman Quirmbach, who represents Ames. “If he decides to run, he’ll draw a lot of interest.”
“‘We’ll talk,’” Harpootlian remembers Biden saying when he saw the vice president in South Carolina last month. “It wasn’t dismissive. It was a sort of ‘Hey, we need to talk about this.’”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/wheres-joe-116409.html#ixzz3VVzQZGOG
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Clinton, With Focus on Human Side, Readies 2016 Bid
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=5d861f40-5725-442c-813b-ccb8400d89ff&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Clinton, With Focus on Human Side, Readies 2016 Bid (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
Tuesday, 07 Apr 2015
By Elliot Jager
When Hillary Clinton announces her candidacy for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination — a move that's "likely only days away" — she will simultaneously be reintroducing herself as approachable, emotionally open and without any presumption of entitlement, CNN reported.
In contrast to her 2008 launch, the 2016 campaign will not start with a focus on the candidate, who has near universal name recognition, but on what ordinary Americans have told her they want from their next president.
There will be fewer extravaganzas and a more determined effort to portray a candidate who does not take her nomination or the quest for the White House for granted.
She will spend more time pressing the flesh, starting in Iowa and New Hampshire. Her handlers will seek out folksier settings so Clinton can hear what voters have to say, CNN reported.
Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, and political consultant Marlon Marshall have laid the groundwork in those two early primary states. The goal, according to CNN, is to show the former first lady, senator and secretary of state as open to the concerns, criticism and complaints of ordinary Americans.
The campaign will shun, based on focus group findings, explicit references to Clinton's historic chance to be the nation's first female president.
"First and foremost people vote for candidates that they like, people who connect with them emotionally," Bonnie Campbell, co-chair of Clinton's 2008 campaign in Iowa, told CNN.
Since she left the State Department, Clinton has been speaking more about her role as a mother and grandmother. She can be expected in the campaign to more tightly align those references to messages that reveal her character.
"Reintroducing her is important because we want to make sure that the opposing party and even other Democrats aren't able to cast the secretary in a light that just isn't her," said South Carolina state Rep. Bakari Sellers, a Clinton backer. "She has an amazing skill to connect with voters and we just have to give her that opportunity," CNN reported.
The task of rebranding Clinton belongs first and foremost to public relations guru Kristina Schake, who has served as first lady Michelle Obama's communications director, The New York Times reported.
So as not to overshadow the candidate, former president Bill Clinton will likely be given an understated role in the campaign.
Arrangements for staff, volunteers, and a headquarters in downtown Brooklyn, New York, are already in place.
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/hillary-clinton-2016-presidency-rebranding/2015/04/07/id/636855/#ixzz3WjxMpDTS
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Rand is already running against Hilary. not a bad strategy.
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However, the Democratic lousy candidates keep winning
Yes, they "keep winning" two in a row, after losing two in a row.
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Yes, they "keep winning" two in a row, after losing two in a row.
Dems have won 4 of 6 elections by wide margins.
Repubs have won 2 of 6 last elections by a single state.
Dems could be 6-0 just as easily, dude. Hardly worthy of celebration.
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Dems have won 4 of 6 elections by wide margins.
Repubs have won 2 of 6 last elections by a single state.
Dems could be 6-0 just as easily, dude. Hardly worthy of celebration.
Nobody is celebrating. Just cleaning up the liberal partisan garbage you like to spew. :)
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Yes, they "keep winning" two in a row, after losing two in a row.
Yep, gotta love how they desperately try to couch it in the most recent terms.
Gotta suck that they have an only-runner who's scandal-ridden and still clinging to a cheating husband.
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liberal garbage
no need to drag Jeb into this.
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no need to drag Jeb into this.
Troll.
Jeb would probably whip the shit out of every other 2012 potential.
And he would defeat obama too.
He is extremely smart, well connected, he has insane experience, he knows his shit, he has plenty of resources...
He would win in a cakewalk. People don't hate bush anymore.
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Former RI Governor Considering 2016 Campaign
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=95e1e97b-9960-46e2-a4a6-49c98d9375ad&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Former RI Governor Considering 2016 Campaign Gov. Lincoln Chafee. D- R.I. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Thursday, 09 Apr 2015
Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee says he has formed an exploratory committee to consider a Democratic presidential campaign, saying in a video that voters want to "assess the character and experience of those offering ideas."
The Republican-turned-independent-turned Democrat says in the video on his website that President Barack Obama has "led admirably" but he remains "alarmed" about instability in the Middle East and North Africa. He says Americans are seeking "safety, stability and sustainability."
The former U.S. senator joined the Democratic party in May 2013 but ultimately decided not to seek re-election as governor last year. He has expressed distaste for raising campaign money and negativity in politics.
Hillary Rodham Clinton remains the dominant potential candidate in the Democratic primaries and is expected to announce a campaign within days.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/chafee-running-campaign-2016/2015/04/09/id/637469/#ixzz3WrISMkZZ
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1983 called, they want their suit back.
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=95e1e97b-9960-46e2-a4a6-49c98d9375ad&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
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Sources: Hillary Clinton to launch presidential campaign on Sunday
Published April 10, 2015
FoxNews.com
Hillary Clinton plans to kick off her long-expected 2016 presidential campaign on Sunday, two Democratic sources told Fox News.
The sources said the former secretary of state is expected to first reveal her decision to voters via social media. The sources added that, as has been widely expected, Clinton will then head to key early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire next week.
Clinton would be the first Democratic candidate to confirm a run for the White House, and she is considered the clear frontrunner to win the party’s nomination. If she were to win in 2016, she would be the first female U.S. president.
Sources say, in advance of her announcement, Clinton has been holed up in recent days behind closed doors in policy meetings. The meetings have covered a range of subjects, including national security as well as domestic topics like the economy.
Clinton would join the race after two Republicans -- Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky -- already declared. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also is expected to announce his plans next week. Despite not being an official candidate, Clinton has faced immense scrutiny from the media, and Republicans, over her use of personal email while secretary of state and her family foundation's acceptance of foreign donations. On Friday, Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus said Clinton "has left a trail of secrecy, scandal and failed liberal policies that no image consultant can erase."
The specific timing of Clinton's announcement is unclear, though one source told The Guardian she will declare her candidacy through Twitter at noon Sunday. The tweet reportedly would be followed by a video and email announcement, and then a series of conference calls announcing her tour, which starts in Iowa.
On Friday, two Democrats who are weighing whether to challenge Clinton also appeared to needle her looming candidacy.
"I think history is full of examples where the inevitable front-runners are inevitable right up until they are no longer inevitable," former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley told Fox News. "What I've heard all around the country is that people want new leaders, they want to hear the voices of new leaders and they want to start a robust debate about the issues our country faces."
Former Democratic Virginia Sen. Jim Webb also told Fox News "people are looking for leadership that they can trust" and leaders who say what they believe "rather than massaging issues to try to get to ... one political safety zone or another, who will really take the risk of leadership."
Asked whether Clinton has done that in her career, Webb said: "You'll have to ask her."
On Monday, Clinton’s political team – from senior advisers to state operatives – was put on alert for a presidential campaign announcement.
A Democratic official earlier told Fox News that Clinton’s approach in next year’s election will illustrate that as a presidential candidate “she fights for every vote and takes nothing for granted". This would be in sharp contrast to her failed 2008 run, when she was considered the inevitable Democratic presidential nominee but failed to see the burgeoning rival campaign of now-President Obama.
The plan in 2016 is to have Clinton try to “connect with real people” better than she did eight years ago, according to a Democratic official with knowledge the announcement plans and strategy.
Clinton started the campaign clock ticking last week when her team signed a lease for a massive new campaign headquarters at Pierrepont Plaza in Brooklyn, New York that occupies at least two floors. The campaign has at least 35 staffers in New York City alone.
That action by Team Clinton means that by FEC rules, she has 15 days since the signing of the lease to file the paperwork officially for a 2016 presidential run because her expenditure on the lease was purportedly over $5,000.
Sources said the bulk of Clinton staffers who have been hired already started moving into the campaign headquarters in Brooklyn this past Wednesday -- another sign the announcement is imminent.
The Clinton campaign continues to scoop up key campaign operatives, with both Karen Finney and Oren Shur recently joining her VIP team. Finney will work as strategic communications adviser, and Shur as director of paid media, according to a Clinton spokesperson.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/04/10/hillary-clinton-will-reportedly-launch-presidential-campaign-over-weekend/?intcmp=latestnews
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She is not aging well. :-\ But I agree with the "insider" that she will raise an insane amount of money.
(http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2015/04/10/hillary-to-launch-campaign-this-weekend-with-insane-fundraising-push/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/1428673516271.cached.jpg)
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton smiles as she attends the early childhood development initiative "talk to you baby" in Brooklyn, New York April 1, 2015 .
Hillary to Launch Campaign This Weekend With ‘Insane’ Fundraising Push
04.10.15
David Freedlander
On Sunday, Clinton will announce her presidential run and plans to use next week to raise ‘an insane amount of money,’ an insider says.
After the announcement comes the deluge.
Hillary Clinton will announce her presidential campaign this Sunday, sources in the Clinton operation tell The Daily Beast.
After that, the nascent campaign will embark on a fundraising push that the Clinton camp says will dwarf anything seen in the history of presidential politics.
“They are going to raise in one week what some Republican presidential candidates are going to raise the entire cycle,” said one Clinton aide.
On Saturday afternoon, Ready for Hillary, the super PAC that has been a Clinton campaign-in-waiting in the years since Clinton left the State Department, will host what is likely a final fundraising push at SouthwestNY, a sleek Tex-Mex restaurant steps from the rebuilt World Trade Center.
From then on, Ready for Hillary will encourage its 3.6 million supporters to give to Clinton’s real campaign while the super PAC quietly dissolves.
Ready for Hillary has raised close to $15 million from nearly 150,000 donors, and Clintonistas believe that those same donors alone could give as much as 10 times that amount to a Clinton campaign.
They are expected to be joined in this fundraising by Clinton allies like EMILY’s List, the organization dedicated to electing pro-choice women to office that is viewed as central to Clinton’s 2016 chances.
Regardless of when she announces, the plan, one Clinton insider told The Daily Beast, was to do a massive fundraising push through her website and with allied organizations to raise “an insane amount of money” right out of the starting gate.
A senior official with Clinton’s soon to be campaign tamped down fundrasing expectations.
“The ‘insane fundraising’ expectations comments are about as connected to reality as that person probably is to the campaign. After eight years away from fundraising and a list a fraction of the size of Obama's, that couldn't be further from the truth.”
“They are going to raise in one week what some Republican presidential candidates are going to raise the entire cycle.”
Clinton is likely to announce her run for president on Twitter, linking the announcement through a variety of social media platforms.
Clinton has been unusually active on Twitter in recent weeks to generate an audience for her expected announcement.
Since the last week of March, she has tweeted twice: in support of the Affordable Care Act and against an Indiana law that some say would discriminate against gays. She has also weighed in on the shooting of an unarmed black man in South Carolina—“Praying for #WalterScott’s family. Heartbreaking & too familiar. We can do better—rebuild trust, reform justice system and respect all lives.”; paid tribute to retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid; and come out against “payday lenders.”
After Clinton announces her candidacy, she will likely jet off to the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire early next week. While most presidential campaigns strategize over how to get media attention, Clinton operatives are trying to figure out how to wrangle a ballooning press corps that for weeks has competed over such small-bore issues as which empty Brooklyn loft space will house her campaign headquarters and looked for meaning in every Clinton facial expression and utterance since 2012.
Bill and Hillary Clinton have always been prodigious Democratic fundraisers, but they will enter the 2016 election cycle as newcomers to the post-Citizens United world of campaign finance. Super PACs associated with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), for example, have raised $31 million since he announced his campaign last week. And former Florida governor Jeb Bush has embarked on a “shock and awe” fundraising blitz to overwhelm his Republican rivals.
Hillary Clinton intends to upstage them all.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/10/hillary-to-launch-campaign-this-weekend-with-insane-fundraising-push.html
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Democrat Lincoln Chafee Tells CNN He's Running For President
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=d0a3b689-1fdf-41f9-99e8-4c409ae4b441&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Democrat Lincoln Chafee Tells CNN He's Running For President (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Thursday, 16 Apr 2015
By Sandy Fitzgerald
Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee told CNN Thursday that he'll be seeking the Democratic nomination for the White House, making his intentions official just one week after announcing he had formed an exploratory committee.
"Yes, that's why I'm running, because I feel strong about where we're going as a country," the Republican-turned-independent-turned Democrat told CNN's John Berman on the network's "New Day" show Thursday.
Chafee made his comments after Berman asked him why he has continued to be critical of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, including criticizing her for her vote while she was a New York senator for the war in Iraq.
"That was a moment where the premise for going to Iraq was so false, that there were weapons of mass destruction, she didn't do her homework. We live with the ramifications," Chafee told CNN's "State of the Union" program on Sunday. "You may say that's 12 years ago — that's a big motivator for me running. If you show a lack of judgment, lack of doing homework then what can we expect in the future?"
He also criticized Clinton's term as secretary of state on Sunday's program, saying her service was "kind of a muscular, top-down, unilateral, too close to neo-cons, too Bush-like" that ended with "precious few" accomplishments.
But he does want to court supporters of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a liberal favorite who has said she isn't going to run for president.
"There's no doubt that Sen. Warren's absolutely right about what's happening to the middle class," Chafee said. "She's just been a prophet about this for a number of years."
Chafee has said that Clinton's vote for the Iraq War should disqualify her from receiving the Democratic nomination.
"One of the motivators for me to run is, I just don't think the United States president should have voted for that huge mistake," Chafee told the National Journal. "And I definitely don't think the Democratic Party nominee should have made that huge mistake."
Chafee, while serving as a Republican senator, was one of 23 senators who voted against the Iraq War and the only member of his party to do so.
On Thursday, Chafee admitted that there's "no doubt I'm the underdog." He has not held public office since his term ended last year, and has not been included in most polling involving the Democratic Party.
Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse defeated Chafee for the Senate seat in 2006, and then Chafee became Rhode Island's governor as an independent in 2010. He later switched again to become a Democrat, choosing not to seek re-election in 2014.
He told CNN Sunday he switched parties because the "Republican Party changed and I never changed. As I became an independent my values never changed whether it's on fiscal responsibility, environment or using government tools to help the less fortunate."
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Lincoln-Chafee-Democrat-Rhode-Island/2015/04/16/id/638912/
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Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee told CNN Thursday that he'll be seeking the Democratic nomination for the White House, making his intentions official just one week after announcing he had formed an exploratory committee.
He looks like a douche, but I like the way he attacks Hilary, so I won't trash him quite yet.
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He looks like a douche, but I like the way he attacks Hilary, so I won't trash him quite yet.
it will actually be interesting how Hillary handles him..does she just blow him off and refuse to debate him????..she then runs the risk of looking arrogant...if she debates him how do the Clintons react to someone trying to destroy Hilary in a debate???..Bill's not gonna be too happy
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She is not aging well. :-\ B
She is 67 years old.
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Bernie Sanders: 2016 decision coming 'very shortly
“The Ron Paul of the left”: Why Bernie Sanders is the cranky socialist 2016 needs
(http://media.salon.com/2015/04/Screen-Shot-2015-04-16-at-4.11.07-PM-620x412.png)
Liberal Democrats might be a little surprised, pleasantly so, by the nascent Hillary Clinton campaign’s flashes of progressivism. At least in the early going, she’s deploying something of a populist lexicon that is unexpected, given her close ties with Wall Street (and virtually the entire global elite, let’s be honest). She’s already floated the idea of a Constitutional amendment to make campaign finance transparent after Citizens United, and she calls out the vast disparity in the incomes of CEOs and average workers, whose incomes have not risen proportionately with increasing productivity in recent decades. It’s likely that her Wall Street pals are not thrilled with her denouncing a rigged tax code that allows hedge fund managers and other financiers to very often pay lower rates than wage earners.
But let’s not get it twisted: Secretary Clinton is not a populist. She leads all possible presidential candidates of both parties among voters from the millionaire class, according to a survey by CNBC. She is expected to amass a war chest of $1 billion, much of that sum coming from the wealthy elite with whom she’s been associated for decades.
So despite the populist tone she strikes in the proximity of corn, many progressive Democrats still worry that a Clinton presidency would be, well, a Clinton presidency, a DLC-type affair like that of husband Bill — during whose tenure NAFTA was enacted, welfare was “reformed,” and Glass-Steagall was repealed.
As the Clinton coronation has proceeded, progressives have defiantly sought their beautiful loser, the candidate who could, even falling short of the nomination, push Clinton off of her easy centrism and force her to articulate more progressive policy goals, to which she’d be wed in the general election.
So far it’s been Sen. Elizabeth Warren whom Clinton skeptics have desperately tried to enlist to nudge Hillary leftward. But Warren is not running. Repeat: She’s not running for president. And, frankly, it’s become a little sad at this point to watch the calls for her entry continue, despite repeated, definitive and resolute denials of presidential ambition from Warren.
Plus, Warren’s not ready. The freshman senator with foreign policy experience, totaling nil, would be torn apart by the former Secretary of State in that arena. Sen. Warren is not a seasoned politician, and while Clinton has her own inherent weaknesses as a campaigner, it’s not hard to imagine Clinton’s team mopping the convention floor with the former academic. Clinton, after all, took President Obama, a once-in-a-generation campaigner, to a late-inning showdown in the primaries of 2007-08.
But if progressives do want some bang for their buck–and there won’t be many non-Clinton bucks to go around–the way to go is probably a cranky socialist from Vermont.
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She is 67 years old.
we seem to judge women by hollywood standards of beauty...Hillary looks the way she should for a 67 yr old
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we sem udge women by hollywood standards oif beauty...Hillary looks the way she should for a 67 yr old
Actually, she looks a lot better then the average 67 year old woman.
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Actually, she looks a lot better then the average 67 year old woman.
Agreed...I just didn't want to go too far...but since you also see the same thing then I agree too ;)
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Actually, she looks a lot better then the average 67 year old woman.
Not to me.
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I am incredibly underwhelmed by the quality of these potential choices.
De Blasio in secret bid to be Dems’ 2016 pick
By Fredric U. Dicker
April 20, 2015
(https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/deb11.jpg?w=720&h=480&crop=1)
Photo: Seth Gottfried ; Startraks
Despite repeated claims to the contrary, Mayor Bill de Blasio is positioning himself to be the leftist “progressive” alternative to Wall Street-friendly Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president, a national party operative told The Post.
De Blasio’s hope, the operative said, is a “Draft de Blasio’’ movement will develop among progressive activists over the next several months that will lead to the mayor being able to defeat Clinton in the primary elections next year in much the same way leftist Sen. George McGovern successfully challenged the initially front-running establishment Democratic candidate, Sen. Edmund Muskie, more than 40 years ago.
Standing ready to back de Blasio against Clinton, said the operative, is the state’s small but influential Working Families Party, which has strong ties to de Blasio and is funded by some of the nation’s most powerful labor unions.
Earlier this year, the New York-based WFP urged Massachusetts Senator and Wall Street-bashing “progressive’’ favorite Elizabeth Warren to challenge Clinton and run for president — but she has repeatedly said she won’t do so.
“With Warren saying she’s not running, de Blasio and his advisers are trying to position the mayor as the ‘draft’ candidate for the left in 2016. That’s why he refused to endorse Hillary last week,’’ contended the operative, who is involved in presidential politics.
The draft effort explains why de Blasio was accompanied last week on his “progressive” speech-making trip to Iowa by John Del Cecato, one of the nation’s most important Democratic communications strategists and the man responsible for the popular “Dante” TV spot that helped get de Blasio elected mayor, said the operative.
“Why would your ad maker be traveling with you in a non-campaign year? Why was he there with de Blasio in Iowa unless you’re trying for something bigger?’’ asked the operative.
For Del Cecato, an expert in Iowa politics and a longtime campaign adviser to President Obama, helping develop a draft effort for de Blasio may also be personal.
Del Cecato was described by the operative as “part of the faction of Obama advisers who still deeply dislike and deeply distrust Clinton’’ dating from the time the two faced off in the Democratic primaries in 2008.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who came under attack from fellow Democrats last year for doing little to help his party recapture control of the state Senate, still hasn’t done anything to help the Senate Democrats this year, The Post has learned.
Even as Cuomo recently updated his own campaign committee for a possible re-election campaign in 2018 and held a $15,000-a-person fundraiser for his campaign committee, he “has not provided any help with fundraising or candidate recruitment to date,’’ a source close to Senate Democrats told The Post.
The governor, who faced a surprisingly strong primary challenge last fall in part because of his refusal to help Senate Democrats, has been publicly criticized by Senate Democratic Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins for leaving her out of state budget talks. The remarks didn’t sit well with the thin-skinned Cuomo, insiders say.
The Senate Democratic source, noting the Senate elections don’t take place until 2016, said Cuomo would be officially put on the spot with a formal request for assistance later this year.
http://nypost.com/2015/04/20/de-blasio-sets-sights-on-presidential-draft-candidacy-vs-hillary/
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Bernie Sanders To Launch Presidential Campaign
The Huffington Post | By Sam Levine
Posted: 04/28/2015
(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2890206/images/r-BERNIE-SANDERS-huge.jpg)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will launch a campaign seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 on Thursday.
Sanders will be the first official challenger for the Democratic nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who launched her campaign earlier this month.
Sanders' decision was first reported byVermont Public Radio, and confirmed by The Huffington Post.
Sanders, who first entered the Senate in 2007, has criticized Clinton for being too soft on Wall Street and has doubted whether Clinton can address income inequality.
Sanders has been an outspoken critic of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal the Obama administration is negotiating with 11 Pacific countries. Sanders is also a critic of the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which struck down corporate campaign contribution limits. Sanders has tried to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision.
While Clinton is heavily favored over Sanders, the Vermont senator's entry in the race will provide a platform for Democrats to criticize Clinton from the left. Sanders' presence could also highlight a divide between progressive and moderate Democrats.
Before assuming office in the Senate in 2007, Sanders represented Vermont in the U.S. House for 16 years. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress.
According to HuffPost Pollster, which aggregates publicly available polling data, Sanders trails Clinton by 55.1 percentage points. He also trails Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Vice President Joe Biden.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/28/bernie-sanders-presidential-campaign_n_7165270.html
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Bernie Sanders To Launch Presidential Campaign
The Huffington Post | By Sam Levine
Posted: 04/28/2015
(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2890206/images/r-BERNIE-SANDERS-huge.jpg)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will launch a campaign seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 on Thursday.
Sanders will be the first official challenger for the Democratic nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who launched her campaign earlier this month.
Sanders' decision was first reported byVermont Public Radio, and confirmed by The Huffington Post.
Sanders, who first entered the Senate in 2007, has criticized Clinton for being too soft on Wall Street and has doubted whether Clinton can address income inequality.
Sanders has been an outspoken critic of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal the Obama administration is negotiating with 11 Pacific countries. Sanders is also a critic of the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which struck down corporate campaign contribution limits. Sanders has tried to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision.
While Clinton is heavily favored over Sanders, the Vermont senator's entry in the race will provide a platform for Democrats to criticize Clinton from the left. Sanders' presence could also highlight a divide between progressive and moderate Democrats.
Before assuming office in the Senate in 2007, Sanders represented Vermont in the U.S. House for 16 years. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress.
According to HuffPost Pollster, which aggregates publicly available polling data, Sanders trails Clinton by 55.1 percentage points. He also trails Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Vice President Joe Biden.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/28/bernie-sanders-presidential-campaign_n_7165270.html
SHIT JUST GOT REAL!!! :o :D
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SHIT JUST GOT REAL!!! :o :D
lol
Another stellar candidate steps up.
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:-\
Huff Po: Don't Worry! Bernie Sanders Is the Good Kind of Socialist
By Bryan Ballas | May 1, 2015
For the first time since Norman Thomas, America finally has a viable self-proclaimed socialist presidential candidate in the form of Senator Bernie Sanders. However, the Huffington Post tells us not to panic. After all, Sanders is not just a socialist. He’s a “democratic socialist.” That makes it okay.
What’s the difference between the two? Well, according to Jonathan Cohn, Senior National Correspondent for the Huffington Post, it means that Sanders likes government control of business in theory, but concentrates his efforts on realizing “less radical objectives” such as a “single-payer system, in which the government provides insurance directly rather than subsidizing private insurers.... taxpayer-funded child care...right up through kindergarten....breaking up the big banks...imposing a carbon tax to slow climate change...And....public financing of campaigns for federal office.”
Bear in mind these are the “less radical”of his ideas. In fact, Cohn goes so far as to say, “Some of these ideas are more popular than others....But none of these ideas is loopy. Most Western democracies have some of these policies....A few have produced such strikingly positive results -- variations on single-payer work very well in France and Taiwan, for example -- that it’s hard to understand why they don’t get more serious hearings in the U.S.”
Cohn continued his attempt to mainstream Sanders’ radical leftism by noting his willingness not to shove his agenda down the throat of the populace, “Sanders understands the political constraints of American politics -- the fractured constitutional structure, the influence of money, the disproportionate power of rural, more conservative states. Even as he has tried to tear down those obstacles, he’s also been willing to compromise. He voted for (and continues to defend) the Affordable Care Act, even though it's a weak imitation of the single-payer system he’d prefer.”
So, Sanders is moderate because he voted for Obamacare rather than insisting people adopt his more radical vision? Cohn then claims that Sanders “isn’t actually that far to the left....[H]e is actually less liberal than many Republican senators are conservative.”
What world does Cohn live in that he believes there are Republicans far right enough to be more partisan than a man who called Obamacare a “good Republican, Romney-type...moderate program?”
Cohn wraps up his over-the-top political assessment with this insightful comment, “You won’t hear Clinton calling herself a socialist, for sure. But as Sanders’ own career shows, the label doesn’t mean a whole lot anyway.”
One can only wonder how the nation is affected by the fact that its information is filtered through people like Cohn, who think politicians calling themselves "socialists" isn’t a big deal and the label itself “doesn’t mean a whole lot.”
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/bryan-ballas/2015/05/01/huff-po-dont-worry-sanders-good-kind-socialist#sthash.YjZP2TZD.dpuf
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(http://www.redstate.com/uploads/2015/03/bernie-and-jane-sanders-620x435.jpg)
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Was looking for a list of potential 2016 Democrat nominees and came across this stellar list.
Presidential Candidates 2016: 10 Democrats Who Might Be the Next Presidential Nominee
By Shawna Gillen November 12, 2012
Now that the long 2012 presidential election has concluded, it is no surprise that politicians are preparing for 2016. Obama’s victory means this will be his final term as president, leaving a window of opportunity for Democratic presidential hopefuls. Here is a list of possible candidates to keep a close watch on for the 2016 Democratic presidential ticket.
1. Hillary Clinton
(http://media2.policymic.com/569b0aae69228083e9e2464899f192a1.jpg)
President Obama’s Secretary of State is no stranger to the political arena. Clinton was Former First lady under her husband Bill Clinton from 1993-2001. Bill has been a strong supporter of the Obama campaign and gave a noteworthy speech at the Democratic National Convention in September. As for Hillary, she ran for the Democratic nomination in 2008, but who’s to say she will not try again in 2016? She has become a prominent female figure in politics, which will definitely give her great advantage for securing the female vote.
2. Joe Biden
(http://media2.policymic.com/016e176e5e75fe61528bf9ca2e121b9a.jpg)
Current Vice President Joe Biden has already sought the presidency twice, but would the third time be the charm?? After casting his ballot on Election Day, Biden was asked if this was going to be the last time he would vote for himself. He briefly replied, “No, I don’t think so.” What could be his disadvantage? His age. Biden will be 73 by the time the 2016 Election season is underway, which may make it difficult to campaign against younger competitors.
3. Andrew Cuomo
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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo may have his sights set on 2016. Between his performance on Hurricane Sandy relief, and his former cabinet position as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton Administration, he may have the leverage he needs to form a strong campaign.
4. Beau Biden
(http://media2.policymic.com/f6b2b7b70bae14efd93be78b46bba423.jpg)
Beau Biden is the son of the vice president, so needless to say he has a strong advantage to receiving political endorsements. He is the Delaware Attorney General, and is a Major in the Army National Guard. Beau has made television appearances expressing praise for his father’s performance in the VP debate. He has also made speeches at the past two Democratic National Conventions.
5. Martin O’Malley
(http://media2.policymic.com/475e956fc9c4117bb004b78099c9bde2.jpg)
The Maryland Governor gave an address at the DNC, and is the chairman of the Democratic Governor’s Association. He is a strong Obama supporter and may receive his endorsement if he runs in 2016.
6. Deval Patrick
(http://media2.policymic.com/f6b42e134f797eebb344f915daf4b4c3.jpg)
The Governor of Massachusetts is a close friend of President Obama, and also gave an address at the DNC. When asked the following week of the convention of his future plans, he shot down the idea of 2016. “If there is a time sometime later to come back and serve in public life, I hope I’m able to do that. Just not going to be in 2016,” he said. He may be coy on the subject, but he is still important to watch.
7. Kirsten Gillibrand
(http://media2.policymic.com/a5bc7bceb41b93eb08a9c2fc3ca6aa9e.jpg)
The New York Senator just secured her first full term after replacing Hillary Clinton by winning in a landslide. She addressed Iowa delegates at the DNC giving a possible preview to a 2016 campaign. The Senator may follow in Clinton’s footsteps and seek the presidency.
8. Cory Booker
(http://media2.policymic.com/8f672d5f63773271b4cb9c22501dce2a.jpg)
The Mayor of Newark, New Jersey gave an explosive speech at the DNC. There has been talk that Booker may seek the New Jersey gubernatorial nomination to run against Republican Chris Christie. However, the former Rhodes Scholar may have laid the groundwork for 2016 at the DNC this year.
9. Elizabeth Warren
(http://media2.policymic.com/5dd4d68660f4dd9b6fa40149f72c2816.jpg)
Warren recently defeated Republican opponent Scott Brown for the Massachusetts Senate seat. Warren’s fight against Wall Street banks and her work on the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may give her the exposure she needs for a presidential nomination.
10. Antonio Villaraigosa
(http://media2.policymic.com/be03380b51e3ce9b07599535c0db48ac.jpg)
The Los Angeles Mayor was the chairman of the DNC this past September. He has shied away from the subject when asked about the presidency. However the possibility of becoming the first Latino president may give him advantage among the coumtry's growing Latino population.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/18960/presidential-candidates-2016-10-democrats-who-might-be-the-next-presidential-nominee
Sorry but 2016 se- election is over.
Hillary Clinton will be our next president. ( vomit )
Mark my words.
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NURTURED BY CLINTON NETWORK, O'MALLEY NOW BECOMES 2016 RIVAL
BY LISA LERER AND KEN THOMAS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 19, 2015
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than a decade ago, Bill Clinton spotted a political star in the making, someone he predicted would go from a big-city mayor to a national leader - maybe even to the White House. "I won't be surprised if you go all the way," Clinton wrote in a 2002 letter to Baltimore's mayor, Martin O'Malley.
In the years that followed, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton showed up time and again as their young ally gained stature as governor of Maryland, hosting fundraisers, headlining rallies and connecting him to their sprawling network of political donors.
Now, O'Malley is just days away from walking down the path Clinton laid out for him more than a decade ago, as he prepares to announce his presidential campaign in Baltimore on May 30. And that means transforming himself from one of Hillary Clinton's most loyal supporters into her chief adversary for the Democratic nomination.
"It's certainly been a long and friendly relationship," said Steve Kearney, a former O'Malley aide. "Times change. He clearly thought she was the best candidate in 2008. We'll find out whether that remains true today."
O'Malley quickly endorsed Clinton in her nomination contest with Barack Obama, raised at least $500,000 for her from Maryland donors when he was governor, defended her on cable news and traveled to New Hampshire to campaign for her.
"If I can, I will help her, wherever I can, whenever I can," O'Malley said then.
Today, O'Malley says that while he maintains "tremendous respect" for the Clintons, Democratic voters deserve more than a coronation. "What would be more awkward is if no one were willing to compete for the Democratic party's nomination for president," he told NPR last month. "That would be an extreme poverty indeed."
Hillary Clinton, who last spoke to O'Malley in October at a Maryland campaign rally, and her advisers remain reluctant to comment on O'Malley's candidacy. But some longtime supporters see his bid as an opportunistic maneuver to remain relevant, after his hand-picked Democratic successor lost the governor's race last year in heavily Democratic Maryland.
"Martin O'Malley is certainly not the first person who has turned against her and who she helped enormously," said Stella O'Leary, a Democratic activist whose relationship to O'Malley dates back to the early 1990s when she hired the young man - who fronts a Celtic folk band - to perform at a birthday party for former Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy. "I don't know how she doesn't lash out and start screaming."
Some who question his motives also think the challenge could benefit Clinton by giving her a debate sparring partner - as long as O'Malley avoids tough hits on her finances, family foundation and character.
In the waning days of the Clinton administration, O'Malley was starting his first term as mayor. During one of their earliest meetings, at the 2000 NAACP Convention in Baltimore, the Irish-American mayor asked to be included in a White House delegation going to Northern Ireland later that year. He scored a last-minute invite, joining many of Clinton's top political aides and fundraisers on the trip.
Others in that delegation remember O'Malley for his musical talents. At one stop, as they waited in a pub for the notoriously late president, O'Malley and New York Rep. Joe Crowley pulled out their guitars and entertained the group with renditions of traditional Irish songs.
"Next thing I know we almost forgot all about the president," said Brian O'Dwyer, a New York lawyer and Clinton friend who's active in Irish-American issues. "It was a terrifically warm trip."
Years later, O'Malley would tap the connections he made on that trip to aid his political rise. During his first campaign for governor, Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, a top Clinton donor who met O'Malley on the Ireland trip, held a fundraiser for him at her Georgetown home. In Manhattan, lawyers at O'Dwyer's firm started a group called New York Irish for Martin O'Malley. And O'Leary's political action committee, Irish American Democrats, made campaign contributions.
O'Malley's relationship with the Clintons deepened as he became more involved with the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group that helped craft much of Bill Clinton's policy agenda. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, he worked with Hillary Clinton, then a New York senator, on homeland security issues.
When O'Malley faced a tough race for governor in 2006, the Clintons held fundraisers and starred at rallies for him. In the final days of that race, Bill Clinton answered pleas from O'Malley aides to appear in a campaign ad - stopping in an airport to tape an endorsement of his "good friend."
While Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, Bill Clinton returned to Baltimore four years later to help O'Malley win re-election.
O'Malley maintained his ties to Bill Clinton as he prepared for a presidential run. Last year, O'Malley tweeted a photo of himself with the ex-president at a New York book party, and flew to Denver solely to appear with him at the Clinton Global Initiative.
Some friends of all three don't see malice in O'Malley's ambitions, but also don't feel conflicted. "It's not that I love Martin any less but I love Hillary more," said O'Dwyer. "She was a partner in bringing peace to in Ireland. That type of loyalty is hard to ignore."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEM_2016_OMALLEY_CLINTON?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-05-19-15-00-08
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Guys like Chaffee and Sanders are very hard to debate because they come at you from a different angle......I don't see them beating Hillary but they could make her look bad if she gets sloppy..in trying to fight with them and their odd viewpoints, she could make a slip or two that could put holes in that suit of armor she wears.
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Guys like Chaffee and Sanders are very hard to debate because they come at you from a different angle......I don't see them beating Hillary but they could make her look bad if she gets sloppy..in trying to fight with them and their odd viewpoints, she could make a slip or two that could put holes in that suit of armor she wears.
mccain only won because romney and rudy - both superior candidates - brought down each others' property value by screaming LIB! at each other for months at a time.
If sanders or these other jokers scrap with hilary nonstop for a year, people may just look to the next-most dignified person up there, an Omalley or whoever, and choose them.
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Martin O'Malley 2016 pitch: Youthfulness
By Mark Preston, CNN
Wed May 20, 2015
Washington (CNN)Martin O'Malley is expected to emphasize his "youthfulness," and a less scripted, more accessible presidential campaign, as a way to help contrast his candidacy with Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, an O'Malley confidante tells CNN.
"We do think there is a real generational argument to make and that he can seize upon it," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
O'Malley, 52, announced Tuesday on two social media platforms, Snapchat and Twitter, that he would make a "special announcement" on May 30 in Baltimore -- when he is widely believed to formally enter the 2016 contest. Clinton, the former Secretary of State and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are already in the race for the Democratic nomination.
The former Maryland governor will release a new video Wednesday continuing to tease the May 30 event, according to an early version obtained by CNN. O'Malley's campaign is likely to produce several more similar videos leading up to the announcement.
"I think the way we're approaching things here, making him accessible, doing impromptu concerts at Irish bars, using non-traditional forms of communicating, and yes employing some humor hints at our general approach of running a fresher and less canned campaign," said the confidante.
Clinton, 67, has been criticized for refusing to regularly take questions from the media and engaging with voters only in carefully staged meetings held in key early states.
O'Malley has been making several visits to the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada and meeting with Democrats across the nation to gauge support for is candidacy. Current polling shows that Clinton would easily win the nomination today. O'Malley is polling about one percent in the same national polls.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/20/politics/martin-omalley-2016-elections-campaign-launch-youth/index.html
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Vermont's Sanders kicks off 2016 bid from Clinton's left
Published May 26, 2015·
Associated Press
(http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/876/493/bernie%20sanders%20ap.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a Dec. 6, 2012, news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, FILE)
BURLINGTON, Vt. – Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders kicked off his longshot presidential campaign Tuesday with a pitch to liberals in the Democratic Party and others who want change from a "rigged economy" that favors the rich.
Sanders vowed to make income inequality, a campaign finance overhaul and climate change his leading issues as he takes on Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
"This type of rigged economy is not what America is supposed to be about," the self-described democratic socialist said in remarks prepared for his rally. The event came several weeks after Sanders announced his candidacy — this time, the plan was to hand out free ice cream before his crowd of supporters.
He says there is "something profoundly wrong" when so much of the nation's income goes to the top 1 percent of all earners.
"I know what I believe," Sanders said in a fundraising email hours before his event, pushing back against "the billionaire class" trying to buy the election. "That's why today marks the beginning of our political revolution."
Sanders is trying to ignite a grassroots fire among left-leaning Democrats wary of Clinton — a group that pined for months for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to get in the race. Some still do.
But while Warren remains committed to the Senate, repeatedly saying she won't run for the White House, Sanders is laying out an agenda in step with the party's progressive wing and Warren's platform — reining in Wall Street banks, tackling college debt and creating a government-financed infrastructure jobs program.
Clinton is in a commanding position by any measure, far in front of both Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who is widely expected to get into the race Saturday.
Yet Sanders' supporters in New Hampshire say his local ties and longstanding practice of holding town hall meetings and people-to-people campaigning — a staple in the nation's first primary state — will serve him well.
"Toward the Vermont border it's like a love-fest for Bernie," said Jerry Curran, an Amherst, New Hampshire, Democratic activist who has been involved in the draft Warren effort. "He's not your milquetoast left-winger. He's kind of a badass left-winger."
Sanders, an independent in the Senate who often votes with the Democrats, has raised more than $4 million since announcing in late April that he would seek the party's nomination. He suggested in the interview that raising $50 million for the primaries was a possibility. "That would be a goal," he said.
Whether Sanders can tap into the party's Warren wing and influence Clinton's policy agenda remains unclear. But he has been on the forefront of liberal causes as Clinton has seemed to be tacking to the left.
He's joined with Warren to drive opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade proposal, arguing it would ship jobs overseas. Clinton has avoided taking a specific position on the trade deal.
He has introduced legislation to make tuition free at public colleges and universities, a major piece of Warren's agenda. Clinton's campaign has signaled that she intends to make debt-free college a major piece of her campaign.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/05/26/vermont-bernie-sanders-kicks-off-2016-bid-from-clinton-left/?intcmp=latestnews
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Bernie Sanders Omits Key Democratic Priorities In First Presidential Campaign Speech
The Huffington Post
By Igor Bobic
Posted: 05/27/2015
In case you didn't hear, self-described "democratic socialist" Bernie Sanders is running for president. The Independent from Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate, kicked off his campaign before thousands of enthusiastic supporters in Burlington on Tuesday with a rousing speech that called for a litany of progressive policies: raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, changing overtime standards, expanding Social Security, ensuring paid sick leave and guaranteeing vacation time for all Americans.
The sweeping manifesto, which also includes strengthening campaign finance laws and combating climate change, is a populist -- and popular -- wish list near and dear to the heart of many Democratic voters. But as MSNBC host Chris Hayes noted on Twitter, the 35-minute speech had several glaring omissions.
Sanders didn't address the ongoing debate over race and policing in the wake of protests in Baltimore, New York and Ferguson, Missouri. Nor did he address comprehensive immigration reform and President Barack Obama's executive actions to shield young undocumented immigrants from deportation, which just yesterday saw another legal challenge.
Christopher HayesVerified account @chrislhayes
The problem that "insurgent" progressive Democratic prez candidates tend to face is expanding their base past white, college-educated voters
Christopher HayesVerified account @chrislhayes
As I've said a whole bunch of times, the demographic cornerstone of a progressive political coalition in this country are black women.
The point was only made clearer by the makeup of the assembled crowd -- it is Vermont, after all, made up of many activists and die-hard Sanders fans as quirky as the candidate himself.
(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2999698/thumbs/a-BERNIE-SANDERS-640x468.jpg?)
Bernie Sanders speaks to a crowd in Burlington, Vermont. (Win McNamee via Getty Images)
A spokesman for the senator did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sanders has never been at the forefront of the debate around issues like police reform and immigration. He's spent years in the Senate railing against the influence of Democratic bogeymen and billionaire oil barons Charles and David Koch. Moreover, his 2016 bid is widely viewed as a means to pressure the relatively centrist Hillary Clinton firmly into the progressive camp, especially on taxes and Wall Street reform.
Faulting Sanders for not addressing every Democratic priority would be tantamount to criticizing Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a libertarian-leaning conservative, for failing to toe the line with the Republican establishment. In that respect, both men are hoping to take unconventional paths to the White House. The problem for Sanders is that, if he really wants to be taken seriously, he will at some point need to court the same coalition of voters that twice elected Obama: minorities, women and young people.
But there's plenty of time -- and primary debates -- to do so.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/27/bernie-sanders-democratic-priorities-immigration_n_7451662.html
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O'Malley jumps into presidential race, offers progressive alternative to Clinton
By Rachel Streitfeld and MJ Lee, CNN
Sat May 30, 2015
Baltimore (CNN)Martin O'Malley launched his presidential campaign Saturday with an appeal to the party's progressive base that he hopes will upend the conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton is destined to clinch the Democratic nomination.
The former Maryland governor unveiled his campaign in Baltimore, the city where he was once mayor -- a role that is central to his political persona. But his Baltimore credentials could become more of a challenge than he initially thought after a riot erupted in the city in April.
Speaking in rolled-up sleeves at Federal Hill Park, O'Malley began with a call for economic fairness and closing the gap between rich and poor in America.
"This is the urgent work calling us forward today: to rebuild the truth of the American Dream for all Americans," O'Malley said. "And to begin right now."
He touched upon last month's unrest in Baltimore, saying the aftermath of Freddie Gray's death was about more than race or policing in America, but about "the scourge of hopelessness" in the nation's cities.
"There is something to be learned from that night, and there is something to be offered to our country from those flames," he said.
A small group of protesters tried to interrupt his speech, shouting remarks like "black lives matter" and blowing on whistles. As O'Malley discussed the problem of income inequality and concentration of wealth, one protester angrily yelled out: "You did that! It was you!"
But the protesters largely failed to be a disruptive presence at the launch event, where O'Malley's supporters, numbering in the hundreds, reacted enthusiastically to his speech.
O'Malley also took a shot at Clinton and Republican Jeb Bush, using an attack on Goldman Sachs to suggest they were too close to Wall Street to be advocates for the less fortunate in America.
"Recently, the CEO of Goldman Saches let his employees know that he'd be just fine with either Bush or Clinton. I bet he would," O'Malley said. "Well, I've got news for the bullies of Wall Street: The presidency is not a crown to be passed back and forth by you between two royal families. It is a sacred trust to be earned from the people of the United States, and exercised on behalf of the people of the United States."
Taking on Hillary
Perhaps O'Malley's biggest challenge is finding a way to dent the Clinton political machine while also proving that he's a competitive candidate in his own right -- not just a backup for progressives who would rather see Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in the White House. A Quinnipiac University poll released this week places Clinton 56 percentage points ahead of O'Malley.
Saturday's announcement was not a surprise. Over the past year, the 52-year-old traveled repeatedly to the early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to spark voters' attention to his likely bid.
On the road, O'Malley touts a string of progressive actions he oversaw as governor of Maryland. Under his leadership, the state tightened gun laws, implemented a progressive tax code and legalized same-sex marriage. He also expanded the state's health care rolls, championed Obamacare and signed a bill raising the state's minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
Yet O'Malley found himself defending that Maryland record recently when riots broke out in Baltimore over the death of a 25-year-old African-American man under police custody.
The treatment of Freddie Gray, which sparked a national dialogue about police conduct toward racial minorities, drew renewed scrutiny to the controversial zero-tolerance policing strategy that O'Malley advocated for as mayor -- part of an aggressive strategy to crack down on crime.
In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper last month, O'Malley declared that Baltimore saw a "record reduction in violent crime" under his watch.
There are "probably now 1,000 mostly young, poor African-American men who did not die violent deaths in our city" because of these policies, O'Malley said.
O'Malley may also face questions about his popularity in his home state. His standing took a hit last year when Maryland voters rejected his handpicked successor in the governor's race, Democrat Anthony Brown. Brown lost the statehouse to Republican Larry Hogan.
"I can tell you my feelings were hurt," O'Malley said about the loss. "We had done a lot of really good things in Maryland, and in the end you did not hear much about it during the campaign."
But he added, "I was not on the ballot."
A fresh voice for the party
O'Malley is aiming to present himself as a fresh voice for the party -- one who speaks for a different generation than Washington heavy hitters such as the 67-year-old Clinton. The former governor plays guitar in his Celtic rock band O'Malley's March, and at some gigs he has occasionally bared his biceps in sleeveless shirts.
Beyond Clinton and O'Malley, Bernie Sanders is the only other Democrat who has announced a 2016 presidential bid. Sanders is also popular among liberals and garnered 15% in the Quinnipiac poll.
O'Malley has remained optimistic about his own prospects, telling CNN in March he could turn around his low numbers by outworking the competition.
"When you start off as potential candidate for president and your name recognition is low, you have to just go from county to county, from town to town and engage people in order to change that around," O'Malley said then. "I guess another way to say it is this: Look, it is not unusual for there to be an inevitable frontrunner early in a contest who has fantastic name recognition, and is therefore inevitable right up until he or she is no longer inevitable."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/30/politics/martin-omalley-2016-presidential-announcement/
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Lincoln Chafee expected to announce long-shot presidential bid
By Jose A. DelReal
June 3, 2015
(https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/06/03/National-Politics/Images/DEM_2016_Chafee-09011.jpg)
The former Rhode Island governor will likely announce his bid for the Democratic nomination on Wednesday.
Former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee (D), a one-time Republican U.S. senator who notably broke with the GOP on the 2002 Iraq war authorization, is expected to announce Wednesday that he will seek the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
Chafee's decision to run, which he plans to announce in an evening speech at George Mason University, makes him the fourth Democratic hopeful to officially enter the race. But he's already been the first to directly and consistently attack front-runner Hillary Clinton -- particularly over the Iraq War vote that helped sink her first presidential bid.
[Watch the announcement live here at 5:00 p.m.]
"I don't think anybody should be president of the United States that made that mistake" of voting for the Iraq War, Chafee told The Post in April. "It's a huge mistake, and we live with broad, broad ramifications today — of instability not only in the Middle East but far beyond and the loss of American credibility. There were no weapons of mass destruction."
Chafee, the son of Rhode Island Sen. John Chafee (R), was appointed to the U.S. Senate after his father died in 1999, leaving the seat vacant. As a liberal Republican, Chafee was reelected to a full term in 2000, before losing in 2006. He officially left the Republican Party the following year. He was elected governor as an independent in 2010 and joined the Democratic Party in 2013. His announcement Wednesday comes less than two years after he decided not to seek a second term as governor amid low approval ratings and the prospect of a bruising primary.
Central to Chafee's presidential campaign: his 2002 Senate vote against authorizing the use of military force in Iraq in 2002, when he was the only Republican senator to oppose the measure.
Instability in Iraq has become an unexpected campaign issue in the GOP presidential race. Chafee is hoping it will once again take center stage in the Democratic contest, too.
"Don't forget that probably the biggest reason that Senator Obama, at the time, defeated Hillary Clinton in '08 was because of the Iraq war vote. That was the issue," Chafee told CNN in April. "And that's my big issue here, because we are dealing with [the] ramifications of that huge mistake that Senator Clinton made in 2002, which I did not make, and we live with it today."
Clinton's other rivals for the Democratic nomination have so far mostly stopped short of direct attacks on the former secretary of state. Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley (D), who last week announced his candidacy, has made subtle digs that focus on Clinton's perceived coziness with Wall Street and her long history in Washington. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has staked out populist positions that sometimes fall far to Clinton's left, but he takes pains to avoid mentioning her explicitly.
Chafee does not appear concerned with subtlety.
Several weeks ago, he suggested that heightened tensions with Russia might be traceable to a symbolic, incorrectly labeled "reset button" that Clinton presented to that country's leadership several years ago.
"In the early days, they tried to restart with Russia and she presented the Russian foreign minister with the restart button. And they got the Russian word wrong. They said, 'This means over-charge,' and it was an insult," he said. "Look what is happening with Putin and with Russia -- Ukraine, selling arms to Iran -- and it all could have started with the diplomatic mistake, getting the word wrong."
Chafee has said that he does not expect to raise nearly as much money as Clinton but that he takes comfort in knowing that "America loves an underdog."
In a year when one of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination isn't even a member of the party, Chafee isn't concerned that his past party allegiance will raise eyebrows in his relatively new partisan home. "I have not changed. My old liberal Republican stand on the issues does line up with the Democratic Party -- women's reproductive freedoms, support for working families. I have a 30-year record," he said in April. "Also note that of the candidates here, [former Virginia senator] Jim Webb was a Republican and Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl."
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday suggested Clinton has the support of 63 percent of likely Democratic voters nationwide, with Sanders at 10 percent and O'Malley at 3 percent. Chafee registered 1 percent support.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/03/lincoln-chafee-expected-to-announce-longshot-presidential-bid/
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Lincoln Chafee expected to announce long-shot presidential bid
By Jose A. DelReal
June 3, 2015
(https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/06/03/National-Politics/Images/DEM_2016_Chafee-09011.jpg)
The former Rhode Island governor will likely announce his bid for the Democratic nomination on Wednesday.
Former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee (D), a one-time Republican U.S. senator who notably broke with the GOP on the 2002 Iraq war authorization, is expected to announce Wednesday that he will seek the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
Chafee's decision to run, which he plans to announce in an evening speech at George Mason University, makes him the fourth Democratic hopeful to officially enter the race. But he's already been the first to directly and consistently attack front-runner Hillary Clinton -- particularly over the Iraq War vote that helped sink her first presidential bid.
[Watch the announcement live here at 5:00 p.m.]
"I don't think anybody should be president of the United States that made that mistake" of voting for the Iraq War, Chafee told The Post in April. "It's a huge mistake, and we live with broad, broad ramifications today — of instability not only in the Middle East but far beyond and the loss of American credibility. There were no weapons of mass destruction."
Chafee, the son of Rhode Island Sen. John Chafee (R), was appointed to the U.S. Senate after his father died in 1999, leaving the seat vacant. As a liberal Republican, Chafee was reelected to a full term in 2000, before losing in 2006. He officially left the Republican Party the following year. He was elected governor as an independent in 2010 and joined the Democratic Party in 2013. His announcement Wednesday comes less than two years after he decided not to seek a second term as governor amid low approval ratings and the prospect of a bruising primary.
Central to Chafee's presidential campaign: his 2002 Senate vote against authorizing the use of military force in Iraq in 2002, when he was the only Republican senator to oppose the measure.
Instability in Iraq has become an unexpected campaign issue in the GOP presidential race. Chafee is hoping it will once again take center stage in the Democratic contest, too.
"Don't forget that probably the biggest reason that Senator Obama, at the time, defeated Hillary Clinton in '08 was because of the Iraq war vote. That was the issue," Chafee told CNN in April. "And that's my big issue here, because we are dealing with [the] ramifications of that huge mistake that Senator Clinton made in 2002, which I did not make, and we live with it today."
Clinton's other rivals for the Democratic nomination have so far mostly stopped short of direct attacks on the former secretary of state. Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley (D), who last week announced his candidacy, has made subtle digs that focus on Clinton's perceived coziness with Wall Street and her long history in Washington. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has staked out populist positions that sometimes fall far to Clinton's left, but he takes pains to avoid mentioning her explicitly.
Chafee does not appear concerned with subtlety.
Several weeks ago, he suggested that heightened tensions with Russia might be traceable to a symbolic, incorrectly labeled "reset button" that Clinton presented to that country's leadership several years ago.
"In the early days, they tried to restart with Russia and she presented the Russian foreign minister with the restart button. And they got the Russian word wrong. They said, 'This means over-charge,' and it was an insult," he said. "Look what is happening with Putin and with Russia -- Ukraine, selling arms to Iran -- and it all could have started with the diplomatic mistake, getting the word wrong."
Chafee has said that he does not expect to raise nearly as much money as Clinton but that he takes comfort in knowing that "America loves an underdog."
In a year when one of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination isn't even a member of the party, Chafee isn't concerned that his past party allegiance will raise eyebrows in his relatively new partisan home. "I have not changed. My old liberal Republican stand on the issues does line up with the Democratic Party -- women's reproductive freedoms, support for working families. I have a 30-year record," he said in April. "Also note that of the candidates here, [former Virginia senator] Jim Webb was a Republican and Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl."
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday suggested Clinton has the support of 63 percent of likely Democratic voters nationwide, with Sanders at 10 percent and O'Malley at 3 percent. Chafee registered 1 percent support.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/03/lincoln-chafee-expected-to-announce-longshot-presidential-bid/
Another Old White Person from "The Party of Diversity" ::)
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Consistent with what headhunter has been saying.
Democrats Get a Primary
Joe Klein @JoeKlein
TIME
Why candidates O’Malley and Sanders will make it a race
It should be noted that Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, got off the first sledgehammer line of the 2016 Democratic primary campaign when he announced his can-didacy on May 30: “Recently the CEO of Goldman Sachs”—the huge investment bank—”let his employees know that he’d be just fine with either Bush or Clinton.” And here O’Malley paused for effect. “I bet he would!” He went on, as a ripple of laughter and cheers swept the crowd, “Well, I’ve got news for the bullies of Wall Street. The presidency of the United States is not a crown to be passed back and forth, by you, between two royal families.”
The zinger captured the current 2016 campaign zeitgeist on several levels. There is a yeasty popu-lism rising in both parties. Among the Democrats, it’s anti-Big Business; for the Republicans, it is anti-Big Government (and labor). There is also a rising discomfort with the aforementioned royalist candidates, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Bush’s relatively moderate conservatism separates him from the pack temperamentally, but he is hardly the front runner at this point. No one is. Clinton is very much the presumptive Democrat, but not a very dynamic or compelling one. Indeed, the entry of O’Malley and Vermont’s Bernie Sanders into the race during the last week of May produced something of an energy jolt among Democrats, who have a preternatural need for a horse race, even when the horses are lame, and a long-festering desire for an ideological fight between left and center.
It should come as no surprise that Sanders seems to be catching fire among the leftish faithful, drawing big crowds and scoring double digits in an Iowa poll. He is a recognizable Democratic type–the prophet scorned, gushing rumpled authenticity. Usually, this phenomenon occurs when Democrats find themselves enmeshed in a foolish war: Eugene McCarthy in 1968, George McGovern in 1972, Howard Dean in 2004. Sanders’ distinction is that he is an economic Jeremiah, pitchforking the depredations of Wall Street. This is fertile turf. It is a fight that has been coming since moderate Democrats began courting Wall Street donors in the mid-1980s. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s wanton sloshing about in the plutocratic pigpen of their foundation makes it a particularly fat target this time. Sanders flies commercial.
But the populist case against the Clinton-Obama economic policies has real substance as well. It is no coincidence that the fundamental distortion of the American economy, with the deck stacked to benefit the financial sector, also dates back 30 years, when Democratic Congresses began to slip pro-bank provisions into the tax code, reaching a peak during the Clinton Administration with the demolition of the wall between commercial and investment banking and the flagrant refusal to regulate exotic derivative financial instruments—which, in turn, led to the Great Recession.
Both Sanders and O’Malley would take specific action against the Wall Street giants. They would break up the too-big-to-fail banks; they would reinstate the Glass-Steagall rules that used to separate legitimate banking from casino gambling. And if O’Malley got off the best zinger of the early campaign, Sanders has the best policy proposal: a tax on Wall Street transactions, tiny enough to impact only the computer-driven churning that makes the markets more volatile than they should be. He would spend some of the proceeds on a $1 trillion infrastructure-improvement program that would create, Sanders estimates, 13 million jobs—another good idea.
This should be a bright line in the primary, the most important substantive issue facing Hillary Clinton: How would she reform the tax and regulatory codes that unduly favor the financial sector?
I went to an O’Malley house party in Gilford, N.H., on the last day of May and met Johan Anderson, 68, who had been a successful sales executive but is now working two minimum-wage jobs to augment his Social Security. He had been a Republican and a town official in Stamford, Conn., “back in the days when you could be a Republican and a human being”—that is, before the party’s rightward lurch. Now he was engaged in the ancient New Hampshire pursuit of candidate shopping. “I really respect Hillary Clinton,” he said. “She’s obviously very smart and experienced. But I wonder about her leadership abilities. She made a mess of her health care plan [in 1994], and she didn’t organize her last campaign very well [in 2008]. My heart is with Bernie Sanders. I’d love to vote for him, but can he win? O’Malley is young [52] and brings a real freshness and energy to the race.”
I’m not sure how many people like Anderson are out there: perhaps enough to make Clinton a better candidate, perhaps enough to give her a scare. But there will definitely be a Democratic primary.
http://time.com/3908652/hillary-clinton-primary-challengers/
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Wisconsin Straw Poll: Hillary 49 Percent, Bernie Sanders 41 Percent
Monday, 08 Jun 2015
By Melanie Batley
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton won the Wisconsin Democratic straw poll by just 8 points this weekend, coming in ahead of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
More than 500 Democrats participated in the straw poll at the state's party convention, giving Clinton 49 percent support compared to 41 percent for Sanders, The Nation reported.
Specifically, Clinton drew 252 votes compared to 208 for Sanders.
In third place, Vice President Joe Biden was tied with former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley with 16 votes, or 3 percent of the vote. Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb got 2 percent with 8 votes, while former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee received 1 percent with 5 votes.
Sanders' strong finish is a boost for his campaign. He has been a regular visitor to Wisconsin over the years, frequently speaking at the annual "Fighting Bob Fest" assembled by Wisconsin activists, The Nation said.
His strong support of organized labor may have also resonated given the years of union tensions with GOP Gov. Scott Walker.
In the two weeks since Sanders announced his candidacy, he has seen an uptick in the polls against Clinton, Politico said. He has also drawn large crowds in early nominating states such as Iowa and New Hampshire.
Last year, Clinton won the straw poll while Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren came in second.
Clinton and Sanders did not attend the event but after the vote, a party official read a letter from Clinton vowing to help build the state party and visit Wisconsin soon, Politico reported.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/hillary-sanders-wisconsin-straw-poll/2015/06/08/id/649273/#ixzz3cUbtxHdV
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Wisconsin Straw Poll: Hillary 49 Percent, Bernie Sanders 41 Percent
Monday, 08 Jun 2015
By Melanie Batley
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton won the Wisconsin Democratic straw poll by just 8 points this weekend, coming in ahead of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
More than 500 Democrats participated in the straw poll at the state's party convention, giving Clinton 49 percent support compared to 41 percent for Sanders, The Nation reported.
Specifically, Clinton drew 252 votes compared to 208 for Sanders.
In third place, Vice President Joe Biden was tied with former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley with 16 votes, or 3 percent of the vote. Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb got 2 percent with 8 votes, while former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee received 1 percent with 5 votes.
Sanders' strong finish is a boost for his campaign. He has been a regular visitor to Wisconsin over the years, frequently speaking at the annual "Fighting Bob Fest" assembled by Wisconsin activists, The Nation said.
His strong support of organized labor may have also resonated given the years of union tensions with GOP Gov. Scott Walker.
In the two weeks since Sanders announced his candidacy, he has seen an uptick in the polls against Clinton, Politico said. He has also drawn large crowds in early nominating states such as Iowa and New Hampshire.
Last year, Clinton won the straw poll while Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren came in second.
Clinton and Sanders did not attend the event but after the vote, a party official read a letter from Clinton vowing to help build the state party and visit Wisconsin soon, Politico reported.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/hillary-sanders-wisconsin-straw-poll/2015/06/08/id/649273/#ixzz3cUbtxHdV
Impressive! :o
He's a "No Bullshit" Lefty too.
Will be interesting to see how his numbers move once he gets on stage and doesn't hold back compared to Hillary who will likely be more calculated with her responses.
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Impressive! :o
He's a "No Bullshit" Lefty too.
Will be interesting to see how his numbers move once he gets on stage and doesn't hold back compared to Hillary who will likely be more calculated with her responses.
She will surpass Al Gore as the ultimate political loser if she cannot get by this guy.
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She will surpass Al Gore as the ultimate political loser if she cannot get by this guy.
Agreed
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BERNIE SANDERS DRAWS HORDES OF SUPPORTERS IN IOWA
(http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/05/ap_bernie-sanders_ap-photo2-e1434254221107-640x481.jpg)
DES MOINES, Iowa — While Hillary Clinton makes her way to the Hawkeye State following her first campaign rally in New York City on Saturday, crowds there are lining up to see Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
A horde of supporters applauded the presidential candidate more than 100 times on Friday night at his town hall, as he laid out his vision for the country at Drake University’s Sheslow Auditorium in Des Moines.
“Whoa, got a lot of people here tonight,” Sanders said, as he walked onstage to a standing ovation. Event organizers said there were more than 700 people in attendance.
The longest-serving Independent in Congress focused his speech on income and wealth inequality, climate change and campaign finance reform.
“This campaign is sending a message to the billionaire class, and that message is you can’t have it all,” Sanders said.
Sander’s remarks, which lasted about an hour, were frequently interrupted not only by applause but chants of “Bernie, Bernie” from the audience. Sanders’ topics ranged from student loan debt and President Barack Obama’s trade deal to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Sanders even brought three Iowa college students onstage to shed some light on their struggle with student loan debt.
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I watched this over the weekend. Not impressed. She was terrible. Didn't sound innovative. Did not sound credible. Read the entire speech and sounded scripted. Not funny. Not engaging. No new, good ideas.
But judge for yourself.
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Didn't sound innovative.
LOL Hilary is the OPPOSITE of innovative. She's the choice for idiots that loved Bill clinton, that loved Dubya/Jeb, and like things exactly how they are, which is headed for the toilet.
Any vote for hilary or jeb is a vote for status quo, an affirmation that you love things how they are and don't want to change a thing.
And if I want funny, I watch some Chris Rock or Louis CK. I don't care if candidate can tell one-liners, I care if the candidate can fix the economy, something that hilary/jeb will not.
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I watched this over the weekend. Not impressed. She was terrible. Didn't sound innovative. Did not sound credible. Read the entire speech and sounded scripted. Not funny. Not engaging. No new, good ideas.
But judge for yourself.
Dude..get a grip...she did okay...the speech lacked substance I will admit, but I think she actually came across as likeable which I think was her objective...and she was pleasantly funny...not laugh out loud, but funny
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Dude..get a grip...she did okay...the speech lacked substance I will admit, but I think she actually came across as likeable which I think was her objective...and she was pleasantly funny...not laugh out loud, but funny
We don't have to agree. I'm sure some people will listen to her and like her. Maybe part of my problem is all I could hear was someone who has made millions reading speeches in the past several years trying to talk about income inequality and playing class warfare.
Headhunter is right about her: she is not likeable.
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Jim Webb to Decide on 2016 Run by End of Month
Monday, 15 Jun 2015
Jim Webb says he knows it's time to make a decision on running for president.
The former Virginia senator said Monday he expects to make a decision on a 2016 Democratic bid by the end of the month. Webb is on a three-day tour through Iowa.
Webb says he's assessing if he can raise enough money because he doesn't want to run just "a protest campaign." He says he's got a different record to offer than the other Democratic hopefuls, thanks to his work in the Senate on issues like criminal justice and foreign policy.
Webb says Iowa is a key state where he can connect with voters.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/webb-virginia-democrat-president/2015/06/15/id/650641/#ixzz3dBZFpD4w
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NH POLL: BERNIE SANDERS TRAILS HILLARY BY ONLY 12 POINTS
(http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/06/Bernie-Sanders-and-Hillary-Clinton-AP-Photos.jpg)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) trails Hillary Clinton by only 12 percentage points in New Hampshire in a new poll.
A Morning Consult poll found that “among voters who say they will participate in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary, 44 percent choose Clinton, while 32 percent pick Sanders, who hails from neighboring Vermont.” After kicking off her campaign on Saturday–two months after announcing her candidacy in a YouTube video–Clinton went to Iowa over the weekend and is in New Hampshire on Tuesday to talk about education and propose universal Pre-K.
In what was her most significant victory eight years ago, Clinton won the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation primary in 2008 after she finished third in the Iowa caucuses behind then-Senator Barack Obama and John Edwards. Though Obama carried New Hampshire twice, only 43% of voters in the poll approved of his job performance while 56% disapproved.
Clinton has commanding leads over her competitors in Iowa and South Carolina. In Iowa, Clinton received 54% of the vote while Sanders got 12%. In South Carolina, Clinton received 56% of the vote while Vice President Joe Biden received 15% and Sanders got 10%.
Sanders, who recently came within eight points of Clinton in a straw poll at the Wisconsin Democratic Party convention, has been actively courting Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)’s (D-MA) supporters while attacking Clinton for avoiding reporters and not taking a position on Obamatrade.
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Hilary = romney. Much of party hates her but she'll win nomination just because.
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Hilary = romney. Much of party hates her but she'll win nomination just because.
Bernie has gained a significant amount of ground over the past week or so.
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Bernie has gained a significant amount of ground over the past week or so.
yeah, i'd LOVE to see him run, just so we can have extremes meet - I want to see Ted Cruz (far right) vs. Bernie (far left).
thje last thing I want is hilary vs. jeb... two middle-of-road, RINO/DINO warhawks that will spend and start wars.
No way he loses to hilary's network in all the states, her money, her favors, etc. Hilary ain't gonna lose this twice. Obama was lightining in the bottle, a perfect storm at the time. Sanders idn't obama. MAYBE a warren could do it, but she isn't running. smarter for her to let hilary choose her for veep.
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yeah, i'd LOVE to see him run, just so we can have extremes meet - I want to see Ted Cruz (far right) vs. Bernie (far left).
thje last thing I want is hilary vs. jeb... two middle-of-road, RINO/DINO warhawks that will spend and start wars.
No way he loses to hilary's network in all the states, her money, her favors, etc. Hilary ain't gonna lose this twice. Obama was lightining in the bottle, a perfect storm at the time. Sanders idn't obama. MAYBE a warren could do it, but she isn't running. smarter for her to let hilary choose her for veep.
I agree with you and practically everyone else on here that Hillary basically has the nomination gift wrapped but I am interested to see how Bernie polls against Hillary among 18 to 25 hardcore lefty crowd after they are both on the debate stage and Bernie hits all the liberal talking points spot on.
Hillary has such a huge advantage with the older voters because of her high profile role as First Lady but I don't think that means as much to the young folks.
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Bernie as president would be awesome.
Fuck Hillary.
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Bernie as president would be awesome.
Fuck Hillary.
I think he's going to surprise alot of people come debate time.
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I think he's going to surprise alot of people come debate time.
Im rooting for him thats for sure.
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Bernie Sanders Gains In New Hampshire Primary Polls
Janie Velencia Become a fan
janie.velencia@huffingtonpost.com
Posted: 06/16/2015
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has gained support in New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary polls and is now within 10 percentage points of front-runner Hillary Clinton.
According to a Suffolk University poll released Tuesday, Sanders' support was at 31 percent, compared with Clinton's 41 percent.
A Morning Consult poll published Sunday also showed a leap in support for Sanders in the Granite State. While Clinton maintained the lead with 44 percent of likely New Hampshire voters, Sanders had 32 percent.
The rise for Sanders in the New Hampshire polls coincides with two events: On May 27, Sanders officially announced his bid for the presidency, and on June 2, "Run Warren Run" a volunteer group that aimed to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as a Democratic candidate, announced the suspension of the effort and the closing of the group's field offices.
A University of New Hampshire poll conducted in late May, just after Sanders' declaration, but prior to the announcement by Run Warren Run, showed that only 13 percent of likely New Hampshire voters would vote for Sanders. Warren had 20 percent support. With all speculation gone that Warren might run, polls stopped surveying for Warren, making room for Sanders to consolidate support in the far left.
Still, Sanders remains far behind Clinton nationally and in other primary states. According to HuffPost Pollster charts, nationally Sanders takes 12 percent of the vote, just 2 percentage points ahead of Vice President Joe Biden, who has not declared his candidacy. In Iowa, Sanders sits at 14 percent, while Clinton has more than four times the support, with 58 percent of voters saying they would vote for her. Sanders also is positioned far behind Clinton in Florida, with only 13 percent support.
The Suffolk University poll surveyed 500 likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters using live interviews on landlines and cell phones June 11 to June 15.
The Morning Consult poll surveyed 279 likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters online and via live interviews over landlines and cell phones May 31 to June 8.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/16/bernie-sanders-new-hampshire-primary-poll_n_7598408.html
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Poll: Clinton's honesty and trustworthy problem extends to swing states
By Dan Merica
Wed June 17, 2015
(CNN)A majority of voters in three key presidential swing states view Hillary Clinton as not honest and trustworthy, according to a new poll out Wednesday.
The Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll finds that by margins of 8 to 14 percentage points voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania are skeptical of Clinton's trustworthiness.
In Florida, 51% of voters hold the negative view of Clinton, compared to 43% who feel she is trustworthy. In Ohio, 53% of voters find Clinton not trustworthy, compared to 40% who do. And in Pennsylvania, 54% of voters don't find her honest, while 40% do.
Hillary Clinton answers questions from reporters March 10, 2015 at the United Nations in New York. Clinton admitted that she made a mistake in choosing, for convenience, not to use an official email account when she was secretary of state.
Compounding the possible issue for Clinton, being honest and trustworthy is also the top issue to voters in all three early states.
Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the poll, said that Clinton is experiencing a "continuing slide" with how she is "perceived by voters who continue to say she is not honest and trustworthy."
Clinton's early state honest and trustworthy numbers follow what a CNN/ORC poll released earlier this month found: 42% of Americans consider her honest and trustworthy, while 57% don't.
The Clinton campaign has said that they don't view public polling as reliable, but feel like Clinton's numbers are dropping because she entered the political arena after spending four years as secretary of state, a job many see as above the political fray.
"I take all of these public polls with a grain of salt," Joel Benenson, a top Clinton adviser, told CNN earlier this month.
Former President Bill Clinton has also rejected the idea that his wife his not trustworthy.
"I think that anybody who is still really close to their best friend from grade schools is by definition trustworthy," Bill Clinton told CNN this month. "The people who know, know that."
The Quinnipiac poll also finds voters in the swing states are split on Clinton and her Republican challengers.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio appears to be the best placed Republican to challenge Clinton. In Florida, his home state, Rubio gets 44% support compared to Clinton's 47%. The senator get 41% to Clinton's 45% in Ohio and 44% to Clinton's 43% in Pennsylvania.
"It's a long way until Election Day, but in the critical swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has a tiny edge over the GOP field," Brown said.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/17/politics/poll-2016-elections-hillary-clinton-trustworthy/index.html
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Im rooting for him thats for sure.
I think we are going to see how much "the Presidential look" will weigh in when he faces off against Hillary on stage.
I think if he was an type-Obama clone (i.e. charismatic, good looking, younger etc) mixed with Bernie's energy and popular leftist political stances Hillary would not stand a chance in the Democratic primaries.
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Sanders surge is becoming a bigger problem for Clinton
(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2841928/images/n-HILLARY-CLINTON-large570.jpg)
It may be time for Hillary Clinton to take the challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders more seriously.
Sanders is surging in the race for the party’s presidential nomination.
The Vermont Independent has drawn huge crowds of supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire, and pulled within striking distance of Clinton in some Granite State polls.
“This is not a protest campaign,” Sanders declared at a breakfast with reporters in Washington last week. “This is a campaign to win.”
He’s also a powerful presence on social media, where supporters are eager to share news about his campaign.
While Clinton remains the runaway favorite, the strength of Sanders's challenge — particularly in the states hosting the first two nominating contests — is starting to get attention.
“Primary voters in New Hampshire are looking around,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “They at least want to shop around a little bit before buying. Based on that alone, it’s probably time for the Clinton campaign to take Sanders seriously.”
One of the problems that the Sanders surge poses for Clinton is that Democrats say there’s a risk in taking him head on.
Doing so could rally his supporters, alienate liberals the Democratic nominee will need in the fall of 2016 and elevate Sanders as a challenger.
“They’re not going to go after him publicly, and it’d be wrong to do so,” said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, who worked on then-President Clinton’s 1996 reelection bid. “She needs to keep slogging along and make the kinds of policy arguments that will eventually make some of the uniqueness around Sanders dissipate.”
Meanwhile, Sanders has begun sharpening his attacks against Clinton — and she has started to move toward Sanders on at least one issue.
Clinton on Thursday said she would vote against giving President Obama fast-track authority, which would make it easier for the White House to negotiate trade deals. That came after weeks in which Sanders bashed Obama’s former secretary of State for not taking a clear position.
Democrats close to Clinton aren’t sounding the alarm over Sanders just yet. They believe he has a low ceiling of support that doesn’t extend beyond the anti-establishment contingent.
“Everything can change, but as I see it today, he doesn’t look to me to pose a material threat,” said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, a veteran of the Clinton White House. “I don’t think he has the capacity to unite the different factions of the party beyond those who are naturally inclined to go against the establishment.”
Sanders is uniquely positioned to do well in Iowa and New Hampshire.
In the 2008 contest, Clinton finished third to then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.). While she has sought to make a play for the state in this cycle, the 2008 showing suggests a vulnerability.
In New Hampshire, Sanders has an advantage in being from Vermont.
A Suffolk University survey released this week found Sanders had closed to within 10 percentage points of Clinton in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
“He has to bet the farm there,” said Bannon. “A victory in New Hampshire would scare the hell out of the Clinton people.”
Democrats say the Suffolk poll will have the Clinton campaign on notice and strategizing about how to deal with and contain an early defeat.
“It’s quite possible he’s going to win a primary some place and will have the momentum,” said Sheinkopf. “He may do well in Iowa or New Hampshire. The question is, how do you deal with that? They need to be prepared to organize and surround him on the ground and prepare a response without just going out and attacking him.”
Lehane argued that New Hampshire looks like an outlier.
“After New Hampshire, the nature of the electorate and the dynamics change dramatically,” he said.
Indeed, Sanders will need to expand his base beyond the mostly young and male supporters he’s managed to energize so far.
Sanders and Clinton are essentially tied among men in New Hampshire, according to the Suffolk University poll, but Clinton holds a 19-percentage-point lead among women. Clinton also has a nearly 2-to-1 advantage among seniors in the state, who are more likely to vote in a Democratic primary.
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WMUR/CNN poll: Clinton suddenly in a tight battle with Sanders in NH
Vermont US senator now within 8 percentage points of frontrunner
Jun 25, 2015
DURHAM, N.H. —Less than two months ago, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a 21 percentage point lead over her nearest competitor in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary campaign. Now, her edge is down to 8 percentage points over Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Clinton leads Sanders, 43 to 35 percent, in a new WMUR/CNN Granite State Poll, which was conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center from June 18 to 24. The poll included 360 likely 2016 Democratic primary voters and has a margin of error of 5.2 percent, meaning Sanders is close to being in a statistical dead heat with the frontrunner.
READ: WMUR CNN Granite State Poll for the Democratic Primary
According to the poll, Vice President Joe Biden was the choice of 8 percent, while former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley drew 2 percent and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee were each the choice of 1 percent.
To view the poll results, click here.
A WMUR Granite State Poll released in May showed Clinton leading Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren 51 to 20 percent, with Sanders at 13 percent. Warren, who has repeatedly insisted she will not run for president, was not included in the new poll. A year ago, Clinton led Sanders, 59 percent to 5 percent.
The new poll shows that Clinton still has a strong favorability rating, with 74 percent of those polled viewing her favorably and 19 percent viewing her unfavorably. She also leads Sanders in several issue-related categories.
But Clinton is also the candidate who most likely voters say is the least honest, with 28 percent putting her in that category, as compared to only 2 percent for Sanders, while 60 percent of the Democratic primary voters said they did not know.
Sanders has seen a big increase in the number of likely voters who view him favorably. It is now up to 66 percent, while only 11 percent view him unfavorably. The two candidates’ net favorability rating is the same, at 55 percent.
UNH political science professor Andrew Smith, executive director of the Survey Center, attributed Sanders’ surge primarily to the exit of Warren from the discussion.
“Hillary Clinton’s early numbers had been higher than they reasonably could have been expected to remain,” Smith said. “Historically, New Hampshire has had about 40 percent of the Democratic voters be progressive voters. That has been the case going back to 1968 with Eugene McCarthy.”
Smith said that with Warren out of contention, “Sanders was the beneficiary. If you added the Sanders and Warren numbers in May, they added up to 33 percent, and now we have 35 percent for Sanders as the progressives are coalescing around him.”
Smith said that Clinton “does have some difficulty with the trust issue, but the bigger problem is that she is not connecting with more of the anger, the motivated voters in the Democratic Party.”
By a margin of 41 to 30 percent, likely Democratic primary voters chose Sanders over Clinton as the candidate who best represents the values of their political party. And 45 percent said Sanders cares the most about “people like you,” while 24 percent named Clinton.
But Clinton was viewed by 56 percent of those polled as the strongest leader, compared to 13 percent for Sanders, while 38 percent said she has the personal characteristics and qualities that a president should have, as compared to 27 percent for Sanders.
Clinton led Sanders as better equipped to handle key challenges, including the economy, 37 percent to 28 percent; terrorism, 45 percent to 12 percent; international trade policy, 55 percent to 14 percent; and health care, 43 percent to 27 percent. But Sanders was named by 36 percent as better able to handle “big banks and corporations,” 36 percent to 31 percent.
Jobs and the economy was named as the top issue of 24 percent of those polled, while 16 percent named foreign policy/national security, 8 percent named social issues, 8 percent named health care, 8 percent named the environment/climate change, 6 percent named education, 4 percent named income equality and 3 percent named campaign finance.
There is a clear gender split in the race, with women favoring Clinton, 51 percent to 30 percent, and men favoring Sanders, 42 percent to 32 percent.
Predictably, Sanders polled the strongest in the Connecticut Valley, 45 percent to 37 percent for Clinton. He also leads Clinton in the North Country, 50 percent to 33 percent, and the Seacoast, 40 to 36 percent.
Clinton out-polled Sanders, 50 percent to 24 percent, in the Manchester area, as well as along the Massachusetts border, 47 percent to 24 percent, and in the central part of the state, 50 to 36 percent.
According to the poll, 54 percent said have not definitely decided who to support, but when asked who they would support if the election were held today, 9 percent were undecided.
http://www.wmur.com/politics/wmurcnn-poll-clinton-suddenly-in-a-tight-battle-with-sanders-in-nh/33776056
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WMUR/CNN poll: Clinton suddenly in a tight battle with Sanders in NH
Vermont US senator now within 8 percentage points of frontrunner
Jun 25, 2015
DURHAM, N.H. —Less than two months ago, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a 21 percentage point lead over her nearest competitor in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary campaign. Now, her edge is down to 8 percentage points over Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Clinton leads Sanders, 43 to 35 percent, in a new WMUR/CNN Granite State Poll, which was conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center from June 18 to 24. The poll included 360 likely 2016 Democratic primary voters and has a margin of error of 5.2 percent, meaning Sanders is close to being in a statistical dead heat with the frontrunner.
READ: WMUR CNN Granite State Poll for the Democratic Primary
According to the poll, Vice President Joe Biden was the choice of 8 percent, while former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley drew 2 percent and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee were each the choice of 1 percent.
To view the poll results, click here.
A WMUR Granite State Poll released in May showed Clinton leading Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren 51 to 20 percent, with Sanders at 13 percent. Warren, who has repeatedly insisted she will not run for president, was not included in the new poll. A year ago, Clinton led Sanders, 59 percent to 5 percent.
The new poll shows that Clinton still has a strong favorability rating, with 74 percent of those polled viewing her favorably and 19 percent viewing her unfavorably. She also leads Sanders in several issue-related categories.
But Clinton is also the candidate who most likely voters say is the least honest, with 28 percent putting her in that category, as compared to only 2 percent for Sanders, while 60 percent of the Democratic primary voters said they did not know.
Sanders has seen a big increase in the number of likely voters who view him favorably. It is now up to 66 percent, while only 11 percent view him unfavorably. The two candidates’ net favorability rating is the same, at 55 percent.
UNH political science professor Andrew Smith, executive director of the Survey Center, attributed Sanders’ surge primarily to the exit of Warren from the discussion.
“Hillary Clinton’s early numbers had been higher than they reasonably could have been expected to remain,” Smith said. “Historically, New Hampshire has had about 40 percent of the Democratic voters be progressive voters. That has been the case going back to 1968 with Eugene McCarthy.”
Smith said that with Warren out of contention, “Sanders was the beneficiary. If you added the Sanders and Warren numbers in May, they added up to 33 percent, and now we have 35 percent for Sanders as the progressives are coalescing around him.”
Smith said that Clinton “does have some difficulty with the trust issue, but the bigger problem is that she is not connecting with more of the anger, the motivated voters in the Democratic Party.”
By a margin of 41 to 30 percent, likely Democratic primary voters chose Sanders over Clinton as the candidate who best represents the values of their political party. And 45 percent said Sanders cares the most about “people like you,” while 24 percent named Clinton.
But Clinton was viewed by 56 percent of those polled as the strongest leader, compared to 13 percent for Sanders, while 38 percent said she has the personal characteristics and qualities that a president should have, as compared to 27 percent for Sanders.
Clinton led Sanders as better equipped to handle key challenges, including the economy, 37 percent to 28 percent; terrorism, 45 percent to 12 percent; international trade policy, 55 percent to 14 percent; and health care, 43 percent to 27 percent. But Sanders was named by 36 percent as better able to handle “big banks and corporations,” 36 percent to 31 percent.
Jobs and the economy was named as the top issue of 24 percent of those polled, while 16 percent named foreign policy/national security, 8 percent named social issues, 8 percent named health care, 8 percent named the environment/climate change, 6 percent named education, 4 percent named income equality and 3 percent named campaign finance.
There is a clear gender split in the race, with women favoring Clinton, 51 percent to 30 percent, and men favoring Sanders, 42 percent to 32 percent.
Predictably, Sanders polled the strongest in the Connecticut Valley, 45 percent to 37 percent for Clinton. He also leads Clinton in the North Country, 50 percent to 33 percent, and the Seacoast, 40 to 36 percent.
Clinton out-polled Sanders, 50 percent to 24 percent, in the Manchester area, as well as along the Massachusetts border, 47 percent to 24 percent, and in the central part of the state, 50 to 36 percent.
According to the poll, 54 percent said have not definitely decided who to support, but when asked who they would support if the election were held today, 9 percent were undecided.
http://www.wmur.com/politics/wmurcnn-poll-clinton-suddenly-in-a-tight-battle-with-sanders-in-nh/33776056
If Bernie Sanders can win Iowa and New Hampshire then things suddenly begin to get a little interesting.
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If Bernie Sanders can win Iowa and New Hampshire then things suddenly begin to get a little interesting.
Hillary would still pull it off...but that aura of invincibility would be gone
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Hillary would still pull it off...but that aura of invincibility would be gone
It's already gone.
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Biden Weighs Family's Needs As Support Builds for '16 Run
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=7504aae1-99f8-4405-bbe0-a7819a3a8eb6&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Biden Weighs Family's Needs As Support Builds for '16 Run (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
By Melissa Clyne
Monday, 29 Jun 2015
As Vice President Joe Biden continues to grieve the loss of his eldest son, speculation mounts as to whether he will seek the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2016, a move both of his sons reportedly encouraged.
"It’s no secret that Beau wanted him to run," Dick Harpootlian, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, told The Wall Street Journal. "If he does what Beau wanted him to do, he’ll run."
While Biden’s younger son, Hunter, didn’t respond to a request for comment from the newspaper, South Carolina state Rep. James Smith told the Journal that he has spoken with the younger Biden in the past two weeks and he "reiterated that he wanted his father to jump in the race ... He feels strongly about his dad running and serving."
The 72-year-old vice president — who ran for the White House in both 1998 and 2008 — had already been non-committal about his intentions when on May 30 Beau Biden, a former Delaware attorney general, succumbed to brain cancer.
Beau is the second child Biden last lost to tragedy. In 1972, his first wife, Neilia, and the couple's 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident that also seriously injured Biden’s two sons.
The career politician is faring better in polls than in the past. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 40 percent of Americans viewed him favorably, compared with 31 percent who held unfavorable views. That’s a five-point jump since November, when his favorability rating was at 35 percent.
Biden is expected to announce his intentions by August, according to USA Today, which reports that a Draft Biden campaign has been launched by former staffers and campaign veterans in Iowa and New Hampshire. A petition urging Biden to run has been signed by some 100,000, according to the newspaper.
Although gaffe-prone, Biden is also seen as the best alternative to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner and presumed nominee, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is a "happy warrior" but a "welterweight," according to U.S. News, while progressive Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s appeal among socially conservative Hispanics and blue-collar whites is "questionable."
Biden’s strengths include his everyman persona, strong union support, and the "behind-the-scenes backing of President Barack Obama and his top aides."
"It is they, some say, who made sure the world knew about Clinton’s email account," U.S. News reports, referencing revelations that Clinton exclusively used a private email account and server housed at her New York home to conduct government business. "It is they, it is rumored, who signaled to The New York Times and other liberal media that Clinton is now fair game. Room needs to be made for someone else, someone closer to the president and loyal to his agenda."
Harpootlian said Biden has indicated to him that the decision is about his family.
"It's all about his personal situation — 'Can I do this and not in any way deny my family what I can give them or do for them?'" he told USA Today.
"No one would blame him if he said, 'You know, look, it's just too much,'" said Harpootlian, adding that Biden is a "tough guy" who "fights his way through tough times."
For now, Biden is staying out of the fray, "getting briefed, coached and prepared for the moment when Clinton’s candidacy falls to earth," according to U.S. News. "At that point, Biden will come in as a white knight, without the scuffmarks of a long primary."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/joe-biden-democrats-hillary-clinton-2016/2015/06/29/id/652636/#ixzz3eURNkBw7
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Biden definitely has my vote if he runs......he has a much better resume than Clinton
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He would certainly provide comic relief.
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Biden definitely has my vote if he runs......he has a much better resume than Clinton
correct. probably more experience than any repub up there too?
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He would certainly provide comic relief.
certainly cant provide more comic relief than the Republicans..Trump has already started things off...hard for Biden to top that :D
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certainly cant provide more comic relief than the Republicans..Trump has already started things off...hard for Biden to top that :D
Trump is the only person providing comic relief on the Republican side, but he's not a serious candidate. He's not going to be the nominee. He's going to provide fodder for MSNBC and liberals everywhere.
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Trump is the only person providing comic relief on the Republican side, but he's not a serious candidate. He's not going to be the nominee. He's going to provide fodder for MSNBC and liberals everywhere.
According to FOX he's a serious candidate....polling right up there with Jeb and qualifies for FOX's debate
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According to FOX he's a serious candidate....polling right up there with Jeb and qualifies for FOX's debate
quite a few polls have him tied at the top now. michigan has him at 14% to walker at 15%. Trump is going to grab the obama-hating racist fcks that don't really know the issues, but know they hate them some democrats. Maybe 15 to 20% of repubs (just like libs are the same way for teh bottom fifth).
The credible candidates will split the remaining votes, with way less $ and media attention. Let's face it, Cruz can give an amazing speech tomorrow and fox MIGHT pick up on it. Trump can wink at a waitress and it'll be front page NY Times and every other newspaper. Trump has a massive advantage here.
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quite a few polls have him tied at the top now. michigan has him at 14% to walker at 15%. Trump is going to grab the obama-hating racist fcks that don't really know the issues, but know they hate them some democrats. Maybe 15 to 20% of repubs (just like libs are the same way for teh bottom fifth).
The credible candidates will split the remaining votes, with way less $ and media attention. Let's face it, Cruz can give an amazing speech tomorrow and fox MIGHT pick up on it. Trump can wink at a waitress and it'll be front page NY Times and every other newspaper. Trump has a massive advantage here.
point well taken
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According to FOX he's a serious candidate....polling right up there with Jeb and qualifies for FOX's debate
According to the words that come out of his mouth, his lack of self control, temperament, position on numerous issues, repeated shifting of policy views, etc., he is not and never will be a serious candidate. Going nowhere.
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According to the words that come out of his mouth, his lack of self control, temperament, position on numerous issues, repeated shifting of policy views, etc., he is not and never will be a serious candidate. Going nowhere.
some would say the same about Sanders as well....going nowhere.....yet polling high too
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some would say the same about Sanders as well....going nowhere.....yet polling high too
I agree, except Sanders at least is already a politician. Trump is just trying to make money IMO.
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According to the words that come out of his mouth, his lack of self control, temperament, position on numerous issues, repeated shifting of policy views, etc., he is not and never will be a serious candidate. Going nowhere.
the great thing about the RINO/Repubs dissing trump with quotes like this...
If he wins the nomination, and yes, in 2015, any troll idiot like Trump can win the nomination, Repubs will be kneepadding him, telling us how he's better for USA than Hilary.
Seriously, if Jon Stewart announced on his last night on the Daily Show (a few weeks from now) that he's running for President... i think we can ALL agree he'd be neck and neck with hilary in the polls within 2 weeks. Just like Trump has done with Jeb. The only diff is that Stewart is a tad more intelligent than Trump (even if you dislike his views, you have to admit he's articulate).
So yes, trump can win and hilary could be beaten too.
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Elizabeth Warren: 'I Love What Bernie is Talking About'
By Jason Devaney
Tuesday, 30 Jun 2015
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren likes what she sees in fellow Democrat and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is running for president.
"I love what Bernie is talking about. I think all the presidential candidates should be out talking about the big issues," Warren told the Boston Herald.
Warren would not commit to endorsing Sanders or campaigning with him in the future. In fact, Warren has yet to endorse anyone in the small field of Democrats ahead of next year's primary.
Warren is, however, impressed with Sanders' approach to the campaign thus far.
"Bernie's out talking about the issues that the American people want to hear about," Warren told the Herald.
When asked if she thinks Sanders can win the nomination and earn a spot on the presidential ballot, Warren avoided the question.
"Bernie is there on the issues. That's what matters to a lot of people," she said.
Warren turned down several calls to join the presidential race, including one from a super PAC set up in hopes she would run.
Warren took office in 2013 and is seen by many in the Democratic Party as a rising star.
Conservatives, however, discount her for her lack of political experience and her liberal views. Others think Warren could pull Hillary Clinton further to the left during the presidential campaign, which might end up helping the GOP win the presidential election.
"You've got the energy of the Elizabeth Warren faction kind of driving the agenda, pulling Hillary Clinton further to the left, which, by the way, I think is useful for us in the general election next year," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in May.
Regardless, Warren supporters, including the Ready for Warren super PAC, are beginning to back Sanders' White House bid, USA Today reported last week.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Elizabeth-Warren-Bernie-Sanders/2015/06/30/id/652928/#ixzz3eezn5R36
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Efforts to Draft Biden for 2016 Gain Steam
(http://images.realclear.com/293070_5_.jpg)
By Andrew Desiderio
June 29, 2015
While Hillary Clinton is viewed by many as a political powerhouse who will cruise to the Democratic presidential nomination, there may be room for a familiar face to challenge her: Joe Biden.
The newest indication that the vice president could jump into the race comes from a Wall Street Journal report, which cites friends and advisers who say Biden, 72, received encouragement to do so from sons Beau and Hunter. Beau Biden died last month after a long battle with brain cancer.
Hillary Clinton, who served as secretary of state during President Obama’s first term and worked closely with Biden, is the overwhelming frontrunner to become her party’s standard-bearer, but many Democratic insiders say Biden could present a formidable challenge should her campaign falter.
“He feels strongly about his dad running and serving,” James Smith, a Democratic state representative in South Carolina, told the Journal of Hunter Biden’s sentiments. Dick Harpootlian, former chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, added: “If he does what Beau wanted him to do, he’ll run.”
Thousands of others have also signaled their support for a White House bid by the vice president. Draft Biden 2016, a super PAC that is laying the groundwork for a potential campaign in early voting states, has gathered more than 90,000 signatures to support that effort.
“We think it’s great,” Executive Director William Pierce said of the Journal report in an interview with RealClearPolitics. “We’re excited to see more and more people closer to the vice president urging him to run.”
Some question his viability in a race that is already dominated by the juggernaut Clinton campaign. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Biden is in second place in the Democratic race with 12.8 percent support, behind by more than 50 percentage points.
But Pierce says Biden’s numbers are actually encouraging, noting that he’s polling ahead of declared candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley without having even formed an exploratory committee.
“It’s still very early, but it’s a game-changer if the vice president enters the race,” said Pierce, a veteran of Obama for America.
A similar campaign to draft Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren fell flat when the progressive warrior said once and for all she would not seek the Oval Office in 2016. Many of her supporters, however, have flocked to Sanders, who champions a similar message of economic populism.
Asked to make the case for Biden over Hillary Clinton, Pierce zeroed in on experience. Biden served as a senator from Delaware for 36 years, chairing influential committees including Foreign Affairs and Judiciary. In addition to his long tenure in the upper chamber, Pierce said, Biden has been President Obama’s point man for negotiations on Capitol Hill, adding that the vice president’s efforts in brokering a budget compromise “averted a government shutdown” in 2011.
Pierce avoided speculation when asked if he thinks fulfilling Beau Biden’s wish would serve motivation for the vice president to run, but said he “could view that as encouragement” on Biden’s part.
Pierce, an Iraq War veteran, recalled the vice president’s suggestion in 2006 that Iraq be split into “three largely autonomous regions” consisting of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi’ites – “with a viable central government in Baghdad.” It is something that struck Pierce personally, though many wrote off such a proposal at the time. But now that ISIS continues to advance in the region and such sectarian divisions are already apparent, “even Republicans are saying we should’ve done that,” Pierce said.
Biden, who unsuccessfully sought the Oval Office in 1988 and 2008, has left the door open for a 2016 campaign in recent years.
“I can die a happy man never having been president of the United States of America,” Biden said in a 2013 GQ profile. “But it doesn’t mean I won’t run.”
He continued: “The judgment I’ll make is, first of all, am I still as full of as much energy as I have now – do I feel this? … Number two, do I think I’m the best person in the position to move the ball? And, you know, we’ll see where the hell I am.”
Asked by CNN in February 2014 to name a reason he shouldn’t run, Biden said there are “no obvious reason[s.” More recently, he told ABC News “there is a chance” he will challenge Clinton, adding that the race is “wide open” on both the Democratic and Republican sides.
The next month will be crucial for the advocacy group’s field organizing, as Biden is expected to make a decision on whether to run by early August. Draft Biden announced on Monday that it is expanding its efforts in key primary states, hiring experienced politicos as state directors in New Hampshire and Iowa.
“Our team has come a long way since our humble beginnings of two people in my living room back in March,” Pierce said in a statement. “With positive momentum all across the board, we are going all in to encourage the Vice President to run for President ahead of his potential August 1st announcement.”
A Clinton campaign spokesman did not return a request to comment on the possibility of the vice president jumping into the contest.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/06/29/efforts_to_draft_biden_for_2016_gain_steam_127175.html
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According to the words that come out of his mouth, his lack of self control, temperament, position on numerous issues, repeated shifting of policy views, etc., he is not and never will be a serious candidate. Going nowhere.
are you talking about TRUMP or FOX NEWS??????????????????........this is why they are so good for each other
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Efforts to Draft Biden for 2016 Gain Steam
(http://images.realclear.com/293070_5_.jpg)
By Andrew Desiderio
June 29, 2015
While Hillary Clinton is viewed by many as a political powerhouse who will cruise to the Democratic presidential nomination, there may be room for a familiar face to challenge her: Joe Biden.
The newest indication that the vice president could jump into the race comes from a Wall Street Journal report, which cites friends and advisers who say Biden, 72, received encouragement to do so from sons Beau and Hunter. Beau Biden died last month after a long battle with brain cancer.
Hillary Clinton, who served as secretary of state during President Obama’s first term and worked closely with Biden, is the overwhelming frontrunner to become her party’s standard-bearer, but many Democratic insiders say Biden could present a formidable challenge should her campaign falter.
“He feels strongly about his dad running and serving,” James Smith, a Democratic state representative in South Carolina, told the Journal of Hunter Biden’s sentiments. Dick Harpootlian, former chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, added: “If he does what Beau wanted him to do, he’ll run.”
Thousands of others have also signaled their support for a White House bid by the vice president. Draft Biden 2016, a super PAC that is laying the groundwork for a potential campaign in early voting states, has gathered more than 90,000 signatures to support that effort.
“We think it’s great,” Executive Director William Pierce said of the Journal report in an interview with RealClearPolitics. “We’re excited to see more and more people closer to the vice president urging him to run.”
Some question his viability in a race that is already dominated by the juggernaut Clinton campaign. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Biden is in second place in the Democratic race with 12.8 percent support, behind by more than 50 percentage points.
But Pierce says Biden’s numbers are actually encouraging, noting that he’s polling ahead of declared candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley without having even formed an exploratory committee.
“It’s still very early, but it’s a game-changer if the vice president enters the race,” said Pierce, a veteran of Obama for America.
A similar campaign to draft Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren fell flat when the progressive warrior said once and for all she would not seek the Oval Office in 2016. Many of her supporters, however, have flocked to Sanders, who champions a similar message of economic populism.
Asked to make the case for Biden over Hillary Clinton, Pierce zeroed in on experience. Biden served as a senator from Delaware for 36 years, chairing influential committees including Foreign Affairs and Judiciary. In addition to his long tenure in the upper chamber, Pierce said, Biden has been President Obama’s point man for negotiations on Capitol Hill, adding that the vice president’s efforts in brokering a budget compromise “averted a government shutdown” in 2011.
Pierce avoided speculation when asked if he thinks fulfilling Beau Biden’s wish would serve motivation for the vice president to run, but said he “could view that as encouragement” on Biden’s part.
Pierce, an Iraq War veteran, recalled the vice president’s suggestion in 2006 that Iraq be split into “three largely autonomous regions” consisting of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi’ites – “with a viable central government in Baghdad.” It is something that struck Pierce personally, though many wrote off such a proposal at the time. But now that ISIS continues to advance in the region and such sectarian divisions are already apparent, “even Republicans are saying we should’ve done that,” Pierce said.
Biden, who unsuccessfully sought the Oval Office in 1988 and 2008, has left the door open for a 2016 campaign in recent years.
“I can die a happy man never having been president of the United States of America,” Biden said in a 2013 GQ profile. “But it doesn’t mean I won’t run.”
He continued: “The judgment I’ll make is, first of all, am I still as full of as much energy as I have now – do I feel this? … Number two, do I think I’m the best person in the position to move the ball? And, you know, we’ll see where the hell I am.”
Asked by CNN in February 2014 to name a reason he shouldn’t run, Biden said there are “no obvious reason.” More recently, he told ABC News “there is a chance” he will challenge Clinton, adding that the race is “wide open” on both the Democratic and Republican sides.
The next month will be crucial for the advocacy group’s field organizing, as Biden is expected to make a decision on whether to run by early August. Draft Biden announced on Monday that it is expanding its efforts in key primary states, hiring experienced politicos as state directors in New Hampshire and Iowa.
“Our team has come a long way since our humble beginnings of two people in my living room back in March,” Pierce said in a statement. “With positive momentum all across the board, we are going all in to encourage the Vice President to run for President ahead of his potential August 1st announcement.”
A Clinton campaign spokesman did not return a request to comment on the possibility of the vice president jumping into the contest.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/06/29/efforts_to_draft_biden_for_2016_gain_steam_127175.html
I really do think that Biden is making a huge mistake by not running...he could beat Hillary just on a comparison of resumes.....yes I admit he has a way of putting his foot in his mouth but he is well liked, knows everybody in congress and some of his faux pau's can be attributed to his down home style of talking...nothing a little discipline can't fix.....also he, like Obama has had a very good second term...there's a lot he can point to......but he has to go all out and destroy Hillary..I'm not sure if he has the political balls to do that
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are you talking about TRUMP or FOX NEWS??????????????????........this is why they are so good for each other
I'm talking about Trump.
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I'm talking about Trump.
ok...because when you talk about lack of self control, temperament, position of numerous issues, and repeated shifting of policy views you might as well be talking about FOX as well
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In really do think that Biden is making a huge mistake by not running...he could beat Hillary just on a comparison of resumes.....yes I admit he has a way of puting his foot in his mouth but he is well liked, knows everybody in congress and some of his faux pau's can be attributed to his down home style of talking...nothing a little discipline can't fix.....also he, like Obama has had a very good second term...there's a lot he can point to......but he has to go all out and destroy Hillary..I'm not sure if he has the political balls to do that
Biden has been repeatedly rejected by Democrats when he previously ran for president. No reason why he'll do any better this time around. He's still the same bumbling, dishonest, inept loose cannon he was during his last presidential runs.
He is 72 years old. He isn't going to develop a "little discipline" at this stage of his life. He is who he is.
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ok...because when you talk about lack of self control, temperament, position of numerous issues, and repeated shifting of policy views you might as well be talking about FOX as well
Dude that makes zero sense.
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Dude that makes zero sense.
of course it does...to a pro-FOXer.....everyone else knows what I mean
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of course it does...to a pro-FOXer.....everyone else knows what I mean
Yes, I'm sure everyone knows what you mean when you say "Fox News" has a "lack of self control, temperament, position on numerous issues, and repeated shifting of policy views."
Do you not see how nonsensical that is, or are you just trolling?
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Biden has been repeatedly rejected by Democrats when he previously ran for president. No reason why he'll do any better this time around. He's still the same bumbling, dishonest, inept loose cannon he was during his last presidential runs.
He is 72 years old. He isn't going to develop a "little discipline" at this stage of his life. He is who he is.
believe me...if "bumbling" and "inept" guys like Trump and Rick Perry can get in then surely Biden who has more experience and a better resume than both can get in as well
STILL DESTROYING YOU I SEE
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I also think Mitt Romney maybe should have tried again....he let Jeb Bush scare him off but Jeb is turning out not to be anything special so far
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believe me...if "bumbling" and "inept" guys like Trump and Rick Perry can get in then surely Biden who has more experience and a better resume than both can get in as well
STILL DESTROYING YOU I SEE
Neither Trump nor Perry (both of whom are more successful than Biden) are going to sniff the GOP nomination, so your comparison makes no sense.
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Neither Trump nor Perry (both of whom are more successful than Biden) are going to sniff the GOP nomination, so your comparison makes no sense.
yet in your mind they can at least compete....whereas in your very same mind Biden shouldn't
OH THE HYPOCRISY
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yet in your mind they can at least compete....whereas in your very same mind Biden shouldn't
OH THE HYPOCRISY
What the heck are you talking about?? I said neither Trump nor Perry will sniff the nomination. I didn't say anything about "competing," whatever that means. Of course they can all run. None of them has a snowball's chance.
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"Fox News" has a "lack of self control, temperament, position on numerous issues, and repeated shifting of policy views."
I hate to agree with you - but in this case, you're right.
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What the heck are you talking about?? I said neither Trump nor Perry will sniff the nomination. I didn't say anything about "competing," whatever that means. Of course they can all run. None of them has a snowball's chance.
;D....this I can agree with
But do you think that just maybe Trump can emerge and win the nomination because he appeals to a certain group who like his outspokenness because he says things they themselves are thinking, while the other candidates cancel each other out???
I think trump will drop out maybe because this whole nomination thingy is costing him too much on the bottom line and people will continue to disassociate themselves from him as his pronouncements get more outlandish
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I hate to agree with you - but in this case, you're right.
::)
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;D....this I can agree with
But do you think that just maybe Trump can emerge and win the nomination because he appeals to a certain group who like his outspokenness because he says things they themselves are thinking, while the other candidates cancel each other out???
I think trump will drop out maybe because this whole nomination thingy is costing him too much on the bottom line and people will continue to disassociate themselves from him as his pronouncements get more outlandish
Absolutely not. I think he will definitely appeal to a certain segment who are fed up with the same old Washington politics, but that isn't nearly enough. His ego is too big, his lack of self control is too pervasive, and his arrogance is too great for him to do anything other than lose. Not to mention the fact he has changed his policy views on so many issues. Voters are not going to put that man in charge of the military and/or nuclear weapons.
This run will improve his brand even more, and that's really what he is trying to accomplish IMO.
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Absolutely not. I think he will definitely appeal to a certain segment who are fed up with the same old Washington politics, but that isn't nearly enough. His ego is too big, his lack of self control is too pervasive, and his arrogance is too great for him to do anything other than lose. Not to mention the fact he has changed his policy views on so many issues. Voters are not going to put that man in charge of the military and/or nuclear weapons.
This run will improve his brand even more, and that's really what he is trying to accomplish IMO.
In 1980, yes, a sane candidate would win it because people wouldn't settle for insane.
But in 2015? Yeah, I think a batshit candidate CAN get in. He's polling at the top now... 14% to Walker 15% in MI according to brietbart.
he's rich, he's crazy, he has a populist message. And repubs will be lining up to kiss his ass if he wins the nomation.
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This is partly what makes her a beast.
Democrat Clinton Raises $45M Since April Campaign Launch
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=4b4cbc37-220b-4177-9865-e767cef13aa3&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Democrat Clinton Raises $45M Since April Campaign Launch (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Wednesday, 01 Jul 2015
Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton has raised more than $45 million since she entered the race in April, aides said on Wednesday, setting a fast pace in what is sure to be the most expensive U.S. political campaign in history.
The fundraising figure, announced by the campaign on Twitter, did not include a breakdown of the total number of donors to Clinton, the amount of their average donation or how many donors have already given the legal maximum of $2,700.
But campaign aides said 91 percent of the donations were in amounts of $100 or less and touted the figure as a sign of broad-based grassroots support as she fights off a challenge from the party's liberal wing led by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
The Sanders campaign said on Tuesday it had received contributions from about 200,000 individuals since he entered the race at the end of April, and donations averaged about $37 per person.
The Clinton haul surpasses the $42 million in primary funds raised by President Barack Obama in 2011 in the first quarter after he announced his re-election bid, the previous record for the first quarter of a campaign.
Clinton is the first 2016 presidential contender to report even a rough total on the fundraising numbers, which are viewed as an early indicator of a candidate's appeal and staying power in the race.
The specific fundraising figures for the fiscal quarter ending on June 30 must be reported to the Federal Election Commission by July 15. Clinton said on Twitter her campaign was "still running the numbers" for the final report.
Clinton has kept up an intensive national fundraising schedule since she launched her presidential bid in April, holding dozens of fund-raising events, often at the homes of wealthy donors.
The campaign featured a "Hillstarter" program that asks top donors to host fundraising events that each bring in at least $27,000 from donors.
The Associated Press reported Clinton has raised at least $19.5 million at 61 such fundraisers, an amount that makes up at least 43 percent of her fundraising total. It said the percentage was sure to be even higher, because it used the most conservative ticket prices to calculate the total raised at each event.
On Tuesday, the last day of the quarter, Clinton's campaign sent an email asking supporters to "chip in $1" to help it reach its goal of grass-roots donations.
The former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady has a big lead in polls over three Democratic challengers, giving her broad access to the party's top donors and fundraisers.
Fourteen Republicans are running for their party's nomination ahead of the November 2016 presidential election.
The fundraising numbers for Clinton and other candidates will pale compared to the huge sums expected to be raised by allied Super PACs.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-45-million/2015/07/01/id/653122/#ixzz3ekreaLZM
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Jim Webb joins 2016 presidential race
Cooper Allen, USA TODAY
July 2, 2015
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/caf9d3506900cb9b8c21fbb4d20e36edffe934d8/c=336-0-2996-2000&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/2015/07/01/USATODAY/USATODAY/635713594789770300-GTY-477178784.jpg)
(Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images)
Jim Webb, the former one-term senator from Virginia and Navy secretary, will launch a long-shot bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
Webb announced the decision on his campaign website Thursday.
"After many months of thought, deliberation and discussion, I have decided to seek the office of the Presidency of the United States," he wrote.
In his statement, Webb acknowledged the odds he faced but said he believed "our country needs a fresh approach to solving the problems that confront us and too often unnecessarily divide us."
Webb formed an exploratory committee last November and since then has held events in early voting states, such as Iowa, to test the waters for what will unquestionably be an uphill White House bid.
In a video announcing the formation of the exploratory committee, Webb highlighted issues that the next president should tackle, including increasing educational opportunities, rebuilding national infrastructure and enhancing American national security while avoiding "ill-considered" foreign entanglements.
"With enough financial support to conduct a first-class campaign, I have no doubt that we can put these issues squarely before the American people and gain their support," Webb said.
But that will be easier said than done.
Webb, 69, barely registers in opinion polls and will be challenged, to say the least, to rival Hillary Clinton's considerable fundraising advantage.
Clinton holds a commanding lead in the Democratic race, though Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, has gained ground in recent weeks, particularly in New Hampshire.
However, Sanders' rise has been fueled by his appeal to the left. Whether Webb can gain traction with a message tailored to more moderate voters seems less certain.
Webb recently sparked controversy with a Facebook post on the Confederate flag in which he urged a debate that "recognizes the need for change but also respects the complicated history of the Civil War." The message came in the wake of a bipartisan call to remove the Confederate symbol from the South Carolina state capitol grounds and elsewhere.
A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968, Webb joined the Marines and was awarded the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, among other decorations, during his service in Vietnam. He later served as a congressional aide and was tapped as Navy secretary in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan. He would resign the following year in protest of Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci's decision to decommission 16 Navy ships.
Webb won an upset victory against Republican Sen. George Allen in 2006 to capture a Virginia Senate seat. Allen's campaign was damaged when a video came out that showed him referring to a Democratic Party volunteer of Indian descent as "macaca." During the race, Webb emphasized his opposition to the Iraq War and wore his son's combat boot during his campaign.
Not long after the election, Webb had a notably testy exchange with President George W. Bush at the White House after Bush asked Webb about his son. "That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said after also telling Bush he wanted the U.S. to bring troops home from Iraq.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/07/02/jim-webb-2016-presidential-race/29574907/
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Jim Webb joins 2016 presidential race
Webb running for VP. So cute,
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SANDERS GRASSROOTS SUPPORT BRINGS IN $15 MILLION IN FUNDRAISING, CATCHING HILLARY IN POLLS
(http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/07/Sanders-AP-640x480.jpg)
(http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/07/CIdsl43UMAAgzNO-640x480.jpg)
Since his launch in April, his campaign says he has raised $15 million. “Ninety-nine percent of the almost 400,000 contributions by some 250,000 individuals were for $250 or less. The average donation was $33.51,” reads his press release.
Hillary Clinton – the Democratic frontrunner Sanders is challenging – announced she raised $45 million during the first quarter.
The self-proclaimed socialist Sanders is packing in listeners. Some 10,000 supporters came to see him speak in Madison, Wisconsin this week.
“I am more than aware that my opponents will be able to outspend us. But we are going to win this election,” Sanders said to a cheering crowd. “They may have the money but we have the people. And when the people stand together, we can win.”
Sanders is also seeing a boost in the polls. He took 33 percent from Democratic caucus voters in Iowa according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
“That’s up from 15 percent in the poll in May,” reports the Hill.
Clinton’s support fell from 60 percent in May to, now, 52 percent.
“Eighty-five percent of Democrats surveyed in the poll view Clinton favorably, compared to 66 percent for Sanders. Still, more than a quarter of respondents, 26 percent, say they haven’t heard enough about Sanders,” the Hill noted.
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the problem with sanders is that RINOs love hilary. Her positions are just like Jebs, Christie's. They win no matter what. If hilary wins, nothing really changes. If jeb, christie wins, nothing changes.
But Cruz vs sanders? Some shit may actually change.
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the problem with sanders is that RINOs love hilary. Her positions are just like Jebs, Christie's. They win no matter what. If hilary wins, nothing really changes. If jeb, christie wins, nothing changes.
But Cruz vs sanders? Some shit may actually change.
Like what? What can the President change without the approval of Congress? And what can Congress change in the era of extreme partisanship?
It doesn't matter who's in the White House or in Congress. Things will stay the same and they will not change until the American people decide to wake up and send serious people to D.C. instead of clowns like Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz.
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Like what? What can the President change without the approval of Congress?
obama's changed plenty using executive order.
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Webb running for VP Secretary of Agriculture. So cute,
FIXED
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FIXED
LOL!
Hilary will need a military presence to eclipse what will no doubt be two repubs with zero military experience on that ticket.
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LOL!
Hilary will need a military presence to eclipse what will no doubt be two repubs with zero military experience on that ticket.
I kinda wish the Dems would stop appointing Republicans to the Secretary of Defense position so that they can have political cover for being too soft on defense
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Will Joe Biden run for president? Drumbeat picks up.
(http://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2015/07/919013_1_0702-joe-biden.jpg_standard.jpg?alias=standard_600x400)
A former Obama fundraiser, now finance chair for Draft Biden 2016, puts the probability that Vice President Joe Biden will run at 80 percent. And the latest poll shows Mr. Biden slightly ahead of Bernie Sanders.
By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer
JULY 3, 2015
WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden has long harbored dreams of being president. He’s run twice before, clearly relishes political life, and has yet to rule out a third try – even as Hillary Clinton dominates in fundraising and in polls of Democrats.
After the death on May 30 of Mr. Biden’s beloved elder son, Beau, such talk was put on hold. But in recent days, speculation has begun to soar. New York businessman Jon Cooper, a former Obama fundraising bundler now working on a draft effort to get Biden into the race, told the Monitor Thursday that he puts the probability of Biden running at 80 percent.
“I’m as convinced as I can be that Joe Biden will be entering the presidential race,” said Mr. Cooper, who bases his assessment on signals from Biden’s inner circle, though he can't name names.
Recommended: Beyond Hillary Clinton: 7 other Democrats possibly (or definitely) running for president
Cooper has been sounding out potential donors, and already has commitments from five Obama contributors. On Thursday, Cooper signed on as national finance chair for an independent effort called Draft Biden 2016. Launched in March, the Chicago-based group has collected more than 100,000 signatures, and now has staff on the ground in early nominating states – Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The group has also hired a national fundraising firm.
Biden could also find encouragement in a new CNN/ORC national poll released Wednesday. Without lifting a finger, he is running second in the Democratic field, at 16 percent. Though Biden is well behind former Secretary Clinton (57 percent), he’s in a statistical tie with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont (14 percent), who has been campaigning hard and drawing crowds numbering in the thousands. Perhaps more important, Biden is national Democrats' second-choice candidate, with 35 percent saying he's their second choice and 14 percent choosing Sanders. If Clinton were to falter seriously, Democrats' second-choice candidate could be the biggest beneficiary.
Earlier this week, a report in The Wall Street Journal quoted Biden friends by name saying that before his death, Beau Biden had encouraged his dad to run, as has Biden’s other son, Hunter.
Biden will reportedly state his intentions, either way, by early August. When reached by telephone, former Sen. Ted Kaufman (D) of Delaware, a close friend of Biden’s, declined to comment on the vice president’s thinking. Biden's office also won't comment.
Perhaps the biggest clue that Biden might run is that he and his inner circle have done nothing to stop the draft effort, say draft organizers.
“We have had no communications from anyone in the Biden camp saying, ‘Stop what you’re doing,’ ” William Pierce, executive director of Draft Biden 2016, said in an interview. “Delaware’s a small state, and we talk to the same people, and all we’ve heard is a lot of encouraging communication from people who are close to the vice president.”
Pierce’s group has been holding events in Iowa and other states, and brings a life-size cutout of Biden, called “Cardboard Joe,” to liven things up. At the group’s website, DraftBiden2016.com, merchandise is for sale with the logo “I’m ridin' with Biden,” featuring the veep driving a convertible and wearing his signature aviator sunglasses.
Pundits are skeptical Biden will run and suggest that the media are inflating the possibility to add interest to the Democratic race. If Biden were to run, they doubt he could beat Clinton for the nomination. On Wednesday, Clinton announced a fundraising haul of $45 million for the first three months of her candidacy, a record for a presidential candidate’s first-quarter fundraising.
“It would be a hard catch-up for Biden. He doesn’t have the infrastructure. Who does he go to?” says veteran Democratic strategist Peter Fenn. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying it’s hard.”
Still, Mr. Fenn gets why Biden has kept his options open. Since Harry Truman assumed the presidency after the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, most vice presidents have run for the top job, and a few have reached it. Biden, a senator for 36 years before attaining the vice presidency, has long had that presidential gleam in his eye. He first ran in 1988, then again in 2008.
“I can die a happy man never having been president of the United States of America,” Biden told GQ magazine in July 2013. “But it doesn’t mean I won’t run.”
“Joe’s a thoroughbred,” says Fenn. “He loves this. He sees the gate filling up with other horses, and it’s hard for him not to head for it.”
What about the age issue? Already in his early 70s, Biden would be the oldest person to assume the presidency. But he’s not that much older than Clinton, and he's younger than Senator Sanders. Biden supporters say what matters isn’t age, it’s energy and enthusiasm.
And Biden is nothing if not enthusiastic – sometimes to his embarrassment. Who can forget his hot-mike comment in 2010 as Mr. Obama was about to sign the Affordable Care Act: “This is a big [expletive] deal.” At a campaign appearance in southern Virginia in 2012, Biden again raised eyebrows when he told a predominantly black audience that Republicans are “going to put y'all back in chains."
Biden gaffes are many, but they’re part of what gives him authenticity in a world of overly scripted candidates, analysts say. His life experiences, including a political career bookended by personal tragedy, give him plenty to go on in connecting with voters. Unlike Clinton, Biden is not wealthy, and he doesn’t face the challenge on trustworthiness that she does, amid questions over her private e-mails and Clinton Foundation fundraising.
But by getting into the race relatively late, isn’t there a big chance that Biden would end up only damaging Clinton, the eventual nominee? Fenn, the Democratic strategist, doesn’t see it that way.
“Democrats don’t like coronations,” he says. “They don’t like this notion that someone should be given the nomination without having to work hard and go through their paces. So my sense of this is that at the end, it would be good for Hillary to go through this.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/0703/Will-Joe-Biden-run-for-president-Drumbeat-picks-up
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HILLARY CLINTON CLAIMS NOT TO BE FAZED BY GROWING BERNIE SANDERS’ CROWDS
(http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/05/Bernie-Sanders-and-Hillary-Clinton-AP-Photos.jpg)
As the crowds continue to grow for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, admitted socialist and candidate for the Democrat nomination for 2016, reputed Democrat front runner Hillary Clinton is making as if she isn’t worried over the Vermonters’ growing popularity.
During a Friday campaign stop in New Hampshire, a reporter quizzed Clinton on her impression of the massive crowds that have been coming out to hear Sanders speak.
“We each run our own campaigns and I always knew this was going to be competitive,” Clinton replied.
She continued saying, “I want to have a great debate in the primary and caucus around the country and that is what I am looking forward to.”
The sizes of Sanders’ crowds have been growing by leaps and bounds. At a rally held in Madison, Wisconsin at the end of June, for instance, Hillary struggled to fill seats. But only days later at Madison’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Sanders had a massive crowd of over 10,000.
The growing size of Sanders’ crowds is sending shock waves through the Democrat Party.
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Bernie Sanders says he'd raise taxes
By Eric Bradner, CNN
Sun July 5, 2015
Washington (CNN)Bernie Sanders says America's wealthiest individuals and large corporations would face tax hikes if he's elected president.
The Vermont senator who's closed the gap on Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race said Sunday he'd use that money to pay for infrastructure, job creation and college costs.
In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union," Sanders complained of oil subsidies, companies stashing revenue overseas to avoid taxes and billionaire investor Warren Buffett's secretary paying a higher tax rate than he does.
"Clearly, that has got to change," Sanders said.
He said the United States needs rules that would "dampen down the speculation on Wall Street," and that he'd like to break up Wall Street's biggest financial institutions.
And, he said, he'd "substantially" raise taxes.
"Yes, we have to raise individual tax rates substantially higher than they are today because almost all of the new income is going to the top 1%," Sanders said.
"And yes, those folks and large corporations will have to pay under a Sanders administration more in taxes so that we can use that revenue to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, create the jobs we need, make sure that every kid who has the ability is able to get a college education in America because public colleges and public universities will be tuition-free," he said.
Asked about the type of people who would make up his cabinet, Sanders ticked off the names of three liberal economists: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz and former Bill Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/05/politics/bernie-sanders-raise-taxes/index.html
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Bernie Sanders Predicts He Will Win The Democratic Nomination And Be The Next President
By: Jason Easleymore from Jason Easley
Sunday, June, 28th, 2015
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders predicted on ABC’s This Week that he will win Iowa, New Hampshire, the Democratic nomination, and be the next president of the United States.
During an interview on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Sanders (I-VT) made series of bold predictions:
We are going to win New Hampshire. We are going to win Iowa, and I think we are going to win the Democratic nomination, and I think we’re going to win the presidency.
And I’ll tell you why, George, the American people are sick and tired of seeing the disappearance of the great middle class of this country. They’re sick and tired of working longer hour for lower wages while at the same time 99 percent of all new income generated is going to the top 1 percent and the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much as wealth as the bottom 90 percent.
George, we have seen in the last 30 years a massive shift in wealth and income from ordinary Americans to the richest people in this country and the American people are saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ We need to create an economy that works for all of us and not just a handful of billionaires.
No political candidate is going to say that he/she has no chance of winning, but the confident attitude of Sen. Sanders is increasing justified by the size of the crowds coming out to support him, the millions of dollars he is raising from small donors, and the gains that he is making in the polls.
The reason Sanders has seen such a surge is that he is the only candidate in either party who is addressing the anger and angst of non-wealthy Americans. Hillary Clinton is talking about programs to rebuild the middle-class. Republicans are dropping the words middle and class into all of their speeches as if they are the secret passwords needed to gain entry into the White House, but only Bernie Sanders is expressing the emotions and feelings of those who have been battered by the Great Recession.
People are hurting, and they are angry at an unfair system that is blocking economic advancement for most for the benefit of the few at the top.
Bernie Sanders is speaking to and for those people, and this is why a small Senate very liberal senator has become a serious threat to business as usual in Washington.
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/06/28/bernie-sanders-predicts-win-democratic-nomination-president.html
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4 reasons Joe Biden will run for president -- and four reasons he won't
Barack Obama, Joe Biden
(http://www.trbimg.com/img-559ecbc3/turbine/la-la-na-biden-presidentialaf-wre0029715991-20150701/700/700x394)
Vice President Joe Biden can claim credit for an integral role on many of the Obama administration's biggest initiatives, but whether he'll take on front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and run for the Democratic nomination for president himself remains an open question. (Susan Walsh, AP)
By MICHAEL A. MEMOLI
There is a lot of talk in political circles about a third presidential campaign for Vice President Joe Biden, but it is coming from outside his office for now. Many who are fond of the veteran Democrat have openly discussed what he would bring to the party's race that is dominated by front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton. A group unaffiliated with the vice president called Draft Biden 2016 announced in the last week that a pair of top fundraisers from President Obama's 2012 campaign would join the independent effort to build grass-roots support for the idea of a Biden run.
The vice president has seemed to enjoy stoking public speculation about his future, but of late he has been focused on his family in the wake of the death in late May of his beloved oldest son, Beau. A decision on whether to run could come in the next several months, however. A look at the factors that could lead him to decide to get in, or stay on the sidelines:
Why Biden will run for president
Running on President Obama’s record isn’t the handicap it might once have been: Obama has had a recent run of accomplishments that would certainly help whichever Democrat is running in 2016, but particularly Biden, who would likely run as an extension of – and a major force behind – his policies. “Whoever is running should … talk about in 2016 what we’ve done,” Biden recently said at a liberal think tank gala. “Some say this amounts to a third term for the President Obama. I call it sticking with what works.”
He’s run before: The only question is whether Biden will run for president, not whether he wants to be president. Democratic strategist James Carville once colorfully said that running for president is like having sex: “No one did it once and forgot about it.” Biden has run twice and won’t be intimidated by the idea of a third run, even in a more challenging media and political environment. In the early months of 2015, he conspicuously traveled to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina – the first three states in the nomination battle. The more Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders demonstrates Democratic openness to an alternative to Clinton, the more Biden could see a path to the nomination.
He thinks he’s the most qualified candidate: In a 2014 interview on “The View,” Biden said the only reason to run for president would be if he believed he was the best-positioned to do what the country needs. Clinton’s plans would not affect his own, he stressed, while also saying his experience in foreign policy “uniquely positions me to follow through on the agenda Barack and I have.” It's hard to see Biden looking out at the current field and thinking anyone's resume compares to his six-plus terms as a senator and two terms as vice president.
His family wants him to: Biden's late son Beau had expressed to his father before his death that he wanted to see him run one more time, as does Biden's other son, Hunter, the Wall Street Journal reported. Biden’s family has always been inextricably linked to his public service and political career, and those opinions would certainly carry weight. Beau Biden himself could likely have been elected governor of Delaware in 2016 and many forecast higher office for him. With Beau's death, Biden may feel he owes it to him to try again himself.
Why Biden won’t run
Going out on top: The political ambition that’s always driven the vice president may well be what leads him to believe he’s already run his last campaign. He’s likely not intimidated by the prospect of running against Clinton, who is a heavy front-runner and just set a party record for fund-raising. But that doesn't mean he's willing to risk his political capital or his legacy should he struggle in the primaries.
Unfinished business: The relationship between Obama and Biden might be as strong as it's ever been, as was evident from the president's eulogy at Beau Biden's funeral. And his standing in the administration is secure. "The reason why we never have any conflict within the West Wing is because 80% of the people he has worked for me before," Biden quipped at a luncheon last week. Biden knows a campaign would force him to give up the key role he serves in the White House. Even in the administration's final year, Biden may calculate that the risk isn't worth it.
A harsher spotlight: During the campaign and in the White House, officials often sought to turn some of the vice president's slip-ups and off-script moments into positives, casting them as endearing examples of his authenticity. But what might have been laughed off for a vice president could be disqualifying to some voters in a potential commander-in-chief. And some close to the vice president worry that with ever-more sophisticated opposition tracking and a more fragmented media environment, Biden may struggle to keep the focus on his serious message.
His family needs him: The demands of even just a five-month campaign through the early primary states would keep the vice president away from home at a time when his young grandchildren are still dealing with the loss of their father. Biden has kept them close, taking them last week to the Women's World Cup and the week before on a weekend trip to South Carolina. And even his biggest supporters recognize that it's been hard for him to even consider how a campaign might disrupt that. "I have not talked to him and don’t foresee that I will talk to him until he’s ready to talk," said Dick Harpootlian, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. "I don’t think he’s ready to talk politics."
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-biden-presidential-choice-20150709-story.html
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Biden would have my vote unequivocally 8)
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Biden would have my vote unequivocally 8)
Why?!?
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Biden would have my vote unequivocally 8)
:-[
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Why?!?
Is the best qualified and has the best resume....long service in government......I believe him when he talks.....Hillary I always feel is lying about something
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Clinton favorablity continues to slide; Just 3 in 10 see her as honest
(http://www.thedailydigest.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/hillary-clinton-old.jpg)
Washington (CNN)Just 39 percent of all Americans see Hillary Clinton in a positive light, while 49 percent have an unfavorable view the Democratic Presidential candidate according to a recent AP-GfK poll released Thursday.
This is an eight point increase in her unfavorable rate since an April AP-GfK poll was conducted.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released just one day prior showed Clinton with a 45 percent unfavorable rating, but a 52 percent favorable rating.
There are two factors that may be driving the different ratings. First, polls conducted online, as the AP-GfK poll was, often find lower favorability ratings for well-known figures than most polling conducted via phone. This is partly because online polling makes it easier for respondents to say they don't have an opinion of the person they're asked about. For instance, in the ABC-Post poll, just 4% say they have no opinion of Clinton, compared with 11% in the AP-GfK poll. These differences often hit the positive side of any poll question more than the negative one.
Beyond the methodological differences, the storylines for each poll stem mostly from timing. The AP-GfK poll finds that Clinton's favorability ratings are down since April, shortly after she launched her campaign, without any data in the interim. The Washington Post-ABC News poll reports that her ratings are up since late-May, a time which marked a low point in Clinton's recent ratings in that poll and in others, including CNN/ORC data.
RELATED: Report: Clinton has spent 40% of campaign funds
The only other 2016 hopefully who rated higher in negative impressions among all Americans in the AP-GfK polls was Republican candidate Donald Trump with 58 percent.
The drop in Clinton's numbers appears to extend into the Democratic Party.
Seven in 10 Democrats gave Clinton positive marks, an 11-point drop from the April survey conducted by AP-GfK. Nearly a quarter of Democrats now say they see Clinton in an unfavorable light.
In the Washington Post-ABC News poll, Clinton's fellow Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont, who has been rallying the masses at campaign events, had a 28 percent unfavorable impression among responders, but only a 27 percent favorable rating.
Republican candidates, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were not far behind Clinton in negative impressions in the AP-Gfk poll, tied at 44 percent unfavorable ratings among all Americans. Christie had a 23 percent total favorable rating and Bush had a 31 percent favorable rating.
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Clinton favorablity continues to slide; Just 3 in 10 see her as honest
(http://www.thedailydigest.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/hillary-clinton-old.jpg)
Washington (CNN)Just 39 percent of all Americans see Hillary Clinton in a positive light, while 49 percent have an unfavorable view the Democratic Presidential candidate according to a recent AP-GfK poll released Thursday.
This is an eight point increase in her unfavorable rate since an April AP-GfK poll was conducted.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released just one day prior showed Clinton with a 45 percent unfavorable rating, but a 52 percent favorable rating.
There are two factors that may be driving the different ratings. First, polls conducted online, as the AP-GfK poll was, often find lower favorability ratings for well-known figures than most polling conducted via phone. This is partly because online polling makes it easier for respondents to say they don't have an opinion of the person they're asked about. For instance, in the ABC-Post poll, just 4% say they have no opinion of Clinton, compared with 11% in the AP-GfK poll. These differences often hit the positive side of any poll question more than the negative one.
Beyond the methodological differences, the storylines for each poll stem mostly from timing. The AP-GfK poll finds that Clinton's favorability ratings are down since April, shortly after she launched her campaign, without any data in the interim. The Washington Post-ABC News poll reports that her ratings are up since late-May, a time which marked a low point in Clinton's recent ratings in that poll and in others, including CNN/ORC data.
RELATED: Report: Clinton has spent 40% of campaign funds
The only other 2016 hopefully who rated higher in negative impressions among all Americans in the AP-GfK polls was Republican candidate Donald Trump with 58 percent.
The drop in Clinton's numbers appears to extend into the Democratic Party.
Seven in 10 Democrats gave Clinton positive marks, an 11-point drop from the April survey conducted by AP-GfK. Nearly a quarter of Democrats now say they see Clinton in an unfavorable light.
In the Washington Post-ABC News poll, Clinton's fellow Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont, who has been rallying the masses at campaign events, had a 28 percent unfavorable impression among responders, but only a 27 percent favorable rating.
Republican candidates, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were not far behind Clinton in negative impressions in the AP-Gfk poll, tied at 44 percent unfavorable ratings among all Americans. Christie had a 23 percent total favorable rating and Bush had a 31 percent favorable rating.
Whoa Nellie! I Know that's a photoshop, although that's probably how she will look after four or eight years of her presidency if she is elected.
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Whoa Nellie! I Know that's a photoshop, although that's probably how she will look after four or eight years of her presidency if she is elected.
but i thought looks didn't matter in presidential politics?
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but i thought looks didn't matter in presidential politics?
Good grief.
(http://www.bizpacreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Math-dunce.jpg)
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All five Democrats running for president in one spot Friday
By Dan Merica
Fri July 17, 2015
(http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150608105816-bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-exlarge-169.jpg)
Cedar Rapids, Iowa (CNN)It may not be fiery enough to call it the showdown at the Cedar Rapids Convention Center, but a party dinner on Friday night will be the first time all five Democratic candidates will attend the same event together since the nomination fight kicked off.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee will all address an audience of around 1,200 Iowa Democrats for 15 minutes each on Friday night. Referred to as a "cattle call," it is a first for Democrats this cycle, a stunning fact compared when you consider Republicans have had well over a dozen cattle calls.
The speaking order will be alphabetical -- so the list will go Chafee, Clinton, O'Malley, Sanders, Webb -- and all candidates are expected to be in the room for the other speeches.
The event, which is actually the Iowa Democratic Party's Hall of Fame Celebration, offers each candidate different opportunities to help -- and hurt -- their chances in Iowa.
Clinton will be able to flex her organizing muscles and sizable frontrunner status. Her campaign announced Friday morning, ahead of the dinner, that Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald had decided to endorse the former secretary of state and Democratic frontrunner.
"Hillary Clinton has already started earning the support of thousands of critically important Iowa caucus-goers but there is a long way to go," said Lily Adams, Clinton's Iowa spokeswoman. "She looks forward to continuing to make the case, including tonight at dinner alongside the other candidates."
Clinton, who will likely have a sizable contingent of supporters in the room, will have to avoid coming across as the chosen candidate, something her campaign has tried to avoid since they launched in April.
The former first lady will also have to address her opponents, something she has not done since announcing her campaign.
Iowa Democrats feel the event offers Sanders and O'Malley, Clinton's two most stout Democratic challengers, the biggest opportunity. They can push the envelope, activists said, and an opportunity to cast themselves as the most effective counterweight to the former secretary of state.
Both the Sanders and O'Malley campaigns declined to preview their speeches, but Iowa Democrats expect attack lines at the event to largely be directed at Republicans, not the other Democrats in the room.
Sanders has surged of late in Iowa and nationally. A Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month found Sanders at 33% in the Hawkeye State, with Clinton at 52%. In May, Clinton was beating Sanders by 45%.
O'Malley, however, has not surged in Iowa, despite making the state a focal point of his campaign. The same Quinnipiac poll found the former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor at 3%.
Tom Henderson, the chairman of the Polk County Democratic Party, said Friday's event offers Sanders and O'Malley the most upside, while Clinton has the most at risk.
"Anytime you are the frontrunner I think you are trying to play it safe a bit," said Henderson. "I think Hillary Clinton will try to make hit the same themes that the party is focused on, but she can't be like Bernie Sanders, she can't let it all hang out."
Sanders and O'Malley, though, are the "the ones who need to emerge," said Henderson, and the way they do that is my making a lasting impression on the largely activists audience at the event.
O'Malley's team, cognizant of the fact he is still middling in the polls, issued a memo from their Iowa State Director on Friday that argued their candidate is poised to have a strong summer in Iowa.
Hitting on Iowa's focus on retail politics and O'Malley's progressive record, Jake Oeth, the O'Malley campaign's Iowa State Director, said that "this summer will prove that O'Malley not only has what it takes to perform well in Iowa, but he's the right candidate for president as we fight to rebuild the American dream. That's a strong place to be heading into tonight's speech in Cedar Rapids, with less than 200 days to go."
The question is, though, whether candidates will go after the other Democrats -- even though the candidates are in the room -- or whether they will turn their focus on Republicans.
Iowa State Sen. Jeff Danielson, a Democrat who has already endorsed Clinton, said many Democrats see contrasts within the party as a good and healthy thing. And because of that, subtle knocks on each other could work.
"I want contrast between Democrats," he said. "It is a job interview about what you are going to try to do and not every Democrat thinks the same way. We should be mature about it and welcome it without personal animus."
Danielson acknowledged that Clinton has more to lose tonight than others, but said the key for Sanders and O'Malley is showing "gravitas" and punching up.
"They have to show gravitas, a leadership capability that they are ready for be president," he said. "I don't think that is a question with Hillary."
Webb and Chafee are in a different position than the other two other candidates not named Clinton.
In Henderson's mind, they are "go for broke" candidates.
"They just have to catch attention," he said, arguing that the night will be successful for them if they land a good soundbite the sticks with the crowd.
Chafee has actively not focused on Iowa since launching his campaign earlier this year, instead putting most of his effort behind running in New Hampshire. Debbie Rich, Chafee's spokeswoman, would not provide a preview of the governor's speech, but said he is looking forward to the event.
Webb, on the other hand, has spent time in Iowa and has a small base of support, particularly with blue collar workers and veterans.
Craig Crawford, Webb's spokesman, said Friday that the candidate plans to talk about "his message of inclusion, building a Democratic Party that brings all working people to the table."
"We're happy for this chance to be with all the candidates and their teams," Crawford said. "A night to celebrate our party together, before the 'intramurals' get going."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/17/politics/hillary-clinton-iowa-democrats-dinner/index.html
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Draft-Biden Group Pushes Petition Urging Him to Run for President
By Greg Richter
Sunday, 26 Jul 2015
Draft Biden 2016 has released an ad featuring supporters sharing their reasons why the vice president should run for the nation's highest office.
"Some people ask, 'Why Joe Biden?' I turn back and ask them, 'Why not Joe Biden? He’s been one of the most influential vice presidents that this country has seen,'" a man says in the opening of the 62-second ad.
"He’s right now a part of one of the most successful administrations in recent history, and he’s a big reason for that success," another man says.
Other backers cite Biden's early support for same-sex marriage and for stopping violence on college campuses as reasons for their support.
"He's supported the younger generation's beliefs," said one young man, followed by a woman who says, "There's nobody more qualified to be president than Joe Biden at this point in time."
"In 2016 I’m ridin' with Biden," each of the supporters ends the ad.
The video was released online Friday, one day before Draft Biden 2016's National Day of Action to get more signatures on a petition to urge the vice president to get in the race. The petition currently has more than 150,000 signatures.
Biden has given no indication he will enter the race, but also has said he hasn't ruled out running when asked earlier this year. Bloomberg News reported that his son Beau Biden, just before his death in May, urged his father to run.
Biden is currently polling third at 13 percent in the Democratic field behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at 51 percent and Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders at 17 percent in a recent Monmouth University poll. Clinton and Sanders are both declared candidates.
But Draft Biden 2016 notes that the poll shows that 12 percent more said they would vote for Biden if he enters the race, and 43 percent said they would at least consider Biden should he toss his hat into the ring. And 68 percent of that support would come from current Clinton backers.
"Most people seem to be focusing on a Sanders surge among the liberal wing of the party," Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray said. "But the bigger threat to Clinton may come from a Biden candidacy, where the two would be fighting for the same voters."
Draft Biden isn't putting money behind the ad, The Hill reports, but is sending it to supporters so it can gain grassroots backing.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ddraft-biden-ad-signatures/2015/07/26/id/658984/#ixzz3h6tFCrWN
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Draft-Biden Group Pushes Petition Urging Him to Run for President
By Greg Richter
Sunday, 26 Jul 2015
Draft Biden 2016 has released an ad featuring supporters sharing their reasons why the vice president should run for the nation's highest office.
"Some people ask, 'Why Joe Biden?' I turn back and ask them, 'Why not Joe Biden? He’s been one of the most influential vice presidents that this country has seen,'" a man says in the opening of the 62-second ad.
"He’s right now a part of one of the most successful administrations in recent history, and he’s a big reason for that success," another man says.
Other backers cite Biden's early support for same-sex marriage and for stopping violence on college campuses as reasons for their support.
"He's supported the younger generation's beliefs," said one young man, followed by a woman who says, "There's nobody more qualified to be president than Joe Biden at this point in time."
"In 2016 I’m ridin' with Biden," each of the supporters ends the ad.
The video was released online Friday, one day before Draft Biden 2016's National Day of Action to get more signatures on a petition to urge the vice president to get in the race. The petition currently has more than 150,000 signatures.
Biden has given no indication he will enter the race, but also has said he hasn't ruled out running when asked earlier this year. Bloomberg News reported that his son Beau Biden, just before his death in May, urged his father to run.
Biden is currently polling third at 13 percent in the Democratic field behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at 51 percent and Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders at 17 percent in a recent Monmouth University poll. Clinton and Sanders are both declared candidates.
But Draft Biden 2016 notes that the poll shows that 12 percent more said they would vote for Biden if he enters the race, and 43 percent said they would at least consider Biden should he toss his hat into the ring. And 68 percent of that support would come from current Clinton backers.
"Most people seem to be focusing on a Sanders surge among the liberal wing of the party," Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray said. "But the bigger threat to Clinton may come from a Biden candidacy, where the two would be fighting for the same voters."
Draft Biden isn't putting money behind the ad, The Hill reports, but is sending it to supporters so it can gain grassroots backing.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ddraft-biden-ad-signatures/2015/07/26/id/658984/#ixzz3h6tFCrWN
Do you think Biden should run?
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Do you think Biden should run?
No. I only want candidates who would make good presidents to run, regardless of party.
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No. I only want candidates who would make good presidents to run, regardless of party.
That rules out the entire crop of GOP then.
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That rules out the entire crop of GOP then.
if you excuse all the lunacy, extremism, hypocrisy, ignorance, venom and outright party cannibalism, the 2016 GOP potentials list is awesome.
Any response which points out the dems are also inept will prove my post. thank you.
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That rules out the entire crop of GOP then.
:D :D
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That rules out the entire crop of GOP then.
It rules out Hillary, but that may not keep her from winning.
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It rules out Hillary, but that may not keep her from winning.
Rick Santorum and Scott Walker may be the most sane of the candidates but they have both made big gaffes as well.
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Rick Santorum and Scott Walker may be the most sane of the candidates but they have both made big gaffes as well.
Gaffes don't necessarily dictate whether someone is fit to be president (unless we're talking about Trump). I think a number of the GOP candidates look good on paper (Rubio, Cruz, Walker, Jindal, etc.). The Democrat side is awfully thin. We are probably doomed for another four years of mediocrity regardless of who wins, especially if it's Bush v. Clinton.
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Gaffes don't necessarily dictate whether someone is fit to be president (unless we're talking about Trump). I think a number of the GOP candidates look good on paper (Rubio, Cruz, Walker, Jindal, etc.). The Democrat side is awfully thin. We are probably doomed for another four years of mediocrity regardless of who wins, especially if it's Bush v. Clinton.
Walker and Rubio are neophytes.......Cruz is just too extreme and just called the leader of his party a liar ;D......I would never vote for Jindal simply because he dipicted himself as white in a self-portrait...shows you how he feels about himself
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/03/1362092/-Governor-Bobby-Jindal-s-official-portrait-revealed
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Gaffes don't necessarily dictate whether someone is fit to be president (unless we're talking about Trump). I think a number of the GOP candidates look good on paper (Rubio, Cruz, Walker, Jindal, etc.). The Democrat side is awfully thin. We are probably doomed for another four years of mediocrity regardless of who wins, especially if it's Bush v. Clinton.
That's where your problem lies. You are not very good at thinking it appears.
Jindull will most likely be the very first one to drop out when he fails to garner a single digit percentage of the votes.
Walker - like Jindull - panders to the faith based zealots who want to 'Murica to it's 1940s glory. Good luck with the praying though, it sure helped them with those dazzling numbers in regards to their state ranking and approval ratings.
Cruz is nothing more than Trump-lite. Trump neutered him to claim the spotlight at the most brash spokesperson of the party now. The fact Cruz looks like he has a penchant for wearing eye liner isn't a good thing either.
Rubio - oh please.
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Rand is in trouble. Twelve people from his organization gave interviews. low $, low interest.
he doesn't stand for anything. He WAS tea party, then swung center TOO SOON. Now the base is like "Rand WHO?"
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Walker and Rubio are neophytes.......Cruz is just too extreme and just called the leader of his party a liar ;D......I would never vote for Jindal simply because he dipicted himself as white in a self-portrait...shows you how he feels about himself
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/03/1362092/-Governor-Bobby-Jindal-s-official-portrait-revealed
Being a neophyte isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to politics.
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Being a neophyte isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to politics.
IF they achieved awesome things in real life, agreed.
But if they were a lobbyist turned career "running for prez" like Rubio, it's a little tough to brag about how prepared he is.
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That's where your problem lies. You are not very good at thinking it appears.
Jindull will most likely be the very first one to drop out when he fails to garner a single digit percentage of the votes.
Walker - like Jindull - panders to the faith based zealots who want to 'Murica to it's 1940s glory. Good luck with the praying though, it sure helped them with those dazzling numbers in regards to their state ranking and approval ratings.
Cruz is nothing more than Trump-lite. Trump neutered him to claim the spotlight at the most brash spokesperson of the party now. The fact Cruz looks like he has a penchant for wearing eye liner isn't a good thing either.
Rubio - oh please.
Wow. Some hard hitting political commentary right there. lol
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That's where your problem lies. You are not very good at thinking it appears.
Jindull will most likely be the very first one to drop out when he fails to garner a single digit percentage of the votes.
Walker - like Jindull - panders to the faith based zealots who want to 'Murica to it's 1940s glory. Good luck with the praying though, it sure helped them with those dazzling numbers in regards to their state ranking and approval ratings.
Cruz is nothing more than Trump-lite. Trump neutered him to claim the spotlight at the most brash spokesperson of the party now. The fact Cruz looks like he has a penchant for wearing eye liner isn't a good thing either.
Rubio - oh please.
I don't know what people see in jindal.he stays on the fence and says absolutely nothing
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I don't know what people see in jindal.he stays on the fence and says absolutely nothing
They don't see anything in him. Why do you think his ratings back home is so low? This dude probably couldn't even pull his own state in a national election.
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Wow. Some hard hitting political commentary right there. lol
Reality can be harsh for those harboring silly delusions. :)
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NYT: Biden Considering Run For White House
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=aacf824d-7010-424a-8854-cf7b2dae1141&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: NYT: Biden Considering Run For White House (AP)
By Todd Beamon | Saturday, 01 Aug 2015
Vice President Joe Biden is considering a challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination amid fears that the former secretary of state cannot win key states because her popularity is declining in several recent polls.
"It’s not that we dislike Hillary, it’s that we want to win the White House," Richard Harpootlian, a lawyer and Democratic donor in Columbia, S.C., told The New York Times for its Saturday report. "We have a better chance of doing that with somebody who is not going to have all the distractions of a Clinton campaign."
Biden, 72, who has been inspired to run by his late son Beau, said he would make a decision by the end of the summer.
Before Beau Biden died of brain cancer in May at age 46, he encouraged his father to make a third run for the White House. The vice president's younger son, Hunter, also endorsed another campaign.
"He was so close to Beau and it was so heartbreaking that, frankly, I thought initially he wouldn’t have the heart," Michael Thornton, a Boston lawyer who supports Biden, told the Times. "But I’ve had indications that maybe he does want to — and 'that’s what Beau would have wanted me to do.'"
Kendra Barkoff, a Biden spokeswoman, told the Times: "As the Biden family continues to go through this difficult time, the vice president is focused on his family and immersed in his work."
A spokesman for the Clinton campaign declined to comment, and the White House also had no immediate comment, the Times reports.
But Biden's advisers have been approaching Democrats who have not yet committed to Clinton to test a run by the vice president, according to the Times.
The calls mostly have been fielded by Steve Ricchetti, who is Biden's chief of staff. Ricchetti began talking to donors and supporters months before Beau Biden died, the Times reports.
Harpootlian told the newspaper that he had met with Ricchetti before Biden's death.
"Biden is also talking to friends, family and donors about jumping in," Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported. "The 72-year-old vice president has been having meetings at his Washington residence to explore the idea of taking on Hillary in Iowa and New Hampshire."
Dowd, who has long criticized Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, cited Biden's conversations with his sons.
She added that a run by the vice president would be complicated since Biden has a good relationship with Clinton and respects Democratic Party's desire to put a woman in the White House.
"The reality is it's going to be a tough, even-Steven kind of race — and there’s that moment when a lot of party establishment would start exactly this kind of rumble: 'Is there anybody else?'" Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist, told the Times.
Biden, a longtime senator from Delaware, sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008. Recent polls show that Clinton's popularity has dropped.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday showed that 57 percent of respondents said that the former first lady was not honest and trustworthy — and 52 percent said she did not care about their needs or problems.
Biden, however had his highest favorability rating — 49 percent — in seven years. Fifty-eight percent said that he is honest and trustworthy, while 57 percent responded that he cares about them.
Clinton’s numbers remain strong, however, particularly among likely Democratic primary voters, according to the survey.
"The No. 1 thing voters want is a candidate who is honest and trustworthy, and the veep is leading in those polls," William Pierce, executive director of the Draft Biden super PAC, told the Times. The group has been working for months to build support for a possible campaign.
Republicans also slammed Clinton on Friday after the State Department released thousands of emails during her four years as the nation's top diplomat.
Many of the documents were heavily redacted, with some being classified because the Obama administration deemed the information in them as critical to national security.
Clinton has steadily been attacked for using her private email server as secretary of state, and two inspectors general recently told Congress that some of the communications included classified information.
She is expected to testify before the special House panel investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks in a public hearing on Oct. 22.
South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, the panel's chairman, said Friday that the latest documents will "probably not" help the committee.
"We are in a constant battle with the State Department over the production of documents," he told Fox News. "We'll find out what happened with or without their help."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/biden-considering-run/2015/08/01/id/664974/#ixzz3hmnNVpWe
Urgent: Rate Obama on His Job Performance. Vote Here Now!
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Biden will definitely have my vote if he runs....the only Republican I could vote for so far is Trump (although it really pains me big time to say that)
or maybe Jeb if he can convince me he really wants it
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Biden will definitely have my vote if he runs....the only Republican I could vote for so far is Trump (although it really pains me big time to say that)
or maybe Jeb if he can convince me he really wants it
One of Biden's many problems is Democrats don't like him. He did pretty miserably in his prior runs. I doubt that would change if he runs again. The only thing he can really hang his hat on is Hillary's scandals and (as headhunter has said) people don't like her.
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One of Biden's many problems is Democrats don't like him. He did pretty miserably in his prior runs. I doubt that would change if he runs again. The only thing he can really hang his hat on is Hillary's scandals and (as headhunter has said) people don't like her.
He just MIGHT be able to win some votes on the fact that people think he's honest and due to him running because his dying son asked him to....
But I do agree that there just isn't any groundswell by regular people for him to run
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He just MIGHT be able to win some votes on the fact that people think he's honest and due to him running because his dying son asked him to....
But I do agree that there just isn't any groundswell by regular people for him to run
I was telling someone the other day that he would get some sympathy votes because of son, although I doubt he gets enough to win.
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I was telling someone the other day that he would get some sympathy votes because of son, although I doubt he gets enough to win.
Agreed....but if Clinton continues to stumble..............you never know...the party may turn to Biden..excellent experience...excellent debater...knows everybody in government.....
I'm really baffled by Clinton....so far she's looking even worse than when she ran against Barack Obama
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Agreed....but if Clinton continues to stumble..............you never know...the party may turn to Biden..excellent experience...excellent debater...knows everybody in government.....
I'm really baffled by Clinton....so far she's looking even worse than when she ran against Barack Obama
I'm really not impressed with Biden's experience. Simply holding an office for a long period of time doesn't mean much if the person doesn't excel in the position. Biden hasn't.
Excellent debater? I think he's terrible. He was long on sarcasm and unprofessionalism and short on substance during his VP debates.
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I'm really not impressed with Biden's experience. Simply holding an office for a long period of time doesn't mean much if the person doesn't excel in the position. Biden hasn't.
Excellent debater? I think he's terrible. He was long on sarcasm and unprofessionalism and short on substance during his VP debates.
Biden's experience is more than impressive....I thought he was an excellent vice president as well...did he make gaffes?..yeah..guilty...but he brought attention to certain issues and he was all over the world in various capacities........as for being a debater, he definitely is not your classic debater....actually I was taught not to do all the things that he does..LOLOL...but he is effective with the sarcasm, the shaking of the head, the grinning, and the covert put-downs....I really felt he saved Obama's presidency when he won that vice presidential debate.....Obama was on his heels after losing the first debate to Romney...had Biden lost the momentum for Romney may have been unstoppable...it would have really turned the press against Obama-Biden big time
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name any person in either party with a better legislative resume than biden. 30+ years in senate? lmao yes, rubio's 3 years totally dwarf that.
keep working on it.
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Biden's experience is more than impressive....I thought he was an excellent vice president as well...did he make gaffes?..yeah..guilty...but he brought attention to certain issues and he was all over the world in various capacities........as for being a debater, he definitely is not your classic debater....actually I was taught not to do all the things that he does..LOLOL...but he is effective with the sarcasm, the shaking of the head, the grinning, and the covert put-downs....I really felt he saved Obama's presidency when he won that vice presidential debate.....Obama was on his heels after losing the first debate to Romney...had Biden lost the momentum for Romney may have been unstoppable...it would have really turned the press against Obama-Biden big time
What "certain issues" did Biden bring attention too? And how is that a major accomplishment that helps qualify him to be president?
You were taught well. He was not effective. He didn't turn the election. People vote the top of the ticket. If anything, having him on the ticket was a hinderance given that even Democrats didn't want him to be president.
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Ed Klein: Hillary Racing to Stave Off Indictment
By Cathy Burke | Tuesday, 04 Aug 2015
President Barack Obama and those closest to him are "doing everything they can" to encourage Vice President Joe Biden to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, former New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Edward Klein tells Newsmax TV.
In a panel discussion Tuesday on "Newsmax Prime" with host J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan, the author of "Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. The Obamas," said the push is coming from the president, First Lady Michelle Obama and Obama's senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett.
"[They] are doing everything they can at this point to encourage Joe Biden to throw in his hat," he said.
Klein said he also believes Clinton is in "a kind of race against time."
"Which is going to come first, is she going to be able to sew up the nomination by just throwing more money, more organization at the primaries so that she is unbeatable – or will a criminal indictment come down from the Justice Department [over her personal email system while Secretary of State] before that fact?" Klein said.
"And they're very concerned about which is going to come first."
Political commentator Dick Morris said if a possible Biden candidacy doesn't signal any animosity between the Obama and Clinton camps, "there sure will be if Biden runs, because the inevitable dynamos of the race are going to cause it, even if nobody wants it."
"You can only have one candidate out there saying everything Obama's doing is right…. I'll just continue what Obama's doing," he said. "You can't have two candidates saying that because the other one won't get covered and Biden lives on campus. These are his programs as well as Obama's."
Morris added Hillary Clinton, in order to get media coverage, will have to distinguish herself, and that means criticizing the president's record — "at first gently," but eventually becoming "more and more acerbic."
"It really could endanger Hillary's pursuit of Obama's base," Morris predicted.
In the meantime, Morris predicts Clinton's polling will continue continue to trend downard.
"I believe that Hillary is in free fall," Morris said. "She's dropped from the high 60s to 37 percent in favorability and she's going to continue to drop and she's losing her grip on the base and the Clintons are wrong. Something may happen before she sews up the nomination ... which is the sound of Hillary crashing and hitting bottom.
"If Biden comes into the race, the opening head to head would probably be Hillary 38 [percent support], Biden 18, [Vermont Sen. Bernie] Sanders 15. And then a month later, it'll become close to a two-way tie. I don't think that Hillary can easily defeat Biden and Sanders. Biden would probably win that contest."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Edward-Klein-Joe-Biden-challenge-Hillary-Clinton/2015/08/04/id/665419/
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Ed Klein: Hillary Racing to Stave Off Indictment
By Cathy Burke | Tuesday, 04 Aug 2015
President Barack Obama and those closest to him are "doing everything they can" to encourage Vice President Joe Biden to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, former New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Edward Klein tells Newsmax TV.
In a panel discussion Tuesday on "Newsmax Prime" with host J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan, the author of "Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. The Obamas," said the push is coming from the president, First Lady Michelle Obama and Obama's senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett.
"[They] are doing everything they can at this point to encourage Joe Biden to throw in his hat," he said.
Klein said he also believes Clinton is in "a kind of race against time."
"Which is going to come first, is she going to be able to sew up the nomination by just throwing more money, more organization at the primaries so that she is unbeatable – or will a criminal indictment come down from the Justice Department [over her personal email system while Secretary of State] before that fact?" Klein said.
"And they're very concerned about which is going to come first."
Political commentator Dick Morris said if a possible Biden candidacy doesn't signal any animosity between the Obama and Clinton camps, "there sure will be if Biden runs, because the inevitable dynamos of the race are going to cause it, even if nobody wants it."
"You can only have one candidate out there saying everything Obama's doing is right…. I'll just continue what Obama's doing," he said. "You can't have two candidates saying that because the other one won't get covered and Biden lives on campus. These are his programs as well as Obama's."
Morris added Hillary Clinton, in order to get media coverage, will have to distinguish herself, and that means criticizing the president's record — "at first gently," but eventually becoming "more and more acerbic."
"It really could endanger Hillary's pursuit of Obama's base," Morris predicted.
In the meantime, Morris predicts Clinton's polling will continue continue to trend downard.
"I believe that Hillary is in free fall," Morris said. "She's dropped from the high 60s to 37 percent in favorability and she's going to continue to drop and she's losing her grip on the base and the Clintons are wrong. Something may happen before she sews up the nomination ... which is the sound of Hillary crashing and hitting bottom.
"If Biden comes into the race, the opening head to head would probably be Hillary 38 [percent support], Biden 18, [Vermont Sen. Bernie] Sanders 15. And then a month later, it'll become close to a two-way tie. I don't think that Hillary can easily defeat Biden and Sanders. Biden would probably win that contest."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Edward-Klein-Joe-Biden-challenge-Hillary-Clinton/2015/08/04/id/665419/
Criticizing Obama would be a death Knell.....he's done too many positive things and tplus the economy is good....she would definitely lose the black vote, part of the Hispanic vote, and far left liberals
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Criticizing Obama would be a death Knell.....he's done too many positive things and tplus the economy is good....she would definitely lose the black vote, part of the Hispanic vote, and far left liberals
What the heck dude. You do so much better when you avoid the stream of consciousness crazy talk. Look at the president's approval and disproval ratings. That should give you an idea of how big (or small) of a problem it would be to criticize him.
She needs to win independents and crossover Republicans to get elected.
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What the heck dude. You do so much better when you avoid the stream of consciousness crazy talk. Look at the president's approval and disproval ratings. That should give you an idea of how big (or small) of a problem it would be to criticize him.
She needs to win independents and crossover Republicans to get elected.
independents and Republicans do her no good if she can't rally her base......Obama is certainly a different type of animal...he was supposed to lose to Hillary in 2008 remember???........he was supposed to lose to Romney in a landslide, remember???.......and he is MUCH more liked now than he was when Romney ran against him......
If blacks, Hispanics, and die-hard Libs stay home because they perceive her criticism of Obama to be too strong, then she will have already lost......
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independents and Republicans do her no good if she can't rally her base......Obama is certainly a different type of animal...he was supposed to lose to Hillary in 2008 remember???........he was supposed to lose to Romney in a landslide, remember???.......and he is MUCH more liked now than he was when Romney ran against him......
If blacks, Hispanics, and die-hard Libs stay home because they perceive her criticism of Obama to be too strong, then she will have already lost......
I agree Hillary has to rally her base, although hardliners in both parties support their nominee. Whether they get to the polls is another story, but she doesn't have to convince the bots in her party to support her.
Obama is a phenomenal politician in that he has won more high profile elections with the thinnest resumé and some of the poorest leadership qualities I have ever seen.
Obama is more liked now than in 2012? I doubt that. He will become more popular several years after he leaves office, like most presidents, and when all he has to do is make a few speeches and drop a few lines for his groupie fan base.
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I agree Hillary has to rally her base, although hardliners in both parties support their nominee. Whether they get to the polls is another story, but she doesn't have to convince the bots in her party to support her.
Obama is a phenomenal politician in that he has won more high profile elections with the thinnest resumé and some of the poorest leadership qualities I have ever seen.
Obama is more liked now than in 2012? I doubt that. He will become more popular several years after he leaves office, like most presidents, and when all he has to do is make a few speeches and drop a few lines for his groupie fan base.
LOL @ "groupie fan base"..however I would think ALL fan bases for ANY candidate are groupies...
I don't think Obama has displayed poor leadership...an argument can be made that his resume was thin even though I don't agree with that, but if you look at Hillary's resume, it is thin as well....she was a senator just like Obama and her senate seat was gift-wrapped in NY for her by Bill with an eye towards the presidency....as for leadership, Obama has basically accomplished every single one of his objectives and has defeated and frustrated his enemies at every turn....the only thing he hasn't made good on was to close Guantanomo Bay........ he got us out of war, reduced the yearly deficit in doing so, passed Obamacare, turned around the economy, and had a lot of other legislative victories.....
ALSO his administration has been basically SCANDAL FREE which shows what a great supervisor and leader he is
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LOL @ "groupie fan base"..however I would think ALL fan bases for ANY candidate are groupies...
I don't think Obama has displayed poor leadership...an argument can be made that his resume was thin even though I don't agree with that, but if you look at Hillary's resume, it is thin as well....she was a senator just like Obama and her senate seat was gift-wrapped in NY for her by Bill with an eye towards the presidency....as for leadership, Obama has basically accomplished every single one of his objectives and has defeated and frustrated his enemies at every turn....the only thing he hasn't made good on was to close Guantanomo Bay........ he got us out of war, reduced the yearly deficit in doing so, passed Obamacare, turned around the economy, and had a lot of other legislative victories.....
ALSO his administration has been basically SCANDAL FREE which shows what a great supervisor and leader he is
Regarding groupies, I haven't seen anything on Obama's level since I have been following politics.
Obama has not accomplished all of his objectives. He has been dishonest. He failed to work with Congress, including members of his own party. The foundation of his presidency, including transparency, public involvement in the legislative process, not having lobbyists in his campaign, not running up national debt, etc. were all falsehoods.
And no scandals? Dude I don't even know what to say about that.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DMnPKCcziI8/TusAjRY4HGI/AAAAAAAAAOg/t7Y4AeltFRc/s1600/obama-hypnosis.png)
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Regarding groupies, I haven't seen anything on Obama's level since I have been following politics.
Obama has not accomplished all of his objectives. He has been dishonest. He failed to work with Congress, including members of his own party. The foundation of his presidency, including transparency, public involvement in the legislative process, not having lobbyists in his campaign, not running up national debt, etc. were all falsehoods.
And no scandals? Dude I don't even know what to say about that.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DMnPKCcziI8/TusAjRY4HGI/AAAAAAAAAOg/t7Y4AeltFRc/s1600/obama-hypnosis.png)
Dude, your bias is showing once again...name ONE scandal that was tied to any one in the Obama inner circle....or to Obama himself???????...yes there were the IRS thing and the Benghazi thing......but NOTHING WAS EVER TIED TO ANYONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE OR OBAMA'S INNER CIRCLE...the only negative thing was when Valerie jarrett somehow messed up and some people were let into a party at the white house who didn't beliong there...other than that.................... ........NOTHING
As for groupies on the level of Obama, how conveniently we forget RON PAUL......or even BILL CLINTON.......and of copurse THE TEA PARTY, the biggest groupies of all who are so single-minded and intransigent that they scare even members of their own party..saying that OBAMA failed to work with congress is one of the worse BS you've ever presented here..you absolutely know that congress would not work with him in his first six years in office.....they spent that time trying to de-legitimize him, denigrate him, and to try and stop his signature legislation without coming up with any alternative..... is that his fault????????.....and they still try to frustrate his moves by sending an open letter to the Iranians encouraging them to back out of the nuclear deal and still continue to try repealing OBAMACARE which is the law of the land........
get off it
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Dude, your bias is showing once again...name ONE scandal that was tied to any one in the Obama inner circle....or to Obama himself???????...yes there were the IRS thing and the Benghazi thing......but NOTHING WAS EVER TIED TO ANYONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE OR OBAMA'S INNER CIRCLE...the only negative thing was when Valerie jarrett somehow messed up and some people were let into a party at the white house who didn't beliong there...other than that.................... ........NOTHING
As for groupies on the level of Obama, how conveniently we forget RON PAUL......or even BILL CLINTON.......and of copurse THE TEA PARTY, the biggest groupies of all who are so single-minded and intransigent that they scare even members of their own party..saying that OBAMA failed to work with congress is one of the worse BS you've ever presented here..you absolutely know that congress would not work with him in his first six years in office.....they spent that time trying to de-legitimize him, denigrate him, and to try and stop his signature legislation without coming up with any alternative..... is that his fault????????.....and they still try to frustrate his moves by sending an open letter to the Iranians encouraging them to back out of the nuclear deal and still continue to try repealing OBAMACARE which is the law of the land........
get off it
Put the crack pipe down. We don't have to tie a scandal directly to Obama himself for it to be a scandal that is a part of his administration. The president is responsible for the success and failures of his administration. For starters:
- The IRS targeting the president's opponents.
- Lying about the Benghazi terrorist attack being caused by a youtube video.
- Lying to the public about whether they can keep their doctor.
- Lying to members of his own party and the public about whether the Obamacare mandate was a tax, solely in an effort to convince Democrats to vote for the bill.
- Using the Justice Department to target James Rosen and using the AP to spy on reporters.
- Hacking the computer of reporter who wouldn't toe the line (Sheryl Attikson?). Hasn't been proved that this was part of his administration, but I believe it was.
I'm not conveniently forgetting Ron Paul or Bill Clinton. I agree Ron Paul had a rabid fan base, but they were much smaller in number. Clinton? Nah. Nothing that approaches Obama's rockstar status. Nobody calling Clinton Jesus. Remember this?
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Put the crack pipe down. We don't have to tie a scandal directly to Obama himself for it to be a scandal that is a part of his administration. The president is responsible for the success and failures of his administration. For starters:
- The IRS targeting the president's opponents.
- Lying about the Benghazi terrorist attack being caused by a youtube video.
- Lying to the public about whether they can keep their doctor.
- Lying to members of his own party and the public about whether the Obamacare mandate was a tax, solely in an effort to convince Democrats to vote for the bill.
- Using the Justice Department to target James Rosen and using the AP to spy on reporters.
- Hacking the computer of reporter who wouldn't toe the line (Sheryl Attikson?). Hasn't been proved that this was part of his administration, but I believe it was.
I'm not conveniently forgetting Ron Paul or Bill Clinton. I agree Ron Paul had a rabid fan base, but they were much smaller in number. Clinton? Nah. Nothing that approaches Obama's rockstar status. Nobody calling Clinton Jesus. Remember this?
Those occurrences you mentioned have never been traced back to anyone in the Obama administration...what you may happen to think doesn't matter....NO EVIDENCE exists showing that Obama officials participated in or lied about anything directly......and coming from you that the president is responsible for the successes or failures of his administration is LAUGHABLE since you ONLY see the failures and refuse to credit OBAMA with his successes
I think YOU SHOULD BE THE ONE to put the crack pipe down sir
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How many people within the Obama administration have been convicted and indicted?
How many in the Dubya?
How many in the Clinton?
How many in the papa Bush?
How many in the Reagan?
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Those occurrences you mentioned have never been traced back to anyone in the Obama administration...what you may happen to think doesn't matter....NO EVIDENCE exists showing that Obama officials participated in or lied about anything directly......and coming from you that the president is responsible for the successes or failures of his administration is LAUGHABLE since you ONLY see the failures and refuse to credit OBAMA with his successes
I think YOU SHOULD BE THE ONE to put the crack pipe down sir
You mean Obama didn't actually say, repeatedly, "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor"?
He didn't actually say the Obamacare mandate was not a tax?
He didn't blame the Benghazi terrorist attack on a youtube video?
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You mean Obama didn't actually say, repeatedly, "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor"?
He didn't actually say the Obamacare mandate was not a tax?
He didn't blame the Benghazi terrorist attack on a youtube video?
and just why do you think those were lies...things change...he probably did think that you would not have to change your doctor...then reality set in....is that a lie??? Politicians propose this and that and things change over time......or is it that crybabies like you characterize it as such???,....Also the obamacare mandate is not a tax as such...there is no obamacare tax coming out of your paycheck.....although there could be an increase in Medicaid taxes in the future which is no surprise since the number of Medicaid participants continually is going up with an aging population...as for Benghazi, thats already been settled.....the congressional investigation found NO LINK TO OBAMA and found that no one in the administration intentionally lied....and the initial thing about the video came from the CIA
you're gonna get your mod privileges revoked if you keep this up ;D
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How many people within the Obama administration have been convicted and indicted?
How many in the Dubya?
How many in the Clinton?
How many in the papa Bush?
How many in the Reagan?
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that's because 80s dems had balls to indict.
2015 repubs lack that courage,
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Excellent post above by lurker........end of thread
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and just why do you think those were lies...things change...he probably did think that you would not have to change your doctor...then reality set in....is that a lie??? Politicians propose this and that and things change over time......or is it that crybabies like you characterize it as such???,....Also the obamacare mandate is not a tax as such...there is no obamacare tax coming out of your paycheck.....although there could be an increase in Medicaid taxes in the future which is no surprise since the number of Medicaid participants continually is going up with an aging population...as for Benghazi, thats already been settled.....the congressional investigation found NO LINK TO OBAMA and found that no one in the administration intentionally lied....and the initial thing about the video came from the CIA
you're gonna get your mod privileges revoked if you keep this up ;D
You're all over the place. First you say this:
Those occurrences you mentioned have never been traced back to anyone in the Obama administration
When I show you that he made several statements that are the focus of several scandals, you now want to say they weren't actually lies. Is that your way of admitting the statements were traced back to Obama himself?
In any event, there has been much posted on this board showing Obama knew those statements were false when he made them, which = lies.
What is it with you people and mod privileges? Good grief. ::)
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You're all over the place. First you say this:
When I show you that he made several statements that are the focus of several scandals, you now want to say they weren't actually lies. Is that your way of admitting the statements were traced back to Obama himself?
In any event, there has been much posted on this board showing Obama knew those statements were false when he made them, which = lies.
What is it with you people and mod privileges? Good grief. ::)
You only gave the example of the doctor thing which again can be plausibly explained that things change over time..it happens....you didn't give nay other example that I can recall....again, Benghazi was explained to Obama as being caused by the video..that was the opinion of the CIA which came out in the congressional hearings
as for mod privileges, is it asking too much for mods to know what they are actually talking about??????? ;D ;D
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You only gave the example of the doctor thing which again can be plausibly explained that things change over time..it happens....you didn't give nay other example that I can recall....again, Benghazi was explained to Obama as being caused by the video..that was the opinion of the CIA which came out in the congressional hearings
as for mod privileges, is it asking too much for mods to know what they are actually talking about??????? ;D ;D
Dude are you just absentminded, trolling, or being dishonest?
- Lying about the Benghazi terrorist attack being caused by a youtube video.
- Lying to the public about whether they can keep their doctor.
- Lying to members of his own party and the public about whether the Obamacare mandate was a tax, solely in an effort to convince Democrats to vote for the bill.
Nothing can be explained. The president knew people would not be able to keep their doctor at the time he was making those statements.
He knew the terrorist attack was not caused by a youtube video.
He knew the individual mandate was a tax, which is precisely what he argued in the Supreme Court.
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Dude are you just absentminded, trolling, or being dishonest?
Nothing can be explained. The president knew people would not be able to keep their doctor at the time he was making those statements.
He knew the terrorist attack was not caused by a youtube video.
He knew the individual mandate was a tax, which is precisely what he argued in the Supreme Court.
And once again..you haven't proven shit....all of that is YOUR OPINION...being wrong and lying is two different things....the congressional hearings proved Obama was told that the video was the cause BY THE CIA.....that wasn't a lie it was what he thought was the truth at the time...a very big difference....
He did not know the mandate was a tax....he argued that it wasn't...he was ruled against which is what courts do....you say this and I say that and the court decides...in that case are we both lying?????????....NO..we are giving our opinion.....Obama gave his opinion...he lost...that does not make him a
liar....
I'm getting really really tired of constantly destroying you....get a grip man ;)
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And once again..you haven't proven shit....all of that is YOUR OPINION...being wrong and lying is two different things....the congressional hearings proved Obama was told that the video was the cause BY THE CIA.....that wasn't a lie it was what he thought was the truth at the time...a very big difference....
He did not know the mandate was a tax....he argued that it wasn't...he was ruled against which is what courts do....you say this and I say that and the court decides...in that case are we both lying?????????....NO..we are giving our opinion.....Obama gave his opinion...he lost...that does not make him a
liar....
I'm getting really really tired of constantly destroying you....get a grip man ;)
I'm not going to waste my time "proving" anything to you. If you were reasonable and I felt like it, I'd provide some resources, but you're not and I don't. Use your friend Google (not like it will matter). You disciples don't care about the facts.
Case in point: you saying Obama "did not know the mandate was a tax" is absolutely false. The only way he got the bill passed was by telling Democrats the mandate was not a tax. Then when he got into court he argued that the mandate was in fact a tax, and that is the only way the mandate was upheld.
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Preparing for the coronation.
Dems blast DNC for slim debate schedule, allege Clinton coddling
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
Published August 07, 2015
FoxNews.com
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley is taking his party to task for issuing a primary debate schedule that he says clearly insulates front runner Hillary Clinton from harm on her way to a possible nomination.
The former governor of Maryland told reporters that the debate schedule – trimmed to six from more than 25 in 2008 – represents a circling of wagons around Clinton, who is clearly ahead of her Democratic challengers. He is joined by fellow Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is also calling for more debates.
“This is not how democracy works,” O’Malley told supporters in a fundraising letter Thursday. “It’s ridiculous. The campaign for presidency should be about giving voters an opportunity to hear from every candidate and decide on the issues, not stacking the deck in favor of a chosen candidate.”
The Democratic Campaign Committee did not return a request for comment on Friday.
Experts say televised debates are not Clinton’s strong suit, and that popular political wisdom suggests candidates with her solid name recognition and position in the polls do not need to debate if they don’t have to. In fact, it might be preferable if she doesn’t.
“Hillary is not known for debates, she does much better in small groups,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin & Marshall Poll in Pennsylvania. “She does not do well in big arenas, she is not compelling. Right now she is pursuing the front-runner strategy, in that she can be hurt more by a primary process that gets combative in debates. So she speaks more to selective audiences.”
But whether that is what the Democratic National Committee had in mind when it set the debates at six, beginning in October, is unclear. There are only two debates scheduled after the critical Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primaries in February 2016.
The debate schedule is as follows:
1.) October 13 – CNN – Nevada
2.) November 14 – CBS/KCCI/Des Moines Register – Des Moines, IA.
3.) December 19 – ABC/WMUR – Manchester, NH.
4.) January 17 – NBC/Congressional Black Caucus Institute – Charleston, SC.
5.) February or March – Univision/Washington Post – Miami, FL
6.) February or March – PBS – Wisconsin
“We are thrilled to announce the schedule and locations for our Democratic primary debates,” said DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Thursday. “These six debates will not only give caucus goers and primary voters ample opportunity to hear from our candidates about their vision for our country’s future, they will highlight the clear contrast between the values of the Democratic Party which is focused on strengthening the middle class versus Republicans who want to pursue out of touch and out of date policies.”
But the announcement reportedly came after some tense back and forth from the campaigns. O’Malley and Sanders were calling for more, while Clinton’s camp allegedly lobbied for fewer than six, according to Politico.
Sanders’ campaign said Thursday that it was disappointed with the results. “But I am not surprised,” he said in a statement. “At a time when many Americans are demoralized about politics and have given up on the political process, I think it's imperative that we have as many debates as possible -- certainly more than six. I look forward to working with the DNC to see if we can significantly expand the proposed debate schedule."
The other two official candidates – former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee and former Sen. Jim Webb – had less to say.
“Governor Chafee is looking forward to the debates!” said spokeswoman Jennifer Rich, when contacted by Foxnews.com.
Webb’s people did not return a request for comment, but told Politico that Webb will participate whenever, and for however many debates are held. “All we know is we will show up for as many debates as they want to do,” spokesman Craig Crawford said on Wednesday.
The debates are critical to contenders like O’Malley, who has low recognition among primary voters outside of Maryland. For him and the others, the free media coverage and chance to shine during the debates is critical for their outreach to voters.
“Look at it from their point of view – they’re struggling for name recognition and identity with the voters. Meanwhile the party is going to say enough – we don’t want the bloodletting,” said Madonna.
2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney was said to have been banged up so badly by his fellow primary candidates during their 19 official debates that it hurt him in the general election, which he lost to President Obama. That might be the DNC’s line of thinking. Clinton had to debate Obama no less than 26 times before he beat her in the 2008 primary.
“Let’s be honest we don’t know whether (the debate schedule) has anything to do with Clinton stumbling and her current problems in the polls,” Madonna said, pointing to her creeping unfavorable ratings and the private email scandal. “The other problem in these debates is they can become a referendum on Obama,” and Clinton’s relationship to him could boomerang on her. The leadership could be mindful of that.
It can’t hurt O’Malley and Sanders to push back, Madonna added. “They need to take the gloves off at some point, and challenge her,” he said. “People in the same party need to give people a reason to vote for them, and talking about their differences, too, just like they did (in the Republican debate) last night.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/08/07/fellow-dems-blast-dnc-for-coddling-hillary-in-debate-schedule/?intcmp=hpbt1
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I'm not going to waste my time "proving" anything to you. If you were reasonable and I felt like it, I'd provide some resources, but you're not and I don't. Use your friend Google (not like it will matter). You disciples don't care about the facts.
Case in point: you saying Obama "did not know the mandate was a tax" is absolutely false. The only way he got the bill passed was by telling Democrats the mandate was not a tax. Then when he got into court he argued that the mandate was in fact a tax, and that is the only way the mandate was upheld.
Again..in terms of policy, shit changes....you determine that Obama has lied so in your mind he has.....there is no concrete evidence that Obama lied
and the fact that I keep telling you that the CIA admitted during government hearings that they initially thought Benghazi was caused by the video and relayed such to secretary of state Clinton and to Obama and you CONTINUING to call Obama a liar in that regard in spite of that proves you just aren't really unbiased and destroys your credibility
sorry.
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Again..in terms of policy, shit changes....you determine that Obama has lied so in your mind he has.....there is no concrete evidence that Obama lied
and the fact that I keep telling you that the CIA admitted during government hearings that they initially thought Benghazi was caused by the video and relayed such to secretary of state Clinton and to Obama and you CONTINUING to call Obama a liar in that regard in spite of that proves you just aren't really unbiased and destroys your credibility
sorry.
Nothing changed. He knew it was a tax before he sold it to Democrats and the Americans public.
And yes, he lied about the youtube video too. This is a classic example of how that man got elected twice, and why Hillary is the favorite to win 2016. We are so screwed . . . .
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Nothing changed. He knew it was a tax before he sold it to Democrats and the Americans public.
And yes, he lied about the youtube video too. This is a classic example of how that man got elected twice, and why Hillary is the favorite to win 2016. We are so screwed . . . .
WOW..what happened to you man?...I guess you're In the Tea Party now
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:o
Bernie Sanders in Statistical Tie With Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire Poll
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2015/08/13/us/12firstdraft-nhpoll/12firstdraft-nhpoll-tmagArticle.jpg)
Senator Bernie Sanders and his wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, at a rally in Los Angeles on Monday.Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times
By Alan Rappeport
August 12, 2015
Senator Bernie Sanders is making significant inroads against Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Hampshire, with a new poll showing him in a statistical tie with Mrs. Clinton in the state.
A new survey released by Franklin Pierce University and The Boston Herald found that 44 percent of Democrats in the state are backing Mr. Sanders compared with 37 percent for Mrs. Clinton, a difference that is within the poll’s margin of error.
The last Democratic poll from the group in March showed Mr. Sanders with support of 8 percent of likely voters, demonstrating a significant erosion in the former secretary of state’s lead.
The Franklin Pierce survey follows a WMUR poll last week that also showed Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton in a tight race in New Hampshire. Mrs. Clinton continues to poll well nationally, but questions about her use of a private email account and growing criticism from Republicans have taken a toll on her popularity.
Despite Mr. Sanders’s strength in New Hampshire, nearly two-thirds of Democrats in the state think Mrs. Clinton will ultimately secure the nomination. However, the lack of excitement for her campaign was illustrated by the fact that 51 percent said they could back her but that they were not enthusiastic about her candidacy.
As for Mr. Sanders, enthusiasm for the Vermont senator’s campaign is robust but voters have doubts about his electability.
Other Democratic candidates such as Lincoln Chafee, Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb are failing to gain much traction so far in New Hampshire, but voters to appear to have an appetite for another candidate to join the fray: Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Of the 442 likely voters surveyed, 46 percent said Mr. Biden should run for president.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/08/12/bernie-sanders-in-statistical-tie-with-hillary-clinton-in-new-hampshire-poll/
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:o
Bernie Sanders in Statistical Tie With Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire Poll
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2015/08/13/us/12firstdraft-nhpoll/12firstdraft-nhpoll-tmagArticle.jpg)
Senator Bernie Sanders and his wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, at a rally in Los Angeles on Monday.Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times
By Alan Rappeport
August 12, 2015
Senator Bernie Sanders is making significant inroads against Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Hampshire, with a new poll showing him in a statistical tie with Mrs. Clinton in the state.
A new survey released by Franklin Pierce University and The Boston Herald found that 44 percent of Democrats in the state are backing Mr. Sanders compared with 37 percent for Mrs. Clinton, a difference that is within the poll’s margin of error.
The last Democratic poll from the group in March showed Mr. Sanders with support of 8 percent of likely voters, demonstrating a significant erosion in the former secretary of state’s lead.
The Franklin Pierce survey follows a WMUR poll last week that also showed Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton in a tight race in New Hampshire. Mrs. Clinton continues to poll well nationally, but questions about her use of a private email account and growing criticism from Republicans have taken a toll on her popularity.
Despite Mr. Sanders’s strength in New Hampshire, nearly two-thirds of Democrats in the state think Mrs. Clinton will ultimately secure the nomination. However, the lack of excitement for her campaign was illustrated by the fact that 51 percent said they could back her but that they were not enthusiastic about her candidacy.
As for Mr. Sanders, enthusiasm for the Vermont senator’s campaign is robust but voters have doubts about his electability.
Other Democratic candidates such as Lincoln Chafee, Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb are failing to gain much traction so far in New Hampshire, but voters to appear to have an appetite for another candidate to join the fray: Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Of the 442 likely voters surveyed, 46 percent said Mr. Biden should run for president.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/08/12/bernie-sanders-in-statistical-tie-with-hillary-clinton-in-new-hampshire-poll/
Unbelievable.
It has just gotten consistently worse and worse for Hillary.
I don't know how Bernie will fare in The South but these rallies he holds with 20 thousand plus people are very impressive.
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Unbelievable.
It has just gotten consistently worse and worse for Hillary.
I don't know how Bernie will fare in The South but these rallies he holds with 20 thousand plus people are very impressive.
Right? She just might have to work to win the nomination, although the DNC is doing what it can to protect her (e.g., reducing the number of debates from 25 to 6).
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Unbelievable.
It has just gotten consistently worse and worse for Hillary.
I don't know how Bernie will fare in The South but these rallies he holds with 20 thousand plus people are very impressive.
Agreed....Hillary has no momentum since she is so bogged down responding to this email thing...which seems to be a never-ending story...it just goes on and on
and yes....Bernie is drawing some impressive crowds..how odd it would be if it came down to him and Trump
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Agreed....Hillary has no momentum since she is so bogged down responding to this email thing...which seems to be a never-ending story...it just goes on and on
She should be sliding rapidly. Instead it's "Feel the bern IF biden is in the race), which he is not.
She is staying in good enough shape to come out of 2015 without many scratches. The repub competitor will look like shit no matter what, thanks to trump.
Hilary SHOULD be all over the news for her shit behavior in servergate. but liberal trump is holding a press conference to steal the media spotlight every single time more info comes out about hilary server.
Didn't the FBI grab her server on friday? ANd so Trump actually goes on the news - on a friday night - to make a joke about menstration? Too much of a concidence!
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Agreed....Hillary has no momentum since she is so bogged down responding to this email thing...which seems to be a never-ending story...it just goes on and on
and yes....Bernie is drawing some impressive crowds..how odd it would be if it came down to him and Trump
That would would likely end up in a fist fight because I don't think either one of those crotchety old bastards know how to back down. 8)
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That would would likely end up in a fist fight because I don't think either one of those crotchety old bastards know how to back down. 8)
:D
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She should be sliding rapidly. Instead it's "Feel the bern IF biden is in the race), which he is not.
She is staying in good enough shape to come out of 2015 without many scratches. The repub competitor will look like shit no matter what, thanks to trump.
Hilary SHOULD be all over the news for her shit behavior in servergate. but liberal trump is holding a press conference to steal the media spotlight every single time more info comes out about hilary server.
Didn't the FBI grab her server on friday? ANd so Trump actually goes on the news - on a friday night - to make a joke about menstration? Too much of a concidence!
Bernie is drawing some big crowds....BUT...can his organization get them all out to the polls???
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Bernie is drawing some big crowds....BUT...can his organization get them all out to the polls???
Bernie is the team down 17 points to the Patriots at halftime.
"Well Jim, we saw that last drive by the Bengals to make it 20-3 at halftime... if they can maintain that momentum, they might have a chance against Brady and this hight powered offense..."
I'd love to see hilary lose, but it'd take a heavyweight like obama to do it, not an extreme liberal like Sanders. ALTHOUGH if sanders wins the primary, he'd automatically win the general, since the base votes, the base chooses, and the base loves extremes. Same way a cruz would win the general by owning the base.
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Bernie is the team down 17 points to the Patriots at halftime.
"Well Jim, we saw that last drive by the Bengals to make it 20-3 at halftime... if they can maintain that momentum, they might have a chance against Brady and this hight powered offense..."
I'd love to see hilary lose, but it'd take a heavyweight like obama to do it, not an extreme liberal like Sanders. ALTHOUGH if sanders wins the primary, he'd automatically win the general, since the base votes, the base chooses, and the base loves extremes. Same way a cruz would win the general by owning the base.
He might actually win New Hampshire...but after that, it'll be tough......After Hillary destroyed Obama on Super Tuesday, everyone thought it was over but Obama kept campaigning and ran off 10 straight primary wins in the middle of America where the media wasn't paying attention...next thing you know, all the momentum went out of Hillary's campaign especially when blacks realized that Obama could win and stopped voting for Hillary in droves....
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He might actually win New Hampshire...but after that, it'll be tough......After Hillary destroyed Obama on Super Tuesday, everyone thought it was over but Obama kept campaigning and ran off 10 straight primary wins in the middle of America where the media wasn't paying attention...next thing you know, all the momentum went out of Hillary's campaign especially when blacks realized that Obama could win and stopped voting for Hillary in droves....
right now, dems are excited about him, it's summer, the kids are out of school, the news is slow except for trump (and people are tiring of that) and nobody likes clinton.
But, as the months pass, hilary will dig dirt on sanders. Sanders doesn't look good, he won't translate well. And he's an extreme socialist, that doesn't play well with the south.
I'd love love love to see him win, and I always like the 'what if' potential paths. But I see no path to victory for him. He comes within 6 points in NH and calls it a moral victory before hilary sweeps the states.
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right now, dems are excited about him, it's summer, the kids are out of school, the news is slow except for trump (and people are tiring of that) and nobody likes clinton.
But, as the months pass, hilary will dig dirt on sanders. Sanders doesn't look good, he won't translate well. And he's an extreme socialist, that doesn't play well with the south.
I'd love love love to see him win, and I always like the 'what if' potential paths. But I see no path to victory for him. He comes within 6 points in NH and calls it a moral victory before hilary sweeps the states.
Good prediction..I can envision this...The only way Hillary can probably lose is if they found the codes to our nuclear arsenal in her e-mails ;D
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WSJ: Likelihood Growing That Biden Will Run
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=ba44bfcd-5d45-4671-823b-daaf6891b32a&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: WSJ: Likelihood Growing That Biden Will Run (Jason Davis/Getty Images)
By Melanie Batley
Monday, 24 Aug 2015
Vice President Joe Biden is increasingly leaning toward throwing his hat into the ring for 2016, that is if he feels he can pull together a credible campaign so late into the season, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to people familiar with the matter, financial, political and family matters are all under consideration and his decision whether or not to run has been dominating his conversations recently.
Biden met with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Saturday, sending the most serious signal of late that he is considering a bid, with some speculating that he was sounding out the support he might receive among those in the party's progressive base.
"The vice president has not made a decision about his political future," Biden spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff told the Journal. "Anyone speculating that he has made a decision is wrong."
The Journal noted that Biden would enter the race as an underdog, but some believe Hillary Clinton's nomination is not inevitable.
Recent polls give Clinton a strong front-runner status, and she has a solid and well-developed campaign apparatus behind her. Nevertheless, as the email scandal continues to escalate and her approval ratings decline, backers are increasingly nervous that she could be vulnerable to a credible challenge.
Speculation about Biden's intentions has been mounting for months, but a report out earlier this month suggested that his close friends and political allies share a widespread view that he should stay out of the race or risk damaging his legacy.
Politico reported Monday that a Biden bid would rouse political loyalties in the White House and potentially create a dilemma for the president himself.
"I don't know what the official line will be," a West Wing staffer told Politico. "But you will have a lot of people in the building rooting for him."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/joe-biden-democrats-2016-hillary/2015/08/24/id/671587/#ixzz3jmIJisWT
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The Messiah has spoken.
Obama gives Joe Biden 'blessing' for 2016 bid
(http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/131102191757-01-joe-biden-horizontal-large-gallery.jpg)
By Jeff Zeleny and Peter Morris, CNN
Updated Mon August 24, 2015
Washington (CNN)Vice President Joe Biden received President Barack Obama's "blessing" to make a 2016 bid for the White House, according to a senior Democrat.
But that's if Biden chooses to run -- the decision is his, the source said.
Biden met with the President for one of their regularly scheduled lunch meetings Monday.
Later in the evening, Biden is turning to a pair of President Barack Obama's most trusted advisers as he deepens his examination of how to mount a successful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Vice President was expected to huddle at his residence Monday night with Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer, the husband-and-wife team who have been at Obama's side for much of the last decade, two people familiar with the meeting told CNN. Steve Ricchetti, the Vice President's chief of staff, was also expected to attend.
"As a general rule, we are not going to confirm the Vice President's private meetings or provide a readout of them," an aide to the Vice President told CNN on Monday.
Dunn, a former White House communications director, and Bauer, a longtime lawyer to Obama, were among those invited to a meeting at the Naval Observatory in Washington. Ted Kaufman, a loyal Biden confidant who briefly occupied his Senate seat from Delaware, was also among those gathering to discuss how -- not whether -- Biden could run, if he decides to do so.
Biden is leaning toward running, several people involved in discussions tell CNN, but they stress that he has not yet firmly made up his mind to launch a candidacy.
The meeting on Monday night, along with his private session on Saturday with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, underscores the length he is going to explore a run.
While many top Democrats have already signed onto Hillary Clinton's candidacy, several former Obama advisers tell CNN they would work for Biden if he jumps into the race. Dunn and Bauer would be a high-profile addition to any potential campaign, and could send a signal to other Democrats that they should join Biden's effort. It is not known if they would ultimately work for Biden if he does enter the race.
Bauer is one of the top Democratic election lawyers in Washington, who helped guide Obama's presidential campaign eight years ago. Dunn, a veteran of presidential campaigns, served as a communications director during Obama's first term. She was also an adviser to former Sen. Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader.
Key Democratic fundraisers have been invited to a meeting with Biden after Labor Day, a source close to Biden confirmed to CNN.
The meeting, first reported by The Washington Post, is scheduled to be held at the Naval Observatory and is expected to occur the week after Labor Day.
The source characterizes the session as "one of several logical and necessary steps" the Vice President needs to take to get the best sense of the terrain. The source also says outreach to other party leaders is also planned.
The source says nothing is decided or firm about the Vice President's intentions but conversations are ongoing and deliberations could take most of September as Biden decides whether to enter the presidential race.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/24/politics/joe-biden-obama-blessing-2016/index.html
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:o
Should Hillary Clinton Suspend Her Campaign?
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Growing national security questions about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server during her time as secretary of State are drowning out much of her message as a presidential candidate and causing many of her fellow Democrats to worry about the future of her campaign. Is it time for Clinton to put her campaign on temporary hold?
Voters are almost evenly divided on that question: the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters believe Clinton should suspend her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination until all of the legal questions about her use of the private e-mail server are resolved. Nearly as many (44%) disagree. Nine percent (9%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Even one-in-four Democrats (24%) agree that the front-runner for their party’s nomination should suspend her campaign for the time being. But that compares to 73% of Republicans and 46% of voters not affiliated with either major party.
Forty-five percent (45%) of all voters - but only 18% of Democrats - now consider the national security questions raised about Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while serving as secretary of State to be a serious scandal. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of likely voters consider the matter an embarrassing situation, while nearly as many (23%) say it’s no big deal.
At the same time, Vice President Joe Biden is reportedly moving closer to a decision whether to challenge Clinton for the Democratic nomination because of her e-mail woes. Our latest Hillary Meter shows the former first lady losing ground noticeably among voters, but Democrats weren’t overly enthusiastic about a Biden run earlier this month.
Clinton has been far and away the leader of the Democratic presidential pack in surveys for months. Rasmussen Reports will release its latest numbers from the Democratic presidential race at 8:30 a.m. Eastern tomorrow.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 23-24, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
As recently as a month ago (and there have been additional questions raised since then), 54% of voters already felt Clinton’s use of a private, non-government provider for her e-mail while serving as secretary of State raises serious national security concerns.
Men believe a bit more strongly than women that Clinton should temporarily suspend her campaign. White voters are nearly twice as likely as black voters to think she should put her campaign on hold. Other minority voters tend to oppose that idea.
Middle-income voters are stronger advocates of a campaign hold than those in other income brackets.
Voters who approve of the job President Obama is doing are strongly opposed to Clinton suspending her campaign. Most voters who disapprove of the president’s job performance think she should take a break until the legal questions about the e-mail server are resolved.
Just 37% of all voters say they trust Clinton. Sixty-three percent (63%) think it’s likely some actions Clinton took as secretary of State were influenced by donations made to the Clinton Foundation. This includes 42% who say it’s Very Likely.
Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/should_hillary_clinton_suspend_her_campaign
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73% of Republicans
LOL @ the 27% that told the interviewer "Nah, I like Hilary, she should stay in the race..."
They're probably Trump supporters.
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GOP revels in Joe Biden buzz
After months of enduring Trump and clown-car cracks, Republicans are enjoying watching Democrats squirm.
By KATIE GLUECK
8/26/15
(http://images.politico.com/global/2015/08/26/150825_joe_biden_ap_1160_1160x629.jpg)
AP Photos
Republicans, sick of being derided by Democrats as the clown car party, are downright gleeful that Joe Biden appears to be squeezing in next to Hillary Clinton.
After enduring months of ridicule fueled by Donald Trump, whose frequent outrageous comments have forced a number of GOP rivals into a corner, and as a seemingly endless parade of Republican contenders have jumped into the presidential race, there’s a sense of schadenfreude at the idea of Biden mounting a late-in-the-game run and mixing up the Democratic field.
“We’re constantly denounced as a circus, a clown show, a clown car,” said GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway, adding that competition has been good for the Republican field. But, she went on to add, “Pardon us if we’ve got the giggles over watching the Democrats, the so-called Democratic front-runner, hear [competitors’] footsteps and what was meant to be a runaway victory, what was meant to be a coronation, becomes their own … version of a clown car.”
As chatter about a possible Biden bid has intensified over the past several days, plenty of Republicans are sounding more like Biden cheerleaders — even Biden consultants — than political foes, delighting in gaming out how Biden could emerge as a credible challenger to Clinton and knock out the sense of coronation that has lingered around her, even as she battles scandal-tinged headlines.
“Oh, Run Joe Run,” said Conway, who is also president of a super PAC backing Ted Cruz.
“I’d love to see Joe Biden get into the race,” said GOP strategist and former Mitt Romney spokesman Ryan Williams. “He would be a formidable candidate.”
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) has been tweeting stories bearing headlines such as “Hillary vs. Biden Would Get Ugly Fast” and “Top Democratic fundraisers invited to meet with Joe Biden at Naval Observatory.”
And the Republican National Committee has been blasting out examples of the White House speaking highly of the vice president, seeking to suggest that Obama would lean toward his second-in-command rather than his former secretary of state.
“A Biden candidacy will divide the White House and could fracture the Democrat establishment — especially if Clinton can’t turn things around or stumbles even further,” said RNC spokesman Michael Short, explaining the Biden boosterism.
Biden has yet to publicly announce his intentions but is said to be heavily considering a run, with a decision expected by the end of the summer. His desire to mount another run (after failing to clinch the Democratic nomination in 1988 and 2008) is said to be motivated in part by the recent death of his son Beau Biden, who reportedly wanted his dad to run, and comes as Clinton has suffered endless headlines about her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and questions about conflicts of interest regarding the Clinton Foundation.
It’s not that Clinton is running alone. She already has several challengers, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has gained some traction among progressives in the party. But in the eyes of Republicans, the fact that Biden, the sitting vice president, is mulling a late-entry run, is a sign of Clinton’s vulnerabilities.
“Vice President Joe Biden’s potential entry into the Democratic Primary means one thing and one thing only — Secretary Clinton is in trouble,” said Jeff Bechdel, communications director for the GOP opposition research group America Rising PAC, in a statement. “Clinton has inflicted so much damage on herself through scandals involving her private email and the Clinton Foundation that she has provided an opening for Biden.”
A representative for Clinton didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Republicans are hopeful that Biden, a seasoned politician who is respected on both sides of the aisle, would emerge as a credible contender who, at the least, would be taken seriously should he draw contrasts with Clinton. They also believe Biden would eat into some of her support among centrist Democrats, weakening Clinton by dipping into her base.
“If Biden can get any kind of traction, any momentum, it will further add to all of the problems Hillary Clinton has to deal with. And getting through the nominating season, it adds all kinds of extra pressure that they weren’t really counting on at the beginning of this race. It’s just another prominent voice that’s going to show a contrast with Hillary Clinton,” the RNC’s Short said in a separate conversation.
Many Democrats, and some Republicans, say that’s wishful thinking — Clinton is still overwhelmingly expected to be her party’s nominee, and some think a more contested primary would make her stronger, as was the case for now-President Barack Obama when he ran against Clinton in 2008.
But if nothing else, Republicans say, the colorful Biden would ensure that it’s not just the GOP in the sensationalist spotlight.
Biden, who can be an emotional speaker, has a long record of getting carried away, or getting ahead of himself or the administration, such as when he blurted out full support for same-sex marriage before that was the position held by the White House. While he is currently still raw from the death of his son, Biden is known for using off-color language and for public displays of affection, and after the summer of Trump, Republicans wouldn’t mind sharing the attention.
“Biden is good for a laugh at least once a week,” said New Hampshire GOP operative Dave Carney. “For anyone in the business of generating clicks, he’s almost as good as Trump.”
But the GOP hope that Biden would substantially shake up the Democratic race is predicated on a lot of “ifs.” It’s not at all clear that Biden will actually get into the race; if he does, he could easily fall flat — as he did in 2008, when he ran against Clinton and Obama — and there’s no guarantee that he would criticize Clinton off the bat, much less that he would do so effectively.
“It’s not like they’ve got fundamental policy differences,” said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party who does not think that Biden will deliver on all of those GOP dreams. “Both are establishment Democrats. It’s not like he’s younger … both are former senators. What does he bring to the table, except maybe a little less baggage than Hillary? I just don’t understand it. I think people are being overly polite.”
Bill Kristol, the influential conservative editor of The Weekly Standard, does not think Biden should be dismissed — “I’m not one of those who thinks Biden is a buffoon,” he said — but at the same time doesn’t think the vice president himself will cause the kind of damage to Clinton other Republicans are betting on. But Biden’s possible entry does send the message that the field isn’t settled yet, Kristol continued, painting a picture of a long-shot scenario in which other candidates, possibly even progressive favorite Elizabeth Warren, who has repeatedly ruled out a run, jump in later.
“It does create more fluidity in general in the race,” he said. “If you watch Trump, and Biden gets in, it feels like a crazy year. All the rules are being broken.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/gop-revels-in-joe-biden-buzz-121743.html#ixzz3jweuKaQA
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Clinton Camp Says One-Fifth of Delegates Secured for Nomination
Aug 28, 2015
As Vice President Joe Biden considers a potential run, Hillary Clinton's campaign is seeking to project dominance at the Democratic National Commitee meeting in Minneapolis.
As Hillary Clinton's campaign seeks to project dominance in a field that could soon include Vice President Joe Biden, her top advisers are touting a decisive edge on a little-discussed metric: superdelegate commitments.
At the Democratic National Committee meeting in Minneapolis, where she will speak Friday, senior Clinton campaign officials are claiming that she has already secured one-fifth of the pledges needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination. They come from current and former elected officials, committee officeholders, and other party dignitaries.
The campaign says that Clinton currently has about 130 superdelegates publicly backing her, but a person familiar with recent conversations in Minneapolis said that officials are telling supporters and the undecided in the last few days that private commitments increase that number to more than 440—about 20 percent of the number of delegates she would need to secure the nomination.
Clinton campaign aides at the DNC meeting are privately briefing uncommitted superdelegates there on their mounting totals as a way to coax them to get them aboard the Clinton train now. Campaign manager Robby Mook, chief administrative officer Charlie Baker, political director Amanda Renteria, and state campaigns and political engagement director Marlon Marshall are among top Clinton aides in attendance.
Final numbers are still in flux, but current estimates peg the total number of delegates to next summer’s presidential nominating convention at about 4,491, meaning that a candidate would need 2,246 to win. The Clinton camp’s claim to more than 440 delegates means she’s already wrapped up the support of more than 60 percent of the approximately 713 superdelegates who, under party rules, are among those who cast votes for the nomination, along with delegates selected by rank-and-file voters in primaries and caucuses beginning next February. Delegate totals won’t be finalized until the DNC determines the number of bonus delegates awarded to states, a party official said.
To be sure, Clinton had a superdelegate edge early against Barack Obama in 2008, and superdelegates are free to change their allegiance at any time between now and next summer's convention. But Clinton is ahead of the pace she had eight years ago in securing these commitments, and her support from the core of the establishment represented by these superdelegates is arguably the most tangible evidence of the difficulty Biden would have overtaking her with a late-starting campaign.
While Clinton said earlier this week that Biden “should have the space and the opportunity to decide what he wants to do,” her campaign is at the same time flexing its muscles to stress the strength of her candidacy. The campaign this week unveiled its first endorsement from a sitting member of the Obama Cabinet, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who just happens to be a former governor of Iowa and who spent Wednesday touring the state with Clinton.
The Clinton campaign also released memos on Thursday touting the strength of its field operations in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The memos include specific tallies of thousands of volunteer commitments, dozens of paid organizers, and offices opened, including 11 in Iowa.
Barring some major scandal or controversy, and given Hillary and Bill Clinton's long-standing ties to Democratic Party elites, overcoming her superdelegate edge would be quite a challenge for Biden or the major candidates already competing against her for the nomination, including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
The 300-or-so gap between Clinton's public and private superdelegate commitments derives mostly from state party officials who have yet to reveal their backing of the frontrunner, but have privately pledged to cast their convention votes for the former first lady, according to the person familiar with the campaign's tally.
In their Minneapolis discussions intended to persuade additional uncommitted superdelegates to commit to Clinton, her team is taking care not to mention Biden, but the message is clear: Much of the party establishment is supporting Clinton and the math is in her favor. In 2008, Clinton’s team made a version of this argument before being overtaken by Barack Obama. After Obama took the lead in overall delegates, his campaign began to make a comparable argument about the mathematical inevitability of his ultimate victory.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-08-28/clinton-camp-saying-it-already-secured-one-fifth-the-delegates-needed-for-nomination
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Wouldn't be a good idea for Biden. He isn't popular enough and historically, VPs have never done well when they ran as the head of the ticket.
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Wouldn't be a good idea for Biden. He isn't popular enough and historically, VPs have never done well when they ran as the head of the ticket.
Good point
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Wouldn't be a good idea for Biden. He isn't popular enough and historically, VPs have never done well when they ran as the head of the ticket.
the odds have improved drastically in recent times - a great read here. Biden would do okay. but his heart isn't in it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-hobratsch/when-vice-presidents-run_b_4922047.html
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Biden Beloved by Top Democrats; His Candidacy, Not So Much
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=1332f988-bab9-48c1-9b1c-ade616833211&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Biden Beloved by Top Democrats; His Candidacy, Not So Much
Friday, 28 Aug 2015
MINNEAPOLIS -- Joe Biden got plenty of love from top Democrats on Friday, but their views about a possible White House run by the vice president were decidedly more mixed.
While Biden was nowhere near the summer meeting of the Democratic National Committee, his potential late entry into the party's presidential race against front-runner Hillary Clinton dominated conversations in meeting rooms and hallways.
In more than a dozen interviews, top Democrats expressed admiration and affection for Biden, but several cast doubt on whether he should get in the race. Some questioned whether his late start would keep him from making much headway.
Special: Engineers Call This the ‘Solar Panel Killer’
"I like Joe Biden. We all love him," said Alice Huffman of California, president of the state's NAACP. "But I don't see him overtaking Hillary."
Earl Fowlkes, chairman of the party's LGBT caucus, said Biden was "a good man, a solid man" but wondered whether he would excite the minority and young voters who Democrats rely on in presidential elections.
"The question is, can he raise the money?" Fowlkes said. "If he doesn't have the money, he won't make much difference."
Three Democrats interviewed said they would probably back Biden if he gets in, citing their appreciation for his service to President Barack Obama and his long experience in the U.S. Senate.
"He would probably be my candidate," said Elena McCullough of the Tampa, Florida, area. "He's done a great job, he's been serving our country for a long time."
Sonia Fernandez, of Los Angeles, also said she would probably back Biden because "I would like to see the continuation of the progress we've seen with President Obama."
Biden, 72, has been huddling with advisers to decide whether to challenge Clinton, who has struggled to overcome fallout from her use of a private email server while working as the nation's top diplomat.
Clinton still holds a big lead in opinion polls in the race to pick a nominee for the November 2016 election, but has taken a hit on her personal favorability and trustworthiness.
Clinton and three other Democratic candidates - Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee - addressed party leaders at the meeting.
Speaking to reporters afterward, Clinton also expressed her admiration for Biden but refused to be drawn into a discussion about his possible candidacy. Sanders said he was uncertain what, if anything, Biden's entry in the race would mean.
"I guess we will have to wait and see," he said.
Biden held a conference call with DNC members on Wednesday in which he said he was still giving a lot of thought to a late entry but was unsure if he had the energy or commitment for it.
Editor's Note: Do You Have These Alzheimer's Warning Signs? Rate Your Memory Now.
Biden's eldest son, Beau Biden, a former Delaware attorney general, died of cancer in May at age 46.
Karen Yarbrough, Illinois state vice chairwoman for the party, said she had not decided on a candidate yet but did not think Biden's decision would make much difference.
"I don't know if he would change anything for me," she said, adding she was "leaning" toward supporting Clinton.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Joe-Biden-Democrats-2016/2015/08/28/id/672510/#ixzz3kQnSiIPR
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Iowa Poll: Bernie Sanders Just 7 Points Behind Hillary
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Image: Iowa Poll: Bernie Sanders Just 7 Points Behind Hillary
Saturday, 29 Aug 2015
In a huge new shocker for Democrats, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has closed to within 7 points of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race in the key state of Iowa.
While Clinton is still ahead with 37 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, Sanders is now the choice for 30 percent of Democrat, according to the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll released Saturday evening.
That means that Clinton has lost a staggering third of her total supports since May, and increases the risk that she could once again lose the Iowa contest like she did in 2008. Also, it’s the first time the former secretary of state has dropped below the 50 percent mark in four polls conducted by the Register and Bloomberg Politics this year.
Vice President Joe Biden, who is still mulling a run and sounding out donors, has yet to make much of a mark in Iowa. Biden has the backing of just 14 percent of respondents. The Iowa vote is scheduled for Feb. 1.
"This feels like 2008 all over again," J. Ann Selzer, pollster for the Iowa Poll, told the Register. That year, Clinton was ahead of John Edwards by 6 percentage points and then Sen. Barack Obama by 7 points in an early October Iowa Poll. But Obama surged ahead by late November.
In May, the Iowa Poll put Clinton, a former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady, at 57 percent, Sanders at 16 percent, and Biden at 8 percent.
"It looks like what people call the era of inevitability is over," said Selzer, president of West Des Moines, Iowa- based Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll. "She has lost a third of the support that she had in May, so any time you lose that much that quickly, it’s a wake-up call."
The decline in Clinton's rating in the poll comes despite her dominance of the local broadcast airwaves. During the past month, she was the only Democratic candidate or political action committee advertising on Iowa broadcast television stations. The heavy Clinton buy, which aired in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, focused on her biography and her record as a champion of American families. According to Kantar/CMAG data, the Clinton campaign was not only unopposed on the Democratic side, but had more than twice as many spots in the markets where it bought, than all Republican advertising combined.
Biden, who is expected to make a decision about whether to enter the race by the end of September, placed ahead of several declared candidates. If Biden is not in the race, the poll shows Clinton leading Sanders by 43 percent to 35 percent. The margin of error on the full sample of likely Democratic caucus-goers is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points
The biggest surprise is Sanders. Unlike his recent strong showing in New Hampshire polls, his performance here cannot be dismissed as a result of the Vermont lawmaker’s regional appeal.
The survey of 404 likely Democratic caucus attendees, conducted Aug. 23-26, shows the self-declared socialist, who serves as an independent in the U.S. Senate, packing a powerful appeal in the nation's rural heartland. In the last two months Sanders' favorability rating has jumped to 73 percent from 57 percent among likely Democratic caucus-goers.
"On paper, he’s not the kind of candidate that traditionally ends up as the nominee," Selzer said of Sanders. "But he’s making them feel good about being a Democrat."
Sanders' rise reflects an anti-establishment mood that’s playing out across the country in both parties, elevating Republican contenders such as billionaire Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson while frustrating candidates such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two past U.S. presidents.
Sanders is being buoyed by a coalition that looks uncannily like the one that helped Barack Obama topple Clinton from the front of the Democratic field in 2008: young people, liberals and first-time caucus-goers. Sanders draws 50 percent of the support of likely Democratic caucus-goers under the age of 45, well above Clinton’s 27 percent and Biden’s 8 percent. Sanders has a five percentage point lead over Clinton among self- described liberals. Among Democrats who plan to attend their first caucus in 2016, Sanders is the first choice of 43 percent, Clinton of 31 percent.
Clinton leads with a small group of self-described conservatives among likely Democratic caucus-goers (44 percent to Sanders’s 5 percent); Sanders has a 5-point lead among liberals.
Support for other Democratic presidential contenders - Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee - remains in the low single digits, the poll showed. Asked to identify their second choice for president, respondents divided their preferences essentially evenly among Biden, Clinton and Sanders.
Nearly all Sanders supporters – 96 percent – said they are motivated mostly by support for him and his ideas rather than by opposition to Clinton. While Clinton posts a slightly higher overall favorable rating than Sanders, 77 percent compared with 73 percent, Sanders counts a considerably higher share who rate him as "very favorable," the most positive of the favorability rankings, at 39 percent compared with Clinton’s 27 percent.
"For the last six months, there hasn’t been another contender, but recently Joe Biden and, most importantly, Bernie Sanders has shaken things up," said Bryce Rodgers, 28, a software developer from Iowa City, who still counts Clinton as his first choice but says Sanders may yet steal him away.
"People talk about how they’re more excited about Bernie Sanders," said Rodgers. He's weighing that versus the question of electability. "It bothers me that she’s a little bit more entrenched in the status quo where Bernie has zero problem upsetting the status quo. But on the flip side I think that also could be an advantage" for Clinton in terms of money and organization.
The poll included some good news for Clinton. Her party base still sees her as a formidable nominee. Two-thirds of Democrats surveyed said they are "mostly confident" she can win the White House, compared to one-fourth who described themselves as "mostly nervous" she would lose the general election if nominated.
And the poll results tend to corroborate Clinton's contention that voters are uninterested in the e-mail controversy that has produced months of punishing headlines about her use of a private communications system when she was secretary of state. Most likely Democratic caucus-goers – 61 percent – said the controversy over Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server is unimportant to them.
The survey comes at a time when Clinton’s team is growing concerned about both Sanders and Biden and is moving to lock down support in Iowa. Two prominent Iowa Democrats, former U.S. Senator Tom Harkin and U.S. Agriculture Secretary and former Governor Tom Vilsack, endorsed Clinton this month.
One poll respondent, Sean Bagniewski, who hosted a party for Clinton in his Des Moines backyard in July, said too much is being read into the polling trends and that Clinton remains solidly in the lead and the candidate he is sticking with. "I’m not personally concerned about it," he said.
He said he doesn’t believe Biden will ultimately run – and that the spike in Sanders’ popularity is predicated on most Democrats’ belief that he will not be the nominee but for now is a positive force in terms of nudging Clinton to the left on economic policy and toughening her up for the general election campaign. "When she came to my house, we had 200 people there, she was there for two-and-a-half hours, and she stayed until she personally met everyone there. If that’s the campaign she’s going to do, which it seems like she is, then she’s going to win Iowa."
Material from Bloomberg News was used in this story.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/bernie-sanders-hillary-iowa-register/2015/08/29/id/672610/#ixzz3kQoEAM7w
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Bernie Sanders Leads Hillary Clinton by 9 in New Hampshire, Gains in Iowa: Poll
by MARK MURRAY
Bernie Sanders Overtakes Hillary Clinton by 9 Points in New Hampshire 3:12
Bernie Sanders has jumped out to a nine-point lead over front-runner Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, and he's gained ground on her among Iowa voters in the Democratic presidential race, according to a pair of brand-new NBC News/Marist polls.
In New Hampshire, the Vermont senator gets the support of 41 percent of Democratic voters, Clinton gets 32 percent and Vice President Joe Biden gets 16 percent. No other Democratic candidate receives more than 1 percent.
Back in July's NBC/Marist poll, Clinton was ahead of Sanders in the Granite State by 10 points, 42 percent to 32 percent, with Biden at 12 percent.
Without Biden in the race, Sanders' lead over Clinton in the current survey increases to 11 points, 49 percent to 38 percent.
In Iowa, Clinton maintains her previous advantage over Sanders — but her lead has declined from 24 points in July (49 percent to 25 percent) to 11 points (38 percent to 27 percent); Biden sits at 20 percent. View the full New Hampshire poll here.
(http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_36/1207396/democrats_marist_use_76e9dbf9f5acd0f9de9af7ca17ed6db5.nbcnews-ux-600-480.jpg)
Trump ahead in both Iowa and New Hampshire
Meanwhile, in the Republican presidential race, Donald Trump now holds a seven-point lead in Iowa and a 16-point one in New Hampshire.
In the Hawkeye State, Trump gets the support from 29 percent of potential GOP caucus-goers, while Ben Carson receives 22 percent. There's a steep drop off after that: Jeb Bush gets 6 percent; Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul and Scott Walker get 5 percent; and Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal are at 4 percent.
In July, Walker was ahead of the Iowa Republican field at 19 percent, Trump was second at 17 percent and Bush was third at 12 percent.
In the Granite State, Trump is at 28 percent — followed by John Kasich at 12 percent, Carson at 11 percent, Bush at 8 percent and Fiorina at 6 percent; Walker is down to 4 percent.
Back in July, the top three in New Hampshire were Trump (21 percent), Bush (14 percent) and Walker (12 percent). View the full Iowa poll here.
(http://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_36/1207391/republicans_marist_use_c533afb8265d5e3c1d55c0620d61dd05.nbcnews-ux-600-480.jpg)
Biden is more popular than Clinton — among Democrats and all voters
Amid speculation that Biden might enter the 2016 presidential race, the NBC/Marist polls found that the vice president is more popular than Clinton — among both Democrats and the general electorate.
And they show that he matches up better in general-election contests than Clinton does.
In Iowa, she holds a 67 percent/27 percent favorable/unfavorable score among Democrats, and just a 32 percent/61 percent score among all registered voters.
By comparison, Biden's numbers among Democrats are 74 percent/17 percent, and among registered voters they sit at 42 percent/44 percent.
In New Hampshire, Clinton holds a 69 percent/27 percent favorable/unfavorable score among Democrats, and 36 percent/60 percent among all registered voters.
In contrast, Biden's numbers among Granite State Democrats are 76 percent/17 percent, and among registered voters they are 46 percent/43 percent.
And in hypothetical general-election contests, the NBC/Marist polls found that Jeb Bush and Donald Trump both beat Clinton in Iowa:
Bush 50 percent, Clinton 39 percent
Trump 48 percent, Clinton 43 percent.
But Biden performs better:
Bush 46 percent, Biden 44 percent
Biden 49 percent, Trump 45 percent
In New Hampshire, the general-election numbers are:
Bush 48 percent, Clinton 43 percent
Clinton 46 percent, Trump 45 percent
Bush 46 percent, Biden 45 percent
Biden 50 percent, Trump 41 percent.
The NBC/Marist poll of Iowa was conducted Aug. 26-Sept. 2 of 998 registered voters (margin of error +/- 3.1 percentage points), 390 potential GOP caucus-goers (+/- 5.0) and 345 potential Democratic caucus-goers (+/- 5.3).
The NBC/Marist poll of New Hampshire was conducted Aug. 26-Sept. 2 of 966 registered voters (+/- 3.2%), 413 potential GOP primary voters (+/- 4.8) and 356 potential Democratic primary voters (+/- 5.2).
http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/bernie-sanders-leads-hillary-clinton-9-n-h-gains-iowa-n422111
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Monmouth Poll: Biden Inches Ahead of Sanders, Clinton Slips
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Image: Monmouth Poll: Biden Inches Ahead of Sanders, Clinton Slips (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; Charlie Leight/Getty Images; Alex Wong Getty Images)
Tuesday, 08 Sep 2015
Joe Biden is up and Hillary Clinton is down in a new Monmouth University national poll of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters.
Support for the vice president is building as speculation grows about his potential entry into the 2016 presidential race, with 22 percent saying they'd back him. That's ahead of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who was picked by 20 percent. The difference is within the poll's plus or minus 5.3 percentage point margin of error.
Clinton, who continues to confront questions about her use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state in the Obama administration, has the support of 42 percent, down from 52 percent a month ago. Biden's number is 10 percentage points higher than a month ago, while Sanders has seen a 4-point increase during that time.
“For a guy who is not running for president, Biden sure is making headway against the frontrunner,” Patrick Murray, director of the West Long Branch, N.J.-based Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement. “There also seems to be an opening with the more liberal Sanders voters, if Biden plays his cards right.”
Slim majorities of Clinton and Sanders voters say they would be at least somewhat likely to consider switching their support to Biden if he jumps into the race. The vice president isn't expected to make a decision until at least the end of September.
Biden’s favorable rating among Democrats and those leaning that way has moved a few percentage points higher and now stands at 71 percent, up from 67 percent a month ago.
As her nomination support has dropped, Clinton continues to be viewed favorably by the vast majority of Democrats, with her favorability rating unchanged from a month earlier, at 71 percent. For Sanders, his rating stands at 41 percent, with 14 percent viewing him unfavorably and 45 percent still having no opinion of him.
The telephone poll was conducted Aug. 31 to Sept. 2 with 1,009 U.S. adults. This release is based on a voter sample of 339 registered voters who identify themselves as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party.
One prominent conservative seemed to be egging Biden on as he contemplates entering the race. Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch tweeted on Monday that it's “very likely” the vice president would win the nomination and that he'd “be hard to beat” in 2016.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/biden-ahead-sanders-poll/2015/09/08/id/678553/#ixzz3lBbhTVh8
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First in Fox News First: Hillary finds new low on favorability
By Chris Stirewalt
Published September 09, 2015
FoxNews.com
What’s behind the pitching and ditching in Hillary Clinton’s struggling frontrunner campaign? She wasn’t sorry that she used a secret server on Monday, but – blam-o! –on Tuesday, she was.
Or at least she’s sorry that you don’t understand why it was perfectly right.
Her campaign is touting its reboot and they’ve even got the former secretary of state doing the “Nae Nae” as part of a “humor and heart” offensive. But, like her GOP counterpart, the giggles don’t exactly come rolling out.
The Nae Nae moves and the apology about-face are easily explained with a new poll of the six key swing states that shows Clinton stuck in her summer doldrums.
The poll, which will be released later today, was conducted for the pro-GOP group American Crossroads by pollsters Vox Populi last week in in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia.
Clinton’s deficit to a generic Republican nominee remained basically unchanged at 13 points, but the story remains her ongoing erosion on trust and overall favorability.
Clinton’s net favorability reached yet another new low, ticking down to negative 25 points. That’s four points worse than last month and 10 points worse than when the monthly poll began in July.
On the question of trust, it was more of the same from last month. She was viewed as to some degree untrustworthy by 58 percent of respondents at least to some degree trustworthy by 37 percent. Just 16 percent said they trust Clinton “completely” while 46 percent expressed “complete” distrust.
The telephone survey included 1,447 registered voters. You can get the full results of the poll here.
. . .
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/09/first-in-fox-news-first-hillary-finds-new-low-on-favorability/
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Sanders 41 To Clinton 40 In Iowa Democratic Caucus, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Dems Say Sanders Is More Honest And Caring
September 10, 2015
In a come-from-behind rally, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the choice of 41 percent of Iowa likely Democratic Caucus participants, with 40 percent picking former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 12 percent backing Vice President Joseph Biden, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
This compares to results of a July 2 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe- ack) University showing Clinton at 52 percent, with 33 percent for Sanders and 7 percent for Biden.
Today, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley gets 3 percent of Iowa likely Democratic Caucus participants, with 3 percent undecided.
There is a wide gender gap among Democrats today as Sanders leads Clinton 49 - 28 percent among men, with 16 percent for Biden, while Clinton leads Sanders 49 - 35 percent among women, with 9 percent for Biden.
Sanders and Biden have a higher net favorability rating than Clinton and higher ratings for honesty and empathy. Clinton has the best scores for leadership and temperament to handle an international crisis.
"Sen. Bernie Sanders has become the Eugene McCarthy of 2016," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "He is the candidate of the Democratic left, against his own party's bosses and their prized presidential candidate, Secretary Hillary Clinton.
"Sanders has seized the momentum by offering a message more in line with disproportionately liberal primary and caucus voters."
"But unlike the late Sen. McCarthy, who came on strong just before the 1968 primaries, Sen. Sanders has seized the momentum, five months before voting begins in Iowa. History will eventually tell us whether he has made such a large move too soon," Brown added.
"Although Vice President Joseph Biden received only 12 percent of the vote in this poll of likely Democratic Caucus-goers, he still may be a winner in the zero-sum game of presidential primary politics because it further increases questions about Clinton's electability."
Clinton has a 76 - 20 percent favorability rating among likely Democratic Caucus participants, as these voters say 64 - 30 percent that she is honest and trustworthy, and 78 - 18 percent that she cares about their needs and problems. She has strong leadership qualities, voters say 92 - 7 percent, and the right temperament and personality to handle an international crisis, voters say 89 - 9 percent.
Sanders gets a 78 - 6 percent favorability rating and likely Democratic Caucus-goers say 86 - 4 percent that he is honest and trustworthy, and 85 - 5 percent that he cares about their needs and problems. Voters say 76 - 9 percent that he has strong leadership qualities and 65 - 15 percent that he has the right temperament and personality to handle an international crisis.
Iowa likely Democratic Caucus participants give Biden a 79 - 9 percent favorability rating. He is honest and trustworthy, voters say 91 - 5 percent, and cares about their needs and problems, voters say 84 - 11 percent. He has strong leadership qualities, voters say 81 - 14 percent and the right temperament and personality for an international crisis, voters say 81 - 13 percent.
Iowa Democrats support the nuclear pact with Iran 66 - 19 percent and say 68 - 17 percent that the agreement will make the world safer.
From August 27 - September 8, Quinnipiac University surveyed 832 likely Iowa Democratic Caucus participants with a margin of error of +/- 3.4 percentage points. Live interviewers call land lines and cell phones.
The Quinnipiac University Poll, directed by Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D., conducts public opinion surveys in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado and the nation as a public service and for research.
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/iowa/release-detail?ReleaseID=2277
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Would be nice to see Biden run due the fact that he is loved and truasted by many...BUT...still no groundswell of support there by the public....maybe if Hillary gets caught in bed naked with a horse.....then we'll see
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Actually Biden is probably getting ready to run. I heard today that he is waiting for Hillary's numbers to drop to a certain level before jumping in.
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Actually Biden is probably getting ready to run. I heard today that he is waiting for Hillary's numbers to drop to a certain level before jumping in.
A shot at Bernie?
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A shot at Bernie?
Absolutely. I don't think Democrats are confident in Bernie as the nominee. They have been floating Biden, Kerry, Warren, and even Gore. Smacks of desperation.
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Absolutely. I don't think Democrats are confident in Bernie as the nominee. They have been floating Biden, Kerry, Warren, and even Gore. Smacks of desperation.
So not necessarily against Hilary, but as a hedge against Bernie beating Hilary, you think?
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Looks like the establishment and their media are teaming up against Sanders.
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So not necessarily against Hilary, but as a hedge against Bernie beating Hilary, you think?
Both.
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Six debates coming for Democrats.
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Bernie now edging Hil in Iowa. But they make the story about Hilary rather than Bernie.
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Anyone have info on the upcoming debates? Post it here.
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Anyone have info on the upcoming debates? Post it here.
wed night. repub CNN debate from reagan library
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Clinton, DNC face pressure to add debates
By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI
09/16/15
The increasingly public rift between Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and others in her party’s leadership over the number of presidential debates is threatening to become more than just embarrassing to the DNC.
It’s spelling trouble for Hillary Clinton, the faltering front-runner who can’t afford to look like she’s being protected by party insiders, say Democrats aligned with both the DNC and 2016 campaigns.
On one side of the fight is a pair of party vice chairs and 2016 candidate Martin O’Malley, who have complained in recent weeks that the DNC should sponsor more than its six planned debates – only four of which will take place before voting in Iowa -- and have protested the committee’s vow to punish candidates who try to participate in unsanctioned events.
On the other side is Wasserman Schultz, who steadfastly insists she won’t budge from the plan, which was carefully negotiated with the campaigns this spring — part of a process that included convincing the Clinton camp to agree to so many debates in the first place.
“There has been discussion between the officers of the DNC and the chairwoman, [but] she’s made her decision and her position clear,” said DNC vice chair Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii congresswoman who — along with former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak, another vice chair — is calling for more debates.
With the fault lines drawn, many Democrats believe that it would take nothing less than a direct call from Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn — or the White House — to change Wasserman Schultz’s mind.
And that, they say, reflects poorly on Clinton — who now maintains she would be open to more debates, but whose reluctance to press the issue with Wasserman Schultz appears to reflect her true intentions.
“I think every Democratic campaign and the DNC should have to explain why we are ceding the discussion and attention to the Republicans by refusing to the kind of robust debate schedule we've always had,” said O’Malley’s campaign manager Dave Hamrick in a statement to POLITICO. “The question remains -- if the DNC is still holding to their unprecedented exclusivity clause, are they doing it at the Clinton campaign's request?"
Clinton’s position is delicate, said a handful of Democrats. If the debate complaints were to grow louder or if her prime rival Bernie Sanders were to push the issue more aggressively, Clinton would find herself under even greater pressure to use her leverage with Wasserman Schultz to allow for more debates.
Wasserman Schultz is widely viewed as closer to Clinton than to other candidates or to President Barack Obama, and the Clinton campaign was the first to sign a joint fundraising agreement with the party committee.
And if Wasserman Schultz wants to keep her job after Democrats name their nominee, “she’s got to keep the Clinton people happy,” said one DNC veteran, operating under the widely held assumption that Clinton will eventually win the nomination.
As a result, some Sanders and O’Malley supporters have claimed that the DNC chose its debate plan with an eye toward helping Clinton. At the DNC’s summer meeting in Minneapolis, O’Malley declared that the debate schedule was “rigged” in favor of Clinton. (A Clinton campaign spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.)
For now, the Clinton campaign remains in favor of keeping the number of debates low, say people familiar with Brooklyn’s thinking, to avoid squandering her advantage as the best-known Democrat in the race — and to limit the opportunities for her rivals to rattle her on television.
But Clinton’s position might change if the campaign of Sanders – far ahead of O'Malley in the polls – were to push the matter.
The Vermonter’s team is instead focusing on cooperating with the DNC while its candidate edges past Clinton in both New Hampshire and Iowa.
“When you get into these political debates about debates, you stop communicating about issues that affect the lives of people, and you begin to communicate about things that people in Washington obsess about,” explained Tad Devine, Sanders’ top strategist. “It’s nothing against O’Malley. We join him in calling for more debates. That’s our position. But are we going to have a sit-down in the DNC lobby? No."
For his part, O’Malley – who is trailing both Clinton and Sanders by a huge margin – took the unusual step of railing against the party leadership on stage at the DNC summer meeting in Minnesota, just a few feet away from an annoyed Wasserman Schultz. He gained some crucial support last Wednesday when Gabbard and Rybak put out a statement urging more debates.
Gabbard and Rybak had made the case for more debates directly to both Wasserman Schultz and the other vice chairs, according to Gabbard. But when it became clear that the chairwoman was not going to budge, Gabbard said, they moved forward with the statement, posted to Gabbard's Facebook wall.
Wasserman Schultz told others that she had not known that Gabbard and Rybak were prepared to go public, said one DNC operative, which served to heighten tensions within the DNC. But the whole drama has only toughened Wasserman Schultz’s resolve not to change the plan, according to DNC insiders.
Hamrick, O'Malley's campaign manager, will be part of a protest outside the DNC on Wednesday. He has asked all his counterparts on other campaigns to join in his call for more debates.
The DNC, for its part, is now on its third debate liaison to the campaigns this cycle after communications director Mo Elleithee left the committee in June. Former White House communications director Anita Dunn then took the debate role from him, before handing it off to former Obama strategist Erik Smith in late July.
Yet so far, the issue has yet to resonate on the campaign trail.
Less than a quarter of New Hampshire Democrats said they believed the party leadership was limiting the number of debates to help Clinton, according to a new Monmouth poll of the Granite State out on Tuesday. And a prominent swing-state DNC member said any talk of a nationwide conversation about the debates following O’Malley's speech was overblown.
“There’s not a hue and cry for more debates,” he said. “Martin did his thing and he’s trailing, so that’s what he needed to do to get some attention … I have not heard neither hide nor hair since Minneapolis."
Meanwhile, a pair of prominent New Hampshire DNC members aligned with Clinton similarly insisted they have heard no discussion of the issue among average voters the state, where a handful of prominent Democrats had signed a letter urging the DNC to add more debates before Gabbard and Rybak’s post.
“No one’s asked me to get involved in it,” said longtime Clinton ally Bill Shaheen.
“I haven’t heard anything from other DNC members, and this is something the membership doesn’t have any control over,” added former New Hampshire party chairwoman Kathy Sullivan.
So for the time being, said the swing state official, the conversation is stuck in Washington, much to Clinton’s relief.
“It’s got this inside baseball feel, deep in the dugout,” he said. “It’s more about bruised feelings — a ‘you didn’t include me in the discussion’ deal — than a philosophical conversation about whether we should have more debates."
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/hillary-clinton-dnc-debates-2016-wasserman-schultz-213667#ixzz3lvQZL7ym
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Jerry Brown Considering Running for President?
"You could have a lot of big surprises."
SEP 16, 2015
BY MICHAEL WARREN
California governor Jerry Brown gave signs in a Wednesday interview on CNN that he may be considering running for president.
Brown, who has run for president three before, spoke with Wolf Blitzer about the current Democratic field. The Democrat said he has not yet endorsed a candidate, calling frontrunner Hillary Clinton "formidable" and refused to give advice about Vice President Joe Biden, who is reportedly mulling a run.
"I will say, though, about the Clintons, with some experience, they are very formidable," said Brown, who ran against Bill Clinton in 1992. "I would not underestimate Hillary Clinton."
Blitzer pressed Brown. "What are you waiting for?" said the host.
"I'm not as hasty as I was as a younger candidate or a younger elected official," Brown continued. "I'm enjoying the luxury of being on the sidelines, watching these shows tonight, watching the parade, and where I can be helpful, I'll jump in at the appropriate time."
When Blitzer asked repeatedly about the prospect of a Biden candidacy, Brown declined to comment.
"I would say, though, it is early," Brown said. "You could have a lot of big surprises, a lot of action between now and the first Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. A lot's going to happen in the Republican primary, and I think some things could happen on the Democratic side as well."
Watch the video below:
Earlier in the interview, Brown also made a comment that indicated he believed Americans were worse off economically since before Obama was elected president. While listing out several problems facing the country, Brown said America has a "financial system that is leaving the average American seven percent poorer than he or she was seven years ago."
Watch that video below:
Brown first ran for president in 1976, during his first term as governor. He ran again briefly in 1980, and then again in 1992, when he became the biggest challenger to Bill Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/jerry-brown-considering-running-president_1031871.ht
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As weak as he is, this might be his best opportunity. Has there ever been a weaker Democrat field?
Sources: Joe Biden Has Wife's Support for WH Bid
by Chuck Todd and Alexandra Jaffe
Contrary to reports suggesting Vice President Joe Biden's wife remains an obstacle to his potential presidential run, sources tell NBC News that Jill Biden is fully behind him for another bid.
Jill Biden, sources tell NBC's Chuck Todd, is 100 percent on-board with a presidential run, despite reports indicating her hesitation is part of what's keeping Biden from jumping into the race.
And that looks more likely by the day, as sources have indicated Biden's been meeting with Democratic leaders during his travels around the nation over the past week to tell them he wants to do it and thinks there's room for him to make a credible bid if he does.
The key question that's still weighing on his mind as he decides whether to make another go of it: Does he have the emotional energy to give it his all, sources say.
But Biden knows that if he has any hopes of winning the nomination, he's better off deciding whether to run by Oct. 1 than waiting until the drop-dead deadline of Nov. 5, the day before the first Democratic primary filing deadline, in Alabama.
Deciding within the next three weeks would give him a slot in the first Democratic primary debate, on Oct. 13 in Las Vegas.
http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/sources-joe-biden-has-wifes-support-wh-bid-n430531
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Trying to minimize Bernie S.
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And worried about Hillary.
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And worried about Hillary.
I think they're worried about Bernie beating Hillary. No way is Biden a stronger candidate than her in a general. He's viewed as a juicer, for one thing.
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Once the general is on, it will become more difficult to mute messages.
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I think they're worried about Bernie beating Hillary. No way is Biden a stronger candidate than her in a general. He's viewed as a juicer, for one thing.
Might depend on whether she gets indicted. Regardless, one thing I'm convinced about now: she is not nearly as strong as I and a lot of others thought.
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Biden entering the race only HELPS hilary. She has the cash and infrastructure to win it no matter what, but Bernie will bloody her in a few liberal states. I still predict she wins every single state against him, with it being close in NH for his moral victory.
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Biden entering the race only HELPS hilary. She has the cash and infrastructure to win it no matter what, but Bernie will bloody her in a few liberal states. I still predict she wins every single state against him, with it being close in NH for his moral victory.
do you like bernie?
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do you like bernie?
i cannot stand bernie. he's delusional and his practices will lead to a lazy nation. And it'll cost 18 trillion or so. socialism doesn't work. He'll bring Europe to the USA. Oh, and I hate hilary too :)
I still like Ted Cruz to emerge as the only fcking grownup in the republican mess, when all is said and done.
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i cannot stand bernie. he's delusional and his practices will lead to a lazy nation. And it'll cost 18 trillion or so. socialism doesn't work. He'll bring Europe to the USA. Oh, and I hate hilary too :)
I still like Ted Cruz to emerge as the only fcking grownup in the republican mess, when all is said and done.
don't we already have a lazy nation? i thought that's why we need all the mexicans, central americans, etc to come over. that's what i've been told.
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don't we already have a lazy nation? i thought that's why we need all the mexicans, central americans, etc to come over. that's what i've been told.
we're going to need to hire 3 million new cops, in order to round up, house, shoot it out with 30 million illegal aliens that trump plans to send to live in the desert.
someone has to man these new fema camps, where we lock them up. that's 10% of the population going in there. They gotta go, trump decided. and repub base voters are making him #1, as they have faith in this democrat.
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Ed Klein to Newsmax: Obama Eyes Ex-Mass. Gov. Patrick as Biden Veep
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=b24329f8-0309-46c6-a0c8-5b0812569dec&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Ed Klein to Newsmax: Obama Eyes Ex-Mass. Gov. Patrick as Biden Veep (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
By Bill Hoffmann
Tuesday, 22 Sep 2015
President Barack Obama has been secretly searching for a challenger to take down Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton — and is set to back Vice President Joe Biden, bestselling political insider Ed Klein tells Newsmax TV.
But that backing comes with a price: The White House would select his running mate, a candidate the president and his wife want to be a high-powered African American who can carry on the Obama legacy, Klein believes.
That choice, he says, is likely to be former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
"[He's] very close to Obama both personally and ideologically. They see another African-American coming along after Joe carrying on the Obama legacy," Klein said Tuesday on "Newsmax Prime" with host J.D. Hayworth.
"He is certainly their number one choice and he is number one because as you recall Obama actually gave a speech once in which he plagiarized some of Deval's own words.
"There's a very close infinity between Obama and Deval and they're very hot on him."
Klein said sinking Clinton has been in the White House mindset for a while.
"Not for days, not for weeks but for months the Obama team inside the White House has been courting an alternative to Hillary Clinton," Klein said.
"They courted [Massachsuetts Sen.] Elizabeth Warren … They thought seriously about [former Maryland Gov.] Martin O'Malley and they liked him because they thought he was, as [Obama adviser] Valerie Jarett put it, "O'Malliable," that they can control him. Neither of those things worked."
That leaves Biden, who they now hope to convince to enter the 2016 race, said Klein, author of "Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. The Obamas," published by Pinnacle.
"Politics being politics they've been very close to Joe. Valerie Jarrett has been helping him get over his grieving process with his son, Beau, who recently died of brain cancer. She's actually helped him with that," Klein said.
"They've been encouraging him to get in and they're saying to him, 'Hey Joe, we're really ready to endorse you but you know we want something back.' What they want back is a final say over his vice presidential nominee."
Obama and first lady Michelle want that influence, Klein said, because they have been thinking about their reign as "not eight years but decades long."
"They want to have a serious and profound impact on the Democratic Party going forward for years and years to come. They want to make sure that Biden picks the guy or woman who will carry on the legacy once Biden leaves the scene," he told Hayworth.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ed-klein-barack-obama-joe-biden/2015/09/22/id/692761/#ixzz3mWb0qQfL
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(http://static2.politico.com/dims4/default/b9a6021/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F29%2F8c%2F62d9506349d79affae486080dd52%2F20150924-bernie-sanders-gty-1160.jpg)
Poll: Sanders surges past Clinton in New Hampshire
By Eliza Collins
09/24/15
Bernie Sanders has pulled ahead of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, and now boasts a 16 point lead, according to a new poll out Thursday.
Sanders leads the Democratic field of likely Democratic primary voters with 46 percent, according to a New Hampshire Primary CNN/WMUR poll, while Clinton comes in second with 30 percent, and 14 percent would support Joe Biden. The vice president has yet to decide if he’ll enter the race, but he still leads Martin O’Malley (2 percent) and Jim Webb (1 percent).
Clinton’s numbers have been steadily declining since their high point in January, while Sanders has been on a sharp increase. The last CNN/WMUR poll taken in July showed Clinton with a slight lead.
Voters also think Sanders is a lot more favorable than the other candidates. The Vermont senator has +41 percent favorability, Clinton comes in second with +17 percent, while Biden has +12 percent.
Clinton and Biden are tied at 42 percent for who people think will take home the New Hampshire primary — Clinton decreased drastically and Sanders increased sharply from July to meet there.
New Hampshire voters — who often wait until closer to the primary to select their candidate — are still finicky about who they support though a larger number of Democratic primary voters have made up their mind than Republicans (25 percent compared to 13 percent of GOP). Twenty-eight percent are leaning towards a candidate but nearly half still have no clue who they’ll support.
The survey of 314 likely 2016 Democratic primary voters was taken Sept. 17-23. The margin of error for the poll that was taken over landlines and cellphones is plus or minus 5.5 percent.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/sanders-surge-new-hampshire-214043#ixzz3mhjRgGWr
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(http://static2.politico.com/dims4/default/107062f/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F14%2Fb1%2F4a6793554ae490351b9992383039%2F150928-joe-biden-ap-1160.jpg)
Biden will have chance to appear in first Democratic debate
CNN eases criteria to ensure more candidates on stage, while allowing for high drama around Biden.
By Hadas Gold
Updated 09/28/15
CNN announced its debate criteria on Monday, making clear that Vice President Joe Biden will have the chance to make it onto the first debate stage on Oct. 13, should he declare.
In order to qualify for the debate stage, candidates must have achieved an average of 1 percent in three polls, recognized by CNN, released between Aug. 1 and Oct. 10. Candidates must also declare by Oct. 14, CNN said, meaning that Biden could announce his candidacy the day of the debate and still qualify.
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The rules creates a dramatic scenario for CNN, allowing it to build significant anticipation around its second primetime debate, after the network scored internal record ratings but mixed reviews for its GOP debate earlier this month. The more inclusive criteria also means that all five declared Democratic candidates — Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee — have been invited to participate in the debate, CNN said.
Democrats faced the possibility that the debate could have turned into a Clinton versus Sanders faceoff without wider debate criteria. Only Clinton, Sanders and Biden have been registering above 5 percent in the polls.
CNN changed the criteria initially set out by the Democratic National Committee, making sure more candidates would be on stage. When the DNC first released the debate schedule in August, it said the broadcasters had agreed that to qualify for a debate, candidates must get at least 1 percent in three credible national polls within the six weeks before the debate, which would have been early September. By extending the timeline to October, CNN cleared the way for Chafee, who had only reached 1 percent in two polls since early September. He had achieved 1 percent in early August Fox News and CBS News polls.
The dynamic between the criteria for the Democratic and GOP debates shows the vast differences between the two candidate lineups. The Republicans are grappling with a crowded 15-person field, leading to split debates and attempts to winnow the field through tougher debate criteria.
Lower-tiered candidates on the Republican side now also face the likely possibility there won't be an undercard stage for the Oct. 28 CNBC-hosted GOP debate, meaning they could be completely frozen out of the next event.
For CNN's GOP debate earlier this month, candidates had to have visited and have at least one paid campaign staffers in two of the four early states in addition to at least 1 percent in three national polls. CNN's Democratic debate has no early-state staffing or visit requirements.
“It’s a little bit of an issue, a little bit of a conundrum, for very different reasons than the Republicans,” former DNC communications director Mo Elleithee, who helped with the early stages of debate planning at the DNC, said before the criteria was released. “The reality here is: what kind of criteria do you set that actually gets all the credible candidates on stage in a field right now, where a lot of them just aren’t registering in polls?"
The debate will be held in Las Vegas at the Wynn Hotel on Oct. 13, at 9 p.m. and will last two hours, CNN said. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper will moderate, while CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash, CNN en Español Anchor Juan Carlos and CNN anchor Don Lemon will present questions. Lemon will ask questions submitted through Facebook, the debate's co-host.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/biden-will-have-chance-to-appear-in-first-democratic-debate-cnn-says-214141#ixzz3n5BoWBA5
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Bill Clinton Officially Freaks Out About Possible Joe Biden Run
by Julia Selinger
Aug 26, 2015
Joe Biden may be down to ride, but is he down to run? The Vice President and perennial silver fox has been playing will-he-won’t-he with a spot in the presidential race for months. Though he has been fielding support from donors and Democratic operatives this summer — a late start for any presidential hopeful — the veep has reportedly told supporters and potential backers that he will wait as late as October to make a decision.
While Hillary Clinton may have bigger fish to fry at the moment — she is still struggling with the email controversy, a perceived lack of honesty, and Bernie Sanders’ bump in the polls — her husband is less than enthused towards Biden’s potential candidacy. According to a source who has spoken with the former president in the past few weeks, Bill is “very agitated” by the possibility and the subsequent media hype Biden has been receiving.
In any case, Clinton campaign staffers have been discouraged from pushing negative press about Biden. Any smearing would likely backfire given Biden’s recent family tragedy.
“They better not do that,” a Biden confidant told Politico. “That would really bring out his Irish.”
Regardless of how the Clinton camp proceeds, it is clear that they will have their eyes on the VP in the coming months. One thing is certain: team Clinton “isn’t in a patient mood.”
https://www.slantnews.com/story/2015-08-26-bill-clinton-is-officially-freaking-out-about-joe-bidens-potential-candidacy?utm_source=outbrain&utm_term=1982
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Biden May Miss First Democratic Debate
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=3fc07914-3994-4d4e-845e-de29e97db59f&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Biden May Miss First Democratic Debate (Getty Images)
By Loren Gutentag
Thursday, 01 Oct 2015
Vice President Joe Biden has further extended his deadline to announce his run for the White House and is not expected to be on stage at the first Democratic debate in Las Vegas on Oct. 13, CNN reports.
For more than two months, Biden has been entertaining the idea of launching a presidential campaign and missed his original end-of-summer deadline as he and his team have been inundated by mounds of research and battle plans to launch a candidacy, CNN reports.
A senior Democrat who has spoken with Biden and spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity said, "There's far more talk than action" and "nothing is actually being done yet."
CNN says that as discussions with nearly two-dozen Democrats have taken place, when it comes to Biden running for president, they put it simply: He just hasn't made up his mind yet.
"If you would have asked me several months ago, I would have said he should decide by the beginning of October," said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del. "But as time goes by, his numbers continue to improve and more and more people want him to run. I don't think he has to do something this week. This month? Yeah."
Carper also mentioned Hillary Clinton's hearing on Benghazi which is set to take place on Oct. 22, but noted that he's not sure if the hearing is a possible factor keeping Biden from making a decision.
Meanwhile, as Hillary's poll numbers continue to dip, Biden's continue to rise, despite an official announcement.
"I love Joe Biden because of his honesty and authenticity," said Jon Cooper, national finance chairman of Draft Biden, CNN reports. "At the end of the day, if he were to say no, I would absolutely understand. But I'm the eternal optimist. I'm absolutely convinced he's running."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/joe-biden-democratic-debate/2015/10/01/id/694209/#ixzz3nLdMFTcV
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Poll: Hillary Clinton still leads Sanders and Biden, but by less
Susan Page and Paulina Firozi, USA Today
October 1, 2015
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton continues to lead the Democratic field in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, but she no longer commands the support of a majority of Democrats as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Vice President Biden gain ground.
Clinton is backed by 41% of likely Democratic primary voters, a double-digit drop since the USA TODAY poll taken two months ago, and Sanders is supported by 23%, a jump. Biden is the choice of 20% even though he hasn't announced whether he will jump in the race.
By nearly 3-1, all those surveyed in the national poll predict that the controversy over her exclusive use of a private email server when she was secretary of State would hurt her prospects in a general election.
The poll of 1,000 likely voters, taken by phone Sept. 24-28, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The sample of 430 Democrats has an error margin of +/- 5 points.
"I support Hillary Clinton for a lack of any other real option," says William Sather, 41, the technical director for a production company in St. Paul, Minn., who was among those surveyed. "Bernie is swell and all, but I don't quite think he's electable." He worries about Clinton's electability as well. "She's a terrific leader, it's just, I can understand there's a lot of gut-level hatred of her."
Bob Welch, 44, a real-estate appraiser from Boise, Idaho, is "leaning heavily" to Sanders but would support Clinton if he falters. "Bernie, his message, he gets it," Welch said in a follow-up interview. "He understands the problems plaguing this country and why we have an economy with problems, our constant need to be involved in war, spending money in ways it shouldn't be spent. We don't take care of the people that are suffering in this country."
Clinton remains the clear front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, leading Sanders by 18 percentage points and Biden by 21. But her challenges also are clear. In July, for instance, her favorable-unfavorable rating was narrowly negative, at 43%-47%. Now that gap has grown to 12 points, at 39%-51%.
In contrast, Sanders has a 37%-33% favorable-unfavorable rating, and Biden's favorable rating is a healthy 51%-35%.
Asked for a single word that describes each contender, the most frequent response for Clinton was "liar/dishonest," followed by "untrustworthy/fake." For Sanders, the most frequent response was "socialist" and the second most frequent "favorable/good." For Biden, the top response was "favorable/like," followed by "honest/honorable," although the top five answers for him also included "idiot/joke" and "fun/character/goofy."
"He is what Hillary is not, and that is authentic," Sather says of Biden. "He's easy to make fun of ... (but) she's not authentic. She's searching for the right answer instead of having the right answer."
The controversy over her decision to use a private email server instead of the government system when she was secretary of State is hurting her, although more among Republicans than Democrats. Six in 10 of those surveyed say the issue bothers them and even more, 70%, predict it will hurt her in a general election.
Even about one-third of Democrats and two-thirds of independents are disturbed by the controversy, as well as nearly nine in 10 Republicans.
Overall, 52% say they're bothered by how she handled the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, and by the explanation she has given in the aftermath. Nearly six in 10 say that would be a liability in the general election. Clinton is expected to testify in October before the House select committee investigating Benghazi.
"Trust is a huge thing when it comes to politics, (and) she's lost that trust," says Anthony Edelen, 37, a small-business owner from Vermillion, S.D.
But Erika Raney, 32, a business consultant from Los Angeles, says the email controversy is "kind of beating a dead horse" by this point. "I don't think half of the things we think are election issues should be," she says. "It's another way that we sling mud at candidates to detract from actually what they're saying."
One more thing: Democrats aren't particularly interested in watching more debates beyond the half-dozen already sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee. The first, hosted by CNN, is scheduled for Oct. 13 in Las Vegas. By 54%-34%, likely Democratic primary voters say six is enough.
(http://imgur.com/Nf4ghbv.jpg)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/10/01/suffolk-poll-clinton-sanders-biden/73132954/
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Thing w Biden could be a defense against Hillary getting busted for something. That's true, too.
If Bill C. is really and truly "agitated" by the development, it's because he's worried about Hillary going to the slam.
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Hannity talking nonstop about possibility of AL GORE running.
Repubs would lose their shit, they'd go nuts with the global warming stuff.
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Hannity talking nonstop about possibility of AL GORE running.
Repubs would lose their shit, they'd go nuts with the global warming stuff.
That's true...they would absolutely lose their minds....it would be like Obama being elected again
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Key Iowa Democrats Rooting For A Joe Biden Presidential Bid
Samantha-Jo Roth
Deep friendships, stronghold territory and a Draft Biden super PAC would help a Biden candidacy.
Samantha-Jo Roth is a multimedia journalist covering the 2016 presidential race in Iowa.
Posted: 10/02/2015
DUBUQUE, Iowa -- The Iowa caucuses ended Joe Biden's presidential ambitions in 2008, but a loyal core of his supporters in the state think 2016 could be different. And now, several key Iowa Democrats are speaking out, urging the vice president to give it a shot again.
"I think it's his time now," state Sen. Tony Bisignano (D), a longtime Biden backer, told The Huffington Post. "I think people are starting to realize that we need to take a look at another candidate. I don't know who better than the vice president."
Bisignano has been a Biden friend and supporter since 1987. It’s a personal relationship that never feels political, he said. In addition to his work as a lawmaker in the state capitol, Bisignano served as a president of a local AFSCME chapter, and could aid in rallying support from labor unions. He said he’s been able to convince other lawmakers to join the Biden movement.
"Joe Biden, if he gets in the race, is the most qualified candidate on both sides," Bisignano said. "His years in Congress, 40 some years in government."
State Rep. Bruce Hunter (D) worked on Biden's Iowa campaign in 2007. The two have kept in touch, even after Biden dropped out of the race on Jan. 3, 2008, after capturing less than 1 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses. Hunter and his wife, Betty, have entertained the Biden family at their home, and they make special visits to the White House to visit the vice president.
"We sat there for 45 minutes and just visited," Hunter said, recalling a trip to D.C. five years ago. "A little bit about politics, but mostly about family."
Hunter said he would support the vice president once again if he decides to jump into the race.
"I've made it very clear with all the campaigns around the state that until Joe makes a decision, I'm not committing to anybody," Hunter said. "If Joe decides to run for president, I'm immediately in his camp."
Hunter argued that vice president's genuine nature would set him apart in the 2016 campaign.
"Once you become friends with Joe Biden, you're always a friend of Joe Biden," Hunter said. "He's the real deal. When you say that's Joe, that’s Joe."
With just four months until the Iowa caucuses, the Draft Biden super PAC is ramping up its ground effort in early primary states and recently hired two longtime backers in Iowa.
"We're gaining momentum every day, supporters continue to come our way," Ellen Goodmann Miller, the super PAC's Iowa state director, said.
Goodmann Miller is one of the super PAC's two paid staff members in the state. Draft Biden launched in April, and has nearly met its fundraising goal of $3 million. Twenty elected officials have signed onto the Draft Biden effort, including Hunter and Bisignano.
"We continue to grow a really large steering committee of leaders from across the state who are going to be willing to step up and organize their counties, be precinct captains," Goodmann Miller said.
Support for Biden has been deeply rooted in Goodmann Miller's family for 30 years. Her mother, Teri, is one of the super PAC’s co-chairs and a longtime advocate. She recently traveled to Washington for the pope’s visit to the White House. Goodmann Miller said her mother had lunch with the vice president during the trip, but walked away still unsure whether Biden would run for president.
Dubuque, the 10th-largest city in Iowa, has been known as a Democratic stronghold. Goodmann Miller, who resides here, said the town is one of the most important for the Democratic caucus, and Democrats typically dominate the area, with an advantage of nearly 10,000 registered voters over Republicans. The county supported Democrats by double-digits in the last five presidential elections. Goodmann Miller added that Dubuque is a city where Biden has already laid valuable groundwork, garnering support even after his presidential ambitions faded.
"Northeastern Iowa is a stronghold for the Bidens, particularly where the Bidens have a lot of close relationships and friendships," Goodmann Miller said. "It's because the Dubuquers and northeastern Iowans share the same values that the Bidens do."
Half the population of Dubuque is Catholic, like Biden. Unlike the rest of Iowa, this area is not dependent on farming, with more of the population employed in construction and manufacturing than in agriculture. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley have targeted voters in this town, also working to gain support from influential local labor unions.
Support for Biden isn’t limited to Dubuque. The vice president earned 14 percent of support in the latest Des Moines Register/ Bloomberg Poll, even though he hasn't declared.
"His likability and trustworthiness are very high," Bisignano said. "I think he's what the Democrats need to win this presidential election."
With the first Democratic debate a little more than a week away, many speculate that the vice president is running out of time. He may face several challenges in developing a ground operation in Iowa, months after his competitors. Hillary Clinton now has 17 offices across the state and 78 paid organizers. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has 15 offices and 60 field organizers.
But Biden loyalists are optimistic.
"I don't think it's too late at all," Hunter said. "It may be too late for a brand-new candidate. Joe is known in the state of Iowa. He's been here quite a bit."
"A great many people are not committed in this race," Bisignano noted. "A lot of them are even soft in their commitment to what candidate they've chosen so far."
After the death of a son to brain cancer, Biden is considering whether he has the emotional energy for another campaign. Bisignano said he can relate to what Biden is going through -- since he lost a son in a car accident 20 years ago -- and believes that the loss could give Biden strength beyond what he thought he had.
"This is a man who has suffered more than anyone should have to suffer in his life of family tragedy and loss and he's carried on and done great things," Bisignano said.
Ultimately, however, Biden's backers said they want the vice president to do what feels best.
"If he decides running for president isn't in the cards this time, I'll respect him for it," Hunter said. "I selfishly hope he does."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/iowa-joe-biden_560ea84ae4b0dd85030bb13c?qmwpnwmi
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Exploiting a personal tragedy for political gain. Disgusting.
Exclusive: Biden himself leaked word of his son's dying wish
The vice president is mourning. He’s also calculating.
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE
10/06/15
(http://static2.politico.com/dims4/default/6292653/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2Fe2%2F99%2F928647d24dbab9977439294643d7%2F151005-joe-biden-ap-1160.jpg)
AP Photo
Joe Biden has been making his 2016 deliberations all about his late son since August.
Aug. 1, to be exact — the day renowned Hillary Clinton-critic Maureen Dowd published a column that marked a turning point in the presidential speculation.
According to multiple sources, it was Biden himself who talked to her, painting a tragic portrait of a dying son, Beau’s face partially paralyzed, sitting his father down and trying to make him promise to run for president because "the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.”
It was no coincidence that the preliminary pieces around a prospective campaign started moving right after that column. People read Dowd and started reaching out, those around the vice president would say by way of defensive explanation. He was just answering the phone and listening.
But in truth, Biden had effectively placed an ad in The New York Times, asking them to call.
Before that moment and since, Biden has told the Beau story to others. Sometimes details change — the setting, the exact words. The version he gave Dowd delivered the strongest punch to the gut, making the clearest swipe at Clinton by enshrining the idea of a campaign against her in the words of a son so beloved nationally that his advice is now beyond politics. This campaign wouldn’t be about her or her email controversy, the story suggests, but connected to righteousness on some higher plane.
Biden has portrayed his decision about a 2016 run as purely emotional, a question of whether he and has family have the strength. That’s a big part of it. But it’s not all of it.
By every account of those surrounding Biden, Beau is constantly on his father’s mind. But so are Clinton’s poll numbers — and his own, as the vice president notes in private details, such as the crosstab data that show him drawing more support from Clinton than Bernie Sanders. So is the prospect of what it would mean to run against a candidate who would make history as the first female nominee, and potentially first female president. So is knowing that the filing deadlines are quickly closing in and that he almost certainly has to decide in roughly the next week to make even a seat-of-the-pants campaign possible.
“Calculation sort of sounds crass, but I guess that’s what it is,” said one person who’s recently spoken to Biden about the prospect of running. “The head is further down the road than the heart is.”
And that’s how it’s been for a while.
At the end of August, while friends were still worrying aloud that he was in the worst mental state possible to be making this decision, he invited Elizabeth Warren for an unannounced Saturday lunch at the Naval Observatory. According to sources connected with Warren, he raised Clinton’s scheduled appearance at the House Benghazi Committee hearing at the end of October, even hinting that there might be a running-mate opening for the Massachusetts senator.
Biden and Warren were alone that afternoon, and those around them have been particularly secretive about the meeting. Warren’s spokesperson didn’t return requests for comment.
"His bet is that disaffection with Hillary will allow him to peel away some of her donors and operatives,” former Obama adviser David Axelrod, who’s spoken about the race with the vice president, told The Associated Press last week, trying to sum up the approach.
A month later, NBC News had sources saying Jill Biden, who’s been struggling with the decision and had been reported to be torn or even opposed, now wouldn’t stand in the way. Several Biden loyalists said they felt as though she’d been used by the people who’ve been working with the vice president’s overall blessing to add fuel to the speculation.
All of this maneuvering aside, people who are close to the process are surprised at how undetailed and improvisational the planning remains more than two months after Biden trial-ballooned this campaign via Dowd — a known Clinton antagonist, but who also has a history with Biden dating back to her time as one of the most aggressive reporters chasing the plagiarism scandal that ran him out of the 1988 race. (Dowd didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
Despite the data and the numerous conversations, Biden’s still not drilling down. Sources close to him agree that he is allowing the passing time to make the decision for him, but they disagree on whether the calendar is driving him to a yes or making it easier to say no.
But parts of the timing have always been clear: Biden was never going to Las Vegas for the first Democratic debate next Tuesday, according to people familiar with the plans. Better to force Clinton to enter the first contest of the primary season with Biden’s potential challenge looming. And if he’s going to run, the second debate’s only a month later — and that one’s in Iowa.
Certainly, Biden’s decision is an emotional one, too. The tears he is shedding are real. He feels an obligation not just to his son — the line in his interview with Stephen Colbert that he believes he’d be letting Beau down “if I didn’t just get up” has become one of the touchstone moments, as people involved describe his deliberations — but to other people, who’ve told him that he’s an inspiration in their own grief.
The first hurdle is whether he and his family are up to the race, and they still haven’t made a final decision, according to people who know.
Those sources say Biden has thought that, perhaps, a presidential campaign is exactly what the family needs to find new purpose and a sense of renewal. And while they’ll all get behind him if he runs, for now his son Hunter remains the main agitator supporting a campaign, according to people who have spoken with Biden and members of his immediate family in recent weeks. Biden’s sister and confidante Valerie Biden Owens and his wife, among others, are hoping it’s a no, those sources say.
Biden is a devout, Mass-every-Sunday Roman Catholic. That Pope Francis came to Washington in the midst of this decision-making process was a fluke, but still deeply meaningful to Biden.
The two didn’t have a full, private meeting, but they spoke. Biden has told people about the way the pope greeted him when he took his family to Joint Base Andrews with President Barack Obama to meet the pontiff’s plane.
“I know your troubles,” Biden says Pope Francis told him. “I’m so sorry.”
Neither of them brought up 2016.
But he has kept talking about it with Obama. Both remain tight-lipped about those conversations.
They’ve got lunch again Tuesday afternoon at the White House.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/joe-biden-beau-2016-214459#ixzz3noAEf53R
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Hillary Clinton Readies Oppo-Research to Go to War Against Joe Biden
By Gabriel Sherman
(http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/17/17-joe-biden-hillary-clinton.w245.h368.jpg)
U.S. Vice President Joseh Biden, left, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton share a laugh during a signing ceremony for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009. U.S. President Barack Obama, signing the first legislation of his presidency, made it easier for U.S. workers to win pay-discrimination lawsuits. Photographer: Mannie Garcia/Bloomberg News
If Joe Biden jumps into the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton will be ready to go on the offensive. According to a source close to the Clinton campaign, a team of opposition researchers working on behalf of Clinton is currently digging through Biden’s long record in office to develop attack lines in case the vice-president runs. The research effort started about a month ago and is being conducted by operatives at Correct the Record, the pro-Hillary superpac founded by David Brock, which is coordinating with the Clinton campaign. According to the source, the research has turned up material on Biden’s ties to Wall Street; his reluctance to support the raid that killed Osma bin Laden; and his role in the Anita Hill saga as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The oppo-research project reveals how seriously Clintonworld is taking the prospect of a Biden candidacy. So far, Clinton hasn’t taken any direct shots at Biden herself. But behind the scenes, her loyalists are making moves to blunt Biden's campaign should he run. "Even implicitly his campaign’s argument would be ‘I have integrity and you don’t,'" a Clinton ally said. "If that’s the message, this could be messier than Obama-Clinton '08. At least Obama had the Iraq War vote and could make a case about generational change. This guy" — Biden — "is older than she is and just as conventional."
A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign declined to comment.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/clinton-readies-oppo-research-against-biden.html
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OCTOBER 8, 2015
A New Clue Suggests Biden May Run
BY RYAN LIZZA
(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/AP_89611427364-690.jpg)
A meeting between the Vice-President’s aides and D.N.C. staffers may indicate that Biden, pictured earlier this week, is seriously mulling a Presidential run.
CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH BY OLIVIER DOULIERY / ABACA / SIPA VIA AP IMAGES
Joe Biden has taken another step toward entering the Presidential race.
Representatives of the Vice-President held a meeting this week with Democratic National Committee staffers. They briefed Biden’s aides on arcane but crucial rules that the Vice-President would need to understand if he decides to run, according to a D.N.C. official.
It was the most significant sign the source had seen to indicate Biden’s intentions. “I think it means he’s running,” the source said.
The D.N.C. has held similar meetings for representatives from the five declared Democratic candidates: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb, Martin O’Malley, and Lincoln Chafee. The D.N.C. offered the meeting to Biden earlier this year, and the party committee was scheduled to brief his aides back in June, but that meeting was cancelled.
When the meeting was finally held this week, D.N.C. staffers walked Biden’s representatives through the primary calendar, filing deadlines, the mechanics of ballot-access issues, and the complicated details of the party’s state-by-state selection process for delegates and super delegates. The session included a level of detail that would only be of interest to a candidate who is serious about running. For example, the briefing included information about issues such as whether a particular primary state requires a candidate to send a letter to the Secretary of State in order to get on the ballot, or circulate a petition, or pursue some other method.
But, while the briefing is considered an important step for any candidate who is serious about entering the race, how it will affect Biden’s decision is unclear. It may simply be that Biden is still gathering the necessary information to help him make a final determination. And the details of the complicated process of winning enough delegates to secure his party’s nomination might convince Biden that the window to enter the race has passed.
The D.N.C. source, who was briefed on the meeting, said that the information conveyed seemed eye-opening for Biden’s aides. “They probably thought they had a lot longer,” the source said. “The deadlines for qualifying on the ballots for key states haven’t passed yet, but are fast approaching.”
“D.N.C. staff offers all Democratic Presidential candidates and potential candidates briefings on the ballot and delegate process,” said a D.N.C. spokesperson, declining to confirm or deny whether D.N.C. staff briefed Biden’s representatives this week.
The rumblings in Democratic circles about whether Biden may be leaning toward running seem to be impacting the Clinton campaign. Yesterday, Clinton announced that she no longer supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal that, in 2012, she said “sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field.” Additionally, in “Hard Choices,” Clinton’s 2014 memoir of her tenure as Secretary of State, she wrote that the T.P.P. would be a “signature economic pillar of our strategy in Asia.”
The trade deal is vehemently opposed by labor unions, whose support Biden would count on if he enters the race. As a sitting Vice-President, it would be far more difficult for Biden to oppose the T.P.P., one of Obama’s top remaining priorities, and on Tuesday, Biden’s spokesperson confirmed that he supports the bill and will help pass it on the Hill.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-new-clue-suggests-biden-may-run
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Reuters/Ipsos Poll: Half of Democrats Want Biden in Race
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=74e423ee-062f-4239-aa89-13f021ca088e&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Reuters/Ipsos Poll: Half of Democrats Want Biden in Race
Monday, 12 Oct 2015
The drumbeat for Joe Biden to jump into the 2016 presidential race is growing louder.
Almost half of the nation's Democrats want the vice president to enter the field and challenge front-runner Hillary Clinton, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The poll breakdown among Democrats:
•48 percent favor a Biden run
•30 percent want Biden to stay out.
The results come as speculation surrounding Biden's intentions has intensified, with reports having him close to a decision. The declared Democratic presidential candidates, including Clinton and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, her closest rival, will take the stage Tuesday night in Las Vegas for the first party debate.
Biden will not be there, but 48 percent of Democrats surveyed in the Reuters poll wish he were a candidate, compared with 30 percent who said he should stay out. Independents were split on the question, with 36 percent saying Biden should stay in and an equal share believing otherwise.
But support for Biden's entry into the race does not translate into equal passion for his candidacy. Just 17 percent of those surveyed said Biden would be their first choice, while 46 percent would back Clinton. Biden would also run behind Sanders, who remains the favorite of one fourth of Democrats surveyed.
Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist in Florida with Draft Biden, a political action committee established to lay the groundwork for a Biden run, said more voters would be likely to support Biden once he has officially launched a campaign.
"There's an element of people - they know they like him, but they're not willing to give him their vote yet," Schale said.
Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, ex-Senator Jim Webb of Virginia and Lincoln Chaffee, a former governor of Rhode Island, comprise the rest of the Democratic presidential field.
Clinton has been perceived as increasingly politically vulnerable as questions persist over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state in the Obama administration. That controversy has helped stoke the fires for a late-in-the-game Biden shot.
Even so, Clinton continues to command large organizational and financial advantages, as well as the lion's share of the Democratic electorate, as the Reuters poll confirms.
Those close to Biden told Reuters that the vice president, still grief-stricken over the death of his son Beau from brain cancer in May, has not yet settled upon a course of action and is determined to stay true to his personal timetable.
Media reports last week had aides to Biden consulting with the Democratic National Committee about upcoming deadlines for qualifying for state primary ballots. Several are as early as November, meaning that Biden will have to reach a decision soon or risk being left off the ballot in some primaries.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted from Oct. 7-12 and surveyed 1,431 adults, including 580 self-identified Democrats. The credibility interval, which is similar to the margin of error, was 3 percent for the broader survey and 4.7 percent for the survey of Democrats.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/reuters-poll-biden-democrats/2015/10/12/id/695888/#ixzz3oOwHa7D4
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the dem debate is tonight. should be a shit show.
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Fox News Poll: Biden more electable than Clinton?
By Dana Blanton
Published October 13, 2015
FoxNews.com
Vice President Joe Biden trails Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, yet he looks more electable than the former secretary of state against top Republicans.
As Democrats prepare for their first debate Tuesday evening, the latest Fox News national poll finds little movement in the primary. Clinton remains the front-runner among Democratic primary voters (45 percent), with Bernie Sanders (25 percent) and Biden (19 percent) behind her by about 20 percentage points. That's almost identical to where things stood three weeks ago.
Lincoln Chafee, Larry Lessig, Martin O'Malley, and Jim Webb each receive 1 percent or less.
Biden, who has yet to announce his candidacy, was invited to participate in the debate if he were to make it official; Lessig was not invited.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE POLL RESULTS
In hypothetical 2016 matchups with top-tier Republicans, Clinton trails all the Republicans tested. She trails Ben Carson by 11 points and Donald Trump by 5 points. Jeb Bush has a 4-point edge over Clinton, while Carly Fiorina is up by 3 points.
Biden fares better. He leads Trump by 13 points and tops Bush by 5 points. Biden is preferred over both Fiorina and Carson by 4 points. And Biden narrowly bests Marco Rubio by 1 point.
Though Clinton still dominates the Democratic primary race, the new poll confirms a significant decline in her support since summer. In June, her lead over Sanders was double what it is today (61 percent Clinton vs. 15 percent Sanders). And instead of trailing Trump by 5 points, she topped him by 17 points. Clinton was also up by 6 points over Fiorina then, while she's down by 3 now.
Contrary to the chatter from some pundits, party "trumps" gender. Women are more inclined to back the Democrat over Fiorina whether it is Clinton (+7 points) or Biden (+12 points). Men are more likely to back Fiorina over Clinton by 14 points, yet Fiorina's edge narrows to 5 points over Biden.
Pollpourri
How would the 2016 contest look if Biden were to pick Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as his running mate? Voters prefer a Biden-Warren ticket over both a Trump-Fiorina ticket (48-42 percent) and a Bush-Rubio combo (45-43 percent).
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,004 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from October 10-12, 2015. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for all registered voters, 5 points for Democratic primary voters and 4 points for the head-to-head match-ups.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/13/fox-news-poll-biden-more-electable-than-clinton/?intcmp=hpbt1
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Ready to Debate: A Guide to the Democratic 2016 Candidates
Tuesday, 13 Oct 2015
The Republican presidential contest has been aflutter for months, but now it's time for the Democrats to spread their wings before a big national audience.
Their first debate is Tuesday night on CNN. Grab your binoculars and bring along this field guide to the candidates.
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
Key features: Nearly everybody recognizes her. She's the only candidate who's lived in the White House already, as first lady.
A quick sketch:
— Daughter of a fabric store owner and a homemaker living in the Chicago suburbs
— Met her future husband and future president, Bill Clinton, at Yale Law School
— After serving as first lady, elected to U.S. Senate from New York
— Early Democratic front-runner in '08, she lost presidential nomination to Barack Obama
— Won both praise and criticism as Obama's first secretary of state
Also of note:
A steady drip is wearing on Clinton's air of invincibility as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. The troubles include Clinton using a personal email account and server while at the State Department; the fatal attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, on her watch; and big donations from foreigners and political supporters to the Clinton family's charitable foundation.
Might Clinton be for you?
Perhaps yes, if you prefer a Democrat but with a more aggressive foreign policy than Obama.
Perhaps no, if you want a candidate who isn't already mired in investigations (Benghazi, and therefore emails).
Some other distinguishing issues:
— Wants to make public universities affordable and community colleges tuition-free
— Wants to build on Obama's health care law and lower the costs of prescription drugs and insurance deductibles
— Opposes an Obama initiative that she once supported: the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal
In a nutshell:
Establishment. Early favorite. Second-timer.
BERNIE SANDERS
Key features: He's an independent senator from Vermont who calls himself a Scandinavian-style democratic socialist.
A quick sketch:
— Son of a Polish immigrant father; raised in Brooklyn with the accent to prove it
— A student civil rights activist at the University of Chicago in the '60s
— Unseated the Democratic mayor of Burlington, Vermont, by 10 votes in 1981
— Elected to U.S. House in 1990, he's Congress' longest-serving independent
— An early and vocal opponent of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003
Also of note:
Sanders is running for the Democratic nomination, but he's never been a Democrat. He represented an anti-war third party in four unsuccessful races for office in Vermont in the 1970s. He was elected Burlington mayor as an independent. He caucuses with Democrats in the Senate, but he's called both the Democratic and Republican parties tools of the wealthy.
Might Sanders be for you?
Perhaps yes, if you want a president to tackle income inequality as "the great moral issue of our time" and think democratic socialism is cool.
Perhaps no, if you want government to get smaller, not bigger.
Some other distinguishing issues:
— Create a "Medicare for All" single-payer universal health care program
— Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour
— Make tuition free at public colleges and universities
In a nutshell:
Liberal. Populist. Politically independent.
MARTIN O'MALLEY
Key features: He's a former Maryland governor who champions data-driven leadership and sings, too.
A quick sketch:
— Father was a suburban D.C. lawyer, mother's been a congressional staffer for nearly three decades
— Met his wife while they were University of Maryland law students
— Elected Baltimore mayor at age 36, he took a statistics-heavy approach to reducing crime
— During two terms as governor that ended in January, he signed bills legalizing gay marriage, repealing the death penalty
— The longtime front-man of a Celtic rock band, he sometimes sings and plays guitar at campaign events
Also of note:
One of the achievements O'Malley boasts about — dramatically reducing Baltimore's high crime rate as mayor — is getting new scrutiny in a time of national "Black Lives Matter" protests. Critics contend that O'Malley's zero-tolerance crime policies fostered a culture of harassment and abuse of black citizens that they blame for the death of Freddie Gray while in Baltimore police custody in April.
Might O'Malley be for you?
Perhaps yes, if you want to shield people in the country illegally from deportation until immigration law is overhauled.
Perhaps no, if you dislike his history of raising taxes.
Some other distinguishing issues:
— Increase Social Security benefits for seniors by raising payroll taxes on high earners
— Toughen gun laws, including requiring a background check with fingerprints for every gun sale
— Tighten banking rules and break up big banks to end potential for bailouts
In a nutshell:
Policy wonk. Liberal. An alternative to Clinton.
JIM WEBB
Key features: A highly decorated Vietnam veteran, he's followed his own path as a lawyer, novelist, journalist, Navy secretary and one-term U.S. senator.
A quick sketch:
— Grew up on the move as Air Force officer's son; graduated U.S. Naval Academy in 1968
— Awarded numerous medals, including Navy Cross for heroism as a platoon commander in Vietnam
— Battle injuries forced him out of the Marines; wrote first of his military novels, "Fields of Fire," in 1978
— Named President Ronald Reagan's Navy secretary; resigned to protest spending cuts
— Won 2006 Senate race in Virginia, running as a Democrat who had opposed invading Iraq
Also of note:
Some of Webb's writings could haunt his campaign, especially among women and minority voters. He's expressed regret for a blunt 1975 magazine piece against admitting women to the Naval Academy. He opined that affirmative action should be only for black Americans, not other minorities. Amid recent debate over removing Confederate flags and monuments, he urged people to remember "that honorable Americans fought on both sides." He's also written some racy prose as a novelist.
Might Webb be for you?
Perhaps yes, if you want a champion for the troops who's cautious about military ventures.
Perhaps no, if you want a candidate who backs President Barack Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran.
Some other distinguishing issues:
— Impose a doctrine limiting the circumstances under which the U.S. would use military force
— Stop incarcerating people for nonviolent drug crimes
— Overhaul the tax code to benefit workers, while also reducing the corporate tax rate
In a nutshell:
Former Republican. Combat veteran. Outsider appeal.
LINCOLN CHAFEE
Key features: A former Republican senator, he switched to the Democrats while serving as Rhode Island governor.
A quick sketch:
— Son of John Chafee, who was a Rhode Island governor and senator with a long political lineage
— Earned classics degree from Brown University, then spent seven years shoeing racehorses
— Elected mayor of Warwick in 1992; appointed U.S. senator when his father died in office
— Elected to his Senate seat in 2000 but lost re-election bid six years later
— Quit Republican Party, ran for governor as an independent, became a Democrat in office
Also of note:
Chafee long stood out as a liberal Republican in an increasingly conservative party. In 2002, he was the only Republican senator to vote against going to war in Iraq, and he's making that a cornerstone of his campaign. As an independent governor, he backed Barack Obama for president twice. He joined the Democrats in 2013.
Might Chafee be for you?
Perhaps yes, if you want to reinvigorate the United Nations and "find a way to wage peace."
Perhaps no, if you don't want the U.S. to seek alliances with Russia or Iran or consider talking with Islamic State militants.
Some other distinguishing issues:
— Ban the death penalty
— Drop all charges against fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden
— Switch the U.S. to the metric system
In a nutshell:
Political pedigree. Party switcher. Unconventional.
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/democratic-debate-candidates-guide/2015/10/13/id/695926/#ixzz3oT2CM9bd
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6 things to watch at the CNN Democratic debate
By MJ Lee and Stephen Collinson, CNN
Tue October 13, 2015
(CNN)Five Democratic presidential candidates are about to try their luck at the first Democratic debate of the 2016 election in Las Vegas on Tuesday night.
But the spotlight is largely on two: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The former secretary of state needs to remind viewers of the debate sponsored by CNN and Facebook about why she began the year as the overwhelming front-runner and is best able to take the torch from President Barack Obama.
Sanders has the opportunity to prove to millions of voters why a 74-year-old self-described democratic socialist can take on both Clinton and Republicans.
There's also a lot at stake for the three lesser known underdogs, particularly former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, whose stalled campaigns could benefit from an "all in" performance Tuesday.
Here are CNN's six things to watch in Tuesday night's debate:
Can Clinton flip-flop gracefully?
Hillary Clinton will have to answer for the original sin of politics: flip-flopping.
Clinton came out against the Trans Pacific Partnership last week, when as secretary of state she heralded the agreement as the "gold standard" of trade deals. Her critics quickly accused her of shifting positions for the sake of political expediency in both appealing to liberals and creating distance between her and Barack Obama.
"Wow, that's a reversal," O'Malley, a TPP opponent, said last week. "I can tell you that I didn't have one opinion eight months ago and switch that opinion on the eve of debates."
Clinton has also been accused of doing a course reversal on issues important to the Democratic base, like same-sex marriage and immigration, including whether she supports allowing undocumented people to obtain driver's licenses. She also only recently opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, after months of dodging the question.
"The greatest opportunity for these other candidates is going to be to go after her on shifting positions, mostly recently on the TPP trade deal," Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Obama, said on CNN Monday.
Clinton and Sanders finally face off
The emails: Will anyone go there?
Clinton has battled, unsuccessfully for months, to overcome the political storm over her private email server.
The attacks have been led by Republicans while Democrats have mostly averted their gaze, hoping it would go away.
It's a tricky issue for a rival candidate to bring up -- they could risk harming their own support among Democrats by raising the divisive issue. But it's still possible that Clinton's rivals -- perhaps Webb or O'Malley -- will gingerly point to the issue on Tuesday as a way of suggesting that she abhors transparency and scrutiny.
"She needs to answer the email questions with transparency and openly," Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton's 2008 campaign manager, said on CNN Monday. She added that Clinton's biggest challenge is to avoid getting "riled up" if put on the defensive.
Clinton's campaign has seized on comments by GOP House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy that the congressional Benghazi committee was created to hurt her politically, as well as criticisms of the panel by a conservative former staffer.
South Carolina, Nevada CNN polls find Clinton far ahead
Donald Trump: Democrats' favorite punching bag?
If Democrats don't attack Clinton, who will they hit? Republicans. Especially Trump, the GOP front-runner whose unorthodox campaign has dominated the 2016 narrative so far.
Look for the five Democrats on stage to go after Republicans from the start. The wealthy New York real estate developer presents an alluring target, and the more they can tie Trump to the overall Republican Party, the better.
The Democratic Party has used some of Trump's unfiltered remarks on everything from immigration to women to paint the GOP with a broad brush and label the party as exclusive and intolerant.
Trump will live-tweet the debate
Feel the Bern
By now, Bernie Sanders is used to being the star at the center of the stage.
He's drawing tens of thousands of supporters to campaign rallies, and he's become a liberal sensation, inspiring the popular slogan "Feel the Bern" among progressive Democrats. He's also giving Clinton a run for her money in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire.
Still, the pressure Tuesday night will be like none the Vermont senator has faced so far in the cycle.
Sanders has decades of experience in public office, but in some ways, he seems like a stylistic misfit for the presidential debate stage based on the campaign he has run thus far. He tends to give long and at times rambling speeches, he has repeatedly said he has no interest in attacking his fellow Democratic rivals, and his aides say he's barely engaged in traditional debate prep in the days leading up to Tuesday.
The added challenge for Sanders will be to win over viewers who are skeptical about whether the senator can rise to the occasion of being a national leader.
Why libertarian Penn Jillette likes Bernie Sanders
Which Clinton shows up?
Clinton has spent months on the defensive, due to the controversy over her private email server and surprised by the strong progressive surge that's powering Sanders to her left.
She's come across as not forthcoming in some interviews, reminding voters of the political obfuscation that at times clouded her husband Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s. Clinton's poll numbers and approval ratings have dipped as a result.
But she's a known strong debater, and went toe to toe with Barack Obama again and again in 2008. A repeat of those assured, likable performances on Tuesday night could go a long way toward reminding 18 million Democrats why they voted for her in her first presidential primary campaign.
"Hillary Clinton is an excellent debater," said Pfeiffer. "She is excellent, crisp, knows the substance up and down, is very good in the back and forth."
For all her struggles in the race so far, she is still the overwhelming front-runner and faces by far the highest expectations.
Clinton also knows the dangerous potential of debates. Her halting answer about driving licenses for undocumented migrants in the 2008 season was the first crack in a front-running White House campaign that Obama eventually overhauled.
What celebrities want to ask the candidates
Is this Martin O'Malley's only chance?
O'Malley has spent months berating Democratic leaders for failing to schedule more debates, all as he has struggled to climb above single digits in the polls.
Once seen as a fresh and accomplished new Democratic voice, the former Maryland governor -- partly due to his failure to command much media coverage -- is badly in need of a fresh boost of energy.
He and his other underdog rivals, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee, will want to emulate Carly Fiorina. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO used fiery performances in the GOP debates to jump-start a stalled campaign and put herself into the top tier of GOP candidates.
O'Malley, 52, is also by far the youngest person on the stage. Sanders is 74, and was born months before America entered World War II. Most of the rest are baby boomers. Clinton is 67, Jim Webb is 69 and served in the Vietnam War, and Lincoln Chafee is 62.
Unlike the Republican primary, which features candidates spanning generations -- Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal are just 44 -- the Democratic contest looks like it is for seniors only. The age gap could give O'Malley an edge. And he'll need any advantage he can get.
"The one person who has a great opportunity here is Martin O'Malley," former Mitt Romney adviser Kevin Madden said on CNN Monday. "When you're at 1%, and you're Martin O'Malley, that's very easy. He has nowhere to go but up."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/13/politics/democratic-debate-2015-what-to-watch/index.html
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Some observations from the first Democrat debate:
- Overall, not impressed. Incredibly weak field. The only person I would even consider voting for on that stage at this point is Webb.
- Hillary played the woman card way too much. It's great that we have a woman running for president, but that alone doesn't qualify her to be president. When asked how her term would be different from Obama, she said the fact she is a woman. Pathetic.
- The national security question was very important to me. That is my co-number one issue along with taxes. Sanders said global warming is the no. 1 national security threat. And that man wants to be president?
- Speaking of Sanders, he was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, while Webb was busy earning a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. Loved Anderson Cooper's question about that distinction. There is no way Sanders wins a general election, and no way I want that man to be Commander in Chief.
- Chaffey wants to bring Edward Snowden home. That's when he needed to get the heck off the stage.
- Webb gave the best answer of the night IMO. When asked how he would be different from Obama, he said he would use the legislative process, introduce bills, and not rely on executive orders to try and get things done. Outstanding.
Democrats should be pretty concerned about this group.
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Link to the debate:
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Some observations from the first Democrat debate:
- Overall, not impressed. Incredibly weak field. The only person I would even consider voting for on that stage at this point is Webb.
- Hillary played the woman card way too much. It's great that we have a woman running for president, but that alone doesn't qualify her to be president. When asked how her term would be different from Obama, she said the fact she is a woman. Pathetic.
- The national security question was very important to me. That is my co-number one issue along with taxes. Sanders said global warming is the no. 1 national security threat. And that man wants to be president?
- Speaking of Sanders, he was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, while Webb was busy earning a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. Loved Anderson Cooper's question about that distinction. There is no way Sanders wins a general election, and no way I want that man to be Commander in Chief.
- Chaffey wants to bring Edward Snowden home. That's when he needed to get the heck off the stage.
- Webb gave the best answer of the night IMO. When asked how he would be different from Obama, he said he would use the legislative process, introduce bills, and not rely on executive orders to try and get things done. Outstanding.
Democrats should be pretty concerned about this group.
Any Republican you like better than Webb?
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Any Republican you like better than Webb?
I don't know yet.
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I don't know yet.
Who would you think, maybe?
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Who would you think, maybe?
Not sure. I like some of what I've heard from everyone on the Republican side except Rand Paul, but I don't know if I would vote for any of them or Webb at this point. I don't typically vote in the primaries because I'm an independent. I make my decision after the candidates have been selected. Webb isn't going to be the nominee anyway unless Hillary gets indicted.
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Not sure. I like some of what I've heard from everyone on the Republican side except Rand Paul, but I don't know if I would vote for any of them or Webb at this point. I don't typically vote in the primaries because I'm an independent. I make my decision after the candidates have been selected. Webb isn't going to be the nominee anyway unless Hillary gets indicted.
If it was Webb against Carson, say.
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If it was Webb against Carson, say.
I have no idea. I'll definitely have an opinion when the candidates are selected.
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I'm not the only one who saw it this way.
Webb Wins the Debate
Editorial of The New York Sun
October 14, 2015
Headlines out of the Democratic debate reckon that Secretary Clinton won by default, and did a right charming job of it, particularly given the lack of gumption among the other candidates. This was well-marked this morning by the Wall Street Journal in an editorial that ran under the headline “Hillary Gets a Debate Pass.” It concluded that the party was back on track to her coronation as the 2016 nominee. Yet we wouldn’t want to let the moment pass without tipping our hat to the jarhead from Virginia, Senator James Webb.
LAST MAN STANDING: James Webb, who as an officer of the Fifth United States Marines was decorated for valor in Vietnam, is shown in the portrait painted by Richard Whitney when the future senator was serving as secretary of the Navy. Mr. Webb is the last of the hard-headed Democrats and the winner of the first primary debate in a party that has now drifted to the left of even President Obama. Is it time for him to move to the GOP?
By our lights, the Marine officer (there is no such thing as a former Marine) won this debate on substance. It reminds of what an impressive figure he is and what rich experience he brings to public life. It reminds that the Vietnam War, in which Mr. Webb appeared in arms, handed up its own giants. Mr. Webb was more than gracious when asked about Senator Sanders’s attempt during the Vietnam War to represent himself as a conscientious objector. Everybody makes his decisions in conscription, Mr. Webb noted, saying that if they go through the legal process, he respects them.
What really came through is the connection between character and policy. Mr. Webb is one of those figures who, like Reagan, believes deeply in a few clear principles. Mr. Webb served as Navy Secretary under Reagan. He is the only figure left in the entire Democratic party who has an appreciation of Vietnam and of military strategy. He was the only candidate on the stage who opposes the Iran appeasement. He brilliantly marked the signal it sent for the Russian strongman, President Putin, to enter the Syrian theater.
Mr. Webb used Vietnam to deliver by far the best response we’ve heard on immigration. He wants a pathway to citizenship. He used the example of his own heroic wife, Hong, who escaped the communist conquest of her country — while Democrats in Congress cut off the resupply of our allied government of Free Vietnam — by becoming one of the boat people who risked their lives to get to freedom. Mrs. Webb eventually earned a law degree at Cornell. Her husband conveyed beautifully the promise of a new wave of refugees from the current war.
Incredibly, Mr. Webb was the only candidate who mentioned Israel. The Jewish state wasn’t mentioned once by either CNN’s Anderson Cooper or anyone else in the debate. Only Mr. Webb. He was rebuffing Senator Chafee. “I believe,” the ex-senator said, “that the signal that we sent to the region when the Iran nuclear deal was concluded was that we are accepting Iran’s greater position on this very important balance of power, among our greatest ally Israel, and the Sunnis represented by the Saudi regime, and Iran.”
That may be a glancing mention, but the rest of the Democrats had nothing to say about Israel at all, even though relations between the White House and the government in Jerusalem have fallen to a nadir under the Obama administration. Mrs. Clinton was silent on the question. So was Senator Sanders. No suggestion that things might improve. Zilch. It was an extraordinary moment, pressaged by a page one story in the New York Times the day before reporting that the Democratic Party today is way to the left even of President Obama.
Only Mr. Webb mentioned the strategic problem of Communist China and danger that is gathering at the South China Sea. Mr. Webb gave by far the best answer on gun control, better even than Senator Sanders, who is from the state with both the least restrictive gun policies — known as Vermont Carry — and consistently among the lowest gun-homicide rates. Mr. Sanders boasted of his D minus rating from the National Rifle Association. Mr. Webb, a supporter of robust gun rights, was way ahead of him.
How sad it is for the Democratic Party that Mr. Webb is the only one left with any glint of what used to be the winning formula for the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and even William Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, though she is saner than Sanders, Governor O’Malley, and Senator Chafee, is well to the left of the successful Democratic presidents. Watching Mr. Webb, now, alas, gone from the Senate, we couldn’t help but wonder whether it’s time for him to do what Reagan did, which is throw in with the GOP and announce that it wasn’t he who left the Democrats but the Democrats who left him.
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/webb-won-the-debate/89315/
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webb is a lot like trump, which is why many repubs like him.
he's very full of himself, very immature. I admire his service, but bragging about grenading a man in war? That's just stupid and immature and childish.
didn't the quesiton specifically ask POLITICALLY, which person dislikes you most? Webb was just itching to let the world know he's killed someone. I hate when canddiates do that. Insecure.
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webb is a lot like trump, which is why many repubs like him.
he's very full of himself, very immature. I admire his service, but bragging about grenading a man in war? That's just stupid and immature and childish.
didn't the quesiton specifically ask POLITICALLY, which person dislikes you most? Webb was just itching to let the world know he's killed someone. I hate when canddiates do that. Insecure.
LOL! I don't know why I actually read this, but it sounds like something written by someone who got an arm loose from a straight jacket and had access to a keyboard. :)
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Nice attack on me without addressing what I said.
Typical of you people (liberals who suddenly hate anyone they consider liberals)
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Nice attack on me without addressing what I said.
Typical of you people (liberals who suddenly hate anyone they consider liberals)
What you said is asinine. You pulled it out of your rear end. It's false. And it sounds like the ramblings of someone who is a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
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webb bragged about killing someone with a grenade.
it's not a mature statement. Mature people don't brag in front of 15 million people that they killed someone with a grenade. It's not funny.
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webb bragged about killing someone with a grenade.
it's not a mature statement. Mature people don't brag in front of 15 million people that they killed someone with a grenade. It's not funny.
What is the exact quote where Webb "bragged about killing someone with a grenade"? And why isn't anyone talking about it?
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What is the exact quote where Webb "bragged about killing someone with a grenade"? And why isn't anyone talking about it?
Glen Beck show did what must have been a ten minute mocking of it. "Grenading a man" lol... they went on and on.
You should turn off mainstream media and listen to some FOX NEWS radio. You'll learn a lot.
Also, for your idea that nobody is talking about it -
National review, Fox News, the federalist and Breitbart ALL talked about it, in addition to the leftstream rags like HuffComposte.
Why do you make these completely wrong statements, without even looking it up? I mean, google "fox news webb grenade" and you see them talking all about it.
You just make shit up, bro.
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Glen Beck show did what must have been a ten minute mocking of it. "Grenading a man" lol... they went on and on.
You should turn off mainstream media and listen to some FOX NEWS radio. You'll learn a lot.
Also, for your idea that nobody is talking about it -
National review, Fox News, the federalist and Breitbart ALL talked about it, in addition to the leftstream rags like HuffComposte.
Why do you make these completely wrong statements, without even looking it up? I mean, google "fox news webb grenade" and you see them talking all about it.
You just make shit up, bro.
What is the exact quote by Webb where he "bragged about killing someone with a grenade"?
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What is the exact quote by Webb where he "bragged about killing someone with a grenade"?
Talking about enemies:
the “enemy soldier that threw the grenade that wounded me, but he's not around right now to talk to.”
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Talking about enemies:
the “enemy soldier that threw the grenade that wounded me, but he's not around right now to talk to.”
That's it? ???
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That's it? ???
I believe so. Webb is OK in my book, though. But I can see how it would be viewed as inappropriate or an otherwise strange to say.
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I believe so. Webb is OK in my book, though. But I can see how it would be viewed as inappropriate or an otherwise strange to say.
I can see how some limp noodled pansy might be offended by a veteran talking about what happens in war, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that statement. It certainly isn't him
bragging about grenading a man in war?
The enemy threw the grenade at Webb. He responded by killing the enemy. What the heck was he supposed to do? Holy smokes.
240 you are a friggin liar.
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I think he may have been smirking or smiling when he said it, which may have caused the reaction. (I'd have to look at the tape again to be sure)
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Here's a clip.
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I wouldn't have done that, but then again I'm not him and I haven't had that experience.
Overall, though, I don't think he should have said it (in that manner) if he's serious about the race.
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Here's a clip.
Thanks for posting this. So not only is he talking about a grenade being thrown at him (not the other way around as 240 claimed), he is talking about how he earned one of his Purple Hearts. Beast. :)
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Thanks for posting this. So not only is he talking about a grenade being thrown at him (not the other way around as 240 claimed), he is talking about how he earned one of his Purple Hearts. Beast. :)
Is there really some possibility you'd choose Carson over him, if it was between those two and the election happened now?
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Is there really some possibility you'd choose Carson over him, if it was between those two and the election happened now?
You mean has my answer changed from the time you asked me this question 24 hours ago? No. :)
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You mean has my answer changed from the time you asked me this question 24 hours ago? No. :)
Could you trust Carson to lead people?
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Could you trust Carson to lead people?
You mean like he led people as the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins? Sure.
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You mean like he led people as the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins? Sure.
Interesting comparison, but can't say it isn't fair. (I don't know)
Have you noticed any lack of conviction on his part? That would be a problem if we're counting on him to lead.
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Interesting comparison, but can't say it isn't fair. (I don't know)
Have you noticed any lack of conviction on his part? That would be a problem if we're counting on him to lead.
Well if you're asking whether you trust someone to lead people, the logical starting point is their leadership experience, if any. You also have to look at character and personality traits. All three of those were red flags for President Obama before he was elected.
Conviction about what?
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Well if you're asking whether you trust someone to lead people, the logical starting point is their leadership experience, if any. You also have to look at character and personality traits. All three of those were red flags for President Obama before he was elected.
Conviction about what?
About his ideas, goals, beliefs. Will he go forward in an expected and predictable manner with a clear plan?
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About his ideas, goals, beliefs. Will he go forward in an expected and predictable manner with a clear plan?
No idea. We won't know that about any candidate until they are in office and have a chance to execute.
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No idea. We won't know that about any candidate until they are in office and have a chance to execute.
But that's saying you don't trust him.
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But that's saying you don't trust him.
No it isn't.
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No it isn't.
You just said you have no idea whether you can trust him to do that.
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You just said you have no idea whether you can trust him to do that.
I said I have no idea whether he will follow through with: "his ideas, goals, beliefs. Will he go forward in an expected and predictable manner with a clear plan?"
I also said "We won't know that about any candidate until they are in office and have a chance to execute."
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Ben Carson once got a gun stuck in his ribs at Popeye's chicken and told the assailant that he should be looking for the guy behind the counter.
That deserves some sort of medal I think.
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I said I have no idea whether he will follow through with: "his ideas, goals, beliefs. Will he go forward in an expected and predictable manner with a clear plan?"
I also said "We won't know that about any candidate until they are in office and have a chance to execute."
But it's not from the absence of trust?
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But it's not from the absence of trust?
No. It's from the lack of information.
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No. It's from the lack of information.
Ben Carson once got a gun stuck in his ribs at Popeye's chicken and told the assailant that he should be looking for the guy behind the counter.
That deserves some sort of medal I think.
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No. It's from the lack of information.
Lack of information to say what?
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Ben Carson once got a gun stuck in his ribs at Popeye's chicken and told the assailant that he should be looking for the guy behind the counter.
That deserves some sort of medal I think.
Chickenhawk award? :)
Why did you post his twice?
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Lack of information to say what?
What any candidate will do in office.
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What any candidate will do in office.
You can see what a sorry state of affairs this whole mess is. What a disaster with these candidates.
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You can see what a sorry state of affairs this whole mess is. What a disaster with these candidates.
Par for the course. We routinely fail to put our best and brightest in office. It's such a dirty business.
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Par for the course. We routinely fail to put our best and brightest in office. It's such a dirty business.
But you must admit that Carson needs to nail it down or gtfo.
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But you must admit that Carson needs to nail it down or gtfo.
You can say that about everyone running for office.
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You can say that about everyone running for office.
Dude, you're really deep in the bucket for the Repubs....you're defending the undefensible
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Dude, you're really deep in the bucket for the Repubs....you're defending the undefensible
What you talkin bout Willis? What am I defending?
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You can say that about everyone running for office.
I think Carson steps it up, to where we don't even have a general idea of what he stands for.
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I think Carson steps it up, to where we don't even have a general idea of what he stands for.
I'm pretty sure you can go to every candidate's website and get at least a general idea of what they stand for.
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I'm pretty sure you can go to every candidate's website and get at least a general idea of what they stand for.
Carson is clueless and you know it
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Has Carson gotten into plagiarism, by any chance?
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Carson is clueless and you know it
I wouldn't call one of the most successful brain surgeons in world history clueless at all.
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I wouldn't call one of the most successful brain surgeons in world history clueless at all.
He has more gaffes than trump...he makes no sense
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He has more gaffes than trump...he makes no sense
Which one has been his worst?
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He has more gaffes than trump...he makes no sense
lol. Ok.
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To be fair to Carson, I've been looking at that and haven't seen anything too terrible.
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He needs to learn how to answer the trick questions, but haven't seen any big problems.
There's been a few slams (nh) on gays that he should have known better than to ramble about.
As to not knowing shit about shit, I really don't think he's much different than many of the other candidates. But he's the one getting exposed for it, for whatever reason.
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He needs to learn how to answer the trick questions, but haven't seen any big problems.
There's been a few slams (nh) on gays that he should have known better than to ramble about.
As to not knowing shit about shit, I really don't think he's much different than many of the other candidates. But he's the one getting exposed for it, for whatever reason.
I agree he definitely needs to learn how to avoid the setup/gotcha questions. I don't fault him for stumbling on those, because he is not a politician. He'll learn the game. It's sad candidates have to worry about those kinds of things.
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I agree he definitely needs to learn how to avoid the setup/gotcha questions. I don't fault him for stumbling on those, because he is not a politician. He'll learn the game. It's sad candidates have to worry about those kinds of things.
He needs to have someone train him to do that.
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He is a little short in the common sense department, though...
That will probably be his downfall. So we'll never know if he would have been a good leader.
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Carson is a liar. The baltimore PD has no report of that robbery. Only a psychopath would lie about being a vegetarian hero who wimps out in a popeyes chicken robbery.
someone wrong with carson.
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Which one has been his worst?
certainly his very first gaffe raised eyebrows.....his assertion that being gay is a choice and citing the "fact" that men engage in sex in prison and come out as homosexuals....NOT TRUE
The fact is that YES, men do engage in sex in prison but its due to the absence of females...they then turn to each other 1, basically out of desperation (since the sexual desire and need to get off sexally is strong) and 2, because it has to do with POWER and forcing yourself on another inmate is seen as asserting your will and dominance over him.....and when tyhese men come out of prison they miost often go back to having sex with females again.....the ones who DO come out and continue the gay lifestyle were usually gay already to begin with
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Carson is a liar. The baltimore PD has no report of that robbery. Only a psychopath would lie about being a vegetarian hero who wimps out in a popeyes chicken robbery.
someone wrong with carson.
Ironic that you, a compulsive liar, would challenge anyone's integrity.
You said this:
I admire his service, but bragging about grenading a man in war? That's just stupid and immature and childish.
webb bragged about killing someone with a grenade.
You also claimed Beck spent ten minutes talking about Webb throwing a grenade at the enemy:
Glen Beck show did what must have been a ten minute mocking of it. "Grenading a man" lol... they went on and on.
Turns out the enemy threw a grenade at Webb and that's how he earned one of his Purple Hearts:
So, we know you absolutely lied about Beck spending ten minutes talking about Webb "grenading a man," when that's not even factually what was said.
Tell the truth.
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certainly his very first gaffe raised eyebrows.....his assertion that being gay is a choice and citing the "fact" that men engage in sex in prison and come out as homosexuals....NOT TRUE
The fact is that YES, men do engage in sex in prison but its due to the absence of females...they then turn to each other 1, basically out of desperation (since the sexual desire and need to get off sexally is strong) and 2, because it has to do with POWER and forcing yourself on another inmate is seen as asserting your will and dominance over him.....and when tyhese men come out of prison they miost often go back to having sex with females again.....the ones who DO come out and continue the gay lifestyle were usually gay already to begin with
It's hardly a gaffe to say homosexuality is a choice. It is.
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People are criticizing my dad, Jim Webb, for killing a man. Here’s what they’re missing.
By Jim Webb October 15, 2015
(https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2015/10/Unknown.jpeg&w=1484)
Jim Webb (L) and Jim R. Webb (R) on assignment for Parade magazine together in 2004 in Afghanistan. (Photo courtesy Jim R. Webb)
If you watched the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday night, you probably heard the closing comment by my father, Jim Webb. Without hesitation he answered that the enemy he was ‘most proud of’ was the Vietnamese soldier who wounded him with a hand grenade. He then added that “…he isn’t around anymore.”
While there were those in the media and around the country who were a bit stunned, and perhaps even put off by this answer, my fellow veterans and I were not. If anything, his blunt (and perhaps a bit brutal) honesty was much appreciated, and further endeared him to us as a candidate. We veterans are also more likely to have a fuller picture of my father’s record. He’s the man who gave us the post-9/11 GI Bill. We also know him as a highly decorated combat veteran who earned the Navy Cross for the entire episode surrounding that grenade, not just the snippet that has been focused on.
During the first Democratic debate on CNN, candidates were asked to name an enemy made during their politics careers. Former Virginia senator Jim Webb chose a soldier whom he killed in Vietnam. (CNN)
As a Marine infantryman myself, I have experienced the complex emotions of combat. On the one hand you may not even see the face of an individual who fires a round so close to your head that your ears ring, or blows up the improvised explosive device next to your vehicle that potentially kills or maims your friends. On the other, there’s an intensely personal reaction. After all, this isn’t a person who is besting you in a debate about gun control, or some other social policy, over a beer. This is a person whose intent is to end your life, and that is as clear cut an enemy as you can think of. Additionally, many, if not most, of the veterans I have talked to have read the Navy Cross citation that chronicles the incident surrounding my father. For those unfamiliar, it states:
….Observing the grenade land dangerously close to his companion, First Lieutenant Webb simultaneously fired his weapon at the enemy, pushed the Marine away from the grenade, and shielded him from the explosion with his own body.….
We who know the complexities of combat understand the character displayed in the above sentence. When put into the proper context, it is clearly far more than the sound bite being dissected by political pundits.
In fact, seeing the reaction to my father’s story in recent days has highlighted for me the almost stunning level of ignorance that the general public has about war. CNN introduced him as a “war hero,” and yet people were surprised and even uncomfortable when they were given a glimpse of what that might have entailed.
Yes, the man who threw the grenade isn’t around anymore, but more importantly the man who my Father shielded with his own body lived to see another day. As a Marine and as a leader, that is the important part. To me and many other veterans, we have a sea of presidential candidates who seemingly have only personal interests in mind. Yet, here is a leader who has not only endured war, but demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice his life for his people. Is that really something to be sneered at?
This country has been at war for almost 15 years, and as I think about the ridicule leveled at my father in the past 24 hours, I can’t help but imagine what these same people must think about the service of my own generation. In their eyes, did we simply spend some kind of twisted ‘semester abroad’ in a place with plenty of sand, but no ocean? Or conversely, do they ignorantly dismiss our experiences, as they have my father, as those of cold callous killers?
Jim Webb served as a Marine infantryman from 2005-2010. He currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/10/15/people-are-criticizing-my-dad-jim-webb-for-killing-a-man-heres-what-theyre-missing/
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People are criticizing my dad, Jim Webb, for killing a man. Here’s what they’re missing.
but you said nobody is talking about it.
now you see brietbart, beck, fox, national report, huffpo, and even webbs own son, ARE talking about it.
why would you claim something that is so obviously not true? You said nobody was talking about it - EVERYONE is talking about it.
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It's hardly a gaffe to say homosexuality is a choice. It is.
wow..for the first time I now realize you are trolling....... :-\
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but you said nobody is talking about it.
now you see brietbart, beck, fox, national report, huffpo, and even webbs own son, ARE talking about it.
why would you claim something that is so obviously not true? You said nobody was talking about it - EVERYONE is talking about it.
I hadn't heard anything about it. Why did you lie and say Webb bragged about throwing a grenade at someone?
Why did you lie say say Beck spent ten minutes talking about Webb "Grenading a man"?
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wow..for the first time I now realize you are trolling....... :-\
::)
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EXCLUSIVE: Democratic National Committeewoman says her party is 'clearing a path' for Hillary because 'the women in charge' want it that way
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3273404/Democratic-National-Committeewoman-says-party-clearing-path-Hillary-women-charge-want-way.html#ixzz3okNEwYRR
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::)
ANYONE who says homosexuality is strictly a choice MUST be trolling..its the only explanation for that kind of stupidity...a la Carson
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ANYONE who says homosexuality is strictly a choice MUST be trolling..its the only explanation for that kind of stupidity...a la Carson
Or maybe they are just using common sense and the lack of scientific evidence showing it's genetic. And the fact people choose to engage in that kind of behavior, including those who have become homosexuals and then gave up that lifestyle choice.
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You're 100% correct.
He was asked about his biggest political enemy and he used the chance to brag about killing someone in war.
Highly immature behavior, perhaps a sign of mental disease. I agree with you for once, Dos Equis.
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You're 100% correct.
He was asked about his biggest political enemy and he used the chance to brag about killing someone in war.
Highly immature behavior, perhaps a sign of mental disease. I agree with you for once, Dos Equis.
::)
"A compulsive liar is someone who lies with ease and finds comfort in it. The person may even continue to lie when presented with the truth in cold, hard facts. Getting a compulsive liar to admit he or she lied can be nearly impossible."
http://addiction.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Compulsive_Lying_Disorder
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Or maybe they are just using common sense and the lack of scientific evidence showing it's genetic. And the fact people choose to engage in that kind of behavior, including those who have become homosexuals and then gave up that lifestyle choice.
it was a lifestyle choice adopted in prison as a means of survival so as to satisfy a basic primal instinct...as well as to exert power over others....when these men leave prison VERY FEW are truly homosexual.....as for genetic proof...there has been many reseach projects done which have determined that ones biology DOES play a role in sexual orientation.....again..y ou are deliberately trolling....constant statements like the ones you make above have severely hurt your crediblity on here...you have simply got to stop!
I'm trying to save you from yourself...take heed........PLEASE ;)
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::)
"A compulsive liar is someone who lies with ease and finds comfort in it. The person may even continue to lie when presented with the truth in cold, hard facts. Getting a compulsive liar to admit he or she lied can be nearly impossible."
http://addiction.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Compulsive_Lying_Disorder
if this above is the case please look in the mirror for proof of such person
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if this above is the case please look in the mirror for proof of such person
Dos equis has been doing this a lot lately. see the pattern.
every time a point is made which doesn't make any repub look good, he'll clutter the thread with a dozen little weird points designed to re-route the conversation.
we had groups of repubs upset that 2 repubs have now said benghazi investigation was politically-based, and he goes off on a rant with attacks on the original poster. Or webb bragging about killing a man was suddenly "nobody cares, and even if everyone cares, who cares..."
it's the kind of silly debate points we saw on getbig in 2008 with "so what, obama is just as bad". The political discussion has improved greatly here.
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it was a lifestyle choice adopted in prison as a means of survival so as to satisfy a basic primal instinct...as well as to exert power over others....when these men leave prison VERY FEW are truly homosexual.....as for genetic proof...there has been many reseach projects done which have determined that ones biology DOES play a role in sexual orientation.....again..y ou are deliberately trolling....constant statements like the ones you make above have severely hurt your crediblity on here...you have simply got to stop!
I'm trying to save you from yourself...take heed........PLEASE ;)
I'm not talking about what happens in prison. I'm talking about the number of people who live as heterosexuals, even get married and have kids, then choose to become homosexual. And those who start off heterosexual, become homosexual, then go back to be heterosexual. No, those folks are not "born gay." And there is zero proof that homosexuality is genetic. If that kind of evidence existed, it would be plastered all over the place and be used to support homosexual marriage, etc.
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if this above is the case please look in the mirror for proof of such person
Oh you got me. lol
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Dos equis has been doing this a lot lately. see the pattern.
every time a point is made which doesn't make any repub look good, he'll clutter the thread with a dozen little weird points designed to re-route the conversation.
we had groups of repubs upset that 2 repubs have now said benghazi investigation was politically-based, and he goes off on a rant with attacks on the original poster. Or webb bragging about killing a man was suddenly "nobody cares, and even if everyone cares, who cares..."
it's the kind of silly debate points we saw on getbig in 2008 with "so what, obama is just as bad". The political discussion has improved greatly here.
You still here?
"Getting a compulsive liar to admit he or she lied can be nearly impossible." Truth. You need help.
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Glen Beck show did what must have been a ten minute mocking of it. "Grenading a man" lol... they went on and on.
You should turn off mainstream media and listen to some FOX NEWS radio. You'll learn a lot.
Also, for your idea that nobody is talking about it -
National review, Fox News, the federalist and Breitbart ALL talked about it, in addition to the leftstream rags like HuffComposte.
Why do you make these completely wrong statements, without even looking it up? I mean, google "fox news webb grenade" and you see them talking all about it.
You just make shit up, bro.
And Fox news doesn't?
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It's hardly a gaffe to say homosexuality is a choice. It is.
Homosexuality is not a choice, acting on it is.
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Homosexuality is not a choice, acting on it is.
There might be some truth to this. I think people have certain impulses and temptations. Whether they act on them is another story.
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I'm not talking about what happens in prison. I'm talking about the number of people who live as heterosexuals, even get married and have kids, then choose to become homosexual. And those who start off heterosexual, become homosexual, then go back to be heterosexual. No, those folks are not "born gay." And there is zero proof that homosexuality is genetic. If that kind of evidence existed, it would be plastered all over the place and be used to support homosexual marriage, etc.
Dude, many people who start off as supposedly "heterosexual" were probably gay to begin with and were hiding this or denying said urges.....some can bounce back and forth because their sexuality is "fluid" meaning that they want sex and are sexually attracted to whats available, when available....yes I do agree that some homosexuals made a choice....for instance I've seen and worked with many women who chose lesbianism due to physical and emotional abuse suffered at the hands of men....but my experience working with said population is that this is in the extreme minority...I would say 80% of homosexual men were born that way and KNEW they were homosexual by age 10...another 10% or so had an awakening later on and probably 10% ( but maybe much less) made a true choice to live as a homosexual....
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Homosexuality is not a choice, acting on it is.
I disagree....the "choice" has already pretty much been made biologically....acting on instinct means chosing to have sex...NOT to be a homosexual.....
Thats like saying Heterosexuals have made a "choice" to be heterosexual when they have sex.....no..they are acting on instinct
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Dude, many people who start off as supposedly "heterosexual" were probably gay to begin with and were hiding this or denying said urges.....some can bounce back and forth because their sexuality is "fluid" meaning that they want sex and are sexually attracted to whats available, when available....yes I do agree that some homosexuals made a choice....for instance I've seen and worked with many women who chose lesbianism due to physical and emotional abuse suffered at the hands of men....but my experience working with said population is that this is in the extreme minority...I would say 80% of homosexual men were born that way and KNEW they were homosexual by age 10...another 10% or so had an awakening later on and probably 10% ( but maybe much less) made a true choice to live as a homosexual....
I agree that a lot of those people probably deny urges. I don't agree those urges means that, from a biological standpoint, those people were born with some kind of homosexual trait imprinted in their DNA.
I'm glad you acknowledge that it is a choice, at least with some. I'm not sure how you arrive at your percentages, but they sound pretty speculative.
Also, if you know that at least for some it's a choice, then it's hardly a gaffe for someone to say homosexuality is a lifestyle choice.
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I disagree....the "choice" has already pretty much been made biologically....acting on instinct means chosing to have sex...NOT to be a homosexual.....
Thats like saying Heterosexuals have made a "choice" to be heterosexual when they have sex.....no..they are acting on instinct
I cannot believe this. We are essentially saying the same thing and yet you disagree. If the "choice" was made for you, biologically speaking, then you did not have a say. Trust me, there are homosexuals who chose to avoid sexual relations with the same gender for various reasons. Not everyone acts on instinct. If that were the case then celibacy would also be instinctual. Furthermore if a heterosexual has gay sex, was that a choice or was it instinctual?
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I cannot believe this. We are essentially saying the same thing and yet you disagree. If the "choice" was made for you, biologically speaking, then you did not have a say. Trust me, there are homosexuals who chose to avoid sexual relations with the same gender for various reasons. Not everyone acts on instinct. If that were the case then celibacy would also be instinctual. Furthermore if a heterosexual has gay sex, was that a choice or was it instinctual?
Choosing what you fuck or who you fuck is a choice. As Gore Vidal says, its like ordering beans one night, rice another night. Sure you can prefer one over the other or prefer one slightly more than the other, but the truth is, its not black and white-either or. Sexuality is more of a sliding scale and even then it still can be a choice.
I say, who gives a shit. Let people screw anyone they want.
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Choosing what you fuck or who you fuck is a choice. As Gore Vidal says, its like ordering beans one night, rice another night. Sure you can prefer one over the other or prefer one slightly more than the other, but the truth is, its not black and white-either or. Sexuality is more of a sliding scale and even then it still can be a choice.
I say, who gives a shit. Let people screw anyone they want.
And with this, I completely agree. Some of the choices people make are still despicable though.
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I cannot believe this. We are essentially saying the same thing and yet you disagree. If the "choice" was made for you, biologically speaking, then you did not have a say. Trust me, there are homosexuals who chose to avoid sexual relations with the same gender for various reasons. Not everyone acts on instinct. If that were the case then celibacy would also be instinctual. Furthermore if a heterosexual has gay sex, was that a choice or was it instinctual?
a mea culpa here...yes we do agree...I think.....I may have misinterpreted your response...but I do not agree that Homosexuality in general is a choice...although it can be for a few.....I think its mostly biologically determined...on a grade....biological determination is not the same as "choice" in my opinion.....and to conservatives, "choice" means nurture...that it is a learned behavior
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Krauthammer: Biden Is Democrats' 'Insurance Policy' if Hillary's Indicted
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=ea85b197-0883-4bae-9a70-370f1ddd89f8&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Krauthammer: Biden Is Democrats' 'Insurance Policy' if Hillary's Indicted Joe Biden (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
By Greg Richter
Monday, 19 Oct 2015
Vice President Joe Biden will end up running for the Democratic presidential nomination because the party needs an "insurance policy" in case current front-runner Hillary Clinton is indicted, conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer says.
"I think the reason he wants to be in there is if lightning strikes," Krauthammer said Monday on Fox News Channel's "Special Report."
"In other words, if she is struck by something else, an act of God, meaning an act of the FBI, some indictment, something just truly destructive from which she can’t recover, uncovered by something out of the campaign, he wants to be there standing as the insurance policy," Krauthammer said.
"Imagine if this happened, she got knocked out for some reason. Is the party really going to nominate a Vermont socialist in his mid-70s?" he said. "That’s inconceivable."
It might be a long shot, Krauthammer said, but if something derails Clinton's nomination he would be "in the position to be the one to whom everybody would turn."
Clinton is set to testify on Thursday before the House Selected Committee on Benghazi. That investigation also is focusing on Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State and whether classified information was sent over the unsecured system.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/charles-krauthammer-biden-democrats-insurance/2015/10/19/id/697004/#ixzz3p4Fg1tBA
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People are criticizing my dad, Jim Webb, for killing a man. Here’s what they’re missing.
Your recent love affair with Webb is no surprise.
Aside from loving to waste people and supporting military, Webb is perhaps a bigger liberal than hilary. He's nowhere near independent, he's essentially bernie sanders (A pro-gun bedwetting liberal on everything else)
With links to prove all of them...
Webb is pro-abortion, big spending, big govt, pro union, slash police funding, loves common core, love cap/trade, loves global warming, loves NAFTA, loves obamacare, supports AMNESTY
http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/James_Webb.htm
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Too bad. Losing the best candidate of a sorry group.
Webb to drop out of Democratic 2016 race
Published October 20, 2015
FoxNews.com
(http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/img/Politics/876/493/webb_063015.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
In this June 30, 2015 file photo, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb speaks in Baltimore. (AP)
Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb will announce Tuesday that he is dropping out of the Democratic presidential race, Fox News has learned.
Webb is said to be disillusioned with the Democratic Party -- as well as the Republican Party -- and how the political parties are being pulled to allegedly extreme positions by the huge amounts of loosely regulated money fueling the campaigns.
Webb has a press conference scheduled for 1 p.m. ET.
While Webb is thought to be weighing a possible independent bid, he is not expected to launch an independent campaign for president Tuesday. Rather, he's expected to take some time after his announcement to talk with people from across the political spectrum before making a decision.
Webb, like most of the other candidates in the Democratic race, has struggled to get out from under the shadow of front-runner Hillary Clinton. During the first Democratic debate last week Webb complained repeatedly about how little time he had to answer questions.
He said Thursday he felt the debate had been "rigged in terms of who was going to get the time on the floor."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/20/webb-to-drop-out-democratic-2016-race/?intcmp=hpbt2
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Too bad. Losing the best candidate of a sorry group.
You mean the biggest liberal?
Aside from being pro-military, Webb is COMPLETE liberal.
Webb is pro-abortion, big spending, big govt, pro union, slash police funding, loves common core, love cap/trade, loves global warming, loves NAFTA, loves obamacare, supports AMNESTY
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You mean the biggest liberal?
Aside from being pro-military, Webb is COMPLETE liberal.
Webb is pro-abortion, big spending, big govt, pro union, slash police funding, loves common core, love cap/trade, loves global warming, loves NAFTA, loves obamacare, supports AMNESTY
As the board's biggest liberal, you would certainly know. Are you sad you will not get to vote for him? :'(
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As the board's biggest liberal, you would certainly know. Are you sad you will not get to vote for him? :'(
I point out Webb is a major liberal.
You don't like the MESSAGE, so you attack me, the MESSENGER.
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I point out Webb is a major liberal.
You don't like the MESSAGE, so you attack me, the MESSENGER.
::) This isn't a debate. Calling someone a liberal isn't an attack.
But never fear: you still have Hillary and Bernie, and possibly Biden to choose from.
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Calling someone a liberal isn't an attack.
Yes, calling anyone a name, is an attack upon them personally.
You can't accept the fact I pointed out Webb is a bedwetting liberal softie that loves everything socialism except military.
So you call me a name and get all emotional. Bro, no need for that. Just agree he's a lib, or disagree. Focus upon the debate, don't just attack other getbgigers because they're more aware of Webb's liberal history than you might be.
Have a mineral water, bro. It's just a message board, we're just here to learn. Attacking people personally is what shithead liberals & rightwing idiots do. On getbig, people are reasonable and don't do that.
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::) This isn't a debate. Calling someone a liberal isn't an attack.
But never fear: you still have Hillary and Bernie, and possibly Biden to choose from.
At least we have a choice
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Yes, calling anyone a name, is an attack upon them personally.
You can't accept the fact I pointed out Webb is a bedwetting liberal softie that loves everything socialism except military.
So you call me a name and get all emotional. Bro, no need for that. Just agree he's a lib, or disagree. Focus upon the debate, don't just attack other getbgigers because they're more aware of Webb's liberal history than you might be.
Have a mineral water, bro. It's just a message board, we're just here to learn. Attacking people personally is what shithead liberals & rightwing idiots do. On getbig, people are reasonable and don't do that.
So hypersensitive. Liberal is not a pejorative. It's what you are. It's ok. Nothing to be ashamed of.
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At least we have a choice
Man this is laugh out loud funny, and sad at the same time. Do you actually like your choices?
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Reminds me of Dole, Gore, McCain, and even Romney: guys who hung around long enough and eventually became the nominee, only to lose the general election. (Edited for the troll.)
Attkisson: Biden Would Be No. 1 For Dems
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=69d8b6fc-e780-4575-9711-1ed2681774c8&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Attkisson: Biden Would Be No. 1 For Dems (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Tuesday, 20 Oct 2015
Joe Biden is going to run for president — and he's poised to eventually replace Hillary Clinton as Democratic frontrunner, Emmy award-winning journalist Sharyl Attkisson tells Newsmax TV.
"He'll shoot to number one on the Democrat side," Attkisson said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"If she's not more popular now among the constituency … then that just signals some trouble for her and I don't think things are necessarily going to get a lot better.
"There are more bumps in the road. [Biden] may be perceived as having less baggage at this point, even though he's got the Obama hill to climb."
The vice president is expected announce on Wednesday he is throwing his hat in the ring, just a day before the former secretary of state is set to testify before the House committee on Benghazi.
"Democrats have been very worried about this committee and Hillary Clinton from the start," Attkisson said.
"She has done, my information says, internal polling that has given her reason to worry that the public doesn't think this is a Republican conspiracy."
Attkisson is host of "Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson," a weekly news program on Sinclair Broadcasting's ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox stations nationwide.
She is also author of "Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington," published by Harper.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/joe-biden-democrats-president-sharyl-attkisson/2015/10/20/id/697172/#ixzz3p93emgss
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Reminds me of Dole, Gore, McCain, and even Romney: guys who hung around long enough and eventually became the nominee, only to loose the general election.
yeah, romney was a little "loose" with the 47% comment.
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Man this is laugh out loud funny, and sad at the same time. Do you actually like your choices?
Do YOU like YOURS??????????????
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No Biden.
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We've heard NOTHING leak of any kind. No legal team, no filings, no flights. With such a huge story and so many moving parts, you'd think we would have heard SOMETHING.
Lebron going to the cavs... those of us who are observant caught little cues back in March before the playoffs that year... website color schemes, school enrollments, so many little unexplainable things which pointed toward him leaving.
But there just seems to be so FEW signals that he's running. Nobody's slipped up at ALL. No reporters has caught his team members flying to delaware, no hall rentals, nobody cancelling vacation hours, nobody whispering to field operatives in Iowa...
IMHO, the little oddities give away the story early - and we have had NONE of those with biden. So even though I respect kristol's prediction, I will be surprised if Biden runs. "oct 20th" has a nice ring to it for an announcement planned months ahead of time, which would be tomorrow... but still, we have heard NONE of those little hints that we usually would.
240 1, Kristol 0
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Do YOU like YOURS??????????????
I rarely like my choices, but I don't have any until the general election anyway.
Do you like your choices?
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I'm not a Biden fan, but this was pretty crafty. This was a campaign speech. I think he's out unless and until Hillary gets indicted.
Biden announces he will not run for president in 2016
Published October 21, 2015
FoxNews.com
Vice President Biden announced Wednesday he will not run for president, ending months of feverish speculation over his 2016 plans and likely settling the Democratic field.
Speaking in the Rose Garden alongside his wife Jill and President Obama, Biden said the window of opportunity to mount a viable campaign "has closed." He has been weighing a decision since summer, but cautioned all along that he and his family were grieving over the loss of his son Beau Biden -- and said Wednesday he knew that process could outlast the window for making a decision.
"Unfortunately, I believe we're out of time, the time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination," Biden said.
He added, "While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent." Biden went on to urge Democrats to run on Obama's record, while decrying the current partisanship in Washington.
The decision would appear to bolster front-runner Hillary Clinton -- whom Biden had been urged by supporters to challenge as she grappled with slipping poll numbers and a widening scandal over her email use in her capacity as secretary of state.
After Biden's remarks, Clinton tweeted:
.@VP is a good friend and a great man. Today and always, inspired by his optimism and commitment to change the world for the better. -H
Biden, though, seemed to take a parting shot Wednesday at her and other Democratic candidates, after some suggested Republicans are their enemy at last week's debate.
"I don't think we should look at Republicans as our enemy. They're the opposition," Biden said, urging lawmakers to find "consensus."
"Four more years of this kind of pitched battle may be more than this country can take," he said. "We have to change it."
According to a senior administration official, the vice president made his decision Tuesday night.
His choice is a blow to former staffers and others who were building a virtual campaign in waiting, ready to go if he decided to enter. Draft Biden, the most vocal organization urging the VP to run, put out a brief statement after his announcement: "We are so grateful for the gigantic outpouring of support from hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country in our effort to encourage the Vice President to run. While the Vice President has decided not to run, we know that over the next year he will stand up for all Americans and articulate a vision for America's future that will leave no one behind."
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that Biden's decision will hurt Democrats.
"The Vice President's decision not to enter the 2016 race is a major blow for Democrats, who now will almost certainly be saddled with their unpopular and scandal plagued front-runner Hillary Clinton," he said.
Democratic National Committee leader Debbie Wasserman Schultz, meanwhile, said she appreciates Biden's "thoughtful consideration," adding "his unwavering commitment to America's working families is a legacy each of our candidates will proudly carry forward."
Biden would have brought with him a number of potential assets to the race, including his experience as vice president and a lengthy Senate career that included a term as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has a solid rapport with the labor unions, and is famous for his down-to-earth, casual manner -- one that contributes to his frequent, off-color remarks that sometimes get him in trouble but also fill out his image as an unscripted and genuine statesman, flaws and all.
For someone who had not actually announced, Biden's poll numbers were relatively strong. In a Monmouth University poll released this week, Biden was ranking with 17 percent support among Democratic voters, compared with 21 percent for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and 48 percent for Clinton. A recent Fox News Poll found that in general election matchups, Biden would beat all the Republican frontrunners.
But family considerations and other factors surely weighed on him, including the prospect of mounting a grueling presidential run. And scrutiny on him would have increased rapidly had he entered, testing his level of public support. His long record in office also could have been used against him, specifically on foreign policy. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in his memoir that Biden was "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
Past Biden runs did not generate much support. Biden's run for the 1988 Democratic nomination fizzled, with accusations that he plagiarized a speech by then-British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. Biden also ran for the 2008 nomination, but failed to garner significant support and dropped out in January of 2008 before being chosen as the vice presidential nominee by then-Sen. Barack Obama.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/21/biden-to-speak-in-rose-garden/?intcmp=hplnws
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Interesting take.
Ed Klein: The Story Behind Biden's Decision
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=6c2fc4c4-fa93-4638-98ba-c32a3bf1b63b&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Ed Klein: The Story Behind Biden's Decision (Photo by Aude Guerrucci-Pool/Getty Images)
By Ed Klein
Wednesday, 21 Oct 2015
If you listened to the media chatter about why Joe Biden decided to take himself out of the running for president, you’d conclude that it was all about grieving and timing. By the time the Biden family went through the grieving process over the death of Beau Biden, it was just to late for Joe to get into the race.
All of that is true enough as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough, because none of the media’s coverage told the story behind the story—the intrigue and deliberate deception at the highest levels of the political system that ultimately determined Biden’s decision to take a pass on the presidency.
According to sources close to Biden, the vice president and President Obama, who had been urging Biden to run, held numerous discussions about Biden’s chances of taking on Hillary in the Democrat primaries and knocking her out of the presidential race.
In those talks, Biden expressed doubt that he would be able to overcome Hillary’s advantage in timing, money, organization, and ground game. The only way he could see himself getting into the race, Biden reportedly told the president, was if the White House assured him that it would support the FBI’s investigation of Hillary’s improper handling of classified documents on her private e-mail system and encourage Attorney General Loretta Lynch to bring down an indictment against Hillary.An indictment—even a misdemeanor—would almost certainly doom Hillary’s chances of getting the nomination.
In public, Obama has been reluctant to criticize Hillary. For instance, he recently told Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” that he didn’t think Hillary intended to “hide something or to squirrel away information” on her private e-mail server and that she didn’t endanger national security.
Other sources—in this case, those close to the White House—admit that the president was being deceptive with Kroft because, as the head of his party, he had to be careful not to be seen as dissing the Democrats’ leading candidate for the presidency. What’s more, the White House sources say, the president didn’t want to publicize the hidden depths of his blood feud with the Clintons.
In fact, these sources confirm that Obama sings a different tune in private. The president and his senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, have made it clear to James Comey, the director of the FBI, and the prosecutors in the Justice Department who are working in close collaboration with the FBI, that the White House wants a thorough investigation and, if warranted, a vigorous prosecution.
But the operative words were if warranted. The president did not signal Attorney General Loretta Lynch that he wanted her to follow his guidance. Using the attorney general as a sword in a political fight would have left the president open to charges of committing a federal crime.
Therefore, Obama stopped short of giving Biden the assurances that he was seeking. And without the president’s promise, Biden decided he had no choice but to bow out.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/hillary-clinton-joe-biden-ed-klein-barack-obama/2015/10/20/id/697215/#ixzz3pFxTri1r
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With Biden Out, Clinton Likely To Get A Bump In The Polls
Even when she was the front-runner in 2007, Clinton wasn't polling this well.
Ariel Edwards-Levy
Staff Reporter and Polling Director, The Huffington Post
10/21/2015
Hillary Clinton, already seeing an uptick from her strong performance in the first Democratic primary debate, is likely to get another boost following Vice President Joe Biden's announcement on Wednesday that he won't run for president.
Recent polling tells a consistent story: With Biden out of the race, his supporters will disperse -- and that's generally to Clinton's benefit.
In the most recent Economist/YouGov survey, which was conducted earlier this month, one-fifth of Democratic voters named Biden as their preferred candidate. Among that group, 51 percent said Clinton would be their second choice, while just 30 percent named Sanders and the rest were mostly unsure.
Across six October surveys that reported results with and without Biden, Clinton led Sanders by an average of 23 points when Biden was included, and by 29 points when he was not.
(http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/5627dcab1400006f003c8cbf.png)
With Biden in the mix, Clinton's share of the vote fell as low as 45 percent; without him, she took a majority of the vote in each case. That's substantially higher than she was polling even during her time as the front-runner in the fall of 2007, leading up to the 2008 Democratic primary.
Biden rose in the polls this summer as Clinton suffered from difficult news stories and declining ratings, and as speculation about his candidacy continued to mount.
Even earlier this month, most Democrats didn't think it was too late for the vice president to jump in. But after his absence from the first primary debate, surveys showed, Biden's numbers were already beginning to slide -- and now that he's decided against a run, the largely moderate Democratic voters who were backing Biden look more inclined to rejoin the Clinton camp.
As a summer Economist/YouGov poll showed, Clinton and Biden are perceived as holding virtually identical political ideologies, and Sanders is seen as a more liberal alternative. In the most recent survey, about two-thirds of Biden's supporters considered themselves political moderates or conservatives, similar to the 61 percent of Clinton supporters who assigned themselves the same labels. In contrast, just one-third of Sanders backers say they're not ideologically liberal.
The primary election remains months away, and there's plenty of time for things to change. But Sanders' and Clinton's other rivals continue to face a formidable challenge in opposing a candidate with a solid majority of support. With Biden stepping aside, the path to victory for another Democrat now looks even steeper.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/biden-supporters-hillary-clinton_5627d7ace4b0bce34703a0ea
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I rarely like my choices, but I don't have any until the general election anyway.
Do you like your choices?
contrary to what you might believe it's not a lock that I will vote democratic....I have to admit I am seriously considering Trump although I KNOW he is loony
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contrary to what you might believe it's not a lock that I will vote democratic....I have to admit I am seriously considering Trump although I KNOW he is loony
-Odd choice. My good friend who is ultra-conservative told me she'd vote for Hillary over Donald if it comes down to this. Trump is a total nut job. It wouldn't surprise me to find out he suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.
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contrary to what you might believe it's not a lock that I will vote democratic....I have to admit I am seriously considering Trump although I KNOW he is loony
Whatever you say andre.
Biden definitely has my vote if he runs......he has a much better resume than Clinton
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-Odd choice. My good friend who is ultra-conservative told me she'd vote for Hillary over Donald if it comes down to this. Trump is a total nut job. It wouldn't surprise me to find out he suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.
Is there really any doubt?
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Andre has mentioned how he liked the W administration :-X
So when he says he might not go D, I believe him.
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Andre has mentioned how he liked the W administration :-X
So when he says he might not go D, I believe him.
I actually did thik that George W was a good president. He was blindsided by 9/11...he never had any intention of being a wartime president...and he prosecuted the war well......it was the aftermath that did him in...and that was the fault of Donald Rumsfeld, who didn't have enough troops and had a bad strategy........W also drove Osama Bin Laden out of Afghanistan....he did some good things....when the economy went down in his final two years that was the nail in his coffin.....
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Lincoln Chafee drops out of Democratic primary race
By Dan Merica and Tom LoBianco, CNN
Fri October 23, 2015
(CNN)Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee ended his long-shot bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, he announced Friday.
"As you know, I have been campaigning on a platform of Prosperity Through Peace," Chafee said at the DNC's annual Women's Leadership Forum in Washington. "But after much thought I have decided to end my campaign for president today. I would like to take this opportunity one last time to advocate for a chance be given to peace."
The Democrat declared his presidential campaign in June, shortly after announcing that he had formed an exploratory committee.
One of the reasons Chafee decided to drop out now: Hillary Clinton had "a good week," he said, one where former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb dropped out of the race, Vice President Joe Biden declined to run and she withstood hours of testimony on Capitol Hill.
"Obviously it was a good week for Secretary Clinton," Chafee told reporters after his speech. "She did well in the debates and then Senator Webb got out, Vice President Biden declined to join the race, she did well in the Benghazi hearing and Gov. Chafee got out of the race."
Chafee has spent most of his life as a Republican. He was nominated to his late father's Senate seat in 1999 and then was elected as a Republican in 2000. He served only one term, losing to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in 2006, but then successfully ran for governor of Rhode Island as an independent.
5 ways Joe Biden's decision changes the 2016 race
Chafee said on Friday that the most memorable moment of his campaign was getting to speak to audiences in Iowa and New Hampshire, but the moment that received the most press was his call to the United States to return to the metric system.
The former governor stood by the decision after he dropped out.
"I stand by that. That was part," Chafee said, emphasizing the word part, "of no drone strikes, fair trade, ending capital punishment, not diplomats that are political donors, bringing Snowden home."
"I wish it was put into context of all the other issues that I brought up at the time," he said. "It was a long list. Metric was one of the 10."
Chafee has been one of the most aggressive candidates against frontrunner Hillary Clinton, calling her out at multiple times about her 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq War.
"Considering the premise for invading Iraq was based on falsehoods and considering the ramifications we live with now from that mistake, I would argue that anybody who voted for the Iraq War should not be president and certainly should not be leading the Democratic Party," he said in an interview with CNN earlier this year.
Chafee was never supremely confident in his chances to win the nomination. When asked by CNN in April if he would bet on himself to win, he simply responded, "I can't," before catching himself and saying that he is "in it to win."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/23/politics/lincoln-chafee-2016-election-dnc-meeting/index.html
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O'Malley: 'Clinton Has Changed Her Position on Virtually Every Defining Issue'
OCT 26, 2015
BY DANIEL HALPER
Martin O'Malley came out firing this morning in an interview on Morning Joe:
"I think this race has changed in many, many ways just over the last week ... the differences that I am going to be able to make now between two candidates who have been in Washington for about 40 years now - neither one of whom have gotten much done - and another candidate representing a new perspective and a new generation of leadership who's actually gotten difficult things done," O'Malley said.
Later O'Malley added, “A weathervane shifts its positions in the wind. Effective leaders do not. I am clear about my principles I know where I stand. I was against the Trans Pacific Partnership 8 months ago. Hillary Clinton has changed her position on virtually every defining issue in this race - except for one, and that's to protect the big banks on Wall Street and go about with business as usual. I don't think that's what the people of our country are looking for. I have the independence, I have the backbone, to stand up for what our nation needs. That's what people are going to see now that it's down to a three person race.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/omalley-clinton-has-changed-her-position-virtually-every-defining-issue_1053042.html
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Hillary Clinton swamping Bernie Sanders in South Carolina, poll shows
By Elizabeth Landers, CNN
Wed November 4, 2015 | Video Source: CNN
Columbia, South Carolina (CNN)—A whopping 71% of likely Democratic primary voters in South Carolina are leaning towards voting for Hillary Clinton, according to a new poll out on Wednesday from Winthrop University. Bernie Sanders takes 15% of the vote, while Martin O'Malley earns just 2%.
Clinton's support is even stronger in the African-American community, where she sweeps with 80% support among likely voters.
In Atlanta last week the Clinton campaign unveiled a nationwide "African-Americans for Hillary" initiative; she also spoke in the Palmetto State at an NAACP dinner last Friday.
"African-Americans can make up over 50% of the Democratic presidential primary vote in South Carolina, which is a much larger portion than you'll see in the Iowa Caucus or New Hampshire primary," said Scott Huffmon, the Winthrop polling director, in a statement accompanying the poll results.
Vice President Joe Biden's decision not to enter the race affected voters here: 34% of Clinton and 46% of Sanders supporters said they would have backed the vice president over their first choice had he decided to enter the race.
Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland and mayor of Baltimore, continues his uphill battle for name recognition: 54% of South Carolina voters said that were unfamiliar with him.
Clinton also stands as the most electable candidate in a general election. Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they think she could win a general election, while 29% think Sanders can and only 9% think O'Malley can.
The poll surveyed 832 likely voters between October 24-November 1 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percent.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/04/politics/hillary-clinton-south-carolina-poll/index.html
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Somebody probably gave him good advice to walk back a bit because this is a pretty serious matter.
Bernie Sanders isn't changing his tune on Clinton emails
By Dan Merica, CNN
Thu November 5, 2015
Los Angeles (CNN)—Bernie Sanders told The Wall Street Journal in an article published Wednesday that there are "valid questions" about Hillary Clinton's emails and that the investigation should "proceed unimpeded."
The comment was cast as a break from what Sanders said during the first Democratic debate, when he bellowed that "the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails," a line that was seen as a gift to Clinton because it dismissed what could be her most nagging problem. The Wall Street Journal comment was also seen as a sign that the Democratic candidate was taking the gloves off against the front-runner and preparing to assail her on emails.
In actuality, though, it is consistent with what he has said in the past about Clinton's emails.
Sanders regularly downplays the issue as one that doesn't rise to the level of raising wages, climate change and education reform, but doesn't dismiss the email investigation entirely.
Sanders was asked in an interview with CNN immediately after the debate what motivated him to use the now-famous "damn emails" line.
"Well, what motivated that is that I think the American people want substantive discussions on substantive issues," Sanders said. "There is a process in place for the email situation that Hillary Clinton is dealing with. Let it play itself out. As a nation, let us start focusing on why it is that so few have so much and so many have so little."
Sanders used a similar line the Sunday after the debate, telling ABC that he doesn't regret saying Americans don't care about Clinton's "damn emails" because he thinks he is right.
But that wasn't all Sanders said.
After listing issues that are more important to American families -- including college affordability, campaign finance reform and climate change -- Sanders said "All of those issues are more important than Hillary Clinton's emails, of which there is already a process underway to determine what happens."
And before the debate, Sanders used the same line to discuss Clinton's email controversy.
"I think that's an issue that we've got to take a hard look at, and I think what's going on now is, as I think Secretary Clinton now realizes, is not a good practice," he told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell in August.
"Do you think that she jeopardized national security?" Mitchell asked.
"Well, there is a process that is going on now," Sanders said. "We will learn more about it."
Tad Devine, Sanders' top strategist, said there is "absolutely" no plan for Sanders to start going after Clinton on emails and that his comments to the Wall Street Journal were not new.
"Absolutely not. We are not. We had enough of your damn emails. That still stands. Nothing has changed," Devine said, arguing that Republicans are using emails as a political football and that they "made fools of themselves" at October's hearing on Benghazi.
Sanders, in the interview with the Wall Street Journal, did question Clinton's consistency on issues, saying that her opposition to a Pacific trade deal that she once supported "does speak to the character of a person."
"Is there a new phase that we are doing? No," Devine said. "We are not interested in it."
Clinton's campaign doesn't exactly see it that way. On Thursday, Josh Schwerin, Clinton's campaign spokesman, issued a statement that took issue that Sanders' comments to The Wall Street Journal.
"This has and will remain a campaign about issues for Hillary Clinton, and that's what she'll continue to talk about on the trail," Schwerin said. "It's disappointing Senator Sanders and his campaign strategists have chosen to change direction and engage in the type of personal attacks that they previously said he wouldn't do."
Sanders' strategists, however, don't feel that they have.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/05/politics/bernie-sanders-email-hillary-clinton/index.html
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Clinton Campaign Fires Back at Bernie Sanders
Nov 5, 2015
(http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-LA464_BIDENj_G_20151030190206.jpg)
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders last month in Iowa. —Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News
Hillary Clinton’s campaign fired back Thursday at critical comments voiced by rival Bernie Sanders, saying he was engaging in the sort of “personal attacks” he had disavowed.
In an interview on Wednesday with The Wall Street Journal, the Vermont senator cast Mrs. Clinton’s policy reversals over the years as a character issue and said the federal investigation of the security surrounding her private email account as secretary of state is appropriate. He also suggested that she wouldn’t be an effective regulator of Wall Street.
The Clinton campaign had no comment on Wednesday but on Thursday, spokesman Josh Schwerin pushed back.
“This has and will remain a campaign about issues for Hillary Clinton, and that’s what she’ll continue to talk about on the trail,” he said in an email. “It’s disappointing Sen. Sanders and his campaign strategists have chosen to change direction and engage in the type of personal attacks that they previously said he wouldn’t do.”
Mr. Sanders’s comments mark a turning point in the Democratic race, which has become a two-person contest, with a third contender, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, lagging far behind. While Mr. Sanders has long pointed to policy differences between the two of them, he hasn’t criticized her personally.
In the Democratic debate last month, Mr. Sanders said voters were “sick and tired” of the focus on Mrs. Clinton’s “damn emails,” a comment many interpreted to be a dismissal of the matter. Mr. Sanders rejected that assessment on Wednesday. If her email practices foiled public-records requests or compromised classified information, those are “valid questions,” Mr. Sanders said.
Polling shows that voters question Mrs. Clinton’s honesty and trustworthiness, but also find her well ahead nationally. She’s also taken the lead in recent polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, the states that hold the first two contests.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/11/05/clinton-campaign-fires-back-at-bernie-sanders/
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Correct.
SANDERS: MEDIA SCRUTINY OF BEN CARSON IS WHY PEOPLE HATE POLITICS
by PAM KEY
8 Nov 2015
Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said the aggressive media scrutiny of Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson is the “reason so many people are turned off to the political process.”
When asked if the scrutiny of Carson it is fair game Sanders said, “No. Look, I listened to the interview with Dr. Carson and it’s interesting. But you know what, Chuck? The American people want to know why the middle-class of this country is disappearing. Why we have 47 million people living in poverty. Why we have massive income and wealth inequality. When you look at Dr. Carson, to the best of my knowledge, this man does not believe that climate change is caused by human activity, he wants to abolish medicare and give huge tax breaks to the rich. I think it might be a better — idea I know it’s a crazy idea — but maybe we focus on the issues impacting the American people and what candidates are saying rather than just spending so much time exploring their lives 30 or 40 years ago. I think the reason so many people are turned off to the political process has to do with the fact we’re not talking about real issues impacting real people.”
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/11/08/sanders-media-scrutiny-of-ben-carson-is-why-people-hate-politics/
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10 Reasons I'm Only Voting for Bernie Sanders and Will Not Support Hillary Clinton
H. A. Goodman Become a fan
Columnist published in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Baltimore Sun, The Hill, Salon, The Jerusalem Post www.hagoodman.com
Posted: 11/09/2015
(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/3642628/images/n-BERNIE-SANDERS-large570.jpg)
According to CBS News, an alarming percentage of Democrats either won't vote for Hillary Clinton or would only support her nomination to prevent a Republican from winning:
Just under half of Democratic primary voters nationwide say they would enthusiastically support Clinton if she became the party's nominee. Twenty-seven percent would support her with some reservations and another 11 percent would only back her because she is the nominee. Fourteen percent would not support her in a general election.
When under half of Democrats would "enthusiastically support" Clinton and 27% would only do so "because she is the nominee," even Democrats planning to vote for the former Secretary of State hold reservations.
Then, there are 14% who will not support her in a general election; this figure could easily increase. Also, not only will a sizable percentage of Democrats refuse to vote for Clinton, but 57% of Americans find Clinton "not honest and trustworthy."
In addition, Clinton's negative favorability ratings in 9 out of 10 national polls make her unelectable as a candidate in a general election. If you can name a presidential candidate in American history who voters both didn't trust and didn't like, I'd love to hear the name.
Furthermore, recent polls showing Clinton ahead of Sanders by an astronomical figure target primarily landline telephones and also highlight the fact that even the landline telephone respondents don't trust or admire Clinton. Even in positive polls, there's enough evidence to show that Clinton is simply unelectable in a general election, and I explain why in this YouTube video.
The truth is that Sanders defeats Trump by a wider margin than Clinton in a general election. As for Iowa and New Hampshire, according to an October 5, 2015 NBC News article titled Sanders Outperforms Clinton in General Election Matchups in IA, NH, recent polls show Bernie Sanders more than capable of winning a general election:
Hillary Clinton has always been viewed as the Democrats' best general-election candidate. But new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls of Iowa and New Hampshire show that Bernie Sanders outperforms Clinton in those two general-election battleground states.
Also, in almost every poll, the same people who say they'd vote for Clinton if the election were today are also the same people who state they don't trust Clinton; I explain this in a recent article.
For the record, I have a great deal of respect for Hillary Clinton and admire her attempt at healthcare in the '90s. If the Hillary Clinton of the early '90s were around today, then I wouldn't have been quoted in a recent MassLive.com article titled Hillary Clinton's new foe: the left.
Had Clinton not evolved towards Republican viewpoints on war, foreign policy, Wall Street, and other issues, I wouldn't have been quoted by The Wall Street Journal regarding my views on a Sanders/Warren ticket or by The American Military University on why Bernie Sanders won the Democratic debate.
Sadly, I also wouldn't have been banned from Reddit. However, this is 2016 and I explain in this YouTube video why I'm only voting for Bernie Sanders and why I will not vote for Hillary Clinton or Trump.
When I wrote in The Cleveland Plain Dealer that Bernie Sanders Can Win, Sanders was at 21% support in the Democratic primary. Sanders is now at 31% support and polling trajectory shows him winning the Democratic nomination. And no, Biden votes shouldn't all go to Clinton.
Therefore, below are 10 reasons I'm only voting for Bernie Sanders in 2016, and will not vote for Hillary Clinton or Trump.
1. The Iraq War. Sanders was on the right side of history. Bernie Sanders voted against the Iraq War, using the same intelligence reports as Clinton and Bush. He also foreshadowed the dire consequences of Iraq. In contrast, Hillary Clinton voted for Iraq and now calls her vote a "mistake."
In 2005, Senator Clinton even said the "insurgency is failing" after a visit to Iraq.
I want President Bernie Sanders, who was recently given the Congressional Award by the VFW and stated on CNN that "I'll be damned" if he sends more Americans back to the Middle East as president.
Mass shootings are happening under President Obama, so gun violence can only be solved by Congress, not the president. However, Senators can't send troops abroad unilaterally, but a president can bomb anywhere and deploy troops at will, without Congressional approval. The AUMF gives the president a certain time period to engage in war and send troops anywhere, without Congressional approval.
Regardless of her neoconservative outlook on war and foreign policy, certain "Facebook Liberals" who hate Bush but love Hillary also forget that Clinton and Bush aren't very different in terms of foreign policy.
As Jacob Heilbrunn writes in The New York Times, "It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration."
President Obama just sent Americans to Syria, and might even send more American soldiers in the near future. There's no doubt President Hillary Clinton would send more Americans to the Middle East.
I'm not certain we need a president who jokes, "We came, we saw, he died," and then helps usher a devastating civil war in Libya with her decision to oust a dictator.
You can hear Secretary of State Clinton utter the words in this CBS News segment.
2. The Keystone XL Pipeline. Bernie Sanders has always been against Keystone XL. Keystone XL may threaten water acquirers that irrigate much of the U.S. We know President Sanders will continue President Obama's vetoes of Keystone XL. Clinton was once inclined to support Keystone. She has now evolved, along with a number of other issues. I simply do not trust President Clinton to veto Keystone legislation.
3. Euphemisms. Bernie Sanders never uses euphemisms. I trust Bernie because he speaks clearly; English is a means to communicate, not shield from criticism. Clinton, on the other hand, lives by euphemism and I explain why Orwell would vote for Bernie Sanders in a recent YouTube segment. From a "witch hunt" to wiping a server used out of "convenience" with a "cloth," too many words are used to hide the truth.
4. One candidate is the Charles Darwin of politics. The other is Bernie Sanders. Clinton always evolves; usually following Bernie's lead on issues. I wouldn't sign a contract with an "evolving" clause, nor would I want a president who continually evolves based upon reasons unknown to the average voter.
5. Presidential powers. On war and foreign policy, I want a Democrat, not a Republican. I explain this viewpoint in a recent article. Sanders is the Democrat on foreign policy, while Clinton is another Republican in 2016.
6. The TPP. Sanders has always been against the TPP. Clinton supported it 45 times, but now says she's against it. As POLITIFACT states, "It's up to voters to decide how they feel about her changed stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but we rate Clinton's reversal as a Full Flop."
7. Clinton's 3:00 a.m. ad and Racism. Bernie Sanders has a comprehensive racial justice platform. Clinton's 3:00 a.m. ad in 2008 had a "racist sub-message" according to one Harvard sociologist.
8. I want a Democrat in the White House. I don't want a moderate Republican on Wall Street, or a neocon pertaining to war.
9. The DNC needs to end its fear of being too progressive. I'll only vote for Sanders because progressive politics are mainstream. This isn't 1972 and Nixon is no longer with us, unless you equate Clinton to Richard Nixon.
10. Bernie Sanders is a "once in a lifetime candidate." Clinton represents establishment politics. If you're not voting for Sanders in 2016, don't ever again complain about Wall Street, perpetual wars, or money in politics.
Americans need a choice in our democracy. 43% of American voters are independent, so allegiance towards political party is quickly becoming a thing of the past. I want an honest progressive, not a Republican, which is why I will not support Trump or Clinton. Bernie Sanders will win the presidency in 2016 because there are millions of people like me, and I'll no longer be intimidated by the phrase, "You can't let a Republican win!" Sanders has enough votes to win a general election according to the polls and President Bernie Sanders will be a transformative figure in U.S. history.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/10-reasons-im-only-voting-for-bernie-sanders-and-will-not-support-hillary-clinton_b_8508172.html
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Hillary Clinton changes her tune on Republicans
By Eric Bradner, CNN
Updated 8:31 PM ET, Mon November 9, 2015 | Video Source: CNN
(CNN)Hillary Clinton cast Republicans as enemies in a Democratic presidential debate, but when a woman who described herself as a long-time supporter pressed Clinton at a New Hampshire town hall Monday night, Clinton changed her tune.
The questioner -- who said she was a supporter since "the cookie incident," when Clinton dismissed staying at home and touted her working-woman life during Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign -- said she'd never been so disappointed as when Clinton called the GOP her enemy at the CNN debate. She asked if Clinton would commit to extending an olive branch if she's elected.
Clinton said she would, and that her problem with Republicans is in campaigns, not governance. She added she would do "whatever I can" to find common ground with the GOP.
"It will be a contentious election and what I have found in my 20-plus years of experience in this arena is that when I am in office, I have great relations with Republicans. They say wonderful things about me," Clinton said. "When I am running for office, it is a bit different."
The Democratic front-runner in the 2016 presidential race drew criticism for her inclusion during a debate in Las Vegas of the GOP among the enemies she's proudest of making.
She has since described that comment as "a little tongue in cheek."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/09/politics/hillary-clinton-republicans-enemy/index.html
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Too early? Like the race is really in doubt. Unless he's worried about an indictment?
Al Gore refuses to back Clinton, says it's 'too early'
Published November 10, 2015
FoxNews.com
(http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/img/U.S./876/493/goreinternal649846.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
July 24, 2015: Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore gestures as he gives a speech at the 2015 China US Clean Air conference, in Beijing, China. (Reuters)
Former Vice President Al Gore has refused to back current frontrunner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, saying that it is “too early” to endorse a candidate at this stage in the race.
The 2000 Democratic presidential candidate, who served two terms as VP when Bill Clinton was in the White House, told PEOPLE that he intends to wait before backing any of the candidates.
"It's still too early, in my opinion, to endorse a candidate or pick a candidate," Gore said in an interview published Tuesday.
"Everybody can look at how the presidential campaign is developing and get some pretty clear ideas about how they think it's going to turn out, but I still think it's premature," Gore said.
As for reports earlier in 2015 that he may have been tempted by another shot at the White House, having narrowly missed out in 2000, Gore dismissed the speculation.
"I have taken no steps whatsoever in the direction of a candidacy and my answer has been the same for 10 years now – or more – and you probably heard my answer before: I'm a recovering politician and the longer I go without a relapse, the less likely one becomes," he said.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/11/10/al-gore-refuses-to-back-clinton-says-it-too-early/?intcmp=hpbt1
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(http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/img/U.S./876/493/goreinternal649846.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
He has not aged well.
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He has not aged well.
Nope. Looks like he has been on Chris Christie's diet.
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She's only in trouble if she gets indicted. Even then she still might be elected, although Biden will likely jump in if her email scandal goes sideways.
Dick Cheney on Hillary Clinton: ‘I think she’s in big trouble’
By Ed O'Keefe
November 12, 2015
(https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/09/08/National-Enterprise/Advance/Images/Cheney_0d472.jpg&w=1484)
Former vice president Dick Cheney speaks during the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce annual meeting at The Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs. W.Va., on Sept. 3. 2015. (Rick Barbero/The Register-Herald via AP)
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Former vice president Dick Cheney didn't talk Thursday night about being called an "iron-ass," but he sharply questioned Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton's qualifications to be president.
“I think she’s in big trouble,” he said about the former secretary of state at a Florida Republican Party fundraiser.
A fierce critic of President Obama ever since leaving office, Cheney addressed supporters of the state party the night before it hosts a two-day summit that is scheduled to draw nearly every GOP presidential candidate. One of those candidates, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), sat near the stage as Cheney spoke. The senator later addressed the crowd.
The former vice president spoke just a few days after the release of a new biography that quotes former president George H.W. Bush saying that Cheney had “his iron-ass view of everything” in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bush also called former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- a longtime rival -- -"an arrogant fellow."
Cheney made no mention of the book or the former president's comments, but he did take the stage to the strains of "The Imperial March" -- the so-called Darth Vader theme from the "Star Wars" movies.
He accused Obama and Clinton of rushing to cover up details of the September 2012 attack on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, because “it was election time and it was shortly before the 2012 election and they had a narrative going that once they got Osama bin Laden the problem was solved, there was no terrorism problem anymore -- they didn’t want to admit that there was a problem out there. The data suggested there was."
“It’s pretty clear to me ... that in fact she did not handle the matter appropriately, that she consciously misled the American people and that I think it does raise serious, serious doubts about her capacity to be president of the United States, he added later.
Cheney is especially concerned with Clinton's decision to use a private e-mail address while serving as secretary of state. “I’ve got to believe that she knew that she had to protect and safeguard the classified information that she was party to as secretary of state, one of the most important jobs in our government," he said.
Clinton has said that she did not receive information on her private account that was deemed classified -- a statement that has since been disputed by congressional Republicans.
“All of my papers went to the national archives when I left office. I think they were trying to avoid that," Cheney added, saying later that "If in fact what we’ve seen in the papers is true that it was a serious mistake and error on their part. That’s why today there’s an FBI investigation into what indeed happened and I think there’s still a lot to be heard on this issue.”
“I think if she did do something wrong in her capacity as secretary of state, I think that would say a lot about whether she should be elected to be the commander in chief – I don’t think she should be," he said.
Cheney took several shots at Obama's foreign policy -- and encouraged Republicans to nominate a presidential candidate capable of reversing his legacy, warning: "It’s going to take a long time to restore the U.S. military to its proper capabilities."
"My impression is that Obama is eager to get out of town. I’m eager to have him get out of town," he told the crowd to loud applause.
Cheney suggested that Obama is projecting "weakness" that is being exploited by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Islamic State terror group, China and other American adversaries -- essentially repeating the themes of a book he recently published with his daughter, former State Department official Liz Cheney.
Asked by an audience member about the kind of candidate the GOP should nominate next year, Cheney steered clear of signaling a specific preference, but said that "It’s extraordinarily important that the Republican Party reclaim the reputation we’ve had most of our life that we’re the go-to guys on national defense."
Organizers said that they sold more than 970 tickets for the fundraiser held in a ballroom at the Disney Contemporary Resort, down the street from the Magic Kingdom theme park.
"It's nice of Mickey to have us over," quipped Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam as he introduced Cheney to the crowd.
Before the dinner, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), chairman of the Democratic National Committee, accused Republicans of embracing the failed Bush-Cheney policies.
"This GOP field is endorsing the same reckless foreign policy ideas and the same failed economic and fiscal policies as the Bush-Cheney administration, and if they get control of the White House again, it would lead to the same disastrous results," she said in a statement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/12/dick-cheney-on-hillary-clinton-i-think-shes-in-big-trouble/
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Link to the Democrat debate:
Didn't catch all of it, but here is what I took away from the portions that I watched:
They were tripping all over themselves talking about 101 ways to redistribute and spend your tax dollars.
Sanders kept touting a mandatory living wage, starting with a $15 an hour minimum wage.
Sanders is big on stealing money from the "wealthy" so others can go to college for free.
Sanders maintained climate change is our biggest national security threat.
Hillary refused to say we are at war with Radical Islam.
Overall, it is frightening that one of those three on that stage could be our president and commander in chief.
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Hillary Clinton Botches Wall Street Questions
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
NOV. 15, 2015
(http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/11/16/opinion/16editorialWeb/16editorialWeb-master675.jpg)
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders during the debate in Des Moines on Saturday. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Hillary Clinton should have seen that Wall Street shot coming. Instead, she compounded the damage.
The former secretary of state was off to a sound outing in Saturday night’s debate against Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland. Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris dominated at first, allowing her to highlight her superior experience in world affairs. But it was those attacks that made her badly muffed response to questions about her fealty to Wall Street all the more jarring. Here’s the exchange:
Mr. Sanders: “I have never heard a candidate, never, who has received huge amounts of money from oil, from coal, from Wall Street, from the military-industrial complex, not one candidate say, oh, these campaign contributions will not influence me. I’m going to be independent. Well, why do they make millions of dollars of campaign contributions? They expect to get something. Everybody knows that. Once again, I am running a campaign differently than any other candidate. We are relying on small campaign donors, 750,000 of them, 30 bucks apiece. That’s who I’m indebted to.”
Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
Mrs. Clinton: “Well John, [John Dickerson, the moderator] wait a minute. Wait a minute, he has basically used his answer to impugn my integrity. Let’s be frank here.”
Mr. Sanders: “No, I have not.”
Mrs. Clinton: “Oh, wait a minute, senator. You know, not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small. And I’m very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60 percent. So, I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.”
Predictably, Twitter exploded with demands to know what campaign donations from big banks had to do with New York’s recovery from 9/11. Answer: little to nothing. Since 2001, she and Bill Clinton have earned more than $125 million for speeches, many of the most lucrative made before financial groups. That does not account for the millions given directly to her campaign, and to political action committees backing her. Nearly 15 years after the 2001 attacks, Mrs. Clinton was earning more than $200,000 for a 20-minute speech. Most of those took place behind guarded doors. But one can guess that she and the financial executives were not still talking about 9/11.
Middle-class Americans associate Wall Street with the 2008 meltdown of the economy that cost so many their homes and savings. In the debate Mrs. Clinton repeatedly referred to her plan for reining in banks, but offered precious few specifics. This is what happens when Hillary Clinton the candidate gets complacent. The debate moderator, Mr. Dickerson, had even tipped her off before a commercial break that the next topic was Wall Street.
Her effort to tug on Americans’ heartstrings instead of explaining her Wall Street ties — on a day that the scars of 9/11 were exposed anew — was at best botched rhetoric. At worst it was the type of cynical move that Mrs. Clinton would have condemned in Republicans.
She should make a fast, thorough effort to explain herself by providing a detailed plan for how she would promote measures protecting middle-class Americans from another financial crisis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/opinion/hillary-clinton-botches-wall-street-questions.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
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Clinton: Don't get swayed by GOP 'fear tactics and scare mongering'
By Dan Merica, CNN
Tue November 24, 2015 | Video Source: CNN
Reno, Nevada (CNN)Hillary Clinton asked voters here in Nevada on Monday to not be swayed by Republicans "fear tactics and scare mongering and inflammatory rhetoric" on terrorism.
She told the fired up audience that she shakes her head at what Republicans are saying about fighting ISIS
Clinton spent the day in northern Nevada
Reno, Nevada (CNN)Hillary Clinton asked voters here in Nevada on Monday to not be swayed by Republicans "fear tactics and scare mongering and inflammatory rhetoric" on terrorism.
She told the fired up audience that she shakes her head at what Republicans are saying about fighting ISIS and protecting the United States from another attack.
Clinton's comments come days after Republican front-runner Donald Trump suggested that he saw video of "thousands of people ... cheering" in New Jersey as the World Trade Center towers fell during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack. Trump has also suggested compelling all Muslims in America to register for a national database.
"I don't think it is smart for us to act like we are waging war on every Muslim in the world," Clinton said. "That is not smart."
"These terrorists are killers, they are thugs, they are criminals, they need to be treated like that, not elevated as thought they are representing a religion because even if though they claim to, they are not," she said, speaking at E.L. Pine Middle School in Reno.
Clinton, who spent the day in northern Nevada, revisited a speech she delivered earlier this month on defeating ISIS.
"We must end their murderous reign and prevent them from not only continuing to wreak havoc, terror and violence in the area where they are operating, but export it," she said.
The former secretary of state, however, definitively said she would not, as president, commit ground troops to fight the terrorist organization.
"The United States has to lead the effort but we will not be putting American combat troops in Syria and Iraq to accomplish the mission," Clinton said.
"This is a job we have to take on and we have to be smart about it and we have to be vigilant about it," Clinton said. "I will take a back seat to no one in protecting the United States of America."
While in northern Nevada, Hillary Clinton also met with Hillary Schieve, mayor of Reno; toured a substance abuse facility and met with Carson City Democratic Party Chairman Marty McGarry, who endorsed Clinton after the meeting.
As she has done in other early voting states, Clinton also met with reporters, editors and executives from many of the local news outlets in the area.
Clinton, who appeared energized by the crowd on Monday night, cast the 2016 election as one that will decide whether Republicans "get their way again."
"I want Democrats to vote for me, but I want sensible Republicans to vote for me, too," Clinton said. "The only way Republicans can win this election is if they can induce a state of amnesia in all of us."
The Republican National Committee responded to Clinton by knocking her leadership as secretary of state.
"Dogged by an FBI investigation and an unraveling foreign policy that's made the world less safe, Hillary Clinton has shown she can't be trusted in the White House," said RNC spokesman Michael Short in a statement.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/23/politics/hillary-clinton-gop-fear-tactics/index.html
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People don't trust Hillary.
Hillary Clinton is getting crushed on social media, captured in one word cloud
By James Hohmann December 1, 2015
(https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp-content/uploads/sites/47/2015/12/dec1b1.png)
Above is a word cloud of all mentions related to Hillary Clinton during the month of November, through midnight Eastern time.
The graphic, via our analytics partners at Zignal Labs, does not exactly highlight the kinds of words you want to see if you work at Clinton headquarters in Brooklyn.
It’s driven by the intense dislike for Clinton by activists on the left and the right, but mainly the right. Their constant drumbeat of criticism overwhelms any positive buzz that the Democratic frontrunner gets from her fans.
One negative post on a critical, obscure web site, for instance, got mentioned more than 45,000 times on Twitter. Many of the other Clinton items mentioned most frequently link back to staunchly conservative sites.
. . . .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2015/12/01/hillary-clinton-is-getting-crushed-on-social-media-captured-in-one-word-cloud/
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LOL @ trump spending so much time trashing Bernie, who is 25 or 30 points back in polls, and absolutely no threat to the nomination.
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Hillary Clinton’s likability problem
By Amie Parnes - 12/02/15
Allies of Hillary Clinton are confident she will win the Democratic presidential nomination, but they are worried about one big thing: her likability problem in the general election.
Clinton has rebounded from a rough spring and summer with a strong fall. And while her eyes remain on the primary, she is already testing general election themes against her possible GOP opponents as they do battle in what could be a drawn-out Republican primary.
Presidential elections are often decided on personality instead of specific policies. Along those lines, people in Clinton’s orbit are worried she doesn’t pass the would-you-like-to-have-a-beer-with-her test.
It’s a test she failed against then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in 2008. Throughout that cycle, Clinton stressed her “35 years of experience” while Obama pitched his “hope and change” message.
The likability test came up often on the campaign trail, most notably in the last New Hampshire debate that year when Clinton acknowledged Obama is “very likable.”
In a quip that may have cost him New Hampshire, Obama responded, “You’re likable enough, Hillary.”
Head-to-head 2016 matchups suggest vulnerabilities for Clinton, particularly against Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who often talks about his love of professional football.
“Her challenge remains the same as it always has been — show voters who she is and reveal the person beneath the candidate,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public policy at Princeton University. “To win people’s trust and to generate enthusiasm, she has to let some of her character come out.”
“She has so many qualifications: experience, knowledge, partisan skill,” Zelizer said, adding that the likability factor “is what she needs to work on.”
Team Clinton spent a good part of 2015 highlighting the former first lady’s personality, which they call warm and effusive. Clinton aides, longtime confidants and friends have always maintained she is charming and funny, at least behind the scenes and out of the public spotlight.
But they say after years of public service — and attacks by her political opponents — she’s hesitant to let that side show.
Since Labor Day, after a New York Times story reported that Clinton would show more “humor and heart,” the candidate has made a concerted effort to highlight her lighter side.
Since then, she appeared on “Saturday Night Live” as a bartender named Val, allowed “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon to pull on her hair playfully and sat down with Lena Dunham of “Girls” fame. During those interviews and others, the former secretary of State came across as a yoga-loving woman who loves to go for long walks and keeps up with the Kardashians.
Those efforts may have helped. A Bloomberg poll released late last month showed that her likability has gone up among Democrats from 23 percent in September to 31 percent. A Clinton aide said Tuesday she has always been “remarkably durable” among Democrats.
However, Democratic strategists and even those Clinton loyalists say it’s the unplanned moments that have worked best for her.
In emails released by the State Department this year, including a new batch this week, voters got to know about Clinton’s favorite shows and that she was trying to learn how to use emojis.
“Ironically, she’s done well — maybe best — when she’s not controlling the message,” said a Democratic strategist who spoke on background. “Some of the most humanizing moments of the campaign have come from emails showing Clinton as a tea-drinking, yoga-practicing devoted watcher of ‘The Good Wife’ and ‘Homeland.’ ”
“The carefully crafted moments to ‘let Hillary be Hillary’ almost always backfire,” the strategist said.
In the wake of the Paris attacks last month, Clinton has shown that she is one of the few candidates with hands-on foreign policy experience because of her time at the State Department. While she has come under criticism for events such as the Benghazi attack, Team Clinton has used her tenure at Foggy Bottom to show her commanding grasp of matters around the globe.
Yet, Clinton allies fear that she has other weaknesses as well, particularly her lack of an overarching message.
“If the message they’re homing in on is the ‘fighter for the middle class,’ it would help if they were more explicit about it,” said Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons.
Clinton advisers believe she’ll get there, particularly in a general election when she will be challenged more than she has been in the Democratic primary.
In the meantime, Clinton’s likability factor is generating headlines. The Washington Post on Tuesday published a Zignal Labs word cloud that highlighted Clinton-related mentions on social media in November. The top words included “unethical,” “lies” and “corruption,” something Republicans highlighted right after its release.
“After all the campaign resets, carefully staged events and millions poured into TV ads, Hillary Clinton still finds herself disliked and not trusted by the American people,” said Jeff Bechdel, the communications director for America Rising, a Republican super-PAC. “That won’t change as long as new stories continue to emerge that raise questions about her private emails, questionable judgment and failed leadership.”
Thomas Nides, who served as deputy secretary of State under Clinton and is an informal adviser, said Republicans have “a hard time fighting her on substance, strength, confidence and discipline,” so questions about likability is “what they go to.”
“That’s not a successful strategy,” Nides said. “The more people get to know Hillary Clinton, the more they see her, the more visible she is, the more they like her.”
Nides added Clinton has had a “spectacular three months, arguably had a rougher middle of the year, but the campaign is in a very, very good place.”
“I’d rather be her than anyone else,” he said.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/261741-hillary-clintons-likability-problem
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Bernie Sanders has 10-point lead over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire: poll
By David Sherfinski - The Washington Times -
Thursday, December 10, 2015
(http://twt-thumbs.washtimes.com/media/image/2015/12/08/DEM_2016_Sanders.JPEG-0cd90_c0-0-4956-2888_s561x327.jpg?08e3ff937928120731ec8d583bafa1c17ce3acdc)
Sen. Bernard Sanders has a 10-point lead on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the early state of New Hampshire in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, according to a new poll.
Mr. Sanders has a 10-point, 50 percent to 40 percent lead over Mrs. Clinton in the state, according to the CNN/WMUR poll released Wednesday. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley was at 1 percent.
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In September, Mr. Sanders had led Mrs. Clinton by 16 points in the poll, 46 percent to 30 percent.
In the poll out this week, Mr. Sanders had an 83 percent/4 percent favorable/unfavorable rating split, while Mrs. Clinton had a 68 percent/7 percent favorable/unfavorable split.
Forty-six percent said Mrs. Clinton is the least honest, compared to 5 percent for Mr. O’Malley and 3 percent for Mr. Sanders.
Sixty percent said Mr. Sanders is the most likeable, compared to 22 percent who said Mrs. Clinton and 7 percent who said Mr. O’Malley.
And 68 percent said Mr. Sanders is the most progressive, compared to 22 percent for Mrs. Clinton.
Majorities said Mr. Sanders is the candidate who can best deal with big banks and address income inequality, and a plurality — 43 percent to 34 percent — chose him over Mrs. Clinton as being best able to handle gun policies.
Meanwhile, majorities said Mrs. Clinton can best handle the Islamic State terrorist group and has the right experience to be president.
More Democrats also say Mrs. Clinton is most likely to win the Democratic primary in the state and is the most electable next November.
Fifty-nine percent said she was most likely to win the New Hampshire Democratic primary, compared to 28 percent for Mr. Sanders. In September, they had been even at 42 percent apiece.
And 70 percent said she has the best chance of winning the general election next November, compared to 17 percent who said Mr. Sanders did. In September, 51 percent said Mrs. Clinton had the best chance and 19 percent said Mr. Sanders did.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/10/bernie-sanders-has-10-point-lead-over-hillary-clin/
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Sanders touts union, liberal endorsements
By Dan Merica and Tom LoBianco, CNN
Thu December 17, 2015 | Video Source: CNN
Washington (CNN)Bernie Sanders won a pair of strong endorsements Thursday that could help bring volunteers and money to his campaign as he heads into the homestretch in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The Communication Workers of America, with its 700,000 members, threw its support behind Sanders during an event in Washington Thursday morning. A short while later Democracy for America, the liberal group born from the ashes of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's 2004 bid, signed on with Sanders.
"What I know about the CWA is that your endorsement is not a just paper endorsement, it's not just a press release endorsement," Sanders said Thursday at the union's offices in Washington. "We're going to have thousands of people on the ground, knocking on doors, making phone calls and helping us as we do what needs to be done in this country and that is create a political revolution.
The endorsements come just a few days before the third Democratic debate, and a day after the Sanders campaign cleared more than 2 million individual donations -- a presidential campaign record that also underscores a fundamental challenge he faces: competing with the Hillary Clinton fundraising machine.
"We shouldn't get confused in terms of who necessarily raises the most money as opposed to whether or not we're raising enough money to win," Sanders said Thursday. "So I suspect that because Secretary Clinton has a super PAC -- they got millionaires and billionaires contributing to her -- they will end up raising in total more money than we will. But the question is: Can we raise enough money to win in Iowa, to win in New Hampshire and to win around the rest of the country? And the answer is: Absolutely, we can!"
But the union force still pales in comparison to the numbers behind the endorsements Clinton has already racked up from the American Federation of Teachers, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employee and the Service Employees International Union among many others.
She has racked up 18 national union endorsements since announcing her campaign earlier this year.
The Democracy for America nod could help Sanders in the fundraising arena.
"Bernie Sanders is an unyielding populist progressive who decisively won Democracy for America members' first presidential primary endorsement because of his lifelong commitment to taking on income inequality and the wealthy and powerful interests who are responsible for it," DFA Executive Director Charles Chamberlain said in a statement.
Despite a long record of supporting unions and marching on picket lines, Sanders has struggled to lock down national union endorsements. With 700,000 members, the Communications Workers of America is the largest union to endorse the Vermont senator.
READ: Hillary Clinton maintains national lead in latest Monmouth poll
The endorsement is not surprising: Larry Cohen, the union's former president, joined the campaign is June and is now the campaign's top adviser on labor issues.
After not endorsing in the 2008 nomination fight, the union announced in August that it had set a process in motion to determine whether its members wanted to get involved in the Democratic primary and who they would want to endorse.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/17/politics/bernie-sanders-labor-union-support/index.html
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Going to great lengths to protect this woman.
Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders Bristle at Holding Debates on Weekends
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2015/12/17/us/17firstdraft-debate2/17firstdraft-debate2-tmagArticle.jpg)
Martin O'Malley at the New Hampshire Democratic Party's dinner in Manchester, N.H., last month.Credit Cheryl Senter/Associated Press
If a presidential debate is held and nobody watches, does it really happen?
While viewers are expected to watch the third Democratic debate on Saturday night, they are unlikely to be doing so in the droves that tuned into the Republican debates or the Democratic face-off that was held on a weeknight. While some of that interest on the Republican side can be attributed to the Donald J. Trump effect, critics of the Democratic National Committee’s scheduling process are also upset that the party is muting its message by holding debates when people are less likely to tune in.
There was much discussion over the number of Democratic debates that would be held in this cycle, with Martin O’Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders pushing for more opportunities to face off publicly with Hillary Clinton. They ultimately settled on six, of which two were scheduled for Saturday evenings and one for a Sunday.
As in the previous Democratic debate, which was held at the same time as an important college football game, the candidates will clash on Saturday night with the New York Jets and the Dallas Cowboys.
Mr. O’Malley, who has been the most vocal about the timing of the debates, complained about the issue in August.
“They’ve scheduled it during shopping season, December 19th,” Mr. O’Malley said. “I don’t know why that is. I think it’s out of a false sense that they have to circle the wagons around the inevitable front-runner.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. O’Malley’s campaign said that avoiding prime-time debate slots was a way for the Democratic Party to “protect” Mrs. Clinton, and that it had given Mr. Trump and the Republicans a better platform to express their views.
Mr. Sanders’s campaign said that he did not have any input about when the debates would take place and that he was hoping for more opportunities to discuss the issues with his rivals for the nomination.
“We’re playing the hand we were dealt,” said Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Mr. Sanders. “I guess Christmas Eve was booked.”
The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
For its part, the Democratic National Committee says that it opted for fewer debates to give candidates more time to interact with voters on the campaign trail. The weekend debates were scheduled because the party felt it was important to have some of them broadcast on networks that do not require cable subscriptions, the committee said. Major broadcasters were less flexible about bumping their previously scheduled prime-time lineups for debates.
Luis Miranda, a spokesman for the committee, rejected the notion that the party was trying to accommodate Mrs. Clinton and noted that the first two debates had attracted robust viewership, with a combined total of nearly 25 million people tuning in.
“We’re confident that between our debates and forums, together with the candidates’ town halls, county fair visits, and living-room conversations in states like Iowa and New Hampshire, our candidates are having ample opportunities to engage with voters and to present their visions to keep America moving forward,” Mr. Miranda said.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/18/martin-omalley-and-bernie-sanders-bristle-at-holding-debates-on-weekends/?_r=0
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Going to great lengths to protect this woman.
You could have said "this candidate".
Kinda sexist, don'tcha think?
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You could have said "this candidate".
Kinda sexist, don'tcha think?
::) Stop acting like a hypersensitive sissy.
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He has not aged well.
Looks better than you at nearly 70. ;)
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No doubt.
Sanders says DNC’s timing of Saturday night’s debate was meant to ‘protect’ Clinton
By John Wagner
December 20, 2015
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said in a television interview that the Democratic National Committee deliberately scheduled debates at times when viewership would be low in an effort to “protect” the party’s front-runner, Hillary Clinton.
The criticism from Sanders followed the third Democratic debate of the 2016 contest, held here on Saturday night, six days before Christmas and at a time of heightened tensions between the Sanders campaign and the DNC over a data-breach controversy.
Asked whether he thought the timing of Saturday’s debate was intended to hold down viewership, Sanders said: “Yes, I do.”
“I hope a lot of people watched the debate tonight,” the Vermont senator said on WMUR, the local ABC affiliate. “I think it was a good debate, but I think there is a desire on the part of the DNC to protect Secretary Clinton.”
[Democrats spar over national security, guns and the Islamic State]
Sanders also pointed to the timing of the previous Democratic debate, held last month on a Saturday night in Des Moines at a time when the Iowa Hawkeyes were playing football against the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
“In Iowa, do you know when the debate was held?” Sanders said. “It was the night of the big football game in Iowa. Do you think that’s a coincidence?”
Democratic presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley in the Saturday debate in Manchester, N.H.. (Jewel Samad/AFP)
The DNC has stood by its schedule of six debates, saying it offers ample opportunity for voters to size up the contenders.
On Sunday, DNC spokesman Eric Walker said the Democratic debates had been scheduled in a similar fashion to those of the Republicans: with debates on broadcast television being held on the weekends and those on cable being held during the week.
Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, said the campaign would welcome a time slot geared toward a larger television audience.
“ABC and CBS are the ones that decided to put the debates on a Saturday night,” Palmieri said, naming the networks that broadcast the previous two debates. “Obviously [Clinton] does really great on these debates. We think that the more people that can see that, the better."
Sanders’s comments — which echoed those made previously by his aides — came amid still-boiling tensions with the party in the aftermath of a high-profile data breach last week.
The Sanders campaign has acknowledged that some of its staffers inappropriately accessed proprietary voter information gathered by Clinton on Wednesday when a DNC contractor mistakenly lowered a firewall in a DNC-controlled database that both campaigns use.
The DNC responded by cutting off Sanders’s access to the database, including information gathered by his own campaign. Hours after Sanders filed a federal lawsuit on Friday claiming that the DNC had overreacted, the party leadership agreed to let his campaign regain access to key voter information.
[Two more Sanders staffers face disciplinary action following data breach]
During Saturday’s debate, Sanders apologized to Clinton, and both Sanders and Clinton said they were eager to move on to a discussion of the real issues facing American families.
But Sanders’s interview, conducted shortly after Saturday night's debate and re-aired Sunday, indicated that raw feelings remain.
“I think everybody understands that Hillary Clinton, who I have a lot of respect for, is the establishment candidate,” Sanders said. “Virtually the entire establishment is supporting her, including the leadership of the DNC.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12/20/sanders-says-dncs-timing-of-saturday-nights-debate-was-meant-to-protect-clinton/
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Link to the third debate:
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Link to the third debate:
why watch whats basically a foregone conclusion???
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Bernie Sanders Just Set A New Record For Presidential Campaign Contributions
His grassroots campaign is working.
12/21/2015
Matt Ferner
National Reporter, The Huffington Post
(http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/567836e9190000190178a687.jpeg)
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has broken the record for the number of individual contributions received at this point during a presidential campaign, his campaign announced Sunday.
The Sanders campaign says it hit the 2.3 million contributions mark during Saturday evening's Democratic presidential debate. The major milestone breaks the record President Barack Obama set during his re-election campaign. Through Dec. 31, 2011, Obama reportedly had received about 2.2 million donations.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has raised more money, but Sanders' grassroots strategy is clearly working. As of the Sept. 30 deadline for reporting contributions to the Federal Election Commission, Clinton had raised at least $76 million and Sanders had raised about $41.2 million, much of which came from small donors. During the debate, the average contribution was less than $25, the Sanders campaign notes.
The announcement came just days after Sanders sued the Democratic National Committee to release his campaign's voter data. The candidate's access to the data was suspended last week, following a data breach by campaign staffers who wrongly accessed voter information from Clinton's campaign.
The Sanders campaign fired Josh Uretsky, the candidate's national data director, on Friday, and suspended two other staffers on Saturday, according to NBC News.
The DNC agreed late Friday to allow Sanders to have access to its voter data again.
The public battle with the DNC may have stoked a fire under Sanders' supporters. His campaign raked in $1 million in contributions on Friday alone, The Washington Post reported.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-campaign-contributions_5678356ce4b06fa6887e03c5
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Sanders: I don't need Rahm Emanuel's support
By Eugene Scott, CNN
Thu December 24, 2015 | Video Source: CNN
Washington (CNN)Bernie Sanders said Wednesday that he does not care about winning Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's endorsement.
"If the question is do I want or need Rahm Emanuel's support for president, with all due respect to the mayor, no, I don't," the Democratic presidential candidate said at a press conference in Chicago.
The Vermont senator has, in fits and starts, talked up the issue of police brutality in his White House bid. Like Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley, Sanders has faced pressure from the Black Lives Matter movement and others to make it a focal point of his campaign.
Sanders has repeatedly called for the resignation of all Chicago leaders who were involved with keeping hidden a tape of 16-year-old Laquan McDonald being fatally shot by a police officer.
"Like any other public official, when a police officer breaks the law, that officer must be held accountable," said Sanders, who earlier this year endorsed Emanuel's mayoral opponent, Jesus Chuy Garcia.
Emanuel has denied rumors that he refused to release the tape to win a second term as mayor.
Amid mounting protests about law enforcement's handling of alleged police abuse cases, Emanuel in October accepted the Chicago police superintendent's resignation.
But some critics have suggested that the embattled mayor should step down as well. Sanders hasn't gone that far in speaking about his former House colleague. But he's come close.
"All of us -- whether we're black, whether we're Latino, whether we're white -- are tired of looking up at the TV and seeing videos of unarmed people, often minorities, being killed," he said.
Sanders, who went to undergrad at the University of Chicago, said he spent his earliest days as an activist with the Congress of Racial Equality fighting against discrimination against black, Latino and poor people.
"Now much has changed over the decades, but unfortunately, some things have not. Institutional racism existed then. Institutional racism exist today," he said. "The criminal justice system was broken then. The criminal justice system remains broken today. And that's the sad reality of where we are as a country."
Sanders said fighting against these issues is one of the most important things he would do if elected president.
"And it will be an enormously high priority for me," he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/24/politics/bernie-sanders-rahm-emanuel/index.html
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Key Dem endorsements that Hillary has yet to lock down
By Jonathan Easley
12/26/15
Hillary Clinton has the support of nearly the entirety of the Democratic establishment, but key figures in the party are sitting on their endorsements.
President Obama, Vice President Biden, several Democratic leaders in Congress and one key union remain on the sidelines.
Still, Clinton is crushing Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the endorsements primary, claiming the support of 145 members of the House, 38 of the 46 senators who caucus with Democrats, 12 governors and 17 national union groups.
Sanders, by comparison, has only two Congressional endorsements and the backing of three labor groups.
Here’s a look at the top Democrats and liberal groups who have yet to follow the majority of the party behind Clinton.
President Obama
The White House has said Obama intends to vote in Illinois’ March 15 Democratic primary. It would be viewed as a huge snub if the president casts his ballot for anyone but Clinton.
The White House earlier this year appeared to signal that Obama’s loyalties would lie with Vice President Biden should he have entered the race.
But with Biden on the sidelines, Obama is now a free agent.
Obama and Clinton have a complicated relationship. He upset her in the 2008 race for the Democratic nomination, but rewarded her with the secretary of State position in his administration.
While it's rare for a sitting president to endorse in a competitive primary, a public endorsement during the primary would go a long way to ending any perceived chill between the two.
Vice President Biden
Biden seriously considered challenging Clinton for the nomination, but a confluence of events – including the loss of his son -- conspired to keep him on the sidelines.
During Biden’s announcement that he’d pass on a presidential run, he not only declined to announce his support for Clinton, but dinged the Democratic front-runner for a remark she made at a debate, bemoaned legacy politics and warned the candidates not to take shots at Obama’s record on the campaign trail.
If that speech is any indication, Biden could decide to stay on the sidelines and play the role of referee, watching over the proceedings and weighing in when he believes his input can influence the discourse.
But Biden ultimately takes direction from his boss, so if the head of the Democratic Party moves to back Clinton, he could follow.
Sen. Harry Reid
Back in June, Reid said he’d announce his endorsement soon. That still hasn’t happened.
Reid’s hesitance could be due to the rise of Sanders, who soon after began attracting thousands on the campaign trail and gained in the polls of early-voting states.
It could be difficult for Reid to endorse when a member of his caucus is running for president.
But Reid has spoken warmly of Clinton and has nothing to lose, as his decades-long political career will come to an end next year.
Reid could be waiting to endorse closer to the Nevada caucuses to maximize impact.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi
Pelosi has hinted strongly that she supports Clinton as the Democratic nominee.
She faces the same problem as her counterpart, Speaker Paul Ryan, insofar as it makes little political sense for the minority leader to risk offending some of her caucus members over an endorsement.
But with the majority of House Democrats already in Clinton’s camp, an endorsement for Clinton could come soon.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Progressives furiously sought to recruit Warren to challenge Clinton for the nomination, but Warren made clear from the start that she had no intention of running.
Sanders has since bottled much of that energy left by Warren’s absence, and the Massachusetts senator’s commitment to reining in Wall Street is more in line with Sanders’s message.
Still, Warren is allergic to politics, and may wait until the party decides on a nominee before throwing her weight around.
AFL-CIO
Clinton is crushing Sanders in the race for labor support, but the nation’s largest union group remains notably on the sidelines.
The Teamsters have in the past largely abstained from endorsing in presidential primaries.
But AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has spoken warmly of Sanders and Biden, before he bowed out, and Clinton has been criticized by some in the labor movement for her proximity to President Obama’s trade legislation.
Some see that as a rift, and some see it as Trumka playing hard-to-get with the Democratic front-runner, who has since backed away from the trade legislation.
Trumka has said it’s “conceivable” that his group will endorse during the primaries.
The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a candidate during a presidential primary since it backed Al Gore in 1999, early in the 2000 presidential cycle.
Gov. Jerry Brown
Hailing from the nation’s largest liberal state, Brown is the biggest name on a thin bench of influential Democratic governors.
Brown ran against Bill Clinton in the 1992 Democratic primary, and in 2010, while running for governor, he made a joke about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky that backfired.
Brown apologized and Bill Clinton later campaigned on his behalf.
But Brown was critical of Hillary Clinton over the summer when her email controversy dominated headlines, saying the former secretary of State had left the door open to a challenge from Biden.
He has otherwise spoken warmly of her, and noted that he’s never seen a Democratic candidate with such strong national support.
A primary endorsement could put the bow on that relationship.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/264190-key-dem-endorsements-elude-clinton
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Jim Webb: Hillary's Leadership on Libya 'Inept'
Saturday, 26 Dec 2015
Former Sen. Jim Webb, who dropped out of the race for president earlier this year, is accusing his party’s front-runner, Hillary Clinton, of “inept leadership” in Libya as secretary of state.
“Hillary Clinton should be called to account for her inept leadership that brought about the chaos in Libya, and the power vacuums that resulted in the rest of the region,” Webb wrote in a Facebook post Saturday.
Clinton is casting blame on everybody but herself, Webb said. She is trying to reframe the argument as a success. But he said the fall of frmer Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime has only destabilized the region. And it gave birth to ISIS, whose leader ridiculed the United States in an audio post also released Saturday.
Since dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination, Webb has continued to maintain his Webb2016 website, which he has updated with posts about the possibilities of an independent run. On Twitter, he and his fans have been promoting a #WebbNation hashtag.
A run by Webb, who often manages his own social media accounts and has also used them recently to promote a petition in favor of his run and to deliver kudos to Bernie Sanders in his battles with the Democratic National Committee ("nothing more than an arm for the Clinton campaign," Webb tweeted), could further complicate the already unpredictable 2016 election.
While observers typically have analyzed the prospect of a third-party or independent run by Republican front-runner Donald Trump — or even one from Sanders — Webb could still alter the dynamics of the race even with his smaller profile.
A recent CNN poll, for instance, forecast tight races between Clinton and several Republican contenders in hypothetical match-ups for the general election. Webb's campaign has told Bloomberg it would concentrate on mobilizing voters in the ideological middle, along with people who have become dissatisfied with politics.
In a tight race, even a small base of support could make him a factor. Ralph Nader, for instance, famously won only fractions of a percent of the vote in many states in the 2000 presidential election, yet that arguably helpedtip the Electoral College vote to then-Texas Governor George W. Bush, denying Democratic Vice President Al Gore, the winner of the popular vote, the presidency.
Webb could also get a boost from the organizers of the general election debates, who are preparing for the possibility of three candidates onstage, albeit ones who thus far, have managed to command far more support than Webb the roughly one percent of Democratic support Webb managed to muster by the time he quote the race.
There's no ensuring that Webb would be a spoiler for Clinton even as he attacks her. Although he ran as a Democrat to serve in the Senate, he is a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who also served for a time as President Reagan's secretary of the navy and has won conservative plaudits. Even Saturday's attack echoed the talking points of Republican candidates and groups.
His public statements, meanwhile, have focused economic populism and breaking the monopoly of the two-party system.
Despite the apparent escalation of his interest in an independent bid and his aides previously stated interest in making Webb's intentions known by the beginning of 2016, history suggests he could toy with voters for quite some time. Webb missed his own self-imposed deadline for getting into the Democratic race and blatantly disregarded conventional wisdom on political timing when finally declared hours before the beginning of the July 4 holiday.
In addition, the earliest state deadline for submitting signatures for an independent presidential run is April 26 in South Dakota, according to Ballot Access News. (Incidentally, the site's editor, Richard Winger, says that, in a court challenge, that date would almost certainly be declared unconstitutionally early because six states' June deadlines recently suffered that fate.) So given that most filing deadlines occur in August, Webb's post-Christmas social activity could be another trial balloon.
Craig Crawford, a top aide on the small campaign, did not immediately return request for comment on Saturday on the prospect that Webb is planning an imminent return to the race, nor did a Clinton spokesman respond to the attack.
Crawford, though, told Bloomberg in October that he has been studying the Nader playbook and that an outsider bid is easier than it was 15 years ago but still "requires a lot more multitasking."
Yet the main question was the feasibility of that multitasking, including primarily gathering signatures to get on the ballot, rather than Webb's belief in his message, Crawford added.
"Are we comfortable that there’s actually a chance to get on enough ballots to actually have a mathematical chance?" Crawford said the campaign was asking. "Jim’s not going to going to do this as a protest thing.”
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/jim-webb-clinton-leadership/2015/12/26/id/707194/#ixzz3vdQuaths
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I'm not a Biden fan, but this was pretty crafty. This was a campaign speech. I think he's out unless and until Hillary gets indicted.
Biden announces he will not run for president in 2016
Published October 21, 2015
FoxNews.com
Vice President Biden announced Wednesday he will not run for president, ending months of feverish speculation over his 2016 plans and likely settling the Democratic field.
Speaking in the Rose Garden alongside his wife Jill and President Obama, Biden said the window of opportunity to mount a viable campaign "has closed." He has been weighing a decision since summer, but cautioned all along that he and his family were grieving over the loss of his son Beau Biden -- and said Wednesday he knew that process could outlast the window for making a decision.
"Unfortunately, I believe we're out of time, the time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination," Biden said.
He added, "While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent." Biden went on to urge Democrats to run on Obama's record, while decrying the current partisanship in Washington.
The decision would appear to bolster front-runner Hillary Clinton -- whom Biden had been urged by supporters to challenge as she grappled with slipping poll numbers and a widening scandal over her email use in her capacity as secretary of state.
After Biden's remarks, Clinton tweeted:
.@VP is a good friend and a great man. Today and always, inspired by his optimism and commitment to change the world for the better. -H
Biden, though, seemed to take a parting shot Wednesday at her and other Democratic candidates, after some suggested Republicans are their enemy at last week's debate.
"I don't think we should look at Republicans as our enemy. They're the opposition," Biden said, urging lawmakers to find "consensus."
"Four more years of this kind of pitched battle may be more than this country can take," he said. "We have to change it."
According to a senior administration official, the vice president made his decision Tuesday night.
His choice is a blow to former staffers and others who were building a virtual campaign in waiting, ready to go if he decided to enter. Draft Biden, the most vocal organization urging the VP to run, put out a brief statement after his announcement: "We are so grateful for the gigantic outpouring of support from hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country in our effort to encourage the Vice President to run. While the Vice President has decided not to run, we know that over the next year he will stand up for all Americans and articulate a vision for America's future that will leave no one behind."
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that Biden's decision will hurt Democrats.
"The Vice President's decision not to enter the 2016 race is a major blow for Democrats, who now will almost certainly be saddled with their unpopular and scandal plagued front-runner Hillary Clinton," he said.
Democratic National Committee leader Debbie Wasserman Schultz, meanwhile, said she appreciates Biden's "thoughtful consideration," adding "his unwavering commitment to America's working families is a legacy each of our candidates will proudly carry forward."
Biden would have brought with him a number of potential assets to the race, including his experience as vice president and a lengthy Senate career that included a term as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has a solid rapport with the labor unions, and is famous for his down-to-earth, casual manner -- one that contributes to his frequent, off-color remarks that sometimes get him in trouble but also fill out his image as an unscripted and genuine statesman, flaws and all.
For someone who had not actually announced, Biden's poll numbers were relatively strong. In a Monmouth University poll released this week, Biden was ranking with 17 percent support among Democratic voters, compared with 21 percent for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and 48 percent for Clinton. A recent Fox News Poll found that in general election matchups, Biden would beat all the Republican frontrunners.
But family considerations and other factors surely weighed on him, including the prospect of mounting a grueling presidential run. And scrutiny on him would have increased rapidly had he entered, testing his level of public support. His long record in office also could have been used against him, specifically on foreign policy. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in his memoir that Biden was "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
Past Biden runs did not generate much support. Biden's run for the 1988 Democratic nomination fizzled, with accusations that he plagiarized a speech by then-British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. Biden also ran for the 2008 nomination, but failed to garner significant support and dropped out in January of 2008 before being chosen as the vice presidential nominee by then-Sen. Barack Obama.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/21/biden-to-speak-in-rose-garden/?intcmp=hplnws
Biden regrets not running for president 'every day'
By Jordan Fabian
January 06, 2016
Vice President Biden said Wednesday he regrets not running for president in 2016 but stressed it was ultimately the right call.
“I regret it every day, but it was the right decision for my family and for me, and I plan on staying deeply involved,” he said in an interview with NBC affiliate WVIT in Hartford, Conn.
It’s one of the first times Biden has publicly conveyed remorse about not jumping into the race to succeed President Obama.
Biden agonized over the decision for months during the late summer and early fall following the death of his son, Beau, from brain cancer.
But after road-testing his campaign message and holding dozens of meetings with advisers and family members, he chose not to run, saying it was too late to mount a viable campaign.
In a December interview with Bloomberg, the vice president said it “was the right decision,” and that he was still trying to cope with the death of his son, who died last May at 46 years of age.
“I believed I could win, but that's not enough. I know myself. And I know it takes time,” he said.
Biden has yet to endorse a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary, which pits former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D).
Biden said the tenor of the debate on the Democratic side has been much more civil than the Republican primary fight.
“On the Democratic side, it’s what I expected, there is real robust debate between Hillary and Bernie as there would have been if I had gotten in the race,” Biden said. “There have been no personal attacks ... of any consequence. It’s not a bunch of serendipity out there.”
Biden didn’t indicate he was close to backing a candidate. “We’ve got two good candidates,” he said, apparently omitting O’Malley.
The vice president did a round of local TV interviews to plug Obama’s executive actions on gun control. The Connecticut station broadcasts near Sandy Hook Elementary School, site of the 2012 mass shooting that claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.
Biden, who lost his 1-year-old daughter and first wife in a 1972 car crash, said he can empathize with the victims’ families.
"It's something that haunts you," the vice president said about the shooting. "It's the idea of those beautiful little babies in those classrooms — like dolls, discarded. If you focus on it, it’s hard not to be moved by it. It seems like yesterday."
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/265011-biden-regrets-not-running-but-calls-it-right-decision
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:o
Sanders and Wife Steered Campaign, Nonprofit Money to Family and Friends
Public records show pattern of payments to Democratic presidential candidate’s inner circle
(http://s1.freebeacon.com/up/2016/01/Sanders-wife.jpg)
Sen. Bernie Sanders and his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders / APSen. Bernie Sanders and his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders / AP
BY: Lachlan Markay
January 6, 2016
Bernie Sanders and his wife have on numerous occasions steered money from organizations under their control to friends and family members, public records show.
The payments benefitted the wife of the Democratic presidential candidate, his stepdaughter, and the son of a former colleague in city government whom Sanders has described as a close friend.
Sanders, a self-described socialist, is now running for the presidency on an anti-corruption platform, decrying public officials’ attempts to use their positions for personal financial gain.
Following 16 years as a member of the House, Sanders was elected to the Senate in 2006. His political campaigns were an early vehicle for payments to his family members.
According to Jane O’Meara Sanders, the senator’s wife, Sanders’ House campaigns paid her more than $90,000 for consulting and ad placement services from 2002 to 2004. She pocketed about $30,000 of that money.
Her daughter Carina Driscoll, Sanders’ stepdaughter, also drew a salary from the campaign. She was paid more than $65,000 between 2000 and 2004, according to her mother.
After working for the campaign, the senator’s wife would come under scrutiny for expenditures at Burlington College, where she was hired as president in 2004. While she led the school, it paid six-figure sums to her daughter and the son of a family friend.
Burlington College offered its students a study abroad program in the Caribbean, according to tax filings. It reported spending about $47,000 on that program in the tax year beginning in mid-2008.
Around that time, the son of Jonathan Leopold, a Burlington College board member, purchased a small resort in the Bahamas called Andro’s Beach Club and an accompanying hotel, Nathan’s Lodge.
Leopold served with Sanders in the Burlington city government—as mayor, Sanders appointed Leopold city treasurer—before becoming embroiled in scandal involving millions of dollars in payments to a Burlington telecommunications company.
Sen. Sanders has described Leopold as so close a friend as to be considered “family.” He reportedly discouraged Sanders’ socialist impulses early in their careers. Efforts to reach Leopold were unsuccessful.
Shortly after Leopold’s son, also named Jonathan, purchased the resort, Burlington College began writing it large checks for all-inclusive stays for its study abroad students.
The younger Leopold later said during a deposition related to a lawsuit filed by a student who was injured at the rest that he conducted boat tours and snorkeling trips “on behalf of Burlington College.”
From 2009 through 2011, when O’Meara Sanders stepped down as president of the school, it paid the resort about $68,000, according to annual tax filings. The payments stopped the year after she left the position.
Her departure was a source of controversy. She reportedly overstated pledged contributions to the school in order to secure a loan from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington. The diocese lost between $1.5 million and $2 million on the deal, according to local reports.
By that time, the school had paid huge sums to the Vermont Woodworking School, which is run by Driscoll. The college eventually paid the school more than $500,000 for classes at its Fairfax, Vt., campus, about 30 miles from Burlington.
Burlington College even established a Master of Fine Arts program in woodworking with leased space at the school as its major facility.
Tax filings show that the college continued paying the woodworking school in the year after O’Meara Sanders left, but stopped doing so the year after that.
The Sanders campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
http://freebeacon.com/politics/sanders-and-wife-steered-campaign-nonprofit-money-to-family-and-friends/
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His message doesn't really do anything for me but I gotta give Bernie Sanders some major props for what he has been able to accomplish so far.
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His message doesn't really do anything for me but I gotta give Bernie Sanders some major props for what he has been able to accomplish so far.
I agree. I think what Sanders, Trump, and Carson have done is pretty remarkable.
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I agree. I think what Sanders, Trump, and Carson have done is pretty remarkable.
Or, the ability of voters to choose solid statesmen (or women) with emotional maturity and a sense of realism is sorely lacking.
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Fox News Poll: Bernie Sanders Has 13-Point Lead in NH
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=257f28e4-515d-4249-b7a0-0c94e35bbe99&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Fox News Poll: Bernie Sanders Has 13-Point Lead in NH Bernie Sanders (Photo credit should read KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images)
By Cathy Burke
Friday, 08 Jan 2016
Sen. Bernie Sanders is crushing Democratic presidential nomination rival Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, where he dominates by 13 points, a new Fox News poll shows.
The Vermont lawmaker is polling with 50 percent support of Democratic primary voters in the Granite State, compared with Clinton's 37 percent support, according to survey results released Friday.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley comes in with 3 percent in the survey.
Latest News Update
Fox News notes the new poll shows Sanders has sharply increased his advantage over Clinton since mid-November, when he led Clinton 45-44 percent.
Sanders does well with voters under 45, who pick him over Clinton 55-31 percent, the new survey shows.
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/poll-bernie-sanders-leads-new-hampshire/2016/01/08/id/708789/#ixzz3wxVAv7uC
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Biden Praises Sanders, Dismisses Hillary
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=ce164d19-3c30-40c0-8518-78790669bd3a&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Biden Praises Sanders, Dismisses Hillary
Tuesday, 12 Jan 2016
Vice President Joe Biden described Bernie Sanders on Monday as more authentic on economic inequality than Hillary Clinton and defended Sanders' record on gun control. Weighing in on the Democratic race he almost joined, Biden said he never felt Clinton was the prohibitive favorite to win.
In an interview with CNN, Biden also disclosed that President Barack Obama offered him money when his son's health declined and made him promise not to sell his house. Beau Biden died from brain cancer last May.
Biden, who decided not to run months after his son's death, said Sanders speaks to "a yearning that is deep and real" on issues of wealth disparity and people left out of the economy. He said Sanders had credibility on the issue, but that for Clinton, the issue was relatively new.
"Hillary's focus has been other things up to now, and that's been Bernie's — no one questions Bernie's authenticity on those issues," Biden said. He went on to say people question anybody who hasn't been talking about the issue that long.
He also said Clinton, who has coalesced much of the Democratic establishment's support, had a high bar to meet as the perceived favorite to win her party's nomination.
"I never thought she was a prohibitive favorite. I don't think she ever thought she was a prohibitive favorite," said Biden, who praised Clinton at other points in the interview.
Biden's remarks offered some of the first public insight into his machinations about the 2016 race and particularly the Democratic field. Biden and Obama have not endorsed, and Obama's chief of staff has said the president won't take sides in the primary. Biden's endorsement would be highly coveted by any of the Democratic candidates.
But a campaign dispute erupted last week between Sanders and Clinton after Obama, aiming to ramp up political pressure on gun control, said he wouldn't endorse or campaign for any candidate who opposes what he described as common sense gun control. He mentioned liability for gun-makers — which Sanders voted against in 2005 — as a key issue. White House officials later noted that Sanders has said he's open to reconsidering.
"Bernie Sanders has said that he thought the president's approach is the correct approach. Bernie Sanders said that he thinks there should be liability now," Biden said. Asked whether Sanders needed to change his position to qualify for his support, Biden said no.
In the interview, Biden also revealed an offer Obama made during lunch as Biden's son, the former Delaware attorney general, was losing his ability to speak. Concerned about how his son's family would support themselves without his salary, Biden said he and his wife had discussed selling their house.
"He said, 'I'll give you the money,' " Biden recalled, referring to Obama. "Whatever you need, I'll give you the money. Don't, Joe — promise me. Promise me."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/US-DEM-2016-Biden/2016/01/12/id/709078/#ixzz3x38NUJ2U
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This was supposed to be a coronation. Amazing that she actually has to campaign when there is essentially only one candidate running against her, who is an admitted "Democratic socialist."
With the first two states in danger, Clinton goes on the attack against Sanders
Clinton challenges Sanders on gun control
By Philip Rucker and John Wagner January 12, 2016
AMES, Iowa — A newly aggressive Hillary Clinton emerged here this week and her campaign took on fresh urgency as polls suddenly showed the Democratic presidential front-runner in real danger of losing the first two primary contests to insurgent rival Bernie Sanders.
Here in Ames, Clinton launched her sharpest attacks yet by ripping into Sanders on issues such as health care and gun control. She portrayed the senator from Vermont as naive and his proposals as unrealistic — and, seeking to undermine the central argument of his candidacy, alleged that he could not be trusted to take on entrenched interests.
“If you’re going to go around saying you’ll stand up to special interests, well, stand up to the most powerful special interest — stand up to that gun lobby,” Clinton said, citing Sanders’s 2005 vote to grant immunity to gun manufacturers.
“Don’t talk to me about standing up to corporate interests and big powers,” she added. “I’ve got the scars to show for it, and I’m proud of every single one of them.”
Later Tuesday, the campaign released a new ad in which Clinton doesn’t mention Sanders by name but implicitly criticizes him by saying “it’s time to pick a side” — with or against the gun lobby. “I’m with him,” Clinton says of Obama, suggesting that Sanders is not.
Although Clinton and Sanders have been tweaking each other since the fall, the Democratic contest has been a sleepy affair compared with the rollicking Republican race. But it is coming to life ahead of a debate Sunday, the last before the Feb. 1 caucuses here.
Clinton has seemed this week to relish playing the aggressor in what she has dubbed the “let’s get real” period of the race. Sanders has been drawing contrasts, too, ticking off differences with Clinton on Social Security, energy and other policies at his rallies.
Clinton’s combative approach is part of a broader effort by her campaign and her allies to blunt Sanders’s apparent momentum. Her campaign has begun flooding Iowa and New Hampshire with a wave of surrogates that includes her husband, former president Bill Clinton; their daughter, Chelsea; Lena Dunham, the star of the HBO series “Girls”; and a troupe of female senators.
[Clinton is vulnerable in Iowa. But she may be invincible in the end.]
Clinton has also rolled out major endorsements this week designed to highlight her differences with Sanders on gun safety: Gabrielle Giffords, the former congresswoman who survived a 2011 assassination attempt in Arizona, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
The former secretary of state has tried to highlight her perceived electability, her ability to withstand Republican attacks in the general election and her readiness to occupy the Oval Office. She recalled at length in Ames her time in the White House Situation Room during the Osama bin Laden raid — “one of the most tense days of my life,” she said.
Campaign officials said they long expected the race to be close, and her organization is designed for a protracted battle well past the Super Tuesday contests in March. In Iowa specifically, the Clinton team is confident that its organizational muscle and data-driven strategy will prevail.
The Democrat most GOP candidates want to face
Stump speeches by GOP presidential candidates reveal that they’re planning for a race against Hillary Clinton in the general election. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
“Since the campaign started, we have said this race will be a competitive, tough race that would tighten and we’d have to earn the nomination,” spokesman Jesse Ferguson said. “We have built a tremendous grass-roots organization in Iowa fueled by enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton and her record that is set to compete and win.”
In New Hampshire, Sanders enjoys a home-field advantage as a neighboring senator and has been tied or leading in the polls for months. But he is showing new strength in Iowa, where Clinton’s lead appears to have vanished, and is also catching up in national surveys. A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday showed Clinton trailing Sanders here, 49 percent to 44 percent.
Despite Clinton’s frequent visits, army of community-based organizers and early investment in TV advertisements, she does not appear to have captured people’s imaginations the way Sanders has.
The crowds at his town hall meetings have swelled even beyond his campaign’s expectations. In high school gyms and community centers across the state, Sanders has been feverishly embraced by a mix of young and older voters in recent days. People wave dark-blue signs handed out by the campaign promising “A Future to Believe In,” and many leave saying they are excited about caucusing on his behalf.
[Hillary Clinton could win Iowa but still lose the battle of expectations]
Danniella Vajgrt, 33, said she had been leaning in Clinton’s direction but decided Sunday to caucus for Sanders after hearing him speak in Marshalltown.
“I’m seeing all these things broken in this nation, and these are the things he wants to fix,” said Vajgrt, who works with special-needs children and adults.
Not everyone who attended the Sanders event at a roadside Best Western was ready to commit to him, however. Elly Mack, 62, a nurse, said she was moving his way, in part because of his sincerity, but she doubts he can win the nomination. “I’m pretty sure Hillary is going to be the candidate,” Mack said. “I like her experience, but I’m just not quite there.”
Even before Christmas, some top Clinton supporters here were growing nervous, both because of Iowa’s history of volatility in the closing weeks before the caucuses and because they saw Sanders as primed for a late surge.
There have been hints of those qualms in recent fundraising appeals from Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. “I’m not trying to be dramatic about this (I swear! I’m really not!), but there’s a situation developing in Iowa and New Hampshire that could change the course of this election,” he wrote last week.
Clinton remains the favorite to secure the nomination, in part because of Sanders’s inability so far to make inroads with minority voters. But if she were to fall short in Iowa and New Hampshire, she would have to brace for a costly slog — and, should she prevail, risk entering the general election as damaged goods.
“This is going to be a long nomination process,” said Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver. “There’s no knockout blow by either candidate at the beginning of this race.”
In some quarters of the Democratic firmament this week, there have been fresh signs of uneasiness with Clinton’s candidacy. Vice President Biden, who decided against a campaign of his own last fall, praised Sanders in a CNN interview Monday and said that while “no one questions Bernie’s authenticity” on income inequality, the subject was “relatively new for Hillary to talk about.”
“I never thought she was a prohibitive favorite,” the vice president said, adding, “Everything’s sort of coming down to Earth.”
The fluid state of play in Iowa brought uncomfortable flashbacks for Clinton, who finished in a crippling third place in the 2008 caucuses. In her Ames speech, she mused about how difficult it is for a president to implement his or her ideas in Washington, however wonderful they may sound on the campaign trail. It was an implicit dig at Sanders.
[Clinton and Sanders try to erode each other’s strengths in tightening race]
“I wish we could have a Democratic president who could wave a magic wand and say, ‘We shall do this, and we shall do that,’ ” she said. “That ain’t the real world we’re living in!”
Clinton used a similar “magic wand” line in 2008 to go after then-Sen. Barack Obama, saying he was naive for thinking he could unite Washington.
She is responding to the Sanders threat by trying to tap into the goodwill Democrats here still feel toward Obama, casting herself as his rightful heir and the dependable protector of his legacy.
One of Obama’s Cabinet members, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, jetted to Waterloo on Monday to endorse Clinton. There, and again the next day in Ames, Clinton said Sanders’s single-payer, “Medicare for all” health-care proposal would jeopardize Obama’s Affordable Care Act by shifting health-care decisions to the states, many of which have Republican governors.
Addressing a few hundred Democrats on the frozen campus of Iowa State University, Clinton mocked Sanders’s mantra of a “political revolution” and said, “If that’s the kind of ‘revolution’ he’s talking about, I’m worried, folks.”
Chelsea Clinton echoed her mother at a campaign stop Tuesday in New Hampshire, saying that “Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare” and “strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.”
Sanders spokeswoman Arianna Jones said these attacks are “wrong.” Though Sanders has not released the specifics of his single-payer plan, Jones said it would provide health care to every man, woman and child, and save middle-class families $5,000 a year.
At the Brown and Black Presidential Forum on Monday in Des Moines, co-moderator Jorge Ramos, a Univision news anchor, asked Sanders if he had noticed Clinton becoming more aggressive.
“Yessssss,” the senator said, drawing out the word. “It could be that the inevitable candidate for the Democratic nomination may not be so inevitable today.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-the-first-two-states-in-danger-clinton-goes-on-the-attack-against-sanders/2016/01/12/f5f0f552-b958-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_story.html
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“Don’t talk to me about standing up to corporate interests and big powers,” she added. “I’ve got the scars to show for it, and I’m proud of every single one of them.”
Anyone know wtf she's talking about?
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I'm on the verge of thinking she might be in trouble with Sanders. How crazy is that?
The Nation’s endorsement of Bernie Sanders is really about rejecting Hillary Clinton (again)
By Callum Borchers
January 14, 2016
(https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/11/16/Foreign/Images/Was8982190.jpg&w=1484)
The Nation's endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont over Hillary Clinton reflects progressives' concerns about the former secretary of state's authenticity. (AFP Photo/Mandel Nganmandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
In Thursday’s glowing endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the liberal Nation magazine notes that now only three times in its 150-year history has its preference for one Democratic candidate over the rest been strong enough to warrant support during the primary phase of a presidential election. Two of the three instances share something in common, though: rejection of Hillary Clinton.
The Nation didn’t put it quite so bluntly, but it’s hard to view this rare move as anything but an anti-Clinton double whammy. In Democratic primaries, the magazine has endorsed Jesse Jackson in 1988, Barack Obama (over Clinton) in 2008, and now Sanders.
A single endorsement isn’t make-or-break, of course. And that's especially as the Nation -- once clearly the leading liberal magazine in the country -- doesn't carry the weight it once did, and as diminishing trust in the media makes the influence of endorsements, in general, questionable at best.
But the Nation’s case for Sanders shouldn’t be viewed as an attempt to convince voters of his superior qualifications so much as a frightening (for Clinton) reflection of the way many liberals already feel. In short, the Nation — like the growing number of Democratic voters who back Sanders — isn’t satisfied by Clinton’s claim to be a “progressive who likes to get things done.”
Her approach, the Nation, contends “will not bring the change that is so desperately needed.”
Clinton is open to raising the Social Security retirement age, instead of increasing the woefully inadequate benefits. She rejects single-payer healthcare and refuses to consider breaking up the big banks. We also fear that she might accept a budgetary “grand bargain” with the Republicans that would lock in austerity for decades to come.
That’s only an excerpt from what is a pretty lengthy Clinton critique embedded in the Sanders endorsement. The Nation also finds numerous faults in Clinton’s foreign policy record, including her vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, her promotion of regime change in the Middle East and her support for a no-fly zone in Syria.
The magazine spent far less time on Clinton in its Obama endorsement eight years ago, but the objections it raised back then appear to have gotten stronger.
Obama has also exhibited a more humane and wise approach to foreign policy, opposing the Iraq War while Clinton voted for it, and has been a reliable progressive ally over the course of his career.
“Reliable progressive ally” — that’s really the key test here. What the Nation is saying, without actually saying it outright, is that Clinton simply hasn’t been one.
The Nation’s endorsement of Sanders isn’t isolated, either. MoveOn.org announced its endorsement of the democratic socialist on Tuesday, reporting that 79 percent of its progressive membership supports him. And Democracy for America, a liberal political action committee, endorsed Sanders in December, after the senator finished on top of a membership poll with what the group described as “an astonishing, record-breaking 87.9 percent of the vote.”
The theme is clear: progressive purists are skeptical of Clinton.
Even the White House — through occasionally-too-honest Vice President Joe Biden — appeared to cast doubt on Clinton’s liberal authenticity this week. Discussing income inequality on CNN, Biden remarked that Sanders “has credibility on it.” Meanwhile, “it’s relatively new for Hillary to talk about that,” Biden said.
“Hillary’s focus has been other things up to now, and that’s been Bernie’s — no one questions Bernie’s authenticity on those issues," Biden said.
Clinton need not be alarmed by the Nation’s snub, per se. But she ought to be worried about the broader sentiment that the magazine’s endorsement of Sanders signifies. And Sanders's improving prospects in Iowa suggest a growing movement of which the Nation is now a part.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/14/the-nations-endorsement-of-bernie-sanders-is-really-about-rejecting-hillary-clinton-again/
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Wouldn't it be the funniest thing to see Trump against Ssnders? Trump would be forced into committing himself to specific ideas.
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Wouldn't it be the funniest thing to see Trump against Ssnders? Trump would be forced into committing himself to specific ideas.
Would be bigger victory than Reagan over Mondale 50 - 0
Sanders is a senile commy.
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Would be bigger victory than Reagan over Mondale 50 - 0
Sanders is a senile commy.
Think I heard one of the clowns say something like that in the last debate, but referring to any one of them on stage as the winner.
I'm not sure of that, by any stretch.
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would love to see clinton lose to sanders.
still, i have to bet on the most evil MFer in the room. I bet on Clinton. She'll make up dirt, etc.
And she'll do well in states not called iowa (where they hate her lies) and NH (bernie is from VT)
IN Cali, Florida, texas, the south... all those redneck places... bernie won't win. ESPECIALLY with Trump calling bernie a commie (doing his wedding buddy Hilary's dirty work for her ;) )
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Would be bigger victory than Reagan over Mondale 50 - 0
Sanders is a senile commy.
Actually it was 50-1...Mondale won Minnesota
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would love to see clinton lose to sanders.
still, i have to bet on the most evil MFer in the room. I bet on Clinton. She'll make up dirt, etc.
And she'll do well in states not called iowa (where they hate her lies) and NH (bernie is from VT)
IN Cali, Florida, texas, the south... all those redneck places... bernie won't win. ESPECIALLY with Trump calling bernie a commie (doing his wedding buddy Hilary's dirty work for her ;) )
If Bernie created a real threat for her, and she thought she could get a clean hit on him, I've no doubt she'd do it.
Thing is, though, if Bernie stood a chance, he'd probably have dozens of people from all sides looking to turn him into a daisy patch.
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Link to the fifth debate:
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everyone LOVES a close race. But the dem race is NOT one.
Iowa is a state full of highly religious farmers... they hate clinton cause she's pure evil.
NH is Bernie's neighbor and uber liberals.
In the REST of the country, CLinton is going to wreck him. I still think she squeaks out wins in BOTH Iowa and NH... cheat her ass off on election day. She's leading by 25 points nationally. SHe's gonna win. Don't buy into the bullshit narrative.
(Then she wins/loses by 40 states against Trump)
OR
If brokered convention, Jeb steals the nomination and beats clinton in the general election.
I've been pretty good at predictions so far - Cruz was my #1 conservative and I always said the peons will go to their daddy Trump and hand him the nomination. :( I called Rubio a rookie, I called Carson a clueless dumbass selling a book. I called Trump a dem plant too...
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everyone LOVES a close race. But the dem race is NOT one.
Iowa is a state full of highly religious farmers... they hate clinton cause she's pure evil.
NH is Bernie's neighbor and uber liberals.
In the REST of the country, CLinton is going to wreck him. I still think she squeaks out wins in BOTH Iowa and NH... cheat her ass off on election day. She's leading by 25 points nationally. SHe's gonna win. Don't buy into the bullshit narrative.
(Then she wins/loses by 40 states against Trump)
OR
If brokered convention, Jeb steals the nomination and beats clinton in the general election.
I've been pretty good at predictions so far - Cruz was my #1 conservative and I always said the peons will go to their daddy Trump and hand him the nomination. :( I called Rubio a rookie, I called Carson a clueless dumbass selling a book. I called Trump a dem plant too...
Agreed. Clinton is part of a machine, and Bernie isn't.
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i'd love to see hilary lose. but she will not. sadly, it's a nation of peons that vote based on looks. Bernie doesn't have the looks to be president.
I still think a DNC convention with hilary legal troubles and berbie being crazy... the repubs intro a biden/warren or warren/general or something like that. Energize the base + military credibility OR sympathy for uncle joe + fake indian warren... either way, the dems would be so excited about a ticket like that.
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Actually it was 50-1...Mondale won Minnesota
My apologies...it was 49-1....there are only 50 states...surprised no one caught that...but this IS getbig ;D
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My apologies...it was 49-1....there are only 50 states...surprised no one caught that...but this IS getbig ;D
The person calling people stupid strikes again. lol ;D
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The person calling people stupid strikes again. lol ;D
Busted! ;)
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My apologies...it was 49-1....there are only 50 states...surprised no one caught that...but this IS getbig ;D
We knew what you meant.
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Democratic "Town Hall" Tonight!!
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These things are scripted up the ass. Don't be fooled by the "style" they claim.
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Bernie finally getting his introduction in after all this time running, but he should have gone about it differently IMO.
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Bernie finally getting his introduction in after all this time running, but he should have gone about it differently IMO.
I'm depending on you to tell me whats going on..I'm not watching
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Bernie always sounds like he's preaching to the choir, but I don't think that's what this is about. I think it's a huge mistake to do that. He shouldn't use that as his default mode for damn sure.
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I'm depending on you to tell me whats going on..I'm not watching
Only one I like is Bernie. Other guy doesn't have the material, and Hillary is just too untruthful.. I can't even listen to her say anything, because it's such a waste of energy. She's out to screw us over, acting as an agent for the wealthy, and that's all I need to know.
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Interesting format. I like it. I like the way they have a chance to try to explain themselves.
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O'Malley just babbles along like the typical politician. He'd get pushed around like a chump in that office.
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These candidates talk about "fixing the wage problem in this country", but that will require proper trade agreements. That means putting up your dukes against the richest people in this world. Bernie is the only one who will acknowledge and claim it.
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O'Malley loves to pretend he has a chance in Hell.
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Not listening to Hillary. Lies are cheap, can hear them anywhere.
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I will say, though, she may be drunk.
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Made the mistake of tuning in for a second, only to find Hillary telling us we need to quit "bullying" the Muslims in our country.
::) ::) ::)
Anyone know of any Muslims being bullied?
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We need to do everything we can to keep this woman AWAY from our White House.
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This bitch is crazy, I swear. Did anyone catch if she answered anything on the email issue?
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We need to do everythihg we can to keep this woman AWAY from our White House.
Imagine a fresh faced Rubio or Walker running against Hilary.
Instead, we'll have 70 year old reality TV star and brown people hater.
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i just turned it on now. she's fumbling. "look...."
the repub field is so stacked, and getting undermined by trump and blind base hate.
the dem field is so weak and thin.
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i just turned it on now. she's fumbling. "look...."
the repub field is so stacked, and getting undermined by trump and blind base hate.
the dem field is so weak and thin.
;D
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This bitch is crazy, I swear. Did anyone catch if she answered anything on the email issue?
Good job on the running commentary....thanks!
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Good job on the running commentary....thanks!
Who are you for in this election, Andre?
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Who are you for in this election, Andre?
I don't know....but Hillary seems to be the default candidate because she sounds the most reasonable.....Bernie is way out there and so is Cruz and Trump.....I would have probably voted for Jeb if he hadn't flamed out...I voted for his father and his brother...I have trust issues with Hillary like everyone else but I DO TRUST her experience and judgment in foreign matters.......I don't know much about Bernie in that regard.....I would have even voted for Trump because I am quite familiar with him here in New York...but it is very apparent to me that he knows absolutely nothing about the world
Hillary's email problems are a real turn-off for me and I wonder if she will be indicted???????
Bernie's socialist message is appealing however.....especially in terms of healthcare, wages, and college.
I guess its Hillary for me so far..unless Jeb makes an unlikely comeback
how about you?
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I don't know....but Hillary seems to be the default candidate because she sounds the most reasonable.....Bernie is way out there and so is Cruz and Trump.....I would have probably voted for Jeb if he hadn't flamed out...I voted for his father and his brother...I have trust issues with Hillary like everyone else but I DO TRUST her experience and judgment in foreign matters.......I don't know much about Bernie in that regard.....I would have even voted for Trump because I am quite familiar with him here in New York...but it is very apparent to me that he knows absolutely nothing about the world
Hillary's email problems are a real turn-off for me and I wonder if she will be indicted???????
Bernie's socialist message is appealing however.....especially in terms of healthcare, wages, and college.
I guess its Hillary for me so far..unless Jeb makes an unlikely comeback
Hillary or Jeb. I'll say, that's a first for me. But I'd bet there are a lot of people with that same idea. Easy customers, I suppose.
how about you?
With Trump not detailing anything, I'm left with no other option but Sanders.
Sanders knows we need trade agreements that will protect us and he also knows we need to audit the Fed. That alone sets him apart from everyone else running with the possible exception of Trump.
Sanders also appears to have a tendency to want to tell the truth, which again sets him apart.
And it's funny, but all the things people complain about within the system (and it's been happening in high gear) are exactly what Bernie is addressing.
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Hillary or Jeb. I'll say, that's a first for me. But I'd bet there are a lot of people with that same idea. Easy customers, I suppose.
With Trump not detailing anything, I'm left with no other option but Sanders.
Sanders knows we need trade agreements that will protect us and he also knows we need to audit the Fed. That alone sets him apart from everyone else running with the possible exception of Trump.
Sanders also appears to have a tendency to want to tell the truth, which again sets him apart.
And it's funny, but all the things people complain about within the system (and it's been happening in high gear) are exactly what Bernie is addressing.
I agree with you on this....but I can't see the Republicans laying down for Sanders or Clinton if they are elected...they absolutely detest Hillary and Sanders is way left of Obama.....looks like more years of acrimonious government
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I agree with you on this....but I can't see the Republicans laying down for Sanders or Clinton if they are elected...they absolutely detest Hillary and Sanders is way left of Obama.....looks like more years of acrimonious government
What things would you say make the dividing line between Hillary and Republicans?
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What things would you say make the dividing line between Hillary and Republicans?
They simply despise her....some of it has to do with jealousy....(just like many were jealous of the Kennedys)....it also has to do with the Republicans not being able to get the Clintons in the Lewinsky Scandal or Whitewater
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Quinnipiac Poll: Sanders 49, Hillary 45
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=18e6e14b-b30b-4494-8c97-5b1cb1de9b52&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Quinnipiac Poll: Sanders 49, Hillary 45
Wednesday, 27 Jan 2016
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading Hillary Clinton 49 to 45 percent in Iowa, with Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley taking 4 percent, a new Quinnipiac University poll finds.
The poll puts the two frontrunners in a statistical tie, with the poll's margin of error at +/- 4 percent.
The results mirror a January 12 survey, the pollsters said.
However, there is room for surprises in Iowa. Some 2 percent of likely Democratic voters are undecided and 19 percent of those who name a candidate say they might change their mind.
The poll shows:
The gender gap remains as men back Sanders 63 – 32 percent, while women back Clinton 54 – 40 percent.
Likely Democratic Caucus participants 18 to 44 years old back Sanders over Clinton 78 – 21 percent.
Clinton is ahead 53 – 39 percent among voters 45 to 64 years old and 71 – 21 percent among voters over 65 years old.
“Perhaps more than other contests, the Iowa caucuses are all about turnout. If those young, very liberal Democratic Caucus participants show up Monday and are organized, it will be a good night for Sen. Sanders,” Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll said. “And if Sanders does win Iowa, that could keep a long-shot nomination scenario alive.”
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/sanders-tops-hillary-iowa/2016/01/27/id/711230/#ixzz3yT597LpV
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Democratic Presidential Candidates Get Chance for 7th Debate
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=d500787f-ed07-4817-ba4a-28cb8a5544af&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Democratic Presidential Candidates Get Chance for 7th Debate
Tuesday, 26 Jan 2016
A U.S. news channel and a newspaper will host a debate for the Democratic presidential contenders in New Hampshire a few days before the state's primary election, but it remained unclear whether the party will relax its rule banning candidates from non-sanctioned debates.
The news channel MSNBC and the New Hampshire Union Leader will hold the debate on Feb. 4 in New Hampshire, the second state in the nation to vote for parties' presidential nominees following the Iowa caucuses on Monday, the Union Leader said on its website on Tuesday.
But the Democratic National Committee (DNC) raised doubts about whether it would proceed, saying in a statement it had no plans to sanction this debate. It left open the question of whether it would punish any participants by excluding them from the remaining two sanctioned ones.
Spokesmen for Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who leads most polls, and Martin O'Malley, a former Maryland governor, said their candidates would be happy to take part, at least in theory.
"Hillary Clinton would be happy to participate in a debate in New Hampshire if the other candidates agree, which would allow the DNC to sanction the debate," Jennifer Palmieri, a Clinton spokeswoman, said in a statement.
A spokesman for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont did not respond to a request for comment.
Both Sanders and O'Malley have criticized the DNC for organizing a relatively skimpy debate schedule.
The DNC scheduled only six debates for its 2016 candidates, and, contrary to its practice in previous election years, forbade candidates from taking part in debates not sanctioned by the party. There were 25 Democratic primary debates in 2008 and 15 in 2004, both sanctioned and unsanctioned.
DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has dismissed criticisms from within her party that she organized relatively few debates and scheduled them at times when viewership might be lower than average in order to protect former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's position as the long-standing front-runner for the nomination.
Special: Halle Berry Shocks World With New Look and 27 Year old Man
Sanders has recently been drawing near or even, overtaking Clinton in some opinion polls as the first voting draws near, beginning with caucuses in Iowa on Feb. 1 and the New Hampshire election on Feb. 9.
"We have no plans to sanction any further debates before the upcoming First in the Nation caucuses and primary," Wasserman Schultz said in a statement, "but will reconvene with our campaigns after those two contests to review our schedule."
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/democratic-debate-msnbc-new/2016/01/26/id/711142/#ixzz3yT5ReZpH
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One thing's for sure, no one is ever going to uncover any dirt on this Bernie Sanders. His superpower is complete honesty, and that's probably kind of scary to his enemies. They know they can never confront him on his character and will always have to settle for disagreeing with him on issues. And, of course, misrepresenting him.
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One thing's for sure, no one is ever going to uncover any dirt on this Bernie Sanders. His superpower is complete honesty, and that's probably kind of scary to his enemies. They know they can never confront him on his character and will always have to settle for disagreeing with him on issues. And, of course, misrepresenting him.
Nice thought. But don't count on it.
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Nice thought. But don't count on it.
I'm still waiting for some guy to come out and say Bernie molested him 35 years ago
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'This is a lie': Sanders lashes out at 'negative' attacks, Clinton camp
Published January 28, 2016
FoxNews.com
Bernie Sanders lashed out at Hillary Clinton’s allies – and threw in Donald Trump for good measure – during a heated breakfast session with reporters in Des Moines Thursday, countering an array of allegations from the Clinton camp while claiming he’ll win the Iowa caucuses if turnout is large.
The Democratic presidential candidate, who is running almost even with Clinton in most Iowa polls, got animated when he was asked by a Bloomberg Politics journalist about Clinton camp whispers that out-of-state young people may try to show up to caucus.
Sanders reacted with disbelief, and demanded to know the source of the charge.
“I don't want my integrity and honesty to be impugned,” he said. “This is a lie, an absolute lie. Okay? We will win, or we'll lose -- we do it honestly. I really dislike people suggesting, what? We're going to bring in students from out of state, who are going to perjure themselves by saying they live in Iowa?”
It’s unclear where such a charge originated, though there have been reports about young Sanders supporters organizing online to bring out-of-state volunteers to Iowa – not to caucus, but to knock on doors and help the Sanders cause.
Sanders complained Thursday about the “negative” attacks being leveled against him, and pushed back on Clinton camp claims that his own campaign has turned negative.
“Donald Trump is a pathological liar!” he exclaimed, and claimed he had just stated a fact so it’s not a negative statement.
He also repeated criticism he voiced the night before about Clinton flying to Philadelphia Wednesday for a fundraiser with financial industry figures.
The comments come as the Sanders camp reportedly weighs whether to in fact launch a tough attack ad against Clinton in the closing days of the Iowa caucus race.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the campaign has two ads ready to go – one, a positive spot; the other, an attack on Clinton’s Wall Street ties.
The Times report already is being used as a fundraising tool by the Clinton campaign, which is accusing Sanders of considering going back on past pledges not to run negative ads.
Hillary for America Iowa State Director Matt Paul, in a statement Thursday, described the potential plan as a “last-minute sneak attack from the Sanders campaign” meant to “plaster the Iowa airwaves in the days before the caucus with negative ads slamming Hillary Clinton.”
Sanders on Thursday continued to assert that the party brass are lined up against him. Asked if the establishment is starting to “tilt” away from him, he mocked the question.
"Tilt? Did you say tilt?" Sanders asked, adding that "of course the establishment is for Secretary Clinton."
Polls show Sanders and Clinton locked in a tight race for Iowa on Monday, while Sanders enjoys a comfortable margin atop most polls in New Hampshire, which votes the following week.
Thursday’s breakfast was hosted by Bloomberg Politics
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/01/28/this-is-lie-sanders-lashes-out-at-negative-attacks-clinton-camp.html?intcmp=hpbt3
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I'm still waiting for some guy to come out and say Bernie molested him 35 years ago
Impossible.
Bernie is a democrat, remember?
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Impossible.
Bernie is a democrat, remember?
I forgot that homosexual scandals are lately the exclusive domain of the Republicans.......apolog ies :o
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I forgot that homosexual scandals are lately the exclusive domain of the Republicans.......apolog ies :o
I was referring to the whole 'being a diaper sniper' thing.
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I was referring to the whole 'being a diaper sniper' thing.
;D
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Amazing that delegates were awarded based on coin flips.
Sometimes, Iowa Democrats award caucus delegates with a coin flip
Jason Noble, jnoble2@dmreg.com
February 2, 2016
In a handful of Democratic caucus precincts Monday, a delegate was awarded with a coin toss.
It happened in precinct 2-4 in Ames, where supporters of candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton disputed the results after 60 caucus participants apparently disappeared from the proceedings.
As a result of the coin toss, Clinton was awarded an additional delegate, meaning she took five of the precinct’s eight, while Sanders received three.
Similar situations played out at various precincts across the state, but had an extremely small effect on the overall outcome, in which Clinton won 49.9 percent of statewide delegate equivalents, while Sanders won 49.5 percent. The delegates that were decided by coin flips were delegates to the party's county conventions, of which there are thousands selected across the state from 1,681 separate precincts. They were not the statewide delegate equivalents that are reported in the final results.
The statewide delegate equivalents that determine the outcome on caucus night are derived from the county-level delegates, but are aggregated across the state and weighted in a manner that makes individual county delegate selections at a handful of precincts count for a tiny fraction of the ultimate result.
Here’s what happened in Ames, according to David Schweingruber, an associate professor of sociology at Iowa State University (and Sanders supporter) who participated in the caucus:
A total of 484 eligible caucus attendees were initially recorded at the site. But when each candidate’s preference group was counted, Clinton had 240 supporters, Sanders had 179 and Martin O’Malley had five (causing him to be declared non-viable).
Those figures add up to just 424 participants, leaving 60 apparently missing. When those numbers were plugged into the formula that determines delegate allocations, Clinton received four delegates and Sanders received three — leaving one delegate unassigned.
Unable to account for that numerical discrepancy and the orphan delegate it produced, the Sanders campaign challenged the results and precinct leaders called a Democratic Party hot line set up to advise on such situations.
Party officials recommended they settle the dispute with a coin toss.
A Clinton supporter correctly called “heads” on a quarter flipped in the air, and Clinton received a fifth delegate.
Similar situations were reported elsewhere, including at a precinct in Des Moines, at another precinct in Des Moines, in Newton, in West Branch and in Davenport. In all five situations, Clinton won the toss.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2016/02/02/sometimes-iowa-democrats-award-caucus-delegates-coin-flip/79680342/
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Sanders rally chant: 'She's a liar!'
By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI
02/01/16
(http://static2.politico.com/dims4/default/51fc365/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F12%2Fd8%2F14071cac44c8a2642e1e7eb030bb%2F160201-bernie-sanders-supporter-gty-1160.jpg)
DES MOINES, Iowa — The room at Bernie Sanders' rally here turned ice cold when Hillary Clinton's speech took over the televisions here.
The crowd booed loudly at first, then cheered when the sound cut out. The sound soon returned and Clinton was drowned out by further boos when she said "I'm a progressive who gets things done."
It escalated from there: Chants of "She's a liar!" took over the room before the campaign just entirely shut off the stream, cutting away from MSNBC entirely.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/iowa-caucus-2016-live-updates/2016/02/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-liar-218599#ixzz3z23wbwcj
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She did look a little crazy during her speech.
(VIDEO) Hillary's Angry, Death-Stare 'Victory' Speech in Iowa
BY STEPHEN KRUISER FEBRUARY 1, 2016
(https://pajamasmed.hs.llnwd.net/e1/election/user-content/49/files/2016/02/Hillary-Iowa.sized-770x415xt.jpg)
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
As recently as December, Bernie Sanders was trailing Hillary Clinton by nearly 20 points in Iowa. He now finds himself in a "virtual tie" with Granny Pander after the first contest of this primary that seems like it's been going on since the early days of the republic.
Guess who's not amused?
In what can't really be called a "victory" speech, Mrs. Clinton seemed anything but pleased that her coronation isn't proceeding apace. Eyes flashing and scowling, the once-presumptive Democratic favorite's words didn't really match her demeanor:
https://pjmedia.com/election/2016/02/01/video-hillarys-angry-death-stare-victory-speech-in-iowa/
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Clinton on $675G Goldman Sachs speech fee: 'That's what they offered'
Published February 04, 2016
FoxNews.com
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton proved Wednesday to be unabashed about accepting millions of dollars in speaking fees from Wall Street firms amid an increasingly competitive race with self-proclaimed "democratic socialist" Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
At a CNN town hall in Derry, N.H., moderator Anderson Cooper asked the former secretary of state, "Did you have to be paid $675,000?", a reference to her fees for three speeches to Goldman Sachs. Clinton responded, "I don't know. That's what they offered."
Clinton went on to say that she accepted the Goldman money after she left the State Department in 2013, when, as she put it, "I wasn't committed to running" for president. An Associated Press analysis of public disclosure forms and records released by her campaign found that Clinton made $9 million from appearances sponsored by banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, private equity firms and real estate businesses.
Clinton made her comments amid an ongoing battle with Sanders over their respective progressive credentials following Clinton's narrow victory in Monday's Iowa Caucuses.
“I don’t know any progressive who has a super PAC and takes $15 million from Wall Street,” said Sanders, whose campaign has been driven by modest contributions and has risen in the polls on his promise of more equality for the middle class.
For her part, Clinton dismissed criticism that she’s not a true progressive and is part of the political establishment.
“I’m not going to let that bother me. I know where I stand,” said Clinton, who argued that the Sanders campaign tagging her as an establishment candidate because she was endorsed by Planned Parenthood was “inappropriate.”
“I am a progressive who gets things done,” Clinton added, before wondering aloud how Sanders came to be a progressive “gatekeeper.” She also disagreed with several aspects of Sanders’ platform, questioning his call for a "political revolution" and his plan to provide universal health care through expanding Medicare. Clinton has said she wants to improve on ObamaCare, not dismantle it.
Despite their philosophical disagreements, both Democratic candidates were in harmony on wanting to keep Republicans out of the White House.
"These guys play for keeps,” Clinton said, while Sanders reserved most of his GOP-related ire for Donald Trump.
“Everybody in this room doesn’t want a right-wing Republican in the White House,” he said. “I want Trump to win the nomination. And frankly, I think we could win against him.”
Though Sanders is running an insurgent campaign, he cited his time on Capitol Hill to answer questions about whether Congress would approve some of his campaign promises and whether Democrats or Republicans better serve veterans.
“I have a history of working with Republicans when there was common ground,” Sanders said, pointing out that he was a member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. However, Sanders acknowledged that he and other members of Congress “should have done better” recognizing and fixing problems with patient care at VA facilities.
Clinton and Sanders agreed on the need to stop the ISIS terror group with the help of a coalition of nations, including Middle Eastern allies. Sanders continued to trumpet his opposition to the war in Iraq, which critics say led to the rise of ISIS. Clinton, who voted to authorize the Iraq War, said Wednesday, “I did make a mistake" in doing so.
Clinton also acknowledged she must do more to appeal to young people -- a voting bloc Sanders won handily in Iowa, saying “I accept the fact that I have work to … convey what I want to do for young people ... They don't have to be for me. I will be for them."
Clinton and Sanders won't clash face-to-face until Thursday's debate at the University of New Hampshire. On Wednesday, each answered about an hour’s worth of questions from voters and moderator Cooper.
Most polls have Sanders holding a substantial lead over Clinton in New Hampshire. The most recent Fox News poll, from late January, shows the Vermont senator with a 22-point cushion.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/02/04/clinton-on-675g-goldman-sachs-speech-fee-thats-what-offered.html?intcmp=hpbt3
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She did look a little crazy during her speech.
(VIDEO) Hillary's Angry, Death-Stare 'Victory' Speech in Iowa
BY STEPHEN KRUISER FEBRUARY 1, 2016
(https://pajamasmed.hs.llnwd.net/e1/election/user-content/49/files/2016/02/Hillary-Iowa.sized-770x415xt.jpg)
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
As recently as December, Bernie Sanders was trailing Hillary Clinton by nearly 20 points in Iowa. He now finds himself in a "virtual tie" with Granny Pander after the first contest of this primary that seems like it's been going on since the early days of the republic.
Guess who's not amused?
In what can't really be called a "victory" speech, Mrs. Clinton seemed anything but pleased that her coronation isn't proceeding apace. Eyes flashing and scowling, the once-presumptive Democratic favorite's words didn't really match her demeanor:
https://pjmedia.com/election/2016/02/01/video-hillarys-angry-death-stare-victory-speech-in-iowa/
lol
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I doubt Hillary's possible indictment will change this.
Bernie Sanders Has a Superdelegate Problem
Hillary Clinton has already amassed an overwhelming lead among Democratic Party elites.
Anthony L. Fisher|
Feb. 2, 2016
Hillary Clinton at last night's Iowa caucuses will put significant wind at his back in his quest to win the Democratic presidential nomination from the long-time presumptive front-runner. But even if Sanders keeps the race close while amassing delegates in upcoming primaries, Clinton's advantage with superdelegates is formidable and much larger than the early lead she held over her competitors in 2008.
Superdelegates are party elites who comprise about 20 percent of the delegates required to secure a nomination, and are free to vote for whomever they wish regardless of primary results. During the bruising Democratic primary eight years ago, Clinton insisted to the bitter end that with the support of superdelegates she had the math on her side to defeat Barack Obama.
(https://d1jn4vzj53eli5.cloudfront.net/mc/afisher/2016_02/superdelegates.png?h=335&w=700)
The Associated Press noted that in December 2007, Clinton enjoyed the support of 163 superdelegates, ahead of Obama's 63, former Senator John Edwards' 34, and 54 superdelegates pledged to other candidates.
This time around, Clinton has the pledged support of 359 superdelegates, while Sanders has only 8, an advantage of 45 to 1. On rare occasions, superdelegates have changed their minds before the convention, but Bernie's deliberately outsider candidacy makes this a much less likely proposition.
NPR's Domenico Montanaro explains:
The Clintons have a deep history with Democratic Party politics — Bill, of course, being a former president.
Sanders, on the other hand, has never been a registered Democrat and does not have the kind of party roots that the Clintons have. That has made it very difficult for Sanders to break through with the party elite.
Sanders would argue that the elites and the "status quo" are what's wrong with Washington.
It's their party — and they'll pick the nominee they want. But Sanders hopes to overcome the elite with grass-roots energy.
These numbers show just how much of a hole he starts in.
Even though Obama was a first-term senator when he began his presidential run in 2007, he already had the private support of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and would win the coveted endorsement of "liberal lion" Sen. Ted Kennedy before the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. The upstart candidate had a long way to go to chisel into Clinton's establishment advantage, but he already had amassed some big guns.
It remains to be seen if the democratic socialist senator from Vermont, who takes great pride in being the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress, can get Democratic party bigwigs to believe in his "revolution."
http://reason.com/blog/2016/02/02/bernie-sanders-superdelegate-problem
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Bernie is running against The Machine of Destruction.
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i started a thread on this months ago. Hilary has already won this nomination. All of this bernie shit is just a distraction
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i started a thread on this months ago. Hilary has already won this nomination. All of this bernie shit is just a distraction
It would take an extraordinary chain of events, which probably would have started with an Iowa win -- which didn't happen, of course.
We know Bloomberg (and more, probably) are ready to jump in if Bernie, for any reason, takes the nomination. The wealthy people are standing by, ready to be scared of him if necessary.
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i started a thread on this months ago. Hilary has already won this nomination. All of this bernie shit is just a distraction
::)
Dumbest statement ever.
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It would take an extraordinary chain of events, which probably would have started with an Iowa win -- which didn't happen, of course.
We know Bloomberg (and more, probably) are ready to jump in if Bernie, for any reason, takes the nomination. The wealthy people are standing by, ready to be scared of him if necessary.
Iowa was a tie. There is no "win". Its a matter of collecting delegates and the overall nomination. .3 percent difference is hardly any difference.
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::)
Dumbest statement ever.
i'd love to see clinton lose. but iowa is religious (tied) and they hate her there. Bernie is from VT and he's gonna win NH.
Everywhere else, she's gonna soundly beat him.
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Iowa was a tie. There is no "win". Its a matter of collecting delegates and the overall nomination. .3 percent difference is hardly any difference.
Way to think positively. Sounds good to me!
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i'd love to see clinton lose. but iowa is religious (tied) and they hate her there. Bernie is from VT and he's gonna win NH.
Everywhere else, she's gonna soundly beat him.
I don't think you have thought this out quite yet.
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I don't think you have thought this out quite yet.
The main reasoning I've heard about what 240 says, is that it's because Bernie is a Jew. Saying he'll get destroyed in the South and other places.
But will that really have an effect on those who'd otherwise vote for Hillary? I don't know that it's necessarily true.
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The main reasoning I've heard about what 240 says, is that it's because Bernie is a Jew. Saying he'll get destroyed in the South and other places.
But will that really have an effect on those who'd otherwise vote for Hillary? I don't know that it's necessarily true.
Its not true at all. Jews are beloved in the South. Especially the atheist Jews. ;)
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Its not true at all. Jews are beloved in the South. Especially the atheist Jews. ;)
It doesn't make sense that the voters in question would act against someone for that, no. I agree.
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Next debate = February 11
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Link to the New Hampshire debate:
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Current delegate count:
Hillary: 394
Sanders: 42
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Current delegate count:
Hillary: 394
Sanders: 42
You are counting Superdelegates who pledge their support to whomever wins the Primary?
Why would you automatically put them for Clinton? ???
Makes no sense.
You need to look at the delegates won so far, Bernie is ahead. Superdelegates only pledge after there is a nominee.
Did you not realize this?
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You are counting Superdelegates who pledge their support to whomever wins the Primary?
Why would you automatically put them for Clinton? ???
Makes no sense.
You need to look at the delegates won so far, Bernie is ahead. Superdelegates only pledge after there is a nominee.
Did you not realize this?
Did you not realize a number of superdelegates have already pledged support for Hillary?
After Crushing Defeat, DNC Quirk Still Gives Hillary More New Hampshire Delegates Than Sanders
Derek Hunter, Contributor
02/10/2016
Though Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary in a landslide over Hillary Clinton, he will likely receive fewer delegates than she will.
Sanders won 60 percent of the vote, but thanks to the Democratic Party’s nominating system, he leaves the Granite State with at least 13 delegates while she leaves with at least 15 delegates.
New Hampshire has 24 “pledged” delegates, which are allotted based on the popular vote. Sanders has 13, and Clinton has 9, with 2 currently allotted to neither.
But under Democratic National Committee rules, New Hampshire also has 8 “superdelegates,” party officials who are free to commit to whomever they like, regardless of how their state votes. Their votes count the same as delegates won through the primary.
New Hampshire has 8 superdelegates, 6 of which are committed to Hillary Clinton, giving her a total of 15 delegates from New Hampshire as of Wednesday at 9 a.m.
The state’s 2 remaining superdelegates remain uncommitted.
In the overall delegate count, Clinton holds a commanding lead after a razor-thin victory in Iowa and a shellacking in New Hampshire. Clinton has 394 delegates, both super and electorally assigned, to only 42 for Sanders.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/10/hillary-earns-more-new-hampshire-delegates-than-sanders-after-loss/#ixzz3zoJzM6Vh
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Did you not realize a number of superdelegates have already pledged support for Hillary?
After Crushing Defeat, DNC Quirk Still Gives Hillary More New Hampshire Delegates Than Sanders
Derek Hunter, Contributor
02/10/2016
Though Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary in a landslide over Hillary Clinton, he will likely receive fewer delegates than she will.
Sanders won 60 percent of the vote, but thanks to the Democratic Party’s nominating system, he leaves the Granite State with at least 13 delegates while she leaves with at least 15 delegates.
New Hampshire has 24 “pledged” delegates, which are allotted based on the popular vote. Sanders has 13, and Clinton has 9, with 2 currently allotted to neither.
But under Democratic National Committee rules, New Hampshire also has 8 “superdelegates,” party officials who are free to commit to whomever they like, regardless of how their state votes. Their votes count the same as delegates won through the primary.
New Hampshire has 8 superdelegates, 6 of which are committed to Hillary Clinton, giving her a total of 15 delegates from New Hampshire as of Wednesday at 9 a.m.
The state’s 2 remaining superdelegates remain uncommitted.
In the overall delegate count, Clinton holds a commanding lead after a razor-thin victory in Iowa and a shellacking in New Hampshire. Clinton has 394 delegates, both super and electorally assigned, to only 42 for Sanders.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/10/hillary-earns-more-new-hampshire-delegates-than-sanders-after-loss/#ixzz3zoJzM6Vh
Again, they NEVER break ranks from how their states vote.
The Republican Superdelegates have threatened to do it for years and they also have NEVER done it.
Hope this helps.
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Again, they NEVER break ranks from how their states vote.
The Republican Superdelegates have threatened to do it for years and they also have NEVER done it.
Hope this helps.
So you are saying that everyone who is reporting the superdelegate and delegate count is wrong? Your beef is with them.
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So you are saying that everyone who is reporting the superdelegate and delegate count is wrong? Your beef is with them.
Its disingenuous. Its counting on something that has NEVER taken place in history.
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Nice, TA! Sounds great. I'll admit to being concerned about it since DE posted that other article earlier in the thread. But judging by the following, you're absolutely right:
(http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/SandersMain1223.jpg)
Bernie Sanders’ win in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night came with some pretty impressive footnotes:
1. His margin of victory was the highest for a non-incumbent candidate in any state since JFK.
2. He won almost every demographic group—male, female, young, old, moderate, liberal, college educated, high school-educated—with the exception of voters making more than $200,000 per year.
3. He became the first Jewish candidate to win a state primary in U.S. history.
4. He became the first non-Christian candidate to win a state primary in U.S. history.
Sanders isn’t one to emphasize his religious affiliation—his political beliefs make him enough of an outsider as it is—so you won’t read much coverage about the historic nature of his win. What you will read about is how it’s going to change his primary battle against Hillary Clinton. The path to the nomination is still difficult for Sanders, and Clinton should still be considered the favorite, but winning New Hampshire in a blowout will give his candidacy a new kind of credibility and momentum. Sanders was polling below five percent nationally when he joined the race, and to come this far in such a short time, against an overwhelming favorite, is a bit staggering—so staggering that a frustrated Clinton “might “shake up her entire campaign.
The narrative has changed, which means that establishment figures are duty-bound to change it back. If you’re an avid follower of politics, you may have seen tweets like these in the aftermath of the win:
*******
Timothy McBride
@mcbridetd
#NHPrimary
Vote totals
Sanders 60% Clinton 38%
Delegates won (incl Superdelegates)
Clinton 15, Sanders 13
6:25 AM - 10 Feb 2016
*******
Or:
*******
Timothy McBride
@mcbridetd
Reality check:
Delegate count after tonight
Clinton 431
Sanders 50
Retweets
382
Likes
328
10:07 PM - 9 Feb 2016
*******
Oh no, you might be thinking, look at those delegate totals! He’s getting killed! The New Hampshire primary is meaningless! He didn’t even really win! On the Sanders Reddit page this morning, users were asking whether the whole primary process was a Sisyphean task, and if victory was impossible.
Make no mistake: That’s the point of this kind of messaging. To discourage, dismay, and dishearten, in the wake of something that should feel really positive for Sanders supporters. Reality check: The system is bigger than you, and you can’t change it, so go home.
I have no clue if Timothy McBride has any affiliation or even affection for Hillary Clinton, and he was certainly not alone in advancing this talking point. (Update: Surprise, surprise, the two are connected.) What I do know is that he tweeted these statistics out last night and again this morning, and whatever his intentions—and those like him—Clinton herself could not have written a better media script.
So what’s happening here? Are those delegate counts right?
Well, no—McBride’s math is wrong, but I’m assuming that wasn’t a malicious mistake. The actual count is 394-42.
So technically, yes, the count is close to accurate. He’s not overtly lying. But are they illustrative of some critical, insurmountable problem for Sanders? Not at all. Are they even relevant to the primary race? Barely. Certainly not now, and probably not ever. Are these messages deceptive, even subtly? Yes. Absolutely. And they’re propagated by people who are withholding the full story in the hopes that people like you and me are too stupid and complacent to find out on our own.
McBride’s sneaky tactic is to count “Superdelegates,” which is how he arrives at his imbalanced total. Accept the numbers blindly, and you might feel an impulse toward panic. My message to you: Chill. It’s a clever trick, but a silly one, and it won’t affect anything. To counter this narrative, let’s examine the political reality behind Superdelegates, and explain how they really work, Q&A style.
Q: You say Superdelegates don’t matter, but I don’t even know what they are. How does Hillary have 300+ already?
A: Let’s start simple: The Democratic nominee for president is decided based on which candidate wins the most delegates. You will find conflicting information about how many there are in 2016, but according to the AP, the delegate total is 4,763. It takes 2,382 of those to secure the nomination. And of the 4,763, 712 are “Superdelegates”—about 15 percent of the overall total.
Q: Okay, but what’s the difference?
A: The 4,051 “normal” delegates are allocated based on the votes in each state. That’s why we have primaries and caucuses in all of them, eventually—the will of the people decides where each of these delegates goes. In New Hampshire last night, Sanders won 13 delegates to Clinton’s nine, with two left to award when the last precincts report (in all likelihood, based on current percentages, it will finish 15-9 for Sanders). In Iowa, where Clinton won a narrow victory, the current delegate count is 23-21 in her favor. This process will repeat in every state until all 4,051 “normal” delegates have been alloted.
On the Democratic side, these delegates are rewarded proportionally in each state, rather than on the winner-take-all basis most states use in the electoral college. Those delegates are “pledged” to the appropriate candidate, and will not change affiliation at the national convention.
Q: That makes sense, but what are Superdelegates?
A: The remaining 712 delegates are not decided by each state’s popular vote, but rather by individuals who are given a vote by the Democratic party. They are free to choose whoever they want at the national convention, regardless of how the vote went in their home state.
Q: Who gets to be a Superdelegate?
A: Every Democratic member of Congress, House and Senate, is a Superdelegate (240 total). Every Democratic governor is a Superdelegate (20 total). Certain “distinguished party leaders,” 20 in all, are given Superdelegate status. And finally, the Democratic National Committee names an additional 432 Superdelegates—an honor that typically goes to mayors, chairs and vice-chairs of the state party, and other dignitaries.
Q: So they have way more importance than an ordinary voter?
A: Oh yeah. In 2008, each Superdelegate had about as much clout as 10,000 voters. It will be roughly the same in 2016.
Q: How did this system come to exist?
A: I’ll make this history lesson brief: In 1968, after the riots at the Democratic national convention in Chicago, party leaders knew they needed to change the nomination process to give ordinary people more of a say in how the potential president was chosen. Thus, the state-by-state primary/caucus system was born. By the 1980s, the party elites felt left out of the process, bereft of all influence, and they thought their absence had hurt the party with weaker candidates like George McGovern and Jimmy Carter. Jim Hunt, Governor of North Carolina, was commissioned to come up with a new system, and by 1984 the Superdelegate system was implemented. Democrats thought that by giving more power to party leaders, it would prevent “unelectable” candidates, beloved by the populace, from costing them the general election.
Q: Why does Hillary Clinton have so many more Superdelegates this time around?
A: Because Superdelegates are the establishment, and Clinton is the establishment candidate. Period.
A quick look at the chart below, courtesy of Wikipedia, shows how insanely imbalanced the Superdelegate race is at this point in time:
(http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/assets_c/2016/02/Screen%20Shot%202016-02-10%20at%209.52.47%20AM-thumb-550x170-425652.png)
In Congress, Hillary Clinton has 39 of the 47 Senators, with seven uncommitted. Bernie Sanders has an endorsement from just one Senator. That Senator’s name? Bernie Sanders. In the House, Hillary leads 157-2, and her advantage in the DNC is 138-10. Even among the “distinguished party leaders,” which includes Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, and Walter Mondale, she leads eight to one. Overall, the total is 355-14, with 341 uncommitted.
So when you see tweets like McBride’s above, where he cites Clinton’s 431-50 edge, he’s adding these “pledged” Superdelegates. We’ve already seen that his math is wrong—per the New York Times, the actual updated total is 394-42. But when you look at actual popular votes that have taken place, Sanders leads 34-32.
Q: From everything you’ve told me so far, I can’t understand why you’re calling Superdelegate votes “irrelevant.” It seems to me like they have the same voting power as a normal delegate, and this puts Sanders in a tremendous hole from the word “go.”
A: Here’s why it doesn’t matter: Superdelegates have never decided a Democratic nomination. It would be insane, even by the corrupt standards of the Democratic National Committee, if a small group of party elites went against the will of the people to choose the presidential nominee.
This has already been an incredibly tense election, and Sanders voters are already expressing their unwillingness to vote for Clinton in the general election. When you look at the astounding numbers from Iowa and New Hampshire, where more than 80 percent of young voters have chosen Sanders over Clinton, regardless of gender, it’s clear that Clinton already finds herself in a very tenuous position for the general election. It will be tough to motivate young supporters, but any hint that Bernie was screwed by the establishment will result in total abandonment.
Democrats win when turnout is high, and if the DNC decides to go against the will of the people and force Clinton down the electorate’s throat, they’d be committing political suicide.
The important thing to know here is that Superdelegates are merely pledged to a candidate. We know who they support because they’ve stated it publicly, or been asked by journalists. They are not committed, and can change at any time. If Bernie Sanders wins the popular vote, he will be the nominee. End of story.
Q: But it’s not the end of the story, is it? Hasn’t the DNC pulled some shady shit already?
A: Oh yeah. They totally rigged the debate schedule to limit Sanders’ exposure, and now that he’s gaining ground on Clinton, they’re desperate to add more. Sanders probably won the popular vote in Iowa, but the party elite there are refusing to release popular vote totals, even though that’s exactly what they did in 2008. It’s been an embarrassment of Clinton protectionism from the very beginning.
However, that doesn’t mean they’ll overthrow the will of the people when it comes to the presidential nomination. Assuming Sanders wins the popular vote nationwide, and assuming the Superdelegates put Clinton over the top, let’s consider the consequences:
1. Sanders supporters abandon Clinton completely, cutting off a huge portion of her base.
2. Massive protests at the convention, and a party split in half.
3. Republicans have the easiest attack in presidential election history: “Her own party didn’t even want her!”
4. The perception that Clinton is a dishonest politician grows wings, and even if people are reluctant to vote for the GOP nominee, an independent like Bloomberg could strip away an awful lot of votes.
All of this spells disaster for the Democrats. It may not be too corrupt for the DNC to imagine—they’ve got good imaginations—but it’s too transparent to execute. The winner of the delegate count from state primaries and caucuses will win the nomination, and the Superdelegates will fall in line. Just as they have in every single election since the system was implemented. (Including in 2008, when this same concern was raised—would Superdelegates cost Obama the nomination?)
Even the Democratic power structure isn’t so short-sighted that it would cut off its nose to spite its face.
Q: If Superdelegates can shift allegiances, and if going against the people’s will is so unthinkable, why don’t the pundits ever mention it?
A: It’s almost like there’s an agenda, right? Not to keep picking on McBride, who is a very minor figure in all this, and who had the bad luck to appear on my timeline yesterday, but what purpose do those numbers serve other than to discourage Sanders supporters? They’re essentially meaningless, but when presented without context, they give the impression of an unbeatable juggernaut, and tacitly encourage outsiders to give up all hope. On a smaller level, it’s the same when you see charts like these, from Politico:
(http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/assets_c/2016/02/Screen%20Shot%202016-02-10%20at%2010.25.05%20AM-thumb-550x239-425664.png)
It’s enough to provoke despair, if you don’t understand the system, and none of these outlets are bothering to explain. The reader is left to draw his or her own conclusions, and it can seem overwhelming. I don’t know if the explicit goal is to have a chilling effect on participation, and to discourage passionate people from participating in our democracy, but it certainly feels that way.
So, do yourself a favor and ignore the Superdelegates. If Hillary Clinton wins the most popular delegates, she will be the party nominee. If Bernie Sanders wins the most popular delegates, he will be the party nominee. And anyone who tells you otherwise—even by implication, and even armed with misleading statistics—is selling you a bill of goods. Don’t buy it.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/after-sanders-big-win-in-new-hampshire-establishme.html
Shane Ryan
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Q: Who gets to be a Superdelegate?
A: Every Democratic member of Congress, House and Senate, is a Superdelegate (240 total). Every Democratic governor is a Superdelegate (20 total). Certain “distinguished party leaders,” 20 in all, are given Superdelegate status. And finally, the Democratic National Committee names an additional 432 Superdelegates—an honor that typically goes to mayors, chairs and vice-chairs of the state party, and other dignitaries.
Good article. Thanks.
I'm sure TA already knew that these superdelegates are members of Congress, etc. and not part of a particular state's delegates. :)
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Good article. Thanks.
I'm sure TA already knew that these superdelegates are members of Congress, etc. and not part of a particular state's delegates. :)
This is the part which stood out for me:
The winner of the delegate count from state primaries and caucuses will win the nomination, and the Superdelegates will fall in line. Just as they have in every single election since the system was implemented.
Do you think they may not extend Bernie the same respect they did for Obama, when the same issue came up in 08? I really don't know, and maybe that's true.
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A little something from an NBC article on Bernie:
Sanders' success with blue collar voters in New Hampshire carries potentially significant implications. Conventional wisdom has held that his campaign is fueled by the same liberal white voters who sided with Obama in '08 — but doomed by his inability to make inroads with black voters, who were essential to Obama's triumph.
But the New Hampshire result suggests that Sanders is winning over white voters who shunned Obama in 2008. Eight years ago, it was blue collar whites who sustained Clinton's campaign through the end of the Democratic primary season, providing her edge in must-win contests in Pennsylvania and Ohio and powering her to landslide victories in "Greater Appalachia" states from Oklahoma to West Virginia. If Sanders can continue to win these voters over, he may be in position to win far more states than most have assumed.
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Bernie just raised over 7 million dollars in one day, the most ever by any candidate from individual donors in history. :o
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Blacks need to wake the f up. They need to find their common sense and use it.
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1 Superdelegate = 10,000 votes.
I agree with the guy that we need to scrap-heap the Super (I noticed he paraphrased heavily from the article above, too).
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I'd swear they set it up like this to help prime it to be infiltrated.
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Blacks need to wake the f up. They need to find their common sense and use it.
what does this mean>???
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what does this mean>???
It's an urgent message to pull your heads out of your asses and drop Hillary, because she'll fuck you over just as quickly as Rubio or Ted Cruz or any of the others who would sell you out without the slightest care.
Matter of fact, when she's done with you, she'll probably burst out with that cackle of hers.
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It's an urgent message to pull your heads out of your asses and drop Hillary, because she'll fuck you over just as quickly as Rubio or Ted Cruz or any of the others who would sell you out without the slightest care.
Matter of fact, when she's done with you, she'll probably burst out with that cackle of hers.
Great post....I laughed out loud! ;D...BUT...it's really weird how you guys are always worried about who blacks are voting for...and how you guys are always worried about us "getting fucked over" when really you couldn't care less :D.......well you've already stated blacks shouldn't vote for Hillary, Rubio, or Cruz...so that leaves Trump or Sanders.....if you were black which one would YOU vote for???????????????????????????????????????????...do you see the dilemma???????????????????????????????????
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Great post....I laughed out loud! ;D...BUT...it's really weird how you guys are always worried about who blacks are voting for...and how you guys are always worried about us "getting fucked over" when really you couldn't care less :D.......well you've already stated blacks shouldn't vote for Hillary, Rubio, or Cruz...so that leaves Trump or Sanders.....if you were black which one would YOU vote for???????????????????????????????????????????...do you see the dilemma???????????????????????????????????
No, I don't see it. Trump will require more faith, for sure, but either of those guys will provide much more hope than the others. The others are practically interchangeable from what I see. Their ideas can bring nothing but problems. They are the "suck it up and fuck you" gang.
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No, I don't see it. Trump will require more faith, for sure, but either of those guys will provide much more hope than the others. The others are practically interchangeable from what I see. Their ideas can bring nothing but problems. They are the "suck it up and fuck you" gang.
ok..but again..you didn't answeer the question :D
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ok..but again..you didn't answeer the question :D
About a dilemma?
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About a dilemma?
about who would YOU vote for if you were black
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about who would YOU vote for if you were black
My initial reaction is to say Bernie, but I've built considerable confidence in Trump over the recent past. I believe he's holding his cards closely for very good reason.
That particular question could only come up in the general, of course, anyway, due to Sanders and Trump going against each other. If that happens, I'd say watch their debates and go from there.
But for now, it would require getting Bernie to displace Hillary. The news should be spreading through the African-American community to back Bernie and reject Hilary.
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One definite advantage to Trump, with all else being equal, is the fact that he'd undoubtedly experience less instant rejection as Bernie might expect to receive. It will be more difficult for The Coaches of the country to do that, including politicians. So there's that.
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My initial reaction is to say Bernie, but I've built considerable confidence in Trump over the recent past. I believe he's holding his cards closely for very good reason.
That particular question could only come up in the general, of course, anyway, due to Sanders and Trump going against each other. If that happens, I'd say watch their debates and go from there.
But for now, it would require getting Bernie to displace Hillary. The news should be spreading through the African-American community to back Bernie and reject Hilary.
so let me get this straight and get you on teh record....YOU are saying that they should vote for Bernie...a socialist???
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so let me get this straight and get you on teh record....YOU are saying that they should vote for Bernie...a socialist???
Even by simplifying it to such a low, sketchy level: what would most Blacks (of all people) have to lose by that?
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Even by simplifying it to such a low, sketchy level: what would most Blacks (of all people) have to lose by that?
yes you say that until blacks vote in droves for Bernie and he gets elected...THEN you will rant and rave about how a socialist was elected to the presidency and how blacks were stupid to vote for Bernie...a socialist..
so you see, it really doesn't matter
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yes you say that until blacks vote in droves for Bernie and he gets elected...THEN you will rant and rave about how a socialist was elected to the presidency and how blacks were stupid to vote for Bernie...a socialist..
so you see, it really doesn't matter
Me in particular, you mean?
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Me in particular, you mean?
THOSE WHO ARE SO CONCERNED ABOUT WHO BLACKS ARE VOTING FOR...lol :D
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THOSE WHO ARE SO CONCERNED ABOUT WHO BLACKS ARE VOTING FOR...lol :D
The point is that Blacks, by flocking together for Hillary with absolutely no rhyme or reason to it, are helping to support the FALSE theory that they have inherently low intelligence.
I'm just so sorry to have to put it that way, but the truth sucks sometimes.
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A leader with the NAACP is about to do it, too. Let's hope the troops catch on before it's too late.
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(http://s15.postimg.org/qf30btmez/Bernie_Sanders_Arrested_in_1964_for_Protesting_S.jpg)
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(http://www.movietrailerreviews.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/bernie-sanders.jpg)
(http://s7.postimg.org/6d9i4pyqz/CW5jq7_K.png)
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(http://s15.postimg.org/qf30btmez/Bernie_Sanders_Arrested_in_1964_for_Protesting_S.jpg)
This guy has walked the walk and he's been there since Day 1.
The few Blacks I've seen entertain the thought of him, usually seem to reject him as a "stupid old white man" or similar. Hillary's tricks are in play, you can be sure.
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Hillary never did anything for Blacks. Bill and Hillary only ever used them to further themselves politically. Bernie has actually given a fuck about their plight and issues.
No idea why any black would gravitate towards Hillary. She has no compassion for them.
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Hillary never did anything for Blacks. Bill and Hillary only ever used them to further themselves politically. Bernie has actually given a fuck about their plight and issues.
No idea why any black would gravitate towards Hillary. She has no compassion for them.
The Machine has driven it into their minds, somehow.
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ca98gwHUAAAXogE.jpg:large)
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The point is that Blacks, by flocking together for Hillary with absolutely no rhyme or reason to it, are helping to support the FALSE theory that they have inherently low intelligence.
I'm just so sorry to have to put it that way, but the truth sucks sometimes.
so I guess all the whites who vote for trump have low intelligence?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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so I guess all the whites who vote for trump have low intelligence?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I'd say the majority perhaps suffer from low intelligence.
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Hillary never did anything for Blacks. Bill and Hillary only ever used them to further themselves politically. Bernie has actually given a fuck about their plight and issues.
No idea why any black would gravitate towards Hillary. She has no compassion for them.
you seem to have an emotional connection as to who blacks vote for :'(...../WHY????
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so I guess all the whites who vote for trump have low intelligence?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
You'll find white people are split in groups spanning across the entire field, so not sure of the connection you'd make there.
But ftr, no I don't think that.
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you seem to have an emotional connection as to who blacks vote for :'(...../WHY????
It's a matter of trying to figure out why people do what they do.
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you seem to have an emotional connection as to who blacks vote for :'(...../WHY????
I don't. I see it more as a test. If they want to vote against their interests, they will vote for Hillary. Obama has not done anything for blacks nor did he ever intend to. He banned in his own words "Professional Blacks" from the White House. His staff have commented on his disdain for black people. Don't believe me, look it up. Hillary is not far behind at all.
So I am hoping that blacks will prove that they aren't foolish and stupid to vote against their interest. Can you answer me why they would willingly do that?
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Because their failed leadership loves the Clintons. Bernie aint much better...anybody who is for open borders hurts blacks regardless of party.
A vote for sanders is a vote for cultural suicide.
As president, I will fight for comprehensive immigration reform that provides a roadmap to citizenship for the 11 million aspiring Americans living in this country. But I will not wait for Congress to act. I will take executive action to accomplish what Congress has failed to do and build upon President Obama’s executive orders to unite families.
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Because their failed leadership loves the Clintons. Bernie aint much better...anybody who is for open borders hurts blacks regardless of party.
A vote for sanders is a vote for cultural suicide.
As president, I will fight for comprehensive immigration reform that provides a roadmap to citizenship for the 11 million aspiring Americans living in this country. But I will not wait for Congress to act. I will take executive action to accomplish what Congress has failed to do and build upon President Obama’s executive orders to unite families.
I don't have an irrational fear of berry picking mexicans. Blacks don't like that kind of work anymore anyways. Kind of exhausted them of it 170 years ago. :D
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Because their failed leadership loves the Clintons. Bernie aint much better...anybody who is for open borders hurts blacks regardless of party.
A vote for sanders is a vote for cultural suicide.
As president, I will fight for comprehensive immigration reform that provides a roadmap to citizenship for the 11 million aspiring Americans living in this country. But I will not wait for Congress to act. I will take executive action to accomplish what Congress has failed to do and build upon President Obama’s executive orders to unite families.
That's unfortunate, but he's the ONLY ONE attempting to protect people from the negatives which result from a policy that has continued now for quite a number of years.
Your homeboy Cruz is looking to flood us with several-hundred percent more foreign workers from the top to the very bottom of industry.
In fact, ALL employment growth since George W. Bush took office has gone to immigrants, "legal" and illegal. This is the world you asked for, so I hope you're enjoying it.
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Something that's not mentioned much about Bernie, is that his ideas offer themselves to evolve for the better. At some point, for instance, we will be faced with the realization that the stricter the immigration policy (immigrants from non-trade partners, without question), the more effective we will become in leading the rest of the world on the right path. Only the trade policies Bernie would advance, could reveal that.
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Because their failed leadership loves the Clintons. Bernie aint much better...anybody who is for open borders hurts blacks regardless of party.
A vote for sanders is a vote for cultural suicide.
As president, I will fight for comprehensive immigration reform that provides a roadmap to citizenship for the 11 million aspiring Americans living in this country. But I will not wait for Congress to act. I will take executive action to accomplish what Congress has failed to do and build upon President Obama’s executive orders to unite families.
I don't think you know anything about Bernie Sanders.
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http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/racial-slurs-are-unsettling-if-used-by-celebrity-chefs-or-top-democrats/
July 17, 2000, Arkansas Trooper Larry Patterson confirmed that he frequently heard Bill Clinton use “N I G G E R” to refer to both Jesse Jackson and local Little Rock black leader Robert “Say” McIntosh.Longtime Clinton paramour Dolly Kyle Browning corroborated Patterson on Clinton’s use of N-word: “Not only did he use the N-word, he called him a ‘GD-N’.”
Browning also told NewsMax that President Clinton would regularly make derogatory comments about African-Americans in private. “He has used the ‘N’ word before. Bill would make snide remarks about blacks behind their backs.”
Larry Patterson also said Hillary Clinton was no stranger to the N-word either. He said that he heard her use it many times. Yet, Bill and Hillary Clinton are both placed on high golden pedestals in spite of their racial slurs.
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Yet blacks love them. HAHAHAHHA
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2197527/New-report-reveals-insensitive-racial-remark-Bill-Clinton-Barack-Obama-2008.html
'A few years ago he would've been carrying our bags': New report reveals the insensitive racial remark Bill Clinton made about Barack Obama in 2008
Ex-President said to have made remark in 2008 before later backing Obama
Clinton allegedly made the insensitive remark to Senator Ted Kennedy in 2008, while trying to convince him to endorse Hillary for the Democratic nomination, according to the New Yorker.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2197527/New-report-reveals-insensitive-racial-remark-Bill-Clinton-Barack-Obama-2008.html#ixzz3zuVSaQfH
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
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I don't think you know anything about Bernie Sanders.
Umm..thats his quote guy.....what more do I need to know. Commie......wackjob..... idiot.....
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Sounds like PBS stacked the deck for Hillary just as the other did for Bush.
Bernie looks to be at the edge with Hillary's bullshit, and the two dykes "moderating" the thing are punching his buttons.
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It's a matter of trying to figure out why people do what they do.
The Asians and Hispanics vote OVERWHELMINGLY for Democrats as well...yet you seem not to care about that
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I don't. I see it more as a test. If they want to vote against their interests, they will vote for Hillary. Obama has not done anything for blacks nor did he ever intend to. He banned in his own words "Professional Blacks" from the White House. His staff have commented on his disdain for black people. Don't believe me, look it up. Hillary is not far behind at all.
So I am hoping that blacks will prove that they aren't foolish and stupid to vote against their interest. Can you answer me why they would willingly do that?
I don't understand why blacks have to PROVE anything to you.....and again...Hispanics and Asians vote overwhelmingly for "Democrats as well.....YET..you don't seem to be too concerned about who they vote for and or their well-being...and they don't seem to have to PROVE anything to you either
STRANGE
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The Asians and Hispanics vote OVERWHELMINGLY for Democrats as well...yet you seem not to care about that
I'm not questioning why African-Americans vote Democrat. I'm questioning why they are supporting Hillary over Bernie.
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I'm not questioning why African-Americans vote Democrat. I'm questioning why they are supporting Hillary over Bernie.
and again..I'm saying to you why is that so important to you?...yet other groups vote for the Democrats and will likely vote for Hillary as well..YET..you single out black people in this regard.....what is your motive behind that???????????
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Because their failed leadership loves the Clintons. Bernie aint much better...anybody who is for open borders hurts blacks regardless of party.
A vote for sanders is a vote for cultural suicide.
As president, I will fight for comprehensive immigration reform that provides a roadmap to citizenship for the 11 million aspiring Americans living in this country. But I will not wait for Congress to act. I will take executive action to accomplish what Congress has failed to do and build upon President Obama’s executive orders to unite families.
and what FAILED leadership is that???????
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Bernie explaining himself on immigration very well. He's made me feel much better about where he's coming from on it.
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Sounds like PBS stacked the deck for Hillary just as the other did for Bush.
Bernie looks to be at the edge with Hillary's bullshit, and the two dykes "moderating" the thing are punching his buttons.
;D ;D
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and again..I'm saying to you why is that so important to you?...yet other groups vote for the Democrats and will likely vote for Hillary as well..YET..you single out black people in this regard.....what is your motive behind that???????????
Blacks are overwhelmingly going for Hillary, and no one else, despite being the group who will be most hurt by that. Maybe that's it.
They do what their "leaders" tell them to do, so I want to know what self-serving incentives these so-called leaders are operating toward. What's the game? What's the scam?
I don't want you to take it personally, though, so don't trouble yourself with it.
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Bernie is sick and tired of the con-jobs being run, trying to turn us into a slave planet. Trying to turn the common people into a race of slaves, is what he's fighting against. NO ONE ELSE IS DOING THAT.
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Blacks are overwhelmingly going for Hillary, and no one else, despite being the group who will be most hurt by that. Maybe that's it.
They do what their "leaders" tell them to do, so I want to know what self-serving incentives these so-called leaders are operating toward. What's the game? What's the scam?
I don't want you to take it personally, though, so don't trouble yourself with it.
HA!...all of that is in your mind as I've said.....why would they be the group most hurt by voting for Hillary????????explain that...and you overestimate the power that black leaders have on blacks....same influence that white leaders have on whites...which is practically none
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hilary defending the koch brothers. oh brother.
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Bernie's the man.
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HA!...all of that is in your mind as I've said.....why would they be the group most hurt by voting for Hillary????????explain that...and you overestimate the power that black leaders have on blacks....same influence that white leaders have on whites...which is practically none
Because as a group, they are the poorest of our citizens.
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Because as a group, they are the poorest of our citizens.
and that won't change no matter whose elected
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and that won't change no matter whose elected
It certainly won't with her being elected, no question about that.
I'm not going to be able to watch the rest (will watch on video tomorrow). But have you noticed all the man-hating females on this thing? They go from the two "moderators" to some table with three other women to give "commentary". WTF is up with that?
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It certainly won't with her being elected, no question about that.
I'm not going to be able to watch the rest (will watch on video tomorrow). But have you noticed all the man-hating females on this thing? They go from the two "moderators" to some table with three other women to give "commentary". WTF is up with that?
man-hating females.....FUNNY! ;D
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Link to the PBS/Wisconsin debate:
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PBS’ Donor-Moderator Fails to Ask Hillary About Clinton Foundation
(http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/02/Hillary-Clinton-Dem-Debate-PBS-Morry-Gash-Associated-Press-640x480.jpg)
Hillary Clinton Dem Debate PBS (Morry Gash / Associated Press) Morry Gash / Associated Press
by JOEL B. POLLAK
11 Feb 2016
The PBS moderators at Thursday night’s Democratic debate failed to ask former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton any questions about the Clinton Foundation, despite news earlier in the day that the State Department had sent it a subpoena for documents about its activities during her tenure in office.
Co-moderator Judy Woodruff happens to be a donor to the Clinton Foundation, and faced criticism from the PBS ombudsman in 2015 for giving to the Clintons.
Woodruff is one of several journalists who has contributed to the Clinton Foundation, which has been criticized as a “slush fund” for the Clintons’ own expenses, rather than on direct giving to charitable programs.
PBS has covered the potential conflict of interest for Hillary Clinton, who has been accused of using her position as Secretary of State to direct donations to the foundation. Emails to that effect are suspected of being on her private email server.
The subpoena to the foundation from the State Department inspector general sought “documents about the charity’s projects that may have required approval from the federal government during Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state,” according to the Washington Post, which broke the story Thursday.
The subpoena also apparently sought information on Clinton aide Huma Abedin, “who for six months in 2012 was employed simultaneously by the State Department, the foundation, Clinton’s personal office, and a private consulting firm with ties to the Clintons.”
Neither Woodruff nor co-moderator Gwen Ifill broached the subject. Clinton’s rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)16%
, has also declined to criticize her for her emails and potential conflicts of interest.
Voters, however, have noticed. Exit polls from New Hampshire showed that 5% of Democrats saw Clinton as trustworthy, versus 93% for Sanders.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/11/dem-debate-avoids-questions-about-clinton-foundation/
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man-hating females.....FUNNY! ;D
The Clintons have a bit of a black problem. Wonder if blacks know they used the term Super-Predators to describe their kids. hahaha
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Was reading up on Sanders. He is a lifelong socialist. What's interesting is he actually isn't much different than Obama. He's just a lot more honest about his views and where he wants to take the country. Doesn't make him any less dangerous, but at least he has more integrity than the president.
Still, we really cannot afford to have another socialist in the White House.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders
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What defeat? Despite NH loss, ‘super’ insiders give Clinton early delegate edge
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
Published February 15, 2016
FoxNews.com
Hillary Clinton may claim she’s not part of the ‘establishment,’ but it’s party insiders who are giving her a substantial and early edge in the Democratic nomination battle – even after Bernie Sanders walloped her campaign in last week’s New Hampshire primary.
Thanks to the intricacies of the Democratic primary system, Clinton already has hundreds of so-called “superdelegates” in her corner. These are Democratic governors, lawmakers and other officials and party members who can back any candidate they want – and their vote counts at the convention just like delegates allocated based on the results of primaries and caucuses.
A reminder: It takes 2,382 delegates to win the nomination. With superdelegates alone, according to an Associated Press tally, Clinton starts out with 361 in her corner.
Clinton’s superdelegate edge created a peculiar situation in New Hampshire, and one that angered Sanders supporters. Though Sanders beat Clinton by 22 points, they both walked away with the same number of delegates – 15 apiece. The difference is, all of Sanders’ delegates were earned from his win. Clinton only won nine such “pledged” delegates – the other six were superdelegates who independently back her bid.
The outcome led to protests from progressive groups.
Online petitions from MoveOn.org and DIY RootsAction are drawing tens of thousands of signatures asking superdelegates to honor their constituents and support the candidate the people have voted for.
“Commit to honoring the voters -- let everyone know that you won’t allow your vote to defeat our votes. Announce that in the event of a close race, you’ll align yourself with regular voters -- not party elites,” says the petition at MoveOn.org.
For those who closely followed Clinton’s run against then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, it’s déjà vu all over again.
But as in 2008, the superdelegate support is fluid.
Though Sanders’ backers may cry foul that superdelegates are siding with the former secretary of state early, elections experts told FoxNews.com these party insiders could very well change their minds before the convention.
“The rules give [superdelegates] the latitude; they are unpledged delegates, they can go back and forth as much as they want to,” said Josh Putnam, a lecturer at the University of Georgia who runs the popular elections blog, FrontloadingHQ.
Clinton, for now, enjoys an edge going into most upcoming contests.
According to the AP tally, Clinton goes into this weekend’s Nevada caucuses with three superdelegates and into the upcoming South Carolina primary with two. She has 83 superdelegates in her corner going into Super Tuesday March 1.
As early as August, Clinton’s people were boasting they had secured as many as 440 unpledged delegates -- the Associated Press has confirmed she has 361 out of 712 so far.
Superdelegates will make up 15 percent of the total delegate count at the Democratic National Convention. That total is actually down from 2008 when superdelegates constituted 20 percent and the same questions were raised during the primary battle between then-Sen. Barack Obama and Clinton.
Putnam said the superdelegates were instituted by the party in the early 1980’s in response to Democrats’ concern that the predominance of pledged delegates – those tied to votes – was leading to the grassroots-driven nomination of unelectable candidates. This followed the unsuccessful campaign of George McGovern in 1972 and Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency after that.
“They felt the need to give the party a bit more say in that to make sure someone more electable would emerge, if need be,” he said. “It’s a backstop, more or less.”
On the other hand, the Republican Party has superdelegates, too, but in 2012 the party changed the rules to bind all delegates based on the outcome of presidential primaries and caucuses.
Clinton loyalist and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell defended the system, suggesting the 361 superdelegates are backing Clinton because they believe Sanders is unelectable.
"I think because of the superdelegates who cast their vote based on electability have serious doubts whether Bernie Sanders could be electable once the GOP starts campaigning against him and putting ads against him,” he told NBC News.
When told there was a mini-uproar over the prospect of Clinton walking away with the same amount of delegates after Sanders “crushed her” in New Hampshire, Rendell said simply: “It's the same system that nominated Barack Obama.”
There is the rub, said Daniel Smith, politics professor at University of Florida. By the time the convention opened in 2008, Obama was winning primaries and had captured all undecided superdelegates and defectors from Clinton.
In other words, it didn’t matter that she had been scooping up superdelegates early in that race.
In this case, it could end up hurting her anyway.
“Having superdelegates in the bag doesn’t necessarily help Clinton’s optics for shaking up D.C.," Smith said. “Certainly it’s important, but it can be flipped around. Here is an establishment candidate and she has the supporters, but is she really listening to the folks on the ground? This is something Bernie Sanders can exploit.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/02/15/what-defeat-despite-nh-loss-super-insiders-give-clinton-early-delegate-edge.html?intcmp=hpbt3
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Was reading up on Sanders. He is a lifelong socialist. What's interesting is he actually isn't much different than Obama. He's just a lot more honest about his views and where he wants to take the country. Doesn't make him any less dangerous, but at least he has more integrity than the president.
Still, we really cannot afford to have another socialist in the White House.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders
He is very much different than Obama. If you want to identify someone who is much like Obama, look at Hilary or anyone on the Republican debate stage except for Trump.
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He is very much different than Obama. If you want to identify someone who is much like Obama, look at Hilary or anyone on the Republican debate stage except for Trump.
How is he different? No love for the military. Was a draft dodger. Class warfare. Wants the government to essentially control the private sector. Pretty much zero experience in the private sector. Sounds the same to me.
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How is he different? No love for the military. Was a draft dodger. Class warfare. Wants the government to essentially control the private sector. Pretty much zero experience in the private sector. Sounds the same to me.
They have completely opposite views on the single biggest issue facing our country and our future, which is trade.
The fact that one is corporate-financed and the other is not, might clue someone in.
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They have completely opposite views on the single biggest issue facing our country and our future, which is trade.
The fact that one is corporate-financed and the other is not, might clue someone in.
Well we definitely disagree about whether trade is the single biggest issue facing our country.
The fact Sanders is not "corporate-financed" is good and bad. It's good that he's not beholden to big money. It's bad because he has demonized the "corporations." He is an enemy of business. Business is the backbone of our economy. In that regard, he is President Obama's twin.
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Well we definitely disagree about whether trade is the single biggest issue facing our country.
The fact Sanders is not "corporate-financed" is good and bad. It's good that he's not beholden to big money. It's bad because he has demonized the "corporations." He is an enemy of business. Business is the backbone of our economy. In that regard, he is President Obama's twin.
If Obama is their enemy, how is it that Wall Street loves him so much?
???
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If Obama is their enemy, how is it that Wall Street loves him so much?
???
Wall Street doesn't love him. Wall Street (and everyone else) gives money to whomever is in power to try and buy influence.
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Wall Street doesn't love him. Wall Street (and everyone else) gives money to whomever is in power to try and buy influence.
That's what Bernie is trying to stop. It's the entire point.
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Well we definitely disagree about whether trade is the single biggest issue facing our country.
The fact Sanders is not "corporate-financed" is good and bad. It's good that he's not beholden to big money. It's bad because he has demonized the "corporations." He is an enemy of business. Business is the backbone of our economy. In that regard, he is President Obama's twin.
Actually Obama is the best thing that ever happened to business and Wall Street......Corporate profits have NEVER been so high.....the TTP trade agreement will open up Asian markets big time to U.S. business and will bring down tariffs and barriers to our goods.....also..he has opened up Cuba for our businesses...they can't wait to get over there and start making money
he's nothing like Sanders
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The Clintons have a bit of a black problem. Wonder if blacks know they used the term Super-Predators to describe their kids. hahaha
who cares?..that makes them no different than everyone else who says the same things in private
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That's what Bernie is trying to stop. It's the entire point.
That's not the entire point. He wants the government to control the private sector.
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Actually Obama is the best thing that ever happened to business and Wall Street......Corporate profits have NEVER been so high.....the TTP trade agreement will open up Asian markets big time to U.S. business and will bring down tariffs and barriers to our goods.....also..he has opened up Cuba for our businesses...they can't wait to get over there and start making money
he's nothing like Sanders
Precisely how is Obama responsible for increased corporate profits?
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Actually Obama is the best thing that ever happened to business and Wall Street......Corporate profits have NEVER been so high.....the TTP trade agreement will open up Asian markets big time to U.S. business and will bring down tariffs and barriers to our goods.....also..he has opened up Cuba for our businesses...they can't wait to get over there and start making money
he's nothing like Sanders
Evil doings.
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That's not the entire point. He wants the government to control the private sector.
Can you describe a specific threat that you see and fear?
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Can you describe a specific threat that you see and fear?
You mean other than wanting the government to control the private sector?
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You mean other than wanting the government to control the private sector?
No. If that's your fear or concern, I want to know about it. Give me an example of a specific problem you may have considered.
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No. If that's your fear or concern, I want to know about it. Give me an example of a specific problem you may have considered.
I just did. Twice.
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I just did. Twice.
Can you perhaps explain what you'd expect to see take place?
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Can you perhaps explain what you'd expect to see take place?
I don't expect to see anything take place. He's not going to be elected president.
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Las Vegas, isn't going to be hilarious how wrong all these people are about Bernie "not winning".
He is cleaning up like no tomorrow, his support is much greater than Obama at this point. Republicans better wake up and realize that they do not have the same support on their side for any of their candidates, Trump included.
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Las Vegas, isn't going to be hilarious how wrong all these people are about Bernie "not winning".
He is cleaning up like no tomorrow, his support is much greater than Obama at this point. Republicans better wake up and realize that they do not have the same support on their side for any of their candidates, Trump included.
I'm at the point where it seems sure a third-party plant is in wait to make sure he doesn't get in. I'm thinking a much bigger name than Bloomberg, maybe, but I don't know how much influence Bloomberg has (I hope not much, since he sucks).
The biggest interests want to stop Bernie cold, so he's working against TPTB like no one we've ever seen.
I've been trying to get an explanation for why Bernie is so opposed by certain types of common people, but no one can explain it.
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I'm at the point where it seems sure a third-party plant is in wait to make sure he doesn't get in. I'm thinking a much bigger name than Bloomberg, maybe, but I don't know how much influence Bloomberg has (I hope not much, since he sucks).
The biggest interests want to stop Bernie cold, so he's working against TPTB like no one we've ever seen.
I've been trying to get an explanation for why Bernie is so opposed by certain types of common people, but no one can explain it.
Third party would ensure Bernie victory. It would only split Hillary's vote. Bernies would only increase. No Bernie supporter is going to leave him and tons and tons of Hillary supporters are now leaving her for Bernie.
I REALLY REALLY want someone else to jump in to split Hillary's vote further. It will in effect guarantee a Bernie Sanders nomination victory.
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Las Vegas, isn't going to be hilarious how wrong all these people are about Bernie "not winning".
He is cleaning up like no tomorrow, his support is much greater than Obama at this point. Republicans better wake up and realize that they do not have the same support on their side for any of their candidates, Trump included.
There is no way a socialist pulls independent and cross-over Republicans in the general election. He's not getting there anyway. I'll be shocked if he is even competitive throughout the South against Hillary. His only hope is an indictment, and even then Biden will probably jump in and immediately leapfrog him.
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Third party would ensure Bernie victory. It would only split Hillary's vote. Bernies would only increase. No Bernie supporter is going to leave him and tons and tons of Hillary supporters are now leaving her for Bernie.
I REALLY REALLY want someone else to jump in to split Hillary's vote further. It will in effect guarantee a Bernie Sanders nomination victory.
It would be great if someone could come in time to lower her chances. I'd love to see that.
No, I'm thinking that if his enemies couldn't derail Bernie before he was nominated (if that is due to happen), then we can almost bet the ranch that someone has already been picked and is waiting on the sidelines to take-on the General Election as a third-party. Someone who is ready-made to take votes from a guy like Bernie, but who is a phony (an Obama type).
We cannot underestimate how badly certain forces want to stop him. No way these guys are going to stand back and just let him walk into the White House.
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There is no way a socialist pulls independent and cross-over Republicans in the general election. He's not getting there anyway. I'll be shocked if he is even competitive throughout the South against Hillary. His only hope is an indictment, and even then Biden will probably jump in and immediately leapfrog him.
Did you not see the voter breakdown in New Hampshire and Iowa. Bernie has THE MOST Independent support of all candidates.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ca0O1TmUsAAgCuh.jpg:large)
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In Iowa, Bernie Sanders got 69 percent of ALL INDEPENDENTS.
Time to start paying attention Dos Equis.
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Did you not see the voter breakdown in New Hampshire and Iowa. Bernie has THE MOST Independent support of all candidates.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ca0O1TmUsAAgCuh.jpg:large)
Neither New Hampshire nor Iowa provide much of an indication of what happens nationwide.
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In Iowa, Bernie Sanders got 69 percent of ALL INDEPENDENTS.
Time to start paying attention Dos Equis.
I am. That's why I was reading up on him. Didn't like what I learned.
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I am. That's why I was reading up on him. Didn't like what I learned.
Keep reading and watching. You will find that all the data is trending dramatically in Bernie Sanders favor.
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In Iowa, Bernie Sanders got 69 percent of ALL INDEPENDENTS.
Time to start paying attention Dos Equis.
Nah....I'd rather keep ignoring him
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I am. That's why I was reading up on him. Didn't like what I learned.
What were you reading from? That Wikipedia link?
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What were you reading from? That Wikipedia link?
Yep.
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I didn't know Bernie was a carpenter.
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During his first year in the House, Sanders often alienated allies and colleagues with his criticism of both political parties as working primarily on behalf of the wealthy.
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Little card Bernie typed up for a radio address way back. My, how the stats have changed since then.
(http://images.politico.com/global/2015/07/09/2-radioaddress_1973.png)
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Killer Mike and Bernie Killing it at Morehouse College.
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Bernie Sanders’s Path To The Nomination
Here are the states he needs to win.
By NATE SILVER
FEB 17, 2016
(https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/ap_80117266372-1.jpg?w=1150)
Sen. Bernie Sanders during a rally at Bonanza High School on Sunday in Las Vegas.
EVAN VUCCI / AP
How much trouble will Hillary Clinton be in if she loses in Nevada, where Democrats will caucus on Saturday? How close does Bernie Sanders need to come in South Carolina, which votes a week later? And which states are really “must-wins” for Sanders in March, April and beyond?
We can try to answer all of those questions with the help of the gigantic chart you’ll see below. On the left-hand side of the chart, you’ll find a projection for how each state might go if recent national polls are right, with Clinton ahead of Sanders by about 12 percentage points nationally. The right-hand side is more crucial: It shows how the states might line up if the vote were split 50-50 nationally. Since the Democrats’ delegate allocation is highly proportional to the vote in each state, that means Sanders will be on track to win the nomination if he consistently beats these 50-50 benchmarks. Conversely, Clinton will very probably win the nomination if Sanders fails to do so, especially since superdelegates would likely tip a nearly tied race toward Clinton.
(https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/sliver-clintonvsanders-1.png?w=1150&h=1453)
The starting point for these estimates is state-by-state polling from Morning Consult, a non-partisan polling and media firm that has surveyed about 8,000 Democrats online since Jan. 1. That’s a lot of responses, although not enough to provide an adequate sample size for all 50 states; while there are about 800 respondents from California in the sample, for instance, there are only a dozen or so from Montana.
The solution is to blend the polling results with other data. In particular, I used exit polls to determine the nonwhite share of the Democratic electorate in each state and how each state lines up on a liberal-conservative scale (Sanders does better in white and liberal states). I also included the amount of money raised by Clinton and Sanders in each state in individual, itemized contributions, and their ratio of Facebook likes. In states like California where there’s an adequate sample size from the Morning Consult polling, the polling gets a fair amount of weight, but in the smaller states the other factors predominante. (For a more technical explanation of how this is accomplished, check out the footnotes.1)
Don’t get too attached to these: The state-by-state estimates are pretty rough. But they’re calibrated in such a way2 so as to provide a reasonable benchmark of what a 50-50 race would look like. Maybe Michigan is less favorable to Sanders than this estimate holds, for example. That’s fine, but it means he’ll need to make up ground in another state.
What about the states that have already voted? We estimate that in a 50-50 national race, Sanders would win Iowa by about 6 percentage points, and New Hampshire by 26 points. He didn’t quite hit those targets in either state, although he came close — several percentage points better than you’d expect from his current national polling. As we’ve said, however, the real challenges for Sanders lie ahead.
A quick look at the calendar
Nevada. Nevada has a fairly high nonwhite population, but it isn’t especially liberal. Clinton was also well ahead of Sanders in the (relatively small sample) of interviews Morning Consult conducted there earlier this year. It’s possible that Clinton will be hurt because the state holds a caucus, although we don’t have a lot of evidence yet about which Democrat that benefits. In other words — and as much as her campaign might try to avoid admitting it — it’s a state that Clinton “should” win. Conversely, a Sanders win would be a sign he has staying power.
South Carolina. Clinton is the overwhelming favorite in South Carolina, but her margin of victory could be a useful benchmark for where the race stands nationally. Suppose, for instance, that Clinton winds up winning by 17 percentage points in South Carolina (a bit closer than most polls have it). Would that be a good result for her or a bad one? Our chart projects that Clinton would win South Carolina by 11 points in a 50-50 race, so she’d be doing a little bit better than that benchmark. But not a lot better: Such a result would still suggest that the national race had tightened.
Super Tuesday (March 1). Clinton is likely to compile lots of delegates from the seven Southern states that vote on Super Tuesday, although Oklahoma — which is quasi-Midwestern and relatively white — might be Sanders’s best shot at an upset. Sanders should win Vermont by a huge margin, meanwhile. That leaves the Minnesota caucus, Colorado caucus and Massachusetts primary as the races to watch; they’re the sorts of states Sanders absolutely needs to win to have a shot at taking the nomination.
Big-state primaries on March 8 and March 15. This is probably the most important eight-day stretch on the Democratic calendar. Michigan votes on March 8 (as does Mississippi), followed by Florida, Ohio, Illinois, North Carolina and Missouri on March 15. Together, these states will put 857 pledged delegates at stake, or more than 20 percent of the Democrats’ pledged total. (Pledged delegates, chosen by voters, are distinct from superdelegates.) Based on current polling, most of these states favor Clinton either narrowly or substantially, so Sanders will have to make up ground, perhaps enough to win a couple of them outright.
Favorable terrain for Sanders in late March. A series of Western states vote between March 22 and April 9, as does Wisconsin. Almost all of them figure to be favorable to Sanders — including Wisconsin, where he was already almost tied with Clinton in the polls before his New Hampshire win. A possible exception is Arizona, where Clinton beat Barack Obama in 2008 and where the electorate can be tricky to predict.
New York, California and a big blue finale. With some exceptions — Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana will be interesting to watch — the last quarter of the Democratic calendar mostly resides on the coasts. And there are some big prizes: New York, Pennsylvania and California foremost among them. All three offer advantages and disadvantages to each candidate. For instance, will California’s left-wing politics, which help Sanders, prevail over its racially diverse population, which helps Clinton? Sanders probably needs at least two of the three states, and maybe all of them given Clinton’s lead in superdelegates. A win in California on June 7 would also carry symbolic power, as it’s the last state to vote,3 possibly allowing the winner to claim a mandate from the Democratic electorate.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. If Sanders can hang tight with Clinton in Nevada on Saturday, his chance of eventually notching a win in California and securing the nomination will look a lot better.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanderss-path-to-the-nomination/
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Projected Nevada results:
Clinton 52.4%
Sanders 46.0%
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/primary-forecast/nevada-democratic/
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Projected Nevada results:
Clinton 52.4%
Sanders 46.0%
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/primary-forecast/nevada-democratic/
who do you think is going to win?...or are you going to bail out like you always do and say "I already answered that" and then when looking back in the thread it appears you've done no such thing?
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who do you think is going to win?...or are you going to bail out like you always do and say "I already answered that" and then when looking back in the thread it appears you've done no such thing?
I'm flattered that you care so much about my opinion. For the most part, I like to see and listen to other people's opinions. Usually enlightening. I'm not one of those who has a need to be heard.
That said, I suspect it will be Hillary, because Nate Silver's predictions are usually spot on. He is the one I'll be looking to for the rest of the election season.
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I'm flattered that you care so much about my opinion. For the most part, I like to see and listen to other people's opinions. Usually enlightening. I'm not one of those who has a need to be heard.
That said, I suspect it will be Hillary, because Nate Silver's predictions are usually spot on. He is the one I'll be looking to for the rest of the election season.
can you enlighten me as to who Nate silver is?...Thanks
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can you enlighten me as to who Nate silver is?...Thanks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver
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Delegate Count Shows Sanders Slipping Behind Clinton
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=84ca0913-8fe0-4bea-bd37-f54215f3eca1&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Delegate Count Shows Sanders Slipping Behind Clinton (Getty Images)
Monday, 22 Feb 2016
The odds of Sen. Bernie Sanders overtaking Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton in delegate support is becoming "increasingly remote," The New York Times reports.
With 2,383 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination, Clinton now has 502 delegates compared to Sanders's 70.
And The Times says the former secretary of state will likely win big in the 11-state Super
Tuesday primaries on March 1 — particularly among black and Hispanic voters. Those primaries carry a whopping 880 delegates.
"She could effectively end the race in less than two weeks' time on Super Tuesday," David Wasserman, an analyst for The Cook Political Report, told the newspaper.
On Monday, Clinton received an endorsement from Matteo Renzi, the prime minister of Italy, who declared, "In all respect for the great American democracy, I'm rooting for Hillary Clinton."
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/Bernie-Sanders-Delegate-Count-Slipping-Hillary-Clinton/2016/02/22/id/715497/#ixzz40v36h9VN
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CNN exclusive: Harry Reid endorses Hillary Clinton
By Manu Raju, Senior Political Reporter
Wed February 24, 2016 | Video Source: CNN
Washington (CNN)—Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced Wednesday in an exclusive interview with CNN that he is endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, a sign that Democratic leaders are eager to put the party's contentious primary fight behind them.
The Nevada Democrat issued a plea for his party to consolidate behind Clinton, who has struggled to fend off an insurgent campaign from Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.
"I think the middle class would be better served by Hillary," Reid said.
"I think that my work with her over the years has been something that I have looked upon with awe. She was the first lady. She started the trend toward looking to do something about health care. She understood the issue well, she was the front on the health care during that administration," he said.
Reid added, "I also think she's the woman to be the first president of the United states that's a female."
Reid's endorsement makes him the highest-ranking Democrat to get behind Clinton, who won last Saturday's Nevada caucuses and is the heavy favorite heading into the next primary in South Carolina. And his comments marked a shift in tone for the Nevada Democrat, who in a CNN interview earlier this month was critical of Clinton's campaign in his state and suggesting that the race could continue until the Democratic convention in July.
On Wednesday, Reid wouldn't repeat that prediction, but admitted it could continue for a while.
"I don't know about that, you know I had some meetings today and I think the race is moving along very quickly so we'll have to see, we'll have to see what happens next month," He said.
Reid also declined to call on Sanders to drop out if he doesn't do well in the upcoming Super Tuesday contests on March 1st, saying Sanders' advisers need to decide the senator's strategy.
Sanders and Reid have had a close relationship over the years. Despite being an independent with tenuous ties to the Democratic Party, Reid agreed to throw the party's weight behind Sanders when he won his first Senate race in 2006. And it was Sanders' decision to caucus with Democrats that helped give Reid the title of "majority leader" for the first time in 2007.
Reid called Sanders Tuesday to deliver the news personally.
"It was a really wonderful call," Reid said, adding that Sanders was "so magnanimous, so kind and courteous."
Reid also said it was a "call of friendship."
Despite serving in the Senate Democratic caucus since 2007, Sanders has yet to win any support from his colleagues; Clinton, meanwhile, has at least 40 Democratic senators who have publicly expressed their backing.
Initially, Senate Democrats largely wrote off Sanders' candidacy. But as Sanders has gained steam, largely on the support of younger and more liberal voters, Senate Democrats have stepped up their attacks, saying Sanders is not ready to be commander in chief, criticizing his democratic socialist views and contending that his domestic agenda has little chance of ever becoming law.
Reid would not criticize Sanders.
Across the Capitol, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has not offered her endorsement, but she is widely expected to eventually back Clinton. Reid sought to maintain his neutrality through his home state's nominating contest, given the prominent role it has played in the overall process.
While Reid helped bring out union and casino workers to the Nevada caucuses that ultimately helped Clinton, he denied that he was tilting the scales in her favor.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/24/politics/hillary-clinton-harry-reid-endorsement/index.html
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^ good. Hope it works against her.
"I think the middle class would be better served by Hillary," Reid said.
Lol, OK Harry.
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Getting Harry Reid's endorsement is probably about as worthwhile as getting W's.
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Harry Reid... what a piece of shit. Knowing that he's my Senator makes me want to puke...
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Harry Reid... what a piece of shit. Knowing that he's my Senator makes me want to puke...
He's an embarrassment. I will never forget his hit job on Romney from the Senate floor. Dirty.
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Projected South Carolina results:
Clinton 67.1%
Sanders 28.6%
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/primary-forecast/south-carolina-democratic/
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I don't. I see it more as a test. If they want to vote against their interests, they will vote for Hillary. Obama has not done anything for blacks nor did he ever intend to. He banned in his own words "Professional Blacks" from the White House. His staff have commented on his disdain for black people. Don't believe me, look it up. Hillary is not far behind at all.
So I am hoping that blacks will prove that they aren't foolish and stupid to vote against their interest. Can you answer me why they would willingly do that?
How'd they do?
???
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How'd they do?
???
Worthless Blacks as usual
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Worthless Blacks as usual
you're melting down...you seem to be very pre=occupied with how blacks are voting....meanwhile no concern with how whites, young people, students, homosexuals, Asians or Hispanics are voting
STRANGE
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Worthless Blacks as usual
TA....come on man you had to see Hillary winning the black vote. She was the one who worked under Obama and not Bernie. And his "Bernie Bros" showing off pictures of him being arrested in the 60's was embarrassing. Who the fuck does he think he is??? Martin Luther King???
BTW, Bernie workers advertising on Grindr is just nasty
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Blacks accounted for 61 percent of South Carolina Democratic primary voters in ABC News exit poll results, breaking the state’s record, 55 percent in 2008. And Clinton won 86 percent of their votes, a crushing score. Indeed she did significantly better with blacks in South Carolina than Barack Obama in 2008.
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Gun. Foot. Shoot.
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you're melting down...you seem to be very pre=occupied with how blacks are voting....meanwhile no concern with how whites, young people, students, homosexuals, Asians or Hispanics are voting
STRANGE
I don't care how they vote. I am just amused by their stupidity in large numbers. Nothing will ever change with them. I find it hilarious that they vote for policies that keep them in poverty and that keep them from obtaining a better standard of life and achieving an education. They do seem to want to preserve the slave master mentality and want to crush all opportunity that may be available and instead wait for a phony black savior preacher type or remain in a constant status of "victimhood".
As for the other groups. They get it. Most of those groups want real change and vote for Bernie. Bernie has won Hispanics, Asians and whites, young people and students. Blacks (with the exception of some smart ones) don't get anything.
Don't worry, I feel that most old white Republicans are just as worthless as well. I just wish the blacks would go ahead and switch parties to them.
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TA....come on man you had to see Hillary winning the black vote. She was the one who worked under Obama and not Bernie. And his "Bernie Bros" showing off pictures of him being arrested in the 60's was embarrassing. Who the fuck does he think he is??? Martin Luther King???
BTW, Bernie workers advertising on Grindr is just nasty
Oh I saw it alright. I know how dumb they are. They even thought Hillary was more honest than Bernie Sanders. HAHAHAHAHAH They have no clue who Sanders was because they are too dumb to even research anything. They still think the 90s were the greatest time ever for their people and somehow lump Bill Clinton in there. They don't even realize that Bill Clinton made policies that greatly increased their poverty rates, incarcerated at a rate never seen before and did nothing to help any of their communities. Urban decay hit a high in the 90s, leaving blacks to flounder in their own shit holes.
Bernie bros? Thats a myth. No such thing as that. Yah, Sanders actually did give a fuck about black people and their civil rights. He doesn't think he is anyone but himself.
The bottom line is blacks do not like white men and the inverse is true but to a lesser degree. I tell other white liberals that they do not understand blacks and to just forget about even trying to. Most do not know any. They have their own culture, way of life, one that is self defeating. They have never been able to help themselves and their is no indication of that happening. It sucks that their numbers grow and they continue to drag down elements of society with their ignorance. I feel the same way about old white Republicans but for different reasons obviously.
All in all, the USA is a country filled with stupid people. Blacks, Old Whites who vote for policies that screw everyone, misinformed morons, low information voters and so on. Way less than half the country is actually intelligent enough to make informed decisions.
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Even Obama did not like Blacks which is hilarious. He banned "Professional" blacks from the Whitehouse.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/7/obama-has-no-patience-professional-blacks-or-cbc/
Cornell West even said Obama has no clue about black people because he was never around them nor did he want to be associated with them.
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I don't care how they vote. I am just amused by their stupidity in large numbers. Nothing will ever change with them. I find it hilarious that they vote for policies that keep them in poverty and that keep them from obtaining a better standard of life and achieving an education. They do seem to want to preserve the slave master mentality and want to crush all opportunity that may be available and instead wait for a phony black savior preacher type or remain in a constant status of "victimhood".
As for the other groups. They get it. Most of those groups want real change and vote for Bernie. Bernie has won Hispanics, Asians and whites, young people and students. Blacks (with the exception of some smart es) don't get anything.
Don't worry, I feel that most old white Republicans are just as worthless as well. I just wish the blacks would go ahead and switch parties to them.
TA your meltdown is getting worse ;)...and your apparent hostility toward blacks is rearing it true head..LOL....you castigate blacks for having a slavemaster mentality in voting for Dems, but no such mentality for all the good old boy whites who stick with the Repubs.....and you say blacks are stupid for voting for Dems but all the whites that vote with Trump no matter what are geniuses I guess???..and you want blacks to switch to, and vote for a party who feels blacks don't even exist.....have you watched the debates????....can you remember ONE Repub candidate mentioning anything about black people?????????????????
your REAL agenda here is that you are upset that Hillary may become the next president and that blacks have a kingmaker role ion making that happen....you and I both know you don't give a hell about blacks..you just want them to serve your agenda
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TA your meltdown is getting worse ;)...and your apparent hostility toward blacks is rearing it true head..LOL....you castigate blacks for having a slavemaster mentality in voting for Dems, but no such mentality for all the good old boy whites who stick with the Repubs.....and you say blacks are stupid for voting for Dems but all the whites that vote with Trump no matter what are geniuses I guess???..and you want blacks to switch to, and vote for a party who feels blacks don't even exist.....have you watched the debates????....can you remember ONE Repub candidate mentioning anything about black people?????????????????
your REAL agenda here is that you are upset that Hillary may become the next president and that blacks have a kingmaker role ion making that happen....you and I both know you don't give a hell about blacks..you just want them to serve your agenda
Did you gloss over my words that I feel the same about old white Republicans? Did you miss the part where I lumped stupid blacks with stupid old whites and that the majority of the USA is unintelligent. Blacks are dumb, the majority of Whites are dumb as well. We have a small segment of intelligence in America when it comes down to it.
Seriously scroll up and reread.
Bernie Sanders and Jesse Jackson are the only candidates who have run for office that ever did anything for Black people. The Republicans don't have to worry about black people because they are insignificant in their party.
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TA your meltdown is getting worse ;)...and your apparent hostility toward blacks is rearing it true head..LOL....you castigate blacks for having a slavemaster mentality in voting for Dems, but no such mentality for all the good old boy whites who stick with the Repubs.....and you say blacks are stupid for voting for Dems but all the whites that vote with Trump no matter what are geniuses I guess???..and you want blacks to switch to, and vote for a party who feels blacks don't even exist.....have you watched the debates????....can you remember ONE Repub candidate mentioning anything about black people?????????????????
your REAL agenda here is that you are upset that Hillary may become the next president and that blacks have a kingmaker role ion making that happen....you and I both know you don't give a hell about blacks..you just want them to serve your agenda
Blacks don't give a damn about whites either.
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The Intercept: With Donald Trump Looming, Should Dems Take a Huge Electability Gamble by Nominating Hillary Clinton?
Many Democrats will tell you that there has rarely, if ever, been a more menacing or evil presidential candidate than Donald Trump. “Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory,” pronounced Vox’s Ezra Klein two weeks ago. With a consensus now emerging that the real estate mogul is the likely GOP nominee, it would stand to reason that the most important factor for many Democrats in choosing their own nominee is electability: meaning, who has the best chance of defeating the GOP Satan in the general election? In light of that, can Democrats really afford to take such a risky gamble by nominating Hillary Clinton?
In virtually every poll, her rival, Bernie Sanders, does better, often much better, in head-to-head match-ups against every possible GOP candidate. Here, for instance, is a compilation of how Clinton does against Ted Cruz in recent polls: She trails the Texas senator in all but one poll, and in the one poll she leads, it is by a paltry 2 points:
(https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/02/clintoncruz-540x109.png)
By stark contrast, Sanders leads Cruz in every poll, including by substantial margins in some:
(https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/02/cruzsanders-540x101.png)
A similar story is seen in their match-ups against Trump. Although they both end up ahead in most polls, Sanders’ margin over Trump is generally very comfortable, while Clinton’s is smaller. Clinton’s average lead over Trump is just 2.8 percent, while Sanders’ lead is a full 6 points:
(https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/02/clintontrump-540x333.png)
(https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/02/sanderstrump-540x366.png)
Then there’s the data about how each candidate is perceived. Put simply, Hillary Clinton is an extremely unpopular political figure. By contrast, even after enduring months of attacks from the Clinton camp and its large number of media surrogates, Sanders remains a popular figure.
A Gallup poll released this week reported that “29 percent of Americans offer a positive observation about Clinton while 51 percent express something negative.” As Gallup rather starkly put it: “Unfortunately for Clinton, the negative associations currently outnumber the positive ones by a sizable margin, and even among Democrats, the negatives are fairly high.” Sanders is, of course, a more unknown quantity, but “the public’s comments about Sanders can be summarized as 26 percent positive and 20 percent negative, with the rest categorized as neutral, other or no opinion.”
In fact, the more the public gets to see of both candidates, the more popular Sanders becomes, and the more unpopular Clinton becomes. Here’s Quinnipiac explaining that dynamic in one graph just a few days ago:
This Huffington Post chart, compiling recent polls, shows not only that Clinton is deeply unpopular among the electorate, but becomes increasingly unpopular the more the public is exposed to her during this campaign:
(https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/02/hrc-540x360.png)
(https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/02/clintonunfavo-540x272.png)
Or look at the same metric for critical states. In Ohio, for example, Sanders’ favorability rating is +3 (44-41 percent), while Clinton’s is negative 20 (37-57 percent).
Then there’s the particular climate of the electorate. While it’s undoubtedly true that racism and ethno-nationalism are significant factors in Trump’s appeal, also quite significant is a pervasive, long-standing contempt for the political establishment, combined with enduring rage at Wall Street and corporate America, which — along with the bipartisan agenda of globalization and free trade — have spawned intense economic suffering and deprivation among a huge number of Americans. This article by the conservative writer Michael Brendan Dougherty is the best I’ve read explaining the sustained success of Trump’s candidacy, and it very convincingly documents those factors: “There are a number of Americans who are losers from a process of economic globalization that enriches a transnational global elite.”
In this type of climate, why would anyone assume that a candidate who is the very embodiment of Globalist Establishment Power (see her new, shiny endorsement from Tony Blair), who is virtually drowning both personally and politically in Wall Street cash, has “electability” in her favor? Maybe one can find reasons to support a candidate like that. But in this environment, “electability” is most certainly not one of them. Has anyone made a convincing case why someone with those attributes would be a strong candidate in 2016?
Despite this mountain of data, the pundit consensus — which has been wrong about essentially everything — is that Hillary Clinton is electable and Bernie Sanders is not. There’s virtually no data to support this assertion. All of the relevant data compels the opposite conclusion. Rather than data, the assertion relies on highly speculative, evidence-free claims: Sanders will also become unpopular once he’s the target of GOP attacks; nobody who self-identifies as a “socialist” can win a national election; he’s too old or too ethnic to win, etc. The very same supporters of Hillary Clinton were saying very similar things just eight years ago about an unknown African-American first-term senator with the name Barack Hussein Obama.
Perhaps those claims are true this time. But given the stakes we’re being told are at play if Trump is nominated, wouldn’t one want to base one’s assessment in empirical evidence rather than pundit assertions, no matter how authoritative the tone used to express them?
It’s possible to argue that electability should not be the primary factor. That’s certainly reasonable: Elections often are and should be about aspirations, ideology, and opinion-changing leaders. But given the lurking possibility of a Trump presidency, is now really the time to gamble on such a risky general election candidate as Hillary Clinton?
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Delegate count after the South Carolina blowout:
Clinton - 551
pledged: 91
super: 460
2383 delegates needed to win
Sanders - 85
pledged: 65
super: 20
http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/parties/democrat
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Delegate count after the South Carolina blowout:
Clinton - 551
pledged: 91
super: 460
2383 delegates needed to win
Sanders - 85
pledged: 65
super: 20
http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/parties/democrat
Still don't understand Superdelegates again? You don't count those yet.
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Still don't understand Superdelegates again? You don't count those yet.
Still don't understand the Superdelegates who are comprised of legislators and executives, don't represent a particular state, and are not bound by any state's primary/caucus result? Apparently you don't.
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Still don't understand the Superdelegates who are comprised of legislators and executives, don't represent a particular state, and are not bound by any state's primary/caucus result? Apparently you don't.
Show me where they voted en masse against the primary popular vote.
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Show me where they voted en masse against the primary popular vote.
Wait. Are you acknowledging that you didn't realize these are not Superdelegates who represent a particular state?
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Wait. Are you acknowledging that you didn't realize these are not Superdelegates who represent a particular state?
I am acknowledging that Superdelegates don't count until a candidate is selected from the primaries. Only then do they cast their vote according to the popular vote.
Fine my one instance where they voted en masse for someone who was not the primary nominee.
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I am acknowledging that Superdelegates don't count until a candidate is selected from the primaries. Only then do they cast their vote according to the popular vote.
Fine my one instance where they voted en masse for someone who was not the primary nominee.
Let's recap:
1. You claimed Superdelegates never vote differently from the primary election outcomes in each state:
Again, they NEVER break ranks from how their states vote.
The Republican Superdelegates have threatened to do it for years and they also have NEVER done it.
Hope this helps.
2. You clearly had no idea that members of Congress and every Democrat governor are Superdelegates:
Q: Who gets to be a Superdelegate?
A: Every Democratic member of Congress, House and Senate, is a Superdelegate (240 total). Every Democratic governor is a Superdelegate (20 total). Certain “distinguished party leaders,” 20 in all, are given Superdelegate status. And finally, the Democratic National Committee names an additional 432 Superdelegates—an honor that typically goes to mayors, chairs and vice-chairs of the state party, and other dignitaries.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/after-sanders-big-win-in-new-hampshire-establishme.html
3. You are still struggling with the concept that the Superdelegates who have pledged their support are not bound nor do they at this point care about the outcome of individual state primaries and caucuses.
4. Even if they follow the popular vote, Hillary is going to crush Sanders in the popular vote. Did you not see what just happened in South Carolina? It will only get worse after Super Tuesday.
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Let's recap:
1. You claimed Superdelegates never vote differently from the primary election outcomes in each state:
2. You clearly had no idea that members of Congress and every Democrat governor are Superdelegates:
Q: Who gets to be a Superdelegate?
A: Every Democratic member of Congress, House and Senate, is a Superdelegate (240 total). Every Democratic governor is a Superdelegate (20 total). Certain “distinguished party leaders,” 20 in all, are given Superdelegate status. And finally, the Democratic National Committee names an additional 432 Superdelegates—an honor that typically goes to mayors, chairs and vice-chairs of the state party, and other dignitaries.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/after-sanders-big-win-in-new-hampshire-establishme.html
3. You are still struggling with the concept that the Superdelegates who have pledged their support are not bound nor do they at this point care about the outcome of individual state primaries and caucuses.
4. Even if they follow the popular vote, Hillary is going to crush Sanders in the popular vote. Did you not see what just happened in South Carolina? It will only get worse after Super Tuesday.
Primaries are not won by popular vote genius.
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Show me where they voted en masse against the primary popular vote.
the only prevention for them doing it is "well, they've never done it before..."
I dislike that.
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DE, you are misreading what TA is saying.
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Primaries are not won by popular vote genius.
O Rly? You mean the candidate with the most votes in a primary doesn't receive the most delegates in that state's primary?
And, as I said, you obviously did not know that members of Congress and every Democrat governor are Superdelegates.
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Bernie Sanders Seems to Have Forgotten a Few of His Votes
That's the problem with his holier-than-thou attitude.
By Patrick Caldwell
Tue Mar. 1, 2016
(http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/top-of-content-main/sanders_1.jpg)
Bernie Sanders has been increasingly direct in his attacks against Hillary Clinton's past positions. But there's only one problem with his holier-than- thou narrative: Sanders' own voting record shows he's often voted for similar measures.
Sanders and his supporters seem to consider political consistency as the main measure of a politician's character. "You can be a moderate. You can be a progressive. But you cannot be a moderate and a progressive," Bernie subtweeted Clinton last month. But Sanders has been in the House or Senate for more than 25 years, and during all that time, any politician's voting record is bound to have some inconsistencies. Sanders is no exception. At times he's voted in favor of bills on national security, criminal justice, and immigration that he says he now opposes, attacking Clinton for casting the same votes that he did.
When President Barack Obama announced his plan to shutter the controversial detention facility in Guantanamo Bay last week, Sanders sent out a press release that made sure to ding Clinton over a vote she took that included language to keep Guantanamo Bay open. "Sanders was one of only three senators to vote in 2007 against barring the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to America," the release said. "Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton voted for the amendment that kept the prison open."
It's true that Clinton voted for a resolution in 2007 that said detainees from the prison "should not be released into American society," but that same year she co-sponsored legislation that directly stated the island prison should be shut down and that some prisoners should be transferred to US facilities. But Sanders voted in favor of a 2009 bill that more directly kept the prison open. And when, early in his presidency, Obama was exploring options to close Guantanamo, the Senate voted 90-6 in favor of a measure that barred the president from moving any detainees into prisons on the US mainland. Sanders was one of the 90 who voted in favor of the measure that rebuked Obama.
The Sanders campaign has also been hammering Clinton over the 1994 crime bill that increased penalties for repeat offenders and added funding to build more prisons. "What he does not do is throw people under the bus when it's politically expedient," Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver said on MSNBC earlier this month. "Whether it was in 1994 when then First Lady Clinton called African American youths 'super predators' to push a terrible crime bill or whether it was using coded language in 1996 to pass welfare reform, or whether it was throwing gay people under the bus with DOMA. That's not what Bernie Sanders does. He stands tall with people even when the fight is not popular." Except Sanders failed to "stand tall" against the popular fight in 1994. He sided with the majority of Democrats when he was a member of the House and voted for the crime bill that Bill Clinton signed into law. When Sanders tried last week to explain his support for the 1994 bill, he cited the bill's ban on assault weapons as part of his reason—except the initial House version that he voted for didn't include the assault weapons ban, a provision added by the Senate.
Then there is Sanders' criticism of Clinton on immigration. During a pre-Nevada TV town hall, Sanders threw shade at Clinton on Twitter for saying she'd seek to end the 3-year and 10-year bans on allowing immigrants who overstayed their visa to return to the country.
The only problem? Sanders voted for the measure. It was part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 that passed as part of the defense appropriations bill that year.
As Clinton has frequently pointed out during debates when Sanders challenges her financial-reform bona fides, Sanders voted for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, which eased regulations on Wall Street, thus paving the way for the credit default swaps that sank the economy in the Great Recession.
All of this isn't to say Sanders' attacks lack merit. While Clinton's standard campaign speech has called for a repair of the country's criminal justice system, she has stopped short of a full repudiation of the crime bill her husband signed into law. And, based on her track record representing New York in the Senate, she would have likely joined Sanders in voting for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, but she hadn't yet been elected to the Senate when it became a law.
But that sort of nuanced measure of political evolutions hasn't been part of Sanders' attacks against Clinton. "When this so-called crime bill was being considered," Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, said in the press release last week, "Bernie Sanders criticized its harsh incarceration and death penalty provisions. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, resorted to dog whistle politics and dehumanizing language. Bernie was right then and he's right now."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-voting-history
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Neither Trump nor Perry (both of whom are more successful than Biden) are going to sniff the GOP nomination, so your comparison makes no sense.
(http://vonweiandboxers.webstarts.com/uploads/boxer_dog_sniffing_ar.gif)
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Delegate count after Super Tuesday:
Hillary 1034
Sanders 408
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2016/primaries
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Delegate count after Super Tuesday:
Hillary 1034
Sanders 408
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2016/primaries
I don't think you know how to add correctly at all. I don't think you have a clue as to what you are talking about.
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/delegate-targets/democrats/
Bernie won 41% of pledged delegates so far, with 21.45% of the delegates decided. Bernie is 3.73% of elected delegates behind, with only 21.45% of elected delegates assigned.
The majority of states left will favor Bernie because the ignorant Hebrew vote is done at this point.
Furthermore, Why are you counting Superdelegates you moron?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/03/01/would-democratic-superdelegates-steal-the-nomination-from-bernie-sanders-probably-not/
Would Democratic superdelegates steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders? Probably not.
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The media wants to discourage people from backing Bernie. They've been doing it from the beginning, by listing the superdelegates under Hillary as a tactic to declare her the winner, before it even got going. I notice the media today has all but called it for Hillary.
So much for the "liberal media" baloney people try to use.
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I don't think you know how to add correctly at all. I don't think you have a clue as to what you are talking about.
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/delegate-targets/democrats/
Bernie won 41% of pledged delegates so far, with 21.45% of the delegates decided. Bernie is 3.73% of elected delegates behind, with only 21.45% of elected delegates assigned.
The majority of states left will favor Bernie because the ignorant Hebrew vote is done at this point.
Furthermore, Why are you counting Superdelegates you moron?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/03/01/would-democratic-superdelegates-steal-the-nomination-from-bernie-sanders-probably-not/
Would Democratic superdelegates steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders? Probably not.
Settle down before you hurt yourself. I didn't do any math. I cut and pasted from the internet, just like you.
And you still don't understand that all Democrats in Congress are Superdelegates.
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Jim Webb: I could vote for Trump, but not Hillary
By David Weigel
March 4, 2016
(https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2016/01/13/Editorial-Opinion/Advance/Images/DEM_2016_Webb-034e5-960.jpg&w=1484)
Former Virginia senator Jim Webb (Charlie Neibergall/AP)
In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Reagan administration veteran-turned-Democratic senator from Virginia turned short-term presidential candidate Jim Webb said twice that he could not support Hillary Clinton if she won the Democratic nomination for president.
“No, I would not vote for Hillary Clinton,” Webb said.
Pressed on whether he would vote for Donald Trump, Webb said he was “not sure” but had not ruled it out.
“It’s nothing personal about Hillary Clinton, but the reason Donald Trump is getting so much support right now is not because of the, you know, ‘racists,’ etc. and etc.,” Webb said. “It’s because a certain group of people are seeing him as the only one who has the courage to say, ‘We’ve got to clean out the stables of the American governmental system right now.’ If you're voting for Donald Trump, you might be getting something very good or very bad. If you’re voting for Hillary Clinton, you’re going to get the same thing. Do you want the same thing?”
Webb, who briefly ran for the Democratic nomination before dropping out and recently ruled out an independent bid for president, had just watched Trump win landslide votes in the part of the country Webb knows best.
In Virginia, the mogul won by 2.8 percent of the vote, but dominated the counties of Appalachia, peaking at 69.7 percent in Buchanan County. That was the sort of place that Webb had seen break from the Democrats during the Obama years. In 2006, during his successful Senate bid, Webb won the county by 12 points. Six years later, when now-Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.) ran to replace Webb, he lost Buchanan by 28.6 points — and President Obama lost it by 34.7 points.
Trump is finding a large number of supporters in “coal country” without paying much attention to the Obama administration’s energy policies or to the plight of miners. In his refusal to rule out a Trump vote, Webb was acknowledging the mogul’s surprising appeal to white voters who feel left out of American culture — something that may help him win delegates this weekend in Kentucky and next week in Mississippi.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/04/jim-webb-id-vote-for-trump-but-not-clinton/?tid=sm_fb
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Current delegate count:
Hillary Clinton 1,130
Bernie Sanders 499
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2016/presidential-primary-caucus-results
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Current delegate count:
Hillary Clinton 1,130
Bernie Sanders 499
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2016/presidential-primary-caucus-results
Why are you including Superdelegates? ???
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Why are you including Superdelegates? ???
I've tried to educate you more than once.
1. I'm not including anything. I'm posting what essentially everyone else has reported as the current delegate count.
2. The Superdelegates being counted are members of Congress and other legislators who are not tied to a particular state.
We need a special ed class on this board. lol :)
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I've tried to educate you more than once.
1. I'm not including anything. I'm posting what essentially everyone else has reported as the current delegate count.
2. The Superdelegates being counted are members of Congress and other legislators who are not tied to a particular state.
We need a special ed class on this board. lol :)
Superdelegates are also NOT tied to a particular candidate.
Again, why include them?
For instance, in 2008, Obama NEVER had the Superdelegate backing that Hillary did, yet he got all of them at the very end.
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Superdelegates are also NOT tied to a particular candidate.
Again, why include them?
For instance, in 2008, Obama NEVER had the Superdelegate backing that Hillary did, yet he got all of them at the very end.
Dude. Do you have a learning disability?
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Dude. Do you have a learning disability?
I do. Its called not being able to accept bullshit.
Again, Superdelegates ARE NOT tied to any candidate so including them for one candidate or another is just stupid and wrong.
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I do. Its called not being able to accept bullshit.
Again, Superdelegates ARE NOT tied to any candidate so including them for one candidate or another is just stupid and wrong.
I am really starting to think you do have a comprehension problem. You first claimed Superdelegates never vote differently from their state votes. In other words, you didn't know that some members of Congress and some Governors are also Superdelegates.
If you have a problem with how the delegate count is being reported, you should contact CNN, Fox News, and every other outlet reporting the delegate count.
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I am really starting to think you do have a comprehension problem. You first claimed Superdelegates never vote differently from their state votes. In other words, you didn't know that some members of Congress and some Governors are also Superdelegates.
If you have a problem with how the delegate count is being reported, you should contact CNN, Fox News, and every other outlet reporting the delegate count.
???
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???
Exactly.
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Fox News Town Hall - Sanders:
Clinton:
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I am really starting to think you do have a comprehension problem. You first claimed Superdelegates never vote differently from their state votes. In other words, you didn't know that some members of Congress and some Governors are also Superdelegates.
If you have a problem with how the delegate count is being reported, you should contact CNN, Fox News, and every other outlet reporting the delegate count.
New York times has just not started to NOT include Superdelegates.
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Fox News Town Hall - Sanders:
Clinton:
The Fox News townhall was awesome. Finally a news station that is fair to Bernie. Bernie has always been on Fox News and has always been treated with respect and treated fairly. He has never hesitated to be on that network. Hillary runs for the hills when she see Fox coming.
Bernie destroyed her here and its clear by the audience that Bernie is the clear winner.
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New York times has just not started to NOT include Superdelegates.
Wrong again.
Superdelegates Clinton 461, Sanders 22
Democratic party leaders who are free to support any candidate. The majority of the 712 superdelegates have declared support for Mrs. Clinton, though they could switch candidates if she were to lose the lead in pledged delegates, which are awarded based on election results.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html?_r=0
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Wrong again.
Superdelegates Clinton 461, Sanders 22
Democratic party leaders who are free to support any candidate. The majority of the 712 superdelegates have declared support for Mrs. Clinton, though they could switch candidates if she were to lose the lead in pledged delegates, which are awarded based on election results.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html?_r=0
Look at the graphs, genius.
Up until yesterday they were putting them in the graphs.
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Look at the graphs, genius.
Up until yesterday they were putting them in the graphs.
I looked at the graphs. But I also looked at what comes right after the graphs. You cannot look at one without the other.
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I looked at the graphs. But I also looked at what comes right after the graphs. You cannot look at one without the other.
Well, NYTimes made a clear change to start doing it. I saw the news story on it.
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Well, NYTimes made a clear change to start doing it. I saw the news story on it.
Well I just posted the quote and link from the NY Times. Next softball?
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Well I just posted the quote and link from the NY Times. Next softball?
???
Did you know that Hillary Clinton had a huge lead in Superdelegates in 2008 the entire time and that it made zero difference because they all switched to Obama.
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Well I just posted the quote and link from the NY Times. Next softball?
Did you read this part on the page as well?
Democratic party leaders who are free to support any candidate. The majority of the 712 superdelegates have declared support for Mrs. Clinton, though they could switch candidates if she were to lose the lead in pledged delegates, which are awarded based on election results.
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???
Did you know that Hillary Clinton had a huge lead in Superdelegates in 2008 the entire time and that it made zero difference because they all switched to Obama.
In light of the false info you just gave me, I'm not inclined to believe you.
But I don't blame you for trying to change the subject. lol
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Did you read this part on the page as well?
Democratic party leaders who are free to support any candidate. The majority of the 712 superdelegates have declared support for Mrs. Clinton, though they could switch candidates if she were to lose the lead in pledged delegates, which are awarded based on election results.
Good grief. I quoted it.
Wrong again.
Superdelegates Clinton 461, Sanders 22
Democratic party leaders who are free to support any candidate. The majority of the 712 superdelegates have declared support for Mrs. Clinton, though they could switch candidates if she were to lose the lead in pledged delegates, which are awarded based on election results.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html?_r=0
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Good grief. I quoted it.
Do you understand what it means?
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Do you understand what it means?
Did you not see that I had already posted it? You really do have a reading comprehension problem.
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She is still running away with the nomination, but how weak is she to be losing states to someone like Bernie Sanders?
What went wrong for Hillary Clinton in Michigan?
By MJ Lee, Jeff Zeleny, Dana Bash and Dan Merica, CNN
Wed March 9, 2016 | Video Source: CNN
(CNN)Hillary Clinton's surprise loss in Michigan raises an urgent question for her campaign: What went wrong?
Michigan was supposed to be a clean victory for the former secretary of state, proving that she could win across the country and put her on a quick path to the Democratic nomination. But when polls closed and it became clear that the race against Bernie Sanders would be a nail-biter, the second-guessing among Clinton's allies kicked into full gear.
In the days ahead of the primary, Clinton repeatedly hammered Sanders over his 2009 vote against a bailout for the U.S. auto industry, calculating that the line of attack would resonate in a state that's home to the country's largest car manufacturers. But by Tuesday night, some Michigan Democrats aligned with Clinton's campaign said privately they think that strategy did not work as they intended.
CNN exit polls showed that Sanders outperformed Clinton among voters who are "very worried" about the U.S. economy, 56% to 40%. Among voters who believe international trade takes away American jobs, Sanders also led Clinton, 56% to 43% — a sign that Sanders' populist economic message resonated in Michigan.
In another troubling sign for the Clinton campaign, among voters who said their most important priority in a presidential candidate is that they are honest and trustworthy, Sanders overwhelmingly outperformed Clinton, 80% to 19%.
Some supporters pointed to the fact that, in contrast to Sanders, Clinton had only campaigned in Detroit, Flint and Grand Rapids. After campaigning tirelessly in Nevada and South Carolina, Clinton's schedule in Michigan seemed less packed.
The hand-wringing inside the Clinton circle also included the concern that perhaps the campaign had lost sight of winning the Democratic nomination — and started looking ahead at the general election too soon.
"They didn't take Sanders for granted as much as voters," said one top Democrat close to the campaign.
Clinton told supporters on Monday that "the sooner I could become your nominee, the more I could begin to turn my attention to the Republicans."
Clinton's aides seemed to anticipate the potential of a Michigan loss. A memo last week from Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook noted "even if Sen. Sanders were able to eke out a victory (in Michigan), we would still net more delegates in Mississippi, which holds its election on the same night."
Indeed, Clinton actually won more delegates than Sanders on Tuesday, according to a CNN estimate, picking up 84 to Sanders' 67. She now has 1,234 of the 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination. That figure includes super delegates, party officials and office holders who have said they will back her.
Sanders has 567 delegates overall.
As it began to dawn on the Clinton campaign that the Michigan contest would be much tighter than it had anticipated, Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton's communication director, said that demographics were partly to blame.
"Michigan looks a lot like states that Sen. Sanders does well in. The Democratic vote is only about 75% white -- that is always coming in at a disadvantage to us," Palmieri told reporters Tuesday night in Ohio.
Palmieri added that at the end of the day, the campaign still felt "confident she is going to be the nominee."
Hillary Clinton wins Miss. as exit polls favor Trump
Hillary Clinton wins Miss. as exit polls favor Trump 00:55
Sanders' performance in Michigan gives the senator's campaign a fresh boost of optimism. Particularly after losing by big margins to Clinton in a state like South Carolina, where he had made aggressive outreach to the African-American community, one of his main challenges is to show that he can win over a more diverse electorate.
Clinton's struggles in Michigan will be particularly worrisome as the campaign aims to win neighboring Ohio on March 15.
But on Tuesday night, Palmieri denied that the tightness in Michigan indicates potential problems for Clinton in Ohio, arguing that Clinton's message on jobs, the auto bailout and the Republican Party can deliver them the Buckeye State.
"We think that she came into Michigan with a very strong economic agenda and message about how she would create jobs and put manufacturing sector around clean energy, also how she would help create small businesses, very future-oriented," Palmieri said. "We don't think Senator Sanders offered that and we think that that will be effective in Ohio."
Sanders acknowledged that the Michigan vote was close but thanked voters for "repudiating" polls that indicated Clinton had stronger support in the state.
"What tonight means is that the Bernie Sanders campaign, the people's revolution that we're talking about, the political revolution that we're talking about, is strong in every part of the country," Sanders said. "And, frankly, we believe our strongest areas are yet to happen."
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/09/politics/hillary-clinton-michigan-loss/index.html
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Current delegate count:
Clinton - 1238
Sanders - 572
http://www.cnn.com/election/
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Current delegate count:
Clinton - 1238
Sanders - 572
http://www.cnn.com/election/
Superdelegates again? ???
Do you know what a Superdelegate is?
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Superdelegates again? ???
Do you know what a Superdelegate is?
You crack me up. :)
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You crack me up. :)
I am just wondering if you know what they are. You seem to not be able to make the connection yet.
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It just seems so convenient that, upon reporting results from the very first contest, the media effectively declares Hillary the winner. Because that's exactly what it amounts to. And it's rather difficult not to notice the same thing escaping Trump.
The American people sit on the sidelines, while a bunch of screwy elitists use their Media Machine to play games.
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oh the top newspapers have been all about hilary from minute #1. "Is it over for bernie?" right before new years because a staffer had access to a contact list he should not have? LOL they're in bed together, no doubt.
Love or hate trump, his presence in this race has shown us how freakin' crooked the media can be.
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oh the top newspapers have been all about hilary from minute #1. "Is it over for bernie?" right before new years because a staffer had access to a contact list he should not have? LOL they're in bed together, no doubt.
Love or hate trump, his presence in this race has shown us how freakin' crooked the media can be.
Agreed. The audience problem alone should have caused people to go Samuel Whittemore on their asses.
Maybe we really are at the end of the line, and these are the signs. Not to get all weird, but I can't see how we'll ever stand again after being so fucked-over this season. We have only become more vulnerable than ever IMO.
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Agreed. The audience problem alone should have caused people to go Samuel Whittemore on their asses.
Maybe we really are at the end of the line, and these are the signs. Not to get all weird, but I can't see how we'll ever stand again after being so fucked-over this season. We have only become more vulnerable than ever IMO.
it'll keep growing like this. Ron Paul's people got screwed over in 2012 on some last minute rule change to make them irrelevant. SC ran a senate candidate (alvin greene?) who was a mentally impaired broke man with sex charges pending. complete plant to see if it could work, and it did.
In 2016, Trump running as a dem plant and they're preparing to change convention rules to screw over the will of the people.
2016 is nothing more than the usual escalation from the last presidential election cycle. It's fascinating to watch.
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I am just wondering if you know what they are. You seem to not be able to make the connection yet.
You don't understand how the process works, how delegates are selected, how they vote, and who is actually reporting the delegate count. But you keep hanging around here. There are some smart guys who post here who can help you learn.
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Ever notice in these debates, when it comes to the Telemundo reps, that they don't use people who speak both Spanish and English in a somewhat normal fashion? It's always the extreme, really heavily affected accent.
Seems sort of odd, given that they communicate for a living.
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As Bernie made his comment about the buying of elections (in his closing statement), he should have turned to look right at Hillary and point at her.
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As Bernie made his comment about the buying of elections (in his closing statement), he should have turned to look right at Hillary and point at her.
Did you see that Standing Ovation Bernie got at the end!!! ROFLMAO And then they panned to Hillary's face and she just did nervous laughter the whole time. Then, the audience started chanting BERNIE BERNIE BERNIE. HAHAHA It was awkward as hell for her.
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Standing Ovation. Look at Hillary's Face. HAHAHHAAH
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdKeOKfWwAIv7fR.jpg:large)
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Link to Michigan debate:
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Did you see that Standing Ovation Bernie got at the end!!! ROFLMAO And then they panned to Hillary's face and she just did nervous laughter the whole time. Then, the audience started chanting BERNIE BERNIE BERNIE. HAHAHA It was awkward as hell for her.
Just watched it again. Hillary probably wishes she were running in a time from the past, when all she'd have to do is lie (like she does now), and everyone would be so delusional as to give her the same enthusiasm. To me, that's what her expression read.
Standing around telling lies isn't working so well for her these days, except with Blacks.
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdU_n7oUMAAmCyj.jpg:large)
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Sanders barnstorms Midwest as Clinton lead narrows in several states
Published March 14, 2016
FoxNews.com
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders went on a barnstorming blitz Monday, responding to a sudden opening to gain on Hillary Clinton’s delegate lead as polls show the front-runner’s once-solid advantage in key Midwestern contests shrinking to single digits going into the Super Tuesday II primaries.
In Illinois, one of five states holding primaries on Tuesday, a fresh CBS News poll even shows Sanders ahead of Clinton by 2 points.
The story is the same across the Midwest.
In Ohio’s primary, polls show Clinton leading by an average of just 6 percentage points, down from a high of 30 just a few weeks ago. In Missouri, too, Sanders has decidedly closed the gap.
Clinton might be feeling the pressure. Ahead of Tuesday’s primaries, the Clinton campaign scrambled to clarify comments made the night before in a CNN town hall – where she seemed to predict the demise of coal jobs that many workers in states like Ohio and Illinois rely upon.
At the town hall, she said, “I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country, because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
As Republicans seized on the remarks, her campaign put out a statement stressing that, “Coal will remain a part of the energy mix for years to come” and Clinton’s plan would also safeguard workers’ retirement and health benefits.
Spokesman Brian Fallon said “no candidate in this race is more devoted to supporting coal communities than Hillary Clinton” and “any suggestions otherwise are false."
The latest polling reflects Sanders’ apparent surge in Midwestern and Rust Belt states, possibly propelled by last week's stunning upset of Clinton in the Michigan primary. The territory is proving to be a potential stronghold for the still-underdog self-professed Socialist senator, even as Clinton locks down traditional Democratic support across the South.
Clinton still is favored to win two other Democratic contests Tuesday, in Florida and North Carolina, where polls show her holding tight to a double-digit lead.
But Sanders is concentrating his efforts on the three Midwestern states. His schedule Monday takes him from Ohio to North Carolina, and then back to Missouri before wrapping the night with a rally in Chicago.
Illinois is emerging as a battleground of sorts, with Clinton campaigning in the state earlier in the day, before holding a rally in Charlotte, N.C., Monday night.
In total, 691 delegates are at stake in the Democratic contests on Tuesday. Sanders was able to stave off predictions of his bid’s demise with his upset win last week in Michigan, and sees the potential to further erode Clinton’s edge on Tuesday.
At the same time, Clinton appears well-positioned to win the largest contest on the map Tuesday, Florida’s primary -- worth 214 delegates.
Another big factor in the Florida race is absentee and early voting. According to figures as of Monday morning, nearly 370,000 have voted early in the Democratic contest, and more than 480,000 have voted absentee.
If nothing else, Sanders threatens to keep Clinton locked in a competitive race for weeks longer, even as she nears the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
Clinton aides insist there's little they will do to push Sanders from the race, but they are beginning to show signs of impatience with what they perceive as the increasingly negative tone of his campaign.
"We would like to wrap it up as soon as possible," Clinton communications director Jen Palmieri said hours before Sanders' startling victory in Michigan last week. "You don't want to let them have a head start on the general."
Clinton and her allies had hoped to switch much of their focus to the general election after Tuesday's primary contests, but that plan was thrown into doubt after her loss in Michigan.
Aides acknowledge upcoming contests in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois look tighter than they did just days ago, forcing them to keep focus on the primary despite a sizable advantage among the delegates that determine the nomination.
Victories on Tuesday would give Sanders fresh momentum and grant him months to continue criticizing Clinton's positions on issues that Trump wants to focus on in November.
At the same time, Clinton carries an edge of more than 200 pledged delegates into Tuesday's contests in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Illinois and Missouri and could effectively foreclose Sanders' path to victory with a sweep of the large states.
While the delegates will be awarded proportionately, Clinton's support with superdelegates -- elected officials and party leaders free to back whomever they'd like -- puts her in a strong position to win the nomination.
According to an Associated Press analysis, Clinton holds 1,231 of total delegates, more than half the amount needed to clinch the nomination. Sanders has 576.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/14/sanders-barnstorms-midwest-as-clinton-lead-narrows-in-several-states.html?intcmp=hpbt2
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You don't say?
Bernie's billionaires: Some wealthy donors have backed Sanders for years
By Barnini Chakraborty
Published March 15, 2016
FoxNews.com
While Bernie Sanders has pitched himself as the presidential candidate for the little guy -- tapping into the wallets of voters angry over Wall Street’s influence in politics -- a deeper dive shows Sanders has enlisted an arsenal of millionaire and billionaire backers who have backed his political career since his early Senate runs a decade ago.
That big-money support stands in sharp contrast to Sanders' calls for corporate fat-cats and the uber-wealthy to pay their “fair share” in taxes by closing loopholes and removing breaks that benefit the mega-rich.
At a rally last Sunday at The Ohio State University, Sanders told a cheering crowd,” You can tell a lot about a candidate based on how he or she raises money for his or her campaign.”
The comment goes hand-in-hand with the theme Sanders has been hammering for months.
“I am not raising money from millionaires and billionaires,” Sanders said during the CNN Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas on Oct. 13. “In fact, tonight, in terms of what a political revolution is about, there are 4,000 house parties – 100,000 people in this country – watching this debate tonight who want real change in this country.”
Sanders war chest has been driven by smaller donations – he raised $26 million in small increments in the third fund-raising quarter.
Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager, insists the fancy fundraisers and big-name donors are few and far between and that there is no contradiction in what the Vermont Democrat and self-described socialist practices and what he preaches.
“We don’t have a super PAC,” Weaver told FoxNews.com. “We rely on small contributions. Average contribution is $27. Are there some, a few people in there who have more money, personal money who give larger contributions? Yeah, of course they do, but within the federal $2700 limit. No, you know, no 50, 100, 2 million contributions.”
But for years Sanders has enjoyed donations from a handful of wealthy donors including media moguls Leo J. Hindery and Steven C. Markoff.
Markoff, who donated to Sanders’ 2012 Senate campaign, began trading rare coins when he was 11. By 2004, his company A-Mark Entertainment was listed as the 65th largest privately held company in the U.S., and the second largest in Los Angeles.
Hindrey, managing partner of the private equity fund InterMedia Partners and former chief executive of AT & T Broadband and of the YES Network, also maxed out on contributions to Sanders. Hindrey, while advocating for fewer tax breaks for the wealthy, is among the biggest Democratic fundraisers in the country.
Another big money donor to Sanders’ campaign is David Geffen, co-founder of DreamWorks Animation and worth a cool $6.9 billion. According to campaign finance records, Geffen donated the max at the time -- $2,500 -- to Sanders Senate campaign on Jan. 27, 2012.
But Lara Brown, director of George Washington University’s political management program, told FoxNews.com that she doesn’t see a big push-back from Sanders supporters.
“By and large, Democrats tend to believe these individuals are giving because they have a strong progressive/liberal orientation in their politics and they are doing this because it equates to them giving to a cause,” she said, adding that the same would be true for big-money donors in Silicon Valley and the tech industry.
Viveca Novak, editorial and communications director at Center for Responsive Politics, agrees.
“The vast majority of his contributions in this election have come from smaller donors,” Novak told FoxNews.com. “Even some wealthy Democratic donors believe in changing the campaign finance system, and Sanders’ message has been pretty consistent on that issue.”
However, if donations came in from Wall Street moneymakers, Brown believes the reaction might be different.
“The question is not whether he has taken donations from wealthy individuals, but instead whether he has received support from the very people he has attacked as being at the core of the corrupt campaign finance that funds Washington,” she said. “Hence, as with most scandals, the transgression is judged most harshly when it involves hypocrisy.”
Sanders, born in 1941, started out his political career as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont in the early 1980s. He entered the national political arena in 1991 when he ran as an independent and won a seat in the House of Representatives. In 2007, he was elected to the Senate and then re-elected in 2012.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/15/bernies-billionaires-some-wealthy-donors-have-backed-sanders-for-years.html?intcmp=hpbt1
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You don't say?
Bernie's billionaires: Some wealthy donors have backed Sanders for years
By Barnini Chakraborty
Published March 15, 2016
FoxNews.com
While Bernie Sanders has pitched himself as the presidential candidate for the little guy -- tapping into the wallets of voters angry over Wall Street’s influence in politics -- a deeper dive shows Sanders has enlisted an arsenal of millionaire and billionaire backers who have backed his political career since his early Senate runs a decade ago.
That big-money support stands in sharp contrast to Sanders' calls for corporate fat-cats and the uber-wealthy to pay their “fair share” in taxes by closing loopholes and removing breaks that benefit the mega-rich.
At a rally last Sunday at The Ohio State University, Sanders told a cheering crowd,” You can tell a lot about a candidate based on how he or she raises money for his or her campaign.”
The comment goes hand-in-hand with the theme Sanders has been hammering for months.
“I am not raising money from millionaires and billionaires,” Sanders said during the CNN Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas on Oct. 13. “In fact, tonight, in terms of what a political revolution is about, there are 4,000 house parties – 100,000 people in this country – watching this debate tonight who want real change in this country.”
Sanders war chest has been driven by smaller donations – he raised $26 million in small increments in the third fund-raising quarter.
Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager, insists the fancy fundraisers and big-name donors are few and far between and that there is no contradiction in what the Vermont Democrat and self-described socialist practices and what he preaches.
“We don’t have a super PAC,” Weaver told FoxNews.com. “We rely on small contributions. Average contribution is $27. Are there some, a few people in there who have more money, personal money who give larger contributions? Yeah, of course they do, but within the federal $2700 limit. No, you know, no 50, 100, 2 million contributions.”
But for years Sanders has enjoyed donations from a handful of wealthy donors including media moguls Leo J. Hindery and Steven C. Markoff.
Markoff, who donated to Sanders’ 2012 Senate campaign, began trading rare coins when he was 11. By 2004, his company A-Mark Entertainment was listed as the 65th largest privately held company in the U.S., and the second largest in Los Angeles.
Hindrey, managing partner of the private equity fund InterMedia Partners and former chief executive of AT & T Broadband and of the YES Network, also maxed out on contributions to Sanders. Hindrey, while advocating for fewer tax breaks for the wealthy, is among the biggest Democratic fundraisers in the country.
Another big money donor to Sanders’ campaign is David Geffen, co-founder of DreamWorks Animation and worth a cool $6.9 billion. According to campaign finance records, Geffen donated the max at the time -- $2,500 -- to Sanders Senate campaign on Jan. 27, 2012.
But Lara Brown, director of George Washington University’s political management program, told FoxNews.com that she doesn’t see a big push-back from Sanders supporters.
“By and large, Democrats tend to believe these individuals are giving because they have a strong progressive/liberal orientation in their politics and they are doing this because it equates to them giving to a cause,” she said, adding that the same would be true for big-money donors in Silicon Valley and the tech industry.
Viveca Novak, editorial and communications director at Center for Responsive Politics, agrees.
“The vast majority of his contributions in this election have come from smaller donors,” Novak told FoxNews.com. “Even some wealthy Democratic donors believe in changing the campaign finance system, and Sanders’ message has been pretty consistent on that issue.”
However, if donations came in from Wall Street moneymakers, Brown believes the reaction might be different.
“The question is not whether he has taken donations from wealthy individuals, but instead whether he has received support from the very people he has attacked as being at the core of the corrupt campaign finance that funds Washington,” she said. “Hence, as with most scandals, the transgression is judged most harshly when it involves hypocrisy.”
Sanders, born in 1941, started out his political career as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont in the early 1980s. He entered the national political arena in 1991 when he ran as an independent and won a seat in the House of Representatives. In 2007, he was elected to the Senate and then re-elected in 2012.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/15/bernies-billionaires-some-wealthy-donors-have-backed-sanders-for-years.html?intcmp=hpbt1
Many ultra wealthy support the idea of paying more to help the middle class. Not everyone is as greedy as you.
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Many ultra wealthy support the idea of paying more to help the middle class. Not everyone is as greedy as you.
This is about Sanders, not me. Sheds some new light on his class warfare.
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This is about Sanders, not me. Sheds some new light on his class warfare.
It doesn't shed anything other than the fact that there are good people out there with a ton of money who want to do something good with it by paying more to help improve the lives of millions.
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How many people did Geffen donate to?
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It doesn't shed anything other than the fact that there are good people out there with a ton of money who want to do something good with it by paying more to help improve the lives of millions.
That's one way to look at it. Another way to view it is these are wealthy donors drying to buy influence, which makes them and Sanders a part of the machine.
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That's one way to look at it. Another way to view it is these are wealthy donors drying to buy influence, which makes them and Sanders a part of the machine.
Buy influence? How? Has Bernie ever done that before? (of course not)
What would they have to gain from it?
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That's one way to look at it. Another way to view it is these are wealthy donors drying to buy influence, which makes them and Sanders a part of the machine.
You do realize that these Billionaires are only giving 2700 dollars which is the MAX for a personal contribution.
Hell, many who are not even worth 100,000 dollars have given 2700 dollars.
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That's one way to look at it. Another way to view it is these are wealthy donors drying to buy influence, which makes them and Sanders a part of the machine.
By that standard, then, Bernie's competition is completely unelectable. That's another way to look at it.
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By that standard, then, Bernie's competition is completely unelectable. That's another way to look at it.
He doesn't even realize that these billionaires only gave 2700 dollars which is the max personal contribution.
Would help if he reads the articles he posts.
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Buy influence? How? Has Bernie ever done that before? (of course not)
What would they have to gain from it?
I don't know if his donors have bought influence, but it wouldn't surprise me. That's why many people donate in the first place. Campaign contributions give the donors a seat at the table. It allows them to help influence policy, gain favors, etc.
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You do realize that these Billionaires are only giving 2700 dollars which is the MAX for a personal contribution.
Hell, many who are not even worth 100,000 dollars have given 2700 dollars.
Yes, that's what the article says. Do you know what happens when someone makes that kind of contribution?
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Yes, that's what the article says. Do you know what happens when someone makes that kind of contribution?
Yeah, they deduct 2700 dollars from your bank account.
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I don't know if his donors have bought influence, but it wouldn't surprise me. That's why many people donate in the first place. Campaign contributions give the donors a seat at the table. It allows them to help influence policy, gain favors, etc.
I donated the Max by the way. Where is my influence? I have not gotten a call yet or anything. When do I get it since you seem to know.
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He doesn't even realize that these billionaires only gave 2700 dollars which is the max personal contribution.
Would help if he reads the articles he posts.
From what I understand, it's common for guys like Geffen to donate to multiple candidates. And it was for the Senate run.
If Bernie had a system in place to reject donations from individuals with over a certain level of wealth, imagine the screaming from his enemies about 'class war' then.
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From what I understand, it's common for guys like Geffen to donate to multiple candidates. And it was for the Senate run.
If Bernie had a system in place to reject donations from individuals with over a certain level of wealth, imagine the screaming from his enemies about 'class war' then.
I donated the Max. I got a few Bumper Stickers and Signs from Act Blue, but thats it. Still waiting on the perks Dos Equis said I would get and my Ambassador seat.
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I donated the Max by the way. Where is my influence? I have not gotten a call yet or anything. When do I get it since you seem to know.
Have you tried to call? Do you have an agenda? Do you need a favor? Have you asked? I suspect the answers to those questions are "no."
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I donated the Max. I got a few Bumper Stickers and Signs from Act Blue, but thats it. Still waiting on the perks Dos Equis said I would get and my Ambassador seat.
The attacks on Bernie have been going through the roof lately, even coach looks like a hilary supporter.
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Have you tried to call? Do you have an agenda? Do you need a favor? Have you asked? I suspect the answers to those questions are "no."
Call who? Favor for what?
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Call who? Favor for what?
Santa Claus. Presents. ::)
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Santa Claus. Presents. ::)
Does this email count as anything?
Bernie Sanders
Thank you for your generous contribution to Bernie Sanders' campaign for president.
A successful national campaign is a massive undertaking, especially when we will be heavily outspent. It will require the active participation of millions of Americans in every community in our country.
Please like Bernie Sanders on Facebook to get the latest from the campaign: https://www.facebook.com/berniesanders
We cannot thank you enough for your contribution to this campaign. Thank you for your support.
- Team Bernie
To view your ActBlue contribution history follow this link: My Contribution Summary
Your contribution from 1 March 2016
Reference #: AB25702761
Bernie Sanders $2700.00
Your Information
Adam
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Does this email count as anything?
Bernie Sanders
Thank you for your generous contribution to Bernie Sanders' campaign for president.
A successful national campaign is a massive undertaking, especially when we will be heavily outspent. It will require the active participation of millions of Americans in every community in our country.
Please like Bernie Sanders on Facebook to get the latest from the campaign: https://www.facebook.com/berniesanders
We cannot thank you enough for your contribution to this campaign. Thank you for your support.
- Team Bernie
To view your ActBlue contribution history follow this link: My Contribution Summary
Your contribution from 1 March 2016
Reference #: AB25702761
Bernie Sanders $2700.00
Your Information
Adam
Yes. It lets you validate the life-sized poster of Bernie Sanders on your wall.
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Yes. It lets you validate the life-sized poster of Bernie Sanders on your wall.
You made the claim that 2700 max contribution buys influence. I am calling bullshit. It hasn't bought me anything.
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You made the claim that 2700 max contribution buys influence. I am calling bullshit. It hasn't bought me anything.
That is exactly what happens. We have a $3k max individual contribution here. Couples can donate $6k (or what we call "six thousand dollar couples"). Those couples can, if they choose, influence policy. Their phone calls get returned. They get a seat at the table with decision makers. I've seen it happen.
If you're not getting any access after your alleged contribution, there could be a few things happening: maybe you haven't actually donated; maybe you donated and don't care about access or influence; maybe you donated and tried to contact them but they didn't respond because you are a loser. Who knows?
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That is exactly what happens. We have a $3k max individual contribution here. Couples can donate $6k (or what we call "six thousand dollar couples"). Those couples can, if they choose, influence policy. Their phone calls get returned. They get a seat at the table with decision makers. I've seen it happen.
If you're not getting any access after your alleged contribution, there could be a few things happening: maybe you haven't actually donated; maybe you donated and don't care about access or influence; maybe you donated and tried to contact them but they didn't respond because you are a loser. Who knows?
Or maybe you are just full of shit.
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Or maybe you are just full of shit.
Or maybe you are an uninformed dope. Yeah. I'm rolling with that.
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Or maybe you are an uninformed dope. Yeah. I'm rolling with that.
???
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???
lol
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If brokered convention, Jeb steals the nomination
RUSH LIMBAUGH said this today.
He fears Jeb is going to win it at a brokered convention. He's convinced.
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Current delegate count:
Clinton - 1588 (pledged: 1116; super: 472)
Sanders - 817 (pledged: 794; super: 23)
http://www.cnn.com/election
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Hillary in all her glory.
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Hope springs eternal.
Sanders fights for life as Clinton wins another state, Obama turns screws
Published March 18, 2016
FoxNews.com
Bernie Sanders, still insisting he has a fighting chance to capture the Democratic presidential nomination, ratcheted up his campaign schedule Friday to hit all three Western states voting next week as he scrambles to recover from Hillary Clinton’s recent five-state sweep – while President Obama applies pressure from the outside on the Vermont senator’s underdog bid.
Overnight, Clinton was declared the winner of the last remaining unresolved primary from Tuesday's five contests, in Missouri. Sanders said he won’t seek a recount in the tight race.
But, speaking with the Associated Press, he maintained he can still close the delegate gap.
"I don't believe they have an insurmountable lead," Sanders said Thursday from Arizona, where he was campaigning. "Secretary Clinton has done phenomenally well in the Deep South and in Florida. That's where she has gotten the lion's share of votes. And I congratulate her for that. But we're out of the Deep South now."
Sanders is hoping to turn things around next Tuesday, when Arizona, Utah and Idaho vote in the Democratic contest. His whirlwind campaign schedule on Friday was taking him to all three states.
But after his hopes of notching a few more upset victories this week in the Midwest fizzled, the senator’s path to the nomination remains unclear.
Clinton now has a lead of more than 300 pledged delegates over Sanders from the primaries and caucuses: 1,147-830. When including superdelegates, or party officials who can back any candidate, Clinton has a much bigger lead -- 1,614-856.
Factoring both types of delegates, Sanders would need to win a whopping two-thirds of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination before July’s convention. Clinton only would need to win one-third.
Even if Sanders focuses only on closing the pledged-delegate gap – in hopes that the pro-Clinton superdelegates might later budge – he faces a steep path. The wild card may still be how the FBI investigation into Clinton’s email practices resolves, and whether that happens before the convention.
Robert Jackson, professor of political science at Florida State University, said it would take an unexpected shift of events for Sanders to have a legitimate shot at the nomination this far into the process. “Barring some almost unforeseen event or eruption of new information we haven’t seen before, I believe the pathway for him to get the majority of delegates is very, very difficult and the window of opportunity is rapidly closing,” he said.
Meanwhile, Obama is getting more involved in trying to bring closure and unity to the Democratic primary process.
According to The New York Times, he told a group of donors last week that Sanders’ campaign was getting close to the end and the party will soon have to unite behind Clinton.
He reportedly did not make an explicit call for Sanders to drop out, but suggested Sanders’ prolonged presence in the race could help Republicans in the end.
Clinton’s campaign also is sounding a confident note about their chances as they look to the upcoming contests.
Clinton's campaign pointed to a recent memo by campaign manager Robby Mook, who suggested she has an "insurmountable lead" in the delegate count. The campaign noted its pledged delegate lead of more than 300 is nearly twice as large as any that then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama held over Clinton in the 2008 primary.
"And note Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada and Iowa are generally not considered Deep South," said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon, referring to states won by the ex-secretary of state.
Sanders, speaking with the AP, called his loss in Ohio a "major disappointment," adding, "I thought we had a chance to win or come close in Ohio and we didn't." But he said that while "we know we've got a hill to climb," he was pleased his campaign was able to accumulate more delegates.
He predicted the upcoming calendar of races in several Western states, including Arizona and Washington, and April contests in Wisconsin, New York and Pennsylvania would offer him the chance to catch up.
"We think from now on out, we are having states that, everything being equal, we stand a chance to do well in. We think we have a path toward victory," he said, pointing to California's June primary. "We've got some big states coming up and we think if we can do well, if we go into the convention with delegates, we've got a shot at taking the nomination."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/18/sanders-fights-for-life-as-clinton-wins-another-state-obama-turns-screws.html?intcmp=hpbt2
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(http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2569121.1458311552!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_635/dem-2016-sanders.jpg)
KING: Reports of Bernie Sanders campaign’s death have been greatly exaggerated — here are five reasons why
Two weeks ago, the word was that Clinton campaign surrogates were going to begin calling for Bernie Sanders to drop out of the presidential primary once he got crushed in Michigan.
Polls had him down as much as 27% and the talk was that if he couldn't win there, where the economy is depressed and jobs have been siphoned off, then he couldn't win anywhere.
Well, he won Michigan and the calls for Bernie to drop out soon ceased.
In fact, Bernie Sanders has won primaries in nine different states and barely lost by less than a half of 1% in Iowa and Missouri.
Yet, the calls for Bernie to drop out have been renewed.
That's nonsense.
In 2008, Hillary Clinton did not drop out against Barack Obama until June 7 in spite of being down significantly in the delegate count. In fact, people started calling on her to drop out in that race as early as February, but she resisted all of the calls pretty much until the end of the primary season.
Clinton even hinted she didn't want to drop out in the off chance her opponent was assassinated.
Yet, here we are, in mid-March, and Clinton supporters are already dialing up the calls for Bernie to drop out.
It's all nonsense. Here are five reasons why Sanders should remain in the race until the end.
1. He could still win
While Sanders is down 1147 to 830 in the pledged delegates, it's not outside the realm of possibility for him to stage a comeback. As long as it’s mathematically possible to win, he should stay in the race.
2. Young people deserve an opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice
So far in this campaign, Sanders has dominated the youth vote.
Young people love him. They trust him. They get him. That's why he has received 1.54 million votes from people under 30 and Clinton has only received 625,000. It's not even close. In fact, Bernie has received 300,000 more youth votes than Clinton and Donald Trump combined.
Young people deserve to have a chance to vote for their clear candidate of choice.
3. Half of the country still hasn't had a chance to vote yet
While it may be expedient for the Clinton campaign for Sanders to drop out, nearly half of our country—including states like New York and California—haven't voted yet. They deserve to have a voice in who they want to see in this race. Maybe they'll choose Clinton, but they could choose Sanders and should not be denied this opportunity.
In fact, Sanders is polling very well in the remaining states.
4. Sanders changes the dialogue and issues in this race
Clinton is not a natural progressive or liberal. She has openly claimed to be a moderate most of her adult life. Having Sanders in this campaign has forced her to swing to the left on issues that matter. It's a lot of those issues that engage and excite voters.
5. It's what the establishment wants him to do
The bottom line is that it is primarily establishment politicians and corporate lobbyists who want Sanders to drop out. That alone should raise our suspicions. They never wanted him to win in the first place.
Keep on running Bernie — all the way to the convention!
(http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/outward/2015/10/05/bernie_sanders_on_marriage_equality_he_s_no_longtime_champion/484059572-democratic-presidential-candidate-sen-bernie-sanders.jpg.CROP.promo-xlarge2.jpg)
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Democrats to Sanders: Time to wind it down
Protracted combat with Hillary Clinton threatens to do real damage in a general election against Donald Trump, senators warn.
By BURGESS EVERETT
03/21/16
(http://static2.politico.com/dims4/default/ef1b029/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F26%2F8b%2Fe9ef3830445daccb4df74cd878e7%2F160321-bernie-sanders-ap-1160.jpg)
Democratic senators of all stripes are as impressed as they are surprised by Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign.
But the time has come, they say, for Sanders to start winding things down.
After holding their fire on Sanders for the better part of a year, the senators — all backers of Hillary Clinton — are gently calling on Sanders to face the reality that there’s almost no chance he’s going to be the Democratic nominee. They don’t say outright he should quit; doing so would be counterproductive, they say.
But nearly a dozen Democratic lawmakers suggested in interviews that Sanders should focus more on stopping Donald Trump and less on why he believes Clinton’s stands on trade, financial regulation and foreign policy would make her a flawed president.
“What’s important is not whether or not he gets out, but how he campaigns,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “If the contrast is now about what separates us from Donald Trump, then I think it’s fine. I just hope that we can begin to focus on unifying because obviously a lot of us are perplexed that we could be facing a country led by someone who seems to be a buffoon.”
Added Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.): “It’s good [for Sanders] to continue to raise the concerns that people have, but I think it ought to be in the context of, ‘This is the difference between the Democrats and Republicans in this race.’”
The subtext of these comments is the general view among Democrats that Sanders has no path to win. Clinton has nearly double the number of delegates that Sanders has, and she swept the Vermont independent in three distinct regions of the country last week.
“It will be almost impossible for Sen. Sanders to catch up. And he should do the math and draw his own conclusions,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.).
“The writing’s on the wall,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
The message senators are airing publicly mirrors what President Barack Obama told donors in private recently, according to The New York Times: That while Clinton may have her faults as a candidate, the party needs to channel its energy into defeating Trump.
Over the past month, Clinton campaign staffers have bristled at the way Sanders is running. A Clinton campaign memo said Sanders has been “increasingly negative” and accused him of breaking his vows not to name Clinton in his ads, blaming his sweeping losses on a negative strategy that “backfired.”
While tame compared with the accusations of lying and name-calling that dominate the Republican race, Sanders has gone after Clinton more aggressively of late. In the run-up to the Illinois primary, he highlighted her ties to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who’s unpopular among African-American voters and distrusted by progressives. And Sanders has repeatedly dismissed Clinton supporters as part of the “establishment,” which Democratic senators interpret as showing disrepect for them.
Still, Democratic leaders say they’re confident Sanders will do the right thing in the end. As pointed as some of his barbs at Clinton have been, they argue, the self-described democratic socialist hasn’t gone overboard.
“Bernie is a very constructive person. And he wants to move American politics closer in his direction. He’s done that already,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the expected next Democratic leader. “I am not worried.”
The Sanders campaign dismissed any suggestion that it’s time to wrap up his long-shot bid and pivot to defeating Trump and the Republicans. Campaign spokesman Michael Briggs insisted Sanders is still a superior general election candidate because he “consistently draws much more support than she does in general election matchups with the Republican front-runner.”
“If Democrats are interested in holding on to the White House, if Democratic senators are interested in regaining a majority in the Senate and picking up seats in the House and statehouses all across the county, Bernie’s the best bet,” Briggs said.
Even so, Democrats privately believe Sanders is already calculating how to gradually shift toward a posture of unity by summertime. With Clinton favored to win the nomination and beat Trump in the general election, Sanders also has to think about his relationship with a potential future president and returning to the Senate, where he caucuses with Democrats.
“He won’t do it,” said one high-ranking Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill of Sanders continuing to attack Clinton in ways that go beyond their policy differences.
At the same time, Democrats need to tread carefully in how they treat Sanders. His legion of followers will be critical to getting Clinton elected, not to mention scores of Democratic Senate and House candidates. It’s unknown how hard Sanders would campaign for Clinton, assuming she does prevail.
“I think that Sen. Sanders has built a movement. And that whatever happens, the two big tribes of the Democratic Party will be able to unite at the convention and be so much stronger,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
But the dance is sure to be awkward. Not a single Democratic senator has endorsed Sanders. And beneath their deference, there’s growing irritation among the lawmakers that the longer his campaign continues, the more he will undermine Clinton in the fall.
“That’s something he’s going to have to decide,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said of how long Sanders remains in the race. “She’s going to be the nominee.”
But, for now at least, Democrats believe measured diplomacy is the best approach for dealing with Sanders and his supporters.
“I don’t think any Democrat should call on him to get out,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “Almost no Democrat I know would say that. And shouldn’t.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/bernie-dems-winddown-220966#ixzz43YvSyUq7
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Democrats to Sanders: Time to wind it down
Protracted combat with Hillary Clinton threatens to do real damage in a general election against Donald Trump, senators warn.
By BURGESS EVERETT
03/21/16
(http://static2.politico.com/dims4/default/ef1b029/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F26%2F8b%2Fe9ef3830445daccb4df74cd878e7%2F160321-bernie-sanders-ap-1160.jpg)
Democratic senators of all stripes are as impressed as they are surprised by Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign.
But the time has come, they say, for Sanders to start winding things down.
After holding their fire on Sanders for the better part of a year, the senators — all backers of Hillary Clinton — are gently calling on Sanders to face the reality that there’s almost no chance he’s going to be the Democratic nominee. They don’t say outright he should quit; doing so would be counterproductive, they say.
But nearly a dozen Democratic lawmakers suggested in interviews that Sanders should focus more on stopping Donald Trump and less on why he believes Clinton’s stands on trade, financial regulation and foreign policy would make her a flawed president.
“What’s important is not whether or not he gets out, but how he campaigns,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “If the contrast is now about what separates us from Donald Trump, then I think it’s fine. I just hope that we can begin to focus on unifying because obviously a lot of us are perplexed that we could be facing a country led by someone who seems to be a buffoon.”
Added Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.): “It’s good [for Sanders] to continue to raise the concerns that people have, but I think it ought to be in the context of, ‘This is the difference between the Democrats and Republicans in this race.’”
The subtext of these comments is the general view among Democrats that Sanders has no path to win. Clinton has nearly double the number of delegates that Sanders has, and she swept the Vermont independent in three distinct regions of the country last week.
“It will be almost impossible for Sen. Sanders to catch up. And he should do the math and draw his own conclusions,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.).
“The writing’s on the wall,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
The message senators are airing publicly mirrors what President Barack Obama told donors in private recently, according to The New York Times: That while Clinton may have her faults as a candidate, the party needs to channel its energy into defeating Trump.
Over the past month, Clinton campaign staffers have bristled at the way Sanders is running. A Clinton campaign memo said Sanders has been “increasingly negative” and accused him of breaking his vows not to name Clinton in his ads, blaming his sweeping losses on a negative strategy that “backfired.”
While tame compared with the accusations of lying and name-calling that dominate the Republican race, Sanders has gone after Clinton more aggressively of late. In the run-up to the Illinois primary, he highlighted her ties to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who’s unpopular among African-American voters and distrusted by progressives. And Sanders has repeatedly dismissed Clinton supporters as part of the “establishment,” which Democratic senators interpret as showing disrepect for them.
Still, Democratic leaders say they’re confident Sanders will do the right thing in the end. As pointed as some of his barbs at Clinton have been, they argue, the self-described democratic socialist hasn’t gone overboard.
“Bernie is a very constructive person. And he wants to move American politics closer in his direction. He’s done that already,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the expected next Democratic leader. “I am not worried.”
The Sanders campaign dismissed any suggestion that it’s time to wrap up his long-shot bid and pivot to defeating Trump and the Republicans. Campaign spokesman Michael Briggs insisted Sanders is still a superior general election candidate because he “consistently draws much more support than she does in general election matchups with the Republican front-runner.”
“If Democrats are interested in holding on to the White House, if Democratic senators are interested in regaining a majority in the Senate and picking up seats in the House and statehouses all across the county, Bernie’s the best bet,” Briggs said.
Even so, Democrats privately believe Sanders is already calculating how to gradually shift toward a posture of unity by summertime. With Clinton favored to win the nomination and beat Trump in the general election, Sanders also has to think about his relationship with a potential future president and returning to the Senate, where he caucuses with Democrats.
“He won’t do it,” said one high-ranking Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill of Sanders continuing to attack Clinton in ways that go beyond their policy differences.
At the same time, Democrats need to tread carefully in how they treat Sanders. His legion of followers will be critical to getting Clinton elected, not to mention scores of Democratic Senate and House candidates. It’s unknown how hard Sanders would campaign for Clinton, assuming she does prevail.
“I think that Sen. Sanders has built a movement. And that whatever happens, the two big tribes of the Democratic Party will be able to unite at the convention and be so much stronger,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
But the dance is sure to be awkward. Not a single Democratic senator has endorsed Sanders. And beneath their deference, there’s growing irritation among the lawmakers that the longer his campaign continues, the more he will undermine Clinton in the fall.
“That’s something he’s going to have to decide,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said of how long Sanders remains in the race. “She’s going to be the nominee.”
But, for now at least, Democrats believe measured diplomacy is the best approach for dealing with Sanders and his supporters.
“I don’t think any Democrat should call on him to get out,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “Almost no Democrat I know would say that. And shouldn’t.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/bernie-dems-winddown-220966#ixzz43YvSyUq7
60,000 people came out for him in Washington yesterday. No reason to quit at all.
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60,000 people came out for him in Washington yesterday. No reason to quit at all.
Other than the fact he is going to lose?
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Delegate count after Hillary takes Arizona and Sanders take Utah and Idaho:
2,383 needed
Hillary Clinton - 1,689
Bernie Sanders - 944
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2016/presidential-primary-caucus-results
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Sorry, Bernie supporters. Your candidate is not ‘currently winning the Democratic primary race’
By Philip Bump
March 23, 2016
Denial is powerful. The extent to which the human mind can conjure up scenarios besides the one we don't want to see is impressive, the result of some weird psychological glitch that probably evolved as a way of allowing us to keep our sanity. I don't know; I'm not an evolutionary psychologist.
What I am is a dude who spends a lot of time looking at poll numbers, and particularly poll numbers related to the 2016 nomination contests. I am the author of various articles assessing the chances of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic iteration thereof; those articles come to the conclusion that Hillary Clinton is very, very likely to be the party's nominee. It's a simple function of math. Sanders needs to win a lot of states with a lot of delegates by a lot of points -- something that he's so far shown no ability to do. He needs to win about three-quarters of the remaining delegates. Unless deus emerges from the machina, he will not.
But that's me looking at things objectively. I suspect that Seth Abramson -- a University of New Hampshire English professor and author of "Bernie Sanders Is Currently Winning the Democratic Primary Race, and I’ll Prove It to You" -- is not considering the race as objectively.
Abramson's "proof" consists of the following argument. Actually, Bernie Sanders has more support from Democrats. It's just that no one knows who he is. So Hillary Clinton banks a lot of early votes. But then they hear about Sanders and prefer him, and that's why voting on Election Day favors Sanders. So, really, Sanders is preferred.
The only problem with this is all of the parts.
First of all, not every state has early voting, including states that Clinton has won like Mississippi, Alabama and Virginia.
Second of all, Sanders doesn't always win voting on the day of the election. Abramson points to North Carolina and Tuesday's contest in Arizona -- except that the two were essentially tied in Arizona, by his numbers and Clinton won on Election Day in North Carolina. (This is waved away as being about the suppression of college voters or something.) He ignores, say, Georgia, where Clinton won on Election Day by a 2-to-1 margin.
But that's beside the point. When someone votes doesn't tell us when they decided how to vote. For that, we can look to exit polls.
In most of the contests so far, the Edison Research pollsters have asked voters themselves when they made up their minds about who to support. If Abramson's theory is correct, more people should have made up their minds in the last week before the election -- when Sanders was unquestionably campaigning -- than before that. But a look at the states for which we have data shows that it's split. In about half the states, Sanders does better with last-week deciders, and in about half he does worse.
(https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/files/2016/03/Debunk_Bar.jpg&w=1484)
In fact, if we apply the percentages of votes from those who decided in the last week to the vote totals, Clinton has earned more votes than Sanders from both those who decided in the last week and those who didn't.
(https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/files/2016/03/Debunk_Pie.jpg&w=1484)
So more voters who said, "I made up my mind shortly before Election Day" chose Clinton than Sanders.
Not that people who decided earlier are somehow ignorant! The subtext to Abramson's piece is that Clinton voters are uninformed clods and Sanders voters have had the scales fall away from their eyes. Abramson says his "proof" explains "how Clinton is 'beating' Sanders among American voters despite having a -13 favorability rating nationally, as compared to Sanders' +11 rating." But that's among all voters! Among Democrats, Quinnipiac University reported on Wednesday, Clinton's favorability is plus-65! Sanders is +69 -- but that's hardly the discrepancy Abramson suggests.
Anyway. Empty theory, unproven. But innovative! An interesting theory conjured up in defense of Bernie Sanders. I wonder why.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/23/sorry-bernie-supporters-your-candidate-is-not-currently-winning-the-democratic-primary-race/
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Sorry, Bernie supporters. Your candidate is not ‘currently winning the Democratic primary race’
True. But he has a case if she does get indicted. he has nothing to lose staying in the race.
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I want to say this is the worst set of choices in my lifetime, but we did just have Obama v. McCain not so long ago.
Bloomberg Poll: Democrats Evenly Split Between Clinton, Sanders
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=4bfde180-659f-42aa-9268-d2146c7ca884&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Bloomberg Poll: Democrats Evenly Split Between Clinton, Sanders
Thursday, 24 Mar 2016
More than halfway through a nomination race that she entered as the clear favorite, Hillary Clinton finds herself deadlocked with Bernie Sanders among Democrats.
The latest nation Bloomberg Politics poll results for first choice of hose who have voted or plan to vote in this year’s Democratic contests:
Sanders: 49 percent
Clinton: 48 percent
The narrow difference comes after more than two dozen primaries and caucuses in which Clinton’s amassed a commanding lead in votes and in delegates needed to win the nomination.
The collection of enthusiastic first-time voters, those under 35, men, and self-described independents that he’s leaned on to win in states like New Hampshire and Colorado are keeping Sanders in the race, as is his message singularly focused on addressing income inequality.
By a more than 2-to-1 ratio, Democratic primary voters say Sanders would fight harder than Clinton for the middle class and do the most to rein in the power of Wall Street. Nearly six in 10 say the Vermont senator cares the most about people like them, and 64 percent see him as the most honest and trustworthy candidate. Just a quarter of voters said that of Clinton.
“It comes down to this: Bernie Sanders is the one Democrats see as looking out for them -- meaning he will build a stronger middle class at the expense of Wall Street,” said J. Ann Selzer, whose firm conducted the poll. “They trust him to do it. In the end, Hillary Clinton has a trust problem.”
Matthew Slater, a 26-year old retail manager from Gulfport, Mississippi, said he doesn’t view Clinton “as believable and authentic.”
“Seeing the issues that Hillary Clinton has flip-flopped on, has once supported and is now against or the other way around, I don’t believe in her,” Slater said. “I don’t really trust her.”
The survey also signaled some trouble for Clinton in holding on to Sanders supporters in November. In general- election match-ups, Sanders holds a 24-point edge over Donald Trump, a 12-point lead over Ted Cruz, and a 4-point advantage over John Kasich among likely general-election voters. Clinton, by contrast, trails Kasich by 4 percentage points. She would carry a sizable lead into a contest against Cruz, where she holds a 9-point advantage, and Trump, whom she beats by 18 points.
The poll found some encouraging signs for Clinton as the Democratic race moves into its second half. She leads Sanders 50 percent to 47 percent among those yet to vote in a Democratic primary or caucus, an indication that her drive toward the Democratic nomination won’t be impeded. She has 1,690 of the 2,383 delegates needed to become the party’s nominee to the 946 that Sanders has amassed, according to Associated Press estimates on Wednesday.
The voting groups that Clinton has relied on to dominate in primaries and caucuses continue to be her biggest advantage. She leads Sanders by 27 percentage points among voters over 35, by 18 points among those who identify as Democrats, and by 15 points among women.
She’s also rated more highly than Sanders on presidential characteristics. More than half say she has the better temperament to be president and would work most effectively with Congress. Almost three in five say she knows the most about how to get things done, and half say she’d be better at managing the economy, 10 points better than Sanders.
Clinton may also benefit from the shifting focus to foreign policy in the wake of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels, which killed at least 31 people. Asked which candidate can best combat Islamic terrorism, Clinton bests Sanders by a more than 3-to-1 ratio.
Six in 10 Democratic primary voters say she has the most appropriate life experience to be president, and she’s favored 56 to 31 percent over Sanders when voters are asked who would be better with dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sixty percent said it bothered them that Sanders has little foreign policy experience.
Jane Martin, a 57-year-old from St. Louis who participated in the poll, said Clinton’s foreign policy experience was one of the top reasons she’s backing her over Sanders.
“She’s done a really good job as secretary of state,” Martin said in a phone interview. “I do like Bernie Sanders and some of the things he’s suggesting, but I don’t think he has the same experience.”
Clinton also may benefit from warming views of President Barack Obama, with whom she’s closely aligned herself during the campaign.
The president’s approval rating among all Americans hit 50 percent in the poll, up six points from November. His favorability rating is up nine points from November and, at 57 percent, at its highest point since December 2009. More than half of likely or past Democratic primary voters who cast a ballot in 2012 for Obama -- 55 percent -- said they were backing Clinton.
More than half the country -- 54 percent -- approve of his handling of the vacancy left by recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and 62 percent say Republicans in the Senate are wrong not to hold hearings on the nomination.
Nearly half of all Americans -- 49 percent -- say the president is doing a good job on the economy, up 5 points from November. And 46 percent approve of Obama’s handling of health care, his highest marks since 2010.
The national poll of 1,000 adults was conducted March 19-22 by Selzer & Co. of West Des Moines, Iowa. The overall sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, while the subgroup of 311 Democratic primary voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percentage points. The subgroup of 815 likely general-election voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/clinton-sanders-bloomberg-poll/2016/03/24/id/720641/#ixzz43qOUQzhp
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Bernie Sanders Picks Up Major Union Endorsement Ahead Of Caucuses
The nod from the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union comes just before caucuses in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington.
03/24/2016
Dave Jamieson
Labor Reporter, The Huffington Post
(http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/56f45c1d1e000095007114c3.jpeg)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A powerful West Coast union of dock and warehouse workers has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for president, giving his campaign a boost heading into a series of primary contests there.
The International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union said its executive board voted on the endorsement Thursday. Its president, Robert McEllrath, said in a statement that Sanders is “best on the issues that matter most to American workers.” The union, known for its militant history, now represents roughly 50,000 workers in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii.
Alaska, Hawaii and Washington will all hold Democratic caucuses on Saturday, and it’s possible Sanders could sweep all three.
Craig Merrilees, an ILWU spokesman, told The Huffington Post that the rank-and-file backing for Sanders is clear.
“The support was significant at the grassroots level,” Merrilees said. “Many local bodies throughout the union had already recommended endorsements.”
The union plans to participate in an upcoming Sanders rally in Washington, Merrilees said.
Despite winning a handful of contests in the past week, Sanders is gradually losing any clear path to the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton leads him by more than 300 pledged delegates, a spread he won’t be able to close without racking up the sort of large-margin victories in big states that have so far eluded him. His best hope, as Politico reported, is to win big in Washington and parlay that into a victory in delegate-rich Wisconsin in early April, thereby keeping his nomination hopes alive.
ILWU is the fifth major union to endorse Sanders for president, following the Amalgamated Transit Union, which declared its backing for him last week. More than 20 unions, however, have lined up behind Clinton, including the largest public-sector unions in the country.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-union-endorsement_us_56f45bbae4b0a37218198cce
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Tulsi Gabbard cuts emotional ad for Bernie Sanders
By David Wright, CNN
Fri March 25, 2016
(CNN)Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who has endorsed Bernie Sanders' presidential bid, appears in an emotional new ad for the Vermont senator, talking about her military service and why she believes he is the best choice for the next Commander-in-Chief.
The ad, titled "The Cost of War," features Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii who served a 12-month tour in Iraq, discussing why she decided to join the military and praising Sanders' foreign policy.
Replete with images of Gabbard surfing in Hawaii and accompanied by shots of the island and its residents, the ad is a big assist from a popular home-state representative and rising star in the party, ahead of the Democratic caucuses in Hawaii that take place Saturday.
"I felt a sense of duty and I could not in good conscience stay back here in beautiful Hawaii and watch my brothers and sisters in uniform go off to combat," she says of her decision to enlist in the 90-second spot.
A visibly emotional Gabbard chokes up and continues, "These are people and friends who we never forget, and who we strive to honor every day that we are blessed to live and breathe."
Gabbard then praises Sanders, noting his vote against the Iraq War and his pledge to "take the trillions of dollars that are sent on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars, and invest it here at home."
Gabbard quit her post as a Democratic National Committee vice chairwoman when she endorsed Sanders last month, and she had a public disagreement with DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz over the number debates held for the Democratic primary.
The ad features what could be a subtle shot at Hillary Clinton, who has criticized Sanders' proposals for being unrealistic while championing a more incremental form of progress, the Iraq veteran adds, "The American people are not looking to settle for inches. They're looking for real change."
"What I saw in Bernie Sanders was the heart of Aloha," Gabbard adds, "no matter who you are or where you come from in this country, that we are all in this together."
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/25/politics/tulsi-gabbard-bernie-sanders-ad-hawaii/index.html
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Seth Abramson makes some very interesting points:
Nobody cares how well a politician does at the ballot box when he or she is running for an office unopposed. What matters is how a politician performs in contested primaries and general elections, as when it really matters — like it will, for instance, this November — you can be certain of a contested election.
With that said, let’s make an important observation: Bernie Sanders has tied or beaten Hillary Clinton in a majority of the actively contested votes this election season.
You doubt it? Okay, let me explain.
Bernie Sanders has terrible name recognition in states where he hasn’t advertised or campaigned yet; meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has universal name recognition everywhere. Realizing this, the Clinton camp pushed hard to rack up the early vote in every state where early voting was an option. They did this not primarily for the reason we’ve been told — because Clinton performs well among older voters, and older voters are more likely to vote early than other age demographics — but rather because they knew that early votes are almost always cast before the election season actually begins in a given state.
That’s right — in each state, most of the early primary voting occurs before the candidates have aired any commercials or held any campaign events. For Bernie Sanders, this means that early voting happens, pretty much everywhere, before anyone knows who he is. Certainly, early voting occurs in each state before voters have developed a sufficient level of familiarity and comfort with Sanders to vote for him.
But on Election Day — among voters who’ve been present and attentive for each candidate’s commercials, local news coverage, and live events — Sanders tends to tie or beat Clinton.
In fact, that’s the real reason Sanders does well in caucuses.
It’s not because caucuses “require a real time investment,” as the media likes to euphemistically say, but because caucuses require that you vote on Election Day rather than well before it.
Consider: in North Carolina, Hillary Clinton only won Election Day voting 52% to 48%. Given the shenanigans in evidence during the live voting there — thousands of college students were turned away from the polls due to insufficient identification under a new voter-suppression statute in the state — it wouldn’t be unfair to call that 4-point race more like a 2-point one (51% to 49% for Clinton).
Consider: on Super Tuesday 3, because early voting is always reported first, Clinton’s margins of victory were originally believed to be 25 points in Missouri, 30 points in Illinois, and 30 points in Ohio. Missouri, which doesn’t have conventional early voting, ended up a tie. Illinois ended up with a 1.8% margin for Clinton (after being a 42-point race in Clinton’s favor just a week earlier) and Ohio a 13.8% margin.
Any one of us could do the math there. And yet the media never did.
Consider: in Arizona yesterday, the election was called almost immediately by the media, with Clinton appearing to “win” the state by a margin of 61.5% to 36.1%. Of course, this was all early voting. CNN even wrongly reported that these early votes constituted the live vote in 41% of all Arizona precincts — rather than merely mail-in votes constituting a percentage of the total projected vote in the state — which allowed most Americans to go to bed believing both that Clinton had won Arizona by more than 25 points and that that margin was the result of nearly half of Arizona’s precincts reporting their live-voting results. Neither was true.
In fact, as of the time of that 61.5% to 36.1% “win,” not a single precinct in Arizona had reported its Election Day results.
Indeed, more than two and a half hours after polls closed in Arizona, officials there had counted only 54,000 of the estimated 431,000 Election Day ballots.
That’s about 12%.
So how did Bernie Sanders do on Election Day in Arizona?
As of the writing of this essay (2:45 AM ET), Sanders was leading Clinton in Election Day voting in Arizona 50.2% to 49.8%, with just under 75,000 votes (about 17.3% of all Election Day votes) counted.
So imagine, for a moment, that early votes were reported to the media last rather than first. Which, of course, they quite easily could be, given that they’re less — rather than more — reflective of the actual state of opinion on Election Day. Were early votes reported last rather than first, Arizona as of 2:45 AM ET would have been considered not only too close to call but a genuine nail-biter. In fact, only 400 or so Election Day votes were separating the two Democratic candidates at that point — though the momentum with each new vote counted was quite clearly in Sanders’ favor.
So the question becomes, why does any of this matter? Does the point being made here — that Bernie Sanders is as or more popular than Hillary in both all the states he won and many of the states he didn’t — gain Sanders a single delegate? Does it move him one inch closer to being President?
No.
What it does do is explain why the Clinton-Sanders race is a 5-point race nationally — just a hair from being a statistical tie, given the margin of error — despite the media treating Clinton’s nomination as a foregone conclusion.
What it does do is explain how Clinton is “beating” Sanders among American voters despite having a -13 favorability rating nationally, as compared to Sanders’ +11 rating. That dramatic difference is possible because in favorability polling, pollsters only count voters who say they know enough about a candidate to form an opinion. That eliminates the sort of “early voters” who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton before having much of a handle on who Bernie Sanders is.
And what it does do is explain why Sanders outperforms Clinton against Donald Trump in nearly every state where head-to-head general-election polling data is available. While some of this is undoubtedly due to the fact that Sanders beats Clinton by between 30 and 40 points among Independents — itself a major warning sign for a Clinton candidacy this fall — the rest is explained by the fact that when voters come to know Bernie Sanders as well as they already know Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, they tend to prefer him to these two by clear margins.
The Hillary camp, and Hillary supporters, are justly excited about how their candidate is performing in the delegate horse-race. The problem is that that excitement is quickly becoming the sort of arrogance that will in fact endanger Hillary’s candidacy for President. Both she and her team — including all her millions of supporters — should consider the fact that Hillary does not, outside the deep-red Deep South, do particularly well among voters when they’re given any other reasonable alternative. The fact that early voting statutes and media reporting of elections in America favors the maintenance of the illusion that Hillary remains popular when voters become familiar with other credible options does not excuse ignorance of the reality; certainly, it won’t help Democrats in November.
And given that a demagogue like Donald Trump is the likely Republican nominee, that’s a scary thought for many Americans. Sanders voters should want — and most do want — a Clinton campaign that understands its weaknesses sufficiently to ameliorate them in a general election, should Clinton be the Democratic nominee. Right now that’s clearly not happening, and the national media is unfortunately enabling the persistence and expansion of these troubling blind-spots.
Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about super-delegates. These are folks who are supposed to be supporting whichever candidate has the best chance of winning in November. We already know, per head-to-head general-election polling, that the better candidate to run against Donald Trump is Bernie Sanders; however, many super-delegates (and most of the media) dismiss general election polling this early on, even though Sanders’ commanding lead over Trump is clearly statistically relevant. (This is especially true given that his name recognition lags well behind Trump’s.)
But what about the argument, implicitly being made to super-delegates now, and likely to be made to them explicitly in Philadelphia this summer, that Bernie Sanders has, broadly speaking, out-performed Hillary Clinton in Election Day voting? Given that Election Day voting in the spring is the very same sort of high-information voting that will occur in November, you’d think super-delegates would be quite interested to know that, in live voting, Bernie Sanders beats Hillary Clinton more often than not.
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hilary sucks. like, historically at epic level underachievement here.
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Bernie Sanders Continues To Dominate Caucuses, But He’s About To Run Out Of Them
By HARRY ENTEN
MAR 27, 2016
(https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/ap_708653554507.jpg?w=1150)
Bernie Sanders at a campaign stop on Saturday in Madison, Wisconsin. ANDY MANIS / AP
Bernie Sanders won a trifecta of states on Saturday. He put up big victories in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington, after carrying Idaho and Utah earlier in the week. Sanders beat his delegate targets by a solid margin in all five of these states and closed Hillary Clinton’s pledged delegate lead to just north of 225.1 In doing so, Sanders highlighted an ongoing Clinton weakness: caucuses. All five of Sanders’s wins this week came in caucuses. The problem for the Sanders campaign is that there are only two caucuses left on the Democratic primary calendar.
Here are the FiveThirtyEight delegate targets for every state to vote so far, as well as how many delegates Sanders won:2
SANDERS’S DELEGATES
STATE CAUCUS WON TARGET DIFFERENCE
Washington* ✓ 74 59 +15
Utah ✓ 27 19 +8
Illinois 78 71 +7
Kansas ✓ 24 19 +5
Idaho ✓ 18 14 +4
Alaska ✓ 13 9 +4
Hawaii ✓ 17 13 +4
Colorado ✓ 38 36 +2
Vermont 16 14 +2
Oklahoma 21 20 +1
Maine ✓ 16 15 +1
New Hampshire 15 15 —
Missouri 35 35 —
Nebraska ✓ 15 15 —
Michigan 67 67 —
Minnesota ✓ 46 47 -1
Nevada ✓ 15 18 -3
North Carolina 47 50 -3
Arkansas 10 14 -4
Louisiana 14 18 -4
Iowa ✓ 21 26 -5
Massachusetts 45 50 -5
South Carolina 14 21 -7
Georgia 29 37 -8
Alabama 9 18 -9
Mississippi 4 13 -9
Virginia 33 43 -10
Ohio 62 72 -10
Arizona 31 41 -10
Tennessee 23 34 -11
Texas 74 96 -22
Florida 73 98 -25
Sanders outperforms expectations in caucuses
*Washington’s delegate total won by Sanders is preliminary
Sanders has outperformed his targets in 11 states. Just three of those states held primaries (Illinois, Oklahoma and Vermont), and one of those three (Vermont) is Sanders’s home state. The other eight were caucuses. Six of Sanders’s best states by this measure were in the West (all the caucuses this week and Colorado). In fact, Iowa and Nevada are the only caucuses so far in which Clinton beat our delegate targets by more than one delegate, which may have something to do with all the organizing effort the Clinton campaign put into those states.
So why is Sanders doing better in caucuses than primaries? The most obvious answer is that caucuses reward candidates with diehard supporters. There are often speeches, and sometimes multiple rounds of voting at caucuses. Typically, you have to stick around for a while to vote. That takes devotion, and if you’ve ever met a Sanders fan, you’ll know that many would climb over hot coals to vote for him.
Sanders’s strength in caucuses may also be, in part, coincidental. Every state that has held or will hold a Democratic caucus this year has a black population at or below 10 percent of the state’s total population, and black voters have been among Clinton’s strongest demographic groups. Without those black voters, Clinton just can’t match the enthusiasm of Sanders’s backers. (In Southern states, where Clinton romped, her voters were far more enthusiastic than Sanders’s supporters were.)
Now, I know what some of you are thinking: How do we know that Sanders’s big wins this week aren’t a sign that something more fundamental about the Democratic race has changed? We don’t, necessarily. But look at the calendar: Sanders also outperformed his delegate targets in Colorado, Kansas and Maine earlier this month, and he still went on to suffer big losses on March 15. And that was after his shocking Michigan victory. Moreover, Sanders greatly underperformed his delegate targets last Tuesday in Arizona, which held a primary and has a more diverse electorate.
Most likely, Sanders will need to find another way to make up ground on Clinton in the delegate race. Wyoming (April 9) and North Dakota (June 7) are the only remaining stateside caucuses. The rest of the stateside races are primaries. Sanders has exceeded his delegate targets in just three stateside primaries. He’s matched them in three and underperformed in 15. Given that Sanders is still so far behind in the delegate count, he needs to outperform his delegate targets by a lot.
How likely is that? Well, he’s behind by about 6 percentage points in Wisconsin, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted polling average. That’s not a huge deficit, and it wouldn’t shock me if Sanders won Wisconsin given that the black population there is below 10 percent. (To match his delegate target in Wisconsin, he needs a net gain of 10 delegates there.) Sanders, though, will likely have more difficulty in later primaries in April, such as Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania, where African Americans make up more than 10 percent of the state’s population.
Sanders had a strong week, and this has been a crazy year in politics. But there’s nothing in the recent results to suggest that the overall trajectory of the Democratic race has changed. Clinton was and is a prohibitive favorite to win the nomination.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-continues-to-dominate-caucuses-but-hes-about-to-run-out-of-them/
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Current delegate count:
Clinton 1243 regular, 469 super
Sanders, 975 regular, 29 super
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2016/presidential-primary-caucus-results
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It's all special interest money.
Bernie Sanders Took Money From Big Lobbying Groups, Returned Corporate PAC Donations
BY ANDREW PEREZ @ANDREWPEREZDC AND DAVID SIROTA @DAVIDSIROTA
02/17/16
Bernie Sanders says he’s never taken money from corporate political action committees. An International Business Times review of federal elections records supports that claim — but Sanders has taken PAC money from business-linked groups that lobby Congress.
During his 25 years as a House member and senator, Sanders accepted donations from five corporate PACs, but the contributions were refunded, campaign finance records show. While three other corporate PACs — groups linked to entertainment company Walt Disney and law firms DLA Piper and Wolf Block — have reported making donations to Sanders in the past, the transactions don’t appear to show up in his own reports.
As Hillary Clinton faces scrutiny for the campaign donations and speaking fees she received from Wall Street firms, she has sought to direct attention to Sanders’ ties to a national Democratic Party committee that’s received some of its funding from the financial sector and other big businesses. The Sanders campaign has struck back at that comparison, and declared last week that he “has never accepted corporate PAC money in his life.”
Sanders' congressional campaigns have taken roughly $280,000 from PACs that are not affiliated with a particular company, but do pool money from employees of business cooperatives and professional associations with significant lobbying presences in Washington, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Sanders’ campaign did not respond to questions from IBT about his standard for considering contributions from trade associations, cooperatives and professional groups.
Since 1998, Sanders has received $50,000 in donations from the American Association for Justice and its predecessor group, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. The National Association of Realtors — a top lobbying spender in recent years as Congress has debated reforming the housing sector — has donated frequently to Sanders, giving his campaigns $34,000 since 2004.
The Credit Union National Association has given Sanders $27,000, and he’s also taken donations from farming, dairy and sugar cooperatives. Sanders also received $1.6 million from PACs affiliated with labor unions.
According to CRP, Sanders has taken $375,224 from ideological and single-issue PACs. That includes roughly $38,000 from the Human Rights Campaign (a gay rights group), Planned Parenthood and NARAL (pro-abortion rights) — liberal groups that Sanders called part of the “political establishment” when asked about their endorsements of Clinton.
Nearly $2.3 million of the donations to Sanders’ past campaigns came from PACs. By contrast, PAC contributions made up $4.4 million of the money Clinton raised during her own career as a senator from New York. Her contributions from PACs do include groups connected to corporations — like financial firms Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/bernie-sanders-took-money-big-lobbying-groups-returned-corporate-pac-donations
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Hillary Clinton’s ‘unborn person’ comments anger both pro-choice, pro-life sides
Outlines abortion views after Trump comments spark furor
By Bradford Richardson - The Washington Times
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Democratic primary front-runner Hillary Clinton ran afoul of both the pro-life and pro-choice sides of the abortion debate Sunday when she said constitutional rights do not apply to an “unborn person” or “child.”
“The unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights,” Mrs. Clinton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Now that doesn’t mean that we don’t do everything we possibly can in the vast majority of instances to, you know, help a mother who is carrying a child and wants to make sure that child will be healthy, to have appropriate medical support.”
Mrs. Clinton also said “there is room for reasonable kinds of restrictions” on abortion during the third trimester of pregnancy.
Diana Arellano, manager of community engagement for Planned Parenthood Illinois Action, said Sunday that Mrs. Clinton’s comments undermined the cause for abortion rights.
The comment “further stigmatizes #abortion,” Ms. Arellano said in a tweet. “She calls a fetus an ‘unborn child’ & calls for later term restrictions.”
Describing the fetus as a “person” or “child” has long been anathema to the pro-choice movement, which argues the terms misleadingly imply a sense of humanity.
In addition, the specific term “person” is a legal concept that includes rights and statuses that the law protects, including protection of a person’s life under the laws against homicide. Pro-choice intellectuals have long said that even if an unborn child is a “life,” it is not yet a “person.”
Guidelines issued by the International Planned Parenthood Federation discourage pro-choice advocates from using terms such as “abort a child,” instead recommending “more accurate/appropriate” alternatives such as “end a pregnancy” or “have an abortion.”
“‘Abort a child’ is medically inaccurate, as the fetus is not yet a child,” the guide reads. “‘Terminate’ a pregnancy is commonly used, however some people prefer to avoid this as terminate may have negative connotations (e.g., ‘terminator or assassinate’) for some people.”
The guidebook also advises against the terms “baby,” “dead fetus,” “unborn baby” or “unborn child” when discussing what it is that’s being aborted. Instead, it recommends the terms “embryo,” “fetus” and “the pregnancy.”
“The alternatives are medically accurate terms, as the embryo or fetus is not a baby,” it explains.
The exchange with NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday came after Mrs. Clinton blasted Republican front-runner Donald Trump last week for saying that women should face “some form of punishment” for having abortions if they were illegal. He later reversed his statement, multiple times, after an outcry from both pro-life and pro-choice groups.
Conservatives also caught Mrs. Clinton’s words and drew implications. Commentary Editor John Podhoretz said the gaffe is comparable to those of Mr. Trump.
“This is Trump-level gaffery,” Mr. Podhoretz said in a tweet. “If you acknowledge personhood, then the unborn has every Constitutional right.”
Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro also said that Mrs. Clinton’s statement “demonstrates just how incoherent and evil the left’s abortion position is.”
Mrs. Clinton’s comments come after she implied that primary rival Bernard Sanders is insufficiently pro-choice.
“Look, I know Sen. Sanders supports a woman’s right to choose, but I also know Planned Parenthood and NARAL endorsed me because I have led on this issue,” Ms. Clinton said on Thursday.
“We need a president who is passionate about this, seeing it as a top priority because women’s health is under assault,” she continued.
On Friday, Mr. Sanders dismissed that claim, saying that he’s spent his “entire political life fighting for the right of a woman to control her own body.”
“What Secretary Clinton did is taking things out of context,” he said.
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/3/hillary-clinton-unborn-person-has-no-constitutiona/#.VwFR4sIvoG0.facebook
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The Case Against Bernie Sanders
By Jonathan Chait Follow @jonathanchait
Until very recently, nobody had any cause to regret Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Sanders is earnest and widely liked. He has tugged the terms of the political debate leftward in a way both moderates and left-wingers could appreciate. (Moderate liberals might not agree with Sanders’s ideas, but they can appreciate that his presence changes for the better a political landscape in which support for things like Mitt Romney’s old positions on health care and the environment were defined as hard-core liberalism.) Sanders’s rapid rise, in both early states and national polling, has made him a plausible threat to defeat Hillary Clinton. Suddenly, liberals who have used the nominating process to unilaterally vet Clinton, processing every development through its likely impact on her as the inevitable candidate, need to think anew. Do we support Sanders not just in his role as lovable Uncle Bernie, complaining about inequality, but as the actual Democratic nominee for president? My answer to that question is no.
Sanders’s core argument is that the problems of the American economy require far more drastic remedies than anything the Obama administration has done, or that Clinton proposes to build on. Clinton has put little pressure on Sanders’s fatalistic assessment, but the evidence for it is far weaker than he assumes. Sanders has grudgingly credited what he calls “the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act,” which seems like an exceedingly stingy assessment of a law that has already reduced the number of uninsured Americans by 20 million. The Dodd-Frank reforms of the financial industry may not have broken up the big banks, but they have, at the very least, deeply reduced systemic risk. The penalties for being too big to fail exceed the benefits, and, as a result, banks are actually breaking themselves up to avoid being large enough to be regulated as systemic risks.
It is true that the Great Recession inflicted catastrophic economic damage, and that fiscal policy did too little to alleviate it. The impression of economic failure hardened into place as the sluggish recovery dragged on for several years. Recently, conditions have improved. Unemployment has dropped, the number of people quitting their job has risen, and — as one would predict would happen when employers start to run short of available workers — average wages have started to climb. Whether the apparent rise in the median wage is the beginning of a sustained increase, or merely a short-lived blip, remains to be seen. At the very least, the conclusion that Obama’s policies have failed to raise living standards for average people is premature. And the progress under Obama refutes Sanders’s corollary point, that meaningful change is impossible without a revolutionary transformation that eliminates corporate power.
Nor should his proposed remedies be considered self-evidently benign. Evidence has shown that, at low levels, raising the minimum wage does little or nothing to kill jobs. At some point, though, the government could set a minimum wage too high for employers to be willing to pay it for certain jobs. Even liberal labor economists like Alan Krueger, who have supported more modest increases, have blanched at Sanders’s proposal for a $15 minimum wage.
Sanders’s worldview is not a fantasy. It is a serious critique based on ideas he has developed over many years, and it bears at least some relation to the instincts shared by all liberals. The moral urgency with which Sanders presents his ideas has helped shelter him from necessary internal criticism. Nobody on the left wants to defend Wall Street or downplay the pressure on middle- and working-class Americans. But Sanders's ideas should not be waved through as a more honest or uncorrupted version of the liberal catechism. The despairing vision he paints of contemporary America is oversimplified.
Even those who do share Sanders’s critique of American politics and endorse his platform, though, should have serious doubts about his nomination. Sanders does bring some assets as a potential nominee — his rumpled style connotes authenticity, and his populist forays against Wall Street have appeal beyond the Democratic base. But his self-identification as a socialist poses an enormous obstacle, as Americans respond to “socialism” with overwhelming negativity. Likewise, his support for higher taxes on the middle class — while substantively sensible — also saddles him with a highly unpopular stance. He also has difficulty addressing issues outside his economic populism wheelhouse. In his opening statement at the debate the day after the Paris attacks, Sanders briefly and vaguely gestured toward the attacks before quickly turning back to his economic themes.
Against these liabilities, Sanders offers the left-wing version of a hoary political fantasy: that a more pure candidate can rally the People into a righteous uprising that would unsettle the conventional laws of politics. Versions of this have circulated in both parties for years, having notably inspired the disastrous Goldwater and McGovern campaigns. The Republican Party may well fall for it again this year. Sanders’s version involves the mobilization of a mass grassroots volunteer army that can depose the special interests. “The major political, strategic difference I have with Obama is it’s too late to do anything inside the Beltway,” he told Andrew Prokop. “You gotta take your case to the American people, mobilize them, and organize them at the grassroots level in a way that we have never done before.” But Obama did organize passionate volunteers on a massive scale — far broader than anything Sanders has done — and tried to keep his volunteers engaged throughout his presidency. Why would Sanders’s grassroots campaign succeed where Obama’s far larger one failed?
Sanders has promised to replace Obamacare with a single-payer plan, without having any remotely plausible prospects for doing so. Many advocates of single-payer imagine that only the power of insurance companies stands in their way, but the more imposing obstacles would be reassuring suspicious voters that the change in their insurance (from private to public) would not harm them and — more difficult still — raising the taxes to pay for it. As Sarah Kliff details, Vermont had to abandon hopes of creating its own single-payer plan. If Vermont, one of the most liberal states in America, can’t summon the political willpower for single-payer, it is impossible to imagine the country as a whole doing it. Not surprisingly, Sanders's health-care plan uses the kind of magical-realism approach to fiscal policy usually found in Republican budgets, conjuring trillions of dollars in savings without defining their source.
The Sanders campaign represents a revolution of rising expectations. In 2008, the last time Democrats held a contested primary, the prospect of simply taking back the presidency from Republican control was nearly enough to motivate the party’s vote. The potential to enact dramatic change was merely a bonus. After nearly two terms of power, with the prospect of Republican rule now merely hypothetical, Democrats want more.
The paradox is that the president’s ability to deliver more change is far more limited. The current occupant of the Oval Office and his successor will have a House of Representatives firmly under right-wing rule, making the prospects of important progressive legislation impossible. This hardly renders the presidency impotent, obviously. The end of Obama’s term has shown that a creative president can still drive some change.
But here is a second irony: Those areas in which a Democratic Executive branch has no power are those in which Sanders demands aggressive action, and the areas in which the Executive branch still has power now are precisely those in which Sanders has the least to say. The president retains full command of foreign affairs; can use executive authority to drive social policy change in areas like criminal justice and gender; and can, at least in theory, staff the judiciary. What the next president won’t accomplish is to increase taxes, expand social programs, or do anything to reduce inequality, given the House Republicans’ fanatically pro-inequality positions across the board. The next Democratic presidential term will be mostly defensive, a bulwark against the enactment of the radical Ryan plan. What little progress liberals can expect will be concentrated in the non-Sanders realm.
So even if you fervently endorse Sanders's policy vision (which, again for the sake of full candor, I do not), he has chosen an unusually poor time to make it the centerpiece of a presidential campaign. It can be rational for a party to move away from the center in order to set itself up for dramatic new policy changes; the risk the Republican Party accepted in 1980 when Ronald Reagan endorsed the radical new doctrine of supply-side economics allowed it to reshape the face of government. But it seems bizarre for Democrats to risk losing the presidency by embracing a politically radical doctrine that stands zero chance of enactment even if they win.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/case-against-bernie-sanders.html?mid=fb-share-di
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Bernie Sanders Wins Wisconsin Democratic Primary
The state’s primary was open, so non-Democrats could participate.
04/05/2016
Samantha Lachman
Staff Reporter, The Huffington Post
Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday, in a reminder that the independent senator from Vermont has continued to win states, even as Clinton maintains her lead among delegates.
Sanders had 56 percent of the vote Wednesday compared with Clinton’s 43 percent, with all precincts reporting.
The AP reported that Sanders will emerge from his win with at least 47 of Wisconsin’s 86 delegates, while Clinton will gain at least 36. Sanders must win 68 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to win the Democratic nomination.
Clinton’s campaign had tried to lower expectations for her performance in Wisconsin. Her campaign manager, Robby Mook, wrote in a Tuesday fundraising email that she “could very well lose,” and Brian Fallon, her national press secretary, told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that the state “somewhat favors” Sanders because its Democratic electorate is “very progressive” and the state hosts an open primary in which voters who aren’t registered as Democrats can participate.
Sanders, in contrast, had led in most Wisconsin polls since February and had telegraphed more confidence about his odds.
“If there is a large voter turnout, we will win on Tuesday,” Sanders said at a rally in Eau Claire Saturday.
Sanders significantly outspent Clinton on television advertisements in Wisconsin, and he had visited the state repeatedly in the two weeks before the primary in an attempt to not just win, but win big, holding town halls and rallies that cumulatively drew over 38,000 supporters in Madison, Appleton, Kenosha, Milwaukee, Onalaska, Sheboygan, Green Bay, Eau Claire, Wausau and Janesville.
Clinton had also visited Wisconsin, but held fewer events, stopping in Madison, Milwaukee, La Crosse, Green Bay and Eau Claire. (Her daughter Chelsea Clinton and former President Bill Clinton also held multiple organizing events in the state.)
Sanders had highlighted his opposition to free trade agreements, tying those deals to job losses in Wisconsin. He also emphasized his belief that the nation’s campaign finance and criminal justice systems need to be reformed and touted his tuition-free college and Medicare-for-all plans. Sanders’ win reflected how enthusiastic his base of support in Wisconsin has been: He got attention in early July when a rally of his in Madison drew 10,000, which at the time was the largest event for any of the presidential candidates in the race.
Both candidates got local as they campaigned, frequently criticizing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who withdrew from the GOP presidential primary, for his cuts to education, curtailing of labor rights and support for the state’s strict voter identification law.
Sanders’ campaign frequently attempted to raise the stakes for the primary, noting in press releases that every winner of Wisconsin’s Democratic contest since 1960 has become the party’s nominee, with just one exception.
While Sanders has now outraised Clinton in each of the last three months and won seven of the last eight contests between the two candidates, Clinton’s delegate cushion has proven difficult to cut into. This disparity is a result of the types of states each is winning: Clinton swept every state in the South and has won more delegate-heavy states like Texas, Florida and Ohio, while the majority of Sanders’ wins have come in caucus states that carry fewer delegates.
Clinton or Sanders need to secure at least 2,383 pledged delegates to have a majority at the convention. Clinton currently has a lead of between 240 to 260 delegates, which widens if one counts superdelegates, or the party and elected officials who also play a role at the convention. Sanders’ campaign has suggested that neither candidate will go to the convention with a pledged delegate majority and that the senator will emerge as the victor there by persuading superdelegates to switch their allegiances.
As Politico noted, one problem for Sanders is that he doesn’t perform well in closed primaries, and 16 of the states remaining in the contest between him and Clinton are closed — just two are open with no restrictions on who can vote in the Democratic contest.
Some of the delegate-rich states he’d need win to stay close to Clinton with pledged delegates hold closed primaries, including New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey. Sanders’ wins have come in caucuses and in three primaries where independents aren’t barred from participating.
The race now turns to New York, which hosts its primary on April 19. The state is a major contest because it sends 291 delegates to the convention. But before that, Sanders is expected to win Wyoming’s April 9 caucus.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-wisconsin_us_5703db6de4b083f5c608e5d6
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Bernie Sanders outraises Hillary Clinton for third consecutive month
By Abby Phillip
April 4, 2016
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s fundraising juggernaut outraised Hillary Clinton’s campaign in March, surpassing her for the third consecutive month.
Clinton announced on Monday that her campaign had raised $29.5 million for the month compared with the $44 million raised by the Sanders campaign. Sanders’s March fundraising haul surpasses the campaign’s own record-setting $43.3 million raised in February.
Sanders has made a point to raise a vast majority of his money from small-dollar contributors who donate online — an average of $27 each, according to the campaign. He has also criticized Clinton for devoting time to fundraising from the wealthy.
“What this campaign is doing is bringing together millions of people contributing an average of just $27 each to take on a billionaire class which is so used to buying elections,” Sanders said in a statement on Friday. “Working people standing together are going to propel this campaign to the Democratic nomination and then the White House.”
Clinton has also increasingly emphasized grass-roots fundraising. A majority of Clinton’s donors have given less than $100, according to the campaign. But she also spends a fair amount of time raising millions from larger contributors — including a controversial upcoming fundraiser with actor George Clooney in California with a ticket price of up to $353,400.
She begins April with $29 million in cash on hand for the primary. The Sanders campaign did not disclose the amount of money it had remaining.
Clinton hasn’t always trailed Sanders in fundraising. Up until the end of 2015, Clinton had raised more money and had more cash on hand than Sanders. But beginning in January, Sanders has outraised Clinton each month.
Still, Clinton’s campaign emphasized that despite being outraised and outspent in many states where they competed with Sanders, Clinton now holds a delegate lead that puts her in a strong position to win the nomination.
“By making smart investments and beating our first quarter fundraising goal by nearly 50 percent, we’ve been able to build a nearly insurmountable pledged delegate lead and earned 2.5 million more votes than our opponent,” said Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook in a statement.
Mook characterized recent months as bringing a “surge of grassroots support” and he noted that the campaign now has more than 1 million contributors. And the campaign noted that more than $6 million was raised through a joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee and state parties, which the Clinton campaign has said will benefit down ballot Democrats in the general election.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04/04/bernie-sanders-outraises-hillary-clinton-for-third-consecutive-month/
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Current delegate count (2383 needed):
Hillary Clinton - 1,749
Bernie Sanders - 1,061
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2016/presidential-primary-caucus-results
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I don't think it's fair to count super delegates the way the news keeps doing so.
I believe the actual voted delegate count is only separated by about 200 or so... Bernie will most likely make those up when he gets to California and Oregon.
(Just an opinion of course)
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I don't think it's fair to count super delegates the way the news keeps doing so.
I believe the actual voted delegate count is only separated by about 200 or so... Bernie will most likely make those up when he gets to California and Oregon.
(Just an opinion of course)
I doubt it. She is projected to win NY, Pa, and Md by pretty wide margins. Whatever contests Sanders wins will not be by large enough margins to overtake her.
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I doubt it. She is projected to win NY, Pa, and Md by pretty wide margins. Whatever contests Sanders wins will not be by large enough margins to overtake her.
I don't know.
If he takes 75% in California (A crazy liberal state) and Oregon, I bet it's very very close and the 55/45 wins in the rest of the country might give it to him.
It's going to be extremely tight.
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I don't know.
If he takes 75% in California (A crazy liberal state) and Oregon, I bet it's very very close and the 55/45 wins in the rest of the country might give it to him.
It's going to be extremely tight.
Not really. I just read the following article. He is losing the delegate, super delegate, and popular vote totals by wide margins and that isn't really going to change. You have to click the link to get a clean view of the chart.
Bernie Sanders Is Even Less Competitive Than He Appears
By David Wasserman
Apr 8, 2016
Bernie Sanders’s supporters are fond of the hypothesis that Democratic superdelegates, the elected leaders and party officials who currently support Hillary Clinton by a lopsided-doesn’t-even-begin-to-describe-it 469 to 31, are going to bow to the “will of the people” if Sanders ends up winning more pledged delegates than Clinton by June.
There’s just one hiccup in this logic: Sanders fans seem to be conflating the pledged delegate count and the “will of the voters,” when in fact the two are far from interchangeable.
Sanders’s reliance on extremely low-turnout caucus states has meant the pledged delegate count overstates his share of votes. To date, Sanders has captured 46 percent of Democrats’ pledged delegates but just 42 percent of raw votes. So even if Sanders were to draw even in pledged delegates by June — which is extremely unlikely — Clinton could be able to persuade superdelegates to stick with her by pointing to her popular vote lead.
Sanders already has a nearly impossible task ahead of him in trying to erase Clinton’s pledged delegate lead. He’s down by 212 delegates, meaning he’d need to win 56 percent of those remaining to nose in front. He has dominated caucus states such as Idaho and Washington, but only two caucus states — Wyoming and North Dakota — remain on the calendar. What’s more, the biggest states left — New York and California — favor Clinton demographically.
Including caucus results, Clinton leads Sanders by almost 2.4 million raw votes, 9.4 million to just more than 7 million, according to The Green Papers. So then, what would it take for Sanders to overtake Clinton in the popular vote by the end of the primaries in June?
To estimate how many votes remain to be counted, I first used data compiled by the handy U.S. Elections Project and The Green Papers to compare Democratic primary turnout in each state that’s voted so far to turnout rates in 2008. From 2008 to 2016, the average turnout in primary states as a share of the Voting Eligible Population has fallen from 20 percent to 14 percent. In caucus states, it’s fallen more modestly, from 4.4 percent to 3.7 percent.1
Then, I applied these average declines to the remaining 17 states and Washington, D.C.2 The result: There may be around 12.1 million votes left to be counted. That means Sanders would need to win about 60 percent of remaining voters and caucus attendees to overtake Clinton in popular votes — a very tall task for someone who’s only captured 42 percent up until now.
The much more likely scenario is that Clinton’s popular vote lead continues to expand until the race’s June 7 grand finale.
At the outset of the race, FiveThirtyEight laid out state-by-state targets estimating how well Sanders and Clinton would need to do in each state to win half of the vote nationally. So far, Sanders has averaged about 8 percent ahead of his targets in caucus states (66 percent actual versus 58 percent predicted), but he’s averaged about 8 percent behind his targets in primary states (41 percent actual versus 49 percent predicted).
If we were to apply that pattern to the state-by-state targets over the rest of the calendar, Clinton’s popular vote lead would grow by 1.5 million votes to over 3.9 million by June.
But instead, let’s adjust these targets to estimate how many votes Sanders would need in each state to finish one pledged delegate ahead of Clinton. Even if he were to turn around his 212-delegate deficit and claim a 2,026-to-2,025 lead, he’d only close the popular vote gap by about 1.7 million votes, leaving Clinton with a 670,000-vote advantage. Here’s a rough estimate of how the remaining votes might break down in this generous-to-Sanders scenario:
DATE
STATE
CAUCUS
ESTIMATED TURNOUT
SANDERS VOTE TARGET
CLINTON’S SHARE
4/9 Wyoming ✓ 7,966 6,736 1,230
4/19 New York 1,412,388 801,954 610,434
4/26 Connecticut 267,973 154,835 113,138
Delaware 78,351 40,962 37,389
Maryland 682,599 346,624 335,975
Pennsylvannia 1,762,837 1,000,939 761,898
Rhode Island 138,336 82,697 55,639
5/3 Indiana 967,991 568,985 399,006
5/10 West Virginia 264,415 169,966 94,449
5/17 Kentucky 523,479 299,849 223,630
Oregon 508,416 334,436 173,980
6/7 North Dakota ✓ 18,278 14,816 3,462
California 4,039,240 2,273,284 1,765,956
Montana 142,410 100,086 42,324
New Jersey 852,395 462,680 389,715
New Mexico 210,977 124,012 86,965
South Dakota 75,404 50,355 25,049
6/14 D.C. 104,874 49,060 55,814
Target totals 12,058,329 6,882,276 5,176,053
Already voted 16,734,424* 7,034,997 9,412,426
Total 28,792,753* 13,917,273 14,588,479
How many votes Bernie Sanders needs to catch up in delegates
*Includes votes for candidates other than Sanders and Clinton
In other words, Sanders may have had a great night in Wisconsin on Tuesday and will probably have an even more terrific day in Wyoming on Saturday. But in the long run, even if he were somehow to win more pledged delegates, he’d probably still wind up short in the popular vote.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-is-even-further-behind-in-votes-than-he-is-in-delegates/
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Interesting.
So Hillary is basically a lock.
Well, the Dems better hope Trump is the Nominee then... If not, it's going to be a stomping. Hillary won't do well in the general election.
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It would take an indictment to slow her down and give Sanders a chance. Even then, she's still the most likely nominee.
I still think she is the favorite to win the general election too, especially if Trump is the nominee.
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Dos Equis is a moron and its going to be hilarious when he has to eat his words. He has been wrong the entire time thus far about Bernie.
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Dos Equis is a moron and its going to be hilarious when he has to eat his words. He has been wrong the entire time thus far about Bernie.
I've been wrong about Sanders? How so? Did he win or something?
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The thing I will say that baffles me.
Something like 80% (plus or minus) of people say that Bernie is trustworthy and tries to be honest.
Yet they vote for the people who are known to be liars and deceitful.
Why would they do it?
I get the not liking the taxes or whatever but why vote for the liars? People really just don't like the truth?
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The thing I will say that baffles me.
Something like 80% (plus or minus) of people say that Bernie is trustworthy and tries to be honest.
Yet they vote for the people who are known to be liars and deceitful.
Why would they do it?
I get the not liking the taxes or whatever but why vote for the liars? People really just don't like the truth?
Many are voting because they want to see a woman president before they die which is a sorry reason. Others are just misinformed or just plain stupid. Some play into the meme that all politicians are deceitful and so they see nothing wrong with supporting a dishonest candidate. Then there are some who are just deluded and of course you have the blacks who think that Clinton=90s, the best time they had in their lives and the high point of their culture which has stagnated since.
Hillarys support has dwindled and will continue to do so. This is causing her to lose big time and it will only continue. Bernie will only continue to gain. Game pretty much over for Hillary at this point. She reached her apex with the black vote months ago. She no longer has support from whites and even the blacks are turning against her now.
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hilary IS a lock. I've been saying it since minute one. She's way less popular than sanders, but she knows the system and knows how to work it.
If sanders SOUNDED like Sanders but LOOKED like Sean Connery, it'd be 2008 all over again, with a smiling celeb defeating her. But she's not up against obama. She'll win the nomination and then probably win 40 states against Trump.
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hilary IS a lock. I've been saying it since minute one. She's way less popular than sanders, but she knows the system and knows how to work it.
If sanders SOUNDED like Sanders but LOOKED like Sean Connery, it'd be 2008 all over again, with a smiling celeb defeating her. But she's not up against obama. She'll win the nomination and then probably win 40 states against Trump.
I think you will be wrong. You and the others were calling Bernie a fringe candidate and that he would be gone by last October. How hilarious that prediction was. LOLOLOL
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Wyoming Democratic caucuses: Bernie Sanders picks up another win
By Eric Bradner, CNN
Sun April 10, 2016
(CNN)Bernie Sanders won the Wyoming Democratic caucuses Saturday, providing his campaign with one more jolt of momentum before the race against Hillary Clinton heads east.
Even so, he made no gains in Clinton's delegate lead, as each earned seven delegates as a result.
The Vermont senator was favored going into the caucuses. Wyoming is similar to other places he's won with big margins: rural, Western and overwhelmingly white. The victory is Sanders' eighth win out of the last nine contests -- including a contest that counted the votes of Democrats living abroad -- and a big morale booster heading into the crucial New York primary on April 19.
Sanders, speaking at a rally in Queens, New York, when the state's results were projected, announced the victory to his supporters after his wife, Jane, joined him on stage to say they had won.
"News bulletin: We just won Wyoming," Sanders said as the room exploded into cheers.
Sanders won 55.7% of the vote to Clinton's 44.3%, giving each candidate seven delegates. That helps Clinton maintain her pledged delegate lead over Sanders, 1,304 to 1,075.
A Clinton campaign aide said their "secret sauce" in Wyoming was the state's onerous vote-by-mail rules that required anyone voting by mail to have voted as a Democrat in the 2014 midterms.
"This is exactly the type of contest he needed to shut us out in," the aide said. "Not only did he not do that, he only netted two delegates, if that."
With 55% of remaining delegates in New York, Pennsylvania and California, one senior aide said "by the time we get to California, we will only need to meet threshold to win. He can win 85% and we're fine."
Sanders is banking on momentum to keep Clinton from officially clinching the nomination until the convention, when superdelegates will vote.
"If you look at the math, if you want to talk about math, the truth is is that it is very, very, very unlikely that either candidate, either Secretary Clinton or Sen. Sanders, will go into the convention with a majority needed of pledged delegates in order to win," Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day" Tuesday.
The Republican National Committee in a statement Saturday afternoon quickly noted Clinton's "embarrassing string of defeats," a sign, the RNC said, that Clinton will be beatable if she's the Democratic nominee.
Democrats turn out
Leaving nothing to chance, Sanders spent Tuesday night -- the evening he won Wisconsin's primary -- holding one of his signature large rallies in Laramie, a town of 30,000.
It could be all the attention Wyoming gets in the presidential contest. The rural, sparsely-populated state that's home to former Vice President Dick Cheney is solidly Republican, so Democrats don't spend time trying to win it in the general election.
Here's what it's like to be a Democrat in Wyoming
Saturday morning, Wyoming Democrats jammed into Cheyenne Central High School to caucus.
"We're expecting a record turnout throughout the state. There's a lot of excitement," said Aimee Van Cleave, executive director of the state Democratic Party. "It's wonderful today. Everyone will be allowed to vote. They're not being stopped by an early spring blizzard."
One group of enthusiastic Sanders partisans broke into a Bernie Sanders song to the tune of "Yankee Doodle Dandy."
"Elections in America are brought by corporations / Bernie is the only one who uses small donations," they sang, to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar.
Republicans, meanwhile, are in neighboring Colorado for a party convention where every delegate matters on the road to Cleveland's GOP convention and Donald Trump is trying to clinch the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination.
He has outraised Clinton, $109 million to $75 million, over the last three months, and wins along the way help him prime the small-dollar donor pump for the cash he'll need to compete in expensive, densely-populated East Coast media markets both in New York and the following week in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island.
The Democratic race has taken a sharply bitter turn in New York, where Sanders accused Clinton of "hustling money from the wealthy and powerful" on Thursday, and Clinton instructing Sanders: "Don't make promises you can't keep."
Sanders raised the stakes on Wednesday night, launching into a tirade on why Clinton is "not qualified" for the presidency by citing her positions on trade and her coziness with Wall Street interests.
"I'm not going to get beaten up. I'm not going to get lied about. We will fight back, but I do hope that we can raise the level and I do hope that the media will talk about real issues," he said Thursday in Philadelphia.
Clinton responded with a desire for unity -- to a point. She said that eventually, "we're going to have to unify Democrats," pointing to her own support for then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008 after a hard-fought Democratic nominating contest.
Still, Clinton said she's going to "keep drawing contrasts" with Sanders.
"Because that's what elections are about," she said. "But I think it is important to tell people about what you're going to do for them, and how you can get it done -- how you can produce results that will make a positive difference in people's lives."
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/09/politics/wyoming-democratic-caucus-results/index.html
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27,000 New Yorkers Come Out to See Bernie
APR 13, 2016 | By DANIEL HALPER
Bernie Sanders had a massive crowd tonight in New York City. The campaign for the 74-year-old socialist from Vermont claims 27,000 came out tonight for the event.
"Thank you to the more than 27,000 New Yorkers who came out tonight to join our political revolution. Unbelievable," Sanders wrote on Twitter.
And here's press release from the Sanders campaign:
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday told more than 27,000 people packed into Washington Square Park and the city streets surrounding the Lower Manhattan landmark that he and Hillary Clinton have major differences on issues ranging from Wall Street reform to trade policy and how to combat climate change.
"It is not just about electing a president, it is about creating a political revolution. It is about creating a government which works for all of us, not just wealthy campaign contributors," Sanders said from a stage in front of the park's massive arch.
Ahead of next Tuesday's Democratic Party primary election in New York, Sanders is on a winning streak, drawing big and boisterous crowds like the one in the park. "I don't think there's any doubt that our campaign today has the momentum. We have won seven out of the last eight primaries and caucuses," he said. Sanders also leads Clinton in two recent national polls and "national poll after national poll has us defeating Donald Trump by double digits."
Detailing his differences with Clinton, Sanders said he opposed and she supported trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement and others that have sent good-paying jobs in the United States to low-wage countries overseas. "Secretary Clinton supported virtually every one of these awful trade agreements," he said.
Sanders also said he would take on Wall Street and break up the biggest banks. He questioned whether Clinton would stand up to those who have bankrolled her campaign with $15 million in Wall Street conations to her super PAC and millions more in lucrative speaking fees for speeches to Goldman Sachs and others after she stepped down as secretary of state. "She should release the transcripts," Sanders said.
The rally featured filmmaker Spike Lee, actress Rosario Dawson, civil rights activist Linda Sarsour, actor Tim Robbins and musicians from the bands Vampire Weekend and Dirty Projectors.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/article/2001955
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Bernie Sanders Supporters Shower Hillary Clinton Motorcade With $1 Bills
Making it rain.
04/17/2016
Igor Bobic
Associate Politics Editor, The Huffington Post
A group of Bernie Sanders supporters showered Hillary Clinton’s motorcade with one thousand $1 bills as the former secretary of state drove to a glitzy fundraiser hosted by Hollywood power couple George and Amal Clooney.
A CNN reporter posted video of the motorcade passing through Los Angeles’ Studio City neighborhood Saturday evening:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/721528551359426560/pu/img/VQ_u6owD70DAgq4g.jpg)
Dan Merica ✔@danmericaCNN
Sanders supporters outside Clinton's Clooney fundraiser in LA shower her motorcade in $1,000.
As the motorcade passed, Sanders supporters played the song “We’re In The Money.” After it was out of sight, they danced in the street and stomped on the dollar bills, according to CNN.
Sanders, who wants to reform the campaign finance system, has criticized Clinton for holding pricey fundraisers hosted by the Clooneys in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. Tickets for the Los Angeles event, which was co-hosted by Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw and Haim and Cheryl Saban, were priced at $33,400 per person. A couple wishing to co-chair the event in San Francisco had to pony up $353,000.
Asked whether he thought the pricing was appropriate in an interview on “Meet the Press,” Clooney gave a convoluted explanation.
“Yes. I think it’s an obscene amount of money. I think that, you know, we had some protesters last night when we pulled up in San Francisco and they’re right to protest. They’re absolutely right. It is an obscene amount of money. The Sanders campaign when they talk about it is absolutely right. It’s ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree completely.”
But, he added, the money raised was going to help other Democrats. “[What the] Clinton campaign has not been very good at explaining is this and this is the truth,” he said: “the overwhelming amount of money that we’re raising, and it is a lot, but the overwhelming amount of the money that we’re raising is not going to Hillary to run for president; it’s going to the Democratic ticket.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-hillary-motorcade-dollars_us_5713a8eee4b0060ccda38364
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Better than the actual debate. :)
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Dos Equis is a moron and its going to be hilarious when he has to eat his words. He has been wrong the entire time thus far about Bernie.
Speak on this.
Clinton Poised to Clinch Democratic Nomination
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=18ddc6d0-2959-4560-bed1-7addb7e46c82&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Clinton Poised to Clinch Democratic Nomination
Wednesday, 20 Apr 2016
Hillary Clinton can lose every remaining primary in the coming weeks and still clinch the nomination.
With Clinton's double-digit win in New York and more than two dozen new superdelegates joining her camp, rival Bernie Sanders now faces a far steeper path.
Before New York's contest, Sanders needed to win 68 percent of remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to catch Clinton.
Now to capture the nomination, Sanders must win 73 percent. That means that Clinton can lose all remaining contests and still win.
If she does as well as expected in next week's primaries in the northeast, she's on track to clinch the nomination with help from superdelegates, the party insiders who can back either candidate, on June 7.
Based on primaries and caucuses alone, the latest AP delegate count, including New York, shows that Clinton leads by 1,428 to 1,151.
Including superdelegates, the race stands at 1,930 to 1,189, for Clinton. She needs just 27 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to reach the magic number, 2,383.
Clinton is moving quickly to cast herself as the all-but-certain nominee.
"The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight," she told supporters at her victory party in Manhattan on Tuesday night.
Clinton added 33 new endorsements from superdelegates over the past month, according to a new Associated Press survey, expanding her already overwhelming support, despite Sanders' recent string of victories in Wisconsin and the West. Sanders picked up just seven such endorsements.
Democratic allies of the Clinton campaign say there are dozens more who back her. Some say privately that they don't want to make their support public because they fear aggressive online attacks from certain Sanders backers, who've harassed some superdelegates with threatening calls and emails.
The Sanders campaign contends that if he can close the gap with Clinton among delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses, the superdelegates will flock to his side to avoid overturning the will of the party's voters. While superdelegates are free to switch their vote, Sanders would need to flip dozens to catch up to her.
Looking at just superdelegates, Clinton has 502, while Sanders has 38.
So far, none has switched to Sanders and there's little indication many would defect.
"She's the person I think who can continue to lead this country in the right direction," said Democratic National Committee member Valarie McCall, of Cleveland, now for Clinton. "I don't know how much more qualified one can be."
Both campaigns had cast the New York primary as one that would either put Clinton on a clear path to the nomination or bolster Sanders after a string of primary wins.
Sanders aides are now saying they will re-examine the campaign's position in the race after delegate-rich primaries in five northeastern states Tuesday.
"Next week is a big week," said senior adviser Tad Devine. "We'll see how we do there and then we'll be able to sit back and assess where we are."
Still, few in the Democratic Party expect Sanders to exit the race formally before the final contests in June. He continues to attract tens of thousands to rallies - addressing more than 28,000 in Brooklyn two days before the primary. And he continues to raise millions of dollars, giving him fodder for a persistent fight.
In New York, Sanders spent $6.5 million on television ads compared with $4.2 million for Clinton according to CMAG's Kantar Media. The ad onslaught has come with a more negative tone going after her character - the issue Republicans want to put front and center in the fall election - and that has frustrated Clinton and her team.
The longer the race goes on, the more her negative ratings have risen. Fifty-six percent of people surveyed had a negative view of her, an all-time high, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll earlier this week.
Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, said Sanders must decide whether he wants to continue to "make casualties" of the likely nominee and the Democratic Party.
But the success of Sanders, a decades-long independent, also underscores her weaknesses with critical segments of the Democratic coalition. She's struggled with younger voters and liberal activists, whose enthusiasm will be necessary to fuel her general election bid.
While she stopped short of declaring victory on Tuesday night, Clinton has increasingly sprinkled her remarks with pleas for party unity.
"To all the people who supported Senator Sanders, I believe there is much more that unites us than divides us," she told the cheering crowd.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/US-DEM-2016-Clinton-Delegate-Dominance/2016/04/20/id/724952/#ixzz46OgQch96
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Delegate count after Hillary's win in New York:
(http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160420012111-t1-delegate-scorecard-042016-overlay-tease.jpg)
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Speak on this.
Clinton Poised to Clinch Democratic Nomination
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=18ddc6d0-2959-4560-bed1-7addb7e46c82&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Clinton Poised to Clinch Democratic Nomination
Wednesday, 20 Apr 2016
Hillary Clinton can lose every remaining primary in the coming weeks and still clinch the nomination.
With Clinton's double-digit win in New York and more than two dozen new superdelegates joining her camp, rival Bernie Sanders now faces a far steeper path.
Before New York's contest, Sanders needed to win 68 percent of remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to catch Clinton.
Now to capture the nomination, Sanders must win 73 percent. That means that Clinton can lose all remaining contests and still win.
If she does as well as expected in next week's primaries in the northeast, she's on track to clinch the nomination with help from superdelegates, the party insiders who can back either candidate, on June 7.
Based on primaries and caucuses alone, the latest AP delegate count, including New York, shows that Clinton leads by 1,428 to 1,151.
Including superdelegates, the race stands at 1,930 to 1,189, for Clinton. She needs just 27 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to reach the magic number, 2,383.
Clinton is moving quickly to cast herself as the all-but-certain nominee.
"The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight," she told supporters at her victory party in Manhattan on Tuesday night.
Clinton added 33 new endorsements from superdelegates over the past month, according to a new Associated Press survey, expanding her already overwhelming support, despite Sanders' recent string of victories in Wisconsin and the West. Sanders picked up just seven such endorsements.
Democratic allies of the Clinton campaign say there are dozens more who back her. Some say privately that they don't want to make their support public because they fear aggressive online attacks from certain Sanders backers, who've harassed some superdelegates with threatening calls and emails.
The Sanders campaign contends that if he can close the gap with Clinton among delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses, the superdelegates will flock to his side to avoid overturning the will of the party's voters. While superdelegates are free to switch their vote, Sanders would need to flip dozens to catch up to her.
Looking at just superdelegates, Clinton has 502, while Sanders has 38.
So far, none has switched to Sanders and there's little indication many would defect.
"She's the person I think who can continue to lead this country in the right direction," said Democratic National Committee member Valarie McCall, of Cleveland, now for Clinton. "I don't know how much more qualified one can be."
Both campaigns had cast the New York primary as one that would either put Clinton on a clear path to the nomination or bolster Sanders after a string of primary wins.
Sanders aides are now saying they will re-examine the campaign's position in the race after delegate-rich primaries in five northeastern states Tuesday.
"Next week is a big week," said senior adviser Tad Devine. "We'll see how we do there and then we'll be able to sit back and assess where we are."
Still, few in the Democratic Party expect Sanders to exit the race formally before the final contests in June. He continues to attract tens of thousands to rallies - addressing more than 28,000 in Brooklyn two days before the primary. And he continues to raise millions of dollars, giving him fodder for a persistent fight.
In New York, Sanders spent $6.5 million on television ads compared with $4.2 million for Clinton according to CMAG's Kantar Media. The ad onslaught has come with a more negative tone going after her character - the issue Republicans want to put front and center in the fall election - and that has frustrated Clinton and her team.
The longer the race goes on, the more her negative ratings have risen. Fifty-six percent of people surveyed had a negative view of her, an all-time high, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll earlier this week.
Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, said Sanders must decide whether he wants to continue to "make casualties" of the likely nominee and the Democratic Party.
But the success of Sanders, a decades-long independent, also underscores her weaknesses with critical segments of the Democratic coalition. She's struggled with younger voters and liberal activists, whose enthusiasm will be necessary to fuel her general election bid.
While she stopped short of declaring victory on Tuesday night, Clinton has increasingly sprinkled her remarks with pleas for party unity.
"To all the people who supported Senator Sanders, I believe there is much more that unites us than divides us," she told the cheering crowd.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/US-DEM-2016-Clinton-Delegate-Dominance/2016/04/20/id/724952/#ixzz46OgQch96
That is counting superdelegates which are awarded at the convention. Again, she CANNOT clinch it before the convention so thats where this is going. All the way to the convention, same as the GOP. Reread your article.
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That is counting superdelegates which are awarded at the convention. Again, she CANNOT clinch it before the convention so thats where this is going. All the way to the convention, same as the GOP. Reread your article.
You mean this part?
Including superdelegates, the race stands at 1,930 to 1,189, for Clinton. She needs just 27 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to reach the magic number, 2,383.
Clinton is moving quickly to cast herself as the all-but-certain nominee.
"The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight," she told supporters at her victory party in Manhattan on Tuesday night.
Clinton added 33 new endorsements from superdelegates over the past month, according to a new Associated Press survey, expanding her already overwhelming support, despite Sanders' recent string of victories in Wisconsin and the West. Sanders picked up just seven such endorsements.
Democratic allies of the Clinton campaign say there are dozens more who back her. Some say privately that they don't want to make their support public because they fear aggressive online attacks from certain Sanders backers, who've harassed some superdelegates with threatening calls and emails.
The Sanders campaign contends that if he can close the gap with Clinton among delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses, the superdelegates will flock to his side to avoid overturning the will of the party's voters. While superdelegates are free to switch their vote, Sanders would need to flip dozens to catch up to her.
Looking at just superdelegates, Clinton has 502, while Sanders has 38.
So far, none has switched to Sanders and there's little indication many would defect.
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(http://s31.postimg.org/81vmshzej/GIleez_L.png)
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This woman lacks integrity.
Clinton confronted by laid-off coal worker at West Virginia campaign stop
Published May 03, 2016
FoxNews.com
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was confronted Monday at a campaign stop in West Virginia by a laid-off coal worker over previous comments she made that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
Clinton was attending a panel discussion with residents and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in Williamson, W. Va. when she was asked a question by Bo Copley, who told her he was a laid off worker in the coal industry.
“I just want to know how you can say you’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of, out of jobs, and then come in here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend, because those people out there don’t see you as a friend,” Copley said, sometimes breaking into tears, as the chants of the protesters were heard outside.
Clinton however said her comments in March were a “misstatement,” and that she has been talking about helping out coal country “for a very long time.”
“What I was saying is that the way things are going now, we will continue to lose jobs,” Clinton said Monday. “That’s what I meant to say, and I think that that seems to be supported by the facts. I didn’t mean that we were going to do it, what I said was, that is going to happen unless we take action to try to and help and prevent it.”
Clinton released a $30 billion plan last fall aimed at aiding communities dependent on coal production and she's promised that her husband would focus on revitalizing the region.
Manchin came to Clinton’s defense on Monday.
“If I thought that was in her heart, if I thought she wanted to eliminate one job in West Virginia I wouldn’t be sitting here,” he said. “I think Hillary knows that. She wouldn’t be here if she felt that way. There is no way you could come into this type of a setting and the way that people are hurting so bad unless you want to help them.”
Copley however told Manchin he didn’t believe that his endorsement of Clinton was a good move.
“If I can be candid, I think still supporting her hurts you, it does, because it’s not a good outlook here,” he said.
"I can't take it back, and I certainly can't get people who, for political reasons or personal reasons, very painful reasons, are upset with me," Clinton said. "I want you to know I'm going to do whatever I can to help no matter what happens politically."
She added, "Whether or not West Virginia supports me, I'm going to support you."
Copley said he plans to vote in the Republican primary May 10.
The Republican National Committee responded Monday to the Clinton calling her earlier comments a “misstatement.”
“If Hillary Clinton really stood with coal country she’d be calling on the Obama EPA to stop taking a wrecking ball to their way of life. Given her steadfast support for Obama’s War on Coal, her promise to ‘put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business’ may have been one of the few honest moments she’s had this entire campaign,” said RNC spokesman Michael Short.
The Obama administration has been accused for years of pursuing policies harmful to the coal industry, including new regulations on power plants. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama once said his goal is a cap-and-trade system that would make it so anybody wanting to build a coal plant would face costs so high it would “bankrupt” them.
Clinton is in the midst of a two-day campaign swing through Appalachia ahead of voting in that region later this month.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/03/clinton-confronted-by-laid-off-coal-worker-at-west-virginia-campaign-stop.html?intcmp=hpbt2
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Sanders upsets Clinton in Indiana
By Jonathan Swan
May 03, 2016
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is projected to win the Indiana primary in an upset over Hillary Clinton, who had led the Hoosier State in polling.
At about 10:30 p.m. EDT, Sanders led 53 percent to 47 percent, with 92 percent of precincts reporting, according to The Associated Press.
Sanders will win more of the state's 83 pledged delegates, helping him gain a little ground on Clinton as he tries to keep her from clinching the nomination. He thanked his supporters on Twitter.
Clinton led state polls by about 7 percentage points before the Tuesday primary. This is not the first time Sanders defied polling to pull off a stunning upset. In Michigan, he trailed by 21 points in polls before winning the state primary.
The surprise win gives Sanders and his supporters a much-needed boost at a time when hope seemed to be fading among even his most hardcore followers.
But despite the victory, Sanders has a lot of work to do to catch Clinton.
The former secretary of State entered the day with 1,645 pledged delegates, to 1,318 for Sanders. Factoring in superdelegates as well, her lead expanded to more than 800 total delegates, according to The Associated Press.
Clinton entered Indiana on a hot streak, having won five of the previous six contests to pad her lead.
Sanders now needs to convert his Indiana momentum into a string of victories through the June 7 California primary to have any hope of securing the Democratic nomination.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/dem-primaries/278530-sanders-upsets-clinton-in-indiana
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Delegate count after Indiana:
Hillary - 2202
Sanders - 1400
2382 needed to win
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/democratic_delegate_count.html
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Buzz Grows Over Sen. Tim Kaine as Possible Clinton VP
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=91fa3294-338c-4029-acbc-f453b7018181&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Buzz Grows Over Sen. Tim Kaine as Possible Clinton VP Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. (Getty Images)
By Joe Crowe | Wednesday, 04 May 2016
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine appears to be leading the talk among Democrats about a running mate for presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Kaine was the governor of Virginia and chaired the Democratic National Committee for two years. Supporters say he could balance the ticket because of his moderate positions and his experience as a governor would complement Clinton.
Kaine endorsed Clinton for president before she announced her 2016 run, according to The Washington Post. He worked at a mission in Honduras while he was in law school and speaks fluent Spanish, the Post said.
"I would be 100-percent enthusiastic about Tim Kaine being our vice presidential candidate," Clinton donor Peter Buttenweiser said, reports CNN.
Rep. Gerry Connolly said Kaine "provides a lot of talent to the ticket," and has the potential to be a good president. "He could certainly be an heir apparent."
Kaine has spoken out against Donald Trump, saying he insulted the American military by calling it a "disaster," according to ForeignPolicy.com.
Other possibilities would be more notable than Kaine, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, African-American Sen. Cory Booker, and Latino Labor Secretary Julian Castro, reports CNN.
The Virginia senator said he isn't looking for another job, saying he's "happy" as a senator and he doesn't know if he's even being considered for the position.
"I'm not on any list that I know of," he told CNN.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Tim-Kaine-Clinton-VP/2016/05/04/id/727191/#ixzz47iR6Elt3
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Bernie Sanders Wins West Virginia’s Democratic Primary
It’s a small victory for Bernie’s delegate count.
05/10/2016
Mollie Reilly
Deputy Politics Editor, The Huffington Post
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary in West Virginia, edging out rival Hillary Clinton for a majority of the state’s 29 delegates.
It’s a minor win for Sanders: West Virginia awards delegates proportionately, and while votes are still being counted, he’s unlikely to win by enough percentage points to significantly dent Clinton’s lead in the delegate race.
Sanders was expected to do well in West Virginia, where voters are largely white and working class. He also likely benefited from the state’s primary system, which allows independent voters to vote in either the Democratic or Republican election. More than 250,000 West Virginia primary voters were unaffiliated, according to state data.
Ahead of Tuesday’s primary, Clinton led Sanders in the pledged delegate race by about 300 delegates. Counting unpledged delegates, also known as superdelegates, Clinton is ahead by more than 700. Sanders’ team has acknowledged the mathematical hurdles to overtaking Clinton in the pledged delegate race, and has instead shifted its strategy to challenging the former secretary of state at the convention.
“She will need superdelegates to take her over the top,” Sanders said last week of Clinton’s path to victory. “The convention will be a contested contest.”
Next Tuesday, Democratic voters head to the polls in Kentucky and Oregon. The rest of the Democratic primaries, including California’s and New Jersey’s, will take place in early June.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-west-virginia-primary_us_573282a7e4b096e9f09329da
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I want him to stay in.
Fight Hillary to the end! If she gets the nomination, I want her to have had to work for it... I don't want her just getting it "handed" to her.
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I want him to stay in.
Fight Hillary to the end! If she gets the nomination, I want her to have had to work for it... I don't want her just getting it "handed" to her.
Too late. She was crowned as soon as she announced her candidacy. Probably before she announced.
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Too late. She was crowned as soon as she announced her candidacy. Probably before she announced.
While I agree with you in general, I still want him to keep at it.
If he is doing what he believes to be the best for the American people, he won't just roll over and give it to her.
Side note, did you see Rubio endorse Trump today?
WTF is that? Trump says so many terrible things about him and he just says, "Well, that's ok."
Do these people have no self respect anymore?
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While I agree with you in general, I still want him to keep at it.
If he is doing what he believes to be the best for the American people, he won't just roll over and give it to her.
Side note, did you see Rubio endorse Trump today?
WTF is that? Trump says so many terrible things about him and he just says, "Well, that's ok."
Do these people have no self respect anymore?
'
There's probably a 10% chance that, based upon his internal research, Trump sees Rubio helps him most in FL and with hispanics and with youte vote and with the dimple vote, whoever... and he picks Rubio as veep. Visually, Rubio's NFL cheerleader wife + trump's model wife make for a great campaign poster. If trump knows anything, it's how to make a good media appearance.
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While I agree with you in general, I still want him to keep at it.
If he is doing what he believes to be the best for the American people, he won't just roll over and give it to her.
Side note, did you see Rubio endorse Trump today?
WTF is that? Trump says so many terrible things about him and he just says, "Well, that's ok."
Do these people have no self respect anymore?
Well Rubio pledged during a debate to support Trump if he was the nominee. That was the time to take a stand. All these people are selling their souls. Props to the ones who have the conviction to oppose this man.
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Delegate count after Indiana:
Hillary - 2202
Sanders - 1400
2382 needed to win
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/democratic_delegate_count.html
Delegate count after Bernie's win in WV:
Hillary - 2240
Sanders - 1473
2,382 needed to win
The end is near.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/democratic_delegate_count.html
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Clinton edges Sanders in chaotic Nevada convention
By Eric Bradner, CNN
May 15, 2016
Washington (CNN)Hillary Clinton maintained her delegate advantage in Nevada as the state Democratic convention adjourned amid chaos Saturday night.
The reason things wrapped up quickly and unceremoniously: They were kicked out of the casino hosting the convention.
The Nevada State Democratic Party said Sunday that the Paris Las Vegas Hotel's security said it could no longer handle their event.
"At approximately 10:00 p.m. on Saturday night, the director of security for the Paris Las Vegas Hotel informed the state party and representatives from both presidential campaigns that the property could no longer provide the necessary security under conditions made unruly and unpredictable. Paris Las Vegas Hotel security requested a prompt conclusion to the event," the Nevada State Democratic Party said in a statement.
From there, the state chairwoman Roberta Lange accepted a motion to adopt the delegate slates submitted by the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigns, the state party said.
Sanders' supporters had hoped that winning county conventions would give them more delegates than Clinton -- and therefore would help the Vermont senator secure an advantage in Nevada, even though Clinton had won the state's Democratic caucuses in February.
But the state party's count gave Clinton a 33-delegate advantage out of the 3,400 who attended Saturday.
The results of the convention mean Nevada will send 20 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia for Clinton, plus 15 for Sanders. Another eight, many of whom have committed to backing Clinton, will go as super delegates.
Sanders' supporters booed and protested the count, according to local media reports. They'd also produced a "minority report" of 64 Sanders supporters who they said were wrongly denied delegate status -- which the state party explained by saying those individuals' records couldn't be located or they weren't registered as Democrats by the May 1 deadline.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/15/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-nevada-convention/index.html
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Bernie Sanders Could Still Win the Democratic Nomination — No, Seriously
Seth Abramson
Attorney; Assistant Professor, UNH; Series Editor, Best American Experimental Writing
2016-05-11
Last night on CNN, while discussing Bernie Sanders’ landslide victory over Hillary Clinton in West Virginia — which followed a 5-point Sanders win in Indiana last week — Michael Smerconish said that “Democratic super-delegates might have to rethink” their support of Hillary Clinton given how dramatically better Sanders fares in head-to-head match-ups against Donald Trump.
After Clinton’s Indiana loss, John King had told CNN viewers that “if Sanders were to win nine out of ten of the remaining contests, there’s no doubt that some of the super-delegates would panic. There’s no doubt some of them would switch to Sanders. What he has to do is win the bulk of the remaining contests. Would that send jitters, if not panic, through the Democratic Party? Yes. Yes it would.”
So what gives? Isn’t this thing over?
Almost, but not quite.
What Smerconish (and Wolf Blitzer) were discussing last night, and John King was discussing last week, is a very simple theory — call it “run-the-table” — which is easy enough to understand if you simply know the history of Democratic super-delegates and what’s happened in the 2016 Democratic primary since Super Tuesday.
So here it is — both a brief history of the “super-delegate” and an explanation of the “run-the-table” scenario that increasingly is making it into the mainstream media.
In 1984, the Democratic Party created “super-delegates” — Party officials with a vote at the Democrats’ nominating convention. The hope was that super-delegates would rarely if ever be needed. There was reason to be hopeful on this score: first, because any Democratic nominee able to win even 59 percent of the “pledged” (primary and caucus) delegates would clinch the Democratic nomination before even a single super-delegate had voted; second, because even if a weak front-runner were unable to clinch the Democratic nomination without super-delegates, the candidate behind in the “pledged” delegate count would almost certainly concede before any super-delegates were forced to weigh in.
For 32 years, the Democrats’ decision to create super-delegates looked pretty smart. Other than the current primary season — a single-digit race (54 percent to 45 percent) that’s the second-closest Democratic primary of the last 32 years — only one of the Democrats’ primaries, the one in 2008, was ultimately close enough for super-delegates to matter. In that case the losing candidate, Hillary Clinton, decided to concede after the final votes were cast in June. Clinton’s concession made the super-delegate question a moot one.
Clinton conceded in 2008 for a number of reasons: her opponent, now-President Obama, agreed to retire her massive campaign debt; she believed (correctly) that Obama would name her either Vice President or Secretary of State, the latter the second-most powerful position in Washington; and finally and most importantly, Obama had kicked the hell out of her in the latter half of the election season, winning 16 of the final 25 states. In other words, there was no reasonable argument for Clinton to make to super-delegates that they should step in to change the primary result.
While Clinton permitted a roll call vote in Denver — with more than 1,000 convention delegates officially casting their first-ballot vote for her rather than then-Senator Obama — she thereafter called for Obama to become the nominee by acclamation. Having made a public statement regarding her own base of support within the Democratic Party — it’s highly unusual, indeed almost unheard of, for a roll call vote to occur when one of the two candidates has conceded — Clinton receded into the background. By which I mean that she became, within just a few months, arguably the second most-powerful person in America: the Secretary of State.
But Clinton had seriously considered staying in the race past June 7th of 2008. The reason she almost did — she was barely talked out of it by her aides — is the very reason Bernie Sanders could still win the Democratic nomination in 2016.
That reason?
Super-delegates exist for only one purpose: to overturn, if necessary, the popular-vote and delegate-count results.
Super-delegates would be meaningless if their only purpose were to validate the primary and caucus results, which is why that consideration had absolutely nothing to do with their creation. When super-delegates were created in 1984, it was in fact to avoid a repeat of what had almost happened in 1980: a candidate with no shot at winning the general election almost becoming the popular-vote and pledged-delegate winner. It may seem counter-intuitive to some now, but the Democratic Party in 1984 wanted a mechanism available to vote down the Party’s prospective nominee — the popular-vote and pledged-delegate winner — if that person couldn’t be elected in the November general election. So when Howard Dean, former presidential candidate and Democratic National Committee Chair, said several months ago that he would cast his super-delegate vote without regard for the popular vote or pledged-delegate race, he was only stating what has been true about super-delegates for 32 years now: their role in the process is only “activated” either (a) to validate a historically weak front-runner who isn’t able to clinch the nomination via pledged delegates alone (in which case the super-delegates are “active,” and yet things would be no different if they didn’t exist), or, more profoundly, (b) to preclude the nomination of someone who can’t win the general election.
Fast-forward to 2016.
John King of CNN, and others, have made crystal-clear the scenario under which Bernie Sanders could become the Democratic nominee for President: he runs the table on the remaining primaries and caucuses.
If Sanders runs the table in 2016, it will mean the following has (by June 7th) happened:
Sanders has won 19 of the final 25 state primaries and caucuses (not a typo);
Sanders is within a few hundred thousand votes of Clinton in the popular vote;
Sanders has won 54 percent of the pledged delegates since Super Tuesday; and
Sanders is in a dead heat with Clinton in national polling.
The above alone — while absolutely stunning; Sanders running significantly better than Obama for the entire second half of the primary season is a major eye-opener — wouldn’t be enough to trigger the second scenario in which super-delegates are suddenly meaningful (as noted above, a front-runner so weak he or she is unlikely to win the general election). What makes 2016 very different from 2008 is that the following items are presently true:
Sanders has dramatically higher favorable ratings than Clinton, despite months of attacks from his Democratic opponent and Trump and GOP super-PACs generally laying off both Sanders and Clinton;
Sanders beats Donald Trump nationally by much more than does Clinton (12 points, as opposed to 6 for Clinton, in an average of all national polls);
Sanders beats Donald Trump in every battleground state by more than does Clinton; and
Sanders beats Trump by 22 points among independents, while Clinton loses independents to Trump by 2 points.
As we sit here today, the Clinton-Trump match-up in the three biggest battleground states — Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, the loss of all three of which would lose the Democrats the general election — is a dead heat.
This is one reason why so many Sanders supporters honestly and fervently believe a Hillary Clinton candidacy means a Donald Trump presidency.
The idea that Clinton is in a dead heat with Trump in the three most important battleground states at a time when Trump is the most unpopular major-party candidate in American history is horrifying to Democrats. How horrifying it is cannot be overstated; along with recent polling showing Clinton tied nationally with Trump, and the fact that Hillary’s unfavorables are already rising while Trump’s are already falling, and the fact that the Republican Party is uniting dramatically behind Trump precisely because Clinton looks to be the likely Democratic nominee, the fact that Hillary is already struggling in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania against an absolute buffoon of an opponent is causing Democrats to worry that she actually can’t win.
And they may well be right.
Certainly, much of the available data says they are.
Now imagine that all of the above is true, and Hillary Clinton has just lost the State of California to Bernie Sanders.
In that scenario, Sanders and his supporters believe that the super-delegates — placed in a situation which, to be clear, they have never encountered before — would switch en masse to vote for Sanders in late July.
Anyone reading the above who thinks that eventuality is an impossibility has not done the simple thought experiment that John King’s reasoning requires.
So let’s do it now.
Imagine — I mean really imagine — that you’re watching CNN on June 7th and Hillary has just lost California, New Jersey, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. This comes on the heels of losses in Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oregon. Clinton hasn’t won a state since April; she’s behind Donald Trump in national polling; she’s tied with or behind Donald Trump in all of the battleground states; she’s lost the pledged-delegate battle to Bernie Sanders 53 percent to 47 percent since March 1st; she’s lost 19 of the final 25 state primaries and caucuses; her unfavorables are the highest of any Democrat the Party has considered running since World War II; she’s losing independent voters to Donald Trump; she’s still under investigation by the FBI, and an international criminal is claiming (credibly) that he successfully hacked her basement server and stole classified and top-secret data; 40 percent of Sanders supporters are saying they won’t vote for her; and she’s come to look exactly like two other Democratic losers — unlikable policy wonks Al Gore and John Kerry — rather than the movement candidate Bernie Sanders is and Barack Obama was.
The Clinton camp is betting that Hillary loses zero super-delegates in this situation because — well, just because.
The Sanders camp is betting that the Democratic Party cares more about winning in November than gamely running a terrible dynasty candidate against a beatable Republican foe.
In the hypothetical John King has imagined, that bet doesn’t seem so unreasonable.
Every non-partisan in the national media who’s actually looked at the above scenario has concluded that super-delegates would switch to Sanders in the situation described here — the only question is how many. And if you’ve actually imagined the scenario described above — if you actually imagined the rank panic that would be running through the Democratic Party should Hillary lose the largest state in the country to Bernie Sanders at a time when all the hard-data and environmental indicators are suggesting she’s a possible loser in the fall — you’re thinking, as I am, that the answer to the question, “How many supers would jump ship in that scenario?” is the same answer I got from John King when I asked him this question directly after the Indiana primary: “Lots.”
To get to that point, Sanders has to win Indiana — which he’s already done. And he has to win West Virginia, which he now has. Now he’s looking ahead to Kentucky and Oregon next week, and Oregon looks like a safe win while Kentucky an eminently possible one. Should he sweep Clinton for the third Tuesday in a row, he’ll be looking forward to just one final test: June 7th. Sanders is a plausible winner on that date in California, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and New Mexico; his longest odds are in New Jersey, a state where he nevertheless polled within single digits of Clinton in the second-to-last poll taken in the state (the most recent poll is far less favorable, but also, given the political make-up of the state and the fact that Trump’s lack of competitors on the GOP side will drive up interest and turnout on the Democratic side, less plausible). More importantly, perhaps, King’s scenario doesn’t even require that Sanders win New Jersey — merely that he take nine of the final ten contests, and therefore a still-staggering 18 of the last 25. This isn’t just doable — it’s entirely possible, given the momentum, demographics, and polling in the upcoming states.
Still, no one knows what will happen next week — though the odds of Sanders continuing his current winning streak seem high. And if Sanders does win Kentucky and Oregon, John King’s “run-the-table” scenario will be just one day of voting from becoming a reality. It’s on those grounds that we can say — whatever we might hear from Clinton partisans — that the Democratic primary is, indeed, far from over.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/bernie-sanders-could-still-win-the-democratic-nomination----no-seriously_b_9898436.html
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Bernie Sanders Could Still Win the Democratic Nomination — No, Seriously
that should be the republicans' BIGGEST fear.
hilary is old. she's shady. she's a proven liar. she's low energy and may have health issues. even her supporters are semi-enthusiastic about her. She's still losing states she should be winning. She's beatable, even by a weak weak candidate.
Bernie? A communist socialist turd, sure, BUT he's packing the house and the enthusiasm for him is strong. He'd energize the base and win enough swing voters to probably out-perform hilary. He's beating her in the match-up polls with repubs, right?
repubs better be careful what they wish for ;) Running against bernie might not be easy.
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Sanders And Clinton Enter The Home Stretch
The next contests will be held June 7, with the final contest in Washington D.C. on June 14.
05/18/2016
Ginger Gibson and Emily Stephenson
(http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/573c8a3e1600002a00f93c10.jpeg)
JAVIER GALEANO / REUTERS
After splitting wins in contests on Tuesday, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders head into the final stretch of a longer than expected and sometimes acrimonious battle to represent their party in November’s White House election.
Clinton narrowly edged out Sanders in Kentucky, a state where she had not been expected to win. Sanders won Oregon, a state that played to his strengths.
The protracted fight for the Democratic nomination has boiled over into strife in recent days, prompting party leaders to weigh in and urge unity.
The next contests will be held June 7, including in the delegate heavy states of California and New Jersey, with the final contest in Washington D.C. on June 14.
While Clinton is expected to win the party nomination, Tuesday’s divided outcome means she is still more than 100 delegates short of sealing the deal and so cannot yet turn her attention fully to the general election and taking on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
In Kentucky, the two candidates will likely split the 55 delegates up for grabs. In Oregon, Sanders will take only a handful more of the 61 delegates that were awarded.
Trump, who locked up his party’s nomination after the rest of his rivals dropped out in early May, has begun to organize his campaign for the Nov. 8 election. On Tuesday, he signed a joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee. The agreement allows him to raise $449,400 from a single donor by splitting the funds between his campaign, the RNC and state Republican parties.
Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, had so far insisted on mostly self-funding his campaign and the shift to a more traditional fundraising approach could anger some of his supporters.
In an interview on Fox News on Tuesday night, Trump said he some regrets about his actions during the Republican primary process in which he beat 16 rivals, showering insults on most of them along the way.
“I could have used different language in a couple of instances, but overall I’m happy with the outcome,” Trump said.
NEVADA STILL RANKLES
On the Democratic side, both candidates’ camps kept up a dispute on Tuesday after violent outbursts by Sanders supporters ended the Nevada Democratic convention over the weekend.
Sanders supporters were angered when Nevada state party officials chose to end their convention and block efforts to award the U.S. senator from Vermont more delegates than he initially won in the February caucus. Clinton won the caucus.
One Sanders supporter threw a chair. Others daubed chalk graffiti on a party building. Some circulated a picture of the state party chairwoman, Roberta Lange, online with her cellphone number and encouraged others to complain.
Lange said she and her family had received death threats, including a voicemail message saying “people like you should be hung in a public execution.”
On Wednesday, Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz slammed such actions and called for civility. “We have a process set up that is eminently fair,” she told CNN. “No one should be subjected to death threats.”
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid also said he has spoken to Sanders directly.
Sanders has said he condemns violence and harassment but leveled some of the same complaints his supporters did. He argued Lange did not allow a headcount on a disputed rules change and 64 delegates to Nevada’s convention were not given a hearing before being ruled ineligible.
The state party disputed the claim, saying some delegates did not show up at the convention and others were disqualified because they were not registered as Democrats in time.
Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who is not a registered Democrat, used the incident to boost his call for the party to allow participation by non-party members in the primary process.
Clinton’s campaign continued to express confidence that she will be able to unify the party. Her campaign manager, Robby Mook, said Clinton was grateful for Nevadans who participated in the process but that no one should be intimidated, harassed or threatened.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sanders-and-clinton-enter-the-home-stretch_us_573c8897e4b0646cbeeba79a
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Field Poll: Dem Race Tightens in California
(http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=de184639-eed3-4a95-ae7e-1e76ae01dac6&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600)
Image: Field Poll: Dem Race Tightens in California (Getty Images)
By Jeffrey Rodack | Thursday, 02 Jun 2016
Hillary Clinton's once-commanding lead over Bernie Sanders has declined in California as the two Democrats are now running nearly neck-and-neck as the state's June 7 primary nears, according to a new Field poll released Thursday.
The poll shows:
•45 percent favored Clinton;
•43 percent for Sanders.
As recently as January, Clinton led Sanders 46 to 35 percent.
Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is gaining more acceptance by state Republicans, but still lags behind when pitted against either of the two Democrats.
"While it is a truism that turnout is a key factor in determining who will win any close election, it is especially true in this (Democratic) race," according to a statement by The Field poll.
"The widest differences are generational, with Sanders the overwhelming choice of voters under age 30 and Clinton preferred by a two-to-one margin among Democratic primary voters age 65 or older.
The poll finds significantly greater enthusiasm for Sanders than for Clinton among voters backing each candidate.
"Nearly two in three of those currently backing Sanders (65 percent) say they are enthusiastic in their support of his candidacy. By comparison, less than half (45 percent) of Clinton supporters say this."
The results mirror another poll, which found Clinton clinging to a similar slim margin over Sanders.
A NBC news/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll found Clinton gets support from 49 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in the state, while Sanders gets 47 percent,
Meanwhile The Field poll showed Trump gaining support among California Republicans.
"Trump appears to be winning over more of the state's Republican voters, he still has a long way to go to become competitive in November among the overall California electorate," the statement by The Field Poll said.
"When Trump is paired against Clinton or Sanders in general election trial heats, The Field poll finds both Democrats preferred by large margins, with Clinton besting Trump by 19 points and Sanders leading by 29 points."
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Field-Poll-Clinton-Sanders-California/2016/06/02/id/731935/#ixzz4AS7S3IEV
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Bernie Sanders Campaign Is Split Over Whether to Fight on Past Tuesday
The senator has vowed to press his case, but some urge him to unite behind Clinton
By Peter Nicholas
Updated June 5, 2016
A split is emerging inside the Bernie Sanders campaign over whether the senator should stand down after Tuesday’s election contests and unite behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, or take the fight all the way to the July party convention and try to pry the nomination from her.
One camp might be dubbed the Sandersistas, the loyalists who helped guide Mr. Sanders’s political ascent in Vermont and the U.S. Congress and are loath to give up a fight that has far surpassed expectations. Another has ties not only to Mr. Sanders but to the broader interests of a Democratic Party pining to beat back the challenge from Republican Donald Trump and make gains in congressional elections.
Mr. Sanders in recent weeks has made clear he aims to take his candidacy past the elections on Tuesday, when California, New Jersey and four other states vote. But the debate within the campaign indicates that Mr. Sanders’s next move isn’t settled.
For now, Democratic officials, fund-raisers and operatives are getting impatient, calling on Mr. Sanders to quit the race and begin the work of unifying the party for the showdown with the Republican presumptive nominee.
Orin Kramer, a New York hedge-fund manager who has raised campaign funds for both President Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton, said with respect to Mr. Sanders’s future plans: “I would hope people would understand what a Trump presidency would mean and act accordingly—and ‘accordingly’ means quickly.”
A strong showing in New Jersey on Tuesday, before California results even come in, could help Mrs. Clinton reach the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Her total includes hundreds of superdelegates—party leaders and elected officials who can back either candidate. Mr. Sanders is hoping that defeating Mrs. Clinton in the most populous state later Tuesday might give superdelegates reason to
Even so, Mr. Sanders isn’t backing off. In an interview that aired Sunday on CNN, he stepped up an attack on Mrs. Clinton involving the Clinton Foundation. Echoing a critique made by Republicans, Mr. Sanders said he has “a problem” with the foundation accepting money from foreign sources during her service as secretary of state.
In a news conference Saturday in California, Mr. Sanders indicated he would battle for superdelegates all the way to the convention.
“The Democratic National Convention will be a contested convention,” he said.
Mrs. Clinton, who won Puerto Rico’s Democratic primary on Sunday, seems to be running out of patience with Mr. Sanders. Having shifted her focus to Mr. Trump, she told CNN that after Tuesday, “I’m going to do everything I can to reach out to try to unify the Democratic Party, and I expect Sen. Sanders to do the same.”
When she ran against Mr. Obama in 2008, Mrs. Clinton stayed in the race until the end. As late as the final week of voting, she was talking hopefully of wooing super-delegates and capturing the nomination. But on June 7 of that year—four days after the primary season ended—she gave a speech bowing out and immediately threw her support to Mr. Obama.
Later that month, the two chose the town of Unity, N.H., to make a high-profile joint appearance aimed at persuading Clinton voters to get behind Mr. Obama.
Mr. Sanders is at a similar crossroads. The final contest of the primary season is June 14, when Washington D.C. votes.
Tad Devine, a senior Sanders strategist who advised Democratic nominees Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, among others, suggested the “path forward” is uncertain, hinging on the outcome in California and other states that have yet to vote. He voiced a conciliatory note, describing how the two campaigns might set aside differences that have grown more pronounced in the heat of the year-long campaign.
“What will happen hopefully when the voting is done, our two campaigns will begin to talk once more to one another and figure out where the common ground is,” he said.
Campaign manager Jeff Weaver, who has worked in Mr. Sanders’s congressional offices and Vermont-based campaigns dating to the mid-1980s, takes a more aggressive approach.
Mr. Weaver has long been one of the more tenacious loyalists on Team Sanders, having sparred repeatedly with Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz over the party’s treatment of the Sanders campaign.
.
A victory in California and elsewhere on Tuesday would “strengthen” the argument for the nomination, Mr. Weaver said, but it isn’t necessary to keep the candidacy alive through the convention.
“The plan is as the senator has described it: to go forward after Tuesday and keep the campaign going to the convention and make the case to superdelegates that Sen. Sanders is the best chance that Democrats have to beat Trump,” Mr. Weaver said. “The trajectory is the same regardless of the outcome in California.”
That is what worries Democratic leaders. Pointing to polls indicating a tightening race in November, they say Mr. Sanders, if he is sincere about beating back Mr. Trump, must quickly join forces with the party front-runner.
“Democrats will need as much unity as early as we can get it as possible,” said Tom Daschle, a former senate Democratic leader. “It would be a huge mistake to underestimate [Mr. Trump]. We’ve done that the entire election season.”
Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid has concluded Mr. Sanders has no path to the nomination, an aide said, and that he should shift focus to helping Democrats pick up Senate seats. Doing so would help Mr. Sanders return to the chamber with more power than he wielded before the presidential race began a year ago, the aide said.
William Daley, who chaired Mr. Gore’s presidential campaign and served as a White House chief of staff for Mr. Obama, said in an interview the “damage” Mr. Sanders could do is “overwhelming if he doesn’t give [Mrs. Clinton] the breather she needs in the run-up to the convention to take on Trump.”
At a minimum, some of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters would like to see Mr. Sanders lay off the attacks. Alan Kessler, a longtime Democratic fundraiser, said Mr. Sanders’s tone is “a little disappointing.”
“There’s no reason why he shouldn’t fight for the things that he’s talking about, but there’s no need to continually make it personal,” he added.
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/bernie-sanders-campaign-is-split-over-whether-to-fight-on-past-tuesday-1465171997-lMyQjAxMTE2MzAwNjIwOTYyWj
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Dos Equis is a moron and its going to be hilarious when he has to eat his words. He has been wrong the entire time thus far about Bernie.
I was dead wrong about Trump, but not about Hillary.
Hillary Clinton will win final Democratic primary in D.C., CNN projects
By Theodore Schleifer and Jeff Zeleny, CNN
Tue June 14, 2016
Washington (CNN) — Hillary Clinton will win the last contest of the Democratic primary season, according to a CNN projection, eclipsing Bernie Sanders in the little-noticed election in the District of Columbia.
The contest doesn't change the general election match-up. Clinton clinched her nomination last week, but Sanders declined to drop out and pledged to give every voter a chance to decide between the two candidates.
Though the primary was essentially over, Sanders held a single campaign event in Washington last Thursday, and he reminded voters here about his support for statehood for the nation's capital.
Twenty delegates were at stake in Tuesday's primary, which was open only to registered Democrats. Delegates are awarded proportionally at the statewide and district-level, with a 15% threshold required. Polls were open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The more meaningful Democratic activity in Washington on Tuesday will be the private meeting between Clinton and Sanders. The Vermont senator has begun signaling that his campaign is soon to close, but Sanders' aides say he is not expected to immediately endorse Clinton.
"It should be amicable and hopefully constructive," a person close to Sanders said of the meeting.
He is expected to renew his pledge to help defeat Donald Trump. But "he'll also put his cards on the table" and push for progressive policy positions in the fall campaign and in the party's platform. This is the way to keep his movement alive -- or an attempt to -- without instantly alienating his core supporters, Sanders aides say.
The few Republicans in the District of Columbia gave Marco Rubio one of his few wins when they voted in March.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/politics/district-of-columbia-primary-results/index.html