Presidential Candidates 2016: 10 Democrats Who Might Be the Next Nominee

[Dos Equis]

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

[Dos Equis]

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

[Dos Equis]

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

[Dos Equis]

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

[Dos Equis]

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/

[Dos Equis]

Current delegate count (2383 needed):

Hillary Clinton - 1,749
Bernie Sanders - 1,061

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2016/presidential-primary-caucus-results

[TuHolmes]

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)

[Dos Equis]

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. 

[TuHolmes]

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.

[Dos Equis]

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/

[TuHolmes]

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.

[Dos Equis]

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. 

[The True Adonis]

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.

[Dos Equis]

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? 

[TuHolmes]

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?

[The True Adonis]

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. 

[240 is Back]

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.

[The True Adonis]

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

[Dos Equis]

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

[Dos Equis]

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

[Dos Equis]

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:


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

[Dos Equis]

Better than the actual debate.   

[Skeletor]

[Dos Equis]

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

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

[Dos Equis]

Delegate count after Hillary's win in New York: