Tag: Bernie Sanders

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Bernie Sanders’s Feud With the Democratic Leadership Heats Up

Bernie Sanders

By YAMICHE ALCINDORMAY 21, 2016

Doubling down on his feud with the Democratic Party leadership, SenatorBernie Sanders said that if elected president, he will not reappointDemocratic National Committee chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida.

He made the comments during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that is set to air on Sunday. Mr. Sanders also said he was supporting Tim Canova, a law professor who has begun an insurgent campaign against Ms. Wasserman Schultz for her South Florida congressional seat. They will face off in a primary this summer.

“Well, clearly, I favor her opponent,” Mr. Sanders told Mr. Tapper. “His views are much closer to mine.”

For months, Mr. Sanders has accused the party of favoring Hillary Clinton, often calling her the “anointed candidate.”

He has criticized the party for a debate schedule that his campaign said favored Mrs. Clinton; an arrangement under which Mrs. Clinton raises money for the party; and the appointment of Clinton supporters as leaders of important convention committees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/us/politics/sanderss-feud-with-the-democratic-leadership-heats-up.html?_r=0

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Welcome to a Bernie Sanders Wiccan ritual

Salem-witches

Attending a rally for Bernie Sanders usually involves long lines and security screenings, but that wasn’t the case at an intimate, informal event Friday evening supporting the Vermont senator’s presidential campaign in a park here.

Instead of metal detectors, entrance required burning ceremonial sweetgrass.

Participants were “smudged,” meaning the smoke from the sweetgrass was wafted over them before they could enter the sacred circle and begin a Wiccan ritual to support Sanders ahead of Oregon’s primary on Tuesday.

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“Welcome to the ‘Feeling the Bern ritual,’” Leigha Lafleur, 41, told the gathering  as she prepared to lead them in the “amplification of positive energy of Bernie Sanders and the progressive movement.”

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-sanders-prayer-circle-20160514-snap-story.html

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Sanders: Clinton team thinks race ‘is over. They’re wrong’

Bernie Sanders

By KEN THOMAS

May. 3, 2016 10:39 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bernie Sanders said Tuesday that his primary bid against Hillary Clinton was far from over, pointing to his victory in Indiana and strength in upcoming races as a sign of his durability in the presidential campaign.

“I know that the Clinton campaign thinks this campaign is over. They’re wrong,” Sanders said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from New Albany, Indiana. “Maybe it’s over for the insiders and the party establishment but the voters today in Indiana had a different idea.”

Sanders spoke to the AP after he defeated Clinton in Indiana’s primary, predicting that he would achieve “more victories in the weeks to come” in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon and California. The Vermont senator acknowledged that he faced an “uphill climb” to the Democratic nomination but said he was “in this campaign to win and we are going to fight until the last vote is cast.”

Sanders’ win in Indiana likely won’t make much of a dent in Clinton’s lead of more than 300 pledged delegates. Clinton is still more than 90 percent of the way to clinching the Democratic nomination when the count includes superdelegates, the elected officials and party leaders who are free to support the candidate of their choice.

https://www.bigstory.ap.org/article/b7572961055c450293d8804279aa4362/sanders-clinton-team-thinks-race-over-theyre-wrong

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Exclusive Data Analysis: Democrat Turnout Collapses Down More Than 4.5 Million, Nearly 20 Percent In 2016 Versus 2008

hillary-clinton-what-difference-does-it-make

by MATTHEW BOYLE AND ANDY BADOLATO26 Apr 20165,714

Election data compiled by Breitbart News on the Democratic Party’s primaries and caucuses in 2016 and 2008 show that turnout in is down significantly, nearly 20 percent, from the last contested election.

The data also show that the about 4.5 million fewer people have voted in the Democratic presidential contest this year versus 2008.

This year’s contest is a two-person race between Democratic Socialist

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
16%
of Vermont and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton is also a former U.S. Senator from New York, a position she held after eight years as first lady.

Hillary Clinton also ran for president in 2008, which makes this data all the more interesting: It’s essentially a comparison up against her previous failed race, when she was the frontrunning Democratic presidential candidate until then Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois blew past her late in the game taking the lead before winning the nomination and then eventually the presidency.

Back in 2008, as Obama battled Clinton, a whopping 23,715,866 people voted in primaries and caucuses nationwide in the states that have already voted this cycle. Fast forward to the next time there’s a Democratic primary for president, this year (since Obama was the incumbent president seeking reelection the primaries in 2012 were largely perfunctory), and turnout has dropped off significantly. Just 19,155,825 people have voted thus far in primaries and caucuses this cycle, a decrease of 4,560,041 voters or 19.23 percent.

The steep drop off is so significant on the Democratic side that the vast majority of states saw drops in voter participation in Democratic primaries and caucuses. The following contests saw less voters participate on the Democratic side in the primaries and caucuses than 2008’s contests: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Utah, Wisconsin, Vermont, American Samoa, Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Washington state, and Wyoming.

Only a handful of states have seen increases in participation on the Democratic side, including Arizona, Michigan, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas and Maine. With the exception of Arizona, Sanders won—and Clinton lost—each of those contests. That means the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, has only increased Democratic primary votes in one of the states she won this cycle as compared with 2008’s primary turnout. Every other state she has won this year has seen less turnout from last go-around.

https://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/04/26/exclusive-data-analysis-democrat-turnout-collapses-4-5-million-nearly-20-percent-2016-versus-2008/

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Sanders: Superdelegates may now be eyeing switch from Clinton

Hillary-2016-665x385

By Jessie Hellmann

After three big wins out west, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said he thinks many of the party’s superdelegates who have pledged to rival Hillary Clinton will switch to his side.

“I think the momentum is with us,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper on Sunday. “A lot of these superdelegates may rethink their positions with Secretary Clinton.”

The Vermont senator swept Saturday’s Democratic contests in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii, easily winning the majority of the 142 pledged delegates in those states. The biggest prize of the day was in Washington, which offered 101 delegates to be split up on a proportional basis.

The latest delegate counts still put Sanders behind Clinton, however, with 1,004 pledged delegates to her 1,712.

Of those, 469 are superdelegates who have pledged to Clinton and only 29 have pledged to Sanders.

https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/274402-sanders-superdelegates-may-jump-from-clinton

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The UnDemocratic Democratic Primary

hillary-clinton-what-difference-does-it-make

by Matt Rhoades

I’ll admit it — I might have been wrong when I predicted last month that the Democratic primary was going to be a “long slog.”

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) promises he’s in the Democratic primary to stay, but that pledge may soon fall victim to simple arithmetic and an arcane Democratic Party process known as “superdelegates.”

A casual observer of politics may wonder: how is that possible? After all, heading into yesterday’s contests, Senator Sanders has won nearly half of the primaries and caucuses held to date: of the 20 contests held so far, Sanders has won eight, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has 12.

Yet, Senator Sanders trails by a more than two-to-one margin in the delegate count: of the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination, Secretary Clinton has amassed 1,130 delegates, while Sanders stands at 499.

https://medium.com/america-rising-pac/the-undemocratic-democratic-primary-6f0a4e3d0976#.m1m6ng55v

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Why Millennials don’t eat Cereal

breakfast of champions
February 25,2016

PJ Blogger and the Staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, The other day the Washington Post ran an article entitled “The baffling reason many millennials don’t eat cereal.”
I have never been a fan of cereal myself,actually I hate it, and I thought finally something good to say about Millennials ,so I clicked on it to see if they shared my distaste in the common breakfast ,some call it “food”.

The answer  shocked me ,no Millennials like cereal alright it’s just the cleaning up afterwards they object to.(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/23/this-is-the-height-of-laziness/)

The Washington Post article goes on to describe how this trend toward convenient and quick foods is a sign of a fast-paced, two-income family society in which very few people have time to prepare and eat a meal at home. However, the article also makes another interesting observation:“But there is something different about the backlash against cereal bowls, something more fundamental about it that seems to speak to a greater truth about American households today.

A 2014 national survey, conducted by Braun Research, found that 82 percent of parents said they were asked to do chores as children. But when they were asked if they required their children to do chores, only 28 percent of them said yes. ( https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-kids-chores-vanishing-balancing-20141013-column.html )

Wow you would never survive in my house . That is a generational shift in how families raise their kids. This disconnection from the consequences of everyday living appears to be turning even the most mundane of responsibilities, like doing the dishes, into unthinkable nuisances and raising a generation of self entitled  helpless brats .

Let’s face it: modern parents love and want the best for their children. And in an attempt to achieve that best, parents have pushed aside chore requirements because their children fussed over them or simply didn’t have time to handle them with the busyness of school, sports, and extra-curricular activities.

But have parents missed the fact that training their children to be diligent, capable, and efficient through the medium of chores might be one of the best ways to help their child become a success in the adult world?

The simple things like chores teach children discipline, confidence, persistence, and many other life skills. Skills many new to the workforce seem to be severaly lacking.  In an article in Business Insider about the mid-20s girl in California that mouthed off on Yelp and fired for it. This is another example of someone that lacked discipline to have good financial habits, lack of confidence that she could turn her situation around with hard work, had no persistence in that she wanted and expected more freebies. The typical Bernie Sanders voter I might ad .

I’m sure she’s now fuming at her former boss instead of appreciating her own mistakes because she does not seem to know better. Example of a self-entitled brat, and nobody wants that for a coworker. (https://www.businessinsider.com/stefanie-williams-response-to-yelp-employee-talia-jane-2016-2 )

Why Children Need Chores
Doing household chores has many benefits—academically, emotionally and even professionally.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-children-need-chores-1426262655

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Hillary Clinton just can’t win: Democrats need to accept that only Bernie Sanders can defeat the GOP

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders will become our next president and it should come as no surprise to people actually paying attention

H.A. GOODMAN

In one major poll, Bernie Sanders is now leading Hillary Clinton nationally. In most others, he’s not far behind from the former Secretary of State. Vermont’s Senator already has an “edge over Clinton in matchups with GOP opponents,” dispelling Clinton’s electability myth. In an average of national polls, Bernie Sanders is less  than eight points from Hillary Clinton, after being over 50 points behind in 2015. In addition, there’s only one person capable of challenging a Republican in 2016 withoutJames Comey declaring national security was jeopardized by a private server.

Bernie Sanders is the only Democratic candidate capable of winning the White House in 2016. Please name the last person to win the presidency alongside an ongoing FBI investigation, negative favorability ratings, questions about character linked to continual flip-flops, a dubious money trail of donors, and the genuine contempt of the rival political party. In reality, Clinton is a liability to Democrats, and certainly not the person capable of ensuring liberal Supreme Court nominees and President Obama’s legacy.

The precious and all-knowing polls already show Bernie Sanders defeating Republicans in a general election and Robert Reich has already explained why Sanders can easily win the presidency. In a Huffington Post piece titled “6 Responses to Bernie Skeptic,” Reich debunks the trusted myth of Clinton supporters and Republicans:

https://www.salon.com/2016/02/19/hillary_clinton_just_cant_win_democrats_need_to_accept_that_only_bernie_sanders_can_defeat_the_gop/

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BET feels the Bern : How Bernie Sanders Can Win the Black Vote in South Carolina and Beyond

Bernie Sanders

He has the platform, but it’s all about communicating it.

By Paul Meara
Posted: 02/16/2016 11:00 AM EST

If we know anything about Bernie Sanders’ campaigning prowess it’s that he can make up ground quickly. And there’s no better candidate to do that against than Hillary Clinton, whose approval or favorability numbers have never strengthened after announcing a candidacy bid for any public office. That said, the Clintons have generally high popularity numbers with African Americans and it’s going to be an uphill climb once again for Sanders to capture a large swath of that support.

With the Nevada Caucuses just eight days away and South Carolina Primaries only 15, Bernie has his work cut out for him. Luckily for him it seems like more and more black support, especially young, seems to be turning more and more in his favor. At the same time, Clinton just picked up an endorsement from theCongressional Black Caucus PAC, and it’s likely she’ll pick up the support of President Obamaeventually, whose accomplishments she heavily touted in the Friday’s (February 11) Democratic debate.

While it may be a little outdated, a December poll by YouGov of South Carolina Democrats showed that African Americans heavily favored Clinton at almost 4 to 1. Nationally, a recent Fox News poll showed a 71 percent support figure among non-whites for Clinton compared to just 20 for Sanders. Barack Obama carried South Carolina in 2008 with 80 percent of the black vote and while that number may not be entirely necessary to hit in order to win the state, Bernie can’t have Hillary attaining a statistic near that, especially as they’re mostly split among whites in the state.

No turn around in presidential politics so far would be as big as if Bernie Sanders were able to cut 20 to 30 percent off of Clinton’s lead among African Americans in the state. That effort has already begun and for it to be even more effective, here are a few ways he can better gain the black vote in South Carolina and beyond.

https://www.bet.com/news/national/2016/02/11/how-bernie-sanders-can-win-the-black-vote-in-south-carolina-and-.html

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Three-Fifths Compromise : Sanders supporters revolt against superdelegates

Bernie Sanders

Outraged by the delegate deficit Sanders faces even after his New Hampshire win, the senator’s backers are taking action.

By Daniel Strauss

02/14/16 06:34 PM EST

Bernie Sanders lost by a hair in Iowa and won by a landslide in New Hampshire. Yet Hillary Clinton has amassed an enormous 350-delegate advantage over the Vermont senator after just two states.

Outraged by that disconnect – which is fueled by Clinton’s huge advantage with Democratic superdelegates, who are not bound by voting results – Sanders supporters are fighting back.

Pro-Sanders threads on Reddit have been burning up with calls for action, with some supporters even reaching out to superdelegates (who are typically Democratic governors, members of Congress, and top state and national party leaders) to lobby them on the Vermont senator’s behalf. Progressive groups are also taking a stand: There are currently two petition campaigns designed to urge superdelegates to reflect the popular vote, rather than the sentiment of party elites.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/bernie-sanders-superdelegates-democrats-219286#ixzz40G9k2JnJ

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Virtual tie raises doubts: Can Hillary Clinton close the deal?

Hillary-Clinton

By John Whitesides8 hours ago

Hillary Clinton at her caucus night rally in Des Moines. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By John Whitesides

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) – Hillary Clinton’s struggle in Iowa to fend off underdog Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, reignited questions about her ability to close the deal with Democratic voters and turned up the pressure on her high-profile White House campaign.

The Democratic presidential front-runner, whose campaign ran off the rails in Iowa in 2008 against Barack Obama, was dealt another setback on Monday in the Midwestern state that begins the 2016 race for the presidency.

The former secretary of state, Clinton, 68, was pushed to a virtual tie with Sanders, a 74-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont.

Next up is New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Feb. 9. Sanders has been leading in opinion polls there and has an advantage because it neighbors his home state. A Clinton loss would start to set off alarm bells with her supporters.

“She has had every possible structural and organizational advantage and Sanders fought her to a draw,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.

“This is almost a moment by moment rerun of 2008,” Schnur said. “The difference is her competition is not as tough this time.”

Clinton insisted at her post-caucus rally that she was the candidate who could unify her party and prevail against a Republican challenger in the Nov. 8 election but the sense of disappointment was palpable.

Her subdued, six-minute speech contrasted with the ebullient tone of Sanders’ 16-minute speech.

https://news.yahoo.com/virtual-tie-raises-doubts-hillary-clinton-close-deal-085603229.html

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Coin toss broke 6 Clinton-Sanders deadlocks in Iowa — and Hillary won each time

Gold Coins

Published: Feb 2, 2016 8:19 a.m. ET

While it was hard to call a winner between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders last night, it’s easy to say who was luckier.

The race between the Democrat presidential hopefuls was so tight in the Iowa caucus Monday that in at least six precincts, the decision on awarding a county delegate came down to a coin toss. And Clinton won all six, media reports said.

The situation came about in precincts where Sanders and Clinton were running neck-and-neck, but there were an odd number of delegates, so they couldn’t be evenly split between the two. That was the case in precincts in Ames, Newton, West Branch, Davenport and two in Des Moines, the Des Moines Register reported.

Univision reporter Fernando Peinado caught one of the Des Moines coin tosses on video:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coin-toss-broke-6-clinton-sanders-deadlocks-in-iowa-and-hillary-won-each-time-2016-02-02

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Sanders camp suspicious of Microsoft’s influence in Iowa Caucus

Bernie Sanders

01/27/16 06:05 PM—UPDATED 01/28/16 12:56 PM

By Alex Seitz-Wald

DES MOINES, Iowa – The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is raising questions about the involvement of Microsoft in the Iowa Caucuses, now just days away, and has built a independent system to check the official results.

For the first time this year, Microsoft partnered with the Iowa Democratic and Republican Parties to provide a technology platform with which the parties will run their caucuses. The software giant created separate mobile apps for each party, which officials at hundreds of caucuses across the state will use to report out results from individual precincts to party headquarters for tabulation.

The arrangement has aroused the suspicions of aides to Sanders, whose regularly warns that corporate power and the billionaire class are trying to hijack democracy. Pete D’Alessandro, who is running the Iowa portion of Sanders’ campaign, questioned the motives of the major multinational corporation in an interview with MSNBC: “You’d have to ask yourself why they’d want to give something like that away for free.”

The Sanders campaign has built their own reporting system to check the results from the official Microsoft-backed app. It has trained its precinct captain on using the app, which is designed to be as user friendly as possible, and the campaign will also staff a hotline system as further redundancy.

“It’s just a way that our folks can have an app that we trust to get the numbers to us in a timely fashion,” D’Alessandro said. “I’m always going to be more for sure on the stuff that my people had control over the entire time… If there are any problems, we can spot them right away.”

Other Sanders aides noted that Microsoft employees have donated several hundred thousand dollars to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton over her career, and questioned why the Iowa Democratic Party didn’t partner with a software company based in Iowa.

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/sanders-campaign-suspicious-corporate-influence-iowa-caucus

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Dick Morris: If Hillary loses

Bernie Sanders

By Dick Morris – 01/19/16 04:56 PM EST

The contrast between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, startlingly evident in their debate Sunday night, could not be clearer. While devotees of the establishment can tell themselves that Clinton held her own, it is clear she did not.

Sanders had all the passion, anger, force and emotion on his side, and the best Clinton could do was to try to keep it in the park as her rival hit ball after ball. Since primaries are about motivation in getting out the vote, the Vermont senator has it all over Clinton.

So what happens if she:

(a) loses Iowa;
(b) loses New Hampshire;
(c) falls behind Sanders in the national polls and Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in the head-to-heads?

The Democratic howls of concern will be deafening. “She’s blowing it again,” will be the least of what they will say. Democrats will feel trapped with a candidate who is showing before their eyes that she cannot even win a primary, much less a general election.

https://thehill.com/opinion/dick-morris/266361-dick-morris-if-hillary-loses