Vox:
Of course, these numbers are just one way of looking at media bias in the presidential campaign. For instance, while the press has hit Clinton more frequently, Crimson Hexagon also found that it's paid much more attention to her than to Bernie Sanders. And, by design, this kind of analysis may overlook other ways the press can hurt a candidate — like Sanders — by downplaying or dismissing his or her chances.
Still, Sanders's supporters have widely accused the media of being in the tank for Clinton. And these numbers suggest that perception may not square with reality.
Politico on Donald Trump’s NY guy:
Responding to a recent Bloomberg Politics-sponsored poll that showed Trump performing poorly among married women, [Carl] Paladino sniped, "I talk to women. Okay, the women in my area are a microcosm and love Donald Trump, a strong man that will protect their families in the future, their kids and grandkids."
"They love a man that's going to have a strong military and who they can trust to use the military correctly," Trump said. "Okay? Women love Donald Trump. That's nonsense. Tell Mr. Bloomberg to take his poll and go shove it someplace."
New Yorkers by temperament would have been fine with this past Thursday’s Hill-Bern debate. They think Donald Trump is sweet and restrained. Yeah, I know Trump gets his clock cleaned in November, but you can take those polls and… predict with them.
TPM on freedom and liberty, Bundy-style:
Nearly 1,000 feral cattle may be starving in the wild after Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy released them when he lost the right to graze on public lands years ago, according to a Thursday report from the Reno Gazette-Journal.
The animals have roamed public lands for two decades, the result of a long-running dispute over land rights between Bundy and the federal government. The dispute escalated to an armed standoff in 2014 that culminated in federal agents backing down over fears that tensions with armed, self-styled militiamen could turn violent.
While the original herd was about 150 animals, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal, its numbers have swelled to 1,000 or more after years of the cattle reproducing freely. A recent petition to intervene with the livestock, which the organizers claims are “literally wasting away and suffering from starvation,” has garnered nearly 6,000 signatures.
But an administrator for the Nevada Department of Agriculture told the paper they have not received any “substantiated” reports that Bundy’s cattle are starving.
Bill Galston, after reviewing why Bernie has no chance to win the nomination (the usual delegate math stuff, etc.):
Mrs. Clinton is not a visionary, and her candidacy has done little to inspire Democrats not already committed to her. She is cautious and self-controlled, not a risk-taker. By her own admission, she is not a natural politician. Contradicting Mario Cuomo’s famous maxim, she campaigns in prose.
On the other hand, few have ever questioned her intelligence or work ethic. She understands how politics and policy-making really work. She believes that political leaders should under-promise and over-perform—an eminently defensible thesis in this era of rock-bottom public trust.
In most democracies, the head of government is separate from the head of state. In the U.S., they are fused in a single office. Our presidents are called on to perform both as prime ministers and as symbols of the nation. Rarely are they equally skilled at both tasks.
Hillary Clinton has the qualities of a first-rate prime minister. At a time when the American people are yearning for an end to political dysfunction and a return to government that works effectively on their behalf, what she offers will probably be enough to prevail in November.
Commonweal has a knowledgable dissection of Bernie’s Rome trip:
What is not unimaginable is that the Vatican did its best to dissuade Sanders from coming by scheduling him to speak at 4 p.m. Rome time (10 a.m. Eastern) on Friday, which would be just hours after the end of his Thursday night debate in Brooklyn. If it was meant as a signal—“please don’t come”—it either wasn’t received by the Sanders team, or wasn’t interpreted as such. Next, the Vatican tried to ignore Sanders and downplayed the pending visit; over the course of several press conferences, Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, never once mentioned Sanders. Only today (April 14) did he do so, officially announcing that Francis would not be meeting with the candidate.
I still think it was a a staff screw-up that took Bernie off the trail for two days. Still, Bernie really wanted to go. In the end, he did.
Late breaking news from AP:
U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders told The Associated Press that he met briefly with Pope Francis at the papal residence Saturday and said it was a "real honor" to call on "one of the extraordinary figures" in the world.
Sanders, in Rome for a Vatican conference on economic inequality and climate change, said the meeting took place before the pope left for Greece, where Francis was highlighting the plight of refugees.
The Vermont senator, in a race with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president, said he told the pope that he appreciated the message that Francis was sending the world about the need to inject morality and justice into the world economy. Sanders said that was a message he, too, has tried to convey.
Bernie got his meeting!
This Frank Bruni piece has some debate analysis and this:
Where do the Democrats go from here?
I don’t mean Clinton and Sanders. I mean the party, whose unresolved tensions and muddled mission are manifest in the contrasts and contest between these two.
The surreal twists of the Republican race and its domination by two politicians whom most party traditionalists find odious have obscured the trouble that the Democratic Party is in, by which I mean the strained, increasingly fragile alliance of the idealistic progressives whom Sanders has emboldened and the pragmatic technocrats who, with the help of both Clintons, have defined Democratic politics for the last few decades.
The hostility that so many of Sanders’s supporters feel toward Clinton is a rejection of that kind of politics, and that hostility is where the fiercest energy in the party resides right now. It was audible on Thursday night, in the boos from the audience that sometimes rained down on Clinton.
And this would be generating more discussion — and more angst — if not for the G.O.P.’s implosion and the belief that the Republican nominee will likely be a fatally hobbled one.
Michael Cohen:
This has been, since day one, the fundamental divide between these two candidates — the showhorse vs. the workhorse. On no issue was that gap more starkly laid out than their answer to a question on raising the Social Security cap on taxable income. This proposal is seen by many, including Sanders, as a crucial way to raise revenue to shore up the Social Security trust fund. Although Clinton said she supports the idea, she was unwilling to commit to it Thursday night. Instead she talked of backing a number of different ideas for protecting Social Security — less focused on the details than on the long-term goal. She gave a classic politician’s answer — keeping her options open, refusing to make a statement that might come back to haunt her if she wins the White House.
John Cassidy on Bernie’s best moment in the debate:
It was a revealing exchange, and things got even more interesting when Blitzer asked Sanders about the Vermont senator’s statement that Israel’s military strikes on Gaza in 2014 were “disproportionate and led to the unnecessary loss of innocent life.” The question placed Sanders in a tricky and unenviable position. Obviously, he badly needs to win next Tuesday’s primary, and in New York politics, where Jewish voters represent a large bloc, there is an unspoken rule that you don’t say anything negative about Israel. On the other hand, Sanders is the first Jewish politician to get this far in a Presidential race, and he has strong views on the issue of Israel and the Palestinians. Which way would he go?
To his credit, he stuck with his principles. After pointing out that he had family members in Israel and had spent a lot of time there as a child, he said, “Of course Israel has a right not only to defend themselves but to live in peace and security without fear of terrorist attack. That is not a debate.” But during the attacks on Gaza, Sanders went on, some ten thousand civilians were injured and some fifteen hundred were killed. “Now, if you’re asking not just me but countries all over the world, was that a disproportionate attack, the answer is that I believe it was.”
A bit surprising that this was injected into a NY debate, but good for him. It will serve the country well, eventually.