After every presidential primary, we were treated to a new round of conventional wisdom about what things mean for both parties going forward. Yet, there’s every reason to be deeply skeptical of these discussions among people who never saw either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders coming. They represent a chattering class that both expected and normalized a “war of dynasties” between Bushes and the Clintons, then marveled at the “depth” of the Republican bench, and spent months obsessing over whether Joe Biden would run, as if he were a figure of mythic proportions.
You can laugh, if you want, but the out-of-touch nature of these treasured campaign narratives now lives on in a new form: an obsessive focus on this election cycle, when, if anything, the one thing it has to tell us is that much larger, long-range changes are afoot, and have been creeping up on us, below the radar, for quite some time. If you’re going to cover politics almost exclusively as a horse race, it makes perfect sense, of course. But that narrow-minded focus is an integral part of the very system that voters are furiously struggling to reject.
More than ever, we have to ask, why should the conventions or the elections be the framework for all we think? Even if Trump’s presidential run ends ruinously in November, Trumpism will remain, along with the GOP’s profound vulnerability to the forces Trump has unleashed. Similarly, even if Sanders fails to overtake Clinton’s delegate lead, his voters clearly represent the future of the Democratic Party, and Stan Greenberg, pollster for both Bill Clinton and Al Gore, seems justified in his warning last October that it’s a mistake for Democrats to run for Obama’s “third term.” “That’s not what the country wants. It’s not what the base of the Democratic Party wants. The Democratic Party is waiting for a president who will articulate the scale of the problems we face and challenge them to address it,” he said.
So party leaders on both sides—as well as bipartisan media figures—are simply whistling past the graveyard, perhaps with a slightly different tune just now, but still deeply devoted to reporting, analyzing and discussing things in a way that avoids as long as possible the profound changes that are clearly under way, and the equally profound changes that people are hungry for.
If past looming disasters we’ve ignored can teach us anything, it’s that this is exactly what we shouldn’t be doing. We need to be thinking as clearly and explicitly as we possibly can about the change process under way in our political system—including the objective realities driving it, as well as the deep socio-cultural and psychological forces at work, forces so deep that they are even reshaping how we think of terms like liberalism and conservatism.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has not been shy about his disdain for the mainstream media. But the Democratic presidential hopeful has rarely, if ever, articulated it as bluntly as he did in an interview that aired on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Friday night. Sanders called out the network for its corporate character in a novel exchange with host Rachel Maddow.
“The American people are sick and tired of establishment politics and economics, and by the way, a little bit tired of corporate media as well,” Sanders told Maddow in an interview taped in Burlington, Vermont.
Sanders went on to argue that “pressure has got to be put on media” to cover policy issues like income inequality and poverty more heavily, instead of devoting attention to sensational campaign moments and the state of political horse races.
He then claimed that bringing that pressure to bear would be difficult, since corporate ownership makes it harder for news outlets to cover issues in a way that conflicts with the interests of top executives.
“MSNBC is owned by who?” Sanders asked.
“Comcast, our overlords,” Maddow responded with a chuckle.
“All right, Comcast is not one of the most popular corporations in America, right?” Sanders said.
“And I think the American people are going to have to say to NBC and ABC and CBS and CNN, ‘You know what, forget the political gossip. Politics is not a soap opera. Talk about the real damn issues facing this country.’”
Hillary Clinton edged closer to the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination Saturday, winning the Guam caucuses.
The island in the Pacific Ocean has seven delegates to contribute at July’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The former U.S. secretary of state entered the contest Saturday with 2,205 of the 2,382 delegates she needs to secure the nomination over rival U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who had 1,401 delegates.
The Guam Democratic Party declared Clinton the winner a few hours after the polls closed, ABC News reported. Neither candidate campaigned on the island, although they did spend several thousand dollars on advertising there.
The win gives Clinton a bit of a psychological boost heading into the West Virginia primary election Tuesday in the wake of her upset loss to Sanders in Indiana. He had been considered the underdog but mounted an aggressive advertising campaign and visited with factory workers while she delegated the campaigning in the Hoosier State to her husband and daughter.
Heading into West Virginia, Sanders appeared to have the edge. The latest MetroNews West Virginia poll, taken in February, gives him a 4-point edge over Clinton, 47 percent to 43 percent, while a Public Policy Polling survey released this week gave Sanders an 8-point lead, 45 percent to 37 percent, with nearly 20 percent of Democratic voters still undecided.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has cut into Hillary Clinton’s lead by more than two dozen delegates, based on new data from Washington state.
In Washington state, Mr. Sanders handily won the caucus on March 26, when the Vermont senator won 25 of the 34 delegates awarded that day. An additional 67 district-level delegates couldn't be divided up until the state party released vote data broken down by congressional district.
District-level data provided Saturday to the Associated Press show that Mr. Sanders will pick up 49 of those delegates, while Mrs. Clinton will receive 18.
In Guam, the Democratic Party said Mrs. Clinton won 60% of the vote to earn four of the seven delegates at stake. Mr. Sanders will pick up three delegates.
With her gains in Washington state and Guam, Mrs. Clinton has 1,706 delegates to Mr. Sanders’s 1,414, according to the AP count.
Saturday, Maine Democrats shifted even further to the left in support of Bernie Sanders. The State Convention is wrapped up, and Maine will now send 17 pledged delegates for Senator Bernie Sanders and only eight pledged delegates for Hillary Clinton to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, according to Chicago Tribune.
Clinton’s delegate count went from nine to eight, WMTW reported about the left-ward shift in delegates. Now, Bernie Sanders has 68 percent of Maine’s pledged delegates compared to Hillary Clinton’s 32 percent.
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Rep. Barney Frank urged all Sanders supporters to unite behind Clinton if she wins the nomination in July, as Jon Fishman, drummer from the band Phish, encouraged Sanders supporters not to give up on the idea of Sanders winning the nomination, The Eagle reported.
Currently, three of the five superdelegates from Maine support Clinton. Though the Maine Democrats decided to eliminate superdelegates for the 2020 State Convention, they will still play a part of representing Maine at the National Convention in July. The decision on Saturday to do away with super powerful delegates could impact Maine’s superdelegate power this year anyway, given that there was strong opposition to the idea of superdelegates siding against their state even this summer.
“It’s important that we fully respect the vote of Maine people, and we should be pushing the Democratic National Committee to reevaluate the unpledged delegates,” Maine Democratic Chairman Phil Bartlett said Saturday.
Bartlett hopes to meet with the superdelegates to see where they stand in light of the new decision in Maine.
Margot Kidder and Butte just seem to go together.
The Canadian-American actor, perhaps best known for her film roles as Lois Lane in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, grew up around mining. Not only that, two of her passions are Montana — and progressive politics.
The longtime Livingston resident was in Butte Saturday coordinating a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders that drew scores of activists from across the state.
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Kidder began to feel the Bern about a year ago. Deeply concerned about climate change, she heard Sanders speak on the subject. "I thought, wow, he's right on the money," Kidder said in an interview. "I've been panic-stricken about this for my grandchildren's sake, just worried sick. And here he was saying our campaign finance rules are so bad that the fossil-fuel corporations and the banks that invest in them can basically call the shots.
"The more I listened, the more I thought, the sane thing about this man is that all of his stands on the issues logically connect with each other," she says. "He sees rightly that being a good environmental steward is good economics. He sees correctly the need for campaign-finance reform, that our middle class is disappearing, that we need better health care, that we have a non-livable minimum wage."
She's just getting warmed up.
She recognizes clearly the delegate box Sanders is in — more accurately, the superdelegate box. Almost all of Hillary Clinton's delegate lead is in superdelegates, the officeholders and party officials who gain delegate status through party rules.
Kidder insists that "our enthusiasm has not dampened one bit" in the face of a narrow shot at victory for Sanders, who is ironically poised to have a productive, even dominant month of May after a win in the Indiana primary last week.
As Bernie Sanders prepares for the California presidential primary, he has a local ground force that he leans on as "one of the sponsors of my campaign": nurses.
They typically focus on healthcare policy. But when they weigh in on more purely political pursuits, they have gained a reputation as the mischief-makers of California politics. They have thrown all their might — and that of their affiliated super PAC — behind the Vermont senator's uphill presidential bid, despite Sanders' expressed disdain for such outside spending groups.
They are not as big or as wealthy as the political action committees or California unions backing Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, but the nurses have proved adept at putting better-funded rivals on the defense.
Instantly recognizable in their pastel scrubs, they stalked then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger around the nation in 2005 to protest his effort to increase the patient-to-nurse ratios in state hospitals and emergency rooms. In 2010, they introduced the public to Meg Whitman's illegal-immigrant housekeeper. The billionaire abruptly fired her before running for governor as a staunch critic of employers who hire immigrants in the country illegally.
Now, the California Nurses Assn. is campaigning for Sanders as the presidential race heads toward the state's June 7 primary.
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Labor observers say Sanders benefits from being associated with the nurses, the first national group to endorse him in August, and a profession that is viewed warmly by the public.
"When Bernie comes to California, the fact that the nurses support him legitimizes his candidacy. Here's a union that's powerful and important in California," said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at UC Santa Barbara.
Kentucky’s Democratic primary is May 17, and the candidates for president — and their surrogates — have been flooding the bluegrass state of late.
Bernie Sanders and Bill Clinton both campaigned in Louisville on Tuesday — the same day Sanders won the Indiana primary, giving his campaign a jolt. Hillary Clinton is scheduled to be in Louisville for a public event on May 10. And Chelsea Clinton is making the media rounds.
Today, I talked with Jane Sanders, who’s married to Bernie — and also his longtime political partner.
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On Sanders’ chances at winning the nomination:
“You have to remember, he started at 3 percent in the polls. So it was not very likely that he would be the nominee one year ago. He’s up to — some polls have him beating Hillary Clinton, some just losing by 1 or 2 (percent). He’s looking much better every single day. We know the process is just about complete, but there are nine states to go.
“As you said, it’s a narrow path — he’ll have to do very well, particularity in California. But Oregon, West Virginia, Kentucky — we’re looking forward to working well with them.”
Atlantic City, the struggling casino hub weeks away from bankruptcy absent state action, is a fitting platform for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ populist message on how corporations reap profits while urban areas are neglected.
The Vermont senator’s Monday visit puts a spotlight on the New Jersey shore community, which has been hit hard by the decline of its dominant industry. Governor Chris Christie, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for president, has refused to extend aid to the city unless lawmakers approve giving the state unprecedented control over its operations and the ability to change labor contracts.
Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, once owned three Atlantic City casinos, and has boasted of using the bankruptcy laws to his benefit there as smaller businesses owed money took losses. Christie, a Trump supporter, once pegged the state’s economic recovery to the resort town and now criticizes public-worker unions for its spiral into insolvency.
“Sanders has taken on the role of defender of the underdog,” said David L. Carr, who teaches comparative politics at Stockton University in neighboring Galloway. “If there is a city besides Flint, Michigan, in the U.S. that is an underdog right now, it has to be Atlantic City.”
Sanders visited Flint in February to discuss its lead-contaminated drinking-water crisis with local residents ahead of Michigan’s primary, which he won. The senator was endorsed last month by the union that represents Atlantic City casinos workers.
Credit-rating companies are warning of the risk to other distressed New Jersey cities if the state fails to prevent a bankruptcy for Atlantic City, which would be a first since the Great Depression. Caught in the middle are the people of the city, over a third who live in poverty.
Bay State Bernie Sanders backers chosen to cast ballots for the Vermont senator at the Democratic National Convention vowed to keep pushing his anti-Wall Street message even if his bid for the nomination collapses as expected.
“It’s really a case of making sure people understand the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, and that we come together to really decide how that message gets crafted as a national message that will really make a difference,” said state Sen. Dan Wolf, who was elected as a Sanders delegate at the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee
caucuses yesterday.
“It’s sending a message through the delegates to the convention about what our priorities are and where our heart is,” Wolf said.
Paul Feeney, who ran the
Sanders campaign in Massachusetts, said the senator still has every intention of winning the Democratic nomination, but the policies that have been the hallmark of his campaign — raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, going after corporate tax dodgers — will be pushed regardless.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will headline a rally at Sacramento’s Bonney Field late Monday afternoon, his campaign announced Saturday.
The rally at the home pitch of the Sacramento Republic FC is free, although people are encouraged to make reservations through the campaign’s website. Doors open at 5 p.m. Bonney Field is at Cal Expo, 1600 Exposition Blvd.
Sanders also announced a rally to be held 7 a.m. Tuesday at Stockton’s Weber Point Event Center, 221 N. Center St.
Monday is the first day of mail voting for the state’s June 7 primary election. Despite facing slim odds of overtaking Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in total delegates, Sanders has said he will stay in the race through next month’s primaries in California and other states, as well as the District of Columbia.
Sanders has pointed to national polls showing he would do better against presumptive Republican nominee Donald