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There have been so many good Hillary-positive diaries in the past few days that I’m not going to list them all here, but will highlight particularly useful ones as I go. The afternoon Hillary Hangout and evening #ImWithHer open threads continue, thanks to our devoted hosts.
Clinton spent the long weekend at home in New York, did a couple of fundraisers last night, and will be in New Jersey today. (The breathless media reports that she had cancelled all her New Jersey events to rush back to California in a panic turned out to be only partially correct. One New Jersey event for Thursday was cancelled, and instead, Bill Clinton will headline an organizing event Wednesday afternoon at Union County College in Cranford.) Rocker (and NJ native) Jon Bon Jovi will be performing with her both at a rally Wednesday at Rutgers-Newark and at a fundraiser Wednesday night in Boston.
As everyone knows, the big focus right now is on California and its 475 delegates; Clinton does not need to outright win a majority of them in order to capture the nomination, but would much prefer to finish the day with a solid win. Both candidates will be spending most of the next week in the state. According to Mark Murray at NBC News, Sanders has bought $1.1 million in ads (almost all of it in the Los Angeles market), while Clinton has bought $861,000, more than half in LA and the rest spread across five other media markets. That’s far less than either candidate spent in much smaller states.
A new California poll (Hoover/YouGov/Stanford) was released Tuesday (but was in the field much earlier), giving Clinton a 51-38 lead — more like just about every other poll than to the 46-44 one that has dominated the media narrative for the past week. (Floridageorge got right on it with a full diary, here.) It’s also roughly consistent with Benchmark’s 56-44 prediction, based largely on demographics. (Benchmark is experimenting with putting their county-level predictions into map form, BTW.) However, as the write-up in Politico notes, the big variable that makes California difficult to poll accurately is how many non-party-affiliated voters and young voters will actually vote in the Democratic Presidential primary. It’s possible that Clinton’s staff, whose internal polling or sixth sense seems to have been more accurate than public polls in a number of states, is seeing a too-close-to-call race.
Reinforcing Clinton’s appeal across many demographic group, she was endorsed yesterday by the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Leadership PAC.
The PAC’s Chair, Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA-32) said:
There is so much at stake in this election, and we cannot tolerate any presidential candidate who promotes fear tactics, hateful rhetoric against immigrants and bullying. We AAPIs must turn out the vote and ensure that our voice matters. We must support the candidate who will bring us together, and make our nation more equal and just for everyone — and that person is Hillary Clinton.
This endorsement should help Clinton in California, where more than 12% of eligible voters are Asian-American.
Clinton also picked up the endorsement Tuesday of California Gov. Jerry Brown (given its own front-page diary by Laura Clawson, and another diary by souvarine, but worth repeating):
On Tuesday, June 7, I have decided to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton because I believe this is the only path forward to win the presidency and stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump.
I have closely watched the primaries and am deeply impressed with how well Bernie Sanders has done. He has driven home the message that the top one percent has unfairly captured way too much of America’s wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind. In 1992, I attempted a similar campaign.
For her part, Hillary Clinton has convincingly made the case that she knows how to get things done and has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda. Voters have responded by giving her approximately 3 million more votes – and hundreds more delegates – than Sanders. If Clinton were to win only 10 percent of the remaining delegates – wildly improbable – she would still exceed the number needed for the nomination. In other words, Clinton’s lead is insurmountable and Democrats have shown – by millions of votes – that they want her as their nominee.
But there is more at stake than mere numbers. The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has called climate change a “hoax” and said he will tear up the Paris Climate Agreement. He has promised to deport millions of immigrants and ominously suggested that other countries may need the nuclear bomb. He has also pledged to pack the Supreme Court with only those who please the extreme right.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Our country faces an existential threat from climate change and the spread of nuclear weapons. A new cold war is on the horizon. This is no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other. The general election has already begun. Hillary Clinton, with her long experience, especially as Secretary of State, has a firm grasp of the issues and will be prepared to lead our country on day one.
Next January, I want to be sure that it is Hillary Clinton who takes the oath of office, not Donald Trump.
With respect,
Jerry Brown
A bit of historical perspective: Brown (as some of us remember) was the main left-wing left-coast insurgent challenging Bill Clinton in the 1992 race. From Wikipedia:
Brown embarked on a grassroots campaign to, in his own words, "take back America from the confederacy of corruption, careerism, and campaign consulting in Washington." In his stump speech. . . Brown told listeners that he would only be accepting campaign contributions from individuals and that he would not accept over $100. Continuing with his populist reform theme, he assailed what he dubbed "the bipartisan Incumbent Party in Washington" and called for term limits for members of Congress. Citing various recent scandals on Capitol Hill, particularly the recent House banking scandal and the large congressional pay-raises from 1990, he promised to put an end to Congress being a "Stop-and-Shop for the moneyed special interests." As Brown campaigned in various primary states, he would eventually expand his platform beyond a policy of strict campaign finance reform. Although he focused on a variety of issues throughout the campaign, he highlighted his endorsement of living wage laws and opposition to free trade agreements such as NAFTA.
(Does any of this sound familiar?) Brown won a number of states (but not his own California) and 596 delegates. As Sanders now vows to do, Brown took his fight to the floor of the Convention, and the animosity between himself and Bill Clinton continued long after Clinton’s inauguration. Brown’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton, therefore, is not just “one more governor,” or even “the governor of the largest state with the largest delegate haul.” It is one more sign of a Democratic Party uniting around its nominee and focused on victory in November.
Can we talk about the general election opponent? Ben White at Politico has a new piece with the intriguing title, “Shady accounting underpins Trump’s wealth” (h/t the incomparable Melissa McEwan, @Shakestweet). The whole article is worth a read, but here’s the Cliffnotes version: Trump doesn’t do standard accounting. When asked about his income, he tends to boast about his gross receipts, not net profits (or losses) for his businesses. The valuations of his properties, from casinos to hotels to golf courses, are mostly based on his “feelings” at the moment he’s asked, and whether the number he pulls out of the air will help him get another loan or keep his taxes low. In other words, it’s all fiction. As White notes, the Clinton team is already hard at work untangling the gobbledegook:
That art form [Trump’s creative accounting] is expected to come under relentless scrutiny from Democrats in a general election campaign that is expected to pit Trump against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Clinton campaign wants to portray Trump’s business empire as a Potemkin village, showy on the surface, but with little underneath.
People familiar with the matter say Democrats have leading forensic accountants poring over all of Trump’s public records and disclosures with a plan to release whatever they find to support this narrative as the campaign shifts into general election mode this summer and fall. . . .
Clinton supporters have been taunting Trump on Twitter with the #PoorDonald hashtag and Clinton herself has questioned the mogul’s statements about his wealth. “We’ve got to get below the hype,” Clinton said recently on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think we’re beginning to find out, but I don’t think we know enough, and that’s why he should release his tax returns.”
I’m sure we’ll be seeing more attacks on Trump’s lack of integrity, bullying, and creative accounting practices as everyone moves into general election mode. In the meantime,
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Crossposted at HillaryHQ, an independent, progressive blog committed to the electing Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States.