Over the past hour--and just 10 days after the “Ready for Warren” organization changed its name to “Ready to Fight,” and announced that the organization was supporting Bernie Sanders for President—Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has made some rather stunning, albeit inconclusive, statements to a Boston Herald reporter.
Perhaps, it's the inconclusive nature of her statements which are, indeed, what makes this breaking story fascinating, in the first place...
Warren doesn’t dismiss campaigning for Bernie
Chris Cassidy
Boston Herald (BostonHerald.com)
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren isn’t ruling out joining ultra-liberal Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, saying she’s not surprised at all that the Vermont senator is surging in the polls and drawing enthusiastic Granite State audiences.
“Bernie’s out talking about the issues that the American people want to hear about,” Warren, who hasn’t endorsed anyone in the Democratic primary yet, told the Herald yesterday.
Asked if she would campaign with Sanders at some point, she didn’t dismiss the idea.
“Too early to say,” she said.
But Warren didn’t seem convinced that Sanders could eventually knock front-runner Hillary Clinton out of the Democratic primary.
Asked if Sanders can actually win, Warren sidestepped, saying, “Bernie is there on the issues. That’s what matters to a lot of people.”…
(Bold type is diarist's emphasis.)
Inch by inch, no matter how many mainstream media talking heads and status quo Dems might claim otherwise, in just eight weeks, “the public conversation” has morphed from “Bernie can’t win,” to “Bernie can win.” And, perhaps nowhere has that been better-explained than in a piece by H.A. Goodman, which ran over at HuffPo, earlier on Monday…
Why Bernie Sanders Will Become the Democratic Nominee and Defeat Any Republican in 2016
H.A. Goodman
Huffington Post
Posted: 06/29/2015 10:53 am EDT Updated: 06/29/2015 10:59 am EDT
Bernie Sanders is down by just 8 points in New Hampshire and has gained tremendous momentum in Iowa. If the Vermont senator wins both the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, the odds will favor him getting the Democratic nomination. What was once thought of as a long shot is becoming a reality, primarily because Bernie Sanders has energized his base while Hillary Clinton has been forced to defend against email and foreign donor scandals. However, this isn't the first time in recent history that a challenger to Clinton was once thought of as a long shot.
In 2008, Hillary Clinton finished third in Iowa behind Obama and John Edwards and eventually lost the Democratic nomination to the first African-American elected as president. This eventuality was once described as "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen" by Bill Clinton, when the former president was asked about Obama's record and chances of winning the presidency. Even Hillary Clinton's "It's 3:00 am" advertisement, described by Harvard Professor of Sociology Orlando Patterson as having a "racist sub-message," couldn't prevent history from taking place and a more progressive electorate from deciding their own destiny at the ballot box.
Therefore, if you're a person who says, "I'd vote for Bernie Sanders, but he can't win," then compare the world in 2015 to another time period in American politics. Imagine in 1972, shortly after Nixon won reelection in a legendary landslide, that in 2015 The New York Times would read, Supreme Court Ruling Makes Same-Sex Marriage a Right Nationwide. Imagine just a decade ago, what you'd think about Strom Thurmond's son calling for the removal of the Confederate flag, or the Supreme Court ruling favorably on a national healthcare program. Even before Caitlyn Jenner, transgender Navy Seal Kristin Beck decided to run for Congress and Barney Frank came out publicly in 1987. Therefore, Bernie Sanders isn't George McGovern and this isn't 1972; Americans are willing to vote for any candidate they feel will make a positive change…
Goodman continues on to discuss the
Brookings Institute’s
report:
Minority Turnout Determined the 2012 Election, which focuses upon
“profound demographic changes in the electorate.”
Goodman cites the author’s commentary about this “new era in American politics”, noting that the 2012 election highlighted profound demographic changes in the electorate: “…turnout will be less important for Democratic victory as demography changes in their favor, though they must maintain their strong voting margins among blacks, Hispanics and Asians. For Republicans, the latter projections show that they cannot count primarily on white support to take the White House. Even assuming high 2004 turnout rates and 2012 Republican voting margins for whites, they cannot win unless they also peel off more votes among minorities. In this regard, demography indeed becomes destiny.”
Goodman’s conclusion: “…even if minorities vote at the same rate for any Democratic nominee, including Bernie Sanders, Republicans will still have an uphill battle for the White House in 2016.”
…He voted against the Iraq War, championed gay rights and other issues before they were popular, and works against unfair trade deals and Wall Street greed, so there's no denying the appeal of Vermont's senator to millions of voters. As for his appeal to minority voters, Professor Cornell West posted a message on Facebook stating, "Senator Bernie Sanders is one of the few elected officials who is fundamentally devoted to dealing with the plight of poor & working people." In contrast, Twitter grilled Hillary Clinton for waiting close to three weeks to address Ferguson, and Ebony published a piece titled, Is Hillary 'Ready' for Black Voters?...
There’s much more to this piece, and I strongly suggest a full read of it.
Finally, a word of caution, because my sentiments about all of this are a double-edged sword. It’s still absurdly early for any political campaign to be patting itself on the back, more than six months prior to the first caucuses and primaries in 2016. If all of those “very serious” people inside the Beltway, and even here at Daily Kos, have re-learned anything of late, it’s that six months is an eternity in a political campaign. One need look no further than the past eight weeks for a brutally clear reminder of that truth!
After all’s said and done, how many people reading this would have thought, back at the end of April, that just two months later we’d be reading news of Senator Elizabeth Warren publicly stating that it wasn't outside of the realm of political possibilities that she could see herself campaigning for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries?
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