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Re: F6 post# 248490

Tuesday, 05/17/2016 3:54:35 PM

Tuesday, May 17, 2016 3:54:35 PM

FULL: Bernie Sanders West Virginia VICTORY SPEECH, Salem Rally, Oregon 5-10-2016 Armory Auditorium

Published on May 10, 2016 by LIVE SATELLITE NEWS [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEu3KY-hNCbWVCXrqQfPB9w / http://www.youtube.com/user/psb2usa , http://www.youtube.com/user/psb2usa/videos ]

LIVE Stream: Bernie Sanders Salem Oregon Rally at Salem Armory Auditorium (5-10-16)

Join Bernie Sanders for a rally in Salem, Oregon - A Future to Believe In Salem Oregon Rally on 5/10

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday will travel to Oregon. The Democratic Party presidential candidate will host a rally in Salem. Sanders will discuss a wide range of issues, including getting big money out of politics, his plan to make public colleges and universities tuition-free, combating climate change and ensuring universal health care.

This event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are strongly encouraged. Admission is first come, first served.

Time:
Tuesday, May 10, 2016 4:00 PM - 9:00 PM PDT

Location:
Salem Armory Auditorium (Salem, OR)
2320 17th Street NE
Salem, OR 97309

Hillary Clinton Has A Plan To Help Coal Workers. Donald Trump Has A Scapegoat.

As they campaign in coal country, this policy embodies the difference between the two candidates.
05/10/2016 Updated May 10, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-clinton-coal_us_57310338e4b016f37896bf10 [with comments]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6fxkH8rOGw [no comments yet] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isvVM9WEQjI (no comments yet), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r24Qk8IwydA (no comments yet), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keVielGTqxE (text taken from; no comments yet), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfrEANpQYtU (title taken from; no comments yet), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dItHIS4QWDI (no comments yet), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfFPsIS1nqk (no comments yet)]

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Bernie Sanders LIVE from Salem OR - A Future to Believe in Rally #LoveTrumpsHate

May 9, 2016
http://www.hillaryhq.com/2016/05/exactly-same-except.html [with comment]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_9a3c5MzeY [the primary point of also including this one being the insipid, err inspired commentary preceding and following Bernie's performance; Bernie's performance, slightly clipped at the start, begins at c. the 16:50 mark; with comments]

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Watch Hannity Panic When Geraldo Trashes Bernie Sanders on Hot Mic During Victory Speech - 5-10-2016

Published on May 11, 2016 by Election News Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNly-M0ASbbt27ftVNV77fw , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNly-M0ASbbt27ftVNV77fw/videos ]

"Hannity: We’re going to dip in real quick and watch the socialist, Bernie Sanders, step up to the microphone. There he is. You know, to each according to his need, from each each according to his ability. Spread the wealth. Tax people at 98 %. That’s pretty much the message of Bernie Sanders.

Rivera: Annoying. This guy is so annoying.

Hannity: Your mike is hot!

Rivera: He’s so annoying. People who think that his supporters are going to go to Donald Trump are smoking dope.

what do you mean?

what?

no, no.

it’s called —

Bolling: One of the most important things that came out of this evening, Sean, not who won West Virginia, not who won Nebraska. The most important thing that came out tonight, the exit polling shows 43% of Bernie Sanders supporters, 43% of Bernie Sanders’ voters would vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton."

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/watch-hannity-panic-when-geraldo-trashing-bernie-sanders-on-hot-mic-during-victory-speech/ [with non-YouTube original of this YouTube embedded]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajsc-arqZV8 [with comments]

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Geraldo Trashes Bernie Sanders On "Hot Mic"

Published on May 11, 2016 by The Young Turks [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks/videos ]

Geraldo Rivera was recently on Fox News discussing Bernie Sanders’s West Virginia victory speech. He said the candidate is “so annoying” right before host Sean Hannity jumped in exclaiming, “your mic is hot!” Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola (ThinkTank), hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"Fox News pundit Sean Hannity warned fellow host Geraldo Rivera that his mic was hot Tuesday night after Rivera was heard calling Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) “so annoying” before the network broadcast the senator’s victory speech.

“We’re just going to dip in real quick and watch the socialist, Bernie Sanders, step up to the microphone,” Hannity said during the network’s election coverage. “There he is. You know, ‘to each according to his need, from each according to his ability.’”

“So annoying! The guy is so annoying!” Rivera said after the video feed had switched to Sanders’ live speech.

“Your mic is hot! What are you saying?!” Hannity said with a laugh.

Rivera didn’t seem to mind. “I believe he’s so annoying! People who think his supporters are going to Trump are smoking dope!” he said as Hannity laughed heartily in the background.”*

*Read more here: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sean-hannity-geraldo-rivera-disses-bernie-sanders

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLkWr1_VkAk [with comments]

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Steve Kornacki
@SteveKornacki
Turnout for the NE caucuses was about 22k -- Sanders won by 14.
In tonight's primary it's on pace to be about 70k -- Clinton up 22 points.
6:43 PM - 10 May 2016
https://twitter.com/SteveKornacki/status/730211821127389184 [with comments]

*

The Associated Press
@AP
BREAKING: Clinton wins the Democratic #NebraskaPrimary. @AP race call at 9:49 p.m. EDT. #Election2016 #APracecall

6:50 PM - 10 May 2016
https://twitter.com/AP/status/730213541194702848 [with comments]

*

Harry Enten
@ForecasterEnten
Clinton wins 0 delegates in Nebraska tonight, but wins a talking point on caucuses perhaps not reflecting will of larger electorate.
6:54 PM - 10 May 2016
https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/730214590479478785 [with comments]

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Brian Fallon
@brianefallon
If a state held both a primary & caucus, & Sanders won the one with higher turnout but its results didn't count, would he be complaining?
7:15 PM - 10 May 2016
https://twitter.com/brianefallon/status/730219762404499456 [with comments]

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Nate Cohn
@Nate_Cohn
Clinton, in purple, won Nebraska primary (up 58-42). Sanders, in green, won caucus, 58-42. (primary doesn't count)

7:30 PM - 10 May 2016
https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/730223527517925376 [with comments]

===

Hardball College Tour: Sen. Bernie Sanders | MSNBC

Streamed live on Feb 25, 2016 by North East [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsWdb6CFSlwycOe7TBXVC7Q / http://www.youtube.com/user/Chrislove13 , http://www.youtube.com/user/Chrislove13/videos ]

#BernieStrong [ https://www.youtube.com/results?q=%23BernieStrong ] Go here to check your voting status https://vote.berniesanders.com/

Hardball with Chris Matthews, Transcript 2/25/2016
02/25/16
http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/hardball/2016-02-25 [no comments yet]

original video, in segments in sequence, at:

Sanders takes firm stance on foreign policy
Hardball with Chris Matthews
2/25/16
Bernie Sanders shows that he can be tough in a Hardball special edition from the University of Chicago, taking a hard stance on foreign policy and giving his ideas for effective regime change. The Senator also debates his views on Guantanamo prison with MSNBC's Chris Matthews. Duration: 12:58
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/sanders-takes-firm-stance-on-foreign-policy-631560259918 [with comments; MSNBC YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar2v3h-NXcw {with comments}]

Sanders: 'I'm not an inside-the-Beltway guy'

Hardball with Chris Matthews
2/25/16
Bernie Sanders makes his case for a "political revolution" that would hold government more accountable to the people, stressing to MSNBC's Chris Matthews that such accountability is essential to support the American people. He debates Chris Matthews on the processes of creating change in a standstill U.S. government. Duration: 14:25
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/sanders-i-m-not-an-inside-the-beltway-guy-631560771760 [with comments; MSNBC YouTube (included just above) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPm1de2j16o {with comments}; excerpted at http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/can-sanders-really-create-change-631569475899 (with comments)]

Sanders details how to reform criminal justice
Hardball with Chris Matthews
2/25/16
Bernie Sanders takes questions from University of Chicago students on MSNBC's Hardball, during which he specifically unpacks his solutions to reform the country's prison system and it conduct of criminal justice. Duration: 7:59
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-news/watch/sanders-details-how-to-reform-criminal-justice-631560771771 [with comments]

Sanders remembers life at University of Chicago
Hardball with Chris Matthews
2/25/16
Bernie Sanders tells MSNBC's Chris Matthews all about his times as a University of Chicago student and how his time at the university helped shape his political views. Duration: 7:00
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/sanders-remembers-life-at-university-of-chicago-631562307789 [with comments]

Sanders: Black Lives Matter a very 'real' movement
Hardball with Chris Matthews
2/25/16
Bernie Sanders discusses his views on the Black Lives Matter movement and how it has brought about the fight for criminal justice and police reform in the country. Duration: 2:47
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/sanders-black-lives-matter-a-very-real-movement-631563843536 [with comments; MSNBC YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC6aGX1G55k {with comments}]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ3HvjRYnhc [with comments],
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8hkFfymbxQ [with comments]

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BERNIE SANDERS EXPOSED!

Published on Feb 11, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos ]

Alex Jones calls out Bernie Sanders and declares him a plague that will finish what obama started.
http://www.infowars.com/alex-jones-epic-bernie-sanders-pathetic-scum-rant/ , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooNxJnf_UAI
http://www.infowars.com/bernie-sanders-is-the-1/ , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA2ZLmvo8FM
http://www.infowars.com/democrat-party-bosses-panicked-over-bernie-sanders/
http://www.infowars.com/bernie-sanders-claims-socialism-stole-his-hard-work/ , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7gTBlHT0LQ
http://www.infowars.com/college-kids-feel-the-bern/ , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq9D4u4wjDE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtArlEl84mo [with comments]

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Bernie Sanders: Tool Of Globalist Ruin

Published on May 9, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Alex Jones breaks down how Bernie Sanders is being used by the globalists to foment class envy while they sit off shore on their hordes of gold.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywU_0YkxDRA [with comments]

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Bernie Sanders | The Young Turks Interview (FULL)

Published on Mar 23, 2016 by The Young Turks

Cenk Uygur interviews Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggFitmOTSok [with (over 19,000) comments] [full AIPAC coverage, including videos and linked transcripts of both Clinton's and Bernie's respective remarks, included at/see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=122106081 and preceding and following]

*

Alex Jones Rant: The Fire Of Human Liberty!

Published on May 5, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Alex Jones explains how he is driven by the fire of human liberty.

[originally aired May 4, 2016]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuMNZZmImeA [with comments]

*

The Wickedness Of Humanity Exposed

Published on May 6, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Alex Jones goes off on the degenerate elite who are trying to destroy humanities destiny and their henchmen who are selling humanity out for temporal power.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZDHsBp7f0s [with comments]

--

President Obama Delivers the Commencement Address at Howard University

Published on May 7, 2016 by The White House [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYxRlFDqcWM4y7FfpiAN3KQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse , http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse/videos ]

Howard University
Washington, DC

*

Remarks by the President at Howard University Commencement Ceremony

Howard University
Washington, D.C.
May 07, 2016

11:47 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you! Hello, Howard! (Applause.) H-U!

AUDIENCE: You know!

THE PRESIDENT: H-U!

AUDIENCE: You know!

THE PRESIDENT: (Laughter.) Thank you so much, everybody. Please, please, have a seat. Oh, I feel important now. Got a degree from Howard. Cicely Tyson said something nice about me. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love you, President!

THE PRESIDENT: I love you back.

To President Frederick, the Board of Trustees, faculty and staff, fellow recipients of honorary degrees, thank you for the honor of spending this day with you. And congratulations to the Class of 2016! (Applause.) Four years ago, back when you were just freshmen, I understand many of you came by my house the night I was reelected. (Laughter.) So I decided to return the favor and come by yours.

To the parents, the grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, all the family and friends who stood by this class, cheered them on, helped them get here today -- this is your day, as well. Let’s give them a big round of applause, as well. (Applause.)

I’m not trying to stir up any rivalries here; I just want to see who’s in the house. We got Quad? (Applause.) Annex. (Applause.) Drew. Carver. Slow. Towers. And Meridian. (Applause.) Rest in peace, Meridian. (Laughter.) Rest in peace.

I know you’re all excited today. You might be a little tired, as well. Some of you were up all night making sure your credits were in order. (Laughter.) Some of you stayed up too late, ended up at HoChi at 2:00 a.m. (Laughter.) Got some mambo sauce on your fingers. (Laughter.)

But you got here. And you've all worked hard to reach this day. You’ve shuttled between challenging classes and Greek life. You've led clubs, played an instrument or a sport. You volunteered, you interned. You held down one, two, maybe three jobs. You've made lifelong friends and discovered exactly what you’re made of. The “Howard Hustle” has strengthened your sense of purpose and ambition.

Which means you're part of a long line of Howard graduates. Some are on this stage today. Some are in the audience. That spirit of achievement and special responsibility has defined this campus ever since the Freedman’s Bureau established Howard just four years after the Emancipation Proclamation; just two years after the Civil War came to an end. They created this university with a vision -- a vision of uplift; a vision for an America where our fates would be determined not by our race, gender, religion or creed, but where we would be free -- in every sense -- to pursue our individual and collective dreams.

It is that spirit that's made Howard a centerpiece of African-American intellectual life and a central part of our larger American story. This institution has been the home of many firsts: The first black Nobel Peace Prize winner. The first black Supreme Court justice. But its mission has been to ensure those firsts were not the last. Countless scholars, professionals, artists, and leaders from every field received their training here. The generations of men and women who walked through this yard helped reform our government, cure disease, grow a black middle class, advance civil rights, shape our culture. The seeds of change -- for all Americans -- were sown here. And that’s what I want to talk about today.

As I was preparing these remarks, I realized that when I was first elected President, most of you -- the Class of 2016 -- were just starting high school. Today, you’re graduating college. I used to joke about being old. Now I realize I'm old. (Laughter.) It's not a joke anymore. (Laughter.)

But seeing all of you here gives me some perspective. It makes me reflect on the changes that I’ve seen over my own lifetime. So let me begin with what may sound like a controversial statement -- a hot take.

Given the current state of our political rhetoric and debate, let me say something that may be controversial, and that is this: America is a better place today than it was when I graduated from college. (Applause.) Let me repeat: America is by almost every measure better than it was when I graduated from college. It also happens to be better off than when I took office -- (laughter) -- but that's a longer story. (Applause.) That's a different discussion for another speech.

But think about it. I graduated in 1983. New York City, America’s largest city, where I lived at the time, had endured a decade marked by crime and deterioration and near bankruptcy. And many cities were in similar shape. Our nation had gone through years of economic stagnation, the stranglehold of foreign oil, a recession where unemployment nearly scraped 11 percent. The auto industry was getting its clock cleaned by foreign competition. And don’t even get me started on the clothes and the hairstyles. I've tried to eliminate all photos of me from this period. I thought I looked good. (Laughter.) I was wrong.

Since that year -- since the year I graduated -- the poverty rate is down. Americans with college degrees, that rate is up. Crime rates are down. America’s cities have undergone a renaissance. There are more women in the workforce. They’re earning more money. We’ve cut teen pregnancy in half. We've slashed the African American dropout rate by almost 60 percent, and all of you have a computer in your pocket that gives you the world at the touch of a button. In 1983, I was part of fewer than 10 percent of African Americans who graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Today, you’re part of the more than 20 percent who will. And more than half of blacks say we’re better off than our parents were at our age -- and that our kids will be better off, too.

So America is better. And the world is better, too. A wall came down in Berlin. An Iron Curtain was torn asunder. The obscenity of apartheid came to an end. A young generation in Belfast and London have grown up without ever having to think about IRA bombings. In just the past 16 years, we’ve come from a world without marriage equality to one where it’s a reality in nearly two dozen countries. Around the world, more people live in democracies. We’ve lifted more than 1 billion people from extreme poverty. We’ve cut the child mortality rate worldwide by more than half.

America is better. The world is better. And stay with me now -- race relations are better since I graduated. That’s the truth. No, my election did not create a post-racial society. I don’t know who was propagating that notion. That was not mine. But the election itself -- and the subsequent one -- because the first one, folks might have made a mistake. (Laughter.) The second one, they knew what they were getting. The election itself was just one indicator of how attitudes had changed.

In my inaugural address, I remarked that just 60 years earlier, my father might not have been served in a D.C. restaurant -- at least not certain of them. There were no black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Very few black judges. Shoot, as Larry Wilmore pointed out last week, a lot of folks didn’t even think blacks had the tools to be a quarterback. Today, former Bull Michael Jordan isn’t just the greatest basketball player of all time -- he owns the team. (Laughter.) When I was graduating, the main black hero on TV was Mr. T. (Laughter.) Rap and hip hop were counterculture, underground. Now, Shonda Rhimes owns Thursday night, and Beyoncé runs the world. (Laughter.) We’re no longer only entertainers, we're producers, studio executives. No longer small business owners -- we're CEOs, we’re mayors, representatives, Presidents of the United States. (Applause.)

I am not saying gaps do not persist. Obviously, they do. Racism persists. Inequality persists. Don’t worry -- I’m going to get to that. But I wanted to start, Class of 2016, by opening your eyes to the moment that you are in. If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be -- what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you’d be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into -- you wouldn’t choose 100 years ago. You wouldn’t choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You’d choose right now. If you had to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, “young, gifted, and black” in America, you would choose right now. (Applause.)

I tell you all this because it's important to note progress. Because to deny how far we’ve come would do a disservice to the cause of justice, to the legions of foot soldiers; to not only the incredibly accomplished individuals who have already been mentioned, but your mothers and your dads, and grandparents and great grandparents, who marched and toiled and suffered and overcame to make this day possible. I tell you this not to lull you into complacency, but to spur you into action -- because there’s still so much more work to do, so many more miles to travel. And America needs you to gladly, happily take up that work. You all have some work to do. So enjoy the party, because you're going to be busy. (Laughter.)

Yes, our economy has recovered from crisis stronger than almost any other in the world. But there are folks of all races who are still hurting -- who still can’t find work that pays enough to keep the lights on, who still can’t save for retirement. We’ve still got a big racial gap in economic opportunity. The overall unemployment rate is 5 percent, but the black unemployment rate is almost nine. We’ve still got an achievement gap when black boys and girls graduate high school and college at lower rates than white boys and white girls. Harriet Tubman may be going on the twenty, but we’ve still got a gender gap when a black woman working full-time still earns just 66 percent of what a white man gets paid. (Applause.)

We’ve got a justice gap when too many black boys and girls pass through a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails. This is one area where things have gotten worse. When I was in college, about half a million people in America were behind bars. Today, there are about 2.2 million. Black men are about six times likelier to be in prison right now than white men.

Around the world, we’ve still got challenges to solve that threaten everybody in the 21st century -- old scourges like disease and conflict, but also new challenges, from terrorism and climate change.

So make no mistake, Class of 2016 -- you’ve got plenty of work to do. But as complicated and sometimes intractable as these challenges may seem, the truth is that your generation is better positioned than any before you to meet those challenges, to flip the script.

Now, how you do that, how you meet these challenges, how you bring about change will ultimately be up to you. My generation, like all generations, is too confined by our own experience, too invested in our own biases, too stuck in our ways to provide much of the new thinking that will be required. But us old-heads have learned a few things that might be useful in your journey. So with the rest of my time, I’d like to offer some suggestions for how young leaders like you can fulfill your destiny and shape our collective future -- bend it in the direction of justice and equality and freedom.

First of all -- and this should not be a problem for this group -- be confident in your heritage. (Applause.) Be confident in your blackness. One of the great changes that’s occurred in our country since I was your age is the realization there's no one way to be black. Take it from somebody who’s seen both sides of debate about whether I'm black enough. (Laughter.) In the past couple months, I’ve had lunch with the Queen of England and hosted Kendrick Lamar in the Oval Office. There’s no straitjacket, there's no constraints, there's no litmus test for authenticity.

Look at Howard. One thing most folks don’t know about Howard is how diverse it is. When you arrived here, some of you were like, oh, they've got black people in Iowa? (Laughter.) But it’s true -- this class comes from big cities and rural communities, and some of you crossed oceans to study here. You shatter stereotypes. Some of you come from a long line of Bison. Some of you are the first in your family to graduate from college. (Applause.) You all talk different, you all dress different. You’re Lakers fans, Celtics fans, maybe even some hockey fans. (Laughter.)

And because of those who've come before you, you have models to follow. You can work for a company, or start your own. You can go into politics, or run an organization that holds politicians accountable. You can write a book that wins the National Book Award, or you can write the new run of “Black Panther.” Or, like one of your alumni, Ta-Nehisi Coates, you can go ahead and just do both. You can create your own style, set your own standard of beauty, embrace your own sexuality. Think about an icon we just lost -- Prince. He blew up categories. People didn’t know what Prince was doing. (Laughter.) And folks loved him for it.

You need to have the same confidence. Or as my daughters tell me all the time, “You be you, Daddy.” (Laughter.) Sometimes Sasha puts a variation on it -- "You do you, Daddy." (Laughter.) And because you’re a black person doing whatever it is that you're doing, that makes it a black thing. Feel confident.

Second, even as we each embrace our own beautiful, unique, and valid versions of our blackness, remember the tie that does bind us as African Americans -- and that is our particular awareness of injustice and unfairness and struggle. That means we cannot sleepwalk through life. We cannot be ignorant of history. (Applause.) We can’t meet the world with a sense of entitlement. We can’t walk by a homeless man without asking why a society as wealthy as ours allows that state of affairs to occur. We can’t just lock up a low-level dealer without asking why this boy, barely out of childhood, felt he had no other options. We have cousins and uncles and brothers and sisters who we remember were just as smart and just as talented as we were, but somehow got ground down by structures that are unfair and unjust.

And that means we have to not only question the world as it is, and stand up for those African Americans who haven’t been so lucky -- because, yes, you've worked hard, but you've also been lucky. That's a pet peeve of mine: People who have been successful and don’t realize they've been lucky. That God may have blessed them; it wasn’t nothing you did. So don’t have an attitude. But we must expand our moral imaginations to understand and empathize with all people who are struggling, not just black folks who are struggling -- the refugee, the immigrant, the rural poor, the transgender person, and yes, the middle-aged white guy who you may think has all the advantages, but over the last several decades has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change, and feels powerless to stop it. You got to get in his head, too.

Number three: You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I'll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes.

You see, change requires more than righteous anger. It requires a program, and it requires organizing. At the 1964 Democratic Convention, Fannie Lou Hamer -- all five-feet-four-inches tall -- gave a fiery speech on the national stage. But then she went back home to Mississippi and organized cotton pickers. And she didn't have the tools and technology where you can whip up a movement in minutes. She had to go door to door. And I’m so proud of the new guard of black civil rights leaders who understand this. It’s thanks in large part to the activism of young people like many of you, from Black Twitter to Black Lives Matter, that America’s eyes have been opened -- white, black, Democrat, Republican -- to the real problems, for example, in our criminal justice system.

But to bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in custom. If you care about mass incarceration, let me ask you: How are you pressuring members of Congress to pass the criminal justice reform bill now pending before them? (Applause.) If you care about better policing, do you know who your district attorney is? Do you know who your state’s attorney general is? Do you know the difference? Do you know who appoints the police chief and who writes the police training manual? Find out who they are, what their responsibilities are. Mobilize the community, present them with a plan, work with them to bring about change, hold them accountable if they do not deliver. Passion is vital, but you've got to have a strategy.

And your plan better include voting -- not just some of the time, but all the time. (Applause.) It is absolutely true that 50 years after the Voting Rights Act, there are still too many barriers in this country to vote. There are too many people trying to erect new barriers to voting. This is the only advanced democracy on Earth that goes out of its way to make it difficult for people to vote. And there's a reason for that. There's a legacy to that.

But let me say this: Even if we dismantled every barrier to voting, that alone would not change the fact that America has some of the lowest voting rates in the free world. In 2014, only 36 percent of Americans turned out to vote in the midterms -- the secondlowest participation rate on record. Youth turnout -- that would be you -- was less than 20 percent. Less than 20 percent. Four out of five did not vote. In 2012, nearly two in three African Americans turned out. And then, in 2014, only two in five turned out. You don’t think that made a difference in terms of the Congress I've got to deal with? And then people are wondering, well, how come Obama hasn’t gotten this done? How come he didn’t get that done? You don’t think that made a difference? What would have happened if you had turned out at 50, 60, 70 percent, all across this country? People try to make this political thing really complicated. Like, what kind of reforms do we need? And how do we need to do that? You know what, just vote. It's math. If you have more votes than the other guy, you get to do what you want. (Laughter.) It's not that complicated.

And you don’t have excuses. You don’t have to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of soap to register to vote. You don’t have to risk your life to cast a ballot. Other people already did that for you. (Applause.) Your grandparents, your great grandparents might be here today if they were working on it. What's your excuse? When we don’t vote, we give away our power, disenfranchise ourselves -- right when we need to use the power that we have; right when we need your power to stop others from taking away the vote and rights of those more vulnerable than you are -- the elderly and the poor, the formerly incarcerated trying to earn their second chance.

So you got to vote all the time, not just when it’s cool, not just when it's time to elect a President, not just when you’re inspired. It's your duty. When it’s time to elect a member of Congress or a city councilman, or a school board member, or a sheriff. That’s how we change our politics -- by electing people at every level who are representative of and accountable to us. It is not that complicated. Don’t make it complicated.

And finally, change requires more than just speaking out -- it requires listening, as well. In particular, it requires listening to those with whom you disagree, and being prepared to compromise. When I was a state senator, I helped pass Illinois’s first racial profiling law, and one of the first laws in the nation requiring the videotaping of confessions in capital cases. And we were successful because, early on, I engaged law enforcement. I didn’t say to them, oh, you guys are so racist, you need to do something. I understood, as many of you do, that the overwhelming majority of police officers are good, and honest, and courageous, and fair, and love the communities they serve.

And we knew there were some bad apples, and that even the good cops with the best of intentions -- including, by the way, African American police officers -- might have unconscious biases, as we all do. So we engaged and we listened, and we kept working until we built consensus. And because we took the time to listen, we crafted legislation that was good for the police -- because it improved the trust and cooperation of the community -- and it was good for the communities, who were less likely to be treated unfairly. And I can say this unequivocally: Without at least the acceptance of the police organizations in Illinois, I could never have gotten those bills passed. Very simple. They would have blocked them.

The point is, you need allies in a democracy. That's just the way it is. It can be frustrating and it can be slow. But history teaches us that the alternative to democracy is always worse. That's not just true in this country. It’s not a black or white thing. Go to any country where the give and take of democracy has been repealed by one-party rule, and I will show you a country that does not work.

And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that's never been the source of our progress. That's how we cheat ourselves of progress.

We remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory, the power of his letter from a Birmingham jail, the marches he led. But he also sat down with President Johnson in the Oval Office to try and get a Civil Rights Act and a Voting Rights Act passed. And those two seminal bills were not perfect -- just like the Emancipation Proclamation was a war document as much as it was some clarion call for freedom. Those mileposts of our progress were not perfect. They did not make up for centuries of slavery or Jim Crow or eliminate racism or provide for 40 acres and a mule. But they made things better. And you know what, I will take better every time. I always tell my staff -- better is good, because you consolidate your gains and then you move on to the next fight from a stronger position.

Brittany Packnett, a member of the Black Lives Matter movement and Campaign Zero, one of the Ferguson protest organizers, she joined our Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Some of her fellow activists questioned whether she should participate. She rolled up her sleeves and sat at the same table with big city police chiefs and prosecutors. And because she did, she ended up shaping many of the recommendations of that task force. And those recommendations are now being adopted across the country -- changes that many of the protesters called for. If young activists like Brittany had refused to participate out of some sense of ideological purity, then those great ideas would have just remained ideas. But she did participate. And that’s how change happens.

America is big and it is boisterous and it is more diverse than ever. The president told me that we've got a significant Nepalese contingent here at Howard. I would not have guessed that. Right on. But it just tells you how interconnected we're becoming. And with so many folks from so many places, converging, we are not always going to agree with each other.

Another Howard alum, Zora Neale Hurston, once said -- this is a good quote here: “Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person.” Think about that. That’s why our democracy gives us a process designed for us to settle our disputes with argument and ideas and votes instead of violence and simple majority rule.

So don’t try to shut folks out, don’t try to shut them down, no matter how much you might disagree with them. There's been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite speakers with a different point of view, or disrupt a politician’s rally. Don’t do that -- no matter how ridiculous or offensive you might find the things that come out of their mouths. Because as my grandmother used to tell me, every time a fool speaks, they are just advertising their own ignorance. Let them talk. Let them talk. If you don’t, you just make them a victim, and then they can avoid accountability.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t challenge them. Have the confidence to challenge them, the confidence in the rightness of your position. There will be times when you shouldn’t compromise your core values, your integrity, and you will have the responsibility to speak up in the face of injustice. But listen. Engage. If the other side has a point, learn from them. If they’re wrong, rebut them. Teach them. Beat them on the battlefield of ideas. And you might as well start practicing now, because one thing I can guarantee you -- you will have to deal with ignorance, hatred, racism, foolishness, trifling folks. (Laughter.) I promise you, you will have to deal with all that at every stage of your life. That may not seem fair, but life has never been completely fair. Nobody promised you a crystal stair. And if you want to make life fair, then you've got to start with the world as it is.

So that’s my advice. That’s how you change things. Change isn’t something that happens every four years or eight years; change is not placing your faith in any particular politician and then just putting your feet up and saying, okay, go. Change is the effort of committed citizens who hitch their wagons to something bigger than themselves and fight for it every single day.

That’s what Thurgood Marshall understood -- a man who once walked this year, graduated from Howard Law; went home to Baltimore, started his own law practice. He and his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston, rolled up their sleeves and they set out to overturn segregation. They worked through the NAACP. Filed dozens of lawsuits, fought dozens of cases. And after nearly 20 years of effort -- 20 years -- Thurgood Marshall ultimately succeeded in bringing his righteous cause before the Supreme Court, and securing the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that separate could never be equal. (Applause.) Twenty years.

Marshall, Houston -- they knew it would not be easy. They knew it would not be quick. They knew all sorts of obstacles would stand in their way. They knew that even if they won, that would just be the beginning of a longer march to equality. But they had discipline. They had persistence. They had faith -- and a sense of humor. And they made life better for all Americans.

And I know you graduates share those qualities. I know it because I've learned about some of the young people graduating here today. There's a young woman named Ciearra Jefferson, who’s graduating with you. And I'm just going to use her as an example. I hope you don’t mind, Ciearra. Ciearra grew up in Detroit and was raised by a poor single mom who worked seven days a week in an auto plant. And for a time, her family found themselves without a place to call home. They bounced around between friends and family who might take them in. By her senior year, Ciearra was up at 5:00 am every day, juggling homework, extracurricular activities, volunteering, all while taking care of her little sister. But she knew that education was her ticket to a better life. So she never gave up. Pushed herself to excel. This daughter of a single mom who works on the assembly line turned down a full scholarship to Harvard to come to Howard. (Applause.)

And today, like many of you, Ciearra is the first in her family to graduate from college. And then, she says, she’s going to go back to her hometown, just like Thurgood Marshall did, to make sure all the working folks she grew up with have access to the health care they need and deserve. As she puts it, she’s going to be a “change agent.” She’s going to reach back and help folks like her succeed.

And people like Ciearra are why I remain optimistic about America. (Applause.) Young people like you are why I never give in to despair.

James Baldwin once wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Graduates, each of us is only here because someone else faced down challenges for us. We are only who we are because someone else struggled and sacrificed for us. That's not just Thurgood Marshall’s story, or Ciearra’s story, or my story, or your story -- that is the story of America. A story whispered by slaves in the cotton fields, the song of marchers in Selma, the dream of a King in the shadow of Lincoln. The prayer of immigrants who set out for a new world. The roar of women demanding the vote. The rallying cry of workers who built America. And the GIs who bled overseas for our freedom.

Now it’s your turn. And the good news is, you’re ready. And when your journey seems too hard, and when you run into a chorus of cynics who tell you that you’re being foolish to keep believing or that you can’t do something, or that you should just give up, or you should just settle -- you might say to yourself a little phrase that I’ve found handy these last eight years: Yes, we can.

Congratulations, Class of 2016! (Applause.) Good luck! God bless you. God bless the United States of America. I'm proud of you.

END
12:33 P.M. EDT

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/07/remarks-president-howard-university-commencement-ceremony

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K4MctEmkmI [also at/see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=122476916 and preceding and following; with comments], [embedded at] https://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2016/05/07/president-obama-delivers-commencement-address-howard-university

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Here’s President Obama’s Best and Deepest Argument Against His Critics on the Left

President Barack Obama speaks during the 148th commencement ceremony at Howard University on May 7, 2016.
Photo: Al Drago/Getty Images

By Jonathan Chait
May 10, 2016 9:08 a.m.

If you only read short summaries of President Obama’s commencement address [ https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/07/remarks-president-howard-university-commencement-ceremony (included just above)] at Howard University, you probably missed the thrust of his remarks, which was an extended argument against the political far left. With the exception of a handful of digressions and jokes, this case formed the spine of his remarks, which mounted a detailed defense of his political style combined with a rebuttal of his critics on the left.

1. The world has grown more fair and prosperous over the course of his adult life, especially in its racial equality. “America is a better place today than it was when I graduated from college,” he began, repeating the line for emphasis. Dismissing the straw man of a “post-racial society,” an unrealistic expectation Obama noted he had never promised, he emphasized that opportunities for African-Americans have expanded across society:

In my inaugural address, I remarked that just 60 years earlier, my father might not have been served in a D.C. restaurant — at least not certain of them. There were no black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Very few black judges. Shoot, as Larry Wilmore pointed out last week, a lot of folks didn’t even think blacks had the tools to be a quarterback. Today, former Bull Michael Jordan isn’t just the greatest basketball player of all time — he owns the team. (Laughter.) When I was graduating, the main black hero on TV was Mr. T. (Laughter.) Rap and hip hop were counterculture, underground. Now, Shonda Rhimes owns Thursday night, and Beyoncé runs the world. (Laughter.) We’re no longer only entertainers, we're producers, studio executives. No longer small business owners — we're CEOs, we’re mayors, representatives, Presidents of the United States.

Obama lays out the predicate in detail, because it’s the most important premise of his argument. Bernie Sanders has argued that “it’s too late for Establishment politics” — that progress is too meager to be worth continuing, and that a radical new course, a metaphorical “revolution,” is required to truly make a difference. Though he wouldn’t embrace a loaded term, Obama is making the case that the dreaded “Establishment politics” is working.

2. Political change is necessarily incremental. Not only is incremental progress working, but there is no other alternative. Obama cited the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Emancipation Proclamation as imperfect political compromises. “They did not make up for centuries of slavery or Jim Crow or eliminate racism or provide for 40 acres and a mule,” but they made the world better. The belief that compromise is immoral leads to distrust of the political mechanisms that actually can produce positive change, making those systems less effective as people lose hope in them:

If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that's never been the source of our progress. That's how we cheat ourselves of progress.

3. Successful change can only be accomplished by persuading those who don’t share your beliefs. Obama invoked a police reform bill he helped pass through the Illinois state legislature, frankly confessing that the bill could not have passed if he hadn’t persuaded police to support it. It may have been true that police abuse was rampant, but by approaching the negotiation from a position of respect and empathy with the pressures faced by the well-intended members of law enforcement, he was able to build consensus. “Change requires more than just speaking out — it requires listening as well,” he said. “In particular, it requires listening to those with whom you disagree, and being prepared to compromise.” Browbeating does not work:

The point is, you need allies in a democracy. That's just the way it is. It can be frustrating and it can be slow. But history teaches us that the alternative to democracy is always worse. That's not just true in this country. It’s not a black or white thing. Go to any country where the give and take of democracy has been repealed by one-party rule, and I will show you a country that does not work.

And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right.

4. Protest is just one part of bringing change. Obama praises the role of demonstrations in bringing issues onto the political agenda, but insists that protest alone is useless unless it leads to negotiated political resolution:

You see, change requires more than righteous anger. It requires a program, and it requires organizing. … We remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory, the power of his letter from a Birmingham jail, the marches he led. But he also sat down with President Johnson in the Oval Office to try and get a Civil Rights Act and a Voting Rights Act passed. ...

Brittany Packnett, a member of the Black Lives Matter movement and Campaign Zero, one of the Ferguson protest organizers, she joined our Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Some of her fellow activists questioned whether she should participate. She rolled up her sleeves and sat at the same table with big city police chiefs and prosecutors. And because she did, she ended up shaping many of the recommendations of that task force. And those recommendations are now being adopted across the country — changes that many of the protesters called for. If young activists like Brittany had refused to participate out of some sense of ideological purity, then those great ideas would have just remained ideas. But she did participate. And that’s how change happens.

5. Democratic deliberation must be open. The hard work of persuading a majority to work with you means taking their concerns seriously. Open discourse means, rather than beginning from the assumption that your side represents tolerance and goodness and the opponents bigotry, demoralizing the debate where it is possible to do so. The spreading impulse on the left to shut down ideas they find offensive is counterproductive and undemocratic:

Our democracy gives us a process designed for us to settle our disputes with argument and ideas and votes instead of violence and simple majority rule.

So don’t try to shut folks out, don’t try to shut them down, no matter how much you might disagree with them. There's been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite speakers with a different point of view, or disrupt a politician’s rally. Don’t do that — no matter how ridiculous or offensive you might find the things that come out of their mouths.

This last point is especially interesting to me, since the growing strain of illiberalism on the left, which habitually tries to shut down opposing views on any identity-related questions, is somewhat of a hobbyhorse. I’m grateful for the hate-clicks as well as the proliferation of rebuttals that actually substantiate my argument [ http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/secret-confessions-of-the-anti-anti-pc-crowd.html ]. At the same time, this weekend’s address is at least the fourth time Obama has denounced political correctness. He first did so in a speech [ http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/barack-obama-versus-political-correctness.html ] in September, again in an interview [ http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/obama-on-pc-a-recipe-for-dogmatism.html ] with George Stephanopoulos in November (“And so when I hear, for example, you know, folks on college campuses saying, ‘We're not going to allow somebody to speak on our campus because we disagree with their ideas or we feel threatened by their ideas —’ you know, I think that's a recipe for dogmatism”), and again in an interview [ http://www.npr.org/2015/12/21/460030344/video-and-transcript-nprs-interview-with-president-obama ] with Steve Inskeep in December. While my criticisms of p.c. have generated many, many responses from the left, I have noticed the almost complete dearth of left-wing responses to Obama’s, which run along almost identical lines to my own. This seems odd because — I can say this without any suspicion of false modesty — Barack Obama is far more influential than I am. Every time Obama denounces the left’s practice of suppressing opposing views, I search the sources that defend (or deny) p.c. for outraged rebuttals and have found none. My suspicion is that this is because p.c.-niks rely so heavily on identity to discredit opposing views, it is convenient for them to identify opposition to p.c. with a white male, and highly inconvenient to identify it with a famous, liberal African-American. But I’m open to alternative, less ungenerous explanations for why Obama’s repeated attacks on p.c. have been met with such conspicuous silence.

In any case, Obama has concluded that the left, and especially the young left, has turned away in important respects from his political values. In the final year of his presidency, he has begun to defend his own ideals with increasing force and urgency.

Copyright © 2016, New York Media LLC (emphasis in original)

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/heres-obamas-best-argument-against-the-left.html [with comments]

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Obama’s Critique of Sanders

Without naming names, the president repeatedly offered his views on the Democratic candidates.
Getty Images

By Petey2
Saturday May 07, 2016 3:05 PM CDT

President Obama’s commencement speech today at Howard University firmly and repeatedly challenged the central message of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. (C-Span link offers video and full text [ http://www.c-span.org/video/?409107-1/president-obama-deliver-commencement-address-howard-university ].)

The president was not attacking Sanders’ ideology of fairness. But he was clearly separating himself from Sanders’ dogmatic insistence on revolutionary transformation.

If you want to make life fair, then you have to start with the world as it is.

The balance between idealism and pragmatism was clearly at the forefront of the president’s mind.

Democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100% right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right and you still have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral security, but you will not get what you want.

This is one reason there has been somewhat of a class divide between Bernie and Hillary supporters. The “moral security” Obama refers to is an emotional and intellectual luxury if it doesn’t contribute to substantive change.

I’ve heard Bernie supporters say their movement should be the left-wing equivalent of the Tea Party — a curious sentiment, considering how much karma the GOP is currently paying off thanks to years of the Tea Party’s impassioned “moral security.”

All too often, righteous passion leads to angry cynicism, because progress never matches one’s righteous vision. Here, the president parrots Bernie’s language directly:

If you do not get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. That will lead to more cynicism, not participation — and less participation and a downward spiral of more injustice, anger and despair. And that has never been a source of progress. That is how we cheat ourselves of progress.

The president is tapping into one of Hillary’s main responses to Bernie. It’s not enough to provide critiques of “the rigged system,” you need a strategy to actually get things done.

We need, said the president, “Not just awareness, but action.”

You have to go through life with more than just passion for change. You need a strategy. I will repeat that. You have to have a strategy. Not just awareness but action. Not just hashtags but votes. You see, change requires more than talking, it requires a program and organizing.

But, the president reminds the young graduates, shifting from righteous idealism to pragmatic action requires patience — as well as an acceptance of incrementalism.

To shape our collective future [we need to] bend it in the direction of justice, freedom and equality.

The word “bend,” as in MLK’s famous line, is a reference to reality-based incrementalism. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Inherent in the concept of incrementalism is the concept of compromise. The guiding light is not whether you’ve righteously denounced “the whole rigged system.” It’s whether you’ve made the system better.

You know what? I will take better every time. I always tell my staff, better is good because you can consolidate your gains and then you move on to the next fight from a stronger position.

Allies who strategically push you to go further can help consolidate gains; on the other hand, critics who do nothing but gripe about you “selling out” only weaken your position.

Those who pile on to popular cynical narratives effectively handicap our agents of change. Cynicism only breeds more cynicism — which undermines progress, leading to further cynicism.

And people wonder, how come Obama has not got this or that done? In 2014, only two out of five Americans turned out [to vote]. You do not think that made the difference in terms of the Congress I have got to deal with? You do not think that made a difference? What would have happened if you turned out at 50%, 60%,70% all across this country? People try to make this political thing really complicated. Oh, what kind of reforms do we need and how do we have to do that? You know what? Just vote. It is math. If you had more votes than the other guy, you get to do what you want. It is not that complicated.

When we righteously insist that “the system” is totally fucked up (rather than needing repairs, as per usual), we are not only doing the Right’s political bidding, we are succumbing to a “catastrophizing [ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/02/1522105/-What-Is-Revolution ]” mindset. There’s always work to be done, but…

I tell you this because it is important to note progress. I tell you this not to lull you into complacency but to spur you into action. Because there is still so much more work to do, so many more miles to travel.

Pointing out things that have gotten better doesn’t always come naturally to Democrats. But failing to do so (and succumbing to a catastrophizing mindset) is a political failure.

America is a better place today than it was when I graduated from college. Let me repeat. America is by almost every measure better. It is also better than when I took office. That is a different story. […] I wanted to start by opening your eyes to the moment you are in. If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born and you did not know ahead of time who you were going to be, what nationality, or gender, what race — whether you would be rich, poor, gay or straight, what faith you would be born into — you would not choose 100 years ago. You would not choose the 1950s, the 1960s, or the 1970s. You would choose right now. [...] As complicated and sometimes impractical as the challenges may seem, the truth is that your generation is better positioned than any before you to meet those challenges, to flip the script.

From the beginning, President Obama has been knocked for his associations, and his willingness to listen to others. From the Right, it was Reverend Wright — or shaking hands with Raul Castro. From the Left, it was Wall Street, or his military advisers.

This is one of the things I find most troubling about Bernie: his pointed disdain for the idea of caring what “the bad guys” have to say. His willingness to dismiss members of the franchise with whom he disagrees is a sure sign that his presidency would likely be one of high righteousness, low effectiveness.

Change requires more than just speaking out. It requires listening as well. In particular, it requires listening to those with whom you disagree. And being prepared to compromise.

When I was a state senator, I led Illinois’ first racial profiling law and one of the first laws in the nation requiring the videotaping of confessions in capital cases. We were successful because early on I engaged with law enforcement. I did not say to them, you guys are so racist, you need to do something. And because we took the time to listen, we crafted legislation that was good for the police because it improved the trust and cooperation of the community, and it was good for the community who were less likely to be treated unfairly. And, I can say this unequivocally, without at least the acceptance of the police organization in Illinois, I could never have gotten those bills passed. Very simple. They would have blocked them.

Reminds me of his approach to dismantling “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Righteous liberals taunted him viciously for not going faster, or going alone, or for caring what the generals thought. Thank goodness he had the wisdom and patience to see the value of obtaining buy-in from the military. Now, instead of a fragile executive order, we have settled, permanent statutory change — for the better. It took time and effort, but that is what is known as “the penalty of democracy.”

The point is you need allies in a democracy. That is just the way it is. It can be frustrating and it can be slow. But history teaches us that the alternative to democracy is always worse.

Yes, that even means caring what a Kissinger has to say. (And no, Hillary did not call Kissinger her mentor; she merely said she would listen to him.)

In short, says our president, there’s certainly a place for blazing rhetoric, but it needs to be balanced with pragmatic, messy, imperfect action.

We remember Dr. King's soaring oratory. The power of his letter from a Birmingham jail. The march he led. But he also sat down with President Johnson in the Oval Office to try to get the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act passed. And those two bills were not perfect, just like the Emancipation Proclamation was a war document as much as it was some call for freedom. Those milestones of progress were not perfect, and they do not make up for centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, or eliminate racism or provide 40 acres and a mule. But they made things better.

© Kos Media, LLC (emphasis in original)

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/7/1524279/-Obama-s-Critique-of-Sanders [with comments]

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Bernie Supporters To Jump Ship, Vote Trump If Hillary Wins Nomination

Published on Feb 29, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Richard Reeves explains how bernie sanders supporters will defect over to trump if the democrats pick hillary as their nominee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVvWc0_QMEk [with comments]

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The Stigma of Openly Supporting Hillary Clinton

MARK RALSTON via Getty Images
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-juhl/the-stigma-of-openly-supporting-hillary-clinton_b_9952406.html (with comments)]

By Mary Juhl
May 10, 2016

Hillary Clinton spoke to a crowd of supporters in Los Angeles on Thursday, May 5. By all accounts, the atmosphere inside was initially warm and celebratory among the supporters gathered in the gymnasium of East Los Angeles College. But during Clinton’s speech, multiple anti-Clinton protesters were removed from the event after interrupting her, shouting, and chanting while she was speaking. She ended her speech early due to the interruptions and shouting from protesters in attendance.

As they left the gymnasium, Clinton’s supporters were forced to walk through a gauntlet of harassment. Anti-Clinton protesters lined the gym’s exit on both sides, and as attendees left, they shouted obscenities at Clinton’s supporters. “F*ck you!” one man screamed [ https://twitter.com/septemberdawnbo/status/728379048951320576 ] into a woman’s ears using a megaphone. Witnesses report that protesters called female Clinton Supporters gendered slurs and suggested [ http://thedailybanter.com/2016/05/sanders-shout-obscenities-clinton-rally/ ] the supporters commit suicide. According to twitter reports, one protester snatched a sign [ https://mobile.twitter.com/mattbermudezz/status/728470714131456000 ] reading “We love you Madam Prez!” out of a little girl’s hands and tore it up in front of her?—?Hillary had signed the poster herself. The protesters held signs reading “LIAR LIAR LIAR,” “HILLARY FOR PRISON,” and “BERNIE 2016.” Chants of “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie! [ https://twitter.com/SAConScene/status/728388122304598016 ]” echoed through the gauntlet.

I’ve never experienced anything close to the level of verbal assault endured by the Clinton supporters in East LA, but I learned quickly in this primary season that if I openly support Hillary Clinton, I will be confronted. When I speak positively about her online, I can expect to be swiftly reprimanded and even shamed by people who support other candidates. People I’ve always had friendly relationships with have called my integrity into question because I support the candidate who best represents my political priorities.

I’ve been called a “$hill” more times than I can count. I’ve been accused of being paid by Super PACs to support her publicly when in reality, I donate to Clinton’s campaign every month. I’ve been accused of voting with my genitals.

These comments aren’t coming from conservatives. Until this primary, I’ve never been at odds with other liberals. I never thought the words “Democratic Party” would carry a negative connotation to so many left-minded people. I’m not used to being labeled as one of the bad guys, and this primary has even made me empathize with Republicans who are villainized for their choices at the polls. During this primary, one constant remains: if I say something positive about Clinton, someone will show up to question my morality, my understanding of politics, or my competency as a voter.

It’s important to note that not all Bernie Sanders supporters feel inclined to attack Clinton supporters. Some of the people I’m closest to in this world support him, including my boyfriend and close friends. They have never attacked me for supporting Clinton, and we’ve had many thought-provoking discussions about the race. Unfortunately, the majority of my interactions with more radical Sanders supporters online have been the opposite of productive and respectful.

People absolutely have a right to disagree with me, and to ask me questions about why I support Clinton. I welcome political discussions, especially with people I disagree with. But the anti-Hillary vigilantes online aren’t interested in nuanced, civil discussions?—?they’re interested in shaming Hillary supporters and making them answer for all of Clinton’s perceived failings. It’s never “tell me which parts of her platform appeal to you. I have some concerns about X.” It’s always “How can you vote for a liar who is bought by corporate interests? How?!”

Hillary is not a perfect candidate. There are many valid criticisms of her, and she has certainly made mistakes in her 30-year political career. I don’t regard her as a pinnacle of political purity. In fact, I disagree with her on several issues. I agree with many people that we need campaign finance reform, and I see the hypocrisy in her calling for campaign finance reform while simultaneously benefiting from the current law. But to me, the presidency encompasses so much more than the mechanics of a campaign, and Hillary Clinton’s approach to policy aligns with my own more closely than any other candidate. I believe she is by far the most qualified candidate in either field to lead this country, and my support for her isn’t all about pragmatism?—?believe it or not, she inspires me. She has been attacked and knocked down and had her name dragged through the mud by Republicans for decades, and she is still standing, still fighting. I admire her resilience, her capacity for compromise, and her toughness. I support her with joy and without apology.

I’ve heard people question how it’s possible that Clinton is winning the election when you hear so little from her supporters online. One reason your Facebook feed isn’t brimming with glowing pro-Clinton posts is because when you say nice things about Hillary Clinton online, you will face a barrage of ridicule and spite from purer, more “progressive” liberals. If you know you’re undoubtedly going to be taken to task over posting a video clip that inspired you, you may think twice about sharing it. Sometimes I don’t feel like playing defense with multiple people in the comment section who are attacking my integrity. It’s exhausting.

My goal is not to paint myself as a victim because people confront me over my support for Clinton. I’m not looking to be consoled because someone was mean to me on the internet. I don’t expect people to validate or celebrate me for supporting her. But the onslaught of ideological purity tests projected by anti-Hillary revolutionaries isn’t inspiring, and it’s not a catalyst for change. There’s nothing admirable about dismissing and villainizing people you disagree with, and I long for a primary race where we approach each other with our hearts and minds open to an array of perspectives and opinions.

We’ve all witnessed the gradual destruction of the Republican party as a result of the Tea Party’s rise. Increasingly, factions of the left seem to be following their example of radicalism, intolerance, and rumbling hatred. We are better than this. We have an opportunity to create positive change in our country and in our world, but that won’t happen if we divide ourselves into the worthy and the unworthy, the revolutionary and the dreaded establishment, the ideologically pure and the evil status quo. I implore every liberal voter to consider what’s truly at stake in this election. We are going up against a bigoted demagogue who threatens the safety and the civil rights of millions of Americans. The idea of a Trump presidency is no longer a fantasy for misogynists and racists, it is a reality we must fight.

I don’t expect Bernie Sanders supporters to become cheerleaders for Hillary. I don’t expect them to make calls, donate, knock on doors, or sing her praises. We $hills can take care of that. But if you claim to value the rights of millions of your fellow Americans, if you believe in progressive goals, if you follow Bernie’s philosophy of “Not me. Us.” I do expect you to vote blue.

There is nothing progressive about intolerance and hatred. If we come to consider compromise a destructive force in democracy, we all lose. It is not revolutionary to berate people you disagree with until they give up and shut up. We will not achieve progress by tearing each other apart because of our differences?—?change will only come when we learn to work together despite those differences. As Hillary says, there is much more that unites us than divides us. Let’s come together to defeat the evil we face with all the determination and strength we can muster.

Copyright 2016 Mary Juhl (emphasis in original)

https://medium.com/@maryjuhl/the-stigma-of-openly-supporting-hillary-clinton-4db30b42aced [with comments] [also at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-juhl/the-stigma-of-openly-supporting-hillary-clinton_b_9952406.html (with comments)]

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Drunk Bernie Supporters Run Amok

Published on Apr 1, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Rob Dew interviews people on the streets of Appleton Wisconsin about how they feel about Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVoUgJV1yCw [with comments]

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Bernie Sanders, the Zombie Candidate

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It’s already over, and now he’s just causing havoc. I’ve seen firsthand how much damage this kind of candidacy can do.

By David Wade
May 12, 2016

When he first decided to run for president, Bernie Sanders had a goal in mind: to start a political revolution by getting big money out of politics.

If he wants to do it—if Sanders wants to build a lasting movement to fight money’s outsize influence—he has to close one door to open another. The transition from contender to gracious supporter of the nominee isn’t easy for any presidential candidate, but he needs to make it, and soon.

We already know Sanders isn’t going to win the Democratic Party’s nomination; Hillary Clinton has amassed more than 92 percent of the delegates needed to secure the nomination, and she’ll easily pick up the rest. So right now, Sanders’ campaign is the walking dead: a zombie. And having worked for John Kerry during the slugfest of the 2004 primaries, I’ve seen up close how much damage this sort of prolonged "zombie" candidacy can inflict on the eventual nominee—and what’s ultimately at stake for the country.

I don’t claim that the dragged-out primary made the difference in November 2004; the race came down to the wire, and big forces—including post-9/11 anxiety and “Swift Boat” smears [ http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2004/any-questions ]—loomed large. But in presidential campaigns, the one resource that’s never renewable is time. Zombie candidates can’t win the nomination, but they squander vast amounts of time and slowly chip away at the prohibitive front-runner. Some of the damage is obvious—the endless series of public dents in the candidate’s reputation; some are subtle, noticeable in ways that perhaps only political operatives can appreciate.

It’s an article of faith in politics that competitive primaries create stronger nominees, and I witnessed this firsthand as well. Kerry grew immensely as a candidate in the course of being tested by rivals from Dick Gephardt to Howard Dean; ditto for Barack Obama in 2008. Healthy competition is a good thing. But continuing to contest a primary after your path to victory disappears is not healthy; it actively hinders your would-be partisan ally.

Before spring began in 2004, it was clear that the process had produced a nominee. But deep into primary season, after a winning streak that knocked out most of our opponents, the campaigns of Dean, Wesley Clark and John Edwards lingered on. Even as they were on life support, their organizations took needlessly hard shots at Kerry at the same time Republicans were inundating the presumptive Democratic nominee with a daily barrage of attacks.

By February 15, 2004, 16 statewide caucuses and primaries had completed, and Edwards had carried only his birth state, South Carolina. That evening, Edwards used a debate in Wisconsin to hammer Kerry on trade and spending. When Kerry, who had won 14 of the first 16 contests, started to talk about taking on President George W. Bush in the general election, Edwards pounced. “Not so fast, John Kerry,” he said. “We got a whole group of primaries coming up, and I, for one, intend to fight.” Just north of one week later, Bush gleefully made his first public speech attacking Kerry and kicked off the general election with biting television ads—all while our campaign was hunkered down fighting in Super Tuesday states that we knew wouldn’t be competitive in the general election.

On Super Tuesday, we won nine of the 10 states—and spent plenty of money to do it. But that’s what you have to do when doomed primary opponents don’t accept reality. All the while, the Bush campaign publicized the Democratic attacks on Kerry; they were overjoyed to receive a liberal version of in-kind contributions to the Republican National Committee.

There was something surreal about knowing that doomed campaigns of fellow Democrats were aggressively peddling opposition research, and that candidates whose fates had been sealed were still publicly labeling [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/01/dean-attacks-kerry-on-special-interests/8d1e7311-c832-4c5e-81ef-53f72ebfd369/ ] their party’s soon-to-be nominee as “the handmaiden of special interests.” We were forced to respond. We were forced to spend limited money on the airwaves, buying time to run ads that would be long forgotten by November—all while an incumbent Republican president stockpiled resources. We were less than four years removed from watching Ralph Nader and disaffected liberals throw an election to Bush, yet these flailing campaigns seemed incapable of resisting the danger of repeating that mistake by damaging their own standard-bearer. Political campaigns can do many things, but they cannot recover lost time. The friendly-fire attacks compounded the difficulty of responding effectively to the parallel attacks made by Republicans. It postponed the work of unifying the Democratic Party and absorbing our rivals’ best operatives into our apparatus. It wasted campaign funds that could’ve been put to better use in the general election. And it stalled our ability to shift the campaign’s schedule and resources into an effort that could win the presidency, instead of one that would merely follow a nominating calendar.

In 2004, continued competition after the match was essentially over didn’t improve our campaign or candidate. It hurt the Democratic Party. Kerry would’ve benefited from a decent interval to recharge his batteries, reset for the fall, and focus the campaign entirely on the Republican attack machine.

Today, with Donald Trump all but guaranteed to be the Republican nominee, the general election electorate is beginning to tune in. At a time when voters could be comparing Trump and Secretary Clinton, the presumptive nominees, they’re instead seeing Clinton take shrapnel not just from the Republicans, but from Sanders.

Sanders has a stake in this. I hope he sees it. Sanders needs to think long and hard about the big cost of criticizing the now-prohibitive Democratic front-runner. He didn’t set out to become Trump’s best ghostwriter for the general election, but that is the role continued attacks on Clinton risk earning him.

Make no mistake: Clinton is a crisper candidate than she was a year ago, a credit to her sparring partner from Vermont. She has upped her game. But at this point, it would be better for the Democratic Party if Clinton could focus on the asymmetric political warfare to come from Trump—which she could do right now if she didn’t have to maintain a second front battling a pesky primary opponent who cannot win.

Without math or momentum on his side, isn’t it better for Sanders to finish the campaign as a happy warrior and build a long-term movement for campaign finance reform? Or would he rather be remembered for damaging the Democratic standard-bearer when we have to crush Trump and win back the Senate in November? The best path for Sanders is also the best path for his newly adopted political party.

Sanders has already changed the political conversation in 2016. Whether wage inequality, middle-class pain, or the distorting role of money in politics, he has made a mark. But if the last wheezes of Sanders’ 2016 efforts echo those of Jerry Brown’s campaign in 1992—i.e., attacking a Clinton personally instead of advocating core issues with a positive agenda—the issues that Sanders cares about will suffer.

What’s the alternative for Sanders? If he is serious about creating lasting political change—and I believe he is—he should start a national movement to drive money out of politics. Sanders could harness his enormous grass-roots fundraising network and the cash it has stockpiled—and can replenish repeatedly—to elect candidates from the White House to the Congress to the state and local levels who are committed to repealing Citizens United.

He could target Senate Republicans in states like New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, inspiring voters there to “feel the Bern” and defeat the incumbents. He could hold those new senators accountable and enlist them in his quest to rid big money from the political system.

He could help Hillary Clinton win big and sweep in a Democratic majority in the Senate. He could become a powerful committee chairman. He could return to the next Senate as one of its most influential players.

And for an Independent socialist from Vermont who started this campaign as an asterisk, that’s a political revolution in itself.

David Wade was a senior communications strategist on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign.

© 2016 POLITICO LLC

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-primary-campaign-bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-2004-lessons-kerry-dean-edwards-gephardt-213884 [with comments]

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Bernie Supporters Exposed

Published on Apr 1, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Rob Dew talks with Bernie Sanders supporters at a Bernie Sanders rally to find out just why they're feeling the Bern.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OuYpueEM5o [with comments]

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Ralph Nader isn't content with just giving us George W. Bush, now he wants to give Trump a boost

Ralph Nader, still the best friend the Republicans ever had
AFP/Getty Images

By kos
Friday May 13, 2016 1:04 PM CDT

Ralph Nader is an ass, yes. But he’s also a wrong ass [ http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-05-13/ralph-nader-donald-trump-has-done-some-good-hillary-clintons-winning-by-dictatorship ].

But in an interview with U.S. News, Nader expressed more positive thoughts about Trump's candidacy than Clinton's [...] “He's questioned the trade agreements. He's done some challenging of Wall Street – I don't know how authentic that is. He said he's against the carried interest [ http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/09/17/gop-contenders-call-for-closing-carried-interest-loophole ] racket, for hedge funds. He's funded himself and therefore attacked special interest money, which is very important.”

Remember, even Donald Trump himself says not to take anything he says seriously [ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/13/1526135/-Trump-says-you-shouldn-t-take-Trump-seriously ]. Nader pretends that he shares some sort of ideology with Trump, when Trump is explicitly making shit up as he goes along, exhibiting no ideology beyond self-worship. And of course, it’s telling he completely ignores Trump’s racism, bigotry, and misogyny.

When asked what positive contributions Clinton has made to the 2016 campaign, Nader called her a "corporatist, militarist Democrat" who would have been defeated by Sanders if every state held an open primary.

Clinton has won more open primaries than Bernie Sanders, by far. It’s not even close. The only reason Sanders has as many delegates as he has is because of low-turnout caucuses, which he has won 11-2 (excluding American territories). Clinton has won primaries 21-7. If we’re talking open primaries, she’s won those 13-6, and those include the big delegate-rich states of Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

"She's going to win by dictatorship. Twenty-five percent of superdelegates are cronies, mostly. They weren't elected. They were there in order to stop somebody like Bernie Sanders, who would win by the vote," he says.

Clinton has a popular vote edge of over three million, yet she’s going to win “by dictatorship”? Dear god, what a stupid thing to say. Utterly moronic. And it’s not Clinton depending on the superdelegates to win, it’s Sanders trying to spur a “contested convention” by having the supers abandon the primary-season winner of both the delegate count and the popular vote.

And if those delegates exist to stop people like Bernie Sanders, why didn’t they back up Clinton in 2008 and stop Barack Obama? The supers are utterly superfluous, irrelevant to the current contest. Had Sanders won the primary, the supers would be getting behind him as well, because at this point, they are little more than a rubber stamp. Should they be eliminated? Sure! Do they currently matter? Nope.

To date, Clinton has captured 3 million more [ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/democratic_vote_count.html ] total votes than Sanders, but Nader argues the results would be different if independents were allowed to participate in each state.

The actual vote results prove otherwise. But even if true, it’s irrelevant. This is a Democratic primary. It costs nothing to be a Democrat. So if you want a say in the Democratic primary, then become a Democrat. Otherwise, you don’t get a say. You can vote in the Green Party primary, or the Independent Party primary, or take your sanctimonious “I’m too good to be a member of any party” self and let others make the decision for you. But to whine that non-Democrats don’t have a say in a Democratic decision-aking process is ridiculous.

"I think [Sanders] made very few mistakes. He raised a lot of money, so he was viable, from small contributions. He didn't back down on his record of 35 years. He wasn't given enough debates ... he couldn't do anything about closed primaries. And he couldn't do anything about the superdelegates. But he almost won and he would've won," Nader says. "He would've defeated Trump easily, much more easily than [Clinton] would've defeated him. He doesn't produce gaffes. He's very consistent and he's scandal-free. What politician 35 years in office is scandal-free?"

The idea that Republicans wouldn’t run hog wild with Sanders’ record is bizarre. That’s the difference between Clinton and Sanders—she’s already been through the wringer (from both the Right AND the Left), while Sanders hasn’t been touched. Her numbers have her negatives baked in, Sanders’ don’t have his. I’m not saying Sanders couldn’t win a general, he could. If we’ve learned anything this cycle, it’s that we are so polarized as a nation, that demographics truly are destiny. But his numbers would look close to Clinton’s when all was said and done.

The lack of early debates was one of the Clinton campaign’s biggest miscalculations. Debates didn’t move Sanders’ numbers, they improved Clinton’s, allowing her to define herself apart from the caricatures painted by her detractors. She could’ve solidified her position early with more and earlier debates. That was stupid on her part.

He “couldn’t do anything about closed primaries”? I know something he could’ve done: won Democratic votes. That’s something. You know, winning the support of members of the party he aimed to lead. These are the same voters who rejected Clinton in 2008 and voted for the insurgent. It can happen if you run the right kind of campaign.

He couldn’t do anything about the supers? What exactly have the supers done that has undermined Sanders? I mean, sure, they aren’t overturning the will of the primary voters by coronating him despite his losses, but that’s not the fault of the supers.

Ultimately, Nader wouldn’t say who he’d vote for in November. The answer seems easy, right? Shouldn’t he be a Jill Stein supporter? Man, he can’t even be loyal to the Greens in the end. A complete asshole.

© Kos Media, LLC (emphasis in original)

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/13/1526205/-Ralph-Nader-isn-t-content-with-just-giving-us-George-W-Bush-now-he-wants-to-give-Trump-a-boost [with comments]

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Smartest Man At A Bernie Rally Found: Cassius Clay

Published on Apr 1, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Meet the smartest man we found at Bernie rally in Green Bay Wisconsin. Cassius Clay was intrigued by both populist candidates Bernie and Trump and decided to take time out to see for himself each candidate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7RZazL4nQQ [with comments]

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Is Sanders 2016 Becoming Nader 2000?

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How Bernie could cost Hillary the election.

By Bill Scher
May 16, 2016

Bernie Sanders, for all his talk of revolution, never wanted to be Ralph Nader. He has a long history of keeping the Democratic Party at arm’s length, but he also has a long history of rejecting spoiler bids. Since 1992, he has always endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, snubbing Nader’s four left-wing third-party campaigns. He became a Democrat to run for president instead of keeping his “(I)” and following in Nader’s footsteps. He has pledged to support Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination and has ripped Donald Trump at every opportunity.

But even if Sanders isn’t deliberately trying to replicate the electoral trauma inflicted by Nader in 2000—when he probably [sic - definitely, absolutely, unquestionably] cost Al Gore the presidency—Bernie’s lingering presence in the Democratic primary threatens to produce a similar result in November: delegitimizing the eventual Democratic nominee in the eyes of the left and sending many critics, if not to Trump, then to the Green Party’s Jill Stein or the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson.

In the first poll to assess the impact of third-party candidates, Public Policy Polling [ http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/05/gop-quickly-unifies-around-trump-clinton-still-has-modest-lead.html ] found last week that the inclusion of Stein and Johnson shaves 2 percentage points off Clinton’s lead over Trump. Conversely, the minor party duo loses a combined 2 points when Sanders is tested as the Democratic nominee, indicating that Sanders’ voters account for Clinton’s reduced standing.

A couple points, a couple million voters, is no big deal to Clinton if she’s trouncing Trump. But if he makes it a race, Democrats may find their political post-traumatic stress disorder from 2000 flaring up.

And while Clinton would be the most enraged if she suffers Gore’s fate, it is not in Sanders’ interest to join Nader on the Democratic Party’s unofficial Wall of Shame. His ultimate goal is to remake the party in his progressive populist image. He can’t do that if his name is uttered by rank-and-file Democrats only when seething.

That means Sanders has to strategize very carefully as he prepares to leave his mark at the convention. How can he bend the party to his will without breaking it?

One way would be to follow the lead of Jesse Jackson in 1988, who remained in the race for the entire primary. But when he came to the Democratic convention with 38 percent of the pledged delegates [ https://books.google.com/books?id=zSis8eWVwvYC&lpg=PA14&ots=hJ6wLlegE-&dq=jesse%20jackson%20texas%20caucus%201988&pg=PA14#v=snippet&q=1%2C075%20delegates&f=false ], he went to great lengths to keep his team focused on changing the party over the long haul rather than disrupting the election (though Michael Dukakis still lost). “I’m going to ask you to do a hard thing,” Jackson said to his delegates, “Put your focus on why we're here. If you're following my lead, then reflect my spirit, attitude and discipline. We don't have the time to fill up the media airwaves with pollution.”

A runner-up staying in until the last presidential primary vote is counted, by itself, has never been tantamount to a fatal party schism. Clinton’s reluctance in the spring of 2008 to accept the delegate math did not prevent Barack Obama from becoming the first Democrat to break 51 percent of the popular vote since Lyndon B. Johnson. Jerry Brown’s refusal to endorse his 1992 rival Bill Clinton proved to be about as damaging as a spitball. In the spring of 1976 [ http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/what-nevertrump-can-learn-from-anybody-but-carter-213860 ], Brown and Sen. Frank Church entered the presidential race—and won several late contests—in a futile attempt to stop Jimmy Carter from winning the White House.

Jackson didn’t quit before it was officially over for the same reason Sanders won’t: more delegates means more influence at the convention. But that’s where Sanders faces a paradox. The potential of using his delegates to make her convention disorderly—forcing floor fights over platform language, nominating himself on the floor, withholding his endorsement—is what gives him leverage. But to unleash convention chaos risks a repeat of 1968 [ http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/bernie-sanders-eugene-mccarthy-1968-213828 ], when efforts by Eugene McCarthy’s delegates to wrest the nomination from Hubert Humphrey and include an anti-Vietnam War plank to the platform failed on the convention floor, prompting a livid McCarthy to leave the convention without endorsing the ticket. He gave an extremely reluctant endorsement in the campaign’s final days, and his unwillingness to rally his supporters possibly tipped five states to the Republican winner Richard Nixon.

It seems unlikely that Sanders would renege on his pledge to back the eventual nominee, but a passive-aggressive “nondorsement”—just keeping quiet—or a feeble campaign trail schedule could still stir hostile feelings among his supporters that the party establishment treated their campaign unfairly and views their revolution with disdain.

How might Sanders walk the fine line he needs to—pushing hard for his ideal platform without poisoning the party well?

Perhaps the most potent move he could make without sacrificing his policy agenda would be to declare, after the last ballot is cast in the District of Columbia on June 14, that Hillary Clinton won the majority of the pledged delegates “fair and square.”

A faction of Sanders supporters continues to circulate notions that the game has been rigged, either by the rules— unelected superdelegates and primaries closed to independents—or by outright cheating, with the long lines to vote in Arizona and Bernie-friendly early exit poll data looming large in online conspiracy theories. Sanders has not done much to promulgate the conspiracies, but neither has he tried hard to shut them down. He does regularly complain about superdelegates and closed primaries, despite the fact that he lost 13 of the 21 primaries so far in which independents could vote, and that the distribution of superdelegates on the basis of the popular vote would not give him the overall delegate lead.

In other words, he didn’t lose because of the rules. But if his supporters are left with the impression that rules were designed by the party to thwart their ambitions, then they will have little hesitation to bolt the party.

Sanders could ditch his strident anti-establishment tone and help disabuse his supporters of their suspicions, closing the electoral chapter of the campaign with a speech along the lines of: “Our campaign performed exponentially better than anyone predicted. We worked together to raise enough money to be heard, and our message was heard. We fought for more debates, we got them and we engaged in a substantive dialogue of ideas. We should take enormous pride in winning [probably by then] more than 20 states and 45 percent of the pledged delegates, while we also tip our hat to Hillary Clinton for winning a little more. Our party’s commitment to democracy gave us a fair shot, and the proof is in how well we did in the face of the long odds.”

Declaring the process to be on the level would effectively table a floor fight over the primary process rules that some Sanders allies have been hankering for [ http://www.wsj.com/video/sanders-devotees-warn-of-drama-for-clinton-at-dnc/093B7952-D3DD-4913-8FD6-F53D6CD650AC.html ], and keep the convention spotlight on what Sanders ran to accomplish in the first place: to popularize policy proposals that would break up the banks, provide free college, extend Medicare for all and eliminate corporate campaign cash.

An additional subtext of such a message would be to assure his supporters, “the Democratic Party is our home,” countering the message being sold by the third-party candidates that it is impossible for Sandernistas to advance their revolution within the confines of the Democratic Party.

In 1988, Jesse Jackson faced a similar challenge in keeping his restless supporters in the party fold, while also pressing the Dukakis camp for substantive concessions.

So he took a highly calibrated approach to the party. He negotiated with Dukakis’ aides a platform that reflected much of his liberal agenda [ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/is-the-democrats-new-harmony-for-real-19880908 ], though scrubbed of elements deemed too controversial. Three planks left out were brought to the floor for debate, but Jackson did not force a floor vote [ http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1988-07-20/news/8802110930_1_jackson-proposal-dukakis-campaign-plank ] on the most divisive of the three: “self-determination” for Palestinians.

The moral victory of exercising influence over the platform may have looked ephemeral in the years that followed: The defeat of Dukakis was blamed on excessive liberalism, leading to the 1992 nomination of Bill Clinton who took the party in a moderate direction. But Jackson in 2000 enthused [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/03/jesse-jackson-mother-jones-interview ] at how much he was able to influence the White House in the Clinton years as well as catapult his top staffers into the Democratic Party apparatus. And had he not kept his supporters inside the Democratic tent, neither Clinton’s presidency nor Obama’s more liberal administration would have been possible.

Sanders never endorsed Nader, but he did endorse Jackson in 1988. If he wants his 2016 campaign to leave a lasting legacy on the Democratic Party, he’ll walk Jackson’s path at the convention, and do everything he can to prevent his supporters from walking Nader’s.

Bill Scher is the senior writer at the Campaign for America’s Future, and co-host of the Bloggingheads.tv show “The DMZ” along with the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis.

© 2016 POLITICO LLC (emphasis in original)

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/is-sanders-2016-becoming-nader-2000-213893 [with comments]

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Bernie Socialists Worship Capitalist Products

Published on Apr 3, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Madison Wisconsin is a Bernie Sanders socialist stronghold, what do the residents think about the coming election?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYmFXZboM6w [with comments]

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It's Time for Bernie Sanders to Pack Up and Go Home

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Let's talk about this huge mess in Nevada over *four* delegates.

By Charles P. Pierce
May 16, 2016

For months now, I've been searching for the perfect piece of YouTube flotsam to sum up my feelings about the noisy and petulant endgame of the Democratic presidential primary process.

This is it [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz2LaJOVAiA (next below, as embedded; with comments)]:

(I am Michael Palin as Mr. Bounder, right about at the four-minute mark of the video, in case you were wondering.)

The latest chapter came at this weekend's Democratic state convention in Nevada, where the Sanders faction went completely bananas because the rules by which you had to be a Democrat to participate in a Democratic convention were simply too much for them to bear. Senator Barbara Boxer got booed. Punches and chairs were thrown.

Per The Washington Post [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/15/heres-what-happened-at-saturdays-dramatic-nevada-democratic-convention/ ], with cool video:

Nevada's process for sending delegates to the national convention in Philadelphia is among the most complex. When the state caucused in late February, the fourth state on the calendar for the Democratic Party, the results of that process favored Hillary Clinton. Twenty-three of the 35 total bound delegates were given out proportionally in the state's four congressional districts, giving Clinton a delegate lead of 13 to 10. The results of the caucus suggested that after the state convention—which bound the state's seven at-large delegates and five delegates who are elected officials or party leaders—Clinton would end up with a 20-to-15 lead over Bernie Sanders, with Clinton winning one more delegate from the at-large pool (4-to-3) and one more from the party-leader pool (3-to-2) than Sanders.

First of all, who elects anybody with a system that apparently was designed at a marmoset technical college? This sounds like something Kim Jong-Il would have thought up on the golf course between his 11th and 12th holes-in-one.

Second, the ill-feeling in this election began when Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the mysteriously still-employed chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, rather transparently tried to grease the skids for Hillary Rodham Clinton way back in 2015.

In addition, there was more than a little disinformation being spread on the electric Twitter machine; some enterprising gnome tweeted out that the Sanders contingent booed Nina Turner, a Sanders loyalist who has been the best surrogate on either side.

JonathanDanielBrown
@JonathanDBrown
@ninaturner One troll reported that Bernie supporters booed you and within minutes @JoyAnnReid, @govhowarddean, and @goldietaylor pounced.
4:29 PM - 14 May 2016
[ https://twitter.com/JonathanDBrown/status/731627498606235648 (with comments)]

Nina Turner
@ninaturner
I was not booed @JonathanDBrown Folks were upset w/process #nvdemsconvention leaders. I was shown love by @BernieSanders supporters today.
6:51 PM - 14 May 2016 - Paradise, NV, United States
[ https://twitter.com/ninaturner/status/731633104150921216 (with comments)]

That being said, this whole mess was over four freaking delegates, and the Sanders people should know better than to conclude what has been a brilliant and important campaign by turning it into an extended temper tantrum.

I voted for Bernie Sanders. I even wrote about why I did [ http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a42499/i-voted-for-bernie/ ] here at this very shebeen. But if anybody thinks that, somehow, he is having the nomination "stolen" from him, they are idiots.

And, no, I don't want to talk about it.

©2016 Hearst Communications, Inc.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a44904/nevada-democratic-convention/

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Lost Bernie Supporters Get Trump Education

Published on Apr 4, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Poor Bernie supporters can't find the venue of their socialist savior so they get directions and an education from a Trump supporter @joedjm1978

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO9KDj-clRU [with (over 5,000) comments]

===

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
I don't want to hit Crazy Bernie Sanders too hard yet because I love watching what he is doing to Crooked Hillary. His time will come!
3:26 AM - 11 May 2016
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/730343346204508160 [with comments]

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Sanders: I'm the stronger candidate to defeat Trump

Andrea Mitchell Reports
5/11/16

Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, joins NBC's Andrea Mitchell to discuss his win in West Virginia, his opinion on superdelegates, unifying the Democratic party and the fight against Donald Trump. Watch his full interview here. Duration: 11:54

©2016 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell-reports/watch/sanders-i-m-the-stronger-candidate-to-defeat-trump-683610179595 [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZQIE6uoSPg [with comments]

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Trump Insider Blames Hillary If Suicided

Published on May 12, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Roger Stone sets the record straight on who would be to blame if he's ever found dead of a "suicide".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgc8f1Tp-8Q [with comments]

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50% of Bernie Voters Pick Trump Over Hillary

Published on May 12, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Half of Bernie Sanders supporters would vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, a Fox News exit poll in West Virginia revealed.
http://www.infowars.com/shock-50-of-bernie-voters-pick-trump-over-hillary/
http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/05/10/exit-poll-almost-half-sanders-voters-say-theyd-vote-trump-over-clinton

[originally aired May 11, 2016]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVNibsaAKtk [with comments]

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Will Bernie Sanders' Supporters Jump To Trump?

Published on Mar 2, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

Infowars reporter Richard Reeves speaks to a supporter at UT Austin who says he and other Sanders' supporters will vote for Trump if Hillary gets Democrat nomination.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhwBHm9dQqg [with comments]

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Infowars' Message To Bernie Sanders Supporters

Published on Mar 9, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

A message from Infowars to the voters behind democrat presidential candidate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5iQC4Q0Da8 [with comments]

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Bernie Sanders Supporter Compares Voting For Hillary Clinton To Shooting Yourself

Published on May 11, 2016 by Tea Party 6 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3om2-Rl4zU_gkKGCrxyWA , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3om2-Rl4zU_gkKGCrxyWA/videos ]

MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff was asking people around Los Angeles what they thought of the presidential primaries. One supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) had an interesting and entertaining answer when Soboroff asked him about the general election. Sanders supporter Frank Ontiveros was riding the train when Soboroff asked him for his opinion. “We’ve got a big election coming up. Have you thought about who you are going to support yet?” Soboroff asked. “Not quite there. We’re going to see where it turns out with the Republicans. Definitely not Hillary,” Ontiveros said. “So, the underdog’s who I’m thinking about.”

“So, you’re a no-Hillary guy. Underdog, meaning Bernie?” Soboroff asked. “That’s correct,” Ontiveros said. “OK, but if Bernie doesn’t win, and it’s Hillary versus Donald Trump in the general election, what are you going to do?” Soboroff said. “It’s like shooting yourself or stabbing yourself, one or the other,” Ontiveros said. California has its primaries for both the Republican and Democratic parties on Tuesday, June 7. Trump is the only Republican candidate still in the race while Clinton has a wide lead over Sanders in delegates. Clinton also is leading Sanders in the polls in California, which has a large number of delegates at stake.

Washington Free Beacon: Sanders Supporter Compares Voting For Hillary Clinton To Shooting Yourself
http://freebeacon.com/politics/sanders-supporter-compares-voting-hillary-clinton-shooting-yourself/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2uVAIhXhVc [with comments]

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#BernieOrBust? Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and Bill Maher Have Some Advice For You

Posted by Scott Hopkins at 2:22 PM Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Feeling the #BernieOrBust these days? Let's talk about that for a second.

I understand the enthusiasm for Bernie because I'm equally as enthusiastic about Hillary. But holding your vote hostage if your candidate doesn't win the nomination is not an option.

Certainly not this year. Probably not any year.

And rest assured that don't exclude myself from this principle: If Sanders somehow makes the most unlikely of comebacks to defeat Clinton, I will certainly vote for him in November. Because Donald Trump is not an option.

This also held true for me in 2008, when (after healing a heart broken by Hillary's defeat) I proudly supported and voted for Barack Obama. Because McCain/Palin was not an option.

But you don't have to take just my advice, because several very influential, high-profile voices on the left have been saying the same thing.

For instance, Michael Moore loudly endorsed Bernie on the eve of Iowa caucuses and continues to have plenty of differences with Hillary. But when it comes to the general election, it's a no-brainer [ http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/05/michael-moore-would-support-hillary-clinton-222967 ]:

Michael Moore is an avowed Bernie Sanders supporter and has been for years. But while the outspoken filmmaker and liberal activist says he’s with Sanders till the end, he quickly notes he’ll support former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton if she’s the nominee.

“Oh absolutely. She’s better than the alternative and she will do some good," Moore said in an interview on Sunday.

Then there's this philosophical giant [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/noam-chomsky-supports-hillary-clinton-218192 (video of and more re the Chomsky-Hasan interview included at/see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120986999 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120897208 and preceding and following)] who uses the same a-word when it comes to his support in November:

Noam Chomsky would “absolutely” choose Hillary Clinton over the Republican nominee if he lived in a swing state, but her primary challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, “doesn’t have much of a chance," the MIT professor and intellectual said in a recent interview...

“Oh absolutely…my vote would be against the Republican candidate,” Chomsky told Al Jazeera English’s Mehdi Hasan...

Chomsky cited “enormous differences” between the two major political parties. “Every Republican candidate is either a climate change denier or a skeptic who says we can’t do it,” Chomsky said. “What they are saying is, ‘Let’s destroy the world.’ Is that worth voting against? Yeah.”

Bill Maher has also repeatedly made clear that he supports Sanders for the nomination, but he can see the writing on the wall and used a different a-word [ http://www.nationalmemo.com/sanders-celebrity-cohort-split-over-bernie-or-bust/ ] regarding the choice in November.

Last week on Real Time with Bill Maher, the brazenly liberal host tore into Sanders supporters who claim they’d rather vote for Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. After outlining key differences between a Trump and Clinton presidency, Maher proclaimed, “That’s your choice. Don’t be assholes about it.”

These are just three examples, but there's plenty more where that came from and much more on the way shortly. All you have to do is listen.

Bernie or bust? Are you sure about that? Because what it really means is that you're fine with our entire country going "bust" in every way imaginable (economically, morally, judicially...you name it) for many years to come under the disastrous rule of *shudder* President Donald J. Trump.

If you care about what Bernie Sanders has stood for his whole life and what he continues to fight for to this day, "bust" is simply not an option.

Copyright 2016 HILLARY HQ (emphasis in original)

http://www.hillaryhq.com/2016/05/bernieorbust-michael-moore-noam-chomsky.html [with comments] [also at http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/11/1525536/--BernieOrBust-Michael-Moore-Noam-Chomsky-and-Bill-Maher-Have-Some-Advice-For-You (with comments)]

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One-on-one with Bernie Sanders

All In with Chris Hayes
5/11/16

Chris Hayes talks to Senator Bernie Sanders about his path forward on the heels of his second primary win in two weeks. Duration: 7:29

Almost...There...

May 13, 2016
http://www.hillaryhq.com/2016/05/almostthere.html [with comment]

©2016 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/one-on-one-with-bernie-sanders-684019267666 [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g18F8V0PrhA [with comments]

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Sanders campaign: Democrats 'court disaster' in Clinton

Published on May 12, 2016 by CNN [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCupvZG-5ko_eiXAupbDfxWw / http://www.youtube.com/user/CNN , http://www.youtube.com/user/CNN/videos ]

Bernie Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver tells CNN that Democrats are courting disaster if they nominate Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders Campaign Calls Hillary Clinton Nomination ‘Courting Disaster’
May 12th, 2016
http://www.mediaite.com/online/bernie-sanders-campaign-calls-hillary-clinton-nomination-courting-disaster/ [with comments]

Sanders' fundraising letter: Nominating Clinton is courting 'disaster'
May 12, 2016
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2016/05/12/Sanders-fundraising-letter-Nominating-Clinton-is-courting-disaster/3921463078536/ [with comments]

Jeff Weaver’s Desperate Fundraising Email Confirms Our Prediction About Bernie’s Cash Crunch
May 11, 2016
https://bluenationreview.com/weaver-sends-email-casting-a-hillary-nomination-as-courting-disaster/

The Sanders campaign’s phony math on superdelegates

“During the course of 2008, over 120 superdelegates switched their quote-unquote allegiance in that process. In fact, there is a lot of movement of superdelegates in these contests.”
— Jeff Weaver, Sanders campaign manager, in an interview on MSNBC [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbj-lHPy0hc (just above; no comments yet)], May 2, 2016

May 5, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/05/the-sanders-campaigns-phony-math-on-superdelegates/ [with comments]

Fact-Checker Calls Out Bernie Sanders Campaign Manager Lyin’ Jeff Weaver

May 5th, 2016
http://www.mediaite.com/print/fact-checker-calls-out-bernie-sanders-campaign-manager-lyin-jeff-weaver/ [with a non-YouTube version of the YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9BmfDtI1CM (no comments yet), just above and another video clip embedded, and comments]

MUST WATCH VIDEO: Chris Mathews Hardball with Jeff Weaver - 4-19-2016

Published on Apr 22, 2016 by Bernie Volunteer [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCPzUwP1S6pNVBZzZnFyn8w , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCPzUwP1S6pNVBZzZnFyn8w/videos ]
FOR THE PEOPLE . BY THE PEOPLE . OF THE PEOPLE
https://BernieSanders.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1awtVQ4-z7w [with comments]

Hardball with Chris Matthews, Transcript 4/19/2016
04/19/16
http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/hardball/2016-04-19 [no comments yet]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76BVgddvgxU [with comments] [original at http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/05/12/sanders-weaver-democrats-court-disaster-clinton-nr.cnn/video/playlists/atv-politics-original/ ]

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Rep. Steve Israel addresses Bernie Sanders' grievances

Published on May 12, 2016 by Fox News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXIJgqnII2ZOINSWNOGFThA / http://www.youtube.com/user/FoxNewsChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/FoxNewsChannel/videos ]

Sanders campaign suggests Democrats backing Clinton are courting 'disaster'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVuKkWjwR0Q [with comments]

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Hillary Clinton Embraces Progressive Federal Reserve Reforms

A Clinton campaign spokesman said on Thursday that “commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue.”
KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images

“Holy shit — that’s great news,” was one liberal economist’s reaction.

By Daniel Marans
05/12/2016 03:09 pm ET

Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton came out in favor of changes to the Federal Reserve that would reduce the number of bankers in key central bank positions on Thursday, marking a major coup for national progressive groups championing reform.

“The Federal Reserve is a vital institution for our economy and the wellbeing of our middle class, and the American people should have no doubt that the Fed is serving the public interest,” Jesse Ferguson, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said in a statement [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/12/hillary-clinton-to-support-federal-reserve-change-sought-by-liberals/ ]. “That’s why Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole as well as that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue.”

The campaign also provided insight into the type of Federal Reserve governors that Clinton would appoint.

“Secretary Clinton will also defend the Fed’s so-called dual mandate — the legal requirement that it focus on full employment as well as inflation — and will appoint Fed governors who share this commitment and who will carry out unwavering oversight of the financial industry,” Ferguson said.

The announcement brings the Democratic presidential front-runner closer to the position of her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Sanders proposed barring financial executives from sitting on the boards of the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks in an op-ed in The New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/opinion/bernie-sanders-to-rein-in-wall-street-fix-the-fed.html ] in December.

The Clinton campaign statement came in response to a letter to Fed chair Janet Yellen [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-democrats-federal-reserve-diversity-letter_us_5734a6a9e4b08f96c1825db1?zsezrecpsbnr9kke29 ] from 11 Democratic senators and 116 House Democrats. The letter, spearheaded by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), urged the Fed to appoint more women and people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds while expanding the representation of consumer and labor groups on regional Fed bank boards.

Currently, the vast majority of Fed bank board directors are white men. People representing either the financial industry or other major business sectors also occupy most of the seats.

The Fed’s control over monetary policy allows it to raise borrowing costs to head off inflation and reduce them to maximize employment. The members of Congress who wrote to Yellen argue that the disproportionate influence of financial officials and the lack of diversity at the Fed hamper its sensitivity to groups with a more precarious position in the job market.

Clinton had said virtually nothing about her agenda for the powerful central bank until now.

The Fed Up campaign, a coalition of progressive groups headed by the Center for Popular Democracy that has been at the forefront of recent efforts to make Federal Reserve reform a key part of the liberal agenda, confirmed that it has been in talks with the Clinton campaign for months.

“Secretary Clinton did the right thing today by coming out in favor of reforming the Federal Reserve,” said Ady Barkan, director of Fed Up. “We’re very excited that she listened to the voices of community leaders from around the country who have said that we need a Federal Reserve that reflects and represents the American people and that creates a strong economy for all.”

Some liberal economists previously noted that Clinton’s reticence about the Fed was inconsistent with her stated plans [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-1990s-economy_us_56e1ee56e4b0860f99d8675d ] to return the country to the prosperity of the late 1990s, which enabled widespread wage growth. They argue that the era’s well-distributed economic gains were due in no small part to the permissive monetary policies of the Federal Reserve.

Dean Baker, one such economist and a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, was elated to hear about Clinton’s remarks.

“Holy shit — that’s great news,” Baker said in an email upon receiving the news.

“While Senators Sanders, Warren, and others on the left side of the party took the lead, it appears there is now widespread agreement among top Democrats that the Fed has to redouble its commitment to full employment and to be more attentive to how its policies affect African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities,” Baker continued. “There is also agreement that the Fed’s current archaic structure needs to be changed.”

Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-progressive-fed-reforms_us_5734c8fce4b060aa78199d25 [with comments]

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This Bernie Bro Is With Her

Jim Young / Reuters

By David Vognar
Social Worker
05/12/2016 03:18 pm ET | Updated May 12, 2016

Within the past few weeks, the 2016 presidential election has taken clearer shape. Donald Trump’s rivals have all cowered and bowed out, making him the likely nominee for the Republicans. Hillary Clinton is the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, although Bernie Sanders has not yet begun to give up.

I supported Sanders and voted for him in the Illinois primary. I think that on the issues, he has proven himself to be bold, sincere and forward-thinking. I think that his campaign has molded Clinton’s in a positive way. But a nomination is not realistic. And I will vote for Clinton and the Democrats.

Clinton has been in politics for a long time, and while she doesn’t have the consistency of Sanders’s record, she was a very liberal [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-progressive_us_572cca08e4b0bc9cb0469098 (included in full in the post to which this is a reply)] senator during her time in Congress. She was a senator during the dark ages of George W. Bush’s presidency, when it was often hard to speak one’s mind. The entire country was deranged, so any missteps then should be understood as a product of the time. As a secretary of state, she performed valiantly. She does her homework, is a strategic thinker, has the savvy to strengthen relationships with our allies and would break ground as the first female president.

It’s important that the Dems win this presidency and retake the Senate. As the physicist Niels Bohr noted, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” Right now, the electoral map favors Hillary Clinton. But polling has been notoriously unreliable this election cycle. So let me toss whatever influence I have into imploring you the reader to vote against Trump and everything he represents. (Including, by the way, a foreign policy advisor [ http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/25/donald_trumps_top_foreign_adviser_joseph ] who is a Knight of Malta, which influenced the George W. Bush administration, as I previously reported [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-vognar/the-perils-of-messianism_b_6048136.html ].)

What does Donald Trump represent? As Huffington Post states [ http://www.poynter.org/2016/why-every-huffpost-article-about-donald-trump-calls-him-a-liar/394021/ ], “Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.”

He represents our worst urges when we should be voting for someone who represents our best aspirations. He lies and doubles back, then lies again. We must unite to prevent such a person from holding power. My fellow Bernie supporters, keep the vision Bernie has inspired in us. Keep reminding yourself that Hillary Clinton can dream big too and vote for her in the general election. And with this, we can keep Donald Trump out of the White House.

Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-vognar/this-bernie-bro-is-with-her_b_9906194.html [with comments]

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Take A Look Back At Hillary Clinton’s Most Badass Feminist Moments

Hillary Clinton has been fighting for women's rights for a looooong time.

“I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies ... but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession.”

By HP Originals
05/10/2016 01:19 pm ET

While presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has taken heat from some millennial feminists [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/05/why-millennial-feminists-don-t-like-hillary.html ], moments throughout her life reveal she hasn’t been shy about fighting for equality. Check out some of her trailblazing moments in the video above.

Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clintons-badass-feminist-moments_us_5730f264e4b0bc9cb047b7e6 [with embedded non-YouTube original of the YouTube, for the moment at least at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjZYXIfNnm0 (caption taken from; no comments yet), included above, and comments]

*

Hillary Rodham Clinton interview, 1979

Published on May 13, 2015 by AlphaX News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxvYuKA3F3kTtYMszeIhqBg / http://www.youtube.com/user/AlphaXNews , http://www.youtube.com/user/AlphaXNews/videos ]

Hillary Rodham Clinton interview, 1979

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg_sEZg7-rk [with comments]

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Some Big Democratic Party Backers to Pool Spending to Support Hillary Clinton and Others

Investor, philanthropist and environmentalist Tom Steyer, shown in Nov. 2014, is joining with some labor unions to create and fund a Super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates.
Photo: Reuters

Unions and megadonor Tom Steyer target $50 million in funding for super PAC supporting presidential, congressional candidates

By Brody Mullins and Melanie Trottman
Updated May 12, 2016 6:13 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—Some of the biggest political supporters of the Democratic Party have agreed to pool their money in a super PAC targeting $50 million in funding to pay for door-to-door campaigning in support of Hillary Clinton and other Democrats running in the fall elections.

The AFL-CIO labor federation and unions including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association agreed to join forces to fund the operation along with Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer.

Mr. Steyer and the groups pledged to contribute at least $5 million each to kick off the effort. Other Democratic donors and unions have been asked to contribute up to $1 million each to become a part of the new campaign entity, called For Our Future PAC.

In an interview, Mr. Steyer said it was “highly likely” other unions would join the effort. “This is really an attempt to mobilize working families around key issues in battleground states,” he said.

Mr. Steyer, who spent more money on behalf of Democrats candidates in the 2014 election than anyone else, pledged to match donations to the new group up to a threshold, which he declined to disclose. The former hedge-fund manager turned environmental activist spent about $74 million on behalf of Democratic candidates in the 2014 election.

This latest super PAC is just one of several election efforts Mr. Steyer is funding this election. A few weeks ago, he announced he is backing, with no stated budget, an effort to go to more than 70 college campuses to get young people to vote for progressive candidates this election.

Labor groups had discussed the idea of forming a single super PAC [ http://www.wsj.com/articles/union-effort-to-create-super-pac-stalls-1459989050 ] for months, but a final deal was held up because of internal struggles over how it would be organized.

The Service Employees International Union, which was once involved in the talks, ultimately decided not to join the effort. The SEIU was the top-spending labor union in each of the last three presidential elections, accounting for more than $100 million in expenditures on campaign contributions, television advertisements and other spending in 2004, 2008 and 2012 combined.

The SEIU said it had decided that continuing what it has done in past elections “is the best path forward” for the union and its membership. “So while we’re not officially part of the group we will continue to collaborate with our partners in labor,” said the union’s national communications director Sahar Wali.

Each of the unions involved in the new campaign group has endorsed, or is expected soon to endorse, Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The goal of the combined effort is to eliminate redundant spending on get-out-the-vote efforts and other election activities.

“While we want to win in our election fights, we have an eye towards building a diverse organization and coalition at the community level to work together and stay together over the course of time,” said Amanda Brown, the campaign director for the group.

“Our model is to respect, empower and include communities of color and all organizations who want to work with us on a shared agenda and shared electoral goals.”

Copyright ©2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/some-big-democratic-party-backers-to-pool-spending-1463083688 [with comments]

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Elizabeth Warren Is On An Anti-Trump Tweetstorm. The Clinton Campaign Has Noticed.

“I’ve enjoyed your anti-Trump tweets,” Hillary Clinton said. (OK, she didn’t. This is an old picture.)
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Samples of the Warren tweetstorm against Trump:

Elizabeth Warren
@elizabethforma
We get it, @realDonaldTrump: When a woman stands up to you, you’re going to call her a basket case. Hormonal. Ugly.
10:52 AM - 11 May 2016
[ https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/status/730455574668840960 (with comments)]

Elizabeth Warren
@elizabethforma
.@realDonaldTrump: Your policies are dangerous. Your words are reckless. Your record is embarrassing. And your free ride is over.
11:02 AM - 11 May 2016
[ https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/status/730458060746051585 (with comments)]

They’ve sat next to each other before, when introducing then-Sen. John Kerry as a nominee for secretary of state.
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

And a buried 2015 focus group hints at why she might just be the VP pick.

By Sam Stein and Ryan Grim
05/12/2016 07:22 pm ET | Updated May 13, 2016

Twice this past week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/elizabeth-warren/ ] (D-Mass.) has [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-donald-trump_us_572d4282e4b096e9f0919399 ] unleashed [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-trump_us_57337658e4b012a8b933fef8 ] a seemingly unprompted tweetstorm on Donald Trump [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/donald-trump/ ], taking shots at the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for being sexist, a scam artist, “reckless” and “embarrassing.”

Dripping with disdain, the 140-character asides got under Trump’s skin (admittedly, not the hardest of feats). He accused her of “tweeting violently” and bestowed on the senator one of his trademark churlish nicknames. “Goofy Elizabeth Warren,” he replied in tweets of his own.

The more important reaction came not from Trump, however, but from Hillary Clinton [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/hillary-clinton/ ]‘s campaign. Multiple sources close to the former secretary of state say that her aides took note of the senator’s ability to rile the real estate tycoon. And they recognize the value of such dart throwing from, say, someone filling out a presidential ticket.

One close Clinton confidant said that she and her aides were “thrilled to see Warren get under his skin.” Another senior Clinton adviser, who is advocating internally for Warren as a vice presidential pick, said the senator has “very influential people in the campaign pushing for her.”

A longtime Clinton veteran said the campaign definitely noticed Warren’s attacks. “You want a running mate who can take the fight to the other side with relish,” the veteran said. “Geography does not matter, but attitude and talent and energy and bringing excitement to the campaign, Senator Warren does all that.”

The attributes that Warren would bring to the VP slot extend beyond vigorous mocking of Trump. Top Democrats increasingly see a dual-female ticket as a potent response to a GOP nominee with a well-documented past of sexist remarks.

Then there is the conventional wisdom that Warren would keep backers of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the fold. “She can help validate Clinton with progressives and remind them that despite their differences in the primary, the alternative of the Donald would be untenable,” said Penny Lee, a former longtime aide to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and now a Democratic consultant.

As widely accepted as that argument is, it may dramatically understate the extent of Warren’s appeal. In January 2015, pollster Peter Hart, who does survey research for NBC and The Wall Street Journal, ran a focus group in Colorado with independents and Republicans, gauging their outlook on the 2016 presidential election. This was not a set of millennial Bernie bros ripe for the political revolution. (In fact, Sanders’ name never came up — a window into just how far he’s come in such a short time.)

What stunned Hart was the response to Warren. Not only was the group familiar with her, which took him somewhat by surprise, they were downright enthusiastic.

Asked to give one-word descriptions of a series of possible candidates, the focus group labeled most of them with terms like “liar,” “failure,” “fake,” “two-faced,” “crook,” “not genuine” and “Lord Farquaad from Shrek.” When it came to Warren, however, these moderates and conservative Republicans offered up words like “smart,” “sincere,” “interesting,” “knowledgeable, intelligent,” and “capable.” Two of the 12 participants passed, a third said “unknown,” and a fourth said “questionable.” It was far and away the most positive response overall.

When Hart asked whom they would like to spend an hour with if they could choose from any of the possible candidates, six volunteered Warren above all others. “I saw her on TV, and she seemed very down to earth and knowledgeable, and I didn’t know much about her,” said one man in a typical explanation of his choice.

Hart then asked whom they’d like to have as their neighbor, if they had to have a politician living next door. Five of the 12 picked Warren. She was, several agreed, “the fun aunt.”

Speculation that Warren would end up next to Clinton on the Democratic ticket this fall has been going on for months. But the extent to which Warren is being considered as the choice by the Clinton campaign remains relatively unknown.

In conversations with other top Democrats and close advisers to Clinton, it’s clear that Warren’s stock is rising. One Clinton adviser, who described himself as part of “Team Warren,” said that the idea had plenty of internal support and that the assumption Clinton doesn’t like Warren personally is incorrect.

“Having been around Hillary when Elizabeth is talked about, there’s not much — she doesn’t have bad feelings toward Elizabeth. It’s more that she’s frustrated that people don’t realize that she’s been championing these issues her whole life, too,” the adviser said.

Moreover, the timing of Warren’s attacks on Trump is being interpreted as a sign that she, too, is interested in the gig. Warren notably declined to rule out serving as Clinton’s VP in a recent interview with Mic [ https://mic.com/articles/143231/elizabeth-warren-won-t-rule-out-being-hillary-clinton-s-2016-vice-presidential-nominee ].

“She’s been a totally good soldier,” said the adviser. “I understand that it’s to her benefit to stay out of the Hillary-Bernie thing — talk about a no-win situation — but you could say she’s already been auditioning for it a little bit,” he said.

On Thursday morning, Politico reported [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/joe-biden-elizabeth-warren-223104 (excerpted next below)] that current Vice President Joe Biden thought Warren would be the best choice to replace him — in what seemed like a well-timed leak to ensure just that.

But not everyone is certain that Warren would work as vice president or that she actually wants the job. The aforementioned close confidant interpreted the anti-Trump tweetstorm as more about Warren “showing other Democrats that this is the way to go after Trump, than about positioning herself as a VP candidate.” Others, meanwhile, see a clear reason why [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-vice-president-hillary-clinton_us_571a8129e4b0d912d5fea0e8 ] she would take the post if offered.

Some who have tangled with Warren in the past suggest that she’s a capable political talent but not deft enough to handle the crucible of a presidential campaign. Colin Reed, who works for the Republican super PAC America Rising and previously served as a top aide to then-Sen. Scott Brown, the GOP senator whom Warren defeated in the 2012 election, claimed that she underperformed President Barack Obama in Massachusetts by 15 percentage points that year. (Note: Warren got 53.7 percent of the vote in 2012, compared to Obama’s 60.8 percent in the state, according to The New York Times, making the margin 7 percent [ http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/states/massachusetts ].) Reed argued that Warren’s brand as an anti-Wall Street populist would create tensions with Clinton that both of them would want to avoid.

“Warren castigates Goldman Sachs; Clinton takes their money,” Reed said.

Eric Fehrnstrom, another former Brown adviser, had an additional theory as to why Warren was spending recent days composing anti-Trump tweets, one that suggested this was more about making amends than paving the way to the VP’s residence.

“I think she needed to do something to take the pressure off herself because of her non-endorsement in the Democratic [presidential] race,” Fehrnstrom posited. “The Hillary partisans, who are strong here in Massachusetts, have grown alienated because of her fence sitting. This was a good diversion for her. ... It spared her from answering the question of why, still at this late date, had she not endorsed Hillary Clinton.”

A year after the Colorado focus group, Hart reached out to one of the women he’d met there. Jenny Howard, a conservative Republican, had stunned him with her positive opinion of Warren, which cut against everything he knew about Howard’s politics. For all their differences, both Trump and Warren start from the belief that the system is rigged against the middle class, so Hart wanted to know if Howard had wound up in the Trump camp by the time the GOP race reached Colorado.

Not exactly. Instead, she told him, she was feeling the Bern.

Video produced by JM Rieger.

Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-donald-trump-vice-president_us_5734e8efe4b060aa7819c184 [with embedded video "This 2015 Focus Group Will Change The Way You Think", and comments]

*

Biden wanted Warren as his VP
The Massachusetts senator was 'noncommittal,' but warned of a backlash against his pro-Wall Street votes in Senate.
05/12/16
Joe Biden took months to decide he wouldn’t run for president — but he was sold on Elizabeth Warren as his running mate from the start, people familiar with the situation told POLITICO.
And he still thinks the Massachusetts firebrand would be Hillary Clinton’s best choice to replace him as the nation’s No. 2 in January 2017.
[...]
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/joe-biden-elizabeth-warren-223104 [with comments]

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Sanders campaign surprises with no TV in California strategy

The Rachel Maddow Show
5/12/16

Danny Freeman, covering Sanders campaign for NBC News, talks with Rachel Maddow about what it means that the Bernie Sanders campaign is not buying any television ads as part of their strategy in California. Duration: 8:02

Sanders' California director leaves campaign
05/11/16
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/bernie-sanders-california-michael-ceraso-223077 [with comments]

Bernie Sanders loses his California director
May 11, 2016
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-trailguide-05112016-bernie-sanders-loses-his-california-director-1462995520-htmlstory.html

Why Did Bernie Sanders Cancel a High-Profile Meeting With AIDS Activists?
05/11/2016 Updated May 12, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/why-did-bernie-sanders-cancel-meeting-aids_b_9904898.html [with comments]

Bernie Sanders Weakened Heading Into California
May 12 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/bernie-sanders-weakened-heading-golden-state-n572541 [with video segments, including the segments "Sanders: I'm the stronger candidate to defeat Trump" and "One-on-one with Bernie Sanders" above, embedded, and comments]

©2016 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/sanders-surprises-with-california-strategy-684941891869 [with comments] [show links at http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/citations-the-may-12-2016-trms (no comments yet)] [show transcript at http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show/2016-05-12 (no comments yet)] [the above YouTube of the segment for the moment at least at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAAFpqNTGRs (no comments yet), and also included at the beginning of the YouTube for the moment at least at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYqseryAju8 (with comments)]

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Clinton offers fresh support for key progressive priorities

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leaves the podium during a rally in Purchase, March 31, 2016.
Photo by Seth Wenig/AP

By Steve Benen
05/13/16 08:00 AM

Over the course of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton hasn’t had a whole lot to say about the Federal Reserve or monetary policy in general, which is why it was all the more interesting to see the Democratic frontrunner’s campaign yesterday endorse a change long sought by progressive activists. The Washington Post reported [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/12/hillary-clinton-to-support-federal-reserve-change-sought-by-liberals/ ]:

The Fed is led by a seven-member board of governors based in Washington and a dozen regional bank presidents based across the country, from New York to Kansas City to San Francisco. The governors are nominated by the White House and approved by the Senate, but regional bank presidents are selected by their boards of directors, whose occupants are chosen by the banking industry and by the Fed governors in Washington.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Clinton’s campaign said she supports removing bankers from the boards of directors and increasing diversity within the Fed.

In a written statement, a campaign spokesperson told the Post [id.], “The Federal Reserve is a vital institution for our economy and the well-being of our middle class, and the American people should have no doubt that the Fed is serving the public interest. That’s why Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole and that commonsense reforms – like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks – are long overdue.”

This brings Clinton in line with Bernie Sanders, who endorsed this policy late last year, saying he wants a system in which “the foxes would no longer guard the henhouse.”

The statement also came the same day Clinton wrote an op-ed [ http://washingtoninformer.com/news/2016/may/11/hillary-clinton-restoring-faith-democracy/ ] for the Washington Informer, an African-American newspaper, vowing to be a “vocal champion” for D.C. statehood.

“In the case of our nation’s capital, we have an entire populace that is routinely denied a voice in its own democracy,” Clinton wrote [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/clinton-calls-for-making-dc-the-51st-state-blasts-trump-for-no-position-on-issue-of-voting-rights/2016/05/11/daa63d16-1781-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_story.html ], adding, “Washingtonians serve in the military, serve on juries, and pay taxes just like everyone else. And yet, they don’t even have a vote in Congress.”

Earlier this week, Clinton also emphasized her support for a “public option [ http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/hillary-clinton-keeps-the-fight-public-option-alive ]” in health care coverage, including a possible Medicare buy-in policy.

The broader pattern matters, and it’s not altogether expected.

When Clinton’s campaign got underway nearly a year ago, the former Secretary of State started laying out her platform, and on a variety of issues – immigration, criminal-justice reform, expanding voting rights, etc. – the Democrat not only endorsed progressive ideas, she endorsed an agenda that was even more ambitious [ http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/clinton-goes-bold-voting-rights ] and further to the left than many expected.

At the time, of course, the question that loomed over the race dealt with motivation: was Clinton throwing her support behind a series of bold proposals because she was worried about Bernie Sanders, or was she serious about these plans? It’s one thing to make appeals to the left as the Democratic race gets underway, but would Clinton follow through when she shifts her attention to the general election?

The answer to these questions is coming into sharper focus. While the Democratic race still has some primaries to go, the delegate math suggests Clinton is well positioned to prevail, and she’s already begun shifting her attention to Donald Trump and the fall election. If the cynics were correct, this would be about the time we’d expect to see Clinton move gradually towards the center, eschewing some of her more progressive goals.

Except this week, we’re seeing the opposite, with Clinton backing Sanders-endorsed changes to the financial industry and touting her support for a public option.

Maybe Clinton is hoping to win over Sanders’ ardent fans who aren’t yet ready to back her candidacy in the fall. Maybe she believes these progressive goals are popular enough with the American mainstream that she’s not really taking much of a risk. Maybe she actually believes what she’s saying and none of this is calculated in any meaningful way.

Whatever the motivation, Clinton may be focusing her attention on the general election, but many of her key progressive ideals, at least for now, remain very much intact.

©2016 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/clinton-offers-fresh-support-key-progressive-priorities [with comments]

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DNC denies primary trouble: We're confident, GOP in 'chaos'

Published on May 13, 2016 by Fox News

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz says Sanders staying in the race is 'small potatoes' while Republicans have a 'big mess' with Trump

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYJAv-9RkS4 [with comments]

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Bernie Sanders Rally Bowling Green KY. (5-14-16)

Published on May 14, 2016 by LIVE SATELLITE NEWS

Bernie Sanders Rally Bowling Green KY. (5-14-16)

Historic Rail Park and Train Museum - Bowling Green
Bowling Green, KY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SmE4RDWfOU [with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu401Z76BzU (with comments)]

*

Bernie Sanders LIVE from Bowling Green, KY - A Future to Believe in Rally

Streamed live on May 14, 2016 by Bernie2016tv Live

Bernie Sanders LIVE from Bowling Green, KY - A Future to Believe in Rally
https://www.facebook.com/youngprogressivevoices/posts/1171410042903030

Close

https://vimeo.com/146056619
Spread the BERN http://youtu.be/Uwb-7Q_VvsE?list=PLtVVydGZITomonQqqpLUTofsOfBOXIWbB

Headlines

Ants - We hold the power http://youtu.be/ysLaU6e_pVs
Alabama prison strike http://www.democracynow.org/2016/5/13/alabama_prison_strike_organizer_speaks_from
Democracy Now! - Alabama Prison Strike http://www.democracynow.org/2016/5/13/part_2_alabama_prison_strike_organizer
Joe Arpiao is a shit stain on the fabric of this nation. https://www.rt.com/usa/342990-joe-arpiao-contempt-charges/#.VzalTtoKiZ8.twitter
Army Chaplain resigns,.... http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/13/us-army-chaplain-resigns-protest-over-drones-policy-unaccountable-killing
Snowden Calls For Reassessment Of Our Relationship With The Media http://yournewswire.com/snowden-calls-for-reassessment-of-our-relationship-with-the-media/
Brazil wants change, The USA says, FU http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/WikiLeaks-Reveal-Brazils-New-Coup-President-Is-US-Informant-20160513-0016.html
Here's to the Crazy Ones - They change the world http://youtu.be/lurU8PEVDxw

7.5 Million donations http://www.reuters.com/video/2016/05/13/sanders-touts-75-million-campaign-donors?videoId=368490735&videoChannel=1003
Oregon Voters BS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNq6_ZOS5Tg
Feel good or real change? https://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/sanders-campaign-considers-party-reform-fight

Hillary Bashing

Redacted Tonight - The 9/11 report http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QokUdOyfL6Y
John Stewart - David Axelrod - WOW http://youtu.be/Da5VYSPsoE0?t=18m27s
Hillary's team prepares for the worst as she finds herself in a perfect storm of legal misery http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/05/12/hillarys-team-prepares-for-worst-as-finds-herself-in-perfect-storm-legal-misery.html
Hillary took 100 mil from Saudi's http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/hillarys-latest-scandal-she-and-bill-siphoned-100-mil-from-persian-gulf-leaders/
Do as I say, not as I do. Hillary on the Panama Papers http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article72215012.html
Clinton distrust renews Democrats’ pessimism about general election http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/11/hillary-clinton-distrust-renews-democrats-pessimis/
Hillary gets 1500 a head by Politicizing Trayvon Martin http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/09/hillary-clinton-speak-trayvon-martin-foundation-event/
Clinton can't bite the hands that feeds http://freebeacon.com/issues/hillary-clintons-prescription-pill-problem-oxycontin-inventor-clinton-foundation-donor/

Climate change

Gulf Oil Spill http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/13/shell-oil-spill-gulf-mexico/
LA is a wasteland thanks to oil and gas http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/265-34/36852-focus-why-is-la-toxic
Break Free Colorado https://co.breakfree2016.org/thornton/
David Spratt - No Carbon Budget Left https://vimeo.com/95946811
David Spratt Breakthroughonline http://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/
David Spratt on a Special Frack Off Friday http://www.climatecodered.org/2016/05/after-record-mind-numbing-coral.html
Fuck Fracking http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/09/radium-lead-fracking/
This changes everything http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpuSt_ST4_U
Ft Mac Murray Fire http://www.630ched.com/2016/05/07/fort-mcmurray-wildfire-now-estimated-to-be-over-150000-hectares-in-size/
A Little bit of Forced TRansparency on GMO https://consumerist.com/2016/05/11/pepsi-frito-lay-quietly-adding-gmo-ingredient-labels-to-some-foods/
Great Barrier Reef: devastating images tell story of coral colonies' destruction http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/12/great-barrier-reef-devastating-images-tell-story-of-coral-colonies-destruction
Nestle needs to be taken out http://usuncut.com/news/nestle-water-deal-fryeburg-maine/

The Elephant in the Room

May 11, 2016
http://www.hillaryhq.com/2016/05/the-elephant-in-room.html [with comments]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmUEhnIhzOY [the primary point of also including this one being the insipid, err inspired commentary preceding and following Bernie's performance; Bernie's performance, clipped by about 6:15 at the start thanks to the self-absorbed inattention of the Alex Jones-wannabe BernieBro providing said insipid, err inspired commentary, begins at c. the 55:45 mark; with comments]

*

Study: People Now More Brain Dead Than Goldfish

Published on May 13, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel

A new study shows that smartphones are destroying attention spans and our intelligence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQg8C7gmQig [with comments]

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Presidential Primaries

Democrats
2,383 delegates needed to win

Through the West Virginia Primary of May 10, 2016 and (presumably/apparently) the Nevada Democratic Convention of May 14, 2016:

Pledged Delegates:
Clinton 1,716
Sanders 1,433
Clinton lead 283

Superdelegates:
Clinton 524
Sanders 40
Clinton lead 484

Total Delegates:
Clinton 2,240
Sanders 1,473
Clinton lead 767

Additional Delegates Needed:
Clinton 143
Sanders 910

[(drawn from) as currently at] http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/2016/primaries

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Indoctrinated Burnout Outlines His Support For Sanders and The Liberal Agenda

Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07

"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790

F6

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