At a Hillary Clinton rally at SUNY Purchase campus today, the presidential candidate lost her patience with a Greenpeace activist who thanked her for her commitment to climate change then asked her whether she'll reject fossil fuel money moving forward. Pointing her finger at activist Eva Resnick-Day, Clinton claimed she only takes money from people who work for fossil fuel companies and called the accusations lies.
Hillary Clinton blasted Bernie Sanders at a rally when a Greenpeace activist asked her about taking campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. The Vermont senator joins "CBS This Morning" to respond to her accusation that he is lying, and discusses his battle to win the Democratic nomination.
NEW YORK – Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver on Friday issued the following statement after Secretary Hillary Clinton accused Sanders’ campaign of “lying” about the donations she receives from the fossil fuel industry:
“It is disappointing that Secretary Clinton has leveled an accusation that just isn’t true. It’s very clear from research done by Greenpeace that she’s not just receiving money from ‘individuals’ who happen to work in the oil, coal and gas industry. Fifty-seven lobbyists from the industry have personally given to her campaign and 11 of those lobbyists have bundled more than $1 million to help put her in the White House. If you include money given to super PACs backing Clinton, the fossil fuel industry has given more than $4.5 million in support of Clinton’s bid.
“Bernie believes it is critical that the next president acts to curb the worst effects of climate change by acting boldly to move our energy system away from fossil fuels. He also believes you cannot take on an industry if you take their money. If the Clinton campaign wants to argue that industry lobbyists giving thousands of dollars to her campaign won’t affect her decisions if she’s elected, that’s fine. But to call us liars for pointing out basic facts about the secretary’s fundraising is deeply cynical and very disappointing.”
Clinton’s Close Ties to the Oil, Coal and Gas Industry
Press Release April 1, 2016
NEW YORK – The Clinton campaign on Friday held a conference call with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to discuss Secretary Hillary Clinton’s record on clean energy and climate change.
Unfortunately, the Clinton campaign left out some important facts.
In 2010, Secretary Clinton remarked [ https://newrepublic.com/article/122147/hillary-clinton-has-hired-former-keystone-pipeline-lobbyist ] that she was ultimately “inclined to approve” Keystone XL, a pipeline that would transport tar sands oil from Canada. During the campaign, after strong opposition from environmental organizations, Secretary Clinton eventually came out in opposition to the Keystone Pipeline, not because of her concerns about climate change, but because she viewed it as a “distraction.”
During her time leading the State Department, the agency also signed [ http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/oil-deal-us-mexico-pact-spotlights-obama-clinton-support-fossil-fuel-development ] the “U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement,” a deal it said [ http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2013/05/208650.htm ] would help energy companies expand offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The State Department said the pact would help energy corporations expand offshore drilling and “unlock areas for exploration and exploitation” in locations between the two countries. The agency said the deal will make “nearly 1.5 million acres of the Outer Continental Shelf more attractive” to energy companies.
“Bernie believes it is critical that the next president acts to curb the worst effects of climate change by acting boldly to move our energy system away from fossil fuels,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager. “He also believes you cannot take on an industry if you take their money. If the Clinton campaign wants to argue that industry lobbyists giving thousands of dollars to her campaign won’t affect her decisions if she’s elected, that’s fine. But to call us liars for pointing out basic facts about the secretary’s fundraising is deeply cynical and very disappointing. Secretary Clinton owes Sen. Sanders an apology.”
Greenpeace is attacking Hillary Clinton's ties to fossil fuel donors — but it’s complicated April 1, 2016 [...] Months ago, Greenpeace asked Martin O'Malley, Sanders, and Clinton to refuse to accept "fossil fuel" money. Both O'Malley and Sanders signed the pledge, but Clinton didn't. In one narrow sense, all that means is that Clinton wasn't willing to promise more than she could deliver. If signing the pledge meant refusing donations from everyone who worked in the industry, Sanders has violated it. [...] http://www.vox.com/2016/4/1/11347394/greenpeace-hillary-clinton-sanders [with embedded video]
Fact-checking the Clinton-Sanders spat over Big Oil contributions April 2, 2016 “I have money from people who work for fossil-fuel companies. I am so sick — I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me.” — Hillary Clinton, to a Greenpeace activist, March 31, 2016 “The fact of the matter is Secretary Clinton has taken significant money from the fossil fuel industry. She raises her money with a super PAC. She gets a lot of money from Wall Street, from the drug companies and fossil fuel industry.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), interview on ABC’s “Good Morning, America,” April 1 “Fifty-seven lobbyists from the industry have personally given to her campaign and 11 of those lobbyists have bundled more than $1 million to help put her in the White House. If you include money given to super PACs backing Clinton, the fossil fuel industry has given more than $4.5 million in support of Clinton’s bid.” — Bernie Sanders campaign, in a news release [ https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-statement-clinton-accusations/ (above)], April 1 [...] The Pinocchio Test The Sanders campaign is exaggerating the contributions that Clinton has received from the oil and gas industry. In the context of her overall campaign, the contributions are hardly significant. It’s especially misleading to count all of the funds raised by lobbyists with multiple clients as money “given” by the fossil-fuel industry. Three Pinocchios https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/02/fact-checking-the-clinton-sanders-spat-over-big-oil-contributions/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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Did Hillary Clinton cast a vote that led to the BP tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico? March 14, 2016 “With Sanders scheduled to address a rally here [Tampa] tonight in this Gulf of Mexico coastal community, his campaign cited the 2006 vote on the gulf drilling bill. Sanders, then a member of the House, voted against the legislation. Clinton, then a senator, voted for the bill. After the bill passed, the oil giant BP obtained a permit to drill in the area where one of its rigs exploded in 2010, killing 11 workers and causing a catastrophic spill of of 130 million gallons of oil into the gulf.” — From a news release [ https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-florida-puts-focus-climate-change-offshore-oil-drilling/ ] issued by the Bernie Sanders campaign, March 10, 2016 [...] The Pinocchio Test The Sanders campaign can certainly contrast the candidates’ votes on offshore drilling. But it cannot insinuate that Clinton’s vote in 2006 had anything to do with the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Indeed, as phrased, the Sanders campaign statement would make any reasonable person believe that if it weren’t for the bill that Clinton supported, BP would not have obtained a permit. But there is no cause-and-effect that can be found. We wavered between Three and Four Pinocchios. Given this was made in a prepared statement — and because of the Sanders campaign’s unwillingness to admit error — we tipped toward Four Pinocchios. Four Pinocchios https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/14/did-hillary-clinton-cast-a-vote-that-led-to-the-bp-tragedy-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/ [with comments]
Lauding the Independent from Vermont’s fundraising prowess, the MSNBC anchor asked Sanders when he might start applying his considerable abilities to benefit the Democratic Party. In his response, Sanders pointed out that the average $27 contribution to his presidential campaign is “a very different way of raising money than Secretary Clinton has pursued.” So, Maddow pressed him.
MADDOW: Well, obviously your priority is the nomination, but I mean you raised Secretary Clinton there. She has been fundraising both for the nomination and for the Democratic Party. At some point, do you think — do you foresee a time during this campaign when you’ll start doing that?
SANDERS: Well, we’ll see. And, I mean right now, again, our focus is on winning the nomination. Secretary Clinton has access, uh, to kinds of money, uh, that we don’t, that we’re not even interested in. So let’s take it one step at a time. And the step that we’re in right now is to win the Democratic nomination.
“We’ll see”? “Secretary Clinton has access, uh, to kinds of money, uh, that we don’t, that we’re not even interested in”? To appreciate how those two comments expose Sanders’s hustle, you need some background.
Sanders, the self-identified Democratic Socialist, is a registered Independent who caucuses with the Senate Democrats. Not only has he been helpful in raising money [ http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/sanders-democratic-fundraisers/ ] for them in the past, he also has availed himself of those same funds. But in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sanders has done nothing. In fact, he has disparaged Clinton at every opportunity for doing so.
The most recent object of his self-righteous ire is the upcoming big-money fundraisers featuring Hollywood glamour couple George and Amal Clooney. The fundraising events set for April 15 in San Francisco and April 16 in Los Angeles will raise a ton of money. At the first fete, it’ll cost you $353,400 just for two seats at their table.
“It is obscene that Secretary Clinton keeps going to big money people to fund her campaign,” Sanders told [ http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2016/03/27/39493/ ] CNN’s Jake Tapper on March 27. “Now, I have a lot of respect for George Clooney. He’s a great actor. I like him. But this is the point. This is the problem with American politics, is that big money is dominating our political system. And we are trying to move as far away from that as we can.” Two days later in Appleton, Wis. [ https://amp.twimg.com/v/91b71e86-a34b-4e1d-aee9-fcab1b47824d ], Sanders told a cheering crowd, “One of the reasons that we can speak to hundreds of thousands of people around this country is that I’m not wasting my time going to rich people’s homes begging them for their campaign contributions.”
Sanders makes it sound like Clinton is raising such obscene amounts of money for her campaign. In actuality, she’s raising money for herself, the Democratic Party and state Democratic parties around the country. Those funds would then be used to finance everything from “get out the vote” operations to phone banks and email blasts not only for the presidential nominee but also for House and Senate candidates down the ballot. In an election year in which the Republican presidential nominee could be Donald Trump, the prospects of Democrats holding the White House and possibly retaking the Senate [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/03/24/republicans-hope-the-gop-base-will-save-their-senate-majority-but-trump-might-blow-up-that-plan/ ] AND the House [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-gop-house-majority-jeopardy-221004 ] are not remote. Having money to do this for the November elections will be essential.
Both California fundraisers are for Clinton’s Hillary Victory Fund. This is a so-called joint committee comprised of Hillary for America, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees. Now, the maximum donation to the Clinton or Sanders presidential campaign is $2,700 in the primary and another $2,700 in the general election. But as NPR’s Peter Overby explained [ http://www.npr.org/2015/12/23/460762853/how-hillary-clinton-could-ask-a-single-donor-for-over-700-000 ] in December, a joint committee can raise much more money.
Donors who are rich — and willing — can give $5,400 to the Clinton campaign, $33,400 to the Democratic National Committee and $10,000 to each of the state parties, about $360,000 in all. A joint fundraising committee lets the donor do it all with a single check.
Now, here’s where the Sanders hustle comes in. While most people still assume that Clinton will win the Democratic nomination, all that money she is raising for the DNC and state parties will go to helping said nominee in the general election — even if that ends up being Sanders. The master fundraiser who hasn’t lifted a finger to help his adopted party. The fiery campaigner who has hammered his opponent for raising the money to fortify the DNC for the general election. The person who stands to benefit enormously from Clinton’s big-money prowess without sullying his carefully crafted aura of campaign-finance purity.
If he doesn’t want to “[waste] my time going to rich people’s homes begging them for their campaign contributions,” if he really is “not even interested in” the kinds of money Clinton has access to, then he should forego all the money she has raised for the DNC and state committees if he were to become the Democratic nominee.
Sanders would need every dime of that money to fight the Kraken [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb2zIR2rvRQ ] released on him by the Republicans. But given all that Sanders has said, wouldn’t it be the height of hypocrisy to capitalize on the money he’s so gleefully scorned? Sure would be. And not relying on it would be unbelievably stupid. Sanders is not stupid, even though his campaign rhetoric in this regard is.
Bernie Sanders: Hillary Clinton’s Fundraising Is ‘Obscene’
Sen. Bernie Sanders Stringer / Reuters
He took a swipe at her “big-money” connections.
By Igor Bobic 03/27/2016 10:10 am ET
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday criticized rival Hillary Clinton’s ties to deep-pocketed donors on Wall Street and in the pharmaceutical industry.
“It is obscene that Secretary Clinton keeps going to big-money people [ https://twitter.com/CNN/status/714078656348495872 ] to fund her campaign,” Sanders said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The senator added that Clinton “has now raised well over $15 million from Wall Street for her super PAC, and millions more from the fossil fuel industry, and from the drug companies.”
Stop. Rachel Maddow is Not "Basically Fox News," and Dozens of Good Democrats Aren't Corrupt Shills
Basically Glenn Beck.
By Grizzard Thursday Mar 31, 2016 8:11 PM CDT
This week, I wrote a well-received diary [ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/28/1507316/-I-m-Backing-Hillary-Because-I-Hate-Simple-and-Shallow-Caricatures ] about how the shallow caricatures of Hillary Clinton had given me pause, and in fact, caused me to better investigate her core. The thesis, in short, was that my respect for Hillary Clinton was magnified in the face of insistent declarations that she is an evil shill, a liar, a criminal, or even a person who doesn’t care.
There’s something else to say. Last night, in reading the comments of a story here at Daily Kos, I read a supporter of Senator Sanders say that Rachel Maddow and MSNBC were “basically Fox News.” Rachel’s crime had been asking Senator Senators “process questions”—totally relevant and reasonable inquiries into the campaign.
Rachel Maddow. Champion of various liberal causes, holder of the feet of conservatives to the fire, long-time Bernie Sanders sympathizer. Rachel Maddow.
The Bernie Sanders campaign asks me to believe something I refuse to believe about Rachel Maddow. And yes, I understand that Bernie Sanders himself didn’t malign Maddow and MSNBC. In fact, he signed off from his interview in his normally cordial way. But it’s the core of the message, the unspoken “truth” dancing around the movement: “All of them over there, they’re fundamentally corrupt and out to steal the election through trickery and manipulation.” And no, that message isn’t directed at Republicans. Increasingly, it’s directed at Democrats.
There are many good things about the Bernie Sanders campaign. Even the paranoia that it causes about the state of things is a fundamentally good thing. After all, we live in a country where people for so long have thought to question nothing that we've woken up to extraordinary income inequality and an increasingly brazen corporate-political class. I get all that. And I get that some “Question All This Shit” is in line.
But there’s a line. And if your goal is to persuade—which it should be, this is a campaign after all—then you have to know where that line is.
And here’s where I draw it.
I reject the characterization that dozens, maybe hundreds of Democrats are fundamentally corrupt people. No. I’ve seen too much good from them.
I watched Wendy Davis interview with Chris Hayes on his Fox News show. I heard him describe her as a "Hillary Clinton supporter." And then I heard her described as a woman who'd fillibustered the Texas abortion bill in 2013. I remember watching my Texas sisters wearing their orange for months. I remember the pride that swelled in me as I stayed up to watch video of her standing until her back quite literally gave out. She was doing something bold, trying to stop a Texas Republican majority that wanted to crush the reproductive rights of women. That's the Wendy Davis I know. When you tell me that Clinton endorsers--that faceless "Establishment" that's so often maligned--are corrupt and the problem, I wonder if you know the Wendy Davis I know.
I wonder if you know Rodney Ellis, described by author Wil Haygood as "perhaps the only state senator in America with a national presence." I wonder if you know that Rodney Ellis, a black man in Texas, stands up every single day in the Texas legislature for the rights of prisoners, of criminal defendants, of juveniles, and other maligned people. I wonder whether you know whether he fought for the money to start the Harris County Public Defender's Office, an agency that's gained six times more acquittals for mentally ill people than the average criminal defense lawyer in Houston. I wonder whether you know that he fought to stop the state of Texas in its efforts to arrest children for their classroom misbehavior. He's a Clinton supporter, a Democrat. Is he the "Establishment?" Is he corrupt? Is he evil, in the bag, or manipulating you and I?
I wonder if you know Sherrod Brown, the populist senator from Ohio, or Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay senator, the woman who has taken innumerable rounds of shit not only because she’s a lesbian, but also because she had the balls to oppose the Iraq War and try to impeach Dick Cheney. Is she in the bag, a corrupt member of the establishment that I’m supposed to fear?
You’ve already told me I must dismiss John Lewis, the man whose seat in congress was earned with blood on that bridge in Selma. And I don’t give a damn whether he got it wrong on “seeing” Bernie Sanders. I don’t want to embrace a movement that asks me to call John Lewis bought, or a shill, just because he happens to choose one good candidate over another one.
I don’t dispute that some within the Democratic establishment are far too friendly to corporate interests. Some are so indebted to their corporate betters that they’ve lost sight of who they serve. But it’s not all black and white.
The shark’s been jumped, time and time again. I’ve seen the good things that many of these people have done for actual human beings. For people who no one else supports. And I recognize that they could be wrong about Hillary and right about other things. That they could be fine women’s rights activists while still being wrong on the role of money in politics. I get all of that. But that’s not what you’re proposing. You’re proposing that dozens or hundreds of good people are intentionally manipulating you, and me, and everyone else. You’re asking me to believe that a sweeping malignancy has infected real, actual human beings who I've seen too much good from.
It’s a big ask. Rachel Maddow is not Bill O’Reilly. And the tendency to slap with broad strokes the moniker of “evil” on everything that isn’t absolutely in your corner is not only wrong, it’s counter-productive. There are good people working toward worthy Democratic goals that back Hillary Clinton for reasons that are totally legitimate. Recognize that and stop the foolishness. Learn to parse and paint with shades of grey. The tendency to beat on otherwise worthy allies is not a movement. It’s the opposite of that.
Take This Test to See How Biased You Are Against Having a Woman as President
KENA BETANCUR via Getty Images
By Soraya Chemaly 04/04/2016 03:13 pm ET | Updated Apr 5, 2016
Last week, Vox writer Emily Crockett wrote a great article about gender bias in how we think about leadership. She reviewed the results of new political science research. “One experiment [ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/03/24/gender-is-costing-hillary-clinton-big-among-men/ ],” she wrote, “just found that Clinton’s gender could cost her as much as 24 points against Trump among male voters, and 8 points overall.” Crockett went on to explain gender role expectations and threats, and the role that they play in voter perceptions. Studies reveal that simply asking questions that raise issues about challenges to traditional gender norms prime voters to feel threatened by powerful women who violate those norms. That effect, called gender priming, is far subtler than some alternatives, like the impact of overtly and graphically sexually objectifying women politicians [ http://www.theestablishment.co/2016/03/29/the-shocking-sexualization-of-female-politicians-in-porn/ ] to undermine their credibility or morality.
A similar 2015 study [ http://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/files/gse-mcc/files/leanout-report.pdf?m=1448058138 ] of more than 19,000 high school students, Leaning Out, Teen Girls and Leadership Biases, revealed how early this discrimination is already at play. Almost a quarter of teen girls — 23 percent — preferred male to female political leaders. That number was a staggering 40 percent for teen boys. While twice the percentage of girls said they preferred female political leaders than boys, the numbers were low — eight percent of girls, four percent of boys. Fifty-six expressed no preference. Race was also highly salient. All students were most likely to support their white male peers in positions of leadership and least likely to support their white female peers.
My results “suggest a slight association of Female with Supporter and Male with Leader.” And, I identify as a woman and a feminist, which increases the odds that I would not be biased against women leaders significantly. Men who aren’t feminists have the highest resistance to the idea. A large segment of Millennial men are even more conservative [ http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2016-02-arent-talking-boys-men-feel-woman-president/ ] than Genxers and routinely underestimate women and their professional and political abilities.
Five primary factors contribute to this problem:
• Enduring discrimination, otherwise known as sexism
• Ambient environmental family, school or work hostility
• Profuse negative stereotypes about women in leadership
• Gender biases that associate power, authority and leadership with masculinity
• Institutional intractability that perpetuates the status quo
Your gender and race don’t mean you can’t be biased against your gender and race. In-group biases are common. Most people would balk at the suggestion that they are overtly sexist. Some admit to prejudices, and acknowledge that they have unconscious biases. When faced with a specific candidate, like Hillary Clinton, however, the most common response to why a person might not support her candidacy rarely takes these realities into account. “It’s not because she’s a woman, it’s because INSERT REASON HERE.” Excuses for not wanting Clinton to be president sound incredibly familiar to those mentioned for not wanting other women to be leaders. “She’s not the right woman.” “It’s not the right time.” “She’s not credible.” “She’s not trustworthy.” “I can’t put my finger on it, but...” “I can’t stand her husband,” and more. There are legitimate reasons for not supporting Clinton, but they are, almost inevitably, only partially complete. She pays a very high price, as a candidate, for her lady genes. There are reasons why the U.S. ranks 95th in the world [ http://www.representation2020.com/women-in-parliaments.html ] for women’s national legislative political representation, and has never had a woman president, and it isn’t because women aren’t credible, able, trustworthy, moral, or have problematic spouses.
In the late ‘80s, Mahzarin R. Banaji, who was then an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University, found a way to study the implicit biases that we all have. At the time she was involved in a memory experiment [ http://www.boston.com/news/science/blogs/science-in-mind/2013/02/05/everyone-biased-harvard-professor-work-reveals-barely-know-our-own-minds/7x5K4gvrvaT5d3vpDaXC1K/blog.html ], the end of which involved asking subjects, based on a list of names, which people were famous. The subjects routinely and incorrectly made “ordinary” men “famous” ones, but did not do the same when encountering women’s names. Banaji was curious: Would the same thing happen if she changed male names like “Sebastian” and “Peter,” to “Susannah” and “Penelope.” In her initial experiments, she found that female names were far less likely to achieve fame in the same way. People, entirely unconsciously, herself included, did not treat women the same way they treated men. They could not say why and did not consider the simple change in gender to be the cause of the evident differences.
These biases don’t only hurt the people we are “othering,” but also can undermine people’s own sense of self and their abilities, a phenomenon called stereotype threat [ http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/definition.html ], defined by researchers in 1995 as “the risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group.” So, for example [ http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/situations.html ], when African American students have to indicate their race on a test booklet, their test scores drop. The same thing happens when girls and women are asked to indicate that they are female. Simply removing the request for people to identify themselves prior to taking an AP calculus test improved test scores.
Banaji’s work has, over the years, expanded to study other forms of common and unconscious bias and is, today, coming to some meaningful fruition. Banaji and two other professors, Tony Greenwald (University of Washington) and Brian Nosek (University of Virginia) started a nonprofit, Project Implicit [ http://www.projectimplicit.net/index.html ], in 2001.
While it’s very difficult, impossible, to entirely eliminate bias, it is possible to acknowledge it and reduce its effects at home and at work. Research [ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jasp.12317/abstract ] suggests several approaches, including self-monitoring and evaluation and anti-bias training and education [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25374039 ] that work to create positive outcomes. There are also tech approaches. For example, Gap Jumpers [ https://www.gapjumpers.me/ ] offsets biases through blind interviewing and hiring processes. Of course, you’d have to want those outcomes to willingly participate.
Bernie Sanders’s false claim that he has released his full federal tax returns April 5, 2016 Jake Tapper: “Let’s talk about taxes, specifically about your tax returns. I have to say, I’m kind of surprised that you haven’t gone further on transparency. You released the summary page of your 2014 tax returns. Hillary Clinton has posted on her website the last eight years of her personal returns, all of the returns. Before the New York primary, will you match her? Will you post your full returns for the last eight years?” Bernie Sanders: “You know who does our tax returns? My wife does our tax returns. We’ve been a little bit busy lately. So we will get out as much information as we can. There ain’t going to be very much exciting in that. I get a salary from the United States Senate, you know, there’s not going to be anything new in it that people haven’t seen for the last many years, but we will get it out as soon as we can.” Tapper: “But nobody has seen them at all, I guess, is the point, and whether or not there’s anything exciting in them –“ Sanders: “No, that is not true. That is not true. Of course, we have released them in the past. Our financial situation, to the best of my knowledge, has not changed very much, but we will get out all of that information as soon as we can.” — exchange during CNN’s “State of the Union,” April 3, 2016 [...] The Pinocchio Test Plainly put, Sanders has not released his full federal tax return. The little he has released was the Form 1040 in 2014, which is a summary of his tax filing that gives a snapshot of his finances — not what is considered a full tax return. The Sanders campaign confirmed to The Washington Post that it has not released other tax returns prior to 2014, which is a sharp contrast to Clinton’s voluminous release of her complete tax returns. Tapper correctly questioned Sanders, asking why “nobody has seen them [federal tax returns] at all.” Yet Sanders interrupted Tapper to reject the notion, insisting: “That is not true. Of course, we have released them in the past.” But this answer is nothing remotely close to the little federal tax records he has released to the public. Sanders says there is nothing in his 2015 tax return that is different from what the public has “seen for the last many years.” This indicates he may have been referring to the information filed in his financial disclosures. But that’s not the same as a full federal tax return — and as a longtime member of Congress, Sanders should know that. Sanders is not required to release his tax filings, and he clearly decided to keep them confidential. That’s his choice. But it doesn’t excuse him from misleading the public to believe otherwise with this false claim. Four Pinocchios https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/05/bernie-sanderss-false-claim-that-he-has-released-his-full-federal-tax-returns/ [with comments]
Is Hillary Clinton really ahead of Bernie Sanders by 2.5 million votes? April 6, 2016 “He’s won some, we’ve won some, but I have 2.5 million more votes than he does.” — Hillary Clinton, in an interview on ABC’s “The View [ http://abc.go.com/shows/the-view/video/pl5554876/VDKA0_gie6vl2g ],” April 5, 2016 [...] The Pinocchio Test Despite the suspicions of the Sanders supporter, the fact that caucus results are not included in the popular vote tally does not appear to make much of a difference in the final result. Despite overwhelming victories in caucus states such as Washington and Maine, Sanders gains only about 130,000 votes. That means Clinton is ahead by 2.4 million votes, rather than 2.5 million votes. Given rounding — and the fact that caucus numbers are only estimates — the difference is slight enough that Clinton’s claim, made before the Wisconsin vote, earns a rare Geppetto Checkmark. Geppetto Checkmark https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/06/is-hillary-clinton-really-ahead-of-bernie-sanders-by-2-5-million-votes/ [with comments]
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9 things Bernie Sanders should’ve known about but didn’t in that Daily News interview
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) delivers a foreign policy speech on March 21. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
Nine moments in the Sanders conversation left me agape. From his own plans for breaking up too-big-to-fail banks to how he would handle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to dealing with the Islamic State, the man giving homegirl Hillary Clinton a run for her money seemed surprisingly out of his depth. The bold in the text is mine for emphasis.
1. Breaking up the banks
Daily News: Okay. Well, let’s assume that you’re correct on that point. How do you go about doing [breaking up the banks]?
Sanders: How you go about doing it is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail.
Daily News: But do you think that the Fed, now, has that authority?
Sanders: Well, I don’t know if the Fed has it. But I think the administration can have it.
Daily News: How? How does a President turn to JPMorgan Chase, or have the Treasury turn to any of those banks and say, “Now you must do X, Y and Z?”
Sanders: Well, you do have authority under the Dodd-Frank legislation to do that, make that determination.
Daily News: You do, just by Federal Reserve fiat, you do?
Sanders: Yeah. Well, I believe you do.
2. The legal implications of breaking up a financial institution
Daily News: Well, it does depend on how you do it, I believe. And, I’m a little bit confused because just a few minutes ago you said the U.S. President would have authority to order…
Sanders: No, I did not say we would order. I did not say that we would order. The President is not a dictator.
Daily News: Okay. You would then leave it to JPMorgan Chase or the others to figure out how to break it, themselves up. I’m not quite…
Sanders: You would determine is that, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. If the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up.
Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?
Sanders: It’s something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.
3. Prosecuting Wall Street executives for the financial collapse of 2008
Daily News: Okay. But do you have a sense that there is a particular statute or statutes that a prosecutor could have or should have invoked to bring indictments?
Sanders: I suspect that there are. Yes.
Daily News: You believe that? But do you know?
Sanders: I believe that that is the case. Do I have them in front of me, now, legal statutes? No, I don’t. But if I would…yeah, that’s what I believe, yes. When a company pays a $5 billion fine for doing something that’s illegal, yeah, I think we can bring charges against the executives.
Daily News: I’m only pressing because you’ve made it such a central part of your campaign. And I wanted to know what the mechanism would be to accomplish it.
Considering this is the core of his campaign message, Sanders should know all of the points covered in 1, 2 and 3 inside and out. He should have been able to lecture his interrogators into a stupor with his detailed knowledge. Instead, Sanders sounded slightly better than a college student caught off-guard by a surprise test in his best class just before finals.
4. Handling negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians over settlements
Daily News: I was talking about something different, though. Expanding settlements is one thing; coming into office as a President who said as a baseline that you want Israel to pull back settlements, that changes the dynamic in the negotiations, and I’m wondering how far and what you want Israel to do in terms of pulling back.
Sanders: Well, again, you’re asking me a very fair question, and if I had some paper in front of me, I would give you a better answer. But I think if the expansion was illegal, moving into territory that was not their territory, I think withdrawal from those territories is appropriate.
Daily News: And who makes the call about illegality, in your mind?
Sanders: Well, I think that’s based on previous treaties and ideas. I happen to think that those expansions were illegal.
Daily News: Okay, so if we were to find Israeli settlements, so-called settlements, in places that has been designated to be illegal, you would expect Israel to be pulling them back?
Sanders: Israel will make their own decisions. They are a government, an independent nation. But to the degree that they want us to have a positive relationship, I think they’re going to have to improve their relationship with the Palestinians.
5. Looking back at the 2014 conflict between Israelis and Palestinians
Daily News: And I’m going to look at 2014, which was the latest conflict. What should Israel have done instead?
Sanders: You’re asking me now to make not only decisions for the Israeli government but for the Israeli military, and I don’t quite think I’m qualified to make decisions.
6. Israel and war crimes
Daily News: Do you support the Palestinian leadership’s attempt to use the International Criminal Court to litigate some of these issues to establish that, in their view, Israel had committed essentially war crimes?
Sanders: No.
Daily News: Why not?
Sanders: Why not?
Daily News: Why not, why it…
Sanders: Look, why don’t I support a million things in the world? I’m just telling you that I happen to believe…
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most vexing and vital for the occupant of the Oval Office. It bedeviled Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. And as we learned from Jeffrey Goldberg’s excellent piece on “The Obama Doctrine [ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/ ],” our current president has given up. Solve that foreign policy Rubik’s Cube and you might unleash broader peace on the Middle East. But it requires being able to answer 4, 5 and 6 with finesse, which can’t be done if you “don’t quite think I’m qualified to make decisions.”
7. Dealing with the Islamic State
Daily News: Okay, while we were sitting here, I double-checked the facts. It’s the miracle of the iPhone. My recollection was correct. It was about 2,300, I believe, killed, and 10,000 wounded. President Obama has taken the authority for drone attacks away from the CIA and given it to the U.S. military. Some say that that has caused difficulties in zeroing in on terrorists, their ISIS leaders. Do you believe that he’s got the right policy there?
Sanders: I don’t know the answer to that. What I do know is that drones are a modern weapon. When used effectively, when taking out ISIS or terrorist leaders, that’s pretty impressive. When bombing wedding parties of innocent people and killing dozens of them, that is, needless to say, not effective and enormously counterproductive. So whatever the mechanism, whoever is in control of that policy, it has to be refined so that we are killing the people we want to kill and not innocent collateral damage.
Paris was attacked. Istanbul was attacked. Brussels was attacked and is basically a bedroom community for terrorists seeking to destabilize Europe. And several African nations have been terrorized by Islamic State affiliates. That Sanders “[doesn’t] know the answer” to whether the president has the right policy against the Islamic State is unacceptable.
8. Disposition of captured ISIS commanders
Daily News: Okay. American Special Forces recently killed a top ISIS commander, after they’d hoped to capture him. They felt, from what the news reports were, that they had no choice at that. What would you do with a captured ISIS commander?
Sanders: Imprison him.
Daily News: Where?
Sanders: And try to get as much information out of him. If the question leads us to Guantanamo…
Daily News: Well, no, separate and apart from Guantanamo, it could be there, it could be anywhere. Where would a President Sanders imprison, interrogate? What would you do?
Sanders: Actually I haven’t thought about it a whole lot. I suppose, somewhere near the locale where that person was captured. The best location where that individual would be safely secured in a way that we can get information out of him.
“Actually I haven’t thought about it a whole lot”?! C’mon, man! What makes Sanders’s responses to all of these foreign policy questions even more troubling is that he spoke with more clarity and certainty on foreign policy during a speech [ https://berniesanders.com/sanders-outlines-middle-east-policy/ ] on March 21.
9. Riding the subway
Daily News: I know you’ve got to go in a second. When was the last time you rode the subway? Are you gonna a campaign in the subway?
Sanders: Actually we rode the subway, Mike, when we were here? About a year ago? But I know how to ride the subways. I’ve been on them once or twice.
Daily News: Do you really? Do you really? How do you ride the subway today?
Sanders: What do you mean, “How do you ride the subway?”
Daily News: How do you get on the subway today?
Sanders: You get a token and you get in.
Daily News: Wrong.
Sanders: You jump over the turnstile.
Daily News: We would like our photographer to be there when you jump over the turnstile.
In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal. This is the Big Apple equivalent of asking a candidate what the price of a gallon of milk is. The answer is supposed to show whether you’re in touch with everyday Americans. Sanders’s answer simply reveals that he hasn’t been on a New York City subway with any regularity since 2003, when the MetroCard took over. As for jumping the turnstile? There’s a reason the Daily News would love a photographer to capture Sanders jumping over one. The attempt would be priceless.
The Sanders Campaign’s Sexist New Argument: Hillary Tries Too Hard
From Tracy Flick to Hillary Clinton, female ambition isn't pretty. Photo: Getty Images, Paramount Pictures
By Rebecca Traister April 7, 2016 9:38 a.m.
On Tuesday night, following Bernie Sanders’s big win in the Wisconsin primary, his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, understandably jazzed in the midst of a victory lap, said a really stupid sexist thing [ https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/717575519592644608 ] about Hillary Clinton.
When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked him about the increasingly aggressive rhetoric between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, Weaver averred that his campaign was prepared to play hardball. He then sounded a warning to the former secretary of State and her supporters, suggesting that they not get too critical of Sanders or his supporters. “Don’t destroy the Democratic Party to satisfy the secretary’s ambitions to become president of the United States,” Weaver said.
It was a small comment, in every sense. A throwaway bit of nastiness coming from a campaign manager in the late stages of a long and hotly contested primary battle. But the line, which overtly cast Clinton’s political ambition as a destructive force and framed her famous drive and tenacity as unappealing, malevolent traits, played on long-standing assumptions about how ambition — a quality that is required for powerful men and admired in them — looks far less attractive on their female counterparts, and especially on their female competitors.
Weaver’s language made explicit a message that has, in more inchoate form, been churning through the Sanders campaign’s messaging in recent weeks. As Sanders’s staffers spin the story of how they got to this point in the race — with a candidate whose success has been unexpected and thrilling, especially with young Democrats and independents, but who has failed to win over voters of color and older voters, and remains badly behind his tough opponent by nearly every metric — they seem to have been working on a new framing of Hillary, one that relies on old biases about how we prefer women to conduct themselves and how little we like those who flout those preferences.
So far during this Democratic primary contest (which has been respectful and high-minded compared to the GOP side), Team Sanders’s depiction of Hillary has been of an unimaginative pragmatist, a hope-dashing incrementalist, and a corporatist too beholden to the financial sector to ever regulate or reform it in the way that will be required of our next president. These critiques have been tied to Clinton’s gender in various complicated ways [ http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/02/what-hillary-learned-about-running-while-female.html ], sure, but they’ve also been rooted in reality — she is a pragmatic incrementalist who’s accepted money from banks that she shouldn’t have! There are compelling arguments about the wisdom of the first two qualities and really nothing good to say about the third, but there you have it.
Of course, Weaver’s assertion that Clinton is ambitious is also rooted in reality. But in offering it up so baldly as a negative, in the weeks during which the campaign should be mounting its final argument, Weaver seemed to be suggesting that the argument against Clinton has come down, in part, to this: She’s Tracy Flick [ http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/05/why-dont-more-women-run-for-office.html ]. And no one likes the woman who tries too hard, who competes with too much intensity, who applies too much focus to her own advancement. It’s a message that some of Weaver’s colleagues have been nosing around for a couple of weeks, but Weaver’s comments seemed to make the argument cohere. It goes like this: Bernie Sanders is a kind man whose relaxed and respectful approach to power has led him to come in second to a woman who works too hard and wants to triumph too much; Hillary’s unembarrassed commitment to winning the race not only makes her unappealing but could be ruinous to the party she’s vying to lead.
The Sanders campaign began to lay down this track last week, while their candidate was racking up wins (with massive margins of victory) over Clinton in caucus states, but still not catching up to her pledged-delegate count.
Tad Devine, Sanders’s senior campaign strategist, first tried to explain Clinton’s continued dominance in a bizarre disquisition about the candidates’ unevenly matched commitment to winning. On a call with reporters, Devine proclaimed that Clinton’s “grasp … on the nomination” was based “almost entirely on … victories in states where Bernie Sanders did not compete [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-campaign_us_56f98f5ae4b0a372181aa375 ].” The states he named included Texas, Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, and Louisiana. Sanders would have won the southern Super Tuesday states, Devine’s thinking seemed to go, if he’d only tried harder in those states; the inversion of that point is that Clinton only won because she tried so hard.
by pointing out that Sanders had, in fact, competed pretty hard in the Super Tuesday states — that his campaign had often been first on the ground, opened more offices, and built more robust campaign operations in Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, and Virginia than Clinton’s had. He just lost anyway.
But within a few days, the campaign had trotted out a more refined version of their theory. In a piece published on Monday in the New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/us/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton.html ], Sanders's advisers performed a kind of pre-postmortem on his campaign. They diagnosed its flaw as originating with Sanders’s overly gentle touch, his mensch-y lack of appetite for competition, and reluctance to land hard punches on his opponent. If only he’d competed earlier, more relentlessly, with the kind of ferocious determination exhibited by his opponent, he might be winning now. “Competing aggressively against Mrs. Clinton in 2015 was not part of the Sanders strategy when he announced his candidacy last April,” the Times reported after conversations with his inner circle. Instead, he remained committed to his duties in the Senate, while Hillary, who did not hold public office in 2015, spent her time “working around the clock to campaign, raise money, nail down endorsements and develop policy plans.”
Again, there’s truth in this characterization: Sanders surely didn’t expect his campaign to be as electrically successful as it’s been, and likely didn’t enter the race with the expectation that he’d be running a dogged campaign 24/7 for more than a year. Meanwhile, Clinton, whose chief personality traits include her lack of interest in sleep or ever removing her nose from the grindstone, had already run and lost one very long, very tough, very expensive campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2008. She knew all too well what she was getting into and surely did hit the ground mid-marathon. But the casting of that marathon — the “working 'round the clock” to raise money, garner support, and develop policy positions — as a kind of unfair advantage was pretty weird. That stuff is, after all, fundamental to the job of running for the presidency. How was the version of the story in which Clinton was doing that job, and Sanders wasn’t, anything but a point against Sanders? Because a portrait of a woman trying too hard to do any kind of work, being driven by professional determination and a thirst for victory, is one that rarely flatters that woman.
That theme was audible again earlier this week when Sanders campaign spokesperson Michael Briggs said testily of an April 14 debate in Brooklyn, the scheduling of which entailed the shifting of a planned Bernie rally, “We hope the debate will be worth the inconvenience for thousands of New Yorkers who … will have to change their schedules to accommodate Secretary Clinton’s jam-packed, high-dollar, coast-to-coast schedule of fundraisers all over the country.” The emphasis here was supposed to be on the high-priced fund-raising events Clinton is conducting around the country, events at which she’s collecting cash for her own campaign and for the Democratic Party for both big-picture party-building reasons and self-serving party-building reasons. But it was hard not to hear Briggs's sneering at the super-busy, transcontinental nature of her campaign commitments. It was derision that could have been dialog from an '80s backlash movie about a workaholic, shoulder-padded career woman, always on the road but empty inside, rather than about a woman who’s keeping a schedule that is entirely appropriate for a person on the verge of being the Democratic nominee for president.
And so, after days of these characterizations, Weaver’s glib association of Clinton’s ambition to win the nomination with a force destructive enough to ruin her party didn’t feel like a flub. It felt like he was the guy who gave away the bigger game.
As voters in big states, including New York, Pennsylvania, and California, get ready to cast their votes, the men managing Sanders’s campaign (though notably, so far, not Sanders himself) are offering up a vision of their formidable opponent — the one who’s so far won more states, more delegates, and 2 million more votes than their boss — that reads, seriously, like an old Onion article [ http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/hillary-clinton-is-too-ambitious-to-be-the-first-f-11229 ]. You may remember it. It’s the one that’s headlined “Hillary Clinton Is Too Ambitious to Be the First Female President” and includes critiques like “She spends almost all her time these days going to fundraising events dedicated to raising money for—you guessed it—Hillary Clinton,” and “it just wouldn’t feel right to see someone who is so politically calculating win those precious 270 electoral votes in the next election,” and, of course, “she’s stayed in the race, blatantly ignoring the wishes of some people.”
It’s too bad this is where Sanders’s invigorating campaign, one that is passionately supported by many ambitious feminist women, may be turning in the final stretch: to a depiction of a female rival that is reliant on some of the very double standards that have helped to ensure that there have been too few female rivals — and no female victors — in presidential politics to date.
Liacouras Center at Temple University, 1776 North Broad St., Philadelphia
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday will travel to Pennsylvania. The Democratic Party presidential candidate will hold a rally in Philadelphia. 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.
4,600 delegates registered to become a Democratic delegate and Bernie had 150 more supporters register than Clinton http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/04/05/5
The Vermont Governor has come out and said Clinton is lying on New York's gun problems originating in Vermont http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PADc
Sen. Bernie Sanders caused political shockwaves during a campaign event in Philadelphia Wednesday night when he said he does not believe Hillary Clinton is qualified for the presidency. Lawrence discusses the breaking news with David Corn and Jonathan Allen. Duration: 11:53
By Stephen Schlesinger 04/06/2016 10:15 pm ET | Updated Apr 7, 2016
Wednesday night Senator Bernie Sanders made a path-breaking speech stating that Hillary Clinton is “not qualified” to be president of the United States. This is a major escalation in his attacks on the former Secretary of State in anticipation of the upcoming New York Democratic presidential primary. It is [actually not even close to] the first time that he has made her personal character a part of his campaign rhetoric — in direct refutation of his [obviously never sincere and long-since routinely broken] promise to make this contest about issues rather than personal matters.
This is potential dynamite for the Democratic Party. For it may mean that if Senator Sanders does not get the Democratic presidential nomination this summer — and he continues to argue that Secretary Clinton is disqualified from the presidency — that he will take his large progressive following out of the Democratic Party and run as an independent next fall, figuring that he can win the presidency on his own by taking advantage of a split vote between a reactionary Republican candidate and a figure like Clinton whom, he believes, most people don’t trust. But in doing so he will risk committing a Ralph Nader-type disruption that could [sic - would] bring about the election of a true reactionary in the person of Ted Cruz or the triumph of a reckless right-wing gambler like Donald Trump.
This thus may become a race about Sander’s hurt feelings rather than about the country’s stability and its progressive future and the continuation of the successful policies of President Obama. It is a potential act of folly that could [sic - would] have far-reaching adverse consequences for the nation for decades. We will have to see how this plays out. One still hopes that Sanders, as Clinton has already promised, will hold to his original position that he will agree to support the nominee of the Democratic Party no matter who that may be. But that is no longer assured [if indeed it ever was].
Sanders’s incorrect claim that Clinton called him ‘not qualified’ for the presidency April 7, 2016 “She [Hillary Clinton] has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote, not qualified to be president.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), at a rally at Temple University [ http://youtu.be/WrrnsbUX-yU?t=18m50s ], Philadelphia, April 6, 2016 [...] The Pinocchio Test Sanders is putting words in Clinton’s mouth. She never said “quote unquote” that he was not qualified to be president. In fact, she diplomatically went out of her way to avoid saying that, without at the same time saying he was qualified. The Washington Post article appropriately noted that she raised questions about his qualifications, but certainly never said or suggested she said Sanders was unqualified. Sanders would have been on safer ground if he had said Clinton is raising questions about his qualifications and now he would like to raise questions about her qualifications. But he can’t slam her for words she did not say. Three Pinocchios https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/07/sanderss-incorrect-claim-that-clinton-called-him-not-qualified-for-the-presidency/ [with embedded video, and comments]
*
Bernie Sanders' Campaign Responds To Hillary Clinton 'Unqualified' Comments | MSNBC
Questioning Hillary Clinton’s Qualifications Doesn’t Sit Well With Women Backing Her
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has asserted that Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be president. Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Many of these women have been told their whole lives that they’re not as qualified as men.
By Amanda Terkel 04/07/2016 12:26 pm ET | Updated Apr 7, 2016
When talking to women rooting for Hillary Clinton, one reason comes up over and over again about why they stick by her: She is, simply, the most qualified person to be president.
“She’s the most highly qualified candidate of the Republicans and the Democrats. She has the experience,” New Hampshire state Rep. Mary Heath (D) said during a canvassing event in Manchester in January.
“She’s the most qualified, the smartest person. Her grasp of the issues is just amazing,” agreed Kathy Sullivan, a former chairwoman of the state Democratic Party.
Responses like those are why Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent comment that Clinton isn’t qualified to be president have caused such a backlash with her supporters.
Sanders’ comments — his sharpest criticism to date of his Democratic presidential primary opponent — came during a speech he delivered Wednesday in Philadelphia.
“She has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote, not qualified to be president,” Sanders said. “Well let me just say in response to Secretary Clinton: I don’t believe that she is qualified if she is — if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds,” he said. “I don’t think that you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your super PAC. I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq.”
Sanders also cited Clinton’s support for “virtually every disastrous trade agreement,” and specifically the Panama Free Trade Agreement, as additional reasons why she is not qualified.
Sanders’ criticisms of Clinton focused on her policy positions, but to many of her supporters they came off as a personal insult.
“There are policy disagreements he may have with her on some things. Let’s stick to those,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday. “Let’s not say that the most qualified candidate for president is simply unqualified. Frankly, I don’t get that. And I think we’ve got to refrain from ad hominem attacks that — there’s a different way he could have put that.”
Female Clinton supporters often get defensive when reporters ask them whether they’re backing Clinton because she would be the first woman in the Oval Office. They stress that it’s about her qualifications more than checking a box on the gender list.
“It’s not only that she would be the first woman president,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood. “It’s literally that she brings decades of experience in foreign policy, in domestic policy, in advocacy, and she would start day one in the White House knowing exactly what needs to be done.”
“Hillary has been through that too, absolutely. But not as bluntly as I have,” she added. Salvas said she eventually left that field because “I don’t have a military pension, I don’t have a penis and I’m getting the hell out of this joint.”
Sanders Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver stood by the senator’s “unqualified” remarks in a CNN interview Thursday morning, saying, “If you look at her campaign, her campaign is funded by millions and millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests. She really made a deal with the devil, and we all know the devil wants his money in the end.”
Senator Bernie Sanders has returned back to his birth state with hopes of winning the New York primary. But his campaign has been overshadowed by his remarks that he thinks Hillary Clinton is unqualified for the presidency. He discusses the comments with "CBS This Morning" anchor Charlie Rose.
BIG: Bernie Admits Hillary NOT Accountable for Iraq Deaths, Attacking Her Is ‘Tit for Tat’ One of Bernie’s central contrast points with Hillary is her 2002 AUMF [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution ] vote, which gave George W. Bush authority to use military force in Iraq. Bernie’s surrogates and supporters have implicitly and explicitly used that vote to blame Hillary for the death and destruction in Iraq. His campaign manager went so far as to blame her for the creation of ISIS. Now comes a critical admission from Bernie that Hillary “doesn’t bear responsibility.” April 9, 2016 [...] UPDATE: Here’s what Tad Devine, Bernie’s top adviser, told Meet The Press [ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5772535/ns/meet_the_press/t/transcript-august ] in August of 2004, when he (and I) worked for John Kerry’s presidential campaign: "John Kerry does not regret his vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq. What he deeply regrets is what the president did with that authority. … Tim, again, the authorization was the right vote, it was the right choice." Hillary no longer believes it was the correct vote, because of what Bush and Cheney did. Still, it’s worth noting Devine’s position when Bernie’s campaign uses Hillary’s vote as an all-purpose hit on her judgment. http://bluenationreview.com/bernie-admits-hillary-not-accountable-for-iraq-deaths/ [with embedded video (included in this YouTube); emphasis in original]
Sanders’s claim that Panama Free-Trade deal enabled more offshore tax scams April 9, 2016 “What the Panamanian free-trade agreement did is enable large corporations and the wealthiest people — not just in this country but around the world — to participate in massive tax-avoidance schemes. I was on the floor of the United States Senate in opposition to the Panama free-trade agreement for precisely that reason. What I was concerned about then and what turned out to be true is that that trade agreement will give large corporations in this country and in fact corporations around the world a capability of avoiding paying taxes to their own governments.” –Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), remarks in Philadelphia, April 6, 2016 [...] The Pinocchio Test Sanders has not demonstrated that the Panama free-trade agreement encouraged tax avoidance schemes in Panama. The trade deal did not cover tax issues and the section cited by his staff merely updated an existing investment agreement with Panama. The side agreements on taxes and bearer shares actually appear to have had an impact, even if Panama’s overall performance on stemming shady money continues to be poor. We understand that Sanders is highly critical of free-trade agreements, but in this instance, his claims that provisions in the Panama deal fostered tax avoidance fall short. Perhaps he could make a case that the deal bolstered up an economy built in part on fraud, but that’s not the same thing as saying the deal itself promoted offshore accounts. In fact, U.S. officials tried to use the FTA as leverage to improve access to tax information about U.S. citizens using offshore accounts in Panama. Three Pinocchios https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/09/sanderss-claim-that-panama-free-trade-deal-enabled-more-offshore-tax-scams/ [with comments]
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Bernie Sanders: ‘Something Is Clearly Lacking’ In Hillary Clinton’s Judgment
“I have my doubts about what kind of president she would make.”
By Igor Bobic 04/10/2016 04:01 pm ET | Updated Apr 11, 2016
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on Sunday questioned rival Hillary Clinton’s temperament for the highest office in the land.
“The point that I was making, which is absolutely correct, is that if you look at where she is getting the money from Wall Street, and other powerful special interests, she voted for the war, she cited Henry Kissinger, in a sense, as a model for her,” Sanders said. “I think those issues will tell the American people that in many respects, she may have the experience to be president of the United States. No one can argue that. But in terms of her judgment, something is clearly lacking.”
"The road to the convention goes through New York for both the Democrats and Republicans," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted this survey. "Right now, the front-runners look like they will erase recent setbacks and add significantly to their delegate margins."
In the Republican race, Trump gets support from 54 percent of likely Republican primary voters - followed by John Kasich at 21 percent and Ted Cruz at 18 percent.
If Trump wins with more than 50 percent of the vote both statewide and in each of New York's 27 congressional districts, he'll walk away with all of the state's 95 delegates - more than making up for what he lost last week in Colorado and Wisconsin.
Sixty-four percent of likely New York Republican voters say the Republican Party should still nominate Trump for president if he's won the most delegates but not enough to be nominated on the first ballot, versus 28 percent who believe the party should nominate someone else under those circumstances.
Clinton up 14 points over Sanders in the Empire State
In the Democratic race, Clinton is ahead of Bernie Sanders among likely Democratic primary voters by 14 points, 55 percent to 41 percent.
Clinton leads Sanders among African Americans (68 percent to 28 percent), those ages 45 and older (66 percent to 30 percent) and women (58 percent to 38 percent).
Sanders, meanwhile, holds the advantage among those younger than 45 (62 percent to 37 percent) and those who describe themselves as "very liberal" (59 percent to 40 percent). The two are running roughly even among men and Latinos.
Geographically, Clinton is ahead of Sanders in New York City (58 percent to 39 percent) and in the suburbs (61 percent to 36 percent), but Sanders holds a one-point lead in Upstate New York (49 percent to 48 percent).
Strikingly, 30 percent of likely Democratic voters who support Sanders say they wouldn't support Clinton in a general election, compared with 15 percent of Clinton voters who say that about Sanders.
Yet both Clinton and Sanders easily beat Trump, Cruz and Kasich in hypothetical general-election matchups in the blue state of New York.
We Asked 4 Prominent Bernie Supporters if They’d Vote for Hillary in November. Here’s What They Told Us.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton at the first Democratic debate in Las Vegas, October 13, 2015. (AP Photo / John Locher)
Is there an argument to be made for “Bernie or Bust”?
By Doug Henwood, Rania Khalek, Kathleen Geier and Joshua Holland April 11, 2016
Late last month, Susan Sarandon [see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121533288 and preceding and following] sparked a heated debate among Bernie Sanders supporters about whether, in the event of their candidate’s loss in the contest for the Democratic nomination, it would be better to vote for Hillary Clinton in the November general election or to allow a Republican to succeed Barack Obama.
Or, on the other hand, is it not self-evident that a reinstatement of the Clintons to the White House ought to be preferred over a Republican Party divided only over the extent to which it should be forthright about its racism, xenophobia, sexism, militarism and servility to corporate power? In the interest of a full hearing for each argument, we asked four supporters of Bernie Sanders to comment on the “Bernie or Bust” phenomenon. —Richard Kreitner
It has become accepted orthodoxy in establishment circles to view Trump as an authoritarian race-baiter who poses a uniquely grave danger to the United States and the world. While he is all of those things, this characterization obscures the fact that Clinton is also a threat to world stability, and that, unlike Trump, she already has the blood on her hands to prove it.
Fortunately, Clinton’s coronation isn’t inevitable. Bernie Sanders is still in the race and has a record of consistently opposing regime change, military belligerence, and austerity. And he’s mainstreaming socialist ideas that are vital to combating the fascism coalescing around Trump. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Another four or even eight years of Clintonian economics and military adventurism will lead to the rise of an even more bellicose demagogue than Trump. For me, the choice is clear: It’s Bernie or bust.
In the heat of this primary campaign, some Bernie Sanders supporters say they could never support Hillary Clinton—a candidate, they believe, who does not represent their interests or their values. But I’m confident they’ll come to judge their interests differently over the course of a months-long general election campaign against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.
In November, we’ll vote for more than just a president. We’ll decide which party fills over 2,000 policy-making positions in the Executive Branch; which party will name the heads of the government’s regulatory, enforcement, and social-services agencies; and which party will nominate at least one—and perhaps as many as three—justices to the Supreme Court.
Both parties are too beholden to the donor class for the tastes of most progressives. Neither will advance a foreign-policy agenda sufficiently like Norway’s to win our applause. But when we go to the polls, we’ll face a choice between a party that believes in expanding the social safety net, albeit incrementally, and one that thinks poor people are moochers and that any effort to help them creates a form of dependency worse than poverty. We’ll choose between a party that believes a woman should have the right to control her own body, and one that believes that abortion amounts to infanticide. We’ll decide whether a party that accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming should set environmental policy, or we’ll leave that task to one that largely believes it’s all a big hoax.
If the Republicans win the White House, they would almost certainly retain control of the House and Senate, and Mitch McConnell would likely eliminate the filibuster, producing a federal government entirely under unified the control of the ultra-right. States like Kansas and North Carolina, where that is currently the case, show us what this would be like.
There should be no doubt what this would mean for the progressive project.
The counter-arguments are, frankly, incoherent. If droves of Sanders supporters were to stay home and deliver the White House to the GOP, the political establishment would view that as further proof that parties rarely win three terms in a row. The story would be that Clinton had too much baggage, or that Trump had brilliantly appealed to “Reagan Democrats.” Whatever message the “Bernie or Bust” crowd might think they’d be sending to the establishment would undoubtedly fall on deaf ears.
None of this is news to Bernie Sanders. Primaries highlight divisions within a party—and we’re at a particularly nasty stage of the campaign right now—but those divisions tend to disappear once a nominee emerges. Consider Howard Dean’s rousing endorsement in 2004 of John Kerry, a former rival for the nomination whom he had previously assailed as a supporter of the Iraq war and as a “handmaiden of special interests.” Sanders, who co-sponsored 19 bills [ http://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-alike-426301 ] that Clinton introduced during the two years they overlapped in the Senate, will extract some policy concessions and then do the same for Clinton.
It’s not my place to tell Sanders’s supporters whom to vote for in November. That task will fall to the candidate himself. I have no doubt he’ll do what’s right for this country.
I’ve spent much of the last year and a half as a professional anti-Hillaryite for the left. My days are filled with predictable attacks from Clinton supporters, most of whom don’t seem to have read a word I’ve written on the contender from Chappaqua. The attacks broadly fall into two categories. The first involve charges of anti-feminism and misogyny. The mere act of criticizing Hillary Clinton’s political history, her duplicity and penchant for secrecy, and her habit of creating scandals (the inevitable consequence of her duplicity and penchant for secrecy), is an affront to the aspirations of women. I admire and support the aspirations of women; I just don’t think that Hillary Clinton is the most appealing vehicle for their advancement. The second kind of attack asks, as one unfriendly critic put it, “Who do you want, Ted Cruz?” To some people, he is the only imaginable non-Trumpian alternative to the putative Democratic nominee.
Another way of phrasing the Ted Cruz question generally goes like this: “Okay, if you think Hillary is so horrible, whom are you going to vote for?” You can answer by listing all the annoying historical and structural constraints that got us here: our constitutionally mandated form of divided and unrepresentative government, consciously designed to frustrate popular power; the semi-official status of the two-party system; the ever-more-dominant role of money in politics; the gatekeeping function of the media, etc. But that will never satisfy the questioner, who wants a firm answer. The exchange often has the feeling (to paraphrase Theodor Adorno) of a cop asking for your papers. So, officer, here’s my answer: I can, in fact, imagine myself voting for Hillary Clinton—but only if David Brock, her nemesis turned promoter, were holding a gun to my head. I’ve spent too much time reading about her hawkishness and her loyalty to corporate power to bring myself to pencil in the oval next to her name. It’s likely she’d rip up the nuclear deal with Iran—more elegantly than Donald Trump, perhaps, but no less thoroughly—and try to change a disobedient regime or two. And her apologists who want to know what specific quid pro quos she’s granted in exchange for campaign contributions from banks and other powerful corporations are missing the point: They shouldn’t be read as transactional but as votes of confidence from people who don’t part with money lightly.
Yes, I live in New York, where my vote probably doesn’t matter. That is a luxury of sorts. I won’t argue with anyone who wants to vote for Clinton because the alternative is so horrible—though we’ve been hearing this for decades, without the least recognition that this lesser-evil habit lubricates the endless rightward shift of our politics. What’s different about this election cycle is that the Bernie Sanders campaign is offering the first serious challenge to orthodoxy’s dominance in a long time—and not only to conservatism nationally, but to status quo–friendly politics in the Democratic Party itself. I’d rather think about what that means for the long term than about what I’m going to spend a few minutes doing on November 8.
Hillary Clinton is uninspiring, untrustworthy, and politically tone-deaf. As a candidate, she offers an incrementalist agenda of tinkering around the edges of our nation’s problems, rather than the far-reaching reforms they so urgently require. The product of a corrupt and broken system, she is the most cynical Democratic presidential nominee of my lifetime.
But if Clinton prevails in the primaries, I will vote for her in November, and I strongly recommend that my fellow Bernie Sanders supporters do likewise. Post-Bernie, supporting Hillary in the general election would be the most rational choice progressives can make. She would be the one candidate (with any shot at winning) who comes closest to representing our interests.
Though Clinton is guilty of a multitude of political sins, she possesses one overwhelmingly positive attribute: she is a Democrat. In the political context of 2016, any Democrat is preferable to any Republican. With the Republicans firmly in control of Congress, the only force that can prevent them from enacting their most destructive policies is a Democratic president.
Sanders supporters like myself, for whom economic inequality is a paramount concern, are particularly alarmed about the Republicans’ economic agenda. The Kochs and other oligarchs who control the GOP have made it clear that slashing the federal budget is the party’s top political priority. If the Republicans take control of all three branches of government, be prepared for the most radical austerity measures the federal government has ever experienced.
A Republican president would also be sure to stack every level of the federal government with terrible appointments. Appointments are among the president’s most potent tools, as we were reminded recently when public-sector unions were saved [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/us/politics/friedrichs-v-california-teachers-association-union-fees-supreme-court-ruling.html ] only because Antonin Scalia dropped dead at just the right moment. But it’s not only extremists like Scalia we have to worry about. Because of Republicans’ hatred of government, they actively seek to undermine it by appointing manifestly unqualified people—think of “Brownie” and Hurricane Katrina.
Beyond preventing the worst GOP excesses, a Democratic president would surely achieve at least some meaningful good. Clinton, like any Democrat, would be far more friendly toward policies that produce material gains for working people. Even Andrew Cuomo, as soulless a corporate Dem as anyone, recently enacted paid family leave and a $15 minimum wage in New York State.
I understand the feelings of frustration and disappointment that are driving the “Bernie or Bust” phenomenon, because I share them. But it’s peculiar for leftists, of all people, to be so fixated on individual candidates. After all, leftist thinking has always downplayed personalities and stressed the importance of systems and structures. We know that movements are ultimately what makes change, and that change begins at the grassroots. The presidency is the last place where we’re likely to see a revolution.
Over the long term, the left’s most promising path to victory lies in radically remaking Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders clearly understands this—why else would he be running as a Democrat? Towards that end, activist energies should take two basic forms: pressuring the party from the outside through movements like Fight for 15 and Black Lives Matter, and reforming it from within by electing progressive Democrats [ https://newrepublic.com/article/129047/bernies-army-running-congress ] at all levels of government. But while it’s essential to fight for a better future, it’s also vital to advance our interests in the here and now. In the short term, that means electing Hillary Clinton as president in November.
Bernie Sanders LIVE from Washington Square Park - A Future to Believe in Rally
Streamed live on Apr 13, 2016 by Bernie2016tv Live
A Future to Believe In GOTV Rally Concert In Manhattan's Washington Square Park Featuring Special Guests Vampire Weekend, Spike Lee, Rosario Dawson, Shailene Woodley, Linda Sarsour, Tim Robbins and Graham Nash, Washington Square Park, Main Plaza, New York
Information for the public: Music starts at 7 p.m.
CULTURE: Bernie Thanked Surrogate Who Referenced Hillary and ‘Corporate Democratic Whores’ MSNBC reporter Alex Seitz-Wald first reported that a speaker at Bernie Sanders’s Washington Square Park rally on Wednesday evening referred to “corporate Democratic whores.” The outrage was immediate. By Thursday morning, #DemocraticWhores [ https://twitter.com/hashtag/DemocraticWhores ] was among the top trending Twitter hashtags. The person who spoke those words, Dr. Paul Song, apologized to BNR contributor Melissa McEwan. But there was no initial apology or acknowledgment from Bernie, who thanked Song for his “great introduction.” April 13, 2016, Updated on April 14, 2016 TRANSCRIPT: Dr. Paul Song: Now Secretary Clinton has said that Medicare for all will never happen. [boos] Well, I agree with Secretary Clinton that Medicare for all will never happen if we have a president who never aspires for something greater than the status quo. [cheers] Medicare for all will never happen if we continue to elect corporate Democratic whores [cheers] who are beholden to big pharma and the private insurance industry instead of us.” [...] http://bluenationreview.com/speaker-at-bernie-nyc-rally-refers-to-corporate-democratic-whores/[emphasis in original]