In order to understand why Bernie Sanders is the true Democratic front-runner, and why Hillary Clinton should concede the nomination to Sanders, take a closer look at the FBI’s email investigation. Few people know more about the FBI probe than Jason Leopold, and his latest piece in Vice explains the potential repercussions of this ongoing saga.
In an article titled “FBI Reveals New Details About Its Probe Into Hillary Clinton’s Use of Private Email Server,” Leopold highlights the FBI’s response to a recent court order:
The declaration addresses why the FBI can’t publicly release any records about its probe in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by VICE News…
But the FBI, which consulted with attorneys within its Office of General Counsel “who are providing legal support to the pending investigation,” cannot divulge any of them without “adversely affecting” the integrity of its investigation…
Hardy noted that the FBI’s probe was launched after the bureau received a referral from inspectors general of the State Department and the intelligence community about Clinton’s use of a private email server.
In a new Bloomberg poll conducted by Selzer & Co., Bernie Sanders has a slight national edge over Hillary Clinton, earning 49 percent of support to Clinton's 48. This is only the second poll ever to show Sanders with a lead of any sort, and is at odds with other recent polls showing Clinton with a double-digit lead. But it's clear that it accurately reflects one facet of the Democratic race: Sanders and Clinton are in a tough, evenly fought contest and will likely continue to be.*
What's interesting about the new Selzer poll is why the race is so close. In theory, Clinton should have run away with it. This was the thinking a year ago today, when Clinton had a 54-point lead over Sanders. But over time that lead narrowed and narrowed and narrowed, leading us to this point. The reason? The economy.
It has been an amazing year for outsiders. Within the Republican Party, a real estate mogul with longstanding ties to the Democratic Party is on the verge of winning the Republican nomination for the presidency, sending shockwaves through the party hierarchy and calling into question almost everything the country thought it knew about what was necessary to win a modern presidential nomination contest. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist from Vermont, has given the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party establishment a similar jolt, as he has managed, much as Donald Trump has done in the Republican contest, to highlight the gap between party elites and large segments of the electorate who are completely turned off to “politics as usual.” Both have tapped into a deep populist resentment—and even anger—against the political and economic (and in Trump’s case, cultural) elites who are viewed as dominating the political landscape. But even after his Utah and Idaho wins on Tuesday, Sanders still trails Clinton by nearly 750 delegates, calling his possible nomination into question.
Sanders and Trump are the symbols of a grassroots rebellion that cuts across traditional party allegiances, and suggests that we might be in the early stages of a new political alignment. From Clinton’s standpoint, the events of the last several weeks must seem like déjà vu all over again. After losing to a Democratic Party newcomer in 2008 who went on to win two terms in the White House, she must certainly believe she is snake bit. Her campaign has weaknesses that even a badly divided Republican Party may still be able to exploit (notably the lack of enthusiasm amongst younger voters)—if it can get its act together.
Of course, Sanders is hardly in the same position as Trump, as the latter appears very much on the verge of winning the Republican nomination, in spite of desperate efforts by the party establishment to halt this runaway train. If “normal” political dynamics were to prevail over the next few months, it is nearly impossible to see how Sanders could win the Democratic nomination. He certainly had a good run, winning New Hampshire and Michigan, nearly winning Missouri and Illinois, and doing well in a few other caucus states—like Utah and Idaho by massive margins. But Clinton is far ahead in the delegate count, she has an almost complete lock on the super delegates, and there is little reason to think that fundamental dynamic will change.
Sanders almost surely sees things somewhat differently, though—or, at least, he should see things differently. To the extent Sanders sees himself, like Trump, as the leader of a broader social movement, he has absolutely no reason to quit. Nor is there any reason to think he will quit. Before the end of the primary season, Sanders has the opportunity to continue the process of remaking the Democratic Party in a much more populist and progressive direction, creating in effect a full-fledged, left-wing social Democratic Party much closer to his ideals and those of groups like Occupy Wall Street with their anti-corporate, anti-Wall Street focus. Sanders supporters view Clinton and the elites within the Democratic Party as irretrievably beholden to Wall Street, multinational corporations, and high technology. Sanders sees himself as working toward something more important than a presidential nomination, but rather, reshaping the contours of American politics for the next several decades. And, when Sanders supporters look at Clinton, they are likely to see, fairly or not, someone interested in the acquisition of power for the sake of power.
Sanders still has substantial opportunities to continue to advance his cause over the next few months. Following the Western Super Tuesday, the nomination fight has a bit of a hiatus, with the next primary halting until April 5 in Wisconsin. Madison should be an electoral gold mine for Sanders, and even if he doesn’t end up carrying Wisconsin, he will surely put on a respectable showing. Indeed, while polling has been rather sparse in Wisconsin, one just-released survey by Emerson College shows Clinton and Sanders neck and neck, with Clinton leading by just 6 points (5% margin of error).
While Clinton will assuredly win New York, Sanders should do well in a number of the states following New York on April 26 (Connecticut and Rhode Island, and possibly Pennsylvania), plus California on June 7, the biggest prize of all. Of course, by then Clinton is likely to have long since wrapped up the nomination since she begins the final stretch run with a massive delegate lead, but Sanders’ continuation in the race will give added credibility to his cause and give him additional clout at the convention in shaping the party platform. In order to pacify Sanders’ supporters, Clinton may find it the better part of valor to go along with much, if not necessarily all, of what Sanders and his people want. Seemingly arcane fights over platforms become fights about the future of the party, and so for Sanders, the stakes are high.
But there are much more pragmatic and short-term reasons for Sanders to stay in the race. It is something Democrats seem averse to talking about (and has Republicans salivating) but remains the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room: Sometime in the next several weeks, it’ll be evident what will come of the FBI investigation into Clinton’s emails, and the much-less discussed Clinton Foundation controversies, the latter questioning whether Clinton, in her capacity as secretary of state, helped promote the Foundation in illegal ways.
In the very unlikely event that the Justice Department indicted Clinton, clearly all bets are off. It would be unlikely for Clinton to survive such a blow, in which case Sanders would be extraordinarily well positioned to get the nomination. Yes, there is talk that the party elites would turn to Joe Biden or even Elizabeth Warren in such an eventuality, but would the party really nominate someone who had not participated in the primaries when there is a legitimate contender waiting in the wings who has been through the process? Just as many Republicans worry that such a move by anti-Trump forces could completely fracture the party, Democrats who have their wits about them must surely be pondering the very same possibility for their own side.
Now, the chances of a Clinton indictment are probably exceedingly small, unless there is evidence uncovered by the FBI that hasn’t been in the public eye. But even were the FBI to recommend an indictment, the chances of the Justice Department actually prosecuting seem somewhere between slim and none. But assuming no indictment, the very spectacle of word leaking out that the FBI had been rebuffed in its recommendation of indictment, or if one or more Clinton aides get legally entangled in the server controversy, Clinton could be so damaged that her prospects against even someone like Trump in the general election would be seriously compromised. Under those circumstances, the party might then decide that Sanders is basically the only game left in town. Will any of these possibilities occur? There are only a few who know (FBI Director James Comey, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and President Obama, among a handful of others), and they aren’t talking. Anything less than complete exoneration of Clinton and her staff will leave her vulnerable to attack from Republicans, if not from Sanders himself.
No one would have thought even just a few months ago that the 2016 presidential contest would develop as it has. And with the general election still more than seven months away, there are almost assuredly more surprises in store for the candidates—and the voters. The left-wing social movement hasn’t flamed out yet—quite the opposite—so if you are Bernie Sanders, and still have the resources to stay in the race to the end, why not hang in and see what happens?
It will cost more than four times the average income in San Francisco to have dinner next to Hillary Clinton and the Clooneys there next month.
For two seats at the head table with Clinton, George Clooney and his wife, attorney Amal Clooney, at an April 15 fundraiser, a couple must contribute or raise a whopping $353,400 — a huge ticket price for a hard-dollar fundraiser.
The Bay Area fundraiser, hosted at the home of venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, is one of two events starring the Clooneys. On April 16, Clinton and the Clooneys will reunite at the Clooney Los Angeles mansion, where tickets cost $33,400 per person to dine at the table with one of Hollywood’s most glamorous couples.
Both events raise money for the Hillary Victory Fund. While the maximum donation to a presidential campaign is $2,700 for the primary elections (plus another $2,700 for the general), the Hillary Victory Fund can accept much larger contributions because it is a so-called joint fundraising committee that is comprised of multiple committees.
In addition to Hillary for America, which is Clinton’s main campaign committee, the Hillary Victory Fund also includes the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees.
The maximum donation to the DNC is $33,400 a year, while the state parties each can accept donations of $10,000 a year into their federal accounts.
Clinton’s typical, non-A-list-actor fundraisers for the primary require hosts to raise $10,000 to $50,000. A fundraiser last week at the home of best-selling author John Grisham in Virginia, for instance, required co-hosts to raise $10,000.
In the movie Oceans 11, a gang of lovable thieves successfully heist $150 million from a vault in the basement of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
Fueled primarily from high-dollar donations, Hillary Clinton has raised more than that in this campaign, and is now enlisting the support of George Clooney (Danny Ocean) to pad that total at a dinner event that will cost people up to $353,400 to attend.
Now, most of us can agree that is an obscene amount of money. It’s a sum that would require an employee making the federal minimum wage to work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for more than 5 years.
Here is the truth: while tens of millions of Americans are struggling to put dinner on the table, the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good. And the great question of this campaign is will we restore a vibrant democracy in this country, or will we slide into an oligarchy in which the economic and political life is controlled by a handful of billionaires?
Hillary is again using the "everyone does it" defense to explain away thousands of emails she deleted from her servers claiming they were "private" and not "business." One major problem with that excuse is that Hillary was the one who censured her own emails; deciding what to keep and what to delete. Clinton fails to calm email storm | TheHill
Of those emails, Clinton’s team determined that 30,490 were work-related, in part by searching for the names of top officials and for emails ending in “.gov.” Those records were provided to the State Department two months ago; the other 31,830 were apparently deleted.
“Secretary Clinton chose not to keep her private, personal emails that were not federal records,” the document states. Clinton defended the process as thorough and fair, and suggested that she has the same right to privacy as everyone else.
Hillary assumes that the Secretary of State is the same as "everyone" else; apples and oranges.
It now turns out that there were more oranges than Hillary admitted to;
Conservative legal watchdogs have discovered new emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server dating back to the first days of her tenure as secretary of State.
The previously undisclosed February 2009 emails between Clinton from her then-chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, raise new questions about the scope of emails from Clinton’s early days in office that were not handed over to the State Department for recordkeeping and may have been lost entirely.
Clinton’s presidential campaign has previously claimed that the former top diplomat did not use her personal "clintonemail.com" account before March 2009, weeks after she was sworn in as secretary of State.
But on Thursday, the watchdog group Judicial Watch released one message from Feb. 13, 2009, in which Mills communicated with Clinton on the account to discuss the National Security Agency’s (NSA) efforts to produce a secure BlackBerry device for her to use as secretary of State.
The discovery is likely to renew questions about Clinton’s narrative about her use of the private email server, which has come under scrutiny.
Last year, news organizations reported that Obama administration officials had discovered an email chain between Clinton and retired Gen. David Petraeus that began before Clinton entered office and continued through to Feb. 1. The chain of emails began on an earlier email system that Clinton used while serving in the Senate, but was reportedly transferred on to the clintonemail.com server.
In 2014, Clinton gave the State Department roughly 30,000 emails from her time in office that she said related to her work as the nation’s top diplomat. Another roughly 30,000 emails, which Clinton said contained personal information such as her daughter’s wedding plans and yoga routines, were deleted.
However, critics have questioned her decision to unilaterally delete the allegedly private emails without getting official input to determine which messages were personal and which were work-related.
Tom Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch, has said that he expects all of the emails to eventually come to light.
Socialist senator receives 69 percent of the vote among Americans living abroad, adding nine delegates to his total.
Down but not out, Senator Bernie Sanders scored a big win in the Democrats Abroad global primary as the contest to become the party's candidate in November's US presidential election heats up.
"We are waging a strong campaign and plan to take it all the way to the Democratic National Convention this summer," Sanders said after his win on Monday.
The party said 34,570 American citizens living abroad in 38 countries cast votes by internet, mail, and in person from March 1 to 8.
Sanders received 69 percent of the vote to earn nine of the 13 delegates at stake. Hillary Clinton won 31 percent, picking up four delegates.
It is an important victory for Sanders, who was beaten by Clinton in five states last Tuesday.
Still, Sanders continues to trail Clinton by more than 300 delegates.
Clinton now has 1,163 delegates to Sanders' 844 based on primaries and caucuses.
In the US primary system, voters select delegates supporting their candidates in each state and then the delegates vote for the candidates in parties' national conventions.
When including superdelegates, or party leaders who can support any candidate, her lead is even bigger - 1,630 to Sanders' 870. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.
Halfway into the primary season, the Democratic race now moves to western states this week that Sanders is counting on winning to cut into Clinton's lead.
On Tuesday, Democrats vote in Arizona, Idaho and Utah, with 131 delegates up for grabs; on Saturday, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington hold caucuses with 142 delegates at stake.
But who are Democrats Abroad? Where did the votes come from? Where did these Democrats actually vote?
Votes came in from more than 170 countries. There was in-person voting at 153 voting centers in 38 different countries. Voters could also submit ballots by email, post or fax.
What were the top five countries where people participated?
United Kingdom: 13.3 percent of total (4,610 total votes)
Sanders 2,874 - Clinton 1,726
Canada: 9.5 percent (3,272 total votes)
Sanders 2,171 - Clinton 1,087
Germany: 8.4 percent (2,917 total votes)
Sanders 2,103 - Clinton 805
France: 8.4 percent (2,901 total votes)
Sanders 1,825 - Clinton: 1,058
Spain: 4.93 percent (1,706 total votes)
Sanders: 1,295 votes - Clinton: 405 votes
Clinton only won in three places
The only countries where Clinton had more votes than Sanders were the Dominican Republic (350 to 53), Nigeria (4 to 1) and Singapore (149 to 107).
Which countries had the fewest?
- 7 people cast votes in Afghanistan (5 for Sanders, 2 for Clinton)
- 5 people cast votes in Nigeria (1 for Sanders, 4 for Clinton)
What about the superdelegates?
Democrats Abroad is granted eight superdelegates. (Each carries half a vote.) That means that there are four superdelegate votes at stake — three have made verbal commitments to Clinton and one committed to Sanders. The remaining four have yet to announce. So stay tuned.
As Hillary Rodham Clinton runs for president, her political and family finances have come under scrutiny—especially the Clinton’s ties to Wall Street. Those connections are complex. They include not just her political fundraising and paid public speaking appearances, but also the Clinton Foundation and her son-in-law’s hedge fund.
Besides both of their first names beginning with H both Hillary and Heidi have very strong ties to Wall Street; especially with Goldman Sachs.
For example; both Hillary and Heidi are (or have been) employed by Goldman Sachs; Heidi as a banker;
Heidi Suzanne Cruz is an American investment manager at Goldman Sachs, former economic policy advisor to the 2000 George W. Bush presidential campaign, and an appointed government official in the Bush Adminstration. Wikipedia Read More: Who is the real Heidi Cruz?
Watching any Ted Cruz political advertisement featuring his wife and two young daughters, we could easily get the impression that Heidi Nelson Cruz, like Nancy Reagan, is a devoted wife dedicated to making sure she and her husband occupy the White House.
The New York Times in an article published on Jan. 18, described Heidi Cruz as “a political wife,” who had become a force in her husband’s presidential contest, “an all-purpose surrogate and strategist to be deployed as often as possible.”
Heidi is herself a high-powered Bush insider, who served as deputy to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice before signing on as a Deputy to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, neocon stalwart and former Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. Zoellick wired a cushy job for Heidi when she landed at Goldman Sachs as a partner.
Goldman would, of course, go on to make a secret $1 million loan to fund Ted’s U.S. Senate campaign while both Cruzes lied about the source of funds being Heidi’s retirement savings. Read more: Ted Cruz Didn’t Report Goldman Sachs Loan in a Senate Race
Heidi is not a high flying super model flashing for slick magazines and is fair game in this political game that she's well versed at playing; Read More;The Trials And Triumphs Of Heidi Cruz
As for Hillary and her position as a motivational speaker for Goldman Sachs there is much more to be said and disclosed about why voters should believe her when she says she is not beholden to Wall Street bankers. It's a hard sell to convince voters that bankers paid out those millions of dollars for just a pep talk.
At the most recent Democratic presidential town hall, for instance, Clinton was asked by Anderson Cooper if it was a mistake to accept $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. Her answer was, well, awkward:
CLINTON: “Look, I gave speeches to lots of groups. I told them what I thought. I answered questions.”
COOPER: “But did you have to be paid $675,000?”
CLINTON: “Well, I don’t know. That’s what they offered.”
A new report in Politico, with several quotes from Goldman employees who attended Clinton’s speeches, will likely increase the pressure.
According to people who heard Clinton’s remarks, “she spoke glowingly of the work the bank was doing raising capital and helping create jobs…She spent no time criticizing Goldman or Wall Street more broadly for its role in the 2008 financial crisis.” On the one hand, it’s understandable that Clinton wouldn’t condemn the people paying her several hundred thousand dollars to speak. However, the report sharply contradicts her “Cut it out” narrative, which was already unpersuasive.
“It was pretty glowing about us,” said another attendee. “It’s so far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. It was like a rah-rah speech. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.” However accurate these accounts are, it’s a very bad look for Clinton. The discourse on the Left right now is focused on greed and inequality and corruption – reports like this can only undermine Clinton’s campaign. Hillary Clinton can’t run away from her Goldman Sachs problem: Report suggests her paid speeches were decidedly pro-Wall Street
Report alleges Clinton gave big banks a free pass for financial crisis during glowing speeches about industry
It would be interesting to not only know the contents of these pep talks but who the audience was. Could it be that Heidi might have been in attendance?
Why do Republicans (and the media) frequently mention Hillary and say little or nothing about Bernie when reporting on General Election match-ups?
Republicans believe that Hillary will lose the election regardless who she runs against in November. Her loss is almost guaranteed because she will lose the Independents and Crossovers who will cast their votes for "anyone but Hillary."
They see Hillary as the gift that keeps on giving when the GOP attack dogs begin to feast on her. The baggage she carries is "huuuge" (as Bernie would say) and her opponents will have a field day tearing down her (and her husbands) reputation(s). The theme is obvious; can she be trusted? Is she honest? And, there's plenty of evidence to support that she loses on both counts.
There's her secret email accounts that she shared classified information. There's the secret speeches she made to Wall Street bankers who make up the bulk of her donor base. There's the hundred of millions of dollars her and Bill have pulled in for doing nothing more than peddling their influence and connecting power brokers.
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, scares Republicans because he comes to the race with almost no baggage and is unshakable when it comes to his position on the issues Americans care about; the economy, healthcare, education, the infrastructure, income inequality, immigration, and political corruption. These are issues Republicans would rather not talk about because they; as well as Establishment Democrats, are a part of the problem and have no solutions.
In a General Election Bernie not only wins the votes of the majority of Millennials who are coming out in droves to vote for him, but also Independents and Crossovers that his message rings true with.
High turnout was reported among Democrats in all three states, with voters waiting hours in line in a few locations and some complaining that officials had not opened enough caucus sites or polling places.
Even after Arizona was called for Clinton, Sanders urged voters to stay in line, hoping to narrow the delegate gap in a state in which Democrats award them proportionally. In fact, Clinton’s Arizona margin narrowed as the night wore on—and Sanders’s dominating performances in Utah and Idaho allowed him to claim the majority of delegates who were up for grabs on Tuesday.
With Donald Trump on track to become the Republican nominee, Sanders has highlighted polls that show him beating the New York businessman in a general election by a wider margin than Clinton.
“There is no question that you are looking at the strongest Democratic candidate,” he said Monday.
His campaign team has repeatedly described the primary calendar as skewed in Clinton’s favor for the first half of the nominating contests and expect Sanders to pick up steam in western states, such as Washington, which holds its Democratic caucuses Saturday.
“We’re at halftime here, and we agree we’re behind, but we think we’re going to win this game,” said Sanders strategist Tad Devine last week.
Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager, expressed frustration with the sentiment that Clinton was already locking down the nomination, calling it a “media drumbeat to essentially disenfranchise half of the Democratic voters.”
Cronyism is common in the political Establishment and Hillary Clinton is a major offender. Electing Hillary not only brings a huge amount of baggage but a busload of political hacks that will continue to corrupt the system Hillary and company operate in.
There are two Democrats whose resignation from office right now would do their party and country a service.
Their disappearance might also help Hillary Clinton convince skeptical Democrats that her nomination, if it happens, is about the future, and not about resurrecting and ratifying the worst aspects of the first Clinton reign when she and her husband rarely met a donor to whom they wouldn’t try to auction a sleepover in the Lincoln Bedroom.
In fact, while we’re at it, and if Secretary Clinton really wants us to believe she’s no creature of the corporate and Wall Street money machine — despite more than $44 million in contributions from the financial industry since 2000 and her $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, not to mention several million more paid by other business interests for an hour or two of her time — she should pick up the gauntlet herself and publicly call for the departure of these two, although they are among her nearest and dearest. And we don’t mean Bill and Chelsea.
Consider this fact: Since the primaries began in early February, the oldest presidential candidate in the field has received more votes from people under 30 than the two party frontrunners combined.
Senator Bernie Sanders, the 74 year-old democratic socialist, has galvanized millions of millennials with his anti-establishment message, and in Michigan earlier this month, he pulled off “one of the greatest upsets in modern political history” with the help of 81 percent of the under-30 vote — a huge margin that has been relatively consistent throughout. Young people have packed his rallies across the country and he has been dominant on social media, with almost two million followers on Twitter and three-and-a-half million on Facebook.
This broad support from America’s youngest adults has naturally led some commentators to pronounce Bernie Sanders the future of the Democratic party. And, in one light, even at his advanced age, it’s hard to disagree. While his nomination is looking less and less likely, Sanders has accomplished a great deal by mobilizing both young and older progressives and shaping the national debate.
Even more remarkable, he has convinced a growing number of American voters that “socialism” is not a dirty word, but a positive alternative to corporate capitalism. By openly declaring himself a democratic socialist, Sanders has given a friendly face to a word that has long been used by right-wingers to scare voters. And whether one agrees with the Senator’s policies or not, it is hard to deny that he is sincere. Only the most paranoid conspiracy theorists could claim he has some ulterior motives. What you see is what you get, no blatant flip-flopping or transparent pandering.
This sincerity has been a driving factor for many young voters. On social media, where many millennials learn about the election, numerous videos have been produced comparing the senator’s lifelong political consistency — whether it’s him railing against Alan Greenspan in the early 2000s or deriding a homophobic congressman in the ’90s — to Hillary Clinton’s long history of flip-flopping on important issues like gay marriage, free trade, crime, and so on.A
Using "Private" email servers to conduct government (the people's) business. The issue as to whether some of this information was classified or not is not the problem when it comes to answering the question(s) regarding using a private server to communicate with unknown persons which may have profited by being made privy to government information and the obvious problem with her breaking the rules that can be used as a predictor of how she will conduct herself in future positions.
The Washington Post analyzed all 52,000 pages of Hillary Clinton’s correspondence released by the State Department over the past nine months. The Post found that 1,789 individual emails were classified as a result of the State Department’s review process. They were authored by 299 different people. The authors included Clinton and members of her inner circle, but also long-tenured diplomats and others. The 10 individuals who authored the most emails with classified redactions:
Hillary Clinton used a private email server to carry out State Department business while she was Secretary of State. Some of her correspondence was between non-government email addresses.
Why it matters; Records not under government control
Records not involving government email addresses were not under government control, raising issues concerning security and the State Department’s ability to follow open records laws
What happened; Chose not to keep “personal” emails
Clinton has given 30,000 work-related emails to both the State Department and the FBI. She said she chose not to keep 31,000 others she deemed personal. [Clinton won’t say if her server was wiped]
Why it matters; Emails are possibly irrecoverable
Because Clinton gave the FBI her private server, technology experts may be able to retrieve portions of the emails she did not keep. If they cannot, there may be no way to know what emails Clinton did not turn over.
The Clinton's Are Worth $644 Million While Bernie Is Worth $400K
“Is Hillary our Mitt Romney?” asked MSNBC’s Krystal Ball in a recent segment of her TV show. Ball’s statement came on the heels of several comments by Clinton that made her seem completely out of touch with ordinary Americans — that she is not “truly well off,” that she and her husband were compelled to give speeches for six figures apiece because they were “dead broke” upon leaving the White House.
Indeed, considering that Bill and Hillary Clinton have made more than $100 million since leaving the White House in 2000, it’s not surprising that many Americans see the former first couple as hopelessly detached from the problems of ordinary Americans despite presenting themselves as going through the very same struggles as other Americans.
“We had no money when we got there [to the White House],” explained Hillary Clinton in comments to ABC’s Diane Sawyer. “And we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education. It was not easy. Bill has worked really hard. And it’s been amazing to me. He’s worked very hard.”
Yet many Americans have also worked very hard, and they have not amassed the same kind of wealth as the Clintons, with multiple homes and over $100 million of earned income in the past decade. But underneath the social distance their wealth creates, there is a much deeper and more troubling truth. The real scandal is not that the Clintons are so wealthy but how they got that wealth.
In 2009, Bill Clinton addressed the Campus Progress National Summit, a gathering of progressive students in Washington, D.C. “I never made any money until I left the White House,” he told the students. “I had the lowest net worth, adjusted for inflation, of any president elected in the last 100 years, including President [Barack] Obama. I was one poor rascal when I took office. But after I got out, I made a lot of money.”
Clinton didn’t just make “a lot of money” when he left the White House. Together, the Clintons pulled in $111 millionfrom 2000 to 2007 — far more than what most people would consider a lot.
Thanks to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), which compiles personal financial disclosures from federal public officials, and the ethics laws governing the U.S. Senate, we know a little bit about how the Clintons made their money. Federal disclosure laws require not only officeholders to disclose their finances but also their spouses, since spousal income is shared. Thus Hillary Clinton’s disclosures both as a U.S. senator and as secretary of state are a window into this shared fortune, one that was gleaned from the very same interest groups and corporations over which the Clintons had authority.
In 1999, Bill Clinton made repealing the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act — which separated commercial and investment banking — a priority. He commanded a bipartisan push in repealing the law, which was primarily advocated for by Wall Street lobbyists. Not long after his pen hit the paper to repeal the law, Citigroup, a top beneficiary of the repeal, recruited Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to join as an executive at the firm. Rubin went on to be one of Citigroup’s highest-paid officials, pulling in $115 million in pay from 1999 and 2008. A year after Hillary Clinton called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his family 'friends' of her family, Bill Clinton was paid $250,000 to speak to the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, which was closely tied to the Mubarak regime.
While Rubin was made rich from Wall Street deregulation, his boss went on the lecture circuit. In February of 2001, Clinton had been out of the White House for less than a month when he gave his first paid speech, to none other than Morgan Stanley — another beneficiary of and advocate for Clinton’s Wall Street deregulation — for $125,000. His next address in Manhattan was at Credit Suisse First Boston, which gave him an additional $125,000. His paid speaking arrangements took him around the world, from Canada to Hong Kong, speaking to a variety of interest groups with major public policy interests, including the American Israel Chamber of Commerce and the investment banking giant CLSA. Clinton had also made passing the North American Free Trade Agreement a priority during his presidency, so it is no surprise that major Canadian firms such as the Jim Pattison Group ($150,000) were happy to pay to hear a few remarks from him as well.
The Wall Street payments were significant in that they represented a form of gratitude not only for Bill Clinton’s deregulation of Wall Street. That year Hillary Clinton, now a senator from New York, voted for a bankruptcy bill that made it much harder for people to qualify for Chapter 7 bankruptcy; the bill was backed primarily by banks and credit card issuers.
Bill Clinton in his spree of speeches repeatedly returned to two of the banking giants at the heart of political power in Washington: Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. In 2004 he took home a quarter-million dollars for a Citigroup address in Paris; Goldman Sachs gave him $125,000 for a New York City address. That address must have been a real hit for the former president, because Goldman invited him back for a series of lectures the next year, at Kiawah Island, South Carolina ($125,000); Paris ($250,000); and Greensboro, Georgia ($150,000). The next year, Citigroup Venture Capital invited him for a $150,000 speech, and the Mortgage Bankers Association — representing the folks at the very heart of the financial crisis — gave him $150,000 for a speech in Chicago.
Goldman and Citigroup repeatedly paid Clinton for the next few years, and a number of other major corporate interest groups — such as the National Retail Federation ($150,000) and Merrill Lynch ($175,000) — also joined in the fun.
After Hillary Clinton lost her presidential bid and was appointed to the State Department, she and her husband had brought in more than $100 million from books and speeches. By any measure, they had far more wealth than they needed to pay debts and to take care of their daughter’s future — the reasons Hillary Clinton cited to Diane Sawyer.
In June of 2010, months after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law and the regulatory battle over the health overhaul was set into motion, the former president took $175,000 from the main health insurance lobbying organization, America’s Health Insurance Plans. A year after Hillary Clinton called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarakand his family “friends” of her family, Bill Clinton was paid $250,000 to speak to the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, which was closely tied to the Mubarak regime. As Hillary Clinton grappled with foreign policy issues in Pakistan, Turkey and the Middle East, Bill Clinton took home $175,000 from the Middle East Institute, a think tank that does work in those areas. In 2011 she filmed a video congratulating Kuwait on its independence; a few months later, he was paid a $175,000 honorarium from the Kuwait America Foundation.
Shortly after stepping down from her post, the she then embarked on her own spree of paid speeches, which don’t have to be disclosed because neither Clinton is a public official anymore. But from voluntarily disclosures and press reports, we know that she gave at least two paid speeches to Goldman Sachs for $200,000 each.
Although she has not disclosed her full remarks at these events, a number of attendees talked to Politico about her tone and content. “Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish,” read the article. We won’t know the full extent of payments for speeches unless Clinton chooses to release them or she officially declares for president and has to release her personal financial documents since 2013.
What has been laid out here is only a small sample of the vortex of wealth that Hillary and Bill Clinton have received from corporations, foundations, foreign organizations and others with an interest in U.S. public policy. No one with any knowledge of politics believes these payments to be disinterested or impartial; they are part of a larger political system that rewards politicians for fealty and obedience.
The Clintons were simply following a path laid by other politicos, such as former U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, who raked in millions of dollars as a drug lobbyist after crafting an industry-friendly Medicare overhaul, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who has leveraged his experience in government to enrich himself influence-peddling for a variety of corporate clients without ever having to officially register as a lobbyist.
Given their immense wealth and how they got it — politicized kickbacks from the most powerful political forces in Washington, on Wall Street and around the globe — the Clintons would do well to admit that they are unusually wealthy and stop trying to pass themselves off as ordinary folks. If they don’t, their fate may very well resemble Romney’s, as mounting public anger over growing income and wealth inequality could prevent them from returning to the White House in 2016.
Over four decades of public life, Bill and Hillary Clinton have built an unrivaled global network of donors while pioneering fundraising techniques that have transformed modern politics and paved the way for them to potentially become the first husband and wife to win the White House.
The grand total raised for all of their political campaigns and their family’s charitable foundation reaches at least $3 billion, according to a Washington Post investigation.
Their fundraising haul, which began with $178,000 that Bill Clinton raised for his long-shot 1974 congressional bid, is on track to expand substantially with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 White House run, which has already drawn $110 million in support.
The Post identified donations from roughly 336,000 individuals, corporations, unions and foreign governments in support of their political or philanthropic endeavors — a list that includes top patrons such asSteven Spielberg and George Soros, as well as lesser-known backers who have given smaller amounts dozens of times. Not included in the count are an untold number of small donors whose names are not identified in campaign finance reports but together have given millions to the Clintons over the years.
The majority of the money — $2 billion — has gone to the Clinton Foundation, one of the world’s fastest-growing charities, which supports health, education and economic development initiatives around the globe. A handful of elite givers have contributed more than $25 million to the foundation, including Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra,who is among the wealthy foreign donors who have given tens of millions.
As Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares to run for president, her political and family finances have come under scrutiny—especially the Clinton’s ties to Wall Street. Those connections are complex. They include not just her political fundraising and paid public speaking appearances, but also the Clinton Foundation and her son-in-law’s hedge fund.
The Clinton Foundation(s) are notoriously mercurial. Funding comes in and funding goes out but no one is ever that clear on the details of where it came from, where it is going, and/or what it is being used for. Labeled an “atypical business model” by “charity watchdog” group Charity Navigator, the Clinton Foundation has earned its position on the list of “suspicious charities.”[7]
Not only Republicans are raising questions about whether the Clinton Foundation is taking millions of dollars a year from governments and other donors that want political influence. The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Politico and CBS News have run stories about the questions, with a Journal analysis noting that the number of governments contributing to the foundation in 2014 appeared to have doubled from the previous year.
Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure -- derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) -- represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.
Numerous liberal organizations have called for a more economically progressive candidate to jump into the race. "The desire for an alternative to Clinton is real [and] ... We share that desire," the Nation wrote in a November editorial.
I want to tell you about something that encapsulates so much of what is wrong with our economy, our government, and our corrupt political system. Then I'm going to ask for your help to stop it.
Pfizer is a giant pharmaceutical company based in New York City that has a history of overcharging Americans for prescription drugs. It's in the process of trying to merge with another company located in Ireland.
If the merger is successful, Pfizer would technically become a foreign company, meaning it could dodge around $35 BILLION in corporate taxes here in America.
Enough is enough. Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies cannot be allowed to evade taxes and rip off American patients who already pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.
What Pfizer is trying to do is known as a "corporate inversion." In this case, Pfizer, an American company, is merging with a company based abroad. The result of the merger is a company with an address in another country – even though the majority of shareholders are still based in America.
Pfizer apparently doesn't want to pay the $35 billion in taxes it would owe in America. I don't think that's right.
No matter what, you can bet that Pfizer would continue to overcharge Americans for prescription drugs, too. Since 2014, the pharmaceutical company has hiked the prices of seven of its top selling drugs by an average of 39 percent.
Pfizer also charges 12 times as much in the U.S. under Medicare for these drugs as it charges in Ireland, where it’s claiming a new address for tax purposes.
All of this is the result of years of weakened tax laws, an abdication of responsibility by American companies to their country, and a corrupt political system that allows it to happen.
To many Americans it's just a bunch of buzz words activists use as talking points to support one cause or another. To others it's just a word salad and they have no clue as to what is at stake when these terms come up; much like not being able to find Iran or N. Korea on a map but supporting the made up stories to annihilate them off the face of the planet.
A recent Gallup poll found that less people would vote for a socialist than for an atheist, a Muslim, or an evangelical Christian. Media-numbed Americans still believe that “government is the problem.” Yet evidence keeps pouring in that free-market capitalism treats public safety as a profit-killer, dismisses environmental issues as irrelevant to business, and eliminates jobs to please investors.
Reports from the past six months show that the ongoing record of capitalist greed and irresponsibility has plunged to new lows.
1. Mocking Public Health and Safety
It’s disturbing enough that Volkswagen and Ford and General Motors and other auto companies rigged emissions tests and took safety shortcuts to save money; and that the Southern California Gas Co. lied about its poisonous sulfur levels; and that Exxon was found to be hiding its own climate change research for four decades; and that tens of thousands of government-subsidized abandoned mines have been left to pollute our waterways.
But Monsanto, which proclaims “We are committed to long-term environmental protection,”sued the State of California for trying to protect its citizens from the company’s toxic materials.
2. Showing Contempt for Workers
The sharing economy has created companies that promote worker ‘independence’ while denying them health and retirement benefits, sick pay, overtime pay, and vacation pay. It’s not a new capitalist idea. Merck and Out Magazine are among the companies that have“outsourced” employee positions to independent contractor positions, either by a mass layoff or by selling part of the company, after which former employees could be hired back at lower pay and without benefits.
Companies like American Express and AT&T have gone a step further with “individual arbitration” clauses, which effectively prohibit class-action lawsuits, the only economically feasible way for defrauded employees and customers to fight back against corporate malfeasance. Legal expert Brian T. Fitzpatrick explained, “Without a class action, if someone loses $500, they will not be able to do anything about it.”
3. Discarding the Poor
An “emergency financial manager” (EFM) privatizes the democratic process, stripping citizens and elected officials of power, granting unlimited power to a CEO-like figure who can sell off public assets to save money, even when it threatens the welfare of the community. This is what happened in Flint, Michigan. The EFM was the disaster capitalist’s solution, and as a result the city’s children have been poisoned.
To mount insult upon inhumanity, Flint residents were paying the highest water rates in the country, and, incredibly, they were threatened with a shutdown of water (still needed for toilets and cleaning) if they didn’t keep paying for the toxic product.
The EFM concept is not limited to local governments. In Ohio, where the already privatized charter schools are so bad that they’ve become a national joke, Republican candidate John Kasich signed a bill to allow CEOs to take over ‘failing’ school districts.
4. Catering to the Rich (While Discarding the Poor)
This has been evident most recently in the housing market, especially in the big cities, where developers are seeing dollar signs on affordable housing, and driving rental prices up twice as fast as incomes. The median rent in San Francisco is over $3,000. A New York City parking spot can cost a million dollars.
A half-million homeless Americans walk the streets while 17 million housing units remain vacant.
In New Orleans, tens of thousands of African Americans have been forced to leave the city as starry-eyed developers have more than doubled the rents to attract the wealthy. Louisiana Republican Richard H. Baker thanked God for the change: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it. But God did.”
5. Health Care: The Worst Legacy of Capitalism?
According to the Milliman Medical Index, the cost of healthcare in 2015 for a typical American family of four covered by a PPO was $24,671 — nearly half the median household income. Over $10,000 of this was paid directly by the family, through payroll deductions and out-of-pocket expenses.
Insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors all take advantage of the American people, but the main culprits are pharmaceutical companies, who think nothing of 10,000% markups, even while they and the banks enjoy the world’s highest profit margins. A Roche executive explained, “We are not in the business to save lives, but to make money. Saving lives is not our business.”
Americans who can’t afford their life-sustaining medications are the victims. They’re being killed by the profit incentive of capitalism.
There is an alternative if only Americans can wake up and look beyond the talking points;
Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives.
Democracy and socialism go hand in hand. All over the world, wherever the idea of democracy has taken root, the vision of socialism has taken root as well—everywhere but in the United States. Because of this, many false ideas about socialism have developed in the US.
If you are a Bernie supporter today, what you need is ammunition. Not to persuade your Democratic friends that Bernie is desirable—that’s another argument—but to persuade them that he is electable.
And you can. Hillary and the pundits are wrong. If the Democratic Party nominates Bernie Sanders as its candidate for president, he will win the White House in November 2016.
Here are ten reasons why:
REASON #10: THE POLLS SAY OTHERWISE. The most obvious response to Jack and Alex’s contention is that poll after poll shows something very different. In hypothetical November matchups between Bernie and various Republican nominees, it is not the case that he loses in a landslide. Nor is it the case that he loses in a squeaker. Bernie Sanders wins.
Moreover—and this is the most salient point for Democrats deciding whom to support in caucuses and primaries—Bernie often performs far better than Hillary against these hypothetical opponents.
A single example. Here is the NBC/WSJ/Marist poll on January 10th: In Iowa, Bernie Sanders defeats Donald Trump by 13 points and Ted Cruz by 5 points, and ties with Marco Rubio. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, defeats Trump by only 8 points, loses to Cruz by 4 points, and loses to Rubio by 5 points. The Sanders/Clinton disparity in New Hampshire was even more pronounced. There, Bernie defeats Trump by 19 points, Cruz by 18 points, and Rubio by 9 points. Hillary, however, defeats Trump in New Hampshire by just 1 point, loses to Cruz by 4 points, and loses to Rubio by 12 points.
So if the primary criterion determining the electability of the Democratic candidate in November, these polls—and there are many like them nationwide—unambiguously suggest that Bernie Sanders is significantly more likely to win the general election than Hillary Clinton.
But these polls are not likely to seal the deal. And frankly, they shouldn’t. The general election is still nine months away. Too much will happen during the next nine months —in both the dynamics of the presidential campaign and the world beyond. John McCain led Barack Obama by 3 points in exactly this same kind of hypothetical matchup in January 2008—long before either had secured their party nominations. But in the actual November 2008 election, Obama beat McCain by 7 points.
Fortunately there are many other reasons to believe that if Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic Party nomination, he will also win the presidency in November.
REASON #9: LANDSLIDES ARE FOR INCUMBENTS.
The scenario that Jack Democrat suggests—not just a Bernie Sanders loss but a landslide loss—is particularly unlikely if history is our guide. Why?
Because since the White House was occupied more than 80 years ago by FDR, the only time we have seen such blowout elections is when the sitting president was running for president. Go ahead and google it for yourself. The only landslides—let’s call that roughly 60%-40%—in modern times? Incumbent President Franklin Roosevelt over Alf Landon in 1936. Incumbent President Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater in 1964. Incumbent President Richard Nixon over George McGovern in 1972. And incumbent President Ronald Reagan over Walter Mondale in 1984.
We can’t say many things for sure about the November 2016 election, but we do know for sure that the incumbent president won’t be a candidate.
REASON #8: LANDSLIDES MAY BE A THING OF THE PAST.
That last real landslide, in 1984, was nearly a third of a century ago now. Since then, our presidential contests have become dominated by the "red state/blue state" reality. George F. Will recently pointed out that in the 1976 presidential election, 20 of our 50 states were won by five points or less. This means that during the campaign they were essentially up for grabs. That number in 2012? Only four. At least 40 of America's 50 states—driven for the most part by sheer demographics—seem virtually guaranteed now to go reliably red or blue. To choose just one example, here are the last six presidential election vote totals for the largest state in the union, California, with no less than 12% of the country's population and fully 55 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.
Traditional battleground states like New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan (combined electoral votes: 80) have shown similar patterns of increasing Democratic dominance during the past quarter century. Other states like Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York (combined electoral votes: 50) have been for the most part solidly blue for considerably longer than that.
Sure, Marco Rubio might find some way to reverse this trajectory, and to win California. It's perhaps even possible that he or some other Republican could "win all 50 states." But it seems far, far more likely that whether the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, or Kim Kardashian for president, they will start the general election race well north of 200 electoral votes. Virtually guaranteed.
REASON #7: RECENT DEMOCRATIC DOMINANCE IN PRESIDENTIAL CONTESTS.
It is tempting to conclude that the modern American presidency now runs in pretty regular cycles from party to party. Eight years of Obama (D). Eight years before that of Bush (R). Eight years before that of Clinton (D). Twelve years before that of Reagan and Bush (R).
That’s one way of looking at it.
But let’s try another. Since 1992, the GOP has won only one single non-incumbent presidential race. And when was that? In the year 2000, when—even with many Democrat-leaning voters casting their ballots for Ralph Nader—Al Gore still defeated George Bush by more than half a million ballots in the nationwide popular vote! (And, still in the minds of many, in the Electoral College as well.) The Nader experience, of course, is why the “Run Bernie Run” initiative launched by Progressive Democrats of America in 2014 called explicitly for Sanders to run for president as a Democrat.
It is rarely wise to extend alternative history speculations beyond the boundaries of one’s neighborhood bar. Still, it seems not wholly unreasonable to hypothesize that but for the twin 2000 peculiarities of the Nader candidacy and the butterfly ballots in Florida, the Democrats might have won the last six presidential elections in a row. Rather handily.
That’s another way of looking at it.
Other than 2004—when their candidate was the incumbent president—the Republican Party hasn’t unambiguously won the White House since 1988. And even in 2004, with all the traditional advantages of incumbency, George W. Bush was only able to defeat John Kerry by 3 points. The track record of recent history suggests that the Democratic Party may now have forged a solid and enduring structural advantage in presidential contests. Demographics are destiny, they say, and—in national presidential elections at least—the demographics of the American electorate appear to be running more and more favorably toward the Democrats.
REASON #6: WE MAY BE AT THE DAWN OF A NEW WORLDWIDE PROGRESSIVE ERA.
Or perhaps in the Western world. Or at least in the English and French speaking world!
Last summer a longtime far left backbench MP, Jeremy Corbyn, stunned the UK's political establishment by triumphing in the Labour Party leadership election. The consensus explanation the morning after? He moved people who had never before engaged in political action to show up and participate. (Sound familiar?)
This was, however, was only a party election. And many British pundits make the case today (much like Jack and Alex!) that Mr. Corbyn remains wholly unelectable in a nationwide election for prime minister. Since Tory Prime Minister David Cameron was just re-elected last spring, it will be awhile before we know whether those voices are right or wrong.
Yet in 2012 French voters ousted their center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy, and replaced him with Francois Hollande—the leader of the French Socialist Party. And then just last fall our great neighbor to the north ousted their Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and replaced him with Justin Trudeau—the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Perhaps we can't call this all a broad new transnational progressive wave quite yet. But it doesn’t seem wholly irrelevant to the prospects for a candidacy of the left in this country. Doesn’t it suggest that the winds of world history just may be blowing in our direction? Perhaps we can dare to dream that—after Bernie Sanders takes the oath of office in January 2017—most everyone will be talking about an emerging new worldwide progressive era after that!
REASON #5: THE LIABILITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF HILLARY CLINTON.
A narrative emerged this past fall, in whispers among the Democratic establishment, that Hillary Clinton may simply not be very skilled and gifted—as a politician. Policy expertise and public affairs acumen, which Hillary possesses in abundance, are not the same abilities one needs to perform successfully as a retail politician. If she’s having this much trouble during the primary season, how do you think she’s going to do against the Republican attack machine next fall?
There is, too, the giant unknown about the course of the ongoing FBI investigation into Hillary's practices as Secretary of State. Shortly after the New Year the FBI expanded its investigation beyond email—to examine whether the connections between Clinton Foundation donations and State Department actions might amount to “public corruption.” Then, on the Friday before Iowa, the State Department revealed for the first time that Hillary Clinton’s private server contained at least 22 emails classified as “top secret.” AndThe Hill newspaper reported that former FBI officials had begun speculating that an indictment of the former Secretary of State might come “during the heat of the general election campaign.” What if we choose her as our presidential nominee—and then this all blows up?
Although it should bring us no joy to say this, a case can be made that so many years after Hillary Clinton first emerged onto the American scene, she is now both so damaged and so flawed that she is the one who might "lose in an historic landslide" in the November election. The verdict is arguably in. The jury appears to have spoken. Her husband is one of the most gifted politicians in American history. She is not.
Fortunately, the Democratic Party has someone else running who is.
REASON #4: BERNIE IS UNELECTABLE AGAINST ANY REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE?
Jack Democrat may be right that Marco Rubio, or another "establishment" Republican, may well have a better chance to win the November election. But for the past several months, in poll after poll, the two frontrunners for the Republican nomination have stubbornly remained the ultraconservative ideologue Ted Cruz and the chauvinistic demagogue Donald Trump. Every day it appears more and more likely that one of these two extreme figures will emerge as the Republican nominee. Brent Budowsky of The Hill has suggested that the “intensity of opinion” of their supporters—motivating them to actually show up—means that they both may do even better than their polling numbers in the early states. But, Budowsky continues, if one of them is actually nominated, the chasm between their views and those of most Americans—and the millions who would passionately turn out to vote not just for the Democrat but against the Republican—may well lead to a landslide, for our side. Indeed, in almost an exact parallel to the Democratic fear that a Bernie candidacy would end up “like George McGovern in 1972,” longtime Republican fundraiser Austin Barbour says: “If we’re not careful and we nominate Trump, we’re looking at a race like Barry Goldwater in 1964.”
Indeed, Bernie himself has said: “I would love, love, love to run against Donald Trump … It would be a dream come true.”
But it won’t come true unless we make him our nominee.
REASON #3: BERNIE HAS DECISIVELY DEFEATED MANY REPUBLICAN OPPONENTS.
Hillary Clinton has run only two general election races against Republicans in her life. For U.S. Senate, in the state of New York, in the fall of 2000 and again in the fall of 2006. She won them both. Yet it is fair to say in both that she faced only token Republican opposition—non-heavyweights, candidates with perhaps 10% of her own virtually universal name recognition.
Bernie Sanders, by contrast—with hardly the same name recognition (even still) as the former FLOTUS—has fought and won a full 14 general election campaigns against Republicans in the state of Vermont. That's 4 races for Burlington mayor, 8 races for the U.S. House, and 2 races for the U.S. Senate.
Moreover, he has successfully won over Republican and centrist voters in many of these races. And that track record seems to be carrying over to his presidential campaign as well. Want to know the main reason Bernie performed better than Hillary against those various hypothetical Republican opponents ("Reason #10" above)? According to Marist polling director Lee Miringoff, because in each separate matchup he consistently did better with independents! Now there are several Facebook groups that exist exclusively for lifetime Republicans who intend this year to vote for Bernie Sanders. And others for independents. And others for longtime nonvoters.
Because today, it's hardly only hardcore Democrats who feel ever more tightly squeezed by the economic realities of 21st century American capitalism. It's likely not only liberals who laughed darkly at the recent Onion headline: “Man Dying From Cancer Spends Last Good Day On Phone With Insurance Company.” And it can’t be only citizens “on the far left” who feel alienated and marginalized and completely disengaged from a broken American political system.
So if the Democrats are looking for their most seasoned and proven candidate for the November election? The candidate who has run and won a great many November elections against Republican opponents? And the candidate who, right now, is showing by far the greater crossover appeal?
That candidate is Bernie Sanders.
REASON #2: THE TRIUMPH OF TURNOUT.
There's a strong argument to be made that more and more elections today are won not by "tacking to the center," but instead by appealing to the base. That is arguably why the Republicans have built such significant majorities in statehouses, state legislatures, and the United States Congress—because they do a far better job at motivating their base in these lower turnout elections.
I know an awful lot of Republicans and I know an awful lot of Democrats. But how many authentic "independents" do you actually know who regularly find themselves genuinely undecided between Republicans and Democrats? It’s hard to believe that there are all that many of these mythical unicorns.
But there surely are, on the other hand, millions and millions of lifetime Democrats and lifetime Republicans—who don't bother to show up when their candidates don't give them a clear, compelling, exciting reason to do so. It’s worth recalling that the last time we chose a candidate based on electability we got John Kerry—whose failure to generate any excitement cost us the 2004 election. When the Democrats have achieved electoral successes in recent years, the data indicate that these victories were driven by fired up women, powerfully motivated people of color, and unapologetic liberals—not by winning over swing voters.
I know an awful lot of people who are filled with enthusiasm and zeal about the Bernie candidacy. These are the people who will give him not only their votes in November, but their money and shoe leather in September and October as well. But how many people do you know who feel the same kind of passion and intensity about Hillary Clinton?
The fiery progressive Bernie Sanders could fire up the Democratic base in a way that few Democratic candidates have done in our lifetimes. The young people who have flocked in such waves to Bernie’s rallies may actually vote in meaningful numbers this time. Why? Because Bernie is the first candidate who has ever spoken to them in a meaningful way about the multiple failings of what Harold Meyerson calls “the gig economy.” “Young Americans,” says Meyerson, “may have heard their nation once had a middle-class majority, but (they) have never experienced it themselves.” The vastly higher voter turnout rates in so many other countries around the world shows just how many potential American voters are out there—waiting to be mobilized. Bernie is the kind of authentic and inspirational candidate who could move millions and millions of Americans—both hard core Democratic base voters and new voters—to show up in November 2016.
But that will only happen if we nominate him as our candidate for president.
REASON #1: THIS IS ONE WEIRD YEAR.
If anyone tells you they have with complete certainty “figured out what’s going on” in this election cycle, don’t let them sell you a skyscraper at 57th and 5th. “Apparently this is an F you election,” said the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman on the radio, with some exasperation, on the Friday before Iowa. No one really knows what to make of the twin ascendancies of a narcissistic business mogul in one party and an avowed socialist in the other. But surely, for all their differences—one appealing to tribal insularity and the other to the better angels of our nature—both candidates are tapping into a deep societal disaffection and alienation, profound uncertainty about rapid global change, bottomless socioeconomic worries and struggles, a dismissal of the tired old left/right spectrum, fear about the future, and a belief that Washington as it presently operates seems incapable of doing anything meaningful about any of it.
This suggests strongly that the 45th American president will not be a conventional, centrist, incremental, insider politician. That president will likely be instead someone with a profound authenticity, someone who really gets those profound anxieties, and someone who is offering a vision equal in magnitude to the enormous challenges of our unfolding 21st century.
Isn’t the Democratic candidate with the best chance to win the November election the one who best fits that bill?
If it turns out you actually prefer Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, based on such things as ethics, character, temperament, honesty, policy positions, leadership capacity, and ultimate potential to improve not just American lives but the universal human condition—then in the primaries and caucuses you should vote for Hillary Clinton. But if, based on those same kinds of criteria, you find Bernie Sanders to be the superior choice—then you should vote for Bernie Sanders.
Because if the framers of our constitution had anything in mind, it was that when you pull that curtain closed behind you, you ought to vote for who you want (today), not for who you think other people will want (nine months from today).
Because as six-time presidential candidate Norman Thomas said, "I am not the champion of lost causes, but of causes not yet won."
And most importantly?
Because in the November election, Bernie Sanders can win.
Both Trump and Hillary have so much baggage they are like two pinatas ready to burst with just one poke.
The general election race will turn into a poorly scripted reality TV show where one or the other candidate will be either ranting, or defending themselves against a rant, about their opponent. And rest assured there will be no shortage of baggage to unpack on either side.
Even though the Democratic Establishment is doing the best it can to ignore this ugly truth, younger and obviously less tainted Democrats are intent on not playing out this disastrous scenario if they can help it which is why they are coming out in record numbers to vote for Bernie Sanders.
Do they know something that the older generation(s) of Democrats don't? Yes! They use "social media" rather than "mainstream media" which provides them with a less filtered (commercialized) view of what's going on on the ground. The reporting from someone's cell phone is much more accurate than what ends up being spun by untold pundits who are paid to "spin" rather than report the news.
Bottom line, put Bernie Sanders in a room with Donald Trump and what you'll get is one candidate focusing on the country's problems and how to solve them while the other will be mostly babbling and shouting about whatever enters his self-absorbed mind. That's a win-win for Bernie and America.
Do they say what they mean or say what's politically correct?
Are they true to their ideals or to the political forces at the time?
Can you count on them to represent you by honoring their commitments in return for your vote?
When it comes to politicians being able to answer "yes" to even one of these questions is like finding a needle in a haystack which is why when someone comes along who you can say "yes" to all of these questions it is a once in a lifetime opportunity you should not pass up.
Why I'm Voting for Bernie Sanders
Now, let's ask the same questions again and add a few more;
Do they say what they mean or say what's politically correct?
Are they true to their ideals or to the political forces at the time?
Can you count on them to represent you by honoring their commitments in return for your vote?
Why are they being secretive about what they said in speeches made to Wall Street bankers?
Why did they use "private" servers to conduct government business which involved classified information?
Why do they say they want to reign in greed and corruption while at the same time finance their campaign with money from the same sources?
Here is what Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are doing today:
Hillary Clinton is attending a fundraiser in Tennessee, a state that already voted, to collect checks from high-dollar donors who are bundling as much as $27,000.
Bernie Sanders is holding a town hall with voters in Arizona to talk about the issues that matter.
Hillary Clinton is attending a fundraiser in Virginia, another state that already voted, to collect more checks from high-dollar donors who are also bundling as much as $27,000.
Bernie Sanders is holding three rallies with voters, one in each of the states that vote or caucus on Tuesday — Idaho, Utah, and Arizona.
