snip>
A double bind is far worse than a straightforward damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t dilemma. It requires you to obey two mutually exclusive commands: Anything you do to fulfill one violates the other. Women running for office, as with all women in authority, are subject to these two demands: Be a good leader! Be a good woman! While the qualities expected of a good leader (be forceful, confident and, at times, angry) are similar to those we expect of a good man, they are the opposite of what we expect of a good woman (be gentle, self-deprecating and emotional, but not angry). Hence the double bind: If a candidate — or manager — talks or acts in ways expected of women, she risks being seen as underconfident or even incompetent. But if she talks or acts in ways expected of leaders, she is likely to be seen as too aggressive and will be subject to innumerable other negative judgments — and epithets — that apply only to women.

An example: Anyone who seeks public office, especially the highest one, must be ambitious, yet that word is rarely applied to male candidates because it goes without saying. And ambition is admirable in a man, but unacceptable — in fact, downright scary — in a woman. Google “Bernie Sanders ambitious,” and you get headlines about the candidate’s “ambitious plans.” Try it with Donald Trump, and you find references to his “ambitious deportation plan” and “ambitious real estate developments.” When the word is used to describe Trump himself, it’s positive, as in “Trump is proud and ambitious, and he strives to excel.”
....
But pair the word with Hillary Clinton, and a search spews headlines accusing her of “naked ambition,” “unbridled ambition,” “ruthless ambitions” — even of being “pathologically ambitious.” In a spoof, the satirical website the Onion exposed the injustice and absurdity of demonizing a candidate for this requisite quality through its own version of such headlines: “Hillary Clinton Is Too Ambitious to Be the First Female President.”Why aren’t more young women (or, more precisely, as Post reporter Janell Ross recently pointed out, young white women) flocking to support the first woman with a serious shot at the presidency? The double bind lowers its boom on women in positions of authority, so those who haven’t yet risen to such positions have not yet felt its full weight. They may well believe (as I did when I was young) that when the time comes, they’ll be judged fairly, based on their qualifications. They probably have not yet experienced the truism that to get equal consideration, a woman has to be better than her male counterparts — just as Clinton is, according to the New York Times editorial endorsing her last month, “one of the most broadly and deeply qualified candidates in modern history.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-impossible-expectations-of-hillary-clinton-and-all-women-in-authority/2016/02/19/35e416d0-d5ba-11e5-be55-2cc3c1e4b76b_story.html?postshare=3451456030471231&tid=ss_tw-bottom

If you’ve been following the Democratic primary, you may have noticed that Bernie Sanders has positioned himself as a champion of the immigrant community. From the letter he sent to Barack Obama last week, to the work he, his campaign, and surrogates have done attacking other candidates’ positions, you would think that he has been a lifelong champion on issues that matter to Latinos and immigrants. But here’s the truth: Candidate Bernie Sanders, advocate for immigrants, is not the same as Senator Bernie Sanders.

Let’s start with the letter he sent to President Obama. Bernie, candidate, decried the deportation raids — which he should. But in 2006, Bernie, congressman, actually voted…to create and fund two of the programs he criticizes in the letter.

Furthermore, in 2006, he voted for a bill pushed by James Sensenbrenner, one of the most anti-immigrant members of Congress, that would have allowed undocumented immigrants to be detained indefinitely pending deportation. This bill was widely viewed as a desperate attempt by Republicans to boost their reelection prospects that year by cracking down on immigrants, and the ACLU called it “inhumane.” Bernie voted for it anyway. (You’ll note that he was running for Senate — as an independent.)
....
But my question for Bernie is, where the heck was he for the last 25 years? Where was he on immigration reform? On indefinite detentions? On vigilante justice against undocumented workers? He was nowhere. That’s where.....(W)hy is he pretending like Hillary Clinton hasn’t been on the right side of this while he was on the wrong side? She’s got the track record to prove that she was in the fight with our community, Ted Kennedy, and President Obama. Bernie certainly doesn’t...

https://medium.com/DoloresHuerta/on-immigration-bernie-sanders-is-not-who-he-says-he-is-b79980adff6a#.qpnyumqxs

The Sanders Campaign Has Crossed Into Neverland
snip>I've generally tried to go easy on Bernie Sanders. I like his vision, and I like his general attitude toward Wall Street. But this is insane. If anything, it's worse than the endless magic asterisks that Republicans use to pretend that their tax plans will supercharge the economy and pay for themselves. It's not even remotely in the realm of reality. If it were, France and Germany and Denmark would all be Croesian paradises by now.

A group of stuffy establishment economists says "no credible economic research" supports Friedman's analysis, which "undermines our reputation as the party of responsible arithmetic." Or, in Austan Goolsbee's more colorful language, Sanders' plans have "evolved into magic flying puppies with winning Lotto tickets tied to their collars."

Enough is enough. Everyone needs to get back to reality. This ain't it.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/02/sanders-campaign-has-crossed-neverland

...The point is not that all of this is impossible, but it’s very unlikely — and these are numbers we would describe as deep voodoo if they came from a tax-cutting Republican.

Sanders needs to disassociate himself from this kind of fantasy economics right now. If his campaign responds instead by lashing out — well, a campaign that treats Alan Krueger, Christy Romer, and Laura Tyson as right-wing enemies is well on its way to making Donald Trump president.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/17/what-has-the-wonks-worried/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body&_r=0

An Open Letter from Past CEA Chairs to Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald Friedman
Posted on February 17, 2016 by lettertosanders
Dear Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald Friedman,

We are former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers for Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. For many years, we have worked to make the Democratic Party the party of evidence-based economic policy. When Republicans have proposed large tax cuts for the wealthy and asserted that those tax cuts would pay for themselves, for example, we have shown that the economic facts do not support these fantastical claims. We have applied the same rigor to proposals by Democrats, and worked to ensure that forecasts of the effects of proposed economic policies, from investment in infrastructure, to education and training, to health care reforms, are grounded in economic evidence. Largely as a result of efforts like these, the Democratic party has rightfully earned a reputation for responsibly estimating the effects of economic policies.

We are concerned to see the Sanders campaign citing extreme claims by Gerald Friedman about the effect of Senator Sanders’s economic plan—claims that cannot be supported by the economic evidence. Friedman asserts that your plan will have huge beneficial impacts on growth rates, income and employment that exceed even the most grandiose predictions by Republicans about the impact of their tax cut proposals.

As much as we wish it were so, no credible economic research supports economic impacts of these magnitudes. Making such promises runs against our party’s best traditions of evidence-based policy making and undermines our reputation as the party of responsible arithmetic. These claims undermine the credibility of the progressive economic agenda and make it that much more difficult to challenge the unrealistic claims made by Republican candidates.

Sincerely,

Alan Krueger, Princeton University

Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 2011-2013

Austan Goolsbee, University of Chicago Booth School

Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 2010-2011

Christina Romer, University of California at Berkeley

Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 2009-2010

Laura D’Andrea Tyson, University of California at Berkeley Haas School of Business

Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 1993-1995

https://lettertosanders.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/open-letter-to-senator-sanders-and-professor-gerald-friedman-from-past-cea-chairs/

NEW YORK—Citing her lackluster support among young voters, campaign consultants to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner who has served as both a U.S. senator and secretary of state, reportedly instructed the candidate this week to be more inspiring. “Right now, voters are looking for a candidate who stands for real societal change, someone who can stir something inside them,” said media advisor Jim Margolis, urging the woman—who overcame entrenched societal biases to build a successful legal career, became the first female senator elected in the state of New York, oversaw the Department of State during a period of widespread international tumult, and, if elected, would be the first female president in American history—to appear more uplifting to voters. “Many young people have completely lost faith in the political process, and they want to believe that true progress is actually possible. They want someone who embodies progressive ideals.” Margolis added that Clinton was too much a part of the establishment she spent decades breaking down barriers to enter.

http://www.theonion.com/article/female-presidential-candidate-who-was-united-state-52367