Dan Roberts in Washington and Mona Chalabi in New York

Friday 10 June 2016 11.04 EDT

Nearly six times as many Bernie Sanders supporters are prepared to shift their support to Hillary Clinton than vote for Donald Trump in November, according to an exclusive new poll which suggests Democrats are in a strong position to convert energy from their passionate primary contest into general election success.

However, the research, conducted by SurveyUSA for the Guardian, also shows that if Sanders were to find a way of staying in the presidential race, it could hand the White House to Trump, who would beat Clinton by three percentage points in that scenario.

Carried out the day after the California primary, the polling news comes amid residual pressure from some Sanders supporters for him to continue his struggle – either as an independent or perhaps by replacing Jill Stein, the Green party candidate, on that party’s ticket.

But the survey of 1,408 registered voters reveals limited appetite for this option, which would split the progressive vote. Presented with a four-way choice of Trump, Clinton, Sanders and libertarian Gary Johnson, 35% would vote for the presumptive Republican nominee, versus 32% for Clinton, 18% for Sanders and 4% for Johnson.

Continued at the Guardian

By Gabriel Debenedetti

06/09/16 10:31 PM EDT

The walls are crumbling, and Bernie Sanders knows it.

Barack Obama made his support for Hillary Clinton official on Thursday. So did Vice President Joe Biden and liberal hero Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The major political groups surrounding Sanders are saying it’s time to unify.

The campaign is rapidly winding down around Sanders, the Senate gadfly-turned-unlikely revolutionary who outperformed everyone’s expectations, and he finally began to acknowledge it Thursday.

“We need real change in this country. And what people also understand is that no president, not Bernie Sanders, not anybody else, can do it alone,” he told roughly 3,000 supporters gathered near Washington’s RFK stadium on a hot evening, returning to his original stump speech about billionaires, the “corrupt campaign finance system,” and “the broken criminal justice system" without once mentioning Clinton or the Democratic Party’s convention.

“A little bit over a year ago we began this campaign. What the punditry thought is the campaign would not go very far. Well, here we are in mid-June and we’re still standing."

The signals that he now accepts the fact that he won’t be the party’s nominee were unmistakable.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/sanders-wind-down-224163#ixzz4BA9uetbG
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By Jason Zengerle
June 9, 2016, 1:58 pm ET
GQ.com

ou could almost forgive Donald Trump for thinking the hard part was over. Having laid waste to the supposedly formidable Republican establishment in the primaries, he assumed he could count on a unified GOP to back him. And sure enough, the Republican rank-and-file seemed to be falling in line, "rallying behind Trump as if he were any other nominee," polling analyst Harry Enten recently noted. So too, were the GOP mandarins: Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, even Paul Ryan all began to biting their tongues and signaling their support in the last week. Their motives were clear: As the unsurpassably cynical McConnell put it when asked how the "Party of Lincoln" could defend a racist candidate, "I think the party of Lincoln wants to win the White House."

But this week, in the face of Trump's continued racist attacks on the judge overseeing the Trump University case, his GOP establishment support began to crumble. Some, like Ryan and Rubio, began tiptoeing away; and Illinois Senator Mark Kirk—who's in a tough reelection campaign— rescinded his endorsement of Trump entirely. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the few elected Republicans who's refused all along to board the Trump Train, predicted there would be more defections, telling the New York Times, "There'll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary."

To make matters worse for Trump, just as the exodus from him gains speed, the Democrats' biggest guns are coalescing behind Hillary. Granted, they were pretty much with her all along in her fight against Bernie Sanders. But now that she's cinched the nomination, they can be even more forthright about it. Indeed, for all the recent worry about Hillary's prospects against a candidate like Trump, there hasn't been much talk about one of her biggest strengths: The team that's now coming to pitch in. Unlike Trump—who's the definition of a one-man team—Hillary Clinton calls to mind Andre the Giant. She has a posse.

For starters, she's got Bill Clinton, who—as I've reported—is gearing up to play a much more prominent and aggressive role against Trump than he did against Sanders. Even if the Big Dog's lost a step or two, he's still an extremely popular (and often effective) campaigner and it's easy to imagine him rising to the challenge on the big stage, much as he did in 2012 when he delivered a crucial convention speech for Obama.

Continued at GQ.com

Once and for all: Hillary Clinton is NOT corrupted by Wall Street

DAILYKOS
By PurplePower
2016/06/09 · 00:07



On numerous occasions, Bernie has mockingly said he would release the transcripts of his paid speeches. He then proceeds to flail his arms in the air, proud of the fact he has never been offered money for his thoughts [probably because he is rather ineffective at achieving progress]. Point is — those that are in Congress are not legally allowed to give paid speeches due to conflict of interest. Hillary Rodham Clinton never gave a single paid speech while she served as First Lady, New York Senator, or Secretary of State.


The “Wall Street speech” attack is nothing more than a McCarthy-style smear. Character assassination. Innuendo.

Bernie was unable to give even one concrete example of how these speeches corrupted Hillary Clinton, proving this Wall Street attack is nothing more than an artful smear. Designed to raise questions where there are none. Innuendo at its finest.

However, some Bernie supporters use Hillary’s bankruptcy vote as an example of her supposed “corruption.”

"My experience has been that whenever you closely examine the attacks on Hillary, whether they come from the left or the right, they break apart under scrutiny."

~Zachary Leven

Hillary voted for a version of the bankruptcy bill after working with Congress to include amendments directly addressing Elizabeth Warren’s concerns about the bill — specifically those regarding women and children. The bill then went to the Republican-controlled House, which removed the amendments protecting women and children. When the bill was sent back to the Senate, Democrats [including Hillary] filibustered the bill. Later, a finalized version of the bill passed without Hillary’s support.

READ THE REST including votes Bernie has made that would surprise you