They’re still not telling the real story: Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and the analysis..

SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2016 09:30 AM EDT

They’re still not telling the real story: Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and the analysis you won’t hear on cable news

From Fox News to MSNBC, the pundits are too obsessed with this very second to notice the massive changes underfoot
PAUL ROSENBERG

After every presidential primary, we were treated to a new round of conventional wisdom about what things mean for both parties going forward. Yet, there’s every reason to be deeply skeptical of these discussions among people who never saw either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders coming. They represent a chattering class that both expected and normalized a “war of dynasties” between Bushes and the Clintons, then marveled at the “depth” of the Republican bench, and spent months obsessing over whether Joe Biden would run, as if he were a figure of mythic proportions.

You can laugh, if you want, but the out-of-touch nature of these treasured campaign narratives now lives on in a new form: an obsessive focus on this election cycle, when, if anything, the one thing it has to tell us is that much larger, long-range changes are afoot, and have been creeping up on us, below the radar, for quite some time. If you’re going to cover politics almost exclusively as a horse race, it makes perfect sense, of course. But that narrow-minded focus is an integral part of the very system that voters are furiously struggling to reject.

More than ever, we have to ask, why should the conventions or the elections be the framework for all we think? Even if Trump’s presidential run ends ruinously in November, Trumpism will remain, along with the GOP’s profound vulnerability to the forces Trump has unleashed. Similarly, even if Sanders fails to overtake Clinton’s delegate lead, his voters clearly represent the future of the Democratic Party, and Stan Greenberg, pollster for both Bill Clinton and Al Gore, seems justified in his warning last October that it’s a mistake for Democrats to run for Obama’s “third term.” “That’s not what the country wants. It’s not what the base of the Democratic Party wants. The Democratic Party is waiting for a president who will articulate the scale of the problems we face and challenge them to address it,” he said.

So party leaders on both sides—as well as bipartisan media figures—are simply whistling past the graveyard, perhaps with a slightly different tune just now, but still deeply devoted to reporting, analyzing and discussing things in a way that avoids as long as possible the profound changes that are clearly under way, and the equally profound changes that people are hungry for.

more: http://www.salon.com/2016/05/07/theyre_still_not_telling_the_real_story_donald_trump_bernie_sanders_and_the_analysis_you_wont_hear_on_cable_news/

Those pre-pledged delegates sure are in an awkward, embarrassing position...having

prematurely pledged to the weakest candidate, and unusually early at that. Now that we are here, she still hasn't closed the deal, and he is polling far better- wow. Plus her trend lines compared to his are polar opposites. This cycle has shown those pledged delegates it is best to wait. How awkward!

Latest Delegate Count: (Also, Clinton narrowly won Guam for a gain of 1).

California voters: Check your registrations for errors!

Sanders poised for May win streak

Sanders poised for May win streak

By MATT LATIMER

Here’s one reason Bernie Sanders is reluctant to give up the fight: May is shaping up to be a pretty good month for him.

On the heels of his Indiana victory Tuesday, Sanders is well-positioned for wins in the upcoming West Virginia and Oregon primaries. That might explain his it’s-just-a-flesh-wound approach to the nearly insurmountable delegate math confronting him, and his dogged insistence that he’s taking his long-shot presidential campaign all the way to the July Democratic convention.

“We're going to stay in until the last vote is counted, and that will be in the [June 14] primary in Washington, D.C.," Sanders said in an interview Wednesday with NPR's Steve Inskeep.

For Hillary Clinton, the prospect of additional Sanders wins is more headache than threat. But even if there’s little chance the Vermont senator can win the nomination, every victory raises new questions about why Clinton can’t finish him off.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/one-reason-bernies-staying-in-oregon-and-west-virginia-222844

California residents who wish to vote in the Democratic primary have until May 23 to register:

California residents who wish to vote in the Democratic primary have until May 23 to register:

In Search of the End of Bernie’s Campaign

In Search of the End of Bernie’s Campaign

I went to Indiana to experience the last gasp of the Sanders run. I found something else.

By Seth Stevenson

Three Sundays ago, just before the New York primary, I went to the enormous Bernie Sanders rally in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to observe 28,000 Bernistas basking in afternoon sun and each other’s wokeness. Art-mope rockers Grizzly Bear played a three-song set. Actor Justin Long gave an intro speech during which he apologized for being rich. And then, at last, greeted by Beatlemania-level cheers, Bernie emerged to yell about fat-cat billionaires and imminent revolution.

Bernie had just won seven primaries in a row and gone hard after Hillary Clinton in their debate at the nearby Navy Yard. Everybody in the park seemed jazzed. Confident in their cause. Buoyed by the swell of their numbers.

You know what happened next: Hillary crushed him in New York. She crushed him again the next week in a flurry of “Acela primaries.” The delegate dorks were calling time of death on Bernie’s nomination run—practically backhoe-ing dirt over his campaign. Still, he didn’t drop out. Many assumed he’d now tone things down, stop criticizing Hillary, and play nice until he disappeared. So I flew to Indiana, the next state on the primary roster, to catalog a campaign on its last legs.

When I got there, it appeared no one had told the Hoosiers to give up the fight. At a Bernie rally in Bloomington, corn-fed college kids packed an Indiana University theater to capacity, leaping to their feet for standing O’s each time Bernie lifted his voice a notch or two above his usual bellow. A few days later, their compatriots in South Bend stuffed a convention hall to the gills, queuing up for blocks just to catch a glimpse of the sparse snowdrifts cresting Bernie’s dome.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/05/bernie_sanders_and_his_supporters_march_on.html

Our awful elites gutted America. Now they dare ring alarms about Trump, Sanders — and cast themselve

Our awful elites gutted America. Now they dare ring alarms about Trump, Sanders — and cast themselves as saviors

Both parties ignored workers, spewed hate, enriched themselves, hollowed out democracy. Now the problem's populism?

ANIS SHIVANI

This week, on the night of the Indiana primary, I read one of the most loathsome political screeds it has been my misfortune to encounter.

It was an alarm bell raised by Andrew Sullivan, arguably the greatest hypocrite of the Bush era, on par with his partner in many crimes Christopher Hitchens (remember “Islamofascism?”). Sullivan proclaims that the election of Trump would be an “extinction-level” event. Well, perhaps it will be.

But the extinction Sullivan is most worried about is clearly that of his own breed of callous elites, who could care less about normal human beings who do not have decent jobs and who live in crappy housing and who are so desperate to find a way out of the trap that even someone like Trump starts sounding rational to them.

Now this panic alert, designed to get us in line behind Hillary, is raised by the man who ended The New Republic as we knew it (which then went on to end and then end again), promoting racist and imperialist dogma during his reign at the magazine in the 1990s, and then, with his finger in the wind (which to him and that other arch-hypocrite Hitchens meant being like George Orwell), turned into one of the biggest shills for the war on terror, the Iraq war, the whole works, all the while denouncing the fifth column within our ranks. This so-called journalist, who has no record of liberal consistency, who keeps shifting to whoever holds moral power at any given moment, is scaring us about the mortal threat that is Trump.

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/06/our_awful_elites_gutted_america_now_they_dare_ring_alarms_about_trump_sanders_and_cast_themselves_as_saviors/

Our awful elites gutted America. Now they dare ring alarms about Trump, Sanders — and cast themselve

Our awful elites gutted America. Now they dare ring alarms about Trump, Sanders — and cast themselves as saviors

Both parties ignored workers, spewed hate, enriched themselves, hollowed out democracy. Now the problem's populism?

ANIS SHIVANI

This week, on the night of the Indiana primary, I read one of the most loathsome political screeds it has been my misfortune to encounter.

It was an alarm bell raised by Andrew Sullivan, arguably the greatest hypocrite of the Bush era, on par with his partner in many crimes Christopher Hitchens (remember “Islamofascism?”). Sullivan proclaims that the election of Trump would be an “extinction-level” event. Well, perhaps it will be.

But the extinction Sullivan is most worried about is clearly that of his own breed of callous elites, who could care less about normal human beings who do not have decent jobs and who live in crappy housing and who are so desperate to find a way out of the trap that even someone like Trump starts sounding rational to them.

Now this panic alert, designed to get us in line behind Hillary, is raised by the man who ended The New Republic as we knew it (which then went on to end and then end again), promoting racist and imperialist dogma during his reign at the magazine in the 1990s, and then, with his finger in the wind (which to him and that other arch-hypocrite Hitchens meant being like George Orwell), turned into one of the biggest shills for the war on terror, the Iraq war, the whole works, all the while denouncing the fifth column within our ranks. This so-called journalist, who has no record of liberal consistency, who keeps shifting to whoever holds moral power at any given moment, is scaring us about the mortal threat that is Trump.

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/06/our_awful_elites_gutted_america_now_they_dare_ring_alarms_about_trump_sanders_and_cast_themselves_as_saviors/