March 23, 2016

How come BS supporters denigrate Hillary's wins in the South, as unimportant red states,

but celebrate their own victories in western red states like Utah and Idaho (even though those states have much smaller populations and fewer delegates)?

What's different about the southern red states that makes them worth less, in the eyes of Bernie supporters?

Seems very peculiar. I have my own theory but I'm interested in what others might think.

March 23, 2016

If you're determined to point your finger of blame

at whoever caused the long lines in some Arizona polling places, there are two places to point:

(1) the REPUBLICANS who made the choice to cut back on polling places and (2) the people in Bernie's campaign who didn't educate their voters about the feasibility and simplicity of mail-in ballots. This is basic GOTV, people!

But Hillary is not to blame because some Bernie people say they had trouble voting. And even Debbie is not to blame. These conspiracy theories today are just nutty.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/arizona-voting-suppression/index.html

"I take full responsibility for what happened yesterday," said Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell Wednesday at a Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting.

Purcell, a Republican, initially defended the closings on Tuesday night, telling Fox 10 Phoenix voters could have voted via early ballots rather than risking waiting in line.

March 23, 2016

I would like to point out this very positive post by a Bernie supporter.

Whichever team we're on, I think we can recommend this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027707741#post2

March 23, 2016

During Easter week, Pope Francis to wash the feet of 12 refugees

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2016-03-22/pope-to-wash-feet-of-refugees-in-1st-application-of-new-law

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis will wash the feet of young refugees during an Easter Week ritual in a gesture high in symbolism inside the Catholic Church and beyond.

SNIP

Fisichella, who is spearheading Francis' Holy Year of Mercy initiative, said the choice of the refugee center was highly symbolic given the current migration crises.

"He means to tell us that at this historic time, we must pay attention to the weakest and that we are called to restore their dignity without falling into subterfuge," Fisichella wrote in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.

The fact that most of the residents aren't Catholic "is an even more eloquent" sign that respecting one another is the best path to peace, he wrote.

"By washing the refugees' feet, Pope Francis is asking for respect for each one of them," he wrote.

March 21, 2016

Just for fun

Have you watched this amazing UCLA gymnast, Sophina DeJesus?

You probably have, but just in case. . . .

She's a senior at UCLA, so she refers to herself as an "old Grandma" of a gymnast.

All I can say is WOW.

http://remezcla.com/culture/black-puerto-rican-gymnast-sophina-de-jesus-earned-a-9-925/

While there’s hardly a gymnastics floor routine I’m not impressed by, Sophina DeJesus blew me and everyone else away when she showed off more than just her athleticism. The half Puerto Rican, half black senior at UCLA injected the sport with a shot of energy through her lively performance. Using the Internet’s most popular dances – the Quan, Dab, and the Whip/Nae Nae – Sophina became a viral sensation. One Facebook post, for example, has been viewed more than 23 million times.

March 20, 2016

WA Post: Hillary has a diverse coalition, so she doesn't need a majority of white men

The NYTimes recently printed an article about Hillary's "problem" with white men. WA Post doesn't think it's a problem that will matter, because her support is so broad.

The WA Post didn't mention, but could have, that Mitt Romney won the majority of white men AND white women -- but that wasn't enough to get him elected. And thanks to an even bigger gender gap this year, Hillary is winning majorities of all races of women, including white women.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/03/18/hillary-clinton-doesnt-need-white-men/

It’s true that Clinton has done worse among white male voters in this year’s primaries than she did in 2008. But we should be extremely wary of taking voting results in primaries and extrapolating them out to the general election. For starters, the overwhelming majority of people who vote in primaries will vote for their party’s nominee in November, whether they supported him/her in the primary or not. Furthermore, the general electorate is a completely different group of people than the primary electorate, and they’ll be presented with a different choice.

The Times article talks to some white men who don’t like Clinton, and it’s always worthwhile to hear those individual voices in order to understand why certain people vote the way they do. But when you pull back to the electorate as a whole, you realize that there just aren’t enough votes among white men for Republicans to mine. The reason is simple: they’ve already got nearly all they’re going to get. While some people entertain the fantasy that there are huge numbers of “Reagan Democrats” just waiting to cross over, the Reagan Democrats are gone. They all either died (it was 36 years ago that they were identified, remember) or just became Republicans. The GOP already has them, and it isn’t enough.

Finally, the idea that the Democrats can’t “maintain credibility as a broad-based national coalition” unless they get more votes from white men is somewhere between absurd and insane. We have two main parties in this country. One of them reflects America’s diversity, getting its votes from a combination of whites, blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and people of other ethnicities. Its nominee got 55 percent of his votes in 2012 from whites — smaller than their proportion of the population as a whole, but still a majority of those who voted for him.

The other party is almost entirely white; its nominee got 90 percent of his votes from whites in 2012. And we’re supposed to believe that if that party gets even more white, then it will be the one that’s “broad-based”?

Obviously, every candidate would like to get strong support from every demographic group. But if there’s one group Hillary Clinton can afford not to worry too much about, it’s white men. Most of them are going to vote against her anyway, and even if they do, she still would have a decent chance of winning the election.

March 19, 2016

A young black woman's moving account of protesting at a Trump rally

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/18/i-yelled-black-lives-matter-at-a-trump-rally-this-is-what-happened-next/?tid=sm_tw

As I sat in the Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville, N.C., earlier this month, waiting for Donald Trump’s rally to start, my adrenaline began to rush. I knew I could be hurt for what I was about to do.

I’d driven three hours by myself that morning from college in southern Virginia to protest his campaign. For months, I’d been reading and watching coverage of Trump’s rise. His rallies had become spaces where people felt comfortable being openly racist and hateful, because he allowed them to. And with his ugly rhetoric about Muslims, Mexicans and “the old days” before political correctness, he has encouraged it.

Not long before the Fayetteville event, a group of black students from Valdosta State University in Georgia had been kicked out of a Trump rally at their school before they had even begun to protest. Later that week, I saw a video from another one of his rallies, in Louisville, where Shiya Nwanguma, an African American woman, was pushed around by a crowd of white men. Trump waxed nostalgic, telling the audience: “You know, in the old days — which isn’t so long ago — when we were less politically correct, that kind of stuff wouldn’t have happened. Today we have to be so nice, so nice, we always have to be so nice.”

SNIP

March 19, 2016

Hillary, the “battle tested” candidate, wins major AZ endorsement.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/editorial/2016/03/18/hillary-clinton-democrat-endorsement/81942298/

Editorial: Hillary Clinton has the experience to lead

Editorial board, The Republic | azcentral.com

SNIP

Hillary Clinton deserves her due.

Not just because she has risen higher than any woman in American politics, but because she is by far the most experienced candidate of any of those running in either party this year. In fact, she is one of the most experienced people to ever run for president.
.

SNIP

Clinton will win this race because of qualities she showed as a young woman. While Sanders went off into fantasy land, offering free college to students and a single-payer health-care system, Clinton kept it anchored, proposing subsidized college educations while not tossing the entire bill to taxpayers.

Sanders would add $18 trillion in new spending to a government already badly bloated and in need of budget discipline, according to the Wall Street Journal. Sanders disputes that number, but in an age when entitlement reform is an urgent necessity, Sanders wants to expand entitlements.

Clinton is more real. She proposes large spending of her own, $350 billion on higher education, but requires contributions from students, parents and states. She seems to grasp, more than Sanders, that the American treasury is stressed.

On foreign policy, she is far better equipped to lead than Sanders. Her relationships with world figures would be invaluable in framing America’s outreach beyond our shores. She is reticent to put American troops on the in highly charged conflicts in the Middle East, preferring instead to leave the ground fighting to Middle Eastern allies.

SNIP

March 18, 2016

New state and national poll averages put HRC well ahead in NY, PA, AZ, and CA

These delegate-rich states comprise all the states with poll averages reported by RealClearpolitics:


Arizona: Clinton 48.5, Sanders 21.5

New York: Clinton 63, Sanders 28.5

Pennsylvania: Clinton 49.3, Sanders 26

California: Clinton 42.5, Sanders 29

National: Clinton 51, Sanders 39.6


http://www.realclearpolitics.com/?state=nwa

ON EDIT: All eight western and northern states between now and NY (which includes AZ) in total have FEWER delegates (280, total) than NY alone -- which has 291. PA has 210 and CA, the motherlode, has 548.

But all of the Democratic primaries are divided proportionally, so only large wins yield substantially different numbers of delegates. This is why Hillary is likely, over the long run, to sustain or even increase her current lead -- though Bernie could temporarily cut into her delegate count during the next 8 contests.

If he is as successful as Obama was in 2008 in those states, he will reduce her delegate lead from about 325 to about 265.

And then will come NY, which has more delegates than the previous 8 states combined -- and where Hillary was re-elected to her position as Senator with very wide margins.

March 18, 2016

538: Primary turnout means NOTHING with regard to the General Election

Primary turnout is connected with how competitive the primary is -- it isn't predictive of turnout in the general, despite what the Rethugs want to think.

To use a personal example, I didn't make the effort to go the the WA state caucus in 2008 because I liked both candidates and would have been happy to support either one. I also didn't go to the 2012 caucus in which Obama ran unopposed.

That did NOT mean I wasn't determined to vote in the general.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/primary-turnout-means-nothing-for-the-general-election/

Republican turnout is up and Democratic turnout is down in the 2016 primary contests so far. That has some Republicans giddy for the fall; here’s an example, from a March 1 Washington Times article:

And some commentators are saying that Democrats should be nervous. From The Huffington Post, last month:

But Democratic Party elites shouldn’t be high-fiving each other. They should be very, very worried. In primary after primary this cycle, Democratic voters just aren’t showing up.

But Democrats shouldn’t worry. Republicans shouldn’t celebrate. As others have pointed out, voter turnout is an indication of the competitiveness of a primary contest, not of what will happen in the general election.

SNIP