May 17, 2016

Trump's bad stretch might be about to get worse

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-trump-clinton-83ec15fe-1c27-11e6-82c2-a7dcb313287d-20160517-story.html

Donald Trump finds himself ensnared in one of his worst news cycles of the presidential campaign, and it could get worse this week as the presumptive Republican nominee will face his first real fire from the Clinton machine.

After months of casually deflecting attacks from Republican rivals, Trump is now suddenly on the defensive, fending off questions about whether he impersonated a public relations agent in the early 1990s, defending his past treatment of women, and trying to explain why he won't make his tax returns public.

On Wednesday, Priorities USA, a pro-Clinton super-PAC, will begin airing its first television attacks on Trump, and is planning to unleash $136 million in advertising against him between now and November.

SNIP

"All of these stories matter. They may not turn any of his supporters against him but they inhibit him from growing his support," said Rob Stutzman, a California-based Republican consultant who was with the anti-Trump movement. "The sum of all these stories paints him as a liar, and confirms the central narrative of the Clinton campaign that he's a flim-flam man unfit to serve as president of the United States."

This is Trump's roughest patch since a series of stumbles cost him the Wisconsin primary after re-tweeting an unflattering picture of a rival's wife and repeatedly changing his position on abortion. It comes at a time when Trump's focus has been on the behind-the-scenes work of winning over Republicans on Capital Hill, rather than driving the narrative for the news cycle with headline-grabbing rallies across the country.

SNIP

May 15, 2016

"White People are Not as Important as Bernie Sanders Thinks"

http://www.atlredline.com/white-people-are-not-as-important-as-bernie-sanders-thi-1776048976?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Above_The_Law:_Redline_twitter

By Elie Mystal

Bernie Sanders’s central argument for the nomination is that he is in a better position than Hillary Clinton to take on Donald Trump. He says his comparative strength against Trump is because his message also resonates with the disaffected white men that form the basis of Trump’s support. Bernie can cut into that support while Clinton will be vehemently opposed by that demographic, so he should be the nominee for anybody concerned with stopping Donald Trump.

Even assuming that is true (and the poll numbers do back Bernie up on this point), why do Bernie and his supporters think that is a good argument for all of us non-white, non-men, non-violently angry people out here? Having a way to tap into the boiling nihilism of the would-be Trump supporter doesn’t make me happy. It makes me question whether the message is broad enough for modern America.

Let’s remember, pissed off white people are responsible for much of the bad treatment experienced by women and minorities. Policies that purport to help pissed off white men are often sold in opposition to policies that would benefit women and minorities. I don’t believe that the American dream is a zero-sum game, I do think that we can all move forward together. But when I see a crowd of screaming, angry white people, I don’t think “those guys are really passionate about racial justice and women’s rights.” Historically speaking, a mob of lightly educated white men is not good news for me.

And you want me to like Bernie because he appeals to those people?

You want me to go all in on SuperDelegates overturning the will of black and brown voters, as expressed in diverse primary after diverse primary, because Bernie has tapped into the angry white man vote? Have you Bernie supporters completely lost your minds? In what UNIVERSE am I supporting the guy who is being buoyed by “white rage” over the person who has won more votes without it?

SNIP

May 11, 2016

Bernie's top California guy has just parted ways with the campaign.

I wonder what this is about, with the primary less than a month away?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/bernie-sanders-california-michael-ceraso-223077

Bernie Sanders’ campaign parted ways with its California state director Michael Ceraso on Wednesday morning, 27 days before the primary in the state that Sanders has repeatedly said is crucial to his effort to capture the Democratic nomination.

The surprise move came after a period when Ceraso advocated for a California strategy that involved more investment on field and digital organizing than on television advertising — a staple of Sanders’ campaign elsewhere so far — he told POLITICO.

Sanders’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ceraso, who was Sanders’ deputy state director in New Hampshire and helped lead the teams in a series of March-voting states, had been working for the Vermont senator in California for weeks. As the campaign turned more of its attention to California and its 475 delegates late last month, it also brought in Robert Becker — Sanders’ Iowa state director and another veteran of a series of other contests since then, including New York — to work in the state.


SNIP

May 11, 2016

Can we all agree that Alan Grayson should drop out of the primary for the Senate?

Whatever good he has done in the past is outweighed by his Cayman Island scandal. And his behavior seems very unstable lately.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/alan-grayson-confronts-harry-reid-meeting-say-my-name-n572361

Alan Grayson Blows Up at Harry Reid in Meeting: 'Say My Name'
by ALEX SEITZ-WALD

During a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill Wednesday, liberal firebrand Rep. Alan Grayson angrily confronted Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid over the senator's decision to back a different candidate in Florida's Senate race, according to three sources in the room. Reid fired back by expressing his "low opinion" of Grayson.

The outburst prompted a Reid staffer in the room to bring in the senator's security detail, who stood inside the door during the rest of the meeting as a precaution.

Reid met with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, but when Grayson was called on to speak, he repeatedly asked Reid if the senator knew his name.

"Yes, Alan," Reid replied.

"Say my name," Grayson insisted more than once.

Grayson then produced a printed-out news article that featured a quote from Reid criticizing Grayson's ethics issues.

Asked why he gave the quote, Reid replied, "Because it's true and I want you to lose."

SNIP



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/harry-reid-alan-grayson_us_57338862e4b012a8b93411ea

Grayson is running in the Democratic primary for the Senate seat in Florida. He has been dogged by scandal after it was revealed that he has been managing hedge funds with use of his name in the title, two of which are based in the Cayman Islands. The congressman’s attorneys have argued that he is exempt from ethics rules that prohibit members from using their names for financial entities. But ethics officials have stressed otherwise. All of which has contributed to many members of the Democratic establishment backing Grayson’s opponent in the primary, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.).

May 11, 2016

"Donald Trump is now trying to cover up the bald spots in his economic plan, but women

can see for themselves and women can see through his comb over." ~ Neera Tanden, Center for American Progress




http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/11/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-tax-return/

During the event, Clinton also hit Trump for proposing a tax plan that, she said, would "spend three trillion dollars, that is with a T, three trillion dollars on tax cuts for people like him who make over a million dollars."

"He has released what he calls his tax plan and it very clearly is his tax plan because Donald Trump's tax plan was written by a billionaires for billionaires," Clinton said.

Clinton's campaign has sought to discredit Trump's tax plan ever since he released it, holding two conference calls for reporters on the topic this week.

Neera Tanden, a former Clinton aide and the head of the Center for American Progress, said on a call Wednesday that "Trump is now trying to cover up the bald spots in his economic plan but women can see for themselves and women can see through his comb over."

May 11, 2016

Donald Trump Says He Won't Release Tax Returns Until After The Election

Source: ABC News

In a reversal, Donald Trump has told The Associated Press that he won’t release his tax returns until after the election in November.

"There's nothing to learn from them," Trump told The AP in an interview Tuesday, citing an ongoing audit of his finances as the main reason for withholding the information. He has also said he doesn't believe voters are interested.

Just on Sunday, the presumptive Republican nominee told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he’d be willing to release them should the audit be finished in time.

When asked if he would pledge to release them before the election, Trump responded, "Sure, if -- if -- if the auditors finish. I'll do it as fast as the audit is finished. Remember this, I've already given my financials. And my financials show I'm worth more than $10 billion by any stretch of the imagination.”

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-release-tax-returns-election/story?id=39039525

---

So on Sunday he said he "might" release his returns, and then on Tuesday he said he wouldn't -- because the American people don't care.

May 11, 2016

Emails show Hillary was lobbying for the ACA and its public option in 2009 -- as Sec of State.

So Hillary's proposal to offer a Medicare buy-in as a way to move toward a public option is not sudden or surprising . She has always been looking for ways to move progressive legislation forward, and has always had a particular interest in health care.

And she had advocated for the public option during her own Presidential campaign.

This email was written during a time when the Senate was trying to pass the ACA. Some Senators, like Joe Lieberman and Max Baucus, were fighting the public option. Because the Rethugs were going to filibuster, the only way to get a bill through the Senate was to achieve 60 votes -- and that meant Lieberman and Baucus were critical votes. So we lost the battle to include the public option.

But Hillary was lobbying FOR it.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/us/politics/hillary-clinton-lobbied-on-health-care-as-secretary-of-state-emails-show.html?_r=1

Ms. Tanden, who started working for Mrs. Clinton in the White House in the 1990s and is now president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, said the continuing interest in health care was hardly a surprise.

“The thing that I think the emails show you is she’s secretary of state and super-focused on health care,” Ms. Tanden said. “I worked for Hillary for a really long time, at the beginning of when I worked for her, in the middle of the time I worked for her and at the end of when I worked for her, in her mind, health care is a right.”

SNIP

“She was helpful when we needed votes, having served in the Senate and still having friends and colleagues there,” said one former Senate adviser, who asked not to be identified in discussing internal deliberations. “She did have credibility. She was considered an expert.”

That expertise is clear in some of the email messages, in which, for example, Mrs. Clinton questioned a decision by Senator Max Baucus of Montana, a main drafter of the legislation, to use nonprofit health insurance cooperatives to compete with profit-making insurers, rather than a government-run health plan, known as the public option.

“But the ‘system’ let the Blues go public,” she wrote in a message to Ms. Tanden, referring to the health insurance giant Blue Cross/Blue Shield, after learning of the Baucus plan. “What’s to prevent the co-ops from incorporating down the road? The return of nonprofits would have to require no changes.”

SNIP

____________________

Clinton supported the public option in her 2008 presidential campaign, and during the drafting of the Affordable Care Act a year later, Congress debated allowing a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. However, the public option was eliminated from the legislation because of objections from moderate Senate Democrats who opposed a greater government role in providing health care.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/hillary-clinton-health-care-bernie-sanders-219643#ixzz48K1U3cf3
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

May 10, 2016

MSNBC: 40% of Bernie voters would prefer to vote for TRUMP in the fall -- against Bernie.

But they didn't need to vote for Trump now, since he's got the nomination sewed up, so they decided to get a head start voting against Hillary.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/10/early-w-va-numbers-show-4-in-10-sanders-backers-prefer-trump-over-clinton-and-trump-over-sanders/

But MSNBC's Steve Kornacki tweeted a more remarkable data point: Almost 4 in 10 Sanders voters plan to support Trump over Sanders.

There are usually some people in exit poll data who say they'd vote against their preferred candidate in the general election. After all, the general election offers different choices than the primary, and if you're a conservative Democrat, you may think that Sanders is preferable to Clinton or vice versa, but also that a Republican would be preferable to both.

In Pennsylvania, exit polls reported by CNN indicated that 2 percent of Clinton and 5 percent of Sanders voters would vote against those candidates if they won the nomination. So it's really the scale that's surprising here, not the existence of the phenomenon.

May 10, 2016

Based on demographics rather than polls, Nate Silver says Bernie could win tonight by 15 points.

But because he is so far behind, he needs to win by more than 45 points, and get 21 out of 29 pledged delegates, to get back on track. (He said 45 before Indiana, but the number is actually higher now, because he didn't meet the 28 point win he needed in Indiana.)

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/today-is-clintons-chance-to-end-the-groundhog-day-campaign/

May 10, 2016

If any of you here has a campaign connection

could you pass on my suggestion that the HillaryClinton.com store really ought to have more items in youth sizes?

Hillary has only one shirt. Obama had more.

The young girls I know are VERY interested, but the only way to get a Hillary t-shirt in their size would be to buy one somewhere else. Why not at the campaign store?

Just a suggestion . . .