BornADemocrat
BornADemocrat's JournalBernie Sanders Doesn't Have the Killer Instinct Needed to Beat Hillary Clinton
During the presidential debate, the candidate pulled back when he should have gone for the jugular.
By Jeet Heer
November 14, 2015
Bernie Sanders has set a high goal for himself. He wants to unleash nothing less than a political revolution in America that overthrows the power of big money. In pursuit of this goal, he’s launched a highly energetic and lofty grassroots movement. But it could be that as a candidate he’s a bit too lofty for his own good.
Signal
He is clearly more comfortable debating ideas than launching personal attacks. Throughout the second Democratic presidential primary debate, he performed an awkward dance where he drew a sharp contrast between himself and front-runner Hillary Clinton, but for the most part pulled back from landing a direct hit. Time and again, he tried to present his differences with Clinton in abstract terms, often refusing to name her explicitly as being at fault. For whatever reason, Sanders lacks the killer instinct you need to be a politician at the highest level.
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https://newrepublic.com/article/123853/bernie-sanders-doesnt-have-the-killer-instinct-needed-to-beat-hillary-clinton
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I actually like this quality of Bernie, but I thought this was a worthy topic to put up for discussion here.
Reality takes a beating in latest Republican debate
By Steve Benen
Early on in last night’s debate, Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson was asked whether he’d support an increase in the minimum wage. The retired right-wing neurosurgeon began his answer by saying, “People need to be educated on the minimum wage,” which quickly became one of the more ironic comments of the evening.
“Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases. It’s particularly a problem in the black community. Only 19.8 percent of black teenagers have a job, who are looking for one. You know, and that’s because of those high wages. If you lower those wages, that comes down.
“You know, I can remember, as a youngster – you know, my first job working in a laboratory as a lab assistant, and multiple other jobs. But I would not have gotten those jobs if someone had to pay me a large amount of money.”
The assertion that minimum wage increases are always followed by an increase in unemployment is wrong. Carson’s claim about unemployment among black teens is even further from the truth. And as for the minimum wage when Carson was younger, in 1975, when he was 24 years old, the minimum wage was $2.10 an hour – which is $9.29 when adjusted for inflation, more than two dollars above today’s wage floor.
It was, alas, that kind of event. There’s always considerable chatter about who “wins” or “loses” these debates – most pundits seem to think Marco Rubio excelled, though I’m starting to think some of them are just using a computer macro to save time – but there was one clear loser last night: reality.
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http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/reality-takes-beating-latest-republican-debate
How each Republican fares against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, in 1 cool chart
I'm generally pretty skeptical of any polling this far out from an election. I am, however, very skeptical of the value of general election head-to-head match-ups this far out. 538's Harry Enten has a good articulation of why, in case it's not self-evident, but consider the situation. We're asking people who they'd pick before each party has settled on its candidate -- meaning while there's still internal partisan tension -- before any campaigning and before a year's worth of economic shifts happen.
There is some value though in one subset of head-to-head data, I think: Looking at how demographic groups view different candidates relative to one another.
On Tuesday, McClatchy and Marist released a new poll looking at the Republican field. Included in the results were a phalanx of head-to-head match-ups, pitting Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders against six different Republicans: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump.
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https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/10/how-each-republican-fares-against-hillary-clinton-and-bernie-sanders-in-1-cool-chart/?tid=sm_fb
Analysis Of Kentucky Election Results Indicates Fraud
snip
But the evidence that the Kentucky governor’s race was rigged doesn’t stop there. Another elections watchdog, Richard Charnin, who holds a Masters Degree in Applied Mathematics just published preliminary results of his analysis of the cumulative vote shares in the Kentucky governor’s race, finding that the “cumulative vote shares indicate likely fraud.”
In explaining the analysis process, Charnin [url=https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/]wrote[/url]:
“I downloaded precinct vote data for the largest 25 KY counties and five smaller counties (view the spreadsheet and the graphs below). Downloading all 120 counties is a time consuming process, so I expect to download about 20 more over the next few days. The objective is to view the effects of county/precinct size on the cumulative vote share trend. Since the largest counties are usually heavily Democratic, the consistent pattern of Republican Governor candidates gaining share from small to large precincts is counter-intuitive. On the other hand, there is virtually no change in vote shares in smaller, heavily GOP counties.”
snip
http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=174856
E.J. Dionne Jr.: Clinton won the debate, but Sanders made it interesting
WASHINGTON -- At some point during Tuesday night's Democratic debate, many people in living rooms across the country undoubtedly turned to each other with the same basic thought about Hillary Clinton: Oh, so that's why she's the front-runner.
They also experienced something historic: For the first time in the modern political era, Americans got to watch leaders of a mainstream political party debate the relative merits of capitalism and democratic socialism. And for once, socialism was cast not as the ideology that produced a brutal dictatorship in the old Soviet Union, but as a benign and, yes, democratic outlook that has created rather attractive societies in places such as Denmark and Sweden.
Whatever happens to Bernie Sanders' candidacy, he will deserve credit for having widened our political horizons.
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http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_28974350/e-j-dionne-jr-clinton-won-debate-but
Did Bernie Sanders win the Democratic debate?
Bernie Sanders scored big on social media, fundraising, and in a post-debate focus group and instapolls. He came in well ahead of Hillary Clinton.
By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer October 15, 2015
Washington — There’s no doubt that Hillary Clinton had a good debate Tuesday night. She was poised, prepared, presidential, even funny. She commanded the room.
Many pundits (including Donald Trump) declared her the winner, creating an echo chamber of affirmation for the Democratic front-runner. Mrs. Clinton won the “after debate,” as the Monitor’s Peter Grier puts it.
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The biggest measure of who “won” Tuesday’s debate won’t truly be known until next week, after major pollsters have had several days to gauge Democratic voter opinion. But in the meantime, there are signs that, in fact, Bernie Sanders scored big Tuesday night.
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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/1015/Did-Bernie-Sanders-win-the-Democratic-debate
First Post DNC Debate Poll Results (Gravis Marketing)
Great news for both Bernie and Hillary. This poll is obviously more reliable than the online ones we've seen, most of which do not even require user validation by SMS or email.
The MOE was +/- 3.6, and the survey was conducted via telephone. All respondents identified as Democrats.
Post DNC Debate Poll Results
Who Do You Think Won?
Clinton 62%
Sanders 30%
O' Malley 9%
Chafee 2%
Webb 1%
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/14/1432486/-First-Post-DNC-Debate-Poll-Results-Gravitas-Marketing
TPP is in trouble, thanks to public interest
The public debate over the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership has been a lot more robust and educational than the one that preceded the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement more than two decades ago. During that fight, then-Washington Post editorial page editor Meg Greenfield didn’t see a problem with a six-to-one ratio of space for pro- vs. anti-NAFTA editorials. “On this rare occasion when columnists of the left, right, and middle are all in agreement ... I don't believe it is right to create an artificial balance where none exists.”
Today there are more economists in the news debunking the arguments put forth to promote the TPP, and this has contributed to the collapse of some of these talking points.
This week, economists Dean Baker and Paul Krugman warn that people should be suspicious of any agreement that leads its proponents to lie and distort so much in order to sell it. They called attention to President Barack Obama’s former Chief of Staff William M. Daley, who made the ridiculous claim in a New York Times op-ed that it is “because our products face very high barriers to entry overseas in the form of tariffs, quotas and outright discrimination” that the U.S. ranks 39th of the 40 largest economies in exports as a share of GDP. As Baker and Krugman pointed out, it is actually because the U.S. is a very large economy, and therefore the domestic market is sufficient for many U.S. companies.
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http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/5/tpp-runs-into-trouble-thanks-to-public-interest.html
After 5 Big Banks Plead Guilty to Crimes, Sanders Says Wall Street Business Model is Fraud
WASHINGTON, May 20 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement today after five big banks agreed to pay more than $5 billion and plead guilty to crimes:
“Despite weak financial regulatory systems around the world, it seems that every week we hear about another multi-billion scandal involving a major financial institution. Today, we learn that JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and other huge banks were fined $5 billion for rigging interest rates and manipulating currency exchanges. Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Since 2009, huge financial institutions have paid $176 billion in fines and settlement payments for fraudulent and unscrupulous activities. The reality is that seven years after too-big-to-fail banks crashed the economy, fraud still appears to be the business model on Wall Street.
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http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/after-5-big-banks-plead-guilty-to-crimes-sanders-says-wall-street-business-model-is-fraud
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