December 2, 2015

Sanders 49%-Cruz 39% vs. Clinton 47%-Cruz 42% / Sanders 47%-Carson 41% vs. Clinton 46%-Cruz 43% /

Sanders 49%-Trump 41% vs. Clinton 47%-Cruz 41%.

In addition to confirming that "Sanders does just as well, or even better, against top Republicans," today's Quinnipiac poll shows the candidates' favorable/unfavorable ratings:

(+13).....(44 - 31 percent) for Sanders
(+9).......(37 - 28 percent) for Rubio
(+7).......(40 - 33 percent) for Carson
(even)....(33 - 33 percent) for Cruz
(-6)........(44 - 51 percent) for Clinton

Most importantly, today's poll also has data on the voters' perception of the candidates as honest and trustworthy or not:

(+31).....(59 - 28 percent) for Sanders
(+19).....(53 - 34 percent) for Carson
(+16).....(49 - 33 percent) for Rubio
(+4).......(43 - 39 percent) for Cruz
(-24)......(60 - 36 percent) for Clinton
(-24)......(59 - 35 percent) for Trump

I say this rating for honesty and trustworthiness is the most important number because voters place such a high emphasis on honesty and trustworthiness:

December 2, 2015

CBS News: "New Hampshire activist fights for Sanders while fighting cancer"

link; excerpt:

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire -- When Bernie Sanders concluded yet another fiery speech at the New Hampshire Jefferson-Jackson dinner over Thanksgiving weekend, he hurried off the stage. True to form, the sometimes irascible Vermont senator had little time for pictures and glad-handing with his legions of fans. But backstage, he made the time to chat with one his most vocal supporters and one of the best-connected Democratic activists in the state.

Pushed around in a wheelchair by her son, Jane Lang wore a Bernie Sanders button and her signature fuchsia lipstick. She was feeling tired and ready to go home, rather than stay and listen to Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley address the Democratic faithful. But Lang beamed while she and Sanders chatted in a hold room, surrounded by top staffers, and reminisced about the first time they met at a labor meeting this year and snapped photos.
...
"I think the fact that here we have this one woman who seemed to be involved in politics and knows a lot but felt like I couldn't reach out to her. Felt that I couldn't go to her with this problem."

Ultimately, it was Sanders who seemed more like a kindred spirit, so she chose him.
...
Sanders supporters throughout the Verizon Center's convention hall sported white pins with black font that read "I STAND WITH JANE."

"Those were actually made by the Bernie campaign because his wife is named Jane," Lang recalled. "But they tell me a different story. That they were actually made for me. That they are standing with me through this time."

Julia Barnes, Sanders New Hampshire state director, called Lang "a badass organizer and a pillar of her community."

Barnes said, "Whatever she does, whether it is starting and growing the Salem Farmers' Market to working to protect seniors' rights with the Alliance for Retired Americans to always supporting Democratic candidates in New Hampshire, from state reps to Bernie Sanders, she does it with her whole heart."

December 2, 2015

Sanders Beats All Top Republican Candidates In Latest Poll

Source: Huffington Post

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, is gaining steam against top Republican rivals, according to a national Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

In a hypothetical matchup against the current GOP front-runner, business mogul Donald Trump, Sanders takes 49 percent of the vote to Trump's 41 percent. Against Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Sanders leads 44 percent to 43 percent. He also beats Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) by 10 percentage points and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson by 6 points.

Fifty-nine percent of voters also say Sanders is honest and trustworthy -- placing him well above former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, and above all top Republican candidates tested in the poll.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sanders-beats-republican-candidates-poll_565ee12ce4b079b2818c95fc

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I presume new polling is still latest breaking news:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141266191

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141206691

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141198173

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141276532

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141215333

Not sure if the same rules apply if it is a breaking report about polling favorable to Sanders, but I guess we'll see.

December 1, 2015

Brand Spanking New Ipsos Reuters Poll: Sanders Crushing Clinton in 18-35 Year Old Demographics!

Clinton is losing to Sanders in the following Demographics:

18-29 year olds - 66% Sanders to 17% Clinton

18-34 year olds - 54% Sanders to 37% Clinton

Sanders is also beating Clinton losing among the very liberal 53% Sanders to 40% to Clinton.

Sanders is leading 53% to 44% among Democrats who report no religious affiliation

Sanders is also leading 45% to 44% among Democrats who are single and have never been married.

You can play with the filters to skew the poll to suit your agenda, but Reuters interprets the Reuters poll as 57% Clinton to 29% Sanders (no meaningful change from Reuters last poll). This is a nationwide internet poll (and there is no nationwide primary vote).

December 1, 2015

68% of Democrats find Clinton trustworthy, only 35% of Independents and 4% of Republicans. By gender

only 30% of men and 41% of women find Clinton trustworthy. By education level, only 37% of those with a college degree and 35% of those without a degree find Clinton trustworthy.

Clinton's trustworthiness might be enough to barely win a primary because Democrats are the only demographic where a majority of voters do not distrust her, but the voters' lack of trust in Clinton would be fatal in the general election because voters consider honesty and trustworthiness to be key issues when choosing a candidate:



With a virtual monopoly on "establishment" support, the constituency Clinton lacks is the voters.

December 1, 2015

from Clinton email dump: Hawkish Republican Lindsay Graham to support Hawkish Hillary Clinton?

From 15 must-read Clinton emails, here is discussion of number 2 (from Michael Posner to Jacob Sullivan to Clinton):

Sen. Graham and I were on the same flights back from Kabul last night.
We had a good chance to share our observations about Afghanistan and Pakistan.
More importantly he mentioned that he is seriously considering serving on the Senate Approriations Committee and as the ranking minority member on the foreign operations subcommittee. He expressed strong support for Secretary Clinton and said the main reason he wants to serve on Foreign Ops is to protect our budget requests against those who will advocate for severe cuts. I thanked him for his committment and encouraged him to pursue this committee assignment. He said this won't help him politically in South Carolina but these are the issues that matter most to him.

December 1, 2015

Sanders' view are to the left of the mainstream; Clinton's views are self-serving and ever shifting

Neither candidate is perfectly electable: one candidate needs to persuade the voters to a more progressive plan for our counrty and the other candidate needs to win back lost trust.

We should ask -- what are the candidates doing to improve their electability and to buttress against their main weaknesses in the general election?

Sanders

With Sanders, the challenge is show America that we are better than what we have accomplished so far. Outside of the US, the rest of the industrialized world can afford

1. universal health care that does not pay a huge portion of the cost as a ransom to private insurers;
2. paid parental leave that allows families time at home with newborn children;
3. a $15 an hour minimum wage;
4. treating drug addiction as health issue rather than warehousing addicts in for-profit prisons.

There are those in the US who say we cannot afford the benefits which are so widely enjoyed by people outside of the US. Those naysayers underestimate us as a people and a country. Sanders' main challenge in the campaign is disproving the naysayers who would sell America short. Bringing voters to see that our society can be a better, more equitable, and more just society is not an easy task, but it is far from insurmountable. Already, a majority of the US wants a single payer Medicare-for-all type health care system, even larger majorities favor paid parental leave including both maternal and paternal leave, and still larger majorities favor a $15 an hour minimum wage. We are a progressive nation, but we lack the political fortitude to adopt progressive policies, and Sanders' task is to build that progressive groundswell.

Is Sanders working to improve his electability by buttressing against his main weaknesses in the general election? Yes. Sanders is focused on the issues that a silent majority favors and which he will champion.

Clinton

With Clinton, the challenge is winning back the voters' trust. Of all the candidates in both parties, "Clinton has the lowest rating for honesty as American voters say 60 - 36 percent she is not honest and trustworthy," which is noteworthy in that she is even less trusted than Trump, who is deeply mistrusted. Clinton's trustworthiness problem extends across the whole electorate, and she is trusted by only 35% of independents, 30% of men, 41% of women, 37% of those with college degrees, and 35% of those without college degrees. Most importantly, trustworthiness is a critical general election issue:



Is Clinton working to improve her electability by buttressing against her main weaknesses in the general election? I'm not seeing any campaign efforts to bolster Clinton's trustworthiness, and I would feel more comfortable with the idea of either Sanders or Clinton winning the nomination if I saw more effort from the Clinton campaign to bolster her trustworthiness.

December 1, 2015

Bernie Sanders: 'We need major reforms in a very broken criminal justice system'

Source: Chicago Sun Times Extract

The 2016 Democratic presidential hopeful touched on everything from unemployment to foreign policy and criminal justice. And in true fashion, he didn’t shy away from calls for drug policy reform.

“I am running for president because when youth unemployment and underemployment is at 30, 40, 50 percent, 51 percent for African American kids, we need to invest in jobs and education, not more jails and incarceration,” Sanders said to loud applause.

He criticized U.S. prison policy for incarcerating more people than any country in the world and called for “major reforms in a very broken criminal justice system.”... We need to stop the killing of unarmed African Americans by the police.... We need to treat substance abuse as a serious health issue , not a criminal issue.

Read more: http://extract.suntimes.com/news/10/153/9133/bernie-sanders-criminal-justice-reform-marijuana-laws-new-hampshire/

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Reporting about Clinton campaign events is encouraged in Latest Breaking News. That does not imply the same standard applies to the reporting of Sanders campaign events.

December 1, 2015

The New Yorker: "Standing Up for Bernie Sanders"

link; excerpt:

On a recent fall evening, a crowd of about two hundred filed into the Bell House, a nineteen-twenties former warehouse with a rough brick exterior, in Gowanus, Brooklyn, to raise money for Bernie Sanders’s Presidential campaign, and to laugh. ... Near the ticket window, just outside the main event hall, a flyer decorated the wall. “Stand Up for Bernie Sanders: Bern’in Down the House,” it read, in an autumnal, chestnut-and-pumpkin color palette. A ghoulish drawing of Sanders sat beneath a burning building (maybe the White House?). Two women representing the Bushwick Berners, a grassroots organization mobilizing for Sanders in North Brooklyn, stood adjacent to the ticket counter, hunched over a fold-out table crowded with signage, stickers, a donation jar, pens, voter-registration forms, and pamphlets. ... Lauren Irwin, a Bushwick Berner dressed in a long black coat with fur-like fuzz on the shoulders, solicited new volunteers and registered voters. “It’s all very D.I.Y.,” Irwin said, enthusiastic and proud, pointing to the chaotic arrangement of papers on the table.... “This is something that I’m very passionate about—the physicality of a pamphlet or a zine, where you can pass them around,” Irwin said, beaming. “The zine is not just about [Sanders]. He represents this larger movement, this larger grouping of people who are not down with establishment politics.”...“Yell out some reasons you’re a fan of Bernie Sanders,” Miles, a comedian from Chicago and a co-host of Sunday Nights at the Knitting Factory, said. He had a thick mustache and wore a dark button-down shirt and dark jeans. “What do you guys think?”

“Socialism,” a man yelled.

“The hair,” a woman hollered.

“He’s not an asshole,” another woman shouted, her voice strained and groggy.
...
Each of the eleven comics had between ten and twenty minutes onstage, broken up by appearances by the hosts, and nearly all of the acts seized on some of the central issues in the 2016 campaign: Black Lives Matter, police brutality, economic inequality, feminism, mass incarceration, abortion and contraception, the regulation of financial institutions, and campaign-finance reform. The comedy show was, after all, also a political fundraiser. (Proceeds from the ten-dollar admission benefitted Sanders’s political campaign. The event’s organizers are not officially affiliated with Bernie 2016.) ... The “Saturday Night Live” star Sasheer Zamata applied a more melancholy tone to her dialogue. ...Zamata received her loudest cheers not for telling a joke but for testifying to the merits of open and sincere dialogue. “I don’t think race or gender or sexuality or religion are taboo subjects,” Zamata said. “I think they are just subjects that we can talk about. And if we talk about it more the less uncomfortable it gets.”... After the show, I found Seaton Smith, one of the night’s standout performers, who co-stars on Fox’s “Mulaney,” standing in the rear of the room chatting with a couple friends. Smith, whose long, untamed Afro extends his chiseled jaw line, explained the importance of having conversations. “I like to talk political shit with people,” Smith said. I asked him about comedy’s role in facilitating political discourse. Then Smith, in a blue denim shirt and taupe sport coat with an upturned collar, briefly glanced toward the stage. “Comedy allows you to say things poignantly, but in an easy way. So it’s not forcing down your throat,” he said. “It’s an easier way to deal with a problem.”

December 1, 2015

NYT: "Bernie Sanders, Your Cool Socialist Grandpa"

link; excerpt:

How is a 74-year-old self-described Democratic socialist from one of the least populous states in the country turning the Democratic primary upside down and proving an adept challenger to one of the most established candidates in modern politics?

Easy, supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders say: He represents an unyielding crusader who will restore decency to American politics. Mr. Sanders is ideologically pure at a time when everything and everyone else in Democratic Washington seems to revolve around compromise. And as this primary is proving, many Democrats (and even some Republicans) are frustrated with compromise. ... To understand how Mr. Sanders has outperformed expectations in the Democratic primary, you have to look at how he’s long been outperforming expectations in Washington, where he first arrived after winning a seat in Congress in 1990.

“Bernie Sanders surprises people,” said Harry Jaffe, an editor at large for Washingtonian magazine, who wrote an unauthorized biography of Mr. Sanders, to be published in mid-January. “If I would boil down his political career, it comes down to surprising people and exceeding expectations.”

Since winning his Senate seat, Mr. Sanders has held on to it by keeping his constituents, not his colleagues, in mind.

“This is a man who goes home to Vermont almost every weekend, and he famously said a number of years ago, ‘I work in Washington, but I live in Vermont,’ ” Mr. Jaffe said.
...
Enter Mr. Sanders, an almost painfully earnest politician seemingly burdened with the ambition and moral certitude of Joan of Arc. Liberal millennials are flocking to him, their Cool Socialist Grandpa. A recent McClatchy-Marist poll found that Democratic voters ages 18 to 29 favored Mr. Sanders over Mrs. Clinton by a margin of 58 percent to 35 percent.
...
That is what seems to separate Mrs. Clinton from Mr. Sanders: a willingness to sacrifice ideological purity in order to get things done.
...
“The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that when Republicans get power, they know how to use it,” Ed Schultz, a former MSNBC host and a personal friend of Mr. Sanders, lamented. “When the Democrats get power, they want to negotiate with everybody.”

And would Mr. Sanders know how to wield that power, if it were given to him?

“Absolutely,” he said.