March 2, 2016

Onward for the people! The next 4 states- Sanders projected to win 3/4: Kansas, Nebraska, and Maine!

Sanders has passed almost all the way though Dixie, and this is still a tight race: Clinton has earned 596 pledged delegates (over 59%) while Sanders has earned 399 (just over 40%) pledged delegates during the part of the primary calendar calculated to favor the moderate status quo establishment candidate.

The next 4 races are Kansas, Nebraska, Louisiana, and Maine.

The betting markets favor Sanders in Kansas (Sanders at a 71% favorite), Nebraska (Sanders at a 70% favorite, and Maine (polling advantage in addition to 83% betting market favorite), while Clinton nears the end of her Dixie collection of former Confederate states in Louisiana.

To put the pledged delegate count in context, Sanders is doing better than Rubio or Cruz (Rubio has won less than a fifth of the delegates and Cruz has won just under a third while Sanders has won just over 40%).

February 29, 2016

On the eve of the primary: "In Oklahoma, Sanders leads Clinton 48% to 43%"

link; excerpt:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Donald Trump holds a big lead in Alabama and Oklahoma -- one that would box out everyone else for delegates in Alabama, according to a new poll.

On the Democratic side of the race, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders split the states, with Clinton holding a big lead in Alabama and Sanders a small one in Oklahoma, according to the Monmouth University survey out Monday.

Both states vote in Tuesday's big primary day.... In Oklahoma, Sanders leads Clinton 48% to 43%...

February 29, 2016

Poll: Donald Trump leads in Alabama, Oklahoma; Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders split

Source: KXLF (Montana CBS affiliate)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Donald Trump holds a big lead in Alabama and Oklahoma -- one that would box out everyone else for delegates in Alabama, according to a new poll.

On the Democratic side of the race, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders split the states, with Clinton holding a big lead in Alabama and Sanders a small one in Oklahoma, according to the Monmouth University survey out Monday.

Both states vote in Tuesday's big primary day.... In Oklahoma, Sanders leads Clinton 48% to 43%...

Read more: http://www.kxlf.com/story/31344036/poll-donald-trump-leads-in-alabama-oklahoma-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-split

February 29, 2016

"Warren Buffett: Here's what I like about Bernie Sanders"

link; excerpt:

"What I like about Bernie Sanders is he'll say exactly what he believes. He is not tailoring his message week by week. You'll find with some of the candidates that they shift around, or they don't answer the question. With Bernie, you know exactly what he thinks," Buffett told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday.

The billionaire investor said he agrees with Sanders in certain areas, including the influence of money in politics, as well as income inequality. "{Sanders} is bothered by the fact that, in a country with a $56,000 GDP per capita so many people are poor. ... He would like to do something about that."

I'm not a huge fan of Buffett (although I like him better than most in his industry), but this seems like a fair assessment.

February 29, 2016

The Nation: "Bernie Sanders Just Won Three of His Biggest Endorsements in a Long Campaign"

link; excerpt:

From the earliest stages of the primary process, pundits and political operatives try to wrap things up in tidy little boxes of conventional wisdom. Again and again the message is delivered: everything is finished but the final counting up of delegates, despite the fact that the vast majority of states have not voted. The pressure to conclude the competition disempowers voters and damages the discourse, and candidates have every right and reason to resist the rush to shut the competition down before it has really begun.

But resistance is futile if a candidate gets no encouragement to challenge the emerging narrative.... Something has upset the rush to write off Sanders, however. It seems that a good many Democrats, including several prominent partisans who just endorsed the insurgent, are disinclined to embrace the conventional wisdom... Yet, the primary schedule goes on through June 14, with a number of states that are friendly to Sanders voting in April and May and the biggest prize for both candidates (California) up for grabs on June 7....On Friday, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, announced his support for Sanders, writing that the senator is “leading a movement to reclaim America for the many, not the few. And such a political mobilization—a ‘political revolution,’ as he puts it—is the only means by which we can get the nation back from the moneyed interests that now control so much of our economy and democracy.”

The longtime associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton explained that his endorsement had to do with issues, as opposed to personalities.

“I have the deepest respect and admiration for Hillary Clinton, and if she wins the Democratic primary I’ll work my heart out to help her become president. But I believe Bernie Sanders is the agent of change this nation so desperately needs,” he wrote, while focusing on the issue that has animated the Sanders insurgency. “This extraordinary concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the very top imperils all else – our economy, our democracy, the revival of the American middle class, the prospects for the poor and for people of color, the necessity of slowing and reversing climate change, and a sensible foreign policy not influenced by the ‘military-industrial complex,’ as President Dwight Eisenhower once called it. It is the fundamental prerequisite: We have little hope of achieving positive change on any front unless the American people are once again in control.”

Two days after Reich made his announcement, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, endorsed Sanders. And the next day, Congressman Alan Grayson, D-Florida, announced that he give his super-delegate vote at this summer’s Democratic National Convention to the senator from Vermont.... The announcement by Gabbard was particularly dramatic, in that the congresswoman announced on national television that she would quit a party leadership post in order to free herself to campaign for Sanders.

A Democrat from Hawaii, Gabbard is an proudly independent member of the House Democratic Caucus who does not mind stirring controversy or breaking with leadership. She has sparred with the Obama administration over foreign policy, she has sparred with congressional Democrats over defense policy, and she sparred with the party leaders over debate policy—making headlines early in the 2016 race by stepping up, as a vice chair of the DNC, to demand more forums featuring the presidential candidates. ... On Sunday, Gabbard said that: “I have taken my responsibilities as an officer of the DNC seriously, and respected the need to stay neutral in our primaries. However, after much thought and consideration, I’ve decided I cannot remain neutral and sit on the sidelines any longer.”... “I think it’s most important for us, as we look at our choices as to who our next commander in chief will be, (to) recognize the necessity to have a commander in chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgment,” explained Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran and member of the Hawaii Army National Guard, has been especially outspoken in her criticism of regime-change strategies that she suggests are dangerous and ineffective. To that end, she has introduced legislation seeking to focus U.S. policy on defeating Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Syria, as opposed to a dual strategy that seeks to combat terrorist groups while also trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad. She has, as well, been a sharp critic of Clinton’s proposal for a no-fly zone in Syria—which President Obama and Sanders also oppose.... “We need a commander in chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgment, and who understands the need for a robust foreign policy which defends the safety and security of the American people, and who will not waste precious lives and money on interventionist wars of regime change. Such counterproductive wars undermine our national security and economic prosperity,” added the veteran of two deployments to the Middle East. “As these elections continue across the county, the American people are faced with a very clear choice. We can elect a president who will lead us into more interventionist wars of regime change, or we can elect a president who will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity. It’s with this clear choice in mind that I am resigning as vice-chair of the DNC so that I can strongly support Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.”

Grayson, a popular figure with grassroots Democrats who has often clashed with party leaders on questions of policy and political style, is mounting an insurgent bid this year for his party’s Senate nomination in Florida (and getting plenty of pushback from top Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid). The congressman conducted an online poll asking who he, as a Democratic National Convention super-delegate, should support in the presidential race. “The response has been absolutely overwhelming. Almost 400,000 Democrats voted at GraysonPrimary.com. More than the number who voted in the South Carolina primary. More than the number who voted in the New Hampshire primary and the Nevada caucus combined,” wrote Grayson in a Monday message.... 86 percent of those who responded to his appeal encouraged him to back Sanders, calling the result: “More than just a landslide. An earthquake.”

February 29, 2016

USA Today: "Why Bernie Sanders could win Oklahoma"

link; excerpt:

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma isn’t where you might normally expect to find Sen. Bernie Sanders spending his time.

It’s one of the reddest states in the nation and a leader in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which Sanders calls “a disaster for the planet.”... “On Tuesday, Oklahoma can play a very important role in moving this country forward to a political revolution. Let’s do it,” he told a crowd of more than 6,000.

It seems hard to believe that Oklahoma would even be close on the eve of the primary, but it would be nice for Sanders to get a "bonus" win tomorrow in the South. I'm more curious about Colorado, but I wouldn't say no to Oklahoma.

February 29, 2016

Why Trump and Sanders Were Inevitable-It was only a matter of time before we had a populist backlash

link; excerpt:

There were, in retrospect, clear signs of what was to come—signs that if Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders did not appear on the scene, someone else like them would have. We’ve had decades of forewarnings as the top income earners —the “one percent”—began taking bigger shares of our economy starting in the 1980s: The anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s. The rise of Ross “NAFTA-will-suck-our-jobs-away” Perot and Pat “Pitchforks” Buchanan against the GOP establishment. The brief but intense Occupy Wall Street movement. The adoration of Elizabeth Warren. The warnings from superstar economist Thomas Piketty in recent years that the United States was suffering the worst income inequality in the developed world, worse than anything since the 1920s—and that it was not sustainable.

Above all, there was the drip-drip-drip social acid of stagnating middle-class income... from Washington there was only the all-too-self-confident movement of both political parties toward a full-on embrace of policies that further promoted the brutally unequal society that America is today. First, the Republicans became ardent free traders, then the Democrats under Clinton, with Obama following suit. Even the Democrats—having become deficit-slashing “Eisenhower Republicans,” in Bill Clinton’s tart phrase—responded with mostly harsh trickle-down medicine: “Workfare.” Unfair tax policies, with capital-gains earners (read: plutocrats) getting most of the breaks. Rubinomics. Greenspan worship. And all the while we in the media listened—in hushed awe of their genius—to the economists who told us that of course there were inequities and a lot of people would be left behind, but globalization and ever-freer markets were still good for most of us, overall anyway, sort of, we think. … And besides, what’s the alternative?

The only wonder, perhaps, is that it took Trump and Sanders this long to get here.... The message that Sanders and Trump are bringing to the stump isn’t going away soon, not until the two parties acknowledge the deep flaws in the economic paradigm that got us to this place of inequality, but which neither the Democratic nor the Republican leadership have questioned deeply.... Trump emphasizes shutting down job-stealing immigrants and getting “better” deals from the world; Sanders, imprisoning wealth-gobbling, spoiled Wall Streeters and getting “fairer” deals from the world. Both candidates plainly appeal to people who feel that no one is really standing up for them and what used to be known as their middle class; people who want more of the pie than they’ve been getting for a long time, and people who realize that their political parties are at best half-hearted about doing anything about that.... According to the Federal Reserve, a broad group of Americans loosely defined as the middle class saw its net worth plummet from a median of $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010. Thus we came out the other side of the Great Recession a very different economy altogether. “The recovered wealth—most of it from higher stock prices—has flowed mainly to richer Americans,” The Associated Press reported. According to Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, the wealthiest 1 percent of the country actually made out better, in percentage terms, during Obama’s “recovery” than they did from 2002-07 under George W. Bush.

By 2012, according to Saez, the top 1 percent were earning 23 percent of the nation’s income, almost the same ratio as in 1929. ... The Democratic establishment from Obama to Hillary Clinton has been continually surprised by the anger and sense of betrayal within its progressive wing, which is why so few people took Sanders seriously at first (including the Clintons).... What is not debatable is that growing inequality is a major, society-shaking problem—one that, as Rodrik says, has actually made America less cohesive, and neither Democrats nor Republicans are doing much about it. Here too we’ve had years of warning: Real wages for most U.S. workers have been relatively stagnant since the 1970s, while those for the top 1 percent have increased 156 percent, and those for the top 0.1 percent have increased 362 percent, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. Thus, the Harvard Gazette reported earlier in February, the poorest 20 percent of Americans received just 3.6 percent of the national income in 2014, down from 5.7 percent in 1974. The upper 20 percent, meanwhile, received nearly half of U.S. income in 2014, up from about 40 percent in 1974, according to Census Bureau statistics.

February 29, 2016

Bernie Sanders’ Agenda Just Got a YUGE Shout Out at the Oscars (VIDEO)

https://twitter.com/THR/status/704122817273421824

Without even dropping names, Academy Awards screenwriter and director Adam McKay made a political statement that will certainly resonate with the country.

It was a subtle, but clear shot at front-runner establishment candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and an endorsement of Bernie Sanders.

He simply said “if you don’t want big money to control government, don’t vote for candidates who take money from big banks, oil, or weirdo billionaires — stop.” McKay told the crowd. He made his comment while accepting the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on The Big Short, which satirically covered the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis that sparked a global recession.

Hillary Clinton has been frequently criticized for taking campaign contributions from large corporations, while Sanders has differentiated himself from the former Secretary of State by raising his money through grassroots contributions. He has shattered records for individual contributions to a campaign.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, McKay talked about his ongoing support for Sanders: “I had donated to [Bernie’s] campaign and had talked about doing a fundraiser…when he announced.”... McKay, who is very popular for his positions on climate change, human rights, and economic issues, was also courted by Hillary in Los Angeles but declined her supporters’ invitation to endorse her.”

link

February 29, 2016

Democratic and Native American Leaders Give Support To Bernie Sanders

Source: Inquisitr

The most recent endorsements come from two well-respected and high-ranking officials from the Democratic party. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich finally came out in full support of Sanders this week after revealing bit by bit his support for the Vermont senator’s policies. And on Sunday, Democratic National Committee vice-chair and Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard resigned her post and threw her support behind Sanders.
...
Most people who support Bernie Sanders are aware of his growing support in the Black community, but many still don’t know that he recently gained an endorsement from a major Native American activist. Winona LaDuke, an indigenous activist, environmentalist, and economist posted a video about why she decided to support Sanders.

“Our lands — as indigenous lands — are the place where most of the oil and gas, and a good portion of the uranium and coal comes from. The easiest answer for the future generations is to keep it in the ground. And we are thankful for Bernie Sanders for saying ‘Let’s keep it in the ground.’ Don’t make a mess we can’t clean up.”



Read more: http://www.inquisitr.com/2838899/democratic-and-native-american-leaders-give-support-to-bernie-sanders/

February 29, 2016

Thousands of supporters turn out for Sanders rally

Source: The Coloradoan



A line formed hours before the doors opened at 4 p.m., and Moby Arena's 8,745 seats were almost full by the time Sanders began speaking just after 7 p.m. — the only empty seats that remained were in the rafters.... Em Boyett, the first in line, arrived at Moby Arena at 7:30 a.m. Her friends joined her later. She is a sophomore at Colorado State University, and she said Sanders engages voters on issues other candidates don’t address.

“I just think he’s the best option for feminists...” Boyett said. “He’s trying to include people of color, trans people, queer people. He’s trying to put our issues in the front line. He’s trying to put this generation’s issues in the front line.”

Karen and Joe Warkentine, a couple from Greeley, said they are fans of many of Sanders' policies, including universal healthcare. Karen Warkentine laughed as she said they were among the only “oldies” waiting in the line.

“I’m choosing not to study history but to participate in it,” Joe Warkentine said.

Read more: http://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2016/02/28/faces-crowds-line-up-bernie-sanders-csu/81074940/