Chitown Kev
Chitown Kev's JournalWTF did Hillary Clinton have to gain from this?
She’s raised more money than Sanders, she’s leading in all of the polls, she has a good sized lead in the Iowa polls, she’s within the MOE in New Hampshire, she has a huge lead in South Carolina, she already HAD institutional support among Democrats, she has a LOT of endorsements, etc, etc, etc.
Why would she need to collude with DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on anything like Datagate? (and, yes, there are hundreds of allegations of collusion between DWS and the DNC and the Clinton campaign on this issue)
Bernie Sanders’ staffers improperly accessed proprietary data of the Clinton campaign.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, I believe, overreacted and should really be fired, IMO...but I fail to see why Hillary Clinton would be any kind of participant in Datagate when she had NOTHING to gain from it and everything to lose.
Look, I am aware of many the Clintons' political sins of the past. Bernie’s supporters never fail to remind us of that.That’s not the issue here (and it’s also the reason I don’t support Hillary Clinton at this time but that's not the issue here, either).
When I was a kid, very often I would get caught doing something and I would excuse it by reminding my parents of what my brother had done the day before...or two days before...or two years before.
I assume that you know how my parents responded to that...Because your parents probably responded the same way.
Please read the outstanding article of David Atkins in the Washington Monthly on Datagate.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_12/an_explanation_of_what_bernie059035.php
Yes, what 4 Sanders’ campaign staffers did was serious...as were DWS’s actions.
And would any Sanders' supporters be willing to admit that what tht Sanders' campaign did was wrong?
(This is a diary that I modified somewhat from an earlier diary at DK)
Now that THAT'S over and done with...
1) It was the Sanders' campaign staffers that breached and, at the very least, observed info in the voter database that they weren't supposed to see. That's on Sanders and his campaign 100%...to blame Hillary for the breach is straight up bullshit.
2) The vendor should have posted something that they were "under maintenance" or something while these barriers were let down to upload info.
3) Schultz is a tool and the sooner that she is let go, the better. She handled this (and many other things) extremely poorly.
4) The ratings for tomorrow's debate will go through the roof. If I were a cynic, I would even say....you can complete that sentence.
"If you're so tired of people mistaking you for a Hillary supporter..."
'... then consider changing your avatar."
This was the reason given by a juror in a post that I alerted where someone accused me of being a Hillary supporter in spite of explicitly stating in that very thread that I am not.
and all this time, I thought that black voters had dropped Clinton for Bernie Sanders 
I guess that's supposed to win my vote?
Just had to let a little steam off...
Believe it or not I'm glad to see this: Sanders courting black voters in mostly white Iowa
Sanders courting black voters in mostly white Iowaby Kevin Hardy
Des Moines Register
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/12/14/bernie-sanders-courting-black-voters-mostly-white-iowa/76946524/
7:11 p.m. CST December 14, 2015
WATERLOO, Ia. — Sitting in a throne-like chair next to the pastor of Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church on Sunday morning, it was clear Bernie Sanders wasn't headlining any old Iowa campaign event.
The Vermont senator, who is Jewish, bobbed his head as the congregation sang along with the choir's organ, electric guitar and tambourines. Female ushers, donning white gloves and skirt suits, clapped and swayed in the aisles.
After being introduced as "the next president of the United States of America" by the Rev. Frantz Whitfield, Sanders gave an abbreviated stump speech in front of a mural depicting Jesus Christ's baptism by John the Baptist.
“I don’t have to tell anybody in this room that our great country today faces many serious problems,” he said.
While Iowa and New Hampshire are home to some of the smallest black populations in the country, the African-American vote will become crucial as the Democratic nominating contest moves to other states. Polling in other early state contests, particularly South Carolina, show Hillary Clinton holding a commanding lead among black voters.
The Sanders campaign is hoping a strong showing among African-Americans in Iowa will convince minorities in other states to give him a second look. Even with just 101,000 black Iowans, or 3.3 percent of the population, any political move here easily turns into national news in the lead-up to the Feb. 1 first-in-the-nation caucuses.
Waterloo, Des Moines, and Davenport are three of the centers of the black population in Iowa.
Remember that Obama won 72% of the black vote in Iowa in the 2008 caucuses. Given the closeness of that vote, the black vote was a part of a significant coalition of votes that gave Obama a win in Iowa.
If the race in Iowa further tightens then the black vote in Iowa, small as it is in terms of percentages (in 2008, black voters were 4% of the total Democratic caucus voters in Iowa), this type of outreach might be crucial (and I'm trying not to throw shade at all of those white faces in a historicaly black church).
This is critical for Sanders...from Hardy's story
Miriam Tyson, a longtime political activist in Waterloo, said much of Clinton's cachet with African-Americans comes from name recognition and the work of her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Tyson, a registered Democrat who hasn't decided who she is caucusing for, said after Saturday's Waterloo rally that she's drawn to Sanders' focus on the working and middle classes.
But Sanders needs to ramp up old-fashioned politicking with black communities if he wants to win them over, she said.
"He needs to go immerse himself in a culture," she said. "He needs to go to the churches. He needs to stop by the barbershops."
Tyson, who is black, said Democrats of color, like all voters, need to research all candidates and not rely on name recognition when it comes time to vote.
"Yes, you have an affinity or love or passion for Secretary Clinton," Tyson said, "but I think you should also look at what Bernie Sanders is talking about and what Martin O'Malley is talking about."
Wayne Steger, a political science professor at DePaul University, said both Hillary and Bill Clinton have spent decades building strong relationships with influential black politicians, activists and ministers.
"That kind of familiarity is hard to beat as a newbie on the national scene.," he said.
And while Iowa isn't nearly as diverse as other states, Steger said it still makes sense for Sanders to reach out to minority populations here, where so many reporters and cameras are camped out for coverage.
"Bernie isn't doing well enough nationally to get large numbers of media to follow him around the country, so he can stage events where the media are — which is in Iowa more than anywhere else at this point in the race," he said.
Dispossesed in the Land of Dreams by Monica Potts
The New Republic by Monica Potts
Dispossesed in the Land of Dreams:
Those left behind by Silicon Valley’s technology boom struggle to stay in the place they call home.
December 13, 2015
A majority of the homeless population in Palo Alto—93 percent—ends up sleeping outside or in their cars. In part, that’s because Palo Alto, a technology boomtown that boasts a per capita income well over twice the average for California, has almost no shelter space: For the city’s homeless population, estimated to be at least 157, there are just 15 beds that rotate among city churches through a shelter program called Hotel de Zink; a charity organizes a loose network of 130 spare rooms, regular people motivated to offer up their homes only by neighborly goodwill. The lack of shelter space in Palo Alto—and more broadly in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, which comprise the peninsula south of San Francisco and around San Jose—is unusual for an area of its size and population. A 2013 census showed Santa Clara County having more than 7,000 homeless people, the fifth-highest homeless population per capita in the country and among the highest populations sleeping outside or in unsuitable shelters like vehicles.
San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area are gentrifying rapidly—especially with the most recent Silicon Valley surge in social media companies, though the trend stretches back decades—leading to a cascade of displacement of the region’s poor, working class, and ethnic and racial minorities. In San Francisco itself, currently the city with the most expensive housing market in the country, rents increased 13.5 percent in 2014 from the year before, leading more people to the middle-class suburbs. As real estate prices rise in places like Palo Alto, the middle class has begun to buy homes in the exurbs of the Central Valley, displacing farmworkers there.
https://newrepublic.com/article/124476/dispossessed-land-dreams
Think Des Moines Is Full of Corn and White People? Think Again.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/population-2043/think-des-moines-is-full-corn-white-people-think-againby Matt Vasilogambros
DES MOINES, Iowa—In an old movie theater on 13th Street with lead panels and wavy floors, in the heart of Des Moines’ black community, photographs of a larger-than-life state assemblyman hang on the walls next to portraits of Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Biggie and Tupac.
Ako Abdul-Samad uses this space as the headquarters for his day job: CEO of Creative Visions, a human-development organization that helps the marginalized African-American community in Iowa’s capital. “Des Moines is not bad,” says Abdul-Samad, who was born and raised here. “The key is Des Moines is savable.”
Des Moines is a surprising city for folks who don’t know it well. It’s been many years since it was a sleepy, overwhelmingly white, manufacturing town in the Corn Belt. After the Vietnam War ended, then-Gov. Robert Ray opened Iowa’s doors to refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos—an act that led to waves of other refugees from places like Bosnia, Sudan, and Burma over the years. The town has a deeply rooted and successful Latino community, which—if trends continue—will one day be the majority demographic here. The arrival of well-educated, young professionals, along with significant investments in the downtown area, has made Des Moines one of the fastest-growing economies in the country.
It’s also a city with a stagnant black community that accounts for most of the area’s poverty.
“Downtown, there’s serious development: awesome. East Village: awesome. West Des Moines: awesome. Waukee, Ankeny: awesome. The urban core: pathetic,” Abdul-Samad says. “There’s no development in the urban core.”
The urban core just happens to be where the city’s poverty and African-American population are concentrated. African-American families in Des Moines on average make only 38 percent of what white families in Des Moines bring in. That works out to $29,000 in black median family income, compared with $74,000 for white families. This puts Des Moines near the top (27th out of 417) of U.S. metropolitan areas in wage disparities.
Don't be fooled by Iowa.
Yes, the rural/farming population is very very very white.
But Des Moines is 11% black and 12 % Latino (very close to national averages)
Davenport is 9% black/5% Latino and Waterloo is 15% black.
FTR, in the 2008 Iowa Dem Caucuses, 4% of Dem caucus participants were black and of those black participants, 72% voted for Obama.
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