Triumph visits the Democratic Debate in Charleston, SC as part of
Triumph's Election Special 2016 premiering February 8, only on Hulu. The
special follows Triumph through Iowa, New Hampshire, and South
Carolina, chasing the likes of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie
and many more.
First
Read: “Bernie Sanders bested Clinton by 22 points (!!!) in a state she
carried in the 2008 presidential contest. And the exit poll numbers seem even
worse, even among the groups Clinton is supposedly strong with: Sanders beat her
among women by 11 points (55%-44%), Democrats (52%-48%), and moderates
(58%-39%).
He crushed her among his core groups, winning young voters (83%-16%),
independents (72%-25), and liberals (60%-39%). And then there are these terrible
numbers: Clinton lost among Democrats caring the most about honest and
trustworthiness by 86 points (91%-5%), and she even lost among the Dems who want
their candidate to care about people like them by 65 points (82%-17%).”
“Warning sign: Caring about people like them is the Bill Clinton brand,
folks!!! The silver lining for Hillary: The map is about to get a lot better for
her (see below). But as we wrote yesterday, it will get worse first — Sanders is
going to continue to out raise her, the Nevada caucuses (on Feb. 23) are going to
be closer than anyone thought, and the outside forces are set to be unbearable
(Bloomberg! Biden! Shakeup!).”
Wonk
Wire: Bernie’s brand is the future of the Democratic party.
John Kasich speaks at a town hall on Jan. 23 in Nashua, New Hampshire.
Darren McCollester/Getty Images
In the run up to Tuesday’s Republican primary, John Kasich conceded that a
poor performance in New Hampshire would mean an end to his campaign. “If we get
smoked here,” the
Ohio governor told reporters last week, “I’m going home.” But after finishing
second place in the Granite State—ahead of Marco Rubio and his two other
party-approved rivals—it’s clear Kasich isn’t going home. He’s going on to South
Carolina.
The problem for the Republican Party, though, is that Kasich is unlikely to
go much further than that. In the meantime, he’ll siphon off momentum, media
attention, and money from his fellow party-approved rivals who are actually in a
position to capitalize on a post-primary bump. Kasich’s surprise showing
actually turns the GOP’s Trump-themed headache into a migraine.
There were always going to be two narratives coming out of New Hampshire: the
major one about Donald Trump, who has been leading in state polls for
months, and the minor one about whichever of the establishment-friendly foursome
came out on top in the contest within a contest between Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris
Christie, and Kasich.
Someone like Marco, or even Jeb, was well positioned to
use the second-place spotlight to finally begin consolidating
establishment-minded voters, which remains the best and perhaps only path left
for any of them to pass Trump and Iowa-winner Ted Cruz later this year. Kasich,
though, is almost comically ill equipped to travel that difficult path.
For starters, there’s the very real problem that his bank account is running
low. He raised only $3.2 million in the final three months of last year and
began 2016 with
only $2.5 million on hand—about a fourth of what Rubio had in the bank and a
third of what Bush did. Yes, Kasich’s performance in New Hampshire will likely
come with an uptick in fundraising, but the odds are that he’s still going to
have significantly less than Rubio and Bush, not to mention Trump and Cruz. Much
of the money he does bring in this week, meanwhile, will be canceled out by the
millions Rubio and Bush will now spend via their super PACs to torpedo Kasich’s
campaign.
Kasich’s bigger problem is just how out of line his (relatively!) moderate
worldview appears to be with that of the Republican voters he’ll need to unite.
He doesn’t just have a history of going against the conservative line—he has a
history of unapologetic
conservative apostasy, often seeming to take great joy in telling
conservative voters that they’re wrong. In a world where a former reality TV
star can win New Hampshire, anything is possible. But in a world where Donald J.
Trump does win New Hampshire, it’s hard to imagine a critical mass of Republican
voters will be excited about Kasich’s positions on hot-button topics like immigration,
Common
Core, Medicaid
expansion, and marriage
equality.
The Ohio Republican’s already difficult job will get that much more so now
that the race is leaving New Hampshire, a state where the candidate he’s most
often compared with, Jon Huntsman, won roughly the same share of the GOP vote
four years ago as Kasich did on Tuesday. (Huntsman, you probably won’t remember,
dropped out shortly after.)
Next comes South Carolina and then Nevada, neither
of which will be anywhere near as friendly to Kasich’s particular brand of
politics. If he is still standing come March, he’ll then need to survive a Super
Tuesday dominated by delegate-rich southern states like Texas, Georgia, and
Alabama. In other words, Kasich will leave New Hampshire as a winner—but a
winner the race will soon forget. Additional Slate coverage of the New Hampshire
primary:
Cenk Uygur defends Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) record on Feb. 9, 2016. (YouTube)
After defending Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) record against the Washington Post last month,Young Turks host Cenk Uygur ripped the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. for its criticism of the Democratic presidential candidate.
“They cry their crocodile tears: ‘Sanders is actually gonna fix the
system. How dare he, class warrior?'” Uygur said. “No, you committed
class warfare on the rest of us. You stole our government, then you
redirected trillions of money into your pockets.”
The op-ed by Bret Stephens
accused Sanders of trying to paint everyone working on Wall Street as a
criminal because of his campaign’s focus on economic and campaign
finance reforms.
“No political or social penalties attach, in today’s America, to the
wholesale indictment of this entire industry and the people who work in
it,” Stephens complained. “Had another presidential candidate made a
similarly damning remark about some other profession—public-school
teachers, say, or oil-rig workers—there would have been the usual outcry
about false stereotypes, the decline of civility and so on. When Bernie
says it about Wall Street there’s a collective shrug, if not nodding
agreement.”
“That’s not what he did,” Uygur responded. “You’re lying about that.
‘Cause you don’t want him to fix [the Glass-Steagall Banking Act] ’cause
that’s how you guys get rich — by gambling with our money.”
Stephens also said that one reason Sanders has connected well with
younger voters is because his idea of wisdom is “to hold fast to the
angry convictions of his adolescence.”
“Isn’t it kind of juvenile to go around calling a presidential
candidate childish?” Uygur asked, adding that younger voters are often
more informed than their elders.
“The older voters who watch TV get broad general comments about the
candidates,” the host said. “They never dig into the issues. The younger
voters, who get their news online, have access to all their positions
on all their issues. They’re far more educated than the older
knucklehead voters you guys have been brainwashing all these years.”
A small group of billionaires is trying very hard to buy the
presidency. They want to buy the White House from it’s rightful owners –
you and me.
A recent analysis of campaign finance data by Politico
has found that the top 100 donors to the presidential race have spent
$195 million on their preferred candidates — that’s compared to the $155
million spent by the smallest 2 million donors. In other words, 100
rich people have more purchasing power than 2 million non-rich people
combined. As The New York Times found last year, just 158 mega-donors paid for half of all early campaign donations.
While these sobering figures are hardly cause for celebration, there
is one silver lining: Judging from where the billionaires are putting
their money, it’s not likely to get them much. The top recipient of
billionaire bucks was none other than Jeb Bush, who is currently leading
the field only in the race for last place. Jeb’s flailing campaign was
the recipient of $49 million from donors on Politico’s list. They appear
to be getting zilch in return.
In case you think this is a only a Republican problem, GOP candidates
aren’t the only ones taking money from the rich: Hillary Clinton was
the second largest beneficiary of billionaire bucks.
Clinton’s super PAC allies are assiduously courting wealthy liberals
as they gird for a potentially protracted fight for the Democratic
nomination against the unexpectedly vigorous insurgent campaign of
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has decried super PACs and has relatively little support
from them. While super PACs supporting Clinton in 2015 raised $55
million ― $38 million of which came from top donors on POLITICO’s list,
including $8 million from the fifth biggest donor, New York financier George Soros ― they have struggled to win support from other top Democratic donors.
And who are these billionaires who are trying to purchase our next
president? It will probably come as no surprise that they are
overwhelmingly white and male. The top donors, Dan Wilks and his brother Farris,
made a fortune in hydraulic fracking, $15 million of which they donated
to Ted Cruz. Cruz also took huge amounts from New York hedge fund
tycoon Bob Mercer (No. 2 on Politico’s list), Texas energy man Toby Neugebauer (No. 4) and Illinois manufacturers Dick and Liz Uihlein (No. 6).
Oddly, the notorious Koch brothers were nowhere on Politico’s list. Although they reportedly plan to spend nearly $900 million on the presidential race
— more than either the Republican or Democratic parties — the Kochs
have yet to endorse a candidate for the primary. And should Donald Trump
win the primary, that $900 million could go unspent: While the Kochs
might not love any of the candidates, there is one they clearly loathe.
But for now, Jeb! Bush is clearly in the lead for mega-dollar donors.
And when Bush drops out of the race – which he will – all that money
will get refocused somewhere. Rubio? Cruz? Who knows?
What is clear is that in the race for the biggest donors, there are
about 300 million other Americans who will pay the price: each and every
one of us.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock, Copyright (c) Monkey Business Images
As Ta-Nehisi Coates and Steve Phillips become the latest in a lineage of black scholar/activists
who have worked to push the boundaries of policy discourse about the
feasibility of reparations for African Americans, it is important that
we not lose sight of existing policies that affect the bottom line of
black households.
Social
Security is one such policy that has tremendous economic consequences
for vulnerable families and provides a good litmus test for where the
2016 presidential candidates stand on the issue of black economic
security.
It’s
no secret that more than 150 years after the end of slavery, black
people — along with Native Americans, Latinos and certain subgroups of
Asian Americans — remain at the bottom of
the economic ladder in America.
African Americans and Latinos own only 6
and 7 cents respectively for every dollar of wealth owned by whites and
earn only 67 cents for every dollar of income earned by whites
(national data is not available for Native Americans and Asian American
subgroups).
These deep disparities in wealth and income are a legacy of
discriminatory government policies and business practices that have benefited white households over households of color. It even marred
Social Security’s beginning, which by barring coverage for agricultural
and domestic workers effectively excluded approximately 65 percent of
all black workers when the bill was signed into law in 1935.
This
legacy of social and economic racial discrimination makes African
Americans especially reliant on the program today. Social Security
provides social insurance coverage to eligible individuals in the event
of retirement, disability or the death of a worker with surviving
dependents. It also has a progressive benefit structure that replaces a
greater percentage of lower earners’ pre-Social Security wages compared
to higher earners.
So,
while we know African Americans are economically vulnerable, we also
know that many could not make it through retirement, a disability or the
death of a loved one, without Social Security. For example, 46 percent
of African-American seniors ages 65 and over rely on Social Security for
at least 90 percent of their income, compared to 35 percent of whites.
Although
the formula for determining benefit levels is seemingly neutral with
respect to race and ethnicity, the program does in fact affect racial
and ethnic groups in different ways
because of variances in demographic factors such as life expectancy,
health status, years of work, level of earnings, number of dependents,
and marital status. As a result, the distributional impact of the
program and proposed changes to it can be estimated by variables such as
race, ethnicity, gender, class, and marital status.
We know that African Americans are disadvantaged by the structure of Social Security’s retirement program because of shorter life spans.
We also know that African Americans and other people of color
disproportionately benefit from the disability and survivor portions of
the programs, because of higher morbidity and mortality rates. The data
shows that when all three parts of Social Security are taken as a whole,
African Americans receive a slightly higher rate of return from the program compared to what they contribute in wages.
However,
when taken alone, the retirement portion of the program is regressive
for African Americans, since those who have shorter life expectancy
effectively subsidize the retirement of those with longer life expectancy. Proposals to raise the retirement age, therefore, are not beneficial for
African Americans since they would result in reduced benefit amounts,
and depending on the specifics of the proposal, could make the benefit
of Social Security to African Americans less valuable overall.
Enter
the 2016 elections. While Senator Bernie Sanders’ dismissive response
to the questioner who asked him about reparations at the Black and Brown
debate in Iowa was both regretful and instructive about the
intellectual boundaries of mainstream contemporary populism,
he has taken a stand against all benefit cuts — including increasing
the retirement age. He has also put forward a plan to expand benefits
that has been estimated by the Social Security Administration’s Chief
Actuary to increase benefits
and extend the solvency of Social Security through the year 2074. By
placing the burden of expansion on the wealthy, who would pay more by
raising the earnings cap on Social Security payroll contributions, his
plan would save middle, moderate and low-income Americans from
economically harmful benefit cuts. This would be good for African
Americans.
Although
she has not yet put forward a detailed plan for expanding Social
Security, Secretary Hillary Clinton has expressed support for expanding
benefits for vulnerable groups, which would be good for African
Americans. However, she has not ruled out instituting benefit cuts as a
means for extending Social Security’s solvency and has said she is open
to considering raising the retirement age “for
people whose jobs allow them to work later in life.” This approach
presumably targets higher income, white-collar workers but it represents
little guarantee of protection for African Americans who experience
life-threatening health disparities across the income spectrum.
On
the Republican side of the race, businessman and presidential contender
Donald Trump has shunned traditional conservative approaches to Social
Security reform by ruling out raising the retirement age. His decision taps into a wealth of polling data that shows widespread, bipartisan support for Social Security. Both senators Ted Cruz
and Marco Rubio, on the other hand, have said they would increase the
retirement age. Ted Cruz would seek to destabilize the program
altogether by diverting Social Security funds into private accounts
exposed to Wall Street, which brings a host of additional vulnerabilites for African Americans.
In
sum, Social Security is not a replacement for a policy that compensates
African Americans for lost wages, discrimination, dehumanization, and
pain and suffering they experienced as result of slavery, Jim Crow and a
host of additional discriminatory policies and practices that have
undermined their socioeconomic standing. Given that precedent has been established
for reparative policies for other wronged groups in the U.S., there
should be no reason to exclude African Americans from policy
considerations that have been afforded to others.
Nevertheless, Social Security remains an important pillar of progress that is essential for many black households to survive and thrive. For that reason alone, it too is worth fighting for.
Democratic
presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton and Democratic presidential
candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, shake hands as they greet the
audience before the audience before a Democratic presidential primary
debate hosted by MSNBC at the University of New Hampshire Thursday, Feb.
4, 2016, in Durham, N.H. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (Credit: Associated Press)
It
would be hard to overstate what Bernie Sanders has already achieved in
his campaign for president, or the obstacles he’s had to surmount in
order to achieve it. Not only has he turned a planned Hillary Clinton
coronation into an exercise in grass-roots democracy, he’s reset the
terms of the debate. We are edging closer to the national conversation
we so desperately need to have. If we get there, all credit goes to
Bernie.
Many
of those obstacles were put in place by Democratic national party chair
and Clinton apparatchik Deborah Wasserman Schultz. Without pretense of
due process, Schultz slashed the number of 2016 debates to six, down
from 26 in 2008, and scheduled as many as she could on weekends when she
figured no one would be watching. To deprive would-be challengers of
free exposure, Schultz robbed voters of free and open debate and ceded
the spotlight to the dark vaudeville of the Republicans. That Sanders
got this far in spite of her is a miracle in itself.
Sanders got
bagged again in Iowa, this time by a state party chair, one Andrea
McGuire. Like Schultz, McGuire’s specialty is high-dollar fundraising,
and like Schultz she was deeply involved in Clinton’s 2008 campaign.
Under the esoteric rules of the Iowa Democratic caucuses, and after a
string of lucky coin tosses, Clinton eked out a 700.52 to 696.86 margin,
not in votes cast but in a mysterious commodity known as “delegate
equivalents.”
We’re electing a president, not the senior warden of
a Mason’s lodge. All evidence indicates Sanders won the popular vote.
It isn’t a minor point. If the public knew he won the only vote anybody
understands or cares about, Clinton wouldn’t be “breathing a sigh of
relief,” she’d be hyperventilating. McGuire refuses to release vote
totals. She says keeping them a secret is an Iowa tradition. So what if
it is? As with debates, the stakes transcend the candidates’ interests.
In an editorial headlined “Something Smells in the Democratic Party,”
the Des Moines Register, which endorsed Clinton prior to the caucuses,
wrote:
What happened Monday
night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period… the refusal to
undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy.
Given
that this entire election is a mass insurrection against a rigged
system, one would think the national political press would share the
Register’s concern, but it moved on to the next race with barely a
backward glance. Throughout the campaign the press has been nearly as
big an obstacle for Sanders as the party. Even jaded political junkies
were startled when the Tyndall Report exposed the media blackout of
Sanders. In 2015, ABC News devoted 261 minutes to the 2016 campaign.
Donald Trump got 81 minutes. Bernie Sanders got 20 seconds. Nearly as
harmful is the dismissive tone of the cable commentariat, and I don’t
mean just Fox News.
CNN has larded up “the best political team on
television” with partisans, including Bush acolyte Ana Navarro and Trump
minion Jeffrey Lord. On the Democratic side, Paul Begala advises a
Clinton super PAC; David Axelrod was Obama’s guru; Donna Brazile a DNC
chair; Van Jones an Obama staffer; David Gergen a Clinton adviser. All
are bright, honorable people, but it’s hard to report on a peasant
revolt from inside the castle. (The network just added Sanders
sympathizer Bill Press to the mix, but it’s far too little and too
late.)
Things aren’t all that different over at MSNBC though to
its credit it lets reporters do more of its analysis. One might expect
its younger on-air personalities to be in sync with Sanders but our
younger political journalists aren’t like our younger voters, being more
attuned to the centrist politics of Clinton and Obama than to the
reformist zeal now reshaping and re-energizing the Democrat left.
The
whole press corps still treats politics as theater or sport. No one ever
explains policy on a post-debate show. Must all talk be of the horse
race? It’s a democracy, not an off-track betting parlor. We must all
think less like political consultants and more like citizens, and
journalists should lead the way.
That they don’t is a gift to
Clinton. Sanders wants to talk about the fallen state of our politics,
the fallen state of our middle class, and how the first fall caused the
second. Clinton can’t have that discussion. Exposing her differences
with Sanders on such topics would sink her. So she says she and he are
alike in every way except she’s practical and electable—”a progressive
who likes to get things done”–and he’s a hopeless dreamer. It’s the kind
of argument political reporters were born to buy, and despite being
full of holes, it works even among some non-journalists.
The
electability argument is all about money and polls, ground games and
firewalls, though you hear less about money lately. Clinton’s campaign
muddied the message of its launch by leaking a plan to raise $300
million for an “independent” super PAC. This was to be the year of the
super PAC but it’s proving instead that even in politics, money isn’t
everything. Among Republicans, Jeb Bush raised the most money, Trump the
least. Trump rides high. Bush is on a respirator. As you may have
heard, Bernie doesn’t have a super PAC. Backed by a record breaking 1.3
million small donors, he slashed 40 points off Clinton’s lead and
rewrote the rules of presidential politics.
You hear even less
about polls; or general election polls at least. What makes the media
blackout of Sanders an even greater travesty is that it was imposed over
a period of many months in which he led all 21 other candidates in both
parties in nearly every general election poll. When a self-described
socialist leads every poll, something historic is happening. Even
horse-race reporters should have seen that a story so big, so
confounding of conventional wisdom, demanded in depth coverage, but
unless you read Salon or Rolling Stone, such coverage was hard to find.
In Thursday’s
MSNBC debate, Rachel Maddow, having raised the specters of George
McGovern and Barry Goldwater, briefly acknowledged Sanders’ general
election lead (“I know you have good head to head polling numbers… right
now”) before asking, “but do you have a general election strategy?”
Sanders might have referred all Goldwater questions to Hillary, who
after all worked on Barry’s famed ’64 race, or asked Maddow why the guy
leading every general election poll would need a new general election
strategy, but he did neither.
There is no Clinton firewall. At most, 10 states
are out of Sanders’ reach and public opinion is never static. Nor does
she have a better “ground game.” Real grass-roots organizations like the
Working Families Party, MoveOn.org and Democracy for America let
members guide endorsements. (Sanders’ support in each of those groups
was at or above 85 percent) Such groups are building the movement
Sanders speaks of in every speech. Building a movement is like wiring a
house for electricity. You can buy the most expensive lamps in the store
but with no electricity, when you hit the switch the lights don’t go
on. It takes real conviction to fuel grass-roots politics. In Iowa,
Sanders ran 5 points ahead of late polls. It won’t be the last time it
happens.
*
If you strip away all the nonsense about polls,
money, firewalls and ground games, Clinton’s left with two arguments,
neither one pretty. One is that Sanders is too far left. Pundits dismiss
his polls by repeating her “wait till the Republicans get ahold of him”
line. And they’ll say what? That he’s old? Jewish? A socialist?
Everybody already knows and anyone who’d even think of voting Democratic
is already down with it or soon could be. The “socialist” tag needs
explaining, but so do “corrupt” and “fascist.” Both parties’ front runners carry baggage. For my money, Bernie’s is the lightest. As
for the notion that voters can’t see that paying $1,000 in taxes beats
paying $5,000 in health insurance premiums, it is an insult to the
American people.
The core of Clinton’s realpolitik brief pertains
not to electability but to governance. Her point is that Sanders is
naïve. She says none of his proposals can get though a Republican
Congress. She strongly implies that he’d roll back Obamacare, a charge
that is false, cynical and so nonsensical she’ll have to stop making it
soon. She says she has a plan to get to universal health care—she
doesn’t—and that she’ll do it by working “in partnership” with the
insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
Who’s being naive here? A
Republican Congress won’t pass any of her ideas either. The only way to
get real change is to elect Democrats to Congress and have a
grass-roots movement strong enough to keep the heat on them. Nor will
insurers cough up a dime of profit without a fight. Vowing to spare us a
“contentious debate” over single-payer care she ignores the admonition
of Frederick Douglass; “Power concedes nothing without demand. It never
did and it never will.” There has been a lot of talk lately about what a
progressive is. Here’s a hint: if you think Douglass is wrong, you
might not be one.
Clinton’s last argument concerns
loyalty. Throughout 2015 she sniped at Obama from the right while
relegating Bill to the sidelines. Last month, seeing her lead slip away,
she wrapped herself in political and family connections, as if hoping
to gain the White House as a legacy admission. Analysts say Sanders
drove her to the left. It’s partly but only superficially true. Lately
he has driven her to the status quo, a bad place to be in 2016.
Democrats
are deeply loyal to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton who didn’t so much
reconcile their party’s conflicts as engross them within their protean
personalities. Hillary accuses Sanders of disloyalty to them and to the
modern party they held together. When Sanders suggested that some
progressive groups might be part of the establishment, she ripped into
him, denying there even is such a thing. There is, of course. Its main
components were once grass-roots movements that traded independence for
access and are now Washington lobbies with grass-roots mailing lists.
They were better off when they played harder to get.
The absence
of an independent, progressive movement left a vacuum that groups like
The Working Families Party and MoveOn.org have begun to fill not a
moment too soon. Clinton seeks to cast Sanders as the “other” by calling
into question his loyalty to the establishment. It gets her nothing.
Democrats will always be loyal to Bill and Barack, but know in their
hearts it’s time to move on. The debate now is over what comes next.
It’s
not a debate Hillary wants. She’s a superb debater, whip smart, well
prepared and a world-class verbal gymnast. I’m guessing Sanders goes a
little lighter on debate prep, making him less concrete and specific. I
wish he engaged more directly. But his quiet dignity serves him, and us,
well. He’s the anti-Trump, doing nearly as much to elevate public
discourse as Trump does to debase it.
One way to sum up the case
he’s trying to make might be as follows. In the 1990s a near bipartisan
consensus celebrated a new age of globalization and information
technology in which technology and trade spur growth that in turn
fosters a broad and inclusive prosperity. Government’s job is to
deregulate finance and trade and work with business in ‘public private
partnerships’ for progress.
Twenty years on, Hillary still sees
the world through the rose-colored glasses of that ’90s consensus. Not
Bernie. He sees that in 2016 rising tides don’t even lift most boats,
that growth comes at a steep price when it comes at all, and that new
technology cost more jobs than it creates. He understands that when jobs
flow to countries with weak governments and low wages, the American
middle class can’t get a raise. He sees that public-private partnership
meant pay-to-play politics, and that the whole system runs not on
innovation but corruption. My guess is the middle class sees what he
sees and wants what he wants: a revolution. If he can continue to drive
the debate, they may get one.
Bill Curry was White House counselor to President
Clinton and a two-time Democratic nominee for governor of Connecticut.
He is at work on a book on President Obama and the politics of populism.
Peyton Manning just had one of the nights of his life Sunday.
Potentially in the top five, somewhere in the mix of getting married,
the birth of his two kids, and presumably his previous Super Bowl win?
We’ll never know exactly where tonight’s performance ranks on the
Manning all-time list (unless he tells us), but we can make a few
inferences by his post-game celebration. In the immediate jubilant
aftermath of the game, Manning leaned in to kiss—Papa John? Yes, founder
and owner of the pizza chain, John Schnatter, was on the sideline.
Just to recap, here are Manning’s priorities as expressed through post-game kiss preference:
The Clinton campaign is collapsing. Built for an outdated
presidential race from the past two decades, it underestimated the
changing times, a unique opponent, and increasingly savvy voters.
The campaign's first mistake was to take the traditional approach of sitting on a lead. Certainly, it would have seemeda
safe bet. The party's elected politicians would rally to her as the
presumptive nominee—and they did. Donors were lined up for a big
haul—and they gave. The media would willingly marginalize Sanders—and
they tried. And the voters could be quickly frightened with specters of
Republicans into sticking with the establishment candidate—but they weren't.
Despite every institutional advantage and a made-to-order GOP horror
show, voters could not be scared away from Sanders. The more intently
the machine insisted upon Clinton, the more suspect Clinton became. And
now her campaign is out of options.
There are no more endorsements left to get. She's squandered her
financial advantage by outspending Sanders by many times in Iowa, only
to tie. Her big donors must be maxing out in direct contributions,
leaving Super PAC's as the only vehicle through which she can make up the
losses (less than ideal optics). And the media has already stooped so
low in its dismissal of Sanders that there is no credible room left to
expand that endeavor. At this point, Chris Matthews would literally have
to beg viewers to vote Clinton in order to outdo his current advocacy.
On unfamiliar territory and feeling desperate, the inflexible
campaign made the second mistake of doubling down on its voter
containment strategy, completely giving up on converting any new voters.
There is no obvious goal or governing principles coming out of her camp
at this point. No lines in the sand she's promising to draw as
President. All that's left is jeering smack-talk of Bernie-Bros,
pie-in-the-sky aspirations, and sexism—suggesting that anyone who still
likes Sanders has been cut from the target audience.
And it isn't working.
Why should it? People aren't idiots. Shirley Chisholm, Jan
Schakowsky, Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Elizabeth Warren and many
others have shown us that women can confront our sexist culture and
still refuse to submit to the male-dominated influences that have ruined
our economy and democracy. And consider politicians like Meg Whitman
and Carly Fiorina, who have also battled untold sexist barriers to
achieve their groundbreaking professional goals; only the most deluded
Democratic voter would consider handing them high office as compensation
for their troubles.
Essentially, the Clinton campaign is wrapping a sexist appeal
in the veneer of feminism: because she was a woman, Clinton couldn't
help but play ball with corporations, so give her a girl pass. What a
slap in the face to every woman who never sold out or gave up. It's one
thing to point out that a woman went through a mountain of man-shit to
obtain her rightful due, or blazed a path for future women, however
imperfectly; it's another thing, completely, to insist voters overlook
corruption because the candidate is a woman.
And as the campaign lashes out in a panic, other wheels are starting to come off the bus.
In the last debate, Sanders addressed race on three occasions: 1)
asked about the death penalty, he noted that innocent people of color
are more likely to find their way to death row; 2) asked about our
criminal justice system, he made sure to include in his answer the fact
that we incarcerate mostly people of color; and 3) when responding to
the Flint disaster, he asked a type of question rarely heard from a
Presidential candidate: what would have happened if Flint's population
was middle class and white?
Clinton said absolutely nothing about race. Well, almost nothing. At
the debate's conclusion, with the last question answered, Clinton
wondered aloud why there weren't opportunities to talk about race.
How must that have sounded to black viewers, who surely noticed not
only Sanders' pointed and appropriate injection of racial concerns into
his answers, but the absence of any equivalent from Clinton? I'm sure
she had good sound bytes at the ready; she just lacked the inter-sectional ability to weave them into a question that didn't parade
itself as race-focused.
Is it any surprise that public figures from the African American
community are beginning to withdraw their endorsements of Clinton and
line up behind Sanders?
It is as though the Clinton campaign was designed to last only so
long; slap-dash construction with a lifespan no longer than the short
time it would take to push Sanders out of the frame. When that didn't
happen, there was no Plan B. The public didn't care who Congress
endorsed, and they didn't care what the Chris Matthews of the world
said, and they aren't buying the argument that everyone troubled by
Clinton is somehow hoodwinked by Republican misogyny. They want actual
representation and appreciate a candidate who shoots straight.
And this is the nail in the Clinton coffin. The American people are
beginning to realize they have the ability to elect someone they're not
supposed to elect. Clinton represents everything "normal" about
elections that are now universally recognized as abnormal. She is a safe
bet only in a fictional world that is being dismantled. She is the
past, and the future has become viable.
Berine Sanders' support will continue to swell, as it should, and Democrats need the courage to call this a good thing—a great thing.
No longer can we permit our values and agendas to be boxed in by the
very influences that oppose them. Time is running out on our ecology,
our economy, and our social fabric, and nothing less than an out-and-out
champion for our future will do.
You probably already know this. It's probably why you are
voting for Sanders in your Democratic Primary. It looks like you'll have
plenty of company.
Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States.
One of America’s greatest strengths right now is the fact that our young generation—the millennials—is also the biggest, most educated, most diverse and most digitally fluent generation in our history. And one thing my daughters have taught me about their generation is that they’re not going to wait for anyone else to build a better world; they’re just going to go ahead and create that world for themselves.
We can create the circumstances that give them every chance to do that, of course—to make sure they can grow up free from debt and free to make their own choices in a world that’s not beyond their capacity to repair. That’s why my administration has reduced student loan payments to 10% of a borrower’s income, so that young people who choose college aren’t punished for that choice. We’ve reformed our health-care system so that when young people change jobs, go back to school, chase that new idea or start a family of their own, they’ll still have coverage.
We led nearly 200 nations to the most ambitious agreement in history to combat climate change.
But my daughters’ generation knew long before Paris that protecting the one planet we’ve got isn’t something that’s up for debate. They knew long before the Supreme Court ruled for marriage equality last June that all love is created equal. They don’t see each of us first and foremost as black or white, Asian or Latino, gay or straight, immigrant or native-born. They view our diversity as a great gift.
In many ways, their generation is already pushing the rest of us toward change.
So for the sake of our future, one thing we have to do, maybe even above all others, is to make sure they grow up knowing that their voices matter, that they have agency in our democracy.
Those of us in positions of power have to set an example with the way we treat each other—not by viewing those who disagree with us as unpatriotic or motivated by malice, but with a willingness to compromise.
We have to listen to those with whom we don’t agree.We have to reduce the corrosive influence of money in our politics that makes people feel like the system is rigged. We have to make voting easier, not harder, and modernize it for the way we live now. And we have to encourage our young people to stay active in our public life so that it reflects the goodness and decency and fundamental optimism that they exhibit every day.
The world we want for our kids—one with opportunity and security for our families; one with rising standards of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet; one that’s innovative and inclusive, bold and big-hearted—it’s entirely within our reach. The only constraints on America’s future are the ones we impose on ourselves.
That’s always been the case with America—our destiny isn’t decided for us, but by us. And as long as we give our young people every tool and every chance to decide the future for themselves, I have incredible faith in the choices they’ll make.
Now, the Rude Pundit is no big-time politician who is friends with
football team owners and kings, nor is he running for president, but
he's pretty damn sure that if he were governor of a state that just got
face-fucked by an historic blizzard with historic floods, he'd probably
think it's his responsibility to stay in his goddamn state, just to show
everyone that he gives a happy monkey fuck. But not New Jersey Governor
Chris Christie.
Oh, sure, he was shamed into leaving the campaign trail in New Hampshire
for a day to hang out and drink hot chocolate with the kids back at
home. But as soon as the storm was over (and it was a big fucking
storm), Christie told the snow-coated Garden State to kiss his big happy
ass goodbye and jetted off in a private plane. When questioned about
that decision this morning on Morning Blow, Christie, as is his way, was a total cock about it:
"I don't even know what critics you're talking about. There is no
residual damage, there is no residual flooding damage. All the flooding
receded yesterday morning. And there was no other damage."
And, sure, the southern portions of the Jersey Shore might be a little
more Philadelphia, a little more Delaware, but, you know they are still
part of the state that Christie allegedly runs.
That part of the state got floods that dwarfed Hurricane/Superstorm/Big
Honkin' Weather Event Sandy for them. In fact, this was their Sandy,
since that the south shore dodged that bullet. But this more than made
up for it. The flood waters recorded were a foot higher than the previous record in some areas.
As for the aftermath, or, as Christie calls it, "residual damage," the
governor must understand that if a building gets flooded, especially if
it has three, four, five feet of water in it, there is damage that may
involve gutting the place or condemning it. Certainly, there is a
fuck load of shit messed up. And it ain't isolated to a couple of homes.
The mayor of that town up there, North Wildwood, said,
"We had between four and five feet of water in the downtown. Our entire
dune system was compromised, and we had a big breach on 3rd Avenue. We
had whitecaps and ice flow right through town. It was surreal."
Christie is prancing around New Hampshire, calling himself "the disaster governor," and saying that makes him a good leader. Well, shit, at least he didn't
just fuck off to Disney World this time. He pretended he gave a fuck
for a few minutes. If deluding yourself and lying to people is
leadership, then Chris Christie should be the fuckin' emperor of the
world.
"The party has been hijacked," says one GOP
insider.
The Republican Party has added a new twist to its renowned blame games. Its
Washington-centric establishment is saying the race for the 2016 presidential
nominee is all but over before the voting starts.
As nationalnewsorganizations
are reporting just days before Iowa caucuses, it looks like either Donald Trump
will mount a successful hostile takeover of the GOP, or the senator most
despised by its establishment, Ted Cruz, will grab the nomination. That
realization has prompted a growing chorus of GOP strategists and party insiders
to chime in with last-minute advice to avoid what others say is inevitable, or
simply panic.
“Whoever is not named Trump and not named Cruz that looks strong out of both
Iowa and New Hampshire, we should consolidate around,” Henry Barbour, a
Mississippi-based strategist told the New
York Times, in a piece this week emphasizing time is running out for a
“credible alternative.” His uncle is ex-RNC chair and former Mississippi Gov.
Haley Barbour.
“This whole thing is a disaster,” Curt Anderson, ex-RNC political director
and veteran operative, told
Politico.com in a piece that asked who let Trump get this far. “I feel the party
has been hijacked,” said
RNC member Holland Redfield. “It will be a major internal fight.”
“All of the hand-wringing and alarm-sounding within the Republican
establishment is sound and fury signifying nothing,” Chris Cizilla, the
Washington Post’s top handicapper wrote
Wednesday. “The train has left the station. The boat has left the dock. The
genie is out of the bottle. Pandora’s box is open.”
And what a box it is! Before Trump hijacked the headlines by trying to bully
Fox News into dumping Megyn Kelly as a moderator for Thursday night's debate,
and then walked away because he didn’t get his way (his press statement said,
“this takes guts”), he was drawing the worst GOP publicity hounds.
“I see someone who has touched a nerve with our country,” Rumsfeld said
of Trump. But the one-two punch of Palin’s and Grassley’s support is seen as
influential among Iowa Republicans, who are disproportionately right-wing and
evangelical. That’s why Mike Huckabee won Iowa in 2008 and Rick Santorum won in
2012.
No matter the reason, the finger-pointing has begun. Republicans who tried to
ignite a stop-Trump movement told
Politico that the super PACS and donors that lined up behind their more
mainsteam candidates—Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie—misspent
millions by slamming each other and not attacking Trump or Cruz. “It’s not just
campaigns that are coming under fire—it’s also donors, many of whom were
presented with the opportunity to go after Trump but didn’t pull the trigger,”
Politico wrote.
“Much frustration has been directed at the RNC, which some believe has been
pushed around by the party’s surprise poll-leader.”
Trump’s Fox News Gambit
Going into the week before the Iowa caucuses, polls showed the dark mood of
Republicans favors Trump and Cruz. The base is in a “sour” mood,
the Postreported,
although that’s too genteel. Ninety percent say the country is on a wrong track.
Eighty percent don’t like the way the federal government works. Sixty percent
say people like them are losing influence in America. Forty percent say they are
“angry” about all of this—hence Trump’s standing: he has the support of 37
percent or so of likely GOP primary voters and has been leading for
months.
Trump yet again showed how he can uniquely manipulate the media by reviving
his fight with Fox News’ anchor Megyn Kelly. He deliberately picked a fight with
her the way he picks fights with protesters at his rallies. The timeline
of this latest attention-grabbing gambit saw Trump threaten to pull out of
Thursday’s TV debate unless Fox pulled Kelly from one of three moderator slots.
But Fox did not budge, forcing Trump to follow through on his threat or look
weak—a cardinal sin for him.
The great negotiator might have pulled a dumb move on the eve of what was
lining up to be the biggest night of his life—winning the Iowa caucuses to begin
his hostile takeover of the GOP. As he will see, politics abhors a vacuum and he
just gave Cruz, who’s slightly trailing, and the posse of other mainstream
candidates more airtime to attack and make their case. Undecided Republicans
will see other choices without Trump hogging the limelight. Whether that’s a
masterful move by the master negotiator remains to be seen. The Washington
Post Wednesday reported
that Trump supporters are parroting his lines that Kelly is biased and Fox can’t
be trusted.
What’s most notable about this latest made-for-media dustup is what it
reveals about Trump’s character—how thin-skinned he is when faced with critics
who don’t fawn over him. On Tuesday night, Trump held a rare press conference
and clashed
with reporters who repeatedly asked him to respond to charges that he should not
be endorsed by evangelicals because of his past marital infidelities. Come
Wednesday, the Times’ campaign blog speculated
that Trump knows he will be attacked for past pro-choice stances and would not
be able to monopolize the debate coverage by attending. The Times also
blogged that his campaign was walking
back remarks about not attending the debate.
As the Boston Globenoted,
“Cruz continues to work on his Iowa ground game while Trump continues to fight
with the media.”
Not Republican, But Authoritarian
Whether he shows up or not, what the country is witnessing is not just a
candidate whose uncanny ability to provoke and manipulate the press has upended
previous rules of presidential campaigns, rendering mainstream competition all
but irrelevant. Voters are also witnessing what an extreme authoritarian looks
like and how he operates. That searing conclusion comes
from former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, who has written many books
about political authoritarians and their rise in the Republican Party.
“Trump, after decades in the glare of media attention, instinctively
understands exactly how to manipulate the fourth estate better than any
political figure in modern America,” he recently wrote.
“By being himself, he is taking the country to school on how to dominate public
attention with his inflammatory rhetoric, which he intuitively employs through
unfiltered social media.”
Dean wrote that people who know Trump say he’s not behaving any differently
on the campaign trail than he does in his business life. “I spoke with an
attorney who has been involved in a number of real estate disputes with Trump,
over many years, who said Trump acts in a very similar fashion in his business
dealings. He insults and belittles opponents, and is an extremely sore loser,
whose standard operating procedure is to try to bully and bend the rules his
way.”
“We are going to know a lot more about authoritarian politics when the 2016
presidential race is completed,” Dean said, referring not just to Trump but also
to the vast numbers of Americans who are drawn to following extreme
authoritarians. What that says about the fate of the modern Republican Party
also remains to be seen, but you can be sure that its mainstream leaders see the
writing on the wall and are finding it disconcerting.
On Monday’s show, Ed gives commentary on President Obama weighing in on
the Democratic Primary, and Michael Bloomberg floating the possibility
of an independent run for President.
We are joined by Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and Part-Owner of the Nation, to discuss the significance of the Des Moines Register’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton.
Not only is the Michigan government poisoning
residents, but now they are threatening to take their children for not paying
for it.
Flint, MI – As the water crisis in Flint deepens, it is becoming apparent
that the effects of the lead-infested water are not just a health hazard, but
the situation has the potential of ruining many more lives outside of the poison
issue. There is no denying that the water in Flint is undrinkable and that it is
contaminated with lead and other substances, and it is clear that the government
of Flint is responsible for the problem.
However, the city’s government continues to charge people for the poison
water and then threatening to foreclose their home or take their children if
they refuse to pay. Michigan law states that parents are neglectful if they do
not have running water in their home, and if they chose not to pay for water
they can’t drink anyway, then they could be guilty of child endangerment.
Activists in Flint say that some residents have already received similar threats
from the government if they refuse to pay their bills.
Flint residents have recently filed two
class action lawsuits calling for all water bills since April of 2014 to be
considered null and void because of the fact that the water was poisonous.
“We are seeking for the court to declare that all the bills that have been
issued for usage of water invalid because the water has not been fit for its
intended purpose,” said Trachelle Young, one of the attorneys bringing the
lawsuit said in court.
“Essentially, the residents have been getting billed for water that they
cannot use. Because of that, we do not feel that is a fair way to treat the
residents,” Young added.
Recent estimates have indicated that it could take up to 15
years and over $60 million to fix the problem, and the residents will be
essentially forced to live there until the problem is solved. Despite the fact
that the issue is obviously the government’s responsibility, they have made it
illegal for people to sell their homes because of the fact that they are known
to carry contaminated water.
Meanwhile, residents are still left to purchase
bottled water on their own, in addition to paying their water bill.
Although this problem is finally getting national media attention in Flint,
they aren’t the only city with contaminated water supplies. In fact, a recent
report published by The
Guardian showed that public water supplies across the country were
experiencing similar issues.
This crisis highlights the many dangers of allowing the government to
maintain a monopoly on the water supply and calls attention to the fact that
decentralized solutions to water distribution should be a goal that we start
working towards.
I had promised myself I would keep an open mind about any arguments made in National Review’s “Against Trump”
issue. Sure, it would be the first time I’ve ever done that when
reading this magazine of “conservative thought,” which really started
off as a repository for whatever racist swill William F. Buckley pulled
out of the dark corners of his mind, where leering black men in berets
and leather gloves endlessly lurked. It was an inauspicious beginning
that has not gotten better with age.
And sure, National Review’s
laughably bad writing has inspired so many other pretenders to the
right-wing media’s scholarly throne that the very words “conservative
intellectual” long ago graduated to a “jumbo shrimp” level of oxymoron.
But
still. Conservatism is a political philosophy with its own tenets.
Donald Trump clearly doesn’t care about any of them, which must appall
anyone who still deludes themselves that they are rational believers in
the project, free of the emotion and paranoia and self-pitying
victimhood that fuel the modern conservative movement — a description
that covers nearly every NR writer. If conservatism is to have any
future as a governing principle, if it is to be anything other than
irrelevant in America, surely someone somewhere on the right would take
seriously the project of reclaiming it from the Breitbarts and Federalists of the world, of polishing this blackened diamond until it gleams again.
It
would be bad enough if NR had used its own staff for this exercise.
Lord knows what hilariously bad arguments Jonah Goldberg of “Liberal
Fascism” fame would have brought to bear. But good Lord ‘n’ butter,
Glenn Beck? Katie Pavlich? Dana Loesch, a woman famous for suggesting it
was okay for American soldiers to drop their pants and piss on their dead enemies? Erick Erickson, whose most lasting contribution to political culture was to introduce the phrase “goat-fucking child molester” to the lexicon?
William
F. Buckley was a terrible human being in a million ways, but seeing
these names among NR’s contributors would have him spinning so fast in
his grave he might actually tunnel out of it.
Still, a promise is a promise. Let’s look at Erickson running down a list of Trump’s apostasies against conservatism:
He supported the prosecution of hate crimes… On all these things, Donald Trump now says he has changed his mind.
Trump once thought hate crimes should be prosecuted, and to Erick Erickson, this is a negative. Let’s move along. How about Mark Helprin. Here’s his opening sentence:
A
diet, caffeine-free Marxist (really, the only thing wrong with being a
Marxist is being a Marxist); a driven, leftist crook; and an explosive,
know-nothing demagogue — all are competing to see who can be even more
like Mussolini than is Obama.
How many jars of paste do you have to have eaten for lunch to suggest Bernie Sanders is both a Marxist and a fascist within the same sentence? Forget Helprin. Though I should note that elsewhere, Thomas Sowell makes an implicit comparison of Obama to Hitler.
Unfortunately no one thought to compare our current president to
Emperor Hirohito, thus missing out on hitting the rare trifecta of
Axis-leader references.
To be fair, there are a couple of decent
arguments in the collection. Yuval Levin, for example, makes the smart
point that Trump’s appeal as someone who will bring “great management”
to the government is a contradiction of conservatism, “an inherently
skeptical political outlook… [that] assumes that no one can be trusted
with public power.” As a statement of principle and an analysis of why
Trump’s brand of Republican politics cannot be considered conservative,
this is correct.
This observation, though, highlights a big
absence from any of NR’s statements, which is any self-awareness for all
the ways in which the magazine and these writers and media
personalities have contributed to the rise of Trumpism. Such denial has
been a theme among conservatives this election season. They are happy to
blame just about any other force for Trump’s rise to the top of their
party’s primary: Democrats, Obama, Trump’s impeccable charlatanism
somehow pulling the wool over the base’s usually brilliant eyes.
But
the reason Trump’s promise of “great management” resonates with the
base is due partly to the wholesale demonization of the left that
conservatives have engaged in for decades. Specifically, in the right’s
overhyping of every non-scandal within the perpetual anger machine of
its media organs – and yes, this includes National Review – it has fed
the notion that what is missing from our government whenever Democrats
have a majority in any branch of it is not some strong sense of
restraint by the holders of power, but mature and competent leaders.
This
tendency was on display long before Trumpism. The right has spent seven
years denigrating President Obama as a callow and inexperienced leader
whose every utterance is evidence of his narcissism, incompetence and
autocratic tendencies. Benghazi never would have happened if Obama
hadn’t been fucking off in the White House while the consulate was still
under attack! (What was he doing? We don’t know but it must have been
bad!) Immigrants wouldn’t be flooding across the border in droves if
President Nine Iron wasn’t busy playing golf all the time! Jihadists
wouldn’t be threatening the existence of America if the president would
just say the magical words “radical Islam” instead of taking Christmas
vacation in the exotic foreign land of Hawaii!
National Review and the “Against
Trump” writers, all of whom have been complicit in and active agents of
this ridiculous dumbing down of their audience, might have more reason
to complain if they ever offered substantive policy critiques instead of
constantly spitting out strings of buzzwords (Benghazi! Soros!
Alinsky!) like a computer bot in a feedback loop. Or if they would ever
acknowledge the successes of some Obama initiatives like the Affordable
Care Act instead of, as Jonathan Chait has chronicled, constantly denying it has had any positive effects in the face of any evidence to the contrary.
In
short, the right wing has paved the way for the simplistic thinking of
its voters that has led to Trump. It’s a little disingenuous for
National Review, the self-styled gatekeeper of conservative thought, to
complain about it now, considering its own role in it.
Democratic
presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton and Democratic presidential
candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, shake hands as they greet the
audience before the audience before a Democratic presidential primary
debate hosted by MSNBC at the University of New Hampshire Thursday, Feb.
4, 2016, in Durham, N.H. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (Credit: Associated Press)
Democratic
presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton and Democratic presidential
candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, shake hands as they greet the
audience before the audience before a Democratic presidential primary
debate hosted by MSNBC at the University of New Hampshire Thursday, Feb.
4, 2016, in Durham, N.H. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (Credit: Associated Press)
(Credit: AP)