When will Hillary Clinton give up her candidacy ?

A little more honnesty and genuiness is what she needs. People don't like her because she comes across as disengenious. That's her basic problem.

Carter's views on Israel in recent years have bordered on anti-Semitism.

Carter probably objects to Hillary's belief in treating Israel fairly.

If she had a press conference and copped to half of her bullshit, and said Bernie has inspired her to be more transparent... If she VOWED to reinstate Glass Stegall and carry the torch for a reduction in corruption... And stopped funneling money to her "foundation," she might get Bernie's votes if she wins the nomination.

It is only her corruption that is ******* up her chances.

But she can't because she's in too deep.

(I meant to just agree with you.)

Her ethics appear to be highly situational.

Is Hillary's Personal Story About Student Loans a Fabrication?

It's a slippery slope from pragmatism to self interest.
By Les Leopold / AlterNet
April 10, 2016

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/hillarys-personal-story-about-student-loans-fabrication

"I know [student loan forgiveness] works because Bill and I did that. We both borrowed money when we went to law school and we paid it back as a percentage of our income, so I could go to work at the Children's Defense Fund, not some big law firm that would pay me more. I wanted to do the work I loved...I want everyone to have that chance."

Hillary Clinton tells this story to struggling students. She told it to minority students in Mississippi in November, 2015, and she recently told it againto minority students in Brooklyn.

Her story makes several important points to attract young people who are flocking to Sanders. First, it offers hope that something practical can be done about crushing student loans. Wouldn't it be great if all student debt payments could be reduced to a percentage of income? She argues that is much more realistic than the Sanders free tuition plan.
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Second, it suggests humble origins, and therefore combats the troublesome fact that she recently earned as much from one Wall Street speech as the average worker earns in five years. In this story, Hillary, too, had to amass debt just like other financially struggling students. And only by the good fortune of the Yale Law School debt forgiveness program was she able to work her way out of debt with little difficulty. "Everyone should have that chance."

Third, the story allows Hillary to project an image of selfless pubic service. The forgiveness program spared her from being forced by her loans to work at "some big law firm that would pay me more."

It's a politically potent story that fits neatly together.

Fact or Fiction?

The odds are high that Hillary's story is a fabrication. In all likelihood, her family had enough income to afford Yale Law School in the early 1970s. At that time, the tuition was well in reach for an upper middle class. (I know several of Hillary's law school classmates from similar backgrounds who accumulated no debt.)

But there's a bigger problem with Hillary's story: The loan forgiveness program she refers to didn't exist in the early 1970s. Yale Law School literature is quite clear on this:

"Some students dream of jobs in smaller firms, nonprofit organizations, public interest, government service or academia. These are jobs that typically pay less than those at large firms. Yale Law School has pioneered a loan repayment assistance program to allow these students to take their dream jobs without worrying about their student loans.

Established in 1989, the Career Options Assistance Program (COAP) was one of the first loan forgiveness programs of its kind."

1989 is not 1973. Yet doesn't this description sounds eerily similar to the story Hilary now tells? Might she have read it, found it compelling and projected herself into it?

Hillary wants to strengthen her appeal to young people of color. Internal polling shows that not only is she losing the youth vote overall, but also, young people of color are flocking to Sanders. Here are some numbers obtained from reliable sources within the Sanders campaign:

Overall Sanders is winning the following groups of young voters (18 years old to 29).

White: 66% to 28%

Asian Americans: 72% to 24%

Blacks: 51% to 43%

Latinos: 65% to 30%

If you take out the Southern states, all of which have already voted, the Sanders lead is even more lopsided:

White 70% to 24%

Blacks 59% to 34%

Latinos 65% to 30%

Team Hillary has access to the very same data. It is worrisome and might provide the motivation to fabricate a just so story.

So what?

As much as we expect the tall tales, we don't like it when our candidates make up stories to pander to us. There's also a fear that one lie can lead to another -- that expediency can cause a continual twisting of the truth.

Being untruthful about college loans seems minor, but prevaricating about your position on American military interventions is not. Hillary says her vote for the Iraq war was a mistake; that she was misled by the Bush administration. She also says that she would not send ground troops into the Middle East. Clearly, that's what the American people want to hear, but is she telling the truth?

There are reasons to worry. Hillary advocates the use of special ops and a no-fly zone in Syria. One could easily imagine a scenario in which ground troops would be needed if these operations went sour, and pilots and special ops were captured or in danger. The bottom line is whether or not Hillary is an interventionist, a nation-builder, a potential president who will sacrifice American lives and resources to project military power around the globe. She admires Henry Kissinger for a reason. She's not likely to surround herself with Sanders-type doves.

The fabrications indicate that she is likely to do and say what she believes to be in her self-interest.

And isn't that precisely why young people are flocking to Sanders? They see and sense that Hillary's campaign is all about Hillary. The loan story is just one of a thousand references to herself, her abilities, her accomplishments.

Pragmatism as Cover

Hillary wraps it all together with the idea of pragmatism -- that she is the one who can get things done. Sanders rarely mentions himself. Rather he is asking us to join together so that we can build a political revolution. Big difference.

This difference is why Hillary may be more appealing to many older voters. They know it's not easy to make change. It requires careful policies and practices. It's hard work. Youthful ideals (even when embodied by Sanders, the senior citizen) are not enough. We need to engage in the hard pragmatic work, step by step. That's just what we all learn as we grow older, isn't it?

To paraphrase an old saying: If you're not an idealist when you're young, you have no heart. If you're not pragmatic when you're old, you have no head.

Pragmatism to Opportunism

There's a slippery slope from pragmatism to self interest. The call for practicality easily fits with doing whatever you think best serves your interests at the time. It also can seamlessly fit into a wider range of questionable policies like ending welfare as we know it, destroying Glass-Steagall, supporting NAFTA, voting for the Iraq War, and toppling Qaddafi with little or no planning for the aftermath.

In the end, the problem of pragmatism is really a problem of accountability. By stressing the process of pragmatism, the focus is on the person who drives it forward. But there's nothing within pragmatism that tells us anything about vision and goals. If we don't have a clear idea of where Hillary is headed, pragmatically or not, how do we hold her accountable? And why do we think she will resist the pull of political opportunism?

This election is not about pragmatism versus idealism. Everyone is forced to be pragmatic when trying to get things done and everyone has ideals. Rather, it's about holding leaders accountable to their vision and having confidence that they will remain true to it. Pragmatism is not a vision and embellishments do not fill us with confidence.

Young people have figured this out. Sanders must hope that their parents will as well.

Les Leopold is the director of the Labor Institute in New York. His latest book is Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice (Chelsea Green, 2015). For bulk orders contact him at [email protected].

Clinton Has Edge Over Trump on Range of Issues in New Poll

Delegate math doesn't add up for Bernie Sanders in California

Reformers can kill all the fun. There’s no better example than the California battle shaping up between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

Because of past do-gooders, neither candidate can really run up a big score in the June 7 presidential primary.


Most significantly, it will be virtually impossible for Sanders to catch Clinton in the delegate race, even if he achieves a stunning upset.

California will send 546 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia the last week in July. That will be by far the largest state bloc and 23% of the total needed to nominate the party’s presidential candidate.

What if all California delegates were awarded the old-fashioned, pre-reform way — winner-take-all? The candidate who won the statewide vote would cart off all the delegates.

That would be exciting. It might even rival national attention paid earlier to pipsqueak states Iowa and New Hampshire.

It would be worth multimillion-dollar media buys, border-to-border barnstorming and bringing out the mariachi bands. The victor could win the whole enchilada: the nomination.

California primaries haven’t been that compelling since 1972 when the anti-establishment, anti-Vietnam War candidate George McGovern — the Sanders of his day — beat former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He won all 271 California delegates and thus the nomination.

Well, it wasn’t quite that simple. Drama ensued at the Miami convention. Crazed Humphrey forces initially stripped McGovern of 151 California delegates, triggering a pivotal floor brawl. California leader Willie Brown pounded the podium and shouted: “Give me back my delegation!”

The convention did. McGovern was swamped by President Nixon that November, even losing California. Brown later became a legendary state Assembly speaker and ultimately San Francisco mayor.

And the delegate-selection process was “reformed.” It became sort of ho-hum. No big winners, no big losers. Delegates were chosen on a proportional basis, parceled out based on each candidate’s percentage of the vote.

Young Gov. Jerry Brown won the California primary in 1976 and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts did in 1980. So what? One-day headlines. The state couldn’t provide enough oomph.

California moved up its primary for four presidential elections starting in 1996 in a futile attempt to gain more nominating clout. But without a winner-take-all rule, the results were disappointing.

In 2008, the state’s last early primary, Hillary Clinton did manage to keep her campaign alive for three additional months by winning in California. She beat Barack Obama by 8 percentage points, but won only 38 more delegates than he did.

That race is one reason Clinton had a jump on Sanders this year in California. Another is that Bill Clinton beat Jerry Brown in the 1992 primary and then became only the second Democrat in 11 presidential elections to carry the state that November. Clinton won again easily here in 1996.

So the Clintons have a veteran, loyal, full-service political operation on standby in California. (Full disclosure: my daughter is part of it.)

Clinton started this campaign far ahead in the polls. But Sanders has cut sharply into her lead. In the latest Field Poll, released Friday, Clinton led by only six percentage points, 47% to 41%.

There’s a huge generation gap, as there has been all over the country. Voters under 40 strongly support Sanders; those over 40 prefer Clinton.

But none of that will matter much — except as bragging points — unless Sanders can pull huge upsets in other large states such as New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Clinton only has to capture about one-third of the delegates available in the remaining state contests.

It’ll be extremely hard for Sanders to play delegate catch-up in California. Nationally, he trails by around 250 pledged delegates. Plus more than 400 ostensibly unpledged super-delegates tilt toward Clinton. She could clinch the nomination here.

It works this way: Unlike Republicans, who award the same number of delegates to each congressional district, Democrats do the politically smart thing. They reward party loyalty. Each district’s delegate number is based on its past support of Democratic presidential candidates.


House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district gets nine delegates. But the Kern County district of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — this state’s top Republican — is allotted only five. Take that, Bakersfield. Even fewer, four, go to the San Joaquin Valley district of Republican Rep. David Valadao.

Clinton and Sanders will divide up the delegates based on their vote totals in each district and statewide. Most delegates, 317, will be awarded by district, and 105 will be allotted statewide. Another 53 will go to party leaders. And there’ll be 71 unpledged so-called super-delegates, a group leaning strongly toward Clinton.

In fact, much of the system leans Clinton’s way.

One example: Sanders’ strength is among voters under 30. But their numbers are highest in districts coincidentally allowed the fewest delegates, according to Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc.

Another: Latinos have been favoring Clinton, and they’re numerous in some districts with larger delegate caches.

However, unlike Republicans, Democrats permit nonpartisans to participate in their primary. And, in the poll, they support Sanders by 10 points.


Regardless, it’ll be uphill for the insurgent without much reward at the top.

“Our system is designed to give everyone a fair shake” on delegates, says Bob Mulholland, a longtime state Democratic official and activist.


Fair, maybe. But not as much fun.

New York’s closed primary could be Bernie Sanders’ Achilles’ heel

New York is the first in a series of upcoming “closed primaries,” which allow only registered Democrats to participate – and that could create a major problem for Bernie Sanders.

The Vermont senator is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history, and independent voters have fueled his success across the country.

In Wisconsin last week, for instance, Sanders won independents 72 percent to 28 percent, a margin that helped him rout Hillary Clinton in the state. But Sanders and Clinton split registered Democrats exactly evenly, according to NBC News exit polls.

Sanders lost all three primaries held so far this year that barred independent voters, and closed primaries dominate the final eight weeks of the primary calendar. Nine of the remaining 17 contests are closed primaries, including four out of the five biggest (New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey).

In New York, tight laws and early deadlines will compound the challenge for Sanders.

There is no same-day registration in the state. Independents or members of third parties who want to vote as Democrats had to change their party registration by October 9.

And new voters – another key Sanders voting bloc – had to register by March 25, just days after the Sanders campaign deployed their first paid staffers in New York and the day before they opened their first field office there.

In Arizona, there were widespread reports of independent Sanders supporters showing up at the polls, only to be turned away because they had missed the deadline to switch parties.

The rules are sure to keep at least some Sanders supporters from turning out in New York, but the question is how many and whether the Sanders campaign can make up for losses among other groups.

“We get tons of emails from people who are just discovering that they can’t vote for Bernie because they realize it’s a closed primary,” said Tascha Van Auken, an Obama campaign veteran who co-founded the volunteer group Team Bernie NY, which has worked to register voters ahead of the deadlines.

“It really is a large segment of New York that gets shut out of the primary. Unless you’re very plugged into the political process, you likely don’t even realize it,” Auken said.

John Hughes, who created the website VoteforBernie.org to help Sanders fans learn how to vote in their states, said he’s still regularly getting a trickle of emails from people who missed the deadline to switch party registration.

“It’s really unfortunate. The deadline was really early, before many people were even following the campaign, before even the first debate,” he said of the October date.

Sanders’ strength with independents has been a pattern that’s held true across the country.

In Michigan, for instance, where Sanders pulled out a surprise victory, Clinton comfortably carried registered Democrats 58 percent to 40 percent. In Massachusetts, Clinton edged out a narrow win by beating Sanders among registered Democrats 60 percent to 40 percent, even though he won two-thirds of independents. In New Hampshire, where Sanders blew out Clinton with independents and overall, she nearly tied him with Democrats.

A national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll from March found that Clinton leads Sanders nationally 60 percent to 38 percent among Democrats, while Sanders dominates 59 percent to 35 percent among Democratic-leaning independents.

In New York, about 20 percent of the state’s 11.7 million voters are unaffiliated with any party, according to Board of Elections data.

Also barred from the April 19 primary are voters registered with third parties, including the 48,000 people registered with the Working Families Party. The party endorsed Sanders and its volunteers have been working hard for the insurgent, but those registered on its line won’t be able to vote for him. Neither will the 26,000 Green Party members in the state.

Recognizing the danger last summer, pro-Sanders volunteers did an impressive job of organizing registration drives ahead of the October and March deadlines. Team Bernie NY alone says they collected information for 13,000 registrations. Hughes said over 4,600 people used his website to submit registrations.

But while state officials reported an unprecedented surge in new voter filings just ahead of last month’s deadline, overall voter growth was disappointing.

As of April 1, Democrats had added about 14,000 people to their rolls (out of close to 6 million registered voters) since the same day last year, according to Board of Elections data. Republicans added only 12,000 (out of close to 3 million).

Barbara Bartoletti of the League of Women Voters told the New York Post the numbers were “very depressing, but not surprising,” given the Empire State’s strict ballot access laws.

Sanders allies acknowledge the issue but say they think they can overcome it by super-charging turnout among young people and other key Sanders groups.

In every one of those primaries and caucuses, a coalition of enthusiastic young people, working families and voters hit hardest by today’s rigged economy have come together to defy expectations and build a political revolution.” said Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesperson for the Sanders campaign.

Indeed, Democrats are by far the largest group of voters in New York, which has a relatively small number of independents compared to states like Arizona. The challenge for Sanders will be making sure he gets enough of them to the polls to not only beat Clinton, but also overcome the independent deficit.

Hit piece.

Bernie Sanders does not care about his chance of winning the election.

Geez, you really think this guy is a saint, don't you? No ambition, no ego, no human weakness? Why in the hell wouldn't he care about his chances? Because he does it all for his fellow man?

You seem to have mistaken maporsche for someone else entirely.

If I am not mistaken, and maporsche can certainly speak for himself, I think he meant, it is obvious Sanders is not likely win the primaries but just doesn't care.

Bernie Sanders has said he is in it to win it; there is a small unlikely chance he could if he manages to have blowouts in all the remaining state elections. If he doesn't have blowouts, then he won't win. More than likely he won't win.

I think you are right what you said a week or so ago, even if Sanders looses at the convention, he and his followers will not be able to let it go. They will protest and doubt the numbers, claim fraud, decry the DNC partiality and pre-set rules. I just hope, the media doesn't give them air time to spout all that drivel so that we can then go on with the general election.

How's that? I just quoted his own words and responded to them.

You're right, maporsche can speak for himself. What he wrote was "Bernie Sanders does not care about his chance of winning the election". If that's not what he meant, maybe he'll explain what it is he did mean.

If you think maporsche thinks Mr. Sanders is a saint of any sort you haven't been reading his posts.

I guess I should have included a "/sarcasm" at the end of that last post.

It's either this, or Sanders is getting some really bad advice from his advisers. There's no realistic, effective way for Sanders to win the nomination short of Clinton dropping out (willfully or not).

California isn't winner take all. None of the states in the Democratic party nominating process are winner take all. It pretty much guarantees that the one with the most delegates is the one that was supported by the most people nation wide. That seems like a pretty good idea to me.

The other thing I've heard is that since Sanders is winning caucuses (with tiny voter turnouts) and Clinton has been more successful in primaries, her 2.5 million vote lead will likely be insurmountable EVEN IF Sanders takes the lead in delegates.

So if Sanders takes the lead in pledged delegates (highly unlikely) he still runs the risk of not having the lead in actual number of votes. Delegates win the nomination, so it may not matter too much, but it weakens his case of trying to get the superdelegates to his side of the isle.

I was responding specifically to the statement "Bernie doesn't care about his chances to win (or words to that effect)"
IMO, The only person who at this stage of a campaign didn't care about their chances would be a selfless saint whose efforts were all "for the people".

Do you see the potential confusion you might engender by speaking for maporsche? If he has issue with what I say to/about him, don't you see the good sense in letting him be the one who says it? Can't maporsche most effectively clear up any misconceptions I or anyone has about maporsche?