When will Hillary Clinton give up her candidacy ?

"And yet, Republicans can see the same polling results as everyone else, and they appear to be convinced that Sanders would be vastly easier to defeat.

Indeed, Republicans aren't just operating under those assumptions, they're acting on them. Karl Rove's Crossroads operation started boasting in February about its efforts to boost Sanders, and other Republican outfits have launched similar efforts to help the Vermont senator. In January, the RNC's chief strategist conceded he was eager to "help" the Sanders campaign."
http://on.msnbc.com/1Ss7Kpn

1 Reply

@blatham,

Why Republicans are eager to intervene in the Democratic race
04/19/16 By Steve Benen
When Bernie Sanders says current polling shows him as a strong general-election candidate, a point he emphasizes in nearly every speech, interview, and public appearance, he’s 100% correct. The polling data is readily available, and it says exactly what he claims it says. Political scientists are quick to point out that the evidence isn’t quite what it appears to be, but for Team Bernie, those details don’t negate the survey results themselves.

And yet, Republicans can see the same polling results as everyone else, and they appear to be convinced that Sanders would be vastly easier to defeat.

Indeed, Republicans aren’t just operating under those assumptions, they’re acting on them. Karl Rove’s Crossroads operation started boasting in February about its efforts to boost Sanders, and other Republican outfits have launched similar efforts to help the Vermont senator. In January, the RNC’s chief strategist conceded he was eager to “help” the Sanders campaign.

So, what explains the discrepancy? With so many polls showing Sanders faring better than Hillary Clinton in general-election match-ups, why would Republicans go out of their way to try to line up a race with the candidate who appears stronger?

Bloomberg Politics reported yesterday that Republican operatives “are chomping at the bit to face Sanders,” because they believe it would be easy to change the trajectory of those polls.

“Republicans are being nice to Bernie Sanders because we like the thought of running against a socialist. But if he were to win the nomination the knives would come out for Bernie pretty quick,” said Ryan Williams, a former spokesman for 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign. “There’s no mystery what the attack on him would be. Bernie Sanders is literally a card carrying socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union. There’d be hundreds of millions of dollars in Republican ads showing hammers and sickles and Soviet Union flags in front of Bernie Sanders.”

“Hillary Clinton is a much more centrist candidate in comparison,” Williams said, and she would have a better chance of winning over moderate and undecided voters, despite numerous polls showing that many Americans, even in the Democratic Party, don’t view her as honest and trustworthy. “Bernie’s numbers are better than hers right now because she’s been in the political arena for 30 years getting beat up,” he said.

Former RNC spokesperson Doug Heye added that Republicans look at some of Sanders’ success “with bemusement,” because they think it would be easy to define Sanders as “out of the mainstream.”

The Bloomberg Politics piece quoted a Sanders campaign official saying that Republicans are simply wrong – and that may very well be the case. The underlying question is inherently speculative and there’s no way to prove definitely who’s correct. It is, in fact, possible that Republicans underestimate Sanders’ appeal, just as it’s possible that Sanders could withstand the ferocity of the Republican Attack Machine, which the Vermont senator has never faced.

The fact remains that some of the more controversial aspects of Sanders’ record and platform are not widely known to the public at large – love her or hate her, Clinton is already a well established figure – and we don’t know for sure how the race to “define” the senator would unfold.

But while we can’t see the future, we can see the present, and right now, Republicans would look forward to a general election against Sanders – even if they shouldn’t.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-republicans-are-eager-intervene-the-democratic-race#break

2 Replies

@Blickers,

Quote:

“Republicans are being nice to Bernie Sanders because we like the thought of running against a socialist. But if he were to win the nomination the knives would come out for Bernie pretty quick,”

Exactly.

Interesting twist, though: if he loses the nomination those knives will never come for him; he will never fall in the polls; and his movement may really take off among the young.

Whether we support Clinton, or whether we support the long-term success of Sanders's ideals (or both), let's all pray he loses.

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@Kolyo,

I like your interesting twist - especially if it moves past white America.

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@Blickers,

Well, that got me interested, so I looked up on google "sanders" honeymoon" , there was several links, but I went with the nicest, MSNBC instead of a right wing site.

The 25 best things we learned from Bernie Sanders’ book
By Alex Seitz-Wald

(excerpt)

Quote:

17. He helped make Burlington a progressive utopia. Vermont’s largest city now has arts programs, music festivals, park land development, bike lanes, readings from Noam Chomsky and more.

18. He used to be a “Sandernista.” As mayor, Sanders attracted national attention and controversy for supporting the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which was fighting a proxy war with the United States under Ronald Reagan.

In 1985, he became the highest-ranking American official to visit Nicaragua at the time, and met with President Daniel Ortega. In his book, he called the trip “profoundly emotional” and praised Ortega. Burlington and Managua, Nicaragua’s capital, became sister cities.

19. Sanders honeymooned in the USSR. Sanders married his current wife, Jane, in May of 1988 and the next day left for their “romantic honeymoon” to Yaroslavl, in the then-Soviet Union. The trip was an official delegation from Burlington to cement the two cities’ sister-city relationship. “Trust me. It was a very strange honeymoon,” Sanders writes.

He also visited Cuba with Jane in 1989 and tried to meet with Fidel Castro, but it didn’t work out and he met with the mayor of Havana and other officials instead.

Sanders is proud of Burlington’s international diplomacy efforts. “Burlington had a foreign policy because, as progressives, we understood that we all live in one world,” he writes.

Guess more people should have read the book or least looked in on his past.

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@revelette2,

Hey! I visited Yaroslavl during a cruise from Moscow to St Petersburg. That was many decades ago. Sergei, a member of a2k, showed me Moscow most tourists don't see when I was there.
Have also visited Cuba a couple of times, and know the owner of the largest tobacco farm, Hiroshi Robaina. His grandfather is the icon of cigars in Cuba. His father, Carlos, owns a restaurant in Havana, and we also met him, and ate at his restaurant. The columns in his restaurant are cigars.

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@revelette2,

Oh, look, the Reagan folks are up in arms.

Again.

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I suppose I look at it differently, but enough said, the information is there, to me it is troubling, but then, that is just me I guess.

1 Reply

@revelette2,

You could read about Reagan and the Sandanistas. Articles will vary.

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@ossobuco,

Bernie Sanders’ 1980s Nicaragua letters show his early interest in foreign policy

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@revelette2,

I've read about Nicaragua at some length, not that I remember all of it. That started around the time of the big earthquake, late sixties, boss' daughter working there. I then read a kit,
That shows my early interest in foreign policy. Not to compete with Bernie, he probably has more typed up stuff.

Far as I figure, he and I know very little.

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@revelette2,

I've read about Nicaragua at some length, not that I remember all of that. That started around the time of the big earthquake, late sixties, boss' daughter working there. I then read a bit, over years.
That shows my early interest in foreign policy. Not to compete with Bernie, he probably has more typed up stuff.

Far as I figure, he and I know very little.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Yeah, I say he does have more typed out stuff, apparently a series of cardboard boxes at the Vermont University.

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@revelette2,

Are you claiming that Sanders visiting Ortega was a bad thing?

This is one of the reasons I like Sanders. During the time, Ortega was the democratically elected leader of Nicaragua. The Contras (who were backed by the US under Reagan) were committing atrocities including rape and mass murder.

I don't know how much you know about US history in Latin America Revellette. But in this case Sanders was not only right... he was heroically right.

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@maxdancona,

Ortega was a Communist. We can tolerate Communism these days, but during the Cold War, Communism was a grave threat to the nation. Unless Sanders was carrying out a mission for the CIA or something, meeting with Ortega back then was tantamount to treason.

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@maxdancona,

I didn't know a thing about it until I read about it just a few days ago. I found it kind of troubling and really just want to leave it at that as it is really not relevant to his candidacy, I don't think.

1 Reply

@revelette2,

Is the current use of drone strikes and the suffering it causes to civilians a relevant issue in this presidential election? NPR recently interviews families with young kids who suffer from PTSD and can't sleep because of the drones that could strike at any moment. We are doing this right now.

The consequences of US foreign policy in the past are quite relevant to what is happening today. Bernie took a courageous stand then, and I respect him for it.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Is the current use of drone strikes and the suffering it causes to civilians a relevant issue in this presidential election?

No. Why would it be?

Would you rather we switch out the Hellfire missiles with 20-pound warheads, and instead conduct these bombings with 2,000-pound bombs? Because that is certainly a valid option.

maxdancona wrote:

NPR recently interviews families with young kids who suffer from PTSD and can't sleep because of the drones that could strike at any moment. We are doing this right now.

Yes. We are defending ourselves from the people who are trying to massacre us.

What's the problem again?

maxdancona wrote:

The consequences of US foreign policy in the past are quite relevant to what is happening today. Bernie took a courageous stand then, and I respect him for it.

Benedict Arnold was courageous too.

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@maxdancona,

I respect your respect. I personally think he shouldn't have interfered with such a delicate situation. I thought the same as Jane Fonda. I'm curious if President Carter responded to his letter and if he did go to the country in response or not.

War is terrible, it is terrible for all involved. I imagine they do have fears. We don't know what it is like to live in war torn countries. On the other hand, we do have to deal terrorist and it involves a lot of things I wish it didn't. Probably easy for us both to sit at our laptops and spout off opinions on both sides of the issues.

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@revelette2,

Quote:

War is terrible, it is terrible for all involved. I imagine they do have fears. We don't know what it is like to live in war torn countries. On the other hand, we do have to deal terrorist and it involves a lot of things I wish it didn't

This is a very important issue, and I wish it were a more important issue in this election. Hillary Clinton supports more use of American force in foreign wars. Bernie Sanders doesn't.

Our experience in Latin America is relevant to this.

In the 1990s I spent a summer in Quetzaltenango. This is a city in the mountains of Guatemala. In this region live indigenous people who still speak pre-colonial languages. Many people living in the villages still don't speak English. I saw the aftermath of what happened there.

During the 1960s and 1970s, US backed groups committed systemic rapes and killings on these indigenous people. These atrocities are well documented. Women were lined up and raped in front of their families. Entire villages were lined up and killed. Children were thrown on top of their dead parents. There are still trials taking place by digging up mass graves to identify victims using DNA.

It is also documented that that US government knew these atrocities were taking place. They turned a willful blind eye and most Americans were happily ignorant that these things were taking place with our tacit approval.

Did we need to support these things? The justification for systemic rape and mass killings of villagers was the same then as it is now "we have to deal with communism and we have to do things I wish we didn't"

So now we have drone strikes. It is documented that children have watched their friends die in an explosion that came from a blue sky. A recent NPR story said that children have learned to be afraid of sunny clear days because that is when these strikes happen. We have made kids afraid of sunny days.

I am not one to be happy ignorant of what we are doing, and I don't accept that fear of terrorism or communism or any other ism justifies US or US supported groups committing atrocities.

This is absolutely an important issue in this presidential election. Sadly, the one candidate who has opposed the US committing atrocities isn't going to make it to the general election. That means when it comes to killing innocent civilians, this truly will be a choice between two evils.

4 Replies

When will Hillary Clinton give up her candidacy ?

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