Saturday, April 9, 2016

Desperation in Bernie-Land

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Previous Related Posts:
Susan Sarandon Likes Trump Over Hillary
 Bernie Camp Blames Hillary for AZ Loss
Bernie Gives Hillary the Hand of Silence
Polls and Predictions for Hillary and Bernie on Super Tuesday
Hillary Landslide in South Carolina
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Bernie Sanders has won the last seven consecutive primaries and caucuses, including a big win in Wisconsin last week, and is expected to win the mostly-white Wyoming Caucus today. But the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, will probably beat him in the New York Primary of April 19th in spite of the fact that Bernie being born and raised there.

Of course his rabid followers believe Bernie can win big in New York and pull out wins from now until June, but the reality is he still lags behind in delegates, and even tying or barely beating Hillary will not help. So there is a looming sense of do-or-die for his campaign, especially for his highly-paid team of Tad Devine and Jeff Weaver who need the Bernie fans to keep sending money.

From RealClearPolitics
“With our victory tonight in Wisconsin, we have won seven out of the last eight caucuses and primaries, and we have won almost all of them with overwhelming, landslide numbers,” Sanders said during a victory speech so familiar to his Wyoming supporters that they shouted out lines along with the candidate.
. . . In an email to admirers, Sanders described what remained of April as “the most important three-week stretch of the campaign.”
“We’re going to win this election,” he vowed, “if we can keep our momentum going.”
. . . Clinton’s campaign team predicts that after April 26, when voters in Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., participate and 631 delegates are divvied up, the nominating drama may be mathematically finished for Sanders.

Yet Bernie is his own worst enemy, sounding woefully unprepared for obvious questions in his interviews, such as the methodology of how to "break up the banks" which he mentions in every speech:

From Bernie's Interview with the New York Daily News Board:
Daily News: Well, it does depend on how you do it, I believe. And, I'm a little bit confused because just a few minutes ago you said the U.S. President would have authority to order...

Sanders: No, I did not say we would order. I did not say that we would order. The President is not a dictator.

Daily News: Okay. You would then leave it to JPMorgan Chase or the others to figure out how to break it, themselves up. I'm not quite...

Sanders: You would determine is that, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. If the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up.

Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?

Sanders: It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.

Some of Sanders high-profile surrogates are not helping either. Actor Tim Robbins, long-time partner of Bernie supporter Susan Sarandon, introduced the candidate in Wisconsin by weirdly slamming both the island of Guam, which hasn't voted yet, and the state of South Carolina, an early Southern state who went for Hillary. This continues the Sanders pattern of looking at the Southern states who went mostly for Hillary Clinton as some type of "rigged" election that "stacked the deck" against them. Bernie and company don't seem to understand that for Dems in red states, the primary season is the one chance to make their voices heard to the national party. But forget that - Bernie must win! To hell with the Democratic Party base!

Via Washington Post
"After the Southern primaries," he said, "you had called the election" -- apparently referring to the media. "And who's fooling who? Winning South Carolina in the Democratic primary is about as significant as winning Guam. No Democrat is going to win in the general election. Why do these victories have so much significance?"
This is a not-uncommon argument among supporters of Sanders. Yes, Hillary Clinton is winning. But she's winning largely because she ran up big margins in Southern states. That, the argument goes, bodes poorly for the general, since those Southern states usually vote Republican.
This is a bad argument that borders on insulting.









Surrogate Nina Turner, a former state senator from Ohio and one-time Hillary supporter, made a bizarre reference to slavery while debating ex-Senator Barney Frank on the tv machine:

MSNBC's Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell Transcript:
NINA TURNER: There may be many people standing that are part of the elected ministry in the establishment, standing on the side of Secretary Clinton. Some of those folks I have worked with, but the bottom line is this. There are millions of Americans in this country who believe that change needs to come, that the status quo cannot continue, that people are suffering in this country.

And, Senator Bernie Sanders has a proven track record of having the good judgment and standing up for the least of these when it is not convenient. So, it is unfair. And, congress people like Keith Ellison. I would take his endorsement any day. And, he has endorsed senator Bernie Sanders and that is a big deal. There was a time in this country where the majority of folks thought slavery was OK too.

O`DONNELL: Barney, go ahead.

FRANK: That last comment just baffles me. It is going to take me about a
week to figure out what that was supposed to mean. But as far as Keith Ellison is concerned, I admire Keith. I just signed an e-mail for him. But, he is one of 45 members of the congressional black caucus and every other one is for Hillary Clinton.

So, you are talking about the establishment. No, I do not think John Lewis, one of the great moral leaders of my generation who is a strong Hillary Clinton supporter, is the establishment, not in a bad way – Or Luis Gutierrez who is led the fight for immigration. I understand, and
maybe this highlights in.



And things have gone downhill from there, with the Bernie camp desperately throwing everything and the kitchen sink at Hillary and hoping it will keep their momentum going, calling her "unqualified" and so "ambitious" that she is going to "destroy the party." Yeah, right. Women aren't allowed to be ambitious!















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