The DNC operated as a financial arm of the Hillary Campaign. And rigged the Primary against Bernie.
Tag Archives: primary
Is the Tide Turing Against the Wild-Eyed Witless Right?
One can only hope this is the proverbial Canary in a Coal Mine for the panderers of PT Barnum conspiracy stories, and salacious lies.
Candidate Who Called Obama a Gay Prostitute Loses Education Board Race
In a stunning comeback, State Board of Education hopeful Keven Ellis won Tuesday’s District 9 Republican primary runoff over Mary Lou Bruner, who drew national attention for social media posts touting far-right conspiracy theories and other fringe views.
The East Texas Tea Party activist and former schoolteacher had been favored to succeed in the race after nearly winning the March 1 primary outright and accumulating heavy support from influential conservative groups that typically hold big sway in low-turnout runoff elections. But Ellis, a Lufkin chiropractor who presides over the local school board, maintained a double-digit lead over Bruner throughout Tuesday night, and that lead widened as vote returns rolled in.
He ended the night 18 points ahead of Bruner, with the final vote showing Ellis hauling in 36,842 votes, 59 percent, to Bruner’s 25,420, according to complete but unofficial returns.
Ellis’ victory all but ensures his ultimate election to the 15-member state panel that reviews and approves textbooks and sets curriculum standards for the state’s more than 5 million public school students. District 9, a 31-county swath spanning northeast Texas, is a deeply conservative Republican stronghold. (Democrat Amanda Rudolph, a Stephen F. Austin State secondary education professor who was unopposed in her primary, will appear on the general election ballot in November.)
The 45-year-old’s win comes after Bruner nearly won a three-way GOP primary race March 1, falling less than 2 percent and a few thousand votes short of the 50 percent mark. (Ellis got 31 percent of the vote.) Her strong showing came despite extensive media coverage of her then-public Facebook posts, one of which said she had heard from a reliable source that President Obama worked as a gay prostitute while in his 20s to fund a drug habit.
With Texas GOP runoffs typically drawing the most conservative voters, Rice University political scientist Mark Jones had previously named the 69-year-old from Mineola a favorite to win the runoff while acknowledging a scenario where educators turned out in droves to vote against her.
“It would appear that a perfect storm occurred to defeat Bruner,” Jones said in an email Tuesday night. “Superintendents and teachers (and their friends and families) across the district rallied against her due to disagreement with her positions on education policy, the belief she would not be a good representative of the district’s interests, and the embarrassment they felt her election would bring to the region.”
Ellis said he felt “really confident that the educators turned out and voted.”
“They saw the importance of this,” he said. “They saw who I was and they saw who my opponent was and they made the right decision.”
Bruner did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Jones also noted the possible impact of a recent decision by an influential Tea Party group, Grassroots America — We the People, to withdraw its previous endorsement of Bruner, who worked in East Texas schools for 36 years, citing inaccurate statements she had made on the campaign trail and an apparent unwillingness to issue a statement correcting them.
In a recent speech to East Texas superintendents, for example, Bruner claimed that half of all public school students were in special education. It was the first time the group has ever rescinded support for a candidate, according to Executive Director JoAnn Fleming.
“Texas escaped an education train wreck tonight,” said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning group that monitors the State Board of Education. “If Bruner had ultimately won election to the board, she would have instantly become the most embarrassingly uninformed and divisive member on a board that already too often puts politics ahead of making sure our kids get a sound education.”
Van Hollen Beats Edwards in Democrat Senate Primary in Maryland
The establishment Democrats won out last night in Maryland, where old-line Democrat favorite defeated fiery upstart Donna Edwards in a bruising Primary Race with racial undertones. Not that Von Hollen isn’t a good guy, or a great candidate – it is just his willingness to cave to the Republican Reich with the other Yellowback Donkeys.
Van Hollen wins Maryland Democratic Senate primary
Rep. Chris Van Hollen has won the Democratic primary to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Mikulski in Maryland, defeating Rep. Donna Edwards tonight.
Van Hollen had 56 percent to 37 percent for Edwards with 14 percent of precincts reporting, when The Associated Press called the race. (See results here.)
Van Hollen had the support of Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and many of Maryland’s prominent elected Democrats, but Edwards’ campaign won strong support from African-American voters and EMILY’s List, which spent millions of dollars on her behalf. Van Hollen’s own campaign significantly outraised Edwards, though.
Van Hollen is unlikely to face a serious general election challenge in deep-blue Maryland.
Michelle Obama Shines Some Light on Hillary Clinton
It would appear that Hillary certainly has Michelle’s vote…
Michelle Obama: Hillary Clinton is an ‘impressive,’ ‘phenomenal woman’
Michelle Obama called Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton an “impressive” and a “phenomenal woman” on Wednesday in response to a 14-year-old’s question at a White House event, saying Clinton, like “many” of the other candidates, has devoted her life to public service.
“I think Hillary Clinton is a phenomenal woman, and I’ve gotten to know her, and I think she’s made some pretty major contributions over the course of her life,” the first lady said during an event with the children of executive office workers marking Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.
She also spoke about the first family’s dogs, her “Let’s Move!” initiative to end childhood obesity, what she’ll miss most about the White House – as well as what she won’t miss so much.
Obama reiterated that she doesn’t plan to run for president in the future like the former first lady who is seeking the Democratic nomination.
“Hillary Clinton is an impressive woman and I will not do what she has done, I will not run for president,” Obama said, though she would like to continue to perform public service.
Neither the first lady nor the president has publicly endorsed a candidate.
Racial Politics in Va Hollen v Edwards Primary Senate Race in Maryland?
This one is looking at the wrong issue.
Racial politics upend Democratic Senate primary in Maryland
The race was Chris Van Hollen’s to lose, but Donna Edwards has turned it into a nail-biter.
Donna Edwards bounded up the walkways of more than a dozen modest homes in a largely African-American neighborhood here on a recent Saturday afternoon, posing for photos and sharing a simple message: I’m just like you.
The Democratic congresswoman running for Senate reminded one family that she, too, is a single mom. She talked about working minimum wage jobs earlier in her life, and lacking health insurance.
Six months ago, Edwards was an afterthought in the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Sen. Barbara Mikulski. The race was Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s to lose — a star in House Democratic leadership, he would swamp the field with his fundraising and big-name endorsements, the thinking went.
But as the April 26 primary approaches, Edwards has pulled even or possibly slightly ahead of Van Hollen in one of the most hotly contested Democratic primaries of 2016. She has moved the needle with an explicit appeal to African-American voters, who typically make up about two-fifths of the electorate in Maryland Democratic primaries.
A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released Tuesday showed a neck-and-neck race, 44 percent for Edwards to 40 percent for Van Hollen. Edwards led by 10 points in a Baltimore Sun/University of Baltimore poll last month.
Edwards is trumpeting the historic nature of her candidacy — she would be the first African-American woman in the Senate since the 1990s — and outside groups are playing up her personal background in ads in the pivotal D.C. media market.
“It is the rationale for my running for the Senate seat … It’s about the perspective, the unique perspective that I would bring to the Senate,” Edwards said in an interview. “What people are saying is that I walked in their shoes. I walked in their shoes as a working person … as an African-American woman … as a mom.”…
Van Hollen criticizes what he calls Edwards’ thin résumé on Capitol Hill, painting her as a partisan bomb-thrower who has shown little ability or interest in working across the aisle to get something done.
Edwards, in turn, casts Van Hollen as an accommodating moderate. She says he was willing to cut entitlement programs to clinch a budget deal with Republicans. And she’s slamming him for supporting past trade deals, a potent line of attack among liberals as Congress prepares to take up a massive trade deal next year.
“There are differences when it comes to things like Social Security. Mr. Van Hollen has demonstrated that when push comes to shove that he’s willing to compromise on cuts to Social Security and Medicare,” Edwards said. “I think those are nonstarters.”
That one line I highlighted is why Van Hollen should lose this race, and the reason voters are abandoning him. Democrats have been in accommodationalist politics since Bill Clinton. And what it has got the country is a destroyed middle class, a economy in the dogpile, a housing meltdown, an illegal war, and the largest depression since the Great Depression. Ergo- the middle-class, the poor, and Progressives have been getting screwed by chickenshit Democrats reaching out their hands to Republican Rattlesnakes. If the entire Black Caucus bus ran off a 10,000 ft cliff tomorrow…Not a damn thing would change. President Obama has been a successful President…In spite of conservative racism based obstructionalism. I wonder how much better he could have been if his early advisers hadn’t counseled him to sell the country down the river for some fake bipartisanship. It has little or nothing to do with race.
I would like to see some people elected who understand clearly we are in a war with the American ISIS.
Sanders Wins Big in Idaho, Washington, and Alaska
Bernie Sanders has won big in 3 of the 4 States voting in the Democratic Primary this weekend. He also may well take Hawaii, making it a sweep this week.
Bernie Sanders Wins Washington State and Alaska; Hawaii Democrats Are Also Voting
Senator Bernie Sanders handily defeated Hillary Clinton on Saturday in theWashington State and Alaska caucuses, infusing his underdog campaign with critical momentum and bolstering his argument that the race for the Democratic nomination is not a foregone conclusion.
Mr. Sanders found a welcome tableau in the largely white and liberal electorates of the Pacific Northwest, where just days after routing Mrs. Clinton in Idaho he repeated the feat in Washington. With a handful of precincts still reporting, he was leading Mrs. Clinton by more than 40 percentage points. He performed even better in Alaska, winning 82 percent of the vote.
Washington, with 101 delegates in play, was a vital state for Mr. Sanders, whose prospects of capturing the nomination dimmed after double-digit losses to Mrs. Clinton across the South and weak showings in delegate-rich Ohio, Florida and North Carolina this month.
At a rally in Madison, Wis., late Saturday afternoon, Mr. Sanders assured more than 8,000 supporters that his victories had cleared a viable path to the nomination. “We knew from Day 1 that politically we were going to have a hard time in the Deep South,” Mr. Sanders said. “But we knew things were going to improve when we headed west.”
oting the “huge” voter turnout — in Washington, Democratic Party officials estimated more than 200,000 people participated on Saturday, close to the record set in 2008 — he told the crowd, “We are making significant inroads into Secretary Clinton’s lead.”
The victories in Washington and Alaska, which awarded 16 delegates on Saturday, slightly narrow the gulf with Mrs. Clinton in the quest for the 2,382 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. As of Saturday evening, Mrs. Clinton had roughly 280 more so-called pledged delegates, who are awarded based on voting, and 440 more superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials — than Mr. Sanders.
Anonymous Data Release After First Hack of Trump
Anonymous released their initial data on Trump. So far, it is pretty much low hanging fruit from a hack standpoint, having recovered his private phone number and SSN.
I really can’t support the release of that sort of personal information.
Hillary’s opposition research people have hinted for months that they have the information to take Trump down. They certainly would realize that in business, a person like Trump would have left a long, long trail of documentation relative to his business dealings, US and possibly offshore bank accounts, and investor relationships. Sometimes it is as simple as following the money. Sometimes it is just enough to follow the people involved in approving or financing shady deals. Who is supplying the money to obviously poorly structured and badly conceived businesses for Trump?
If Anonymous wants to go after that…They may find something of value. It is also legal to do much of that.
Secret Service, FBI aware of alleged disclosure of Donald Trump’s personal info
The possible disclosure of Donald Trump’s personal information by hacking group Anonymous has been brought to the attention of the U.S. Secret Service.
“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the internet postings of Candidate Donald Trump’s personal information. We are working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in this matter,” the Secret Service said in a statement Friday.
On Thursday, Anonymous said it released the GOP presidential frontrunner’s Social Security number, cell phone number and other private information about him. The information was posted to Ghostbin.com and Pastebin.com. The group also posted personal information of Trump’s associates, including his spokesperson, campaign manager and some of his family members.
The cell phone number, however, was widely reported last summer, and Trump apparently repurposed the number
Threats Begin in Response to Trump Fascism
The problem with encouraging a culture of violence by your supporters as a politician…Is at some point it comes back to bite you in the ass. At this point it is impossible to tell whether the threat to Trump’s grandchildren came from the left or right.
Trump Family Threatened
Threatening letter sent to Donald Trump’s son, Eric
The Secret Service, FBI and New York Police Department are investigating what sources tell CBS News is a threatening piece of mail sent to Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump.
The mail, sent to Eric Trump at his posh Manhattan residence at 100 Central Park South, also known as Trump Parc East, was opened by his wife Thursday.
A source close to the investigation said the letter had a Massachusetts postmark and warned that if Donald Trump doesn’t withdraw from the race for the Republican presidential nomination — paraphrasing — harm will come to the kids.
A source familiar with the matter said the envelope contained suspicious white powder that’s been sent to a lab for testing. The source said a preliminary field test indicated the substance didn’t appear to be hazardous.
No injuries were reported.
Bernie Wins Michigan
Big upset last night. Despite the MSM Polls showing Hillary with a huge lead, by the time the votes were counted, the Bern won by a small majority. Even 538 got it wrong, projecting that Hillary had a 90% chance of winning in Michigan. Bernie also chipped into Hillary’s lead in black voters with his best showing so far. The math behind that is fairly simple. Economic issues in an area devastated by loss of jobs mean more to black voters than in the South where some companies have relocated due to cheap labor. As such, folks in the industrial heartland are more likely to resonate with Bernie’s economic platform, than folks living in the Republican red zone South where race is the predominant issue.
Bernie’s speech last night –
The next group of states favor Bernie – so the number of delegates is going to be a lot closer. If Bernie wins in Ohio, then things may well turn on their head. He has at least an outside chance of winning more delegates to the Democrat Convention. The downside for Bernie is Hillary owns the super-delegates, who are made up of party insiders and luminaries. So Hillary still has the inside track.
Tell Us How You Really Feel About Cruz, Lindsay…
I mean…everyone but the usual sociopath Republicans know that Cruz is a creep…But the whole Congress? Feel the love…Indeed.
Trump constipation
Graham: No senator would convict Ted Cruz’s killer
Sen. Lindsey Graham shocked Washington reporters Thursday night by saying that Sen. Ted Cruz is so disliked, no one in the Senate would look to convict his murderer.
“If you kill Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial is at the Senate, no one will convict you,” he said.
It was just one of his many barbs against his own party, which he said has gone “bats–t crazy.” He said his own party is in such disarray, that the country is poised to elect the “most dishonest woman” in America president.
“How can that be?” he asked. “Because my party has gone bats–t crazy.”
“Ben Carson is a nice guy,” he noted. “He tried to kill his cousin.”
The South Carolina Republican, who dropped his own bid for president early on, at one point threw up his hands and asked incredulously how he could lose against such a field of GOP candidates.
He poked fun at himself, as well, telling the crowd it was larger than any he addressed during his brief presidential bid, although he noted they were all Washington reporters and liberals.
Graham saved his most searing attack for Donald Trump.
After being forced to drop out early and after Jeb Bush ended his campaign shortly after his endorsement, he called himself the “Dr. Kevorkian” of politics, then donned a “Make America Great Again” hat, said he still hopes he has the “magic touch,” and announced his endorsement of Trump.
KKK Goes All In For Trump
Not to mention being against the two non-whites running against him in the Republican Primary…
White Supremacists Mobilize For Donald Trump
They’re using robocalls and volunteers to drum up support.
As the Republican presidential primary moves into the American south, white supremacist groups are working to mobilize racists to get out the vote for Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, David Duke, the white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, encouraged his radio show listeners to volunteer for Trump’s campaign. “Call Donald Trump’s headquarters [and] volunteer,” he said on the “David Duke Radio Program.” At Trump campaign offices, he said, “you’re gonna meet people who are going to have the same kind of mindset that you have.”
In Minnesota and Vermont, a white supremacist super PAC called the American National Super PAC has begun circulating a robocall in support of Trump.
“The white race is dying out in America and Europe because we are afraid to be called ‘racist,’ says William Johnson, the leader of the white nationalist American Freedom Party. He goes on to bemoan “gradual genocide against the white race,” and how few “schools anymore have beautiful white children as the majority.” He signs off by telling recipients, “Don’t vote for a Cuban. Vote for Donald Trump.”
Johnson is not affiliated in any way with the Trump campaign, and Trump has distanced himself from Johnson’s views. Trump also promised to return a $250 contribution Johnson made to his campaign.
But Trump’s response to the white supremacists backing him is hardly enough to put them off, said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors hate groups.
“Trump has ‘quote unquote’ repudiated these groups, but only in the most milquetoast way imaginable,” Potok said in an interview. “The fact is that white nationalists are mobilizing for Trump whether he likes it or not.”
Trump’s habit of retweeting messages posted by white supremacists, sharing them with his 6.4 million Twitter followers, hasn’t helped matters.
Like Johnson, Duke framed the GOP primary as a contest between Trump and two people of color, Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas). “Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage,” Duke said Wednesday. And while he doesn’t agree with everything Trump says, he told listeners, “I do support his candidacy, and I support voting for him as a strategic action. I hope he does everything we hope he will do.”
Potok said Duke’s backing carries a lot of weight in white supremacist circles. “David Duke is the most important self described white nationalist intellectual out there today, and what he says is still very influential.”
The Huffington Post reached out to Trump’s campaign for a response to the David Duke comments, and will update this post if they provide one.
On white nationalist websites, analysts are portraying Trump’s candidacy as a rebellion by white supremacists against the mainstream conservative movement. As a writer calling himself Gregory Hood recently wrote in the national Raddix Journal, “the conservative movement is trying to keep its White serfs trapped on the conservative planation. They know if Trumpian nationalism triumphs, a more authentic form of White Identity politics can’t be far behind.”
This isn’t the first time white supremacists have seized on Trump’s candidacy. In December, Rachel Pendergraft, the national organizer for the Knights Party, a Ku Klux Klan affiliate, said Trump’s bid for the White House had opened up new ways for her group to recruit like-minded people.
“One of the things that our organization really stresses with our membership is we want them to educate themselves on issues, but we also want them to be able to learn how to open up a conversation with other people,” Pendergraft told The Washington Post. Trump, she said, was a perfect conversation starter for people to begin talking about issues like immigration and demographic changes underway in America.
But as the Republican race moves into states where Jim Crow segregation was the law of the land for more than a century, the influence of overt racism and the white nationalist movement, combined with some of Trump’s rhetoric, could have the more subtle effect of making it seem more acceptable to hold aggressively anti-immigrant and xenophobic views.
“With Trump, white supremacists understand that he’s not exactly a white nationalist, like them, but they applaud his hard right positions on matters that are important to them,” said Potok. “From their point of view, it’s almost better that he’s not a full on white nationalist, because now he has a better chance at winning a major office.”
To many voters, the GOP nominating contest increasingly looks like a three-way race between two Hispanic men and a white man, leaving little doubt as to which candidate is most likely to win the pro-white vote.
“White supremacists are beside themselves with joy,” Potok added.
Typical Trump supporter …
Black Feminists and the Primary
Any automatic supposition about support of Hillary Clinton by black feminists…
Would be wrong.
Black Feminism heavily influenced the Black Panther movement, and by the end, the majority of membership in the Panthers were black women. Some historians credit women in the Panthers as being the creators of the hugely successful breakfast and lunch programs for children.
Democratic Primary Finds Black Feminists Conflicted
Ask a black feminist whether she prefers Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, and you very well might hear “Neither.”
“I long for Shirley Chisholm to be running, to be really honest,” said Renee Bracey Sherman, a reproductive justice activist in Washington, D.C.
Alas for Bracey Sherman, the congresswoman who in 1972 was the first major-party black candidateto run for president, and who promised a “bloodless revolution,” isn’t running. (Chisholm died over a decade ago.) But two candidates who vow to make history in their own ways are, and Bracey Sherman, like many black feminists MSNBC interviewed, is ambivalent.
“I’m definitely weighing my options,” she said. “A lot of my beliefs on economic policies fall in line with Bernie Sanders. However, he is not able to connect the way that gender and race intersect with economic inequality the way Hillary does.”
For weeks, Sanders and Clinton and their allies have tussled over who is the genuine progressive, whose policies are more feminist and who can make the most meaningful difference in black Americans’ lives. So far, as the primary has shifted from majority white states to more diverse ones, the feminist mantle and the black vote have been talked about as if they are separate silos.
“An emphasis on not only black women, but black feminists, is long overdue,” said Lori Adelman, co-executive director of Feministing. “So often, black women’s support is taken for granted.”
The candidates are both concertedly seeking the votes of black women, long a crucial base of the Democratic Party. Both have hired prominent black women, including feminist activists, to represent their campaigns, though Clinton’s inner circle has long been more diverse. Over the weekend, entrance polls showed Clinton winning black voters in Nevada, and polls of South Carolina, which votes Saturday, show Clinton enjoys a broad advantage among African-American voters there too. But in interviews, black feminists with influential perches in activism, journalism and academia critiqued both Democrats.
“I’m glad for any feminist who feels confident that their needs will be met by Hillary or Bernie’s presidency,” Shanelle Matthews, lead communications strategist for Black Lives Matter, wrote in an email. “As a black feminist, I’m not there yet. And frankly, I’d like to stop being lectured by white feminists who would boorishly call themselves my ally while also paternalistically scolding me for not bending toward their political ideologies.”
Black feminist critics of Clinton cite in particular past support of her husband’s policies on criminal justice and welfare reform, which exacted a disproportionate toll on African-Americans. They recoil at how in 1996, Clinton referred to “super predators” who needed to be brought “to heel,” which many saw as dehumanizing language that targeted black children in particular. “If Hillary wants to court black women, she should start by apologizing for all the ways she has hurt our families and us,” said Matthews.
University of Pennsylvania professor Salamishah Tillet, who described herself as undecided but leaning Sanders, said, “It’s hard for me to champion a Clinton prosperity narrative as proof of electability of another candidate when I feel like it decimated the black community and criminalized black men.”
Still, Tillet said, she thinks Clinton has been far more adept than Sanders in using an approach pioneered by black feminists. “I’m increasingly becoming impressed with how Clinton is invoking an intersectional framework,” she said, referring to the term coined by law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to invoke how overlapping identities shape marginalization.
Clinton even came out and used the word in her speech in Harlem last week, quite possibly a first. “We face a complex set of economic, social and political challenges,” Clinton said. “They are intersectional, they are reinforcing and we’ve got to take them all on.”
And the candidate’s recent refrain that she is not a single-issue candidate, implicitly an attack on Sanders’ relentless focus on economics, seems to evoke a much quoted line from the black lesbian poet Audre Lorde: “There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”…Read The Rest Here…
Cenk Uygur Hammers Keli Goff of The Daily Beast Article on Black Folks Voting
Cenk goes off on Daily Beast columnist Keli Goff! And he is right. There is no reason to believe that voting for Sanders is against black folks interests. Or for that matter that Hillary Clinton will tackle the tough issues of race and racism in America if elected to be President.
BTx3 is not ready to go with or endorse either side at this point.
The only major satisfaction I see in electing Hillary is, after 8 years of a black President, shoving that sharpened stake up the nether parts of conservatives further by (probably) 8 years of a woman being President. And I have no doubt she is ruthless enough to deal with the conservaturd set, unlike Obama. However I have doubts whether any progress made under her leadership would be more than cosmetic in terms of the black community, in large part because of folks like the CBC supporting her.
What Bernie would do though is to attack the structural supports of racism in America – through reforming elements of the financial system. Providing black families the ability to gain wealth and pass it on is key to reforming the culture enabling racism and discrimination in this country. So when he says “bust up the big banks” – the impact of that is a lot broader than most folks understand. And Bernie has walked the walk supporting Civil Rights – for a long long time. Whether he is strong enought o dirve that legislation though is up to conjecture.
Erica Garner Endorses Bernie Sanders
A powerful endorsement of Sanders by Eric Garner’s daughter…
Erica has joined a growing group of women supporting Sanders. Hillary may not be able to take the woman vote for granted.
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