Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!
As if speaking in Pine Ridge in the morning and Rapid City in the afternoon aren’t enough, Senator Bernie Sanders has added a Sioux Falls rally to his Thursday blitz of South Dakota. The Democratic Presidential candidate will speak at the Sioux Falls Convention Center on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 5 p.m.—bring your cameras… and watch for sparrows!
Don’t get me wrong: I’m still pretty sure the primary season is effectively over, the two major-party Presidential nominees are set, and the only ballot uncertainty remaining is whether we will have a John Anderson, a Ross Perot, or a Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt to shake up our November math.
But the dire delegate math isn’t stopping Senator Sanders from bringing his revolutionary message to one of the most conservative states in the country. Consider that, South Dakota: Bernie Sanders, a man whose politics seem well removed from what we see in Pierre, is coming to South Dakota, stopping first at the Pine Ridge Reservation, then visiting the capitals of West River and East River, all in one day. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who one might think could gain more traction here with the R in front of his name, deigns to fly to North Dakota only to speak to oil barons. What do those itineraries say about what’s important to those candidates?
Good deal, I am going because I don’t think it is over and even if it were, there are still things to do to change the Democratic platform as to what it actually is. Hint, Clinton now says that she is firmly against the TPP. She was singing its praise not so long ago, so there is that. Good things happen if you are pissed off enough to fight for them.
Given the fact that Bernie is a registered Independent and not a Democrat, how likely is he to launch a 3rd or 4th party bid?
Of all the candidates, it seems most likely that he would go for a 3rd party run.
think i’ll go too. might get excited.
that would certainly spoil Hillary’s race, though.
we gonna give it to trump?
Yeah !!~ Excited to see Bernie!!
Tomorrow you might want to point out to our great senator Thune that in 2007 he introduced a bill to get rid of the fairness doctrine. Now he wants to make sure that Facebook is being fair. Sign of greatness, being able to change your mind when it’s to your benefit
Lets see, what has happened today, oh yeah. Sanders wins West Virginia. So there is that coming into his South Dakota visits. Good deal for progressives!
Cory, you refer to Bernies chances as dire. I don’t believe that. He is the underdog at this point, but certainly not a dire one. I watched KSFY News about Bernie coming here. Very disappointing. But par for the course. I’m sure the other two stations showed the same delegate math as ksfy, which is just flat wrong. Superdelegates do not count until the convention in Philly. Putting the superdelegate count in Hillary’s column at this point is dishonest.
Hillary had a super delegate lead over Obama in 08 also. Once Obama built momentum, like Bernie is doing now, those super-delegates switched at the convention. It is not dire just yet.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/superdelegates-might-not-save-hillary-clinton/
I gotta go. Had a back of the speaker, media fav seat when then-Senator Obama campaigned at the Pennington County fairgrounds; and later left the Firehouse the moment prior to his surprise visit with the adorable 3 sisters there. Cannot break the precedent by not attending a future president’s campaign. Feel the Bern.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPI1YD969sU
http://www.lakotacountrytimes.com/news/2008-06-05/front_page/005.html
Not withstanding Kevin Worster’s bad interview and judgment of the then-Senator, future 2-term POTUS.
This Bernie fellow ate food at the Firehouse? Did he drink beer and if so what kind? This is a telling point when evaluating the character of a socialist like this if we want to slightly mitigate his character into a normal red-blooded American. But…since this Mr. Bernie’s political career is over it probably doesn’t matter. It was more for my own edification. Eh.
About the thune crying game.
The Fairness Doctrine was implemented by the FCC in 1949 to ensure balanced and fair coverage of controversial political issues. In 1987, during the reagan reign of trickle down, it was abolished. That’s when limbaugh took the stage, followed by beck, and later still, all the other neocon flamethrowers. Local corporate owned radio stations regurgitate their homophobic hate 24 hours a day. They even give us local flamethrowers like belfrage and knobe. That’s just radio. How about cable news? All in the pockets of the republican party and corporations. MSNBC had some hope as an alternative viewpoint at one time. Not anymore. Watch joe scarbouro bend his knee daily for trump. Watch the same with maddow bowing to the corporate OWNED hillary. There is nothing fair and balanced about political coverage anymore. Thunes argument is a joke anyway. Smartphones and smart tablets dont even support so called trending topics. Those that do have it on PC’s find it irritating and disable it. Yet, thune now is whining about fairness? Give us a break mr thune.
Mike, that superdelegate article was from February. The math has gotten notably more dire since then. Sanders is not following Obama’s arc from 2008. I want to believe, but I can’t persuade myself that the electorate will deliver the dramatic reversal necessary to make Sanders the nominee.
That said, I want Bernie to stay in. Every day he stays in and keeps his people fired up, he has leverage to make Clinton come our way on important issues like TPP. Roger, I don’t think Sanders will go 3rd or 4th party. He could have run Independent from the start, but he chose to run for the Democratic nomination, perhaps because he saw changing one of the two established parties as a surer route to promoting the revolution than trying to build an entirely new party. If he bails now to form that third party, he gives up the progress he’s made in remaking the Democratic Party. If he mobilizes all those young voters and gets them to stick with the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party will owe him big time, and that will mean appointments and policy steps in the right direction.
As of tonight, CNN is revealing that Hillary has 516 and Bernie has 41.
One person, one vote. The concept that every voter has an equal say in an election is lost, for both parties, more so in the Democratic party. Ted Cruz reels in 34 delegates in Colorado without a vote being cast. Cruz gets more delegates in Louisiana while losing the popular vote. Is that right? No it is not. The Democratic system is even worse. Super delegates can swing any way they like, and they can telegraph their intentions now, but the important thing to remember is those super delegate counts mean nothing until the convention. Including those counts now, as ksfy did last night is wrong. Period. Most voters do not have the time to thoroughly vet the primary “system” and could just as well figure, why even vote.
Supers are nothing more than party insiders there to make sure the party nominates that party’s annointed one. If the republican party, whose own primary system is flawed, did it this way, cruz would be their golden boy.
Most troubling is the sheer number of super delegates. They makeup 30% of the total number needed to be the “Democratic” nominee.
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/12/this_system_is_so_rigged_outrage_as_superdelegate_system_undermines_democracy_giving_clinton_unfair_edge_over_sanders/
Mike KSR, in theory, I could support a superdelegate system, an effort to select a party nominee by hybridizing popular vote and party preferences. In theory, it’s like a bicameral legislature, with a proportional House checked and balanced by a state-by-state Senate.
In theory. I can more easily go full-tilt democratic and say that if we’re committed to letting the people decide, then we let them decide, with no interference from any special category of party leaders. As Ralph Nader tells Democracy Now, if the taxpayers are going to pay for primary elections, then every taxpayer should have the opportunity to vote in the primary, regardless of voter registration status. If the parties want to control their nomination process, then they should conduct that process on their own dime, at which point they could have their smoke-filled (ah, nowadays, latté-steam-filled) rooms select their Presidential candidates just as they pick their PUC and Attorney General candidates.
Sanders supporters are playing right into Trump’s hands at this point. West Virginia was an open primary where Republicans who have no intention of supporting Bernie voted for him just to hurt Clinton.
http://tinyurl.com/jg3t6ce
This is the same state that “In 2012, when Obama ran for reelection unopposed in the primary, Keith Judd, an inmate sitting in a federal prison in Texas won a stunning 41 percent of the Democratic primary vote in the state.”
Clinton is spending money because of Sanders’ old man stubbornness to get out of the way that she could be conserving for the general election against Trump.
I might be going to the Sanders rally–to protest his intransigence. It is apparently true that he “can’t do math” because Hillary needs about 13% of the remaining delegates to win. This is not unlike his vague political promises of a free lunch for everyone without explaining how he will pay for his governmental largesse.
Using your analogy Mr. Larson, all sports teams that find themselves behind going into the 4th quarter should just bench themselves so that fans can get an early start on getting home. Beer and pizza sales would slump. No more water cooler talk, no more fans. Is that what you want? The end of football, bean bag, cribbage? That is so..so Putin.
“I might be going to the Sanders rally–to protest his intransigence. It is apparently true that he “can’t do math” because Hillary needs about 13% of the remaining delegates to win” Math has nothing to do with politics, you should know that by now. It is still anyone’s game to win or loose, don’t count out Bernie.
Trump on Twitter– “I don’t want to hit Crazy Bernie Sanders too hard yet because I love watching what he is doing to Crooked Hillary. His time will come!”
Trump is a detestable human being and a narcissistic caricature of all that is wrong with society. His latest outrage–He blamed Hillary for Bill’s infidelity. This from a man who has been married three times and probably thinks he was justified in cheating on his own spouses.
If Sanders plays a role in getting Trump elected, Sanders will be remembered as a bumbling old fool who chose himself over his party and his country.
Jerry, you say “Math has nothing to do with politics.” Really, so Cruz and Kasich bowed out of the Republican race because they were persuaded that Trump is a better candidate than themselves after all? It wasn’t the fact that they had no hope of getting the number of delegates necessary to win the nomination?
Jerry- your analogy of sports teams is somewhat inaccurate. For one, Bernie is supposed to be on the same team as Hillary. As soon as it is no longer reasonably in doubt who will be the nominee as is the case right now, Bernie should bow out gracefully for the good of the party and the country.
A more apropos analogy perhaps is a game of chess in which Hillary has taken out Bernie’s queen and many of his key pieces, but she has not put him into checkmate, yet. The game could be played out to its inevitable outcome, but most chess players would concede the match in good sportsmanship.
Rafael is considering re-awakening his campaign if he wins Nebraska. Cruz just might be worse than Drumpf.
As has been discussed on this site considerably, the Democratic party has the potential to make a massive land-slide and do considerably better in a lot of red states this year, than usual (but its only potential–never doubt that the Democratic party can screw up this opportunity, so it isn’t impossible for Trump to win either).
There isn’t very good evidence that Sanders staying in the race harms Clinton (there isn’t very good counter-evidence either, though), as FiveThirtyEight reports: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/sanders-shouldnt-drop-out-for-clintons-sake/
(Honestly, the only two news sites I follow are Cory, for the local liberal up-and-up, and FiveThirtyEight. What else do I need? Huh? Exactly!)
Its likely that Sanders is coming to SD and is traveling and talking to his electorate because there is a chance that Sanders’s mere ability to stay in and ‘give people a chance to state their choice’ may actually have a positive effect on the Democratic electorate. Just considering basic political science about how routine influences likelihood to vote, it makes logical sense that getting unregistered depressed-liberals people in SD to register so that they can go vote for Bernie or Hillary in the primary, means there’s a better chance they’ll go vote in November, because now they are engaged at the civic level. And I think that’s all good and gravy, and suggests one way that Bernie can usefully contribute to the good of the party as a whole.
Plus, this will all have long-term emergent effects. Bernie’s platform is likely to become a major factor in Democratic policy for the next decade at least. On the even longer-term, who knows what kid is going to see Bernie talk tomorrow and become the next liberal hero from SD? Yep, all good and gravy.
crazy Bernie…crooked Hillary, hmmm, remind you of anyone? turd blossom.
and George thought he was the chief decider.
perhaps trump is a diversion, a distraction, while the extraordinarily smart, devious and unethical GOP has a new psychological angle to win? never underestimate the GOP, rather than merely acknowledging we can screw it up for ourselves.
Nixon, Reagan, Bush’s son, Trump (or some surprise). a fearful legacy.
another angle- http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/279469-what-does-trump-really-want
Darin,
You are absolutely correct about West Virginia’s open primary.
Very liberal Bernie won that primary quite easily, but in a CNN exit poll 30% of registered voters in the primary said they would vote for Trump in the general election. Huh!
Fellers fellers, as long as math is not a problem, then what do you say about this? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-draws-level-with-clinton_us_573350bfe4b016f37897bf85
Bernie will beat Trump like a pinata.
Sanders can win this and he is in it to win it. I guess no more math then or is it just more cow bells. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-hanley/sanders-can-still-win-the_b_9897096.html
Hillary told some union people on tv the other night that we still have some cards to play. Diverting attention from the debacle of NAFTA, what other cards does she have that she did not promote during Bills presidency or during Obama’s presidency. She has no new card other than to backtrack on what she has been for the last thirty years. Switching who she is at this point in her life is not safe politically. So if she did not take bribes from wall street with all the money they gave her, then they gave her than money since she was already in her heart on their side in the first place. Corrupt or totally honest, she is on the wrong side with the one percent.
re-I don’t think you are correct on your assessment of who Hillary is.
Hillary is responsible for her own problems. Don’t blame Bernie for her poor decisions … for crying out loud she was a Goldwater girl!
I think Mr. Elgersma has a pretty sound assessment of who Hillary is, we know that she is this “About last week’s reports that Clinton was soliciting support from Republican donors who were unsettled by Trump, Sanders said on Friday, “Those are the kinds of things that make not only my supporters, but millions of Americans, nervous.”” http://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-keeps-winning-primaries-and-keeps-shaping-the-anti-trump-agenda/
Seems pretty clear to me as well.
Why isn’t anyone focusing on Hillary’s policy positions? So far the only reason to attack Hillary’s policy statements that I have seen expressed here on DFP is that some people (Douglas Wiken shared this with DFP) believe that there may be some sort of conspiracy by Hillary and her supporters to trick voters with fake policy positions that she will immediately abandon if elected so she can support laws that hurt the poor and middle class and help her myriad Wall Street pals. Is Alex Jones running the anti-Hillary camp or what?
Hillary’s policy positions change from day to day. That is how the Clinton’s operate. It is a game that they are very good at. They are like chameleon’s … see Bill’s triangulation army second term.
First she was for TPP, now she is against it. First she was against a minimum wage increase, now she supports it.
Her track record is not good. Welfare reform, War on Drugs, Mass Incarceration, repeal of Glass-Steagall and that awful Iraq War are not winning policies.
Hillary will have a difficult time winning the general election because her record is proving to be on the wrong side of history.
at Bernie’s rally today some 5000 exuberant fans, mostly young people that I could see, and solidly down near the front around me, stood for some 3 and a half hours in the brilliant hot sun, after he returned from Pine Ridge. Jay Williams preceded him with an aggressive anti-Thune campaign speech, and a rousing Rep. Troy Heinert (D.) from Mission introduced him. Bernie is a great speaker and i’m glad I made it, but others said his “free college” idea for example, is unaffordable. his attacks on the obviously hated Trump were many and LOUDLY cheered.
what are the national consequences if he wins SD’s June 7th primary over Hillary?
The SD primary is late and concurrent with large states. The odds of SD having much impact seem likely to be negligible….unless part of a Bernie sweep and production of an abrupt switch in the psychology of the super delegates finally seeing the light. But, considering nearly all the know-it-all editorialists and journalists have been wrong about Bernie, you should probably also take my comments with a large grain of salt. Time will tell in any case.
Ms. leslie, did this socialist Bernie fellow not know what town he was in? A great speaker knows what town they are in.
how old are you? have you ever landed in PR, spoke to thousands, flown to the end of a big state, spoke, then flown to the other end, spoke, and then slept or flown on to some other state to repeat the process the next day? covered thousands of miles and touched thousands of little people, except the Samsonite executive who didn’t raise his sign to the notion corporations pay increased fair taxes, with a detailed positive message of hope in a single spring day?
socialism? what is this?-
Hedge fund managers are paid in two ways: a management fee of about 2 percent of the assets which is taxed as ordinary income at 39 percent; and 20 percent of the gains the fund makes over time which is taxed at a capital gains rate of 20 percent. Their being able to cut their income taxes in half is a result of a 1993 change in tax rules by the Treasury Department that was not originally intended to apply to hedge funds…
Bernie’s campaign has focused on Wall Street and the inequality of wealth. Hedge funds are the breeding grounds for extreme inequality. In 2015 the top 25 hedge fund managers “earned” $12 billion. The top manager had an annual income of $1.7 billion. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-morris/what-should-bernie-do_b_9906656.html
what was your tax rate grudz? still all for capitalism?
Great post leslie, you are correct in that everything that has to do with these vampire hedge funds needs to be eliminated. Wall Street and the rest of the power brokers that are impoverishing the United States and the world, must be neutered to a degree of fairness. Anyone who stands up for them should never get the reins of the presidency. Bernie is the candidate that will do just that as no other could or would.
jerry, u have reiterated bengahzi is a liability. its not. there was nothing funny going on that Hillary is being slandered by republicans for. it is a red herring. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-rabin-havt/top-gop-benghazi-select-c_b_9984630.html