Fidel Castro, whom the Republicans could make Bernie Sanders’ running mate
By all reasonable measurements, Bernie Sanders‘ promised “political revolution” has not happened. Probably the two best such measurements — Democratic primary voter turnout, and Sanders’ share of the black and Latino primary vote — vividly demonstrate this. Instead, however, another type of revolution was associated with Bernie Sanders this week: Fidel Castro‘s revolution in Cuba.
Bernie Sanders speaking, January 2016
Bernie Sanders is no doubt celebrating his narrow win over Hillary Clinton in the Michigan Democratic Primary last night, and Sanders is getting plenty of media buzz today. Unfortunately, Sanders’ win may be too little, too late, due to the cold hard math of the Democratic primaries.
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg
It is said that voters vote with their hearts in the primaries and with their heads in the general election. However, the death of right wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at age 79 might cut that process short. In particular, in the Democratic primaries, Scalia’s death may focus voters’ attention on using their heads and strategy, which may be more associated with Hillary Clinton, and less on Clinton’s aspirational competitor, Bernie Sanders. Here are several reasons why:
Volunteers for Hillary Clinton in Des Moines, Iowa
Right now, it’s silly season in politics. The mainstream media, the presidential primary candidates and their campaigns are serving up small shiny objects, and the public is lapping them up. On the Democratic Party side, in the primary race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, these shiny objects range from coin tosses to speaking fees to the definition of a “progressive” to “Berniebros.” But hidden behind these superficial stories is some cold hard math involving delegates and demographics.
Donald Trump after giving “concession” speech at Iowa Caucus
Last night’s Iowa Presidential Caucus gave all the front-runners in the Democratic and Republican Parties something to smile about. At least, the Caucus results gave each of the following campaigns something to spin positively about:
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama after clinching 2008 Democratic presidential nomination
Last night, one week before the Iowa Caucus, CNN hosted a Town Hall event at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, featuring Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. The three candidates showed differences in their views and policies while answering questions from the audience of mostly undecided Democratic voters and from moderator Chris Cuomo. But perhaps more striking was the level of knowledge, substance and forcefulness each candidate exhibited on the issues.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a show of unity in 2008.
A true realist might not care who wins the 2016 Democratic presidential primary contest, so long as it’s the Democrat who is most likely to defeat the Republican nominee. The prize is winning the White House, and all the advantages that entails, from nominating U.S. Supreme Court justices to conducting foreign policy to pursuing or protecting social agendas on everything from God to guns to gay marriage. We have an ongoing series about the differences between having a Democrat versus a Republican in the White House, and the list is very long. While there are differences between the Democratic candidates, those differences pale in comparison to the Republican candidates. So let’s take a realistic look at the Democratic primary race:
John Boehner at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference
After announcing his resignation from Congress, Republican U.S. House Speaker John Boehner told John Dickerson of CBS‘ “Face the Nation” that we should “beware of false prophets” from the Republican Party who promise things that they know can’t happen in our current government, such as repealing the Affordable Care Act. Most people think that Boehner was referring to Republican U.S. Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz, among others. However, the corporate mainstream media are giving John Boehner a pass by portraying Boehner as the adult in the room who was unable to manage an unruly Republican right wing, when in fact Boehner was part of the GOP’s anti-government anarchy. As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said upon hearing the news of Boehner’s resignation, the Republican Party is “a political party at war with its own government.”
Republican Presidential Primary debate, September 16, 2015
If you are trying to decode the rather bizarre mainstream media coverage of the 2016 election, it’s pretty simple: The corporate mainstream media are reverse engineering the election to suit their profit motives, and maybe their political biases as well. Take a look at what they’re doing, after the jump:
Dick Cheney, CNN’s go-to right wing apologist
In 2015, the traditional news media — what we call the Corporate Mainstream Media — have continued to move to the right, in some cases sharply so. These television and newspaper media outlets are no longer reliable conveyors of facts that Americans need to make decisions at the voting booth and elsewhere. We should ditch these corporate mainstream media. Instead, we need to become our own news aggregators.
Here are some of the many examples of the mainstream news media’s rightward drift:
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