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Today’s Hillary News & Views begins with coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail, where she is keeping her focus on the GOP.
Los Angeles Times reports:
Hillary Clinton campaigned Sunday as though she were already the Democratic nominee, ignoring rival Bernie Sanders and focusing her fire only on the Republican field.
“I hope you have paid attention to what the Republicans running for president have been saying, because everything I have just said, they disagree with,” she said.
Clinton said people are often shocked by Trump’s incendiary statements.
“But after a while with so many of those comments, those insults, the kind of demagoguery we are seeing from him, we have to ask ourselves what’s really at stake in this election,” she said.
“One of the things that’s at stake are our rights because Republicans wants to undermine and set back our rights.”
Clinton promised to defend abortion rights, Planned Parenthood, same-sex marriage, social security and voting rights, and said she would work to enact comprehensive immigration reform, overturn Citizens United and to hold Wall Street accountable.
“When you hear what Trump and Cruz say, it’s not only offensive, it’s dangerous,” Clinton said, pointing to Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country and Cruz’s call for police patrolling of Muslim neighborhoods.
Clinton had more to say about Harriet Tubman, too.
Time reports:
Hillary Clinton called the White House’s decision to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill a “great historical announcement” and repeated a theme from her 2008 Democratic convention speech when she said Americans should follow Tubman’s example of persevering in difficult times.
Speaking in a predominantly African-American church in Philadelphia on Sunday morning, Clinton said that as senator for New York, she had helped allocate money to preserve Tubman’s homestead in Auburn, NY.
Clinton’s remarks follow the Treasury Department’s announcement last week it would be replacing Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman in 2020.
“There was play that some schoolchildren did that I saw it made such an impression on me,” Clinton recalled. “It was this image of this feisty, determined woman leading slaves to freedom and saying, ‘Don’t look back and don’t stop. Keep going. If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you hear gunshots keep going. Keep going to freedom.'”
“And that to me represented so much about her, but also about our country,” Clinton continued. “We have work to do.”
Regarding the primary, we’ve made it to the bargaining stage. Progress!
Washington Post reports:
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said Sunday that his level of support for Hillary Clinton as the party’s nominee would be “totally dependent” on whether she incorporates a progressive agenda like his into her campaign against the Republican nominee.
The senator from Vermont said he would do all he can to prevent a “right-wing Republican” from becoming president, but he laid out some conditions when asked during an appearance on ABC News’s “This Week” whether he would make an “enthusiastic case” for Clinton.
“That is totally dependent on what the Clinton platform is and how she responds to the needs of millions of Americans who are sick and tired of establishment politics and establishment economics,” Sanders told host George Stephanopoulos. “If Secretary Clinton is the nominee, she is going to have to make the case to the American people, not just to my supporters, but all Americans, that she is prepared to stand up to the billionaire class, she is prepared to fight for health care for all Americans, that she is prepared to pass paid family and medical leave, make sure that college is affordable for the young people in this country.”
Newsweek compares Clinton’s winning coalition to Obama’s:
In both 2008 and 2016, “There’s a relatively stable coalition for each candidate, resulting in fairly predictable vote shares in every state,” Daniel Donner, a contributor at Daily Kos Elections who has studied both the 2008 and 2016 primaries, tells Newsweek . Sanders is supported by a fairly diverse base, largely because the Democratic party is diverse. Clinton’s base is simply more diverse. In New York, for example, nearly one-third of Sanders voters were minorities; Clinton’s were 49 percent minority. Sanders does better with the young, Clinton with the old; Clinton does better with holders of postgraduate degrees and worse with northern rural voters. But by far the most important difference between why she lost in 2008 and why she’s winning in 2016 is minority support.
Another “coalition” factor is Sanders’ strong support with independent voters. A Reuters poll from earlier this month found him leading in that camp by 45 to 29 percent. But many primary states are closed, barring independent voters from participating unless they first switch their registration to Republican or Democrat. That’s why Sanders’ long winning streak in the caucus-heavy Western states didn’t provide enough momentum for him to overtake Clinton in her adopted state of New York, and it’s why Sanders is unlikely to win in California. This time around, Clinton is winning over the Obama voters of yore.
“She’s been doing just a little bit better (than in 2008) in almost every state,” Donner says. “The most important exception is states with large African-American shares of the electorate... in almost all of these states, the switch among African-American voters from huge margins for Obama to huge support for Clinton has meant a large increase in vote share for Clinton in the state.”
By this time in 2008, because the primary schedules were different then, 87 percent of delegates had already been awarded, but the race was still close. This time around, “Clinton has always been significantly ahead of Sanders,” Laden tells Newsweek. Her lead in pledged delegates now is more than twice as large as Obama’s ever was, in 2008.
Benchmark Politics releases its baselines for Clinton and Sanders in…
Pennyslvania:
Expected Baseline: 55% Clinton - 45% Sanders
Like a lot of the states we have had so far, Clinton’s core support will come from large, diverse cities. Clinton is also favored in all but a handful of rural counties however any sort of poll closing would most likely flip these counties to Sanders. The difficulty in flipping some of these rural, blue collar counties will lie directly in the age of the electorate.
Maryland:
Expected Baseline: 66% Clinton - 33% Sanders
Maryland is a very tough state for Sanders. It has some of the highest populations of two groups that Sanders has had the most trouble with. It is the 4th blackest state in the nation and is the richest state in terms of per capita income. With even only one of these factors, we'd probably expect Clinton to take the state, but with both of these factors combined, everything points to Clinton doing exceptionally well here. We don't see how this state will favor Sanders any more than Virginia did, which went heavily for Clinton - it matches Virginia's demographics and even exceeds them for Clinton.
Connecticut:
Expected Baseline: 55% Clinton - 45% Sanders
The Constitution State of Connecticut will be a crucial battleground state for both Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton as it boasts a small but significant 55 delegates. With Sanders’ path to the nomination getting more narrow with each passing primary it is imperative that he takes delegates wherever he can get them to remain competitive in the race. Connecticut as a whole is a diverse, high income state which both play directly into Clinton’s core demographics. Given the states smaller population however there is a real chance for Sanders’ historical grassroots support to make some real headway here in terms of making up the demographic deficit.
Delaware:
Expected Baseline: 60% Clinton - 40% Sanders
Although there are only 21 delegates up for grabs, the “First State” of Delaware is quite important this primary season especially for Hillary Clinton. With a win here combined with a possible 4 other wins across the north east states voting on April 26th, Secretary Clinton can solidify her position as the democratic nominee and start focusing her attention more towards the general election.
Rhode Island:
Expected Baseline: 53% Clinton - 47% Sanders
The Ocean State of Rhode Island promises to be a tight race as the model expects the electorate to be rather competitive for Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton. Overall, Clinton enjoys a moderate but not insurmountable lead of 6% over Sanders. With the lack of polling and the small nature of the primary it is more difficult to project the outcome however looking solely at demographics we are able to get a reasonable benchmark for both candidates. Most of Clinton’s support will come from one area while the rest of the state looks favorable for Sanders.
The Nation calls out the voting fraud argument:
Last week, I attempted to debunk allegations of widespread election fraud by the Clinton campaign that have been swirling around on social media. My argument was an appeal to common sense: If Hillary Clinton entered the race with a very large lead in the national polls and an enormous amount of support from Democratic Party activists and elected officials, as she did, and then quickly built up a significant lead in pledged delegates, as she did, then at no time since the start of the race, regardless of how unscrupulous her campaign might be, would there be any rational motive for risking infamy by rigging the vote. You don’t need to cheat when you’re winning.
That didn’t sit well with Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis, whose earlier piece for The Free Press, “Is the 2016 election already being stripped & flipped?,” I had mentioned briefly in the column. They’ve now published a lengthy broadside accusing me, and The Nation, of not being able to handle the truth when it comes to “election theft.” (It’s an odd charge, given that my Nation colleague Ari Berman has done some of the best reporting in the country on vote suppression.)
It’s unfortunate that Wasserman and Fitrakis didn’t engage my argument (or link to my piece so that readers might judge it for themselves). Instead, they waved away the idea that looking at motive is a legitimate way of evaluating the likelihood that a crime has been committed, writing that the argument was “a bit hard to follow.”
Of the 2016 election, they write that millions of Democratic voters have “already been stripped from the voter rolls in critical states like Ohio.” They noted that most votes Americans will cast this year will be tallied on electronic voting machines that have no auditable paper trail. And they claim that primary exit polls offer evidence that Bernie Sanders is “doing far better than the official vote count.”
But how well do these claims support the charge that the primaries are being rigged? Without getting too deep into the weeds, what’s clear is that Fitrakis and Wasserman don’t require much in the way of evidence to allege that an election is being stolen.
Melissa McEwan writes for Shakesville about the simplistic characterization of Clinton being a warhawk:
A "warhawk" does not prioritize diplomacy. A "warhawk" does not even consider strategic and targeted military intervention, when they have determined, rightly or wrongly, that military intervention is the last resort.
Most importantly, a warhawk doesn't spend her tenure as Secretary of State doggedly advocating on behalf of women and children who are victimized by rape as a weapon of war.
No other candidate so passionately and eloquently tries to address this source of instability and warfare. None.
Calling Clinton a "warhawk," or talking about her record as disproportionately and exclusively "militaristic," is dependent on ignoring all of this incredibly important and specialized work that she's done.
(Of course, she's done it on behalf of women and children, so it's pretty easy for lots of Very Important People Who Care About Serious Issues to ignore, because who gives a fuck about women and kids.)
It also requires ignoring, as but one example, an entire diplomatic career of facilitating peace, stretching all the way back to her tenure as First Lady, when she played a crucial role in the Irish peace process.
She has a long foreign policy history, which includes some things with which I disagree and some things I strongly support. On balance, I find enough to warrant my support of her candidacy. People draw their lines in different places, and there are certainly people who are familiar with the entirety of her record who don't feel there's enough. That's valid.
But it's a rare day indeed when I interact with someone who accuses me of "not caring" about her hawkishness who's even heard of any of the things mentioned above.
John Paul Brammer writes for Blue Nation Review about the importance of Clinton’s diverse support:
As a young non-white person in the LGBT community, I’ve struggled to reconcile Bernie’s “revolution” with Bernie’s narrow coalition. I fail to see how revolution is possible through a movement that lacks significant representation from communities who need change the most.
These communities, by the way, are putting their support behind Hillary in staggering numbers. She’s not winning these communities because they are “southern.” She’s not winning them because they are “conservative.” She’s not winning them because Bernie “pushed her to the left.” She’s winning them because these communities trust her.
This is why the wrongheaded narrative that Bernie is pushing her to the left is so frustrating to me. Hillary has always been Hillary, and her success among historically marginalized groups speaks to her career as a champion for progressive values. These are the groups that make up her coalition, and they look like America’s future.
In the crowds standing behind Hillary, I see people who look like me, and I can do so without straining my eyes. That’s exciting to me. That’s what I want tomorrow’s America to look like – a place where, no matter where you come from or who you are, there is a spot for you. At a time where bigotry is on the rise, that’s radical.
In fact, that’s revolutionary.
And in closing, my daily reminder: We’re winning. Let’s be graceful about it. — Lysis
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Crossposted at HillaryHQ, an independent, progressive blog committed to the electing Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States.