In 2016, Bernie Sanders Will Defeat Clinton and Dominate Trump to Become President

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/in-2016-bernie-sanders-defeat-clinton-trump_b_8902400.html

On November 8, 2016 Bernie Sanders will achieve a dominant victory over Donald Trump. Already, Sanders defeats Trump in the polls by a wider margin than Hillary Clinton, as illustrated in a December 22, 2015 Hill article titled "In blockbuster poll, Sanders destroys Trump by 13 points":

Stop the presses! According to a new poll by Quinnipiac University on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) destroys Republican candidate Donald Trump in a general election by 13 percentage points. In this new poll, Sanders has 51 percent to Trump's 38 percent.

If this margin held in a general election, Democrats would almost certainly regain control of the United States Senate and very possibly the House of Representatives.

It is noteworthy that in this Quinnipiac poll, Sanders runs so much stronger than Clinton against Trump...

In the December 22 poll, Bernie Sanders defeats Trump by 13 points, while Clinton beats Trump by 7 points.

There are numerous reasons Bernie Sanders will achieve this dominant victory over a billionaire xenophobe who panders to the fears and base passions of conservatives. First, Bernie Sanders warns against the influence of money and power in politics, and "welcomes the hatred" of the billionaire class that Trump personifies. Sanders won the Congressional Award from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, while Trump insulted Vietnam Veteran and former POW John McCain. There are a great many other reasons that I'll highlight in the future, when Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee. Overall, Bernie Sanders genuinely cares about ending wealth inequality and perpetual wars, while Trump is a buffoon who's spent most of his time making headlines for outrageous statements.

Most importantly, Sanders is the antithesis of Trump and gives voters a stark contrast in choice; not so with Hillary. POLITICO writes that Clinton "received donations from both him and son Donald Trump Jr. on separate occasions in 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2007, according to state and federal disclosure records." You'll never get a Clinton supporter to address these donations, or why Trump once felt it would be advantageous to become one of Clinton's donors.

Trump also gave $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, in either a moment of pure altruism, or another campaign donation akin to Clinton's foreign donor scandal.

While the recent Quinnipiac poll shows Clinton defeating Trump, the underlying data shows that generally, Americans don't trust the former Secretary of State. 59 percent of American voters believe Clinton is "not honest and trustworthy." 55 percent of American voters say "she does not share their values." 50 percent of American voters feel Clinton "does not care about their needs and problems." Like every other poll in 2008 and 2015 illustrating Clinton's wide lead over a challenger, voters say they'll vote for a candidate they don't trust, or feel doesn't care about their problems.

If you view polls as gospel and place a premium on recent polls, then Quinnipiac also states 72 percent of Independents don't believe Clinton is honest and trustworthy. This is a dangerous number for Democrats since 43 percent of Americans according to Gallup are independent.

Also, 49 percent (compared to 44 percent) of American women don't view Clinton as honest or trustworthy, while over 62% of voters ages 35-64 don't find Clinton honest or trustworthy.

From ages 18 to over 65, there was no age group that found Clinton honest or trustworthy, and 59 percent of Americans age 18-34 don't find Clinton to be honest or trustworthy.

51 percent of registered voters have an unfavorable view of Clinton (compared to 43 percent), while Bernie Sanders has a positive net favorability of 9 points.

Again, this Quinnipiac poll is from December 22, 2015. Most polls, like this one, contradict their findings; Americans will never vote for a candidate they don't like and don't trust, linked to an FBI investigation.

On December 18, 2007 Gallup stated that Clinton Maintains Large Lead Over Obama Nationally. It never lasted, and I explain why Clinton is unelectable due to negative favorability ratings in this YouTube segment.

Bernie Sanders will win the Democratic nomination because if Clinton was ever going to win, it would have been in 2008, not during an investigation of her emails by the FBI. On December 11, POLITICO explained why the FBI's investigation is just getting started in a piece titled "State Department can't find emails of top Clinton IT staffer":

The FBI has taken possession of Bryan Pagliano's computer system...

Clinton had personally paid Pagliano to maintain her home-made server, which is also currently in the FBI's possession. The agency has been investigating whether classified material was ever put at risk because she used her own server instead of the standard State email system. 

The State Department has designated about 1,000 of her emails as classified documents, which would never have been allowed on such a private system.

Considering that hackers from various countries already tried to access Clinton's server, Pagliano pleaded the Fifth, and two computer systems are in the FBI's custody, this story won't end before Election Day.

As for the belief that African American voters and other non-white Democrats will overwhelmingly vote for Clinton in South Carolina and throughout the South, people aren't poll numbers. A Daily Beast article on December 29, 2015 titled "Hillary Clinton's Tone-Deaf Racial Pandering" explains why poll numbers might not equate to votes:

Hillary Clinton's minority outreach over the last week has rekindled the idea that she is a candidate who is out of touch, particularly when it comes to minorities. To many of us, her campaign's insistence that she is an abuela for Latinos and the changing of her Twitter logo to represent Kwanzaa came across as pandering at its worst...

If more of Clinton's outreach attempts seem tone deaf or overly reliant on her previous successes than her present rapport with today's voters, it will be difficult for her to shake the image of being out of touch.

It's important to also note that Clinton's attempt at pandering comes months after progressive groups pressured her to stop taking money from prison lobbyists. The Intercept writes "As immigration and incarceration issues become central to the 2016 presidential campaign, lobbyists for two major prison companies are serving as top fundraisers for Hillary Clinton."

Finally, I find it bizarre that certain people still brand me as a Paul supporter, even though I'm a lifelong Democrat against perpetual war (I only wrote the piece because Obama had sent more Americans back to the Middle East and I'm vehemently opposed to more Americans dying in quagmires), and I now view the Paul article last year as a mistake.

I'm also only voting for Bernie Sanders.

Conversely, Hillary Clinton views Iraq as a "mistake," yet her supporters have no problem seeing the former New York Senator as president. The Iraq war destabilized the Middle East, I simply angered fellow progressives.

If you hear any wild conspiracy theories about me, or ridiculous accusations, simply send my detractors this YouTube segment. As for why I'm writing non-stop about Bernie Sanders, nothing epitomizes my desire to see Sanders as the Democratic nominee and president than this POLITIFACT article titled "Yes, Clinton used the Bush administration line":

"President Bush and Dick Cheney insisted there was a connection. Senator Clinton on the floor of the Senate suggested that there was such a connection," Obama said in an interview on MSNBC's Hardball on March 11, 2008.

In that speech, Clinton explained her reasoning... "He [Saddam] has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members..."

Sanders opposed Iraq and foreshadowed its tragic consequences, going against establishment Democrats and neoconservative Republicans; both would become even more intertwined with a Clinton presidency.

In contrast, Clinton echoed Bush and Cheney talking points about al Qaeda in Saddam's Iraq. If you vote for anyone other than Bernie Sanders in 2016, you're simply not a progressive, especially knowing that Trump is a racist xenophobe and Clinton utilized the same tactics against Obama in 2008. You're also voting for endless wars with Trump or Clinton, while Bernie Sanders says "I'll be dammed" to more quagmires.

This year, it's Bernie Sanders against an establishment upheld by Trump and Clinton. I explain why Bernie Sanders will become president during an appearance on The Thom Hartmann Program. If you listen to the segment, you'll understand exactly why Bernie Sanders will become president in 2016.

Follow H. A. Goodman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HAGOODMANAUTHOR

 

Monty Python -- The Life of Brian

On Medicare-for-All, Clinton Reminds Us That She's Part of the Problem

By Tom Gallagher

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/12/22/medicare-all-clinton-reminds-us-shes-part-problem

If the Hillary Clinton campaign had its way, supporters of Bernie Sanders –  whose backing she will obviously want in November should she win the Democratic nomination – would feel that, while Clinton might not be all that they want in a president, she would at least go part of the way there.  But if you followed the third debate deep enough into the night, you witnessed, in what stands as the most disingenuous moment of the Democratic race thus far, Clinton not simply disagreeing with Sanders on his Medicare For All, single payer health insurance plan, but knowingly distorting it. This was not Hillary Clinton offering a more moderate version of a solution, this was Hillary Clinton acting as part of the problem.  

Clinton argued that the Sanders plan “really does transfer every bit of our health care system including private health care, to the states to have the states run. And I think we've got to be really thoughtful about how we're going to afford what we proposed.”  Between that and Sanders’s public university free tuition plan, she said “we’re looking at 18 to $20 trillion.”  And indeed, the single-payer bill Sanders introduced in 2013 called for a 2.2 percent tax on individual incomes up to $200,000 and couples up to $250,000 (and higher rates for higher brackets), a group she pledges would see no tax increases under a Clinton administration.  But the reason that a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 52 percent of Democrats strongly backing a Medicare For All plan, and another 29 percent somewhat favoring it, is that they understand that there is a payback for that tax increase.  And so does Hillary Clinton.

In ignoring the fact that a single payer plan would, as Sanders quickly pointed out, do “away with the cost of private insurance,” meaning that “the middle class will be paying substantially less for health care,” not only was Clinton wrong on the claim that the Sanders plan would cost the middle class more, but she knew it.  As Sanders said of her, “I know you know a lot about health care.”  Hillary Clinton, let’s remember, was the point person for Bill Clinton’s unsuccessful 1993 health insurance reform, to the point where it was sometimes called “Hillarycare.”  People have applied a lot of negative labels to Hillary Clinton over the years, but “stupid” is not one you hear very often.  This was not an actor like Ronald Reagan, delivering lines he may or may not have understood.  This was not George W. Bush, struggling over words and concepts.  It was a telling, cynical moment.  

In a 2004 interview, Senator Elizabeth Warren (then a professor) told Bill Moyers that when explaining a banking industry-backed bankruptcy bill to First Lady Clinton in the late 1990s she found that “I never had a smarter student.”  Warren went on to tell how Clinton flipped from opponent to proponent of the bill, however, once she saw herself as representing Wall Street in the Senate. 

The health care story is similar.  Back then, the for-profit health insurance industry went all out to obfuscate the facts of the Clinton bill, most memorably with a series of TV ads featuring a pair of actors named Harry and Louise.  Yet by the time Senator Clinton was running for reelection in 2006, yesterday’s enemies had become today’s campaign contributors.  The New York Times reported her the second highest recipient of health care industry campaign contributions, trailing only Republican Senator Rick Santorum.  Washington health care lawyer and lobbyist Frederick H. Graefe told the paper that “People in many industries, including health care, are contributing to Senator Clinton today because they fully expect she will be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008.”  Therefore he felt that “If the usual rules apply,” early donors would “get a seat at the table when health care and other issues are discussed.”  

Sanders, of course, famously does not take such contributions – and there we have the root of the difference.  So, much as Clinton might hope Sanders backers won’t fret too much about her supposed inevitability as the nominee because she’ll at least give us Bernie-Lite, it ain’t necessarily so.  As Sanders charged in an earlier debate, there’s always a price to be paid for becoming a darling of the corporate world.  And it’s generally the people Clinton claims she’ll shield from tax increases who wind up actually paying it.

Those overwhelming numbers of Democrats who support a Medicare For All approach obviously include many Clinton supporters.  One hopes they will not sit quietly by as their candidate carries corporate America’s dishonest baggage.