Thursday, May 3, 2018
Comedian Handcuffed & Ejected From White House Correspondents’ Dinner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaB0WM96NN4
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Media Can't Talk About Comedian Kicked Out Of White House Dinner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5edfpAuz8u8
Elizabeth Warren Can't Explain Why She Didn't Support Bernie Sanders
Warren never answered the question because there was no good answer. She betrayed progressives by not endorsing Bernie Sanders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V983cJzFCWA
Did Elizabeth Warren Just Tell Bernie Sanders to Sit Down and Shut Up? Sure sounds like it.
Did Elizabeth Warren Just Tell
Bernie Sanders to Sit Down and Shut Up?
Sure sounds like it.
JUN 5, 2016
Bernie Sanders supporters are
already not happy with progressive superstar Senator Elizabeth Warren because
she failed to endorse Sanders in the Democratic primary, and they're not likely
to be happy with this, either. Asked if she
supports the Superdelegate system, Warren said even though she's a
superdelegate herself, she doesn't "believe in" them.
She didn't stop there, though,
adding a shot that can't be pleasing to fans of a candidate whose only
stated path
to victory is to convince superdelegates to overturn the will of the
pledged delegates, the majority of whom will have been won by Hillary Clinton:
I don't think that superdelegates
ought to sway the election.
The natural followup question
that Bernie Sanders might ask is "Then what are they for?" That's the
rationale behind fighting to get rid of Superdelegates, while also using them
just this one last time.
Warren has stayed out of the
Democratic primary fight, a fact which Bernie seems to at least grudgingly accept,
but Warren's stance here doesn't bode well for him being able to convince any
Supers to flip. Anyone willing to cross Hillary isn't likely to also want to
cross Warren.
Is Elizabeth Warren a Phony Progressive for Failing to Endorse Bernie Sanders?
JUN 11, 2016
Cenk Uygur of the online news
show "The Young Turks" sees progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s
decision to endorse Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination after
abstaining from endorsing her natural ally, fellow progressive Bernie Sanders,
as an unfortunate miscalculation based on a misunderstanding of the tactics of
power.
Clinton all but has the
Democratic nomination with 2,203 pledged delegates to Bernie Sanders' 1,828
after voters went to the polls in six states, including California, on Tuesday.
Many progressives suspect
Warren didn’t endorse Sanders because she believed that if Clinton ended up
winning, Warren would be in a worse position to pursue a progressive agenda,
either in cooperation with a Clinton administration or as part of one. But that’s
wrong, said Uygur (whom
Guardian contributor Joe Sandler Clark earlier this year called "one of
the sharpest and most thoughtful political commentators in the United States”)
in a segment of "The Young Turks" on Saturday.
“If she had endorsed Bernie
Sanders early on, it wouldn’t have given her less power with the Hillary
Clinton campaign, it actually would have given her more power. The reason is
[that] the Clinton campaign respects power. So if you bow to them, you lose
that power, rather than gain that power.”
“So if [Warren] had said, ‘I’m
for Bernie Sanders! We’re progressive and we’re gonna go out there and fight!”
and at the end, said, ‘OK. All right Hillary. OK, I’ll endorse you’ [...] then
Hillary would have said -- meaning after the fight is over [...] ‘OK. I’ll give
you VP if you endorse me. I’ll make sure, Elizabeth, that progressives have a
real voice in my administration as long as you switch over at the end and come
to my side.’ "
"That would have been the
better, more practical way," Uygur suggested, "because then, Bernie
Sanders might have won. And then, even if he didn’t, she actually would have
had more power, not less power.”
Uygur also acknowledged that
Warren might have turned the race in Sanders’ favor had she endorsed him early
on, and he addressed the question of whether her endorsement of Clinton makes
her less of a progressive -- something many progressives feel strongly.
First off, for reasons that are
borne out by her history, both outside of government and inside government, I
do believe that she is a progressive at heart, a real progressive and not just
a politician scheming for her own personal gain.
I believe that she genuinely
thought that the best way to keep progressive ideals alive was to make sure
there was a voice for progressives in the very likely event that Hillary
Clinton won. That is a calculation that she made.
Now, you could say hey, I’m
being overly generous to her or I’m being naive about it, and that is possible,
but that’s my sincere belief.
On the other hand… boy she
could have made a big difference. So, Bernie Sanders lost Massachusetts by 1.2
percent. I think any objective political analyst looks at that and says if
Elizabeth Warren would have endorsed him, he would have won. Now he wouldn’t
have won Massachusetts by 20 points, but maybe he wins by one point or two
points. But as a matter of optics, it mattered on that night. Massachusetts was
a big, big state there, and when he lost Massachusetts, people were like ‘Oh,
he can’t even win Massachusetts, and that’s in the northeast and that’s close
to Vermont. Oh, he’s done, right?’ Iowa, he only lost by a point too, that was
the first one.
Could a powerful, progressive,
female senator on his side made him win Iowa by a point or two? And then every
headline has to be he wins Iowa, rather than loses Iowa? Boy it would have made
a big difference.
So I actually think, giving
her the benefit of the doubt, which I genuinely believe, I think she
miscalculated. And I don’t mind a practical calculation. Look, we do a lot of
practical calculations at Wolf-Pac, and we support people and we have carrots
and we have sticks and we go after people. And there’s a lot of practical
decisions that need to be made, but in that practical consideration she thought
he wasn’t gonna win. A lot of the progressive senators thought, ‘He’s not gonna
win. I’m not gonna put my neck out there, again, not for just personal reasons,
but I gotta protect…’ But the reality is, if you all backed him, he might have
won! He was really close. He might have won. Even before the California vote,
it was still 54 to 46 in terms of the pledged delegates! Damnit it was close!
And you could have made a difference.
If Uygur is right, then Warren
is not a self-interested traitor to the public, but -- in this instance and for
the time being, at least -- merely an ineffectual or, if you prefer, inadequate
politician.
Clinton campaign feared Elizabeth Warren would endorse Bernie Sanders, hacked emails show
By Ben Wolfgang
October 10, 2016
Hillary Clinton’s
top aides feared progressive hero Sen. Elizabeth Warren would shun the former
first lady and instead endorse Sen. Bernard
Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary, emails show,
confirming that the Clinton campaign was well aware of its potential
liabilities among liberals.
Emails released Monday by
WikiLeaks show Clinton campaign
officials openly worrying about a potential Warren endorsement of Mr. Sanders,
a move that would have reshaped the Democratic primary and dealt a serious blow
to Mrs.
Clinton’s chances.
The October 2015 discussion
focused on whether the former secretary of state would back a reinstatement of
the Glass-Steagall Act, a 1933 law that separated commercial and investment
banking. It was repealed in 1999.
At the time of the
conversation, Mr. Sanders was
pushing a new form of the law to prevent another financial meltdown, but Mrs. Clinton opposed
the idea.
“I am still worried that we
will antagonize and activate Elizabeth Warren by opposing a new Glass Steagall.
I worry about defending the banks in the debate” with Mr. Sanders, Clinton adviser
Mandy Grunwald wrote on Oct. 2, 2015. “I understand that we face phoniness
charges if we ‘change’ our position now - but we face political risks this way
too. I worry about Elizabeth deciding to endorse Bernie.”
Clinton campaign
financial adviser Gary Gensler replied that he’d recently spoke with Mrs.
Warren about Wall Street reform, though the emails did not detail their
discussions.
But other messages show Clinton allies
worried about alienating Mrs. Warren years before the presidential campaign
began. In November 2014, longtime Clinton aide
Huma Abedin told other allies of the former first lady that it was imperative
the two women discuss economic policy.
“They do not want
intermediaries discussing the relationship or the potential policy differences
as they feel that is happening too much. They want to have a direct
conversation about economic policy,” Ms. Abedin wrote.
Ultimately, Mrs. Warren
withheld an endorsement until the primary effectively was over, and then
formally backed Mrs. Clinton.
More broadly, the Clinton
campaign seemed skittish about fighting Mr. Sanders on
the issue of Wall Street reform.
“Bernie wants a fight on a
Wall Street. We should not give him one. Our polling shows this is one of our
weakest areas,” Ms. Grunwald wrote in January 2016.
Over the weekend, WikiLeaks
released private emails from Clinton campaign
chairman John Podesta that included excerpts of Mrs. Clinton’s
paid speeches to top Wall Street firms. In at least one of those
speeches, Mrs.
Clinton told wealthy bankers she has “both a public and a private
position” on Wall Street reform, underscoring progressives’ doubts that she’s
truly interested in taking on powerful banking interests if elected president.
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