US Presidential Contenders

[Rusty Edge]

Wow. I'm glad I'm not a Republican delegate this year. I'd be tempted to "Forget my phone".
I feel sorry for Bill. Why is his exchange with Black Lives Matter a big deal, but Hillary's in South Carolina was not? I guess The Donald was out of hiding that news cycle. As past president and party leader, he should be free to champion his own record and worldview at the time.


Well, maybe that's the price he pays for Hillary not walking out on him during the Lewinski episode.
Maybe being nice to the Obama Administration and protecting it's legacy is the price Hillary pays to keep her name out of the mud.

[Buster's Uncle]

[shrugs] Maybe.

I'm sure I've mentioned that Mr. Clinton was my last choice of the huge herd running for 92.  I guess you can't argue with success, though, and he definitely had a successful presidency despite himself.

[Rusty Edge]

He got stuff done. He was effective. Right or Wrong? I think pretty much every president and general is a mixed bag. Usually they screw up and learn from it, or at least get another chance. When you start to read that they were some kind of god or demon, suspect bias.

Much as I disliked him, I think he was better than St. Reagan, Bush the Lesser, Ford, Carter, Obama, and most regrettably, whoever we must endure next.

[Buster's Uncle]

Probably so.

[Buster's Uncle]

Top T rump aide lobbied for Pakistani spy front
Yahoo News
Michael Isikoff  Chief Investigative Correspondent  April 18, 2016



For more than five years, Donald T rump’s new top campaign aide, Paul Manafort, lobbied for a Washington-based group that Justice Department prosecutors have charged operated as a front for Pakistan’s intelligence service, according to court and lobbying records reviewed by Yahoo News.

Manafort’s work in the 1990s as a registered lobbyist for the Kashmiri American Council was only one part of a wide-ranging portfolio that, over several decades, included a gallery of controversial foreign clients ranging from Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and Zaire’s brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko to an  Angolan rebel leader accused by human rights groups of torture. His role as an adviser to Ukraine’s then prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, prompted concerns within the Bush White House that he was undermining U.S. foreign policy. It was considered so politically toxic in 2008 that presidential candidate John McCain nixed plans for Manafort to manage the Republican National Convention — a move that caused a rupture between Manafort and his then business partner, Rick Davis, who at the time was McCain’s campaign manager.

Manafort’s work for the Kashmiri group has so far not gotten any media attention.

But it could fuel more questions about his years of lobbying for questionable foreign interests before Manafort, 67, assumed his new position as chief delegate counter and strategist for a presidential candidate who repeatedly  decries the influence of Washington lobbyists  and denounces the manipulation of U.S. policy by foreign governments.

Court records show that Manafort’s Kashmiri lobbying contract came on the FBI’s radar screen during a lengthy counterterrorism investigation that culminated in 2011 with the arrest of the Kashmiri council’s director, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, on charges that he ran the group on behalf of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, as part of a scheme to secretly influence U.S. policy toward the disputed territory of Kashmir.



Paul Manafort, convention manager for the T rump campaign, on “Meet the Press,” April 10. (Photo: William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images)


The Kashmiri American Council was a “scam” that amounted to a “false flag operation that Mr. Fai was operating on behalf of the ISI,” Gordon D. Kromberg, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, said in March 2012 at Fai’s sentencing hearing in federal court. While posing as a U.S.-based nonprofit funded by American donors sympathetic to the plight of Kashmiris, it was actually bankrolled by the ISI in order to deflect public attention “away from the involvement of Pakistan in sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere,” Kromberg said. Fai, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax fraud charges, was then sentenced to two years in federal prison.

Lobbying records filed with the secretary of the Senate show that Manafort’s lobbying firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, was paid $700,000 by the Kashmiri American Council between 1990 and 1995. This was among more than $4 million that federal prosecutors alleged came from the ISI; Fai collected the money over 20 years from “straw” American donors who were being reimbursed from secret accounts in Pakistan. (The funds were in some cases delivered to Fai in brown paper bags stuffed with cash — and then the donors reimbursed with wire transfers from ISI operatives, according to an FBI affidavit.)

Manafort, who handled the Kashmiri account for his firm, was never charged in the case, and Kromberg told Yahoo News that what knowledge, if any, he had of the secret source of money from his client was not part of the Justice Department’s investigation. (While registering with Congress as a domestic lobbyist for the Kashmiri American Council, Manafort never registered with the U.S. Justice Department as a foreign agent of Pakistan, as he would have been required to do if he was aware of the ISI funding of his client.)

But a former senior Pakistani official, who asked not to be identified, told Yahoo News that there was never any doubt on Pakistan’s part that Manafort knew of his government’s role in backing the Kashmiri council. The former official said that during a trip from Islamabad in 1994 he met with Manafort and Fai in Manafort’s office in Alexandria, Va., “to review strategy and plans” for the council. Manafort, at the meeting, presented plans to influence members of Congress to back Pakistan’s case for a plebiscite for Kashmir (the largest portion of which has been part of India since 1947), he said. (Internal budget documents later obtained by the FBI show plans by the council to spend $80,000 to $100,000 a year on campaign contributions to members of Congress.) “There is no way Manafort didn’t know that Pakistan was involved with” the council, the former official said, although he added: “Some things are not explicitly stated.”

Neither Manafort nor the T rump campaign responded to requests for comment for this story. (“I’m not working for any client right now other than working for Mr. T rump,” Manafort recently  said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”  when asked by moderator Chuck Todd about his past “controversial” clients.)



Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, executive director of the Kashmiri American Council, in 2007. (Photo: Roshan Mughal/AP)


But Manafort’s former partner Charlie Black, now an adviser to rival Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, said that as far as the firm was concerned, the Kashmiri council was a domestic, not a foreign, client. “Nobody was more surprised than me that the guy was taking the money from Pakistan,” Black said in a telephone interview. “We didn’t know anything about it.”

But there was no doubt on the part of the Indian government about where the money was coming from. Its officials repeatedly alleged that the Kashmiri council was a front group for Pakistan during the period that Manafort’s firm was lobbying for it. The issue blew up in September 1993 after Manafort and one of his lobbying associates, Riva Levinson, traveled to Kashmir and, according to Indian officials, posed as CNN reporters in an effort to gather video footage of interviews with Kashmiri officials.

“The whole thing was obviously a blatant operation of producing television software with a deliberate and particularly anti-Indian slant by lobbyists hired by Pakistan for this very purpose,” Shiv Shankar, then the Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a letter to CNN in Atlanta at the time. (Levinson did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News. At the time she denied the Indian allegations, telling a UPI reporter, “We never misrepresented ourselves as journalists.”)

Exactly what Manafort did for the Kashmiri council is unclear from the sketchy lobbying reports his firm filed with the secretary of the Senate. Those reports show his firm first registered as lobbyists for the group in October 1990, the same year the group was founded by Fai. The reports list little beyond the purpose of the lobbying: to seek support for a House resolution by then-Rep. Dan Burton to sponsor a “peaceful resolution” of the Kashmir dispute. They also show payments to the firm of $140,000 a year. (During this time, Black, Manafort had a long list of other domestic clients that included the NRA, the Tobacco Institute and the T rump Organization, which paid the firm $70,000 a year to lobby Congress on casino gambling, aviation and tax issues, according to the lobbying records.)

“We went to the Hill for them to raise the profile of the [Kashmiri] cause,” said Black about the firm’s work for Fai’s council. “But nobody in Bush 41 [the administration of George H.W. Bush] or the Clinton administration wanted to touch it. We never got any real attention for it.”

The FBI came across evidence that ISI was actually not pleased with Manafort’s work. The bureau’s investigation began in 2005 with a tip from a confidential informant (who was seeking a reduced prison term) that Fai and an associate in Pakistan, Zaheer Ahmad, were agents of the ISI. As part of the probe, agents obtained secret national security warrants to wiretap Fai’s communications; they also searched his home and offices. Among the evidence they seized: a December 1995 letter from Fai’s main ISI handler, identified as a Pakistani Army brigadier general named Javeed Aziz Khan, who went by the name of “Abdullah,” that criticized Fai for renewing a contract with a public relations firm, according to the FBI affidavit from a counterterrorism agent, Sarah Webb Linden, that was filed to support Fai’s detention in July 2011.



Lobbyist Charlie Black (Photo: Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images)


Eight months later, at Fai’s sentencing hearing, prosecutor Kromberg for the first time identified the public relations firm as Black, Manafort, according to court records. He then detailed a dispute between Fai and his ISI handler over the Black, Manafort contract. Fai wrote back to Khan the next day insisting that the ISI official had in fact approved the renewal of the contract and noted that to “make it appear” that the council was a Kashmiri organization “financed by Americans,” there was a preexisting agreement that nobody from the Pakistani Embassy would ever contact Black, Manafort, said Kromberg. But Fai was overruled, according to Kromberg’s account. The ISI handler wrote back to Fai stating that that “‘we’ — a reference to the ISI — were unsatisfied with the performance of Black, Manafort & Stone, and advised Fai to terminate the contract immediately,” according to a transcript of Kromberg’s statement to the court.

Meanwhile, the FBI pursued even more alarming allegations relating to Ahmad, Fai’s Pakistan-based associate. According to a ProPublica account, the bureau questioned witnesses about a trip that Ahmad had allegedly made to Afghanistan with a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood; the scientist was suspecting of having met with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in August 2001 to discuss the terror leaders’ interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.

Manafort, for his part, appears to have expanded his business connections in Pakistan. In 2013 he acknowledged to French investigators that, in 1994, he had received $86,000 from two arms dealers involved in the sale of French attack submarines to Pakistan’s navy. The payments were part of an arrangement to compensate Manafort for political advice and polling he provided to French presidential candidate Édouard Balladur — one part of a wide-ranging French investigation into alleged kickbacks from arms sales dubbed by the French press “the Karachi affair.”

One puzzling question about the Kashmir case is why, six years after the investigation began, the FBI decided to arrest Fai in 2011. One explanation, a source familiar with the case said, is that it came during a period of mounting tensions between the United States and Pakistan, much of it due to concerns among U.S. national security officials about the “double game” being played by the ISI. In May of that year, President Obama ordered the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden without informing the Pakistani military, in part because of fears that elements of the ISI (an arm of the military) might have been protecting the al-Qaida leader. Just weeks later, federal prosecutors in Chicago presented  damning testimony in federal court  that an ISI handler had directed one of the confessed conspirators in the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai — which killed 164 people, including six Americans — that was perpetrated by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based group with links to al-Qaida committed to “liberating” Muslims from Indian rule in Kashmir.

Then, on July 18, after Fai returned from a trip to the United Kingdom, the FBI confronted him for the third time about whether he had any connections to the ISI — and he denied it. Fai was arrested, and he and Ahmad (who remained in Pakistan and died later that year) were charged in federal court with being unregistered foreign agents of Pakistan.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-T rump-aide-lobbied-for-1409744144007222.html


Long story short - he's Uncle Duke from Doonesbury - and that makes working for the Pig a perfect fit...

[Buster's Uncle]

Bernie Sanders blasts critics who call his ideas unrealistic: ‘Nothing is radical’
Yahoo News
Dylan Stableford  Senior editor  April 18, 2016



Bernie Sanders addresses supporters at a massive rally on Sunday in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)



Fresh from a whirlwind weekend in which he met the pope and drew his largest-ever crowd at a rally in Brooklyn, Bernie Sanders hit back against a theme that’s become central to Hillary Clinton’s campaign: He has some great ideas, but when it comes to getting them done, his plans are — as Larry David put it on “Saturday Night Live” — nothing more than “yada, yada, yada.”

On CNN’s “New Day” Monday, one day before New York’s primary, Sanders pointed out that he called for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour from $7.50 more than five years ago.

“Most people thought that was a crazy idea,” the Vermont senator said. “Well, guess what. California, New York, Oregon have done it. Why? Because people stood up and fought.”

Sanders said the same about same-sex marriage.

“Ten years ago, would you have believed that gay marriage would be legal in all 50 states? Probably not,“ he said. “When people stand up and say, ‘We’ve got to end bigotry in America — people have a right to love whomever,’ change takes place.”

At a block party in Washington Heights Sunday, Clinton pushed her pragmatic message.

“It’s easy to diagnose the problem,” the Democratic frontrunner said. “You’ve got to be able to solve the problem.”

The Vermont senator, though, dismissed her criticism, saying his “radical ideas” are anything but.

“I believe everything we’re talking about,” Sanders said. “Nothing is radical. These ideas have existed in other countries. They’ve existed in the United States.”

His comments come on the eve of the Democratic primary in New York, where polls show Clinton with a comfortable, double-digit lead over Sanders in her adopted home state.

The Brooklyn-born Sanders urged an estimated 28,000 at his rally in Prospect Park Sunday to help him overcome her edge.

“When I was a kid growing up in Flatbush, our parents would take us to Prospect Park,” he said. “But I was never here speaking to 20,000 people. This is a campaign that’s on the move. This is a campaign that one year ago was considered a fringe candidacy — 70 points behind Secretary Clinton. Well they don’t consider us fringe anymore.”

“This is a movement of people who are prepared to think big, not small,” Sanders added. “People who want to elect not just the new president, but to transform America.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bernie-sanders-yada-yada-nothing-is-radical-160605124.html?nhp=1

[Buster's Uncle]

A party primary ‘is not a public decision,’ rules expert says
Yahoo News
Jon Ward  Senior Political Correspondent  April 18, 2016



Members of the Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee, from left, Donna Brazile, Elaine Kamarck and Alice Germond vote on what to do with Florida delegates during their meeting in Washington in 2008. (Photo: LM Otero/AP)



Elaine Kamarck got her start in Democratic politics in the 1970s, at a time when political parties had just recently begun to open up the presidential nominating process. The modern primary system did not really even exist until that decade, after a set of party reforms following the 1968 election took control of the nominating process out of the hands of party insiders and allowed voters a greater say.

The current controversy over the Republican Party’s nominating process, driven by Donald T rump’s complaints that the system is “rigged” and “corrupt” — and his call for a “bold infusion of popular will” — ignores the fact that the rules have been generally the same for more than four decades. Kamarck, who started as an aide to President Jimmy Carter and became a top White House official during the Clinton administration in the ’90s, wrote a book called Primary Politics (2009), which explains the history of how the modern nominating process for Republicans and Democrats came to be.

She talked to Yahoo News about the current debate over the GOP system. The transcript of the conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.


Yahoo News: A lot of people are wondering about these rules for how delegates are selected. They’ve never really mattered since the primary season was opened up in 1972. Why is that?

Elaine Kamarck: They’ve mattered three times. They mattered for the Democrats in 1972. They mattered for the Republicans in 1976. And they mattered for the Democrats in 1980.


But for most people under 30, that’s ancient history.

True. Most people are accustomed to thinking that — if they think about those delegates at all — they think those are people brought to the convention to cheer on the nominee and wear stupid hats.


So why does it matter now?

The only reason it matters is because the voters haven’t given a clear-cut victory to someone. What we are accustomed to is: Someone wins early, they keep on winning, the other candidates drop out, and by the time you get to July, there isn’t a contest anymore. Whenever the voters don’t make a clear decision, the decision making falls to the delegates and you have essentially the system that existed prior to 1972, where party insiders get to make the decision. There’s nothing new about this. It’s just that in the modern situation, we’re not used to it.


It happened all the time pre-1972.

The first nominating convention was in 1832. Until 1968, Americans nominated their presidents in almost exactly the same way. It was party leaders, elected as delegates in their states, going to the convention. For all that time, almost no one ran in primaries. There were very few. In fact, running in a primary was considered a weakness, not a mark of strength. In ’72, because of … reform efforts on the Democratic side, more states held primaries, [and] those primaries suddenly were binding — or attempted to be — on the delegates.


What do you think of T rump’s complaint that the system is corrupt and unfair?

T rump’s out of his f***ing mind. Every single presidential candidate except for him knows what this system is. It’s not corrupt. It’s the system by which the parties pick their nominee. Parties are protected under the First Amendment’s freedom of assembly. No American is forced to participate.

Parties are institutions. They have an interest in preserving their brand. Coca-Cola doesn’t let Pepsi participate in their brand. Republicans don’t let Democrats participate in their brand. This is a party decision, and parties make these decisions based on their institutional health. Meaning, if you put someone at the top of the ticket that is so unpopular that you lose the House of Representatives, you’re not doing the right thing for your party.

The voters have been included to keep parties from getting really out of touch. In 1968, Democrats did not understand the depths of the antiwar sentiment in their party and cut [Vietnam War opponents] out of their convention. This time, the Republican Party didn’t understand the anger of voters for T rump. But the bottom line is, this is not a public decision — it’s a party decision.


Do you want that on the record, that T rump is out of his f***ing mind?

Yes. He’s out of his f***ing mind. He’s an a******. No other candidate has ever run for president so unprepared.


Do you think his arguments will influence the way we choose nominees?

The systems will only change if the parties themselves decide to change them. My guess is the system will move in the other direction from where T rump wants it to, with parties taking greater control of the nominations to keep them from being captured by people who sully the brand.


T rump is essentially arguing for direct democracy.

Exactly. He is arguing [for] direct democracy. The Congress has considered a national primary many times. Political parties, however, will never be for it. The current system is very open through the primaries and caucuses and to letting new people participate. At the same time, it has an insider piece to it. That’s why the system has persisted for 40-some years.

The general election is a different story because it’s a constitutionally sanctioned thing. The parties are a different thing. Parties have the right to say this person is not a Democrat or a Republican. They are voluntary associations of citizens. They are semipublic organizations. No democracy has ever managed to function without parties. They are crucial for organizing the electorate and helping people govern.


Why were the Founding Fathers concerned about parties?

The founders were concerned about the mischief of factions. They created this system of elaborate checks and balances to stop anybody from gaining too much power. What the founders created is something that T rump doesn’t like, where it is very hard for one faction to foist its will on others. The Founding Fathers tried to avoid factional disputes, and they did not succeed, because by 1800, the Jefferson versus Adams race was one of the meanest, nastiest party fights in history.

No other democracy in the world nominates its candidates in primaries. All the parliamentary democracies have party conferences and they have lists. You can’t just go run for Parliament in Devonshire [in the United Kingdom]. You have to be placed on a list by the central party committee.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/party-primaries-are-not-public-decisions-rules-154558765.html

[Rusty Edge]

That was a lot to digest.

No surprise, but I like the one about the history of presidential candidate selection, and strangely enough, I approved of the ***** words.

Watched the Kasich and Cruz town halls hosted by Sean Hannity tonight, forgot the original air times.
He annoys me with his populist appeals on his show and as a host. Not because he's populist, but because he's uninformed, and he's misleading people....well, he is a FOX staffer.  "Why can't/shouldn't the guy with the most votes get the nomination?"

Why does he talk about "the rule of law" all of the time, and then think that the rules of the party don't matter?

Anyway, Cruz's take on it was that the selection process wasn't rocket science, and that anybody seriously seeking the highest office should, take the time to familiarize themselves with it.

Kasich explained that the delegates make the presidential candidate selection, and they aren't uninformed. They might reasonably decide to go with the candidate who would be a sure thing against Hillary in a general election, and secure the Supreme Court nominees, rather than risk the entire ticket - Congress, governors and state legislators, on a controversial candidate.

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't think having intermediaries vote -theoretically- on behalf of the people -instead of direct election- is all that much of a democracy thing; but delegates bound for at least the first ballot and free to adapt afterwards seems reasonable, for all that.

[Dio]

That was a lot to digest.

No surprise, but I like the one about the history of presidential candidate selection, and strangely enough, I approved of the ***** words.

Watched the Kasich and Cruz town halls hosted by Sean Hannity tonight, forgot the original air times.
He annoys me with his populist appeals on his show and as a host. Not because he's populist, but because he's uninformed, and he's misleading people....well, he is a FOX staffer.  "Why can't/shouldn't the guy with the most votes get the nomination?"

Why does he talk about "the rule of law" all of the time, and then think that the rules of the party don't matter?

Anyway, Cruz's take on it was that the selection process wasn't rocket science, and that anybody seriously seeking the highest office should, take the time to familiarize themselves with it.

Kasich explained that the delegates make the presidential candidate selection, and they aren't uninformed. They might reasonably decide to go with the candidate who would be a sure thing against Hillary in a general election, and secure the Supreme Court nominees, rather than risk the entire ticket - Congress, governors and state legislators, on a controversial candidate.

The founders established an electoral college to prevent the president from becoming a instrument in the tyranny of the majority inside the country.

[Buster's Uncle]

The founders did LOTS of dumb things for dumb reasons - though I get that about the tyranny of the majority being a thing.

[Buster's Uncle]

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders battle for momentum in New York’s Democratic primary
Yahoo News
Hunter Walker  National Correspondent  April 19, 2016



Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Mary Altaffer/AP, Seth Wenig/AP



BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Bill Clinton starkly laid out the stakes for New York’s Democratic presidential primary at an event in the Long Island suburb of Elmont earlier this month.

“Look. This election in so many ways psychologically is coming down to New York,” he said.

Indeed, while Hillary Clinton has racked up enough delegates in earlier primaries to put her on a path to victory, the race in New York remains crucial to her campaign. The delegate-rich state provides the possibility of a decisive win, but also the potential for humiliation if born-and-bred New York City rival Bernie Sanders keeps the margin close in Clinton’s adopted home.

Polls heading into the Empire State’s election on Tuesday show Clinton poised for another victory, but with Sen. Sanders having won eight of the last nine contests, his campaign has been on a hot streak. Sanders’ team argues that this momentum will help him overtake Clinton in the delegate count as the candidates hopscotch the country, leading other delegates to switch sides come convention time.

In an email sent to supporters last Wednesday, Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, laid out the importance of the New York primary.

“Did you see that last week, Bernie’s campaign manager said they will ‘100 percent, absolutely’ push for a contested convention in July — even if Hillary holds on to her big lead in the popular vote? There’s only one way to stop that from happening: build an insurmountable delegate lead. To do that, we need a strong result in New York one week from today,” Mook wrote.

It’s easy to see why New York is a prize for the Democratic hopefuls. With 291 delegates on the line, it is second only to California in terms of impact on the race. However, for Clinton, the state has added importance because she represented it in the U.S. Senate from 2001 until 2009 and has made it her home since she left the White House. Losing her adopted home state to Sanders, who despite his Brooklyn roots has been largely absent from New York for decades, would be an especially embarrassing defeat.

The  RealClearPolitics average of New York primary polls  shows Clinton with an 11.7-point lead over Sanders. However, the polls have tightened substantially. Just last month, Clinton had an advantage of more than 30 points in New York.



The Clintons sign in at their voting place in Chappaqua, N.Y., Tuesday, April 19, 2016. (Photo: Richard Drew/AP)


A Clinton campaign official who requested anonymity told Yahoo News on Monday that the campaign always expected that the primary in New York would be competitive.

The official also noted that the current state of the race means Sanders will  have to win more than 56 percent of the delegates  in New York, and every other state on the calendar, to overtake Clinton. Because of this, Sanders would need to do more than just outperform the polls to come out ahead: He needs to beat Clinton by several points to make a difference.

Both Clinton and Sanders have strengths in the state. As he has elsewhere, Sanders has drawn massive crowds and generated substantial enthusiasm among younger voters. Along with the youth vote, Sanders’ team is hoping to win among working-class voters. Robert Becker, Sanders’ deputy national field director, told Yahoo News that the campaign’s decision to have its first major New York City event in the hardscrabble South Bronx neighborhood on March 31 was a deliberate signal about whom Sanders hopes to make part of his base.

“We started out … in the South Bronx. That should have been a signal of where we’re going to make a play, the sort of lower end on the wage scale, make poverty an issue here, obviously, working class, the youth,” Becker said when asked where Sanders expected to draw support.

Sanders faces strong obstacles as he tries to win with that coalition. Clinton has repeatedly outperformed him with black voters, and recent polls indicate he is not on track to buck this trend in New York.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who is backing Clinton, identified some of the candidates’ advantages in a conversation with Yahoo News at a campaign event in Harlem earlier this month.

“I think it’s very much of a home state for her,” Brewer said of Clinton. “She was beloved in New York. Sen. Sanders hasn’t been in Brooklyn for a long time. So I think Hillary will win big. That said, in addition to being the borough president, I also teach at Hunter College and … a lot of my students, they like Bernie.”



Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally in Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he was born. (Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)


A Quinnipiac University poll released on April 12 found that while Sanders has a 19-point lead among voters ages 18 to 44, he was trailing badly with African-American voters. Quinnipiac showed Clinton with a huge 37-point advantage among New York’s black voters, and the university’s pollsters largely attributed her overall lead to the African-American electorate.

“Black voters matter for Secretary Hillary Clinton in the New York Democratic primary,” Quinnipiac University Poll Assistant Director Maurice Carroll said in a statement announcing the results.

The rules in New York also favor Clinton. Sanders has, thus far, fared better in states with open primaries where independents are allowed to vote in the Democratic race. However, New York election law allows only registered Democrats to participate in the primary. Voters who wanted to join the party had to do so by last October, and new voters who wanted to register as Democrats needed to do so by March 25. Because of these rules, Sanders needs to win among people who were already members of the Democratic Party and were registered before he kicked off his campaign in the state.

In the spin room after the Democratic debate last Thursday, Sanders’ senior adviser Tad Devine acknowledged that the closed nature of New York’s primary is not ideal for his candidate. Devine also pointed out that Sanders’ strength with voters who are not party stalwarts may also be part of why he outperforms Clinton in some hypothetical general election polls. Those results are a major part of the Sanders campaign case that delegates should switch sides and back the Vermont senator.

“It is an obstacle. I mean, listen, we do better when independents can vote. … It’s just a much better system, and Bernie does much better with independents,” Devine said.

Clinton also has the backing of the vast majority of New York’s elected Democratic establishment. The state’s entire congressional delegation has endorsed her, along with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. At Sanders’ South Bronx rally, Assemblyman Luis Sepúlveda suggested he faced pressure to back Clinton.

“Several months ago, I was told, ‘You must endorse a particular candidate,” Sepúlveda recounted. “And I said, ‘Hold on, what’s the rush to judgment? Why don’t we find out about all the candidates? Let’s review the record.”

And many of the Democratic politicians backing Clinton have strong voter turnout organizations of their own, including Brewer, Rep. Charlie Rangel, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. Speaking with Yahoo News in the spin room after the debate, Jeffries said the organization in his Brooklyn district was working the streets for Clinton.

“We’re going to work as hard as we can over the next few days to turn the vote out,” Jeffries said.



Clinton campaigning at Junior’s restaurant in Brooklyn with Council Member Laurie Cumbo and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Saturday, April 9, 2016. (Photo: Seth Wenig/AP)


With Sanders’ momentum and the polls tightening, Clinton will need to capitalize on all of her strengths in the state. While she has begun building what some on her campaign have termed an “insurmountable” delegate lead, a narrow single-digit victory in her adopted home, with an army of allies by her side, will hardly dull Sanders’ momentum or stop his campaign from arguing that delegates should jump Clinton’s ship. In the spin room, Devine argued that Sanders doesn’t necessarily need a victory in New York to remain viable.

“Listen, I’m not going to say we’re going to win every contest between now and the middle of June. We’re going to win most of them. We’re going to win, by far, most of the delegates. We can make up the pledged delegate differential,” Devine said. “I believe when the voting’s over, he’ll be ahead in pledged delegates, he’ll be way ahead in the general election matchups, and I think the Democratic Party is going to … realize that Bernie Sanders, by far, is the strongest candidate for our party.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hillary-clinton-and-bernie-sanders-battle-for-143153053.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Majority of Americans can't fathom supporting T rump or Clinton (or Cruz)
Yahoo News
Dylan Stableford  Senior editor  April 19, 2016



Donald T rump, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Cruz. (Photos: John Minchillo/AP; Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx/AP; Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)



They may be the frontrunners, but a majority of Americans can’t see themselves supporting either Donald T rump or Hillary Clinton. Nor, for that matter, could they fathom supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

According to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll, 68 percent of registered voters say they couldn’t see themselves supporting T rump, while 58 percent say the same about Clinton. Sixty-one percent of voters surveyed said they couldn’t see themselves backing Cruz.

Bernie Sanders and John Kasich fared slightly better, with a minority of voters saying they couldn’t see themselves supporting either the Vermont senator (48 percent) or the Ohio governor (47 percent).





What’s more, 65 percent of all voters hold a negative view of T rump — making him “the most unpopular major presidential candidate in the history” of the NBC/WSJ poll. A majority of voters (56 percent) have an unfavorable view of Clinton — a figure that has risen five points in the last month — while 49 percent view Cruz the same way.

In terms of favorability, Sanders and Kasich scored net-positive favorability ratings, the NBC/WSJ poll found. Sanders is also the only candidate who more voters could see themselves supporting than could not.

“To top it off,” NBC senior political editor Mark Murray noted, “just 19 percent of all respondents give Clinton high marks for being honest and trustworthy, while only 12 percent give T rump high scores for having the right temperament.”





Nonetheless, a majority of likely voters in both parties say they’d be satisfied with them as their nominees.

Among Democrats, 73 percent say they’d be either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with Clinton as the nominee, while 63 percent of Republicans said the same about T rump.

Still, more GOP voters say they’d be satisfied with Cruz (66 percent) than with T rump.

New York Rep. Peter King is not one of them.

“I hate Ted Cruz,” King said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday. “I think I’ll take cyanide if he got the nomination.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/T rump-clinton-cruz-majority-wont-support-143030280.html

[Rusty Edge]

Well, if Sanders needs 56% of the remaining delegates to secure the nomination, he's more likely to secure a nomination than The Donald. Of course, we'll have to see how things shake out tonight, because there's a lot at stake in terms of delegates.

Funny, that "Could not see self supporting candidate chart" ranked the final five the same way I did earlier in the thread, (I think )

[Sleezebag]
Cruz
Clinton
Sanders
Kasich

[Lorizael]

The founders did LOTS of dumb things for dumb reasons - though I get that about the tyranny of the majority being a thing.

The founders also realized they needed to get signatures from all the states. The electoral college helped with that.