Clinton is the favorite and Sanders is the underdog -- we get it.

But we don't call off sports games and give the favorite a "win" just because the odds weigh against the underdog. More importantly, we don't simply crown the victor of the primaries two months before the first votes are even cast. The will of the voters matters:



Sanders has a chance here, but the pathway for a Sanders victory may require two things:

1. a Sanders win in Iowa or New Hampshire;

2. overconfidence plus a sense of entitlement on the part of the Clinton campaign and her supporters as was her downfall in 2007-2008.

I think the Sanders campaign has got goal number one well in hand, but we may need your help with goal number two.

Looking at the posts in this forum today, all I can say is thanks for pitching in where your help is needed most.

Source: Advocate

Republican presidential hopeful and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz thinks the Obama administration’s support for trans students amounts to “lunacy!”

Speaking on a conservative radio show Thursday with host Steven Crowder, Cruz inaccurately claimed that the Department of Justice is “trying to force {school districts} to let boys shower with little girls.”
...
“Look, these guys are so nutty that the federal government is going after school districts, trying to force them to let boys shower with little girls,” Cruz responded. “Now listen: I’m the father of two daughters, and the idea that the federal government is coming in saying that boys, with all the god-given equipment of boys, can be in the shower room with junior high girls — this is lunacy!”

“And I bet you there are a whole lot of parents — particularly parents of daughters — that are not eager to have the federal government saying, ‘Guess what? Your daughter has to shower with a boy, if he wants to be in there,'” Cruz continued, discounting the fact that trans girls are, in fact, girls, not boys who “want to be in there.”



Read more: http://www.advocate.com/election/2015/11/22/ted-cruz-thinks-supporting-trans-students-lunacy

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Of course all of the Republican candidates are awful, but let's not lose sight of the fact that Cruz is perhaps the most awful.

Source: The Hill

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Sunday continued to hit Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for his vote to “gut” federal intelligence programs.

“There are members of the Republican Party, that includes Senator Cruz and Senator Paul, who have argued that somehow the government is out there spying on everybody, so we need to gut these programs,” Rubio said on “Fox News Sunday.” “That isn’t true.”
Cruz voted for the USA Freedom Act, a bill that killed the National Security Agency’s (NSA) telephone bulk data collection program.

Rubio said government agents who misuse surveillance technology to spy on American citizens should be “fired and prosecuted,” but added that the bill significantly curtailed “valuable tools in the war on terror that allow us to learn more about the terrorists than they know about us, and allow us to identify them and potentially disrupt plots before they’re carried out.”

The Florida senator also went after Cruz on immigration, saying the Texas Republican at one point supported amnesty for illegal immigrants residing in the country.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/261047-rubio-hits-cruz-on-national-security-immigration

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Forgive me for enjoying a slap-fight between children of Cuban immigrants fighting about which has less self-awareness about America's tradition as a cultural melting-pot.

link; excerpt:

1. The entire GOP is in agreement on stopping or halting the Syrian refugee program. ... Cruz is pouring gasoline on the issue, but it is not an issue on which he can distinguish himself from the field.

2. His national-security record is highly problematic. ... For many of those who care deeply about the existential threat to the West, he seems bizarrely off-base.

3. Donald Trump has a better “strong man” persona. ... The “Trump isn’t fading” problem is a bigger concern for Cruz than for the “establishment,” which is certain to rally around the final non-Trump candidate.

4. Rubio has the ability to put Cruz on defense. ... Rubio ... is a much more formidable opponent for Cruz than Jeb Bush would have been.

5. Cruz has minuscule support outside the tea party. ... His refusal to expand his appeal relegates him to one quadrant of the party, one in which he must compete with Trump and Ben Carson.

6. Iowa is becoming a must-win for him. ... Cruz says he has the money and organization to prevail in the so-called SEC primary, but former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani learned the hard way that you cannot lose repeatedly and pin your hopes on later primaries.

Excerpt from the great Salon article "America has never recovered from Ronald Reagan. That’s why Bernie Sanders is so important":

On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) gave his long planned speech on Democratic Socialism, invoking great American leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and reminding everyone that some of the most popular social programs we have today — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — were all once labeled socialist and aggressively opposed by monied interests, who FDR called “economic royalists.”

Not only were social programs opposed and called socialism; so were any kind of laws or regulations that intervened with the “free market” for the betterment of society. “Unemployment insurance, abolishing child labor, the 40-hour work week, collective bargaining, strong banking regulations, deposit insurance, and job programs that put millions of people to work were all described, in one way or another, as ‘socialist,’” explained Sanders.
...
Bernie Sanders, FDR, MLK, and many other past and present Americans have a very different view of freedom, and believe that the freedom to starve or to be left untreated after being seriously injured is no freedom at all. As FDR said while listing his Second Bill of Rights, “we have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.” ...For Sanders and other Democratic Socialists (or Social Democrats), socialism is not so much about having the individual freedom to do what you wish without ever taking on a role (a major flaw in Marx’s thought was his dismissal of identity and the fulfillment human beings find in roles, e.g. someone who writes or paints would like be known as a writer or a painter), but having the freedom to fully utilize your innate talents and pursue work that you love, without having to worry about medical care or being tens of thousands dollars in debt for a necessary education. It is the right for every single person who works hard, regardless of how skilled or unskilled the labor is, to have a livable wage. And of course, it is democracy, or as Sanders put it:

“Democratic socialism, to me, does not just mean that we must create a nation of economic and social justice. It also means that we must create a vibrant democracy based on the principle of one person one vote.”

Source: The Hill



Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is launching an ad campaign with renewed focus on his economic policies.

Television ads set to run in early-voting states come amid the campaign’s plan to destigmatize the Democratic presidential candidate’s status as a democratic socialist.

“If you’re doing everything right but find it harder and harder to get by, you’re not alone,” Sanders says in an ad titled “Works for Us All” that will air in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“While our people work longer hours for lower wages, almost all new income goes to the top one percent,” he continues. “My plan: Make Wall Street banks and the ultra-rich pay their fair share of taxes.” ... In another spot titled “A Rigged Economy,” Sanders says America’s finances are “held in place by corrupt politics where Wall Street banks and billionaires buy elections.”



Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/dem-primaries/261015-sanders-touts-plan-to-make-ultra-rich-pay-their-fair-share

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WOW!

Source: The Hill

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is calling on America to push corporate power out of its prison system.

“We need to end prisons for profit,” he said at the 2015 Presidential Justice Forum at Allen University in Columbia, S.C.

“It is wrong for corporations to be making profits from the incarcerations of their fellow Americans,” Sanders continued.
“I want to see incentives to get people out of jail or prevent people from going into jail,” the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate added.

“By and large, we do a pretty bad job in making sure that when people are released from jail, they don’t end up in jail again. There needs to be a path back from prison.”

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/261025-sanders-we-need-to-end-prisons-for-profit

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He. Is. On. Fire!

Source: The Hill

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Saturday called for Republicans to abandon the corrupting influence of the Koch brothers and other wealthy energy magnates.

“This is a party that rejects science and refuses to understand that climate change is real,” he said of GOP during the annual Blue Jamboree in North Charleston, S.C.

“I understand if you stand up to the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry, that you’ll lose your campaign contributions,” the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate added.
“{Climate change} is already causing devastating problems all over this world. To hell with the fossil fuel industry. Worry more about your children and your grandchildren than your campaign contributions.”



Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/261019-sanders-to-hell-with-the-fossil-fuel-industry

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I love this man

link; excerpt:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Those words, of course, are by Emma Lazarus. Her poem, "The New Colossus," appears in bronze on the base of the Statue of Liberty. A statue given to the United States by France, our nation's oldest friend and ally... a bit of history that seems especially important just now, in light of the recent horrors in Paris....

Emma Lazarus had it right. Donald Trump and thirty-one governors have it wrong, wrong, wrong.

The Hill: "Sanders ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire poll":

Sanders garners 45 percent support, to 44 percent for Clinton. ... Sanders has a much more comfortable lead among young people in the Granite State poll, carrying the under-45 vote with 59 percent, to 30 percent for Clinton.

?