leftcoastmountains

leftcoastmountains's Journal

October 11, 2015

One of Bernie's main talking points.

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They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two: finance and energy.

Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

October 10, 2015

"It now looks like Bernie Sanders could also actually win."

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(CNN)Recently, I was in Des Moines, Iowa, for a meeting of the populist farmers organization Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. I was there to help the group celebrate its 40th anniversary and to talk about the issues it works on, including environmental regulation, farm policy and immigration reform.

But all the members wanted to talk about was Bernie Sanders.

They don't seem all that unique among Democratic voters or voters in general in Iowa. One poll in mid-September found Sanders with a 10-point lead over Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic primary voters. And a newer poll finds that Sanders fares better than Clinton even in general election matchups against possible GOP contenders.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/10/opinions/kohn-bernie-sanders-popularity/index.html

October 10, 2015

2 hours before Bernie speaks in beautiful Boulder (photo)

October 10, 2015

Setting Bernie Sanders Apart From the Debate Field: A Palpable Sense of Conviction; NYTimes

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A review of Mr. Sanders’s campaign debates — from his early days as a no-shot radical through his tenures as a crafty, independent small-city mayor, a congressman and then a junior senator from Vermont — shows that his economic inequality message has remained strikingly unchanged. And it reveals a compelling, highly confident debating style in which Mr. Sanders wields his accomplishments and command of policy, but mostly a palpable sense of conviction and outrage, to set him apart on stages where allotted speaking times and parsed positions are the norm.

He has also improved over the decades. Mr. Sanders has learned to suppress his exasperated expressions and eye rolls, speak in sound bites and use humor to make his arguments more digestible. He has an unstilted conversational style, packed with matter-of-fact questions asked and then answered. (“Is that a woman’s issue? I think it is.”) He will jab at an opponent’s weaknesses, dodge when necessary and, perhaps most remarkably, given his cantankerous nature, compliment his questioners.

“He can be adept at using sarcasm and irony as an attack style, but his primary voice is declarative,” said Greg Guma, a Vermont reporter and author who knew Mr. Sanders so well he played him during debate preparation for Gov. Madeleine Kunin, a Democrat whom Mr. Sanders, an independent, unsuccessfully challenged in 1986.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/us/politics/setting-bernie-sanders-apart-from-the-field-a-palpable-sense-of-conviction.html?_r=2

October 10, 2015