ViseGrip
ViseGrip's JournalFLORIDA DEM'S MESSAGE TO IOWA, N.H.:IF YOU WANT OUR HLEP IN NOVEMBER, DON'T NOMINATE 'THIS MAN'
(Title used in the online version of the Tampa Bay TImes, www.tampabay.com)
Prominent Florida Democrats agree Hillary Clinton is stronger candidate than Bernie Sanders
(This is the establishment speaking here!)
• By Adam C. Smith, Times Political Editor
Tuesday, January 26, 2016 6:00am
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn (D) has a message for Democratic voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.
"It's okay to be right, but it's more important to win. And if you don't win, you can't govern,"
Buckhorn said when asked about the excitement Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is generating in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. "When all is said and done — certainly in Florida — Hillary has a much, much better chance of prevailing than Sen. Sanders."
The electoral math is simple: If Democrats win Florida's 29 electoral votes in November, they win the White House. Florida's most prominent Democrats overwhelmingly say Hillary Clinton stands a much better chance of carrying Florida than Sanders.
Like it or not, a self-described democratic socialist like Sanders is simply not a strong Florida candidate, said former chief financial officer Alex Sink (D).
"Absolutely not," said Sink, who recently hosted Clinton at a fundraising reception at her home east of Tampa. "Look at the history of the Democrats Floridians have elected: Bill Nelson's not going to go for a socialist Democrat. I'm not going for a socialist Democrat. Bernie's touching a nerve, and rightfully so, about income inequality. I totally agree with him that that's something this country has to address and fix, but I don't agree with his solutions."
Florida has long been viewed as Clinton country. She and husband Bill have deep roots dating back to when he was an obscure Arkansas governor successfully campaigning to win a state Democratic Party presidential straw poll in 1991. Today, virtually every prominent Democrat in the state is publicly backing Clinton or remaining officially neutral.
"The person the Republicans are the most scared of is Hillary, because she's going to be very tough, particularly in Florida, and specifically in Miami-Dade, which is hometown to a couple of the Republican candidates. I think she would win Miami-Dade against either (Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio)," said Miami congressional candidate Annette Taddeo, who was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2014. "And from a Florida Hispanic perspective, it's going to be very tough for somebody besides Hillary to get the Hispanic vote. She's known, and she clearly has a track record."
The pragmatic, Hillary-can-win argument is not new. Nor is it necessarily effective.
Even when Barack Obama was challenging Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008, supporters of the former senator and first lady argued that Clinton — strong with Hispanic voters, seniors and Jewish voters — was far better equipped to win Florida than Obama. Neither of them campaigned for Florida's 2008 Democratic primary, which was declared meaningless by the national party, but Clinton beat Obama by 17 percentage points.
He still wound up carrying Florida in two general elections.
"The more people get to know Bernie the better they like him," said Michael Briggs, a spokesman for the Sanders campaign.
The two most recent polls of Florida Democrats show Clinton leading Sanders by at least 36 percentage points.
In Iowa, at least one poll suggests Sanders is neck-and-neck with Clinton ahead of the caucuses on Monday. Sanders leads most polls in New Hampshire, which neighbors his home state and votes Feb. 9.
Winning those two states could give Sanders a big burst of momentum, but then he faces contests that appear stronger for Clinton: Nevada Feb. 20, a South Carolina primary Feb. 27, and on March 1 the so-called "SEC primary" in a dozen states, many of them in the south.
"It's possible that Bernie could win the first two — the caucuses in Iowa and the primary in New Hampshire. But once you get into the flow of South Carolina, the SEC primary, and later on in mid March in the Florida primary, Hillary is going to win in Florida and she's going to win big," said Sen. Bill Nelson, a Clinton supporter who suggested "it would be difficult for Bernie to win" Florida in the general election.
"Despite all the partisan politics," agreed Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler, "Florida is a moderate state, and Hillary is definitely less liberal than Bernie."
more at:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/prominent-florida-democrats-agree-hillary-clinton-is-stronger-candidate/2262744
Well Bernie Sanders is 74 but Hillary Clinton wants more war....
Our nation and treasure have all been spent,
Our citizens can't afford much food nor rent.
Our nations children are racked with debt,
While our mortgage and lending were the banks best bet.
No one is fooled, and no one still cares,
That the best man for prez is 74 with white hairs.
Nice try CNN/DNC/DWS/HRC
Just donated again to Bernie Sanders
To Clinton: "We think you're dishonest"
Why has no one asked about the dishonesty of being under enemy fire? Like Brian Williams and a few others?
That is more bad judgment that Bernie Sanders speaks to, when it comes to Hillary's experience. Judgment while working is what it's about. She is very dishonest and used very bad judgment when telling this most disrespectful lie. She shouldn't ever be considered.
Help us Iowa!
I support paying the taxes that Bernie Sanders proposes. It's all for us!
Now will come the Bernie will raise taxes squawking points. I don't care, as long as they're Bernie taxes!
Do only Republicans allow non cable users to view debates online?
Are we cut out of the Town Hall Debate again tonight?
Why are democrats restricting these events? If it's CNN, then move it to another channel.
I can catch it later....and I'm voting for Bernie. But this is just wrong. Damn, this party of exclusion.
I don't want to bother getting a SlingTV account for one free week, then canceling it in a week. To watch a public debate? This is shut out again? This is ugly.
Student describes how she became a Clinton Plant - Why is this Town Hall even taking place?
GRINNELL, Iowa (CNN) -- The college student who was told what question to ask at one of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign events said "voters have the right to know what happened" and she wasn't the only one who was planted.
Student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff said a staffer told her what to ask at a campaign event for Sen. Hillary Clinton.
In an exclusive on-camera interview with CNN, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, said giving anyone specific questions to ask is "dishonest," and the whole incident has given her a negative outlook on politics.
Gallo-Chasanoff, whose story was first reported in the campus newspaper, said what happened was simple: She said a senior Clinton staffer asked if she'd like to ask the senator a question after an energy speech the Democratic presidential hopeful gave in Newton, Iowa, on November 6.
"I sort of thought about it, and I said 'Yeah, can I ask how her energy plan compares to the other candidates' energy plans?'" Gallo-Chasanoff said Monday night.
According to Gallo-Chasanoff, the staffer said, " 'I don't think that's a good idea, because I don't know how familiar she is with their plans.' " Watch the student speak out about question »
He then opened a binder to a page that, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, had about eight questions on it.
"The top one was planned specifically for a college student," she added. "It said 'college student' in brackets and then the question."
Topping that sheet of paper was the following: "As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?" Watch the student ask the planted question »
And while she said she would have rather used her own question, Gallo-Chasanoff said she didn't have a problem asking the campaign's because she "likes to be agreeable," adding that since she told the staffer she'd ask their pre-typed question she "didn't want to go back on my word."
Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee said, "This is not acceptable campaign process moving forward. We've taken steps to ensure that it never happens again." Elleithee said Clinton had "no idea who she was calling on."
Gallo-Chasanoff wasn't so sure.
"I don't know whether Hillary knew what my question was going to be, but it seemed like she knew to call on me because there were so many people, and ... I was the only college student in that area," she said.
In a separate statement in response to the campus article, the campaign said, "On this occasion a member of our staff did discuss a possible question about Sen. Clinton's energy plan at a forum. ... This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again."
Gallo-Chasanoff said she wasn't the only person given a question.
"After the event," she said, "I heard another man ... talking about the question he asked, and he said that the campaign had asked him to ask that question."
The man she referenced prefaced his question by saying that it probably didn't have anything to do with energy, and then posed the following: "I wonder what you propose to do to create jobs for the middle-class person, such as here in Newton where we lost Maytag."
A Maytag factory in Newton recently closed, forcing hundreds of people out of their jobs.
During the course of the late-night interview on Grinnell's campus, Gallo-Chasanoff also said that the day before the school's newspaper, Scarlet and Black, printed the story, she wanted the reporter to inform the campaign out of courtesy to let them know it would be published.
She said the "head of publicity for the campaign," a man whose name she could not recall, had no factual disputes with the story. But, she added, a Clinton intern spoke to her to say the campaign requested she not talk about the story to any more media outlets and that if she did she should inform a staffer.
"I'm not under any real obligation to do that, and I haven't talked to [the campaign] anymore," Gallo-Chasanoff said, adding that she doesn't plan to.
"If what I do is come and just be totally truthful, then that's all anyone can ask of me, and that's all I can ask of myself. So I'll feel good with what I've done. I'll feel like I've done the right thing."
The Clinton campaign's acknowledgment that it planted a question reinforces a widely held criticism of the senator -- that she is not entirely honest, said Bill Schneider, CNN's senior political analyst.
"It's the same criticism often made of her husband," Schneider said. "Most Americans never felt Bill Clinton was honest and trustworthy, even when he got elected in 1992 -- with only 43 percent of the vote. His critics called him 'Slick Willy.' ... Will her critics start referring to the New York senator as 'Slick Hillary?' "
Asked if this experience makes her less likely to support Clinton's presidential bid, Gallo-Chasanoff, an undecided voter, said, "I think she has a lot to offer, but I -- this experience makes me look at her campaign a little bit differently."
"The question and answer sessions -- especially in Iowa -- are really important. That's where the voters get to ... have like a real genuine conversation with this politician who could be representing them."
While she acknowledged "it's possible that all campaigns do these kind of tactics," she said that doesn't make it right.
"Personally I want to know that I have someone who's honest representing me."
A second person has a story similar to Gallo-Chasanoff's. Geoffrey Mitchell of Hamilton, Illinois, on the Iowa border, said the Clinton campaign wanted him to ask a certain question at an Iowa event in April.
"He asked me if I would ask Sen. Clinton about ways she was going to confront the president on the war in Iraq, specifically war funding," said Geoffrey Mitchell, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois. "I told him it was not a question I felt comfortable with."
No questions were taken at the event. Elleithee said this incident was different from what happened with Gallo-Chasanoff in Newton. Elleithee said the staffer "bumped into someone he marginally knew" and during a conversation with Mitchell, "Iraq came up." Elleithee denied the campaign tried to plant him as a friendly questioner in the audience.
Mitchell said he had never met the staffer before the event.
Former presidential adviser David Gergen said the front-runner's campaign could take a hit from the incident.
"When a campaign plants a question, it's a pretty minor infraction of the rules -- like a parking ticket," Gergen said. "The problem here is it feeds a damaging perception of Hillary Clinton that she can't quite be trusted."
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/13/clinton.planted/
Jennifer Granholm even pulls the 'socialist' card on MTP. I know a few in her family support Bernie!
Ha ha ha Jennifer. I just lost ALL respect for you...sitting there in your Hunter boots. Even you know the difference between socialist and democratic socialist. Even someone in your family discussed it with me. They support Bernie.
We realize you left your job to take a position with the campaign. These TV events are hardly to relay news, they are just chop shops these days for campaigns, this time for Hillary. I get your job...but to take the mantle of 'socialist' and pin it on Sanders is a lie. Again, I just lost all respect for you. It's great that several in your family know better, and have more integrity.
Is this a job you really need? It's awful, for a woman with your credentials in her own right. It's obvious that you are not there for your credentials, you were there to go along with a media slam against another candidate instead of talking up your own. You should go back to teaching, and include teaching the difference between socialism and democratic socialism.
We have much democratic socialism here....in all of the things Jennifer ran on when she went to office. What a shame to see her stoop so low. Again, some in her family support Bernie Sanders. Take that Hillary!
Chuck Todd just lied on MTP saying Bernie Sanders has zero endorsements!
That is a lie. He has endorsements from those holding office. Of course not the establishment, but to say he has "ZERO" is a boldface lie......once again from the Toad.
Bernie is right....just said on earlier show, the MSM is part of the establishment too!
FUCK CHUCK TODD!
Why is Hillary's 2008 campaign chair directing this town hall?
When George Stephanopoulos was not allowed to moderate a debate, only because he gave a contribution? Oh, and they like each other.
Now this so called "Town Hall" debate, ginned up by DWS and Hillary, was probably planned all along. Knowing there would be complaints because there WERE too few debates, they plan to throw in this type of event, where they say Hillary "performs well". Such shenanigans!!
Also, Hillary has already been caught stacking the audience questions at her town hall style debates. So why are the people being forced to endure such a shit show, all to try and show HILLARY at her finest one week before the Iowa caucuses? How can DWS and the DNC make this crap up as they go along? Can we sanction the party for this? After all, those were their rules?
NYT - In race defined by income gap, Hillary Clinton's Wall Street ties incite rivals
By Nicholas Confessore and Jason Horowitz, New York Times
Thursday, January 21, 2016 3:57pm
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gestures while speaking during a rally on the campus of Simpson College on Thursday in Indianola, Iowa. [Associated Press]
Nine months after leaving the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton sat on a stage under the life-size model of a blue whale that hangs in the American Museum of Natural History.
For a fee of $275,000, she had agreed to appear before the clients of GoldenTree Asset Management, the capstone of a lucrative speech making sprint through Wall Street that would earn her more than $2 million in less than seven months.
Clinton said the Dodd-Frank rules, while unpopular among some on Wall Street, were a necessary response to the financial crisis, the New York Times reported, citing one person who attended, while making clear she viewed Wall Street as a partner in securing the country's economic future, not an enemy. We have to win together, she said, not divide ourselves.
But her paid speeches are now emerging as the central line of attack in an increasingly bitter primary clash with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. In Sunday's debate in South Carolina and at a series of campaign appearances in Iowa this week, Sanders has argued that Clinton is too personally beholden to Wall Street to effectively rein in the industry's excesses.
In Iowa on Wednesday, Sanders went even further, seeming to mock her sizable speaking fees as borderline bribes from a powerful industry. "You got to be really, really, really good to get $250,000 for a speech," he said.
The attacks have become one of Sanders' biggest applause lines in Iowa, where the median household earns about $52,229 a year. And Republican strategists are testing how to turn Clinton's speaking fees against her in an election defined by rising economic inequality and stagnant middle-class wages. Even some of her supporters are questioning the wisdom of accepting the fees when she knew she might run for the presidency again.
Clinton has sought to parry Sanders by highlighting her support for tighter regulation and comparing herself to President Barack Obama, who took millions of dollars in campaign contributions from Wall Street but went on to enact some of the farthest-reaching financial regulations in decades.
But the new attacks strike at what even some allies believe may be one Clinton's biggest vulnerabilities: not her positions on financial regulation, but her personal relationships with Wall Street executives, along with the millions of dollars the candidate, her husband and their family foundation have accepted in speaking fees or charitable contributions from banks, hedge funds and asset managers. Unlike Clinton, Obama has never earned speaking fees from Wall Street. (oh but he will cuz he's a goldman boy too!)
"The reason that Bernie is focusing on the speaking fees is that Hillary can't use the Obama defense," said Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor, who has supported Clinton.
In retrospect, Rendell conceded, Clinton would have been better off giving fewer such speeches.
"Although they needed money, I think that Bill was raking in enough that Hillary didn't have to do it," Rendell said.
"To people who earn $200,000 in seven years, it looks ridiculous."
Together, Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have earned in excess of $125 million in speech income since leaving the White House, one-fifth of it in the past two years. Goldman Sachs alone paid Clinton $675,000 for three speeches in three different states, a fact Sanders has highlighted repeatedly.
"Goldman Sachs also provides very, very generous speaking fees to some unnamed candidates," he told voters at a winery in Carroll, Iowa, on Tuesday.
In highlighting Clinton's ties to Wall Street, Sanders is tapping into suspicion that remains potent in both parties years after the last Occupy Wall Street tents disappeared from lower Manhattan. Donald Trump, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, has mocked hedge fund managers as "guys that shift paper around" and "get lucky." Other Republicans have likewise sought to tap into popular discontent with Wall Street, blaming the Dodd-Frank legislation for letting "the big banks get bigger and bigger and bigger," as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, another Republican presidential candidate, put it last fall.
Sanders' line of attack is now being bolstered by an unlikely ally: American Crossroads, the conservative "super PAC" advised by the prominent Republican strategist Karl Rove. In recent days, the group has run digital ads in Iowa questioning Clinton's Wall Street ties — even though several hedge fund billionaires are among the top donors to Crossroads.
"Wall Street made her a multimillionaire," the ad, titled "Hillary's Bull Market," asserts. "Does Iowa really want Wall Street in the White House?"
On Wednesday, the group escalated its attacks, targeting Clinton's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, who in her 20s worked for a New York-based hedge fund run by a Clinton friend and campaign donor, Marc Lasry.
Hillary Clinton's time on the speaking circuit connects her to a long and bipartisan tradition of prominent former officials who commanded large fees for modest work, including Rove himself (who reportedly charges about $25,000 per appearance), and former President George W. Bush ($100,000 to $250,000). Condoleezza Rice, Clinton's predecessor as secretary of state, also preceded her as a speaker for GoldenTree, appearing at a previous investor dinner for the New York-based firm, which manages $25 billion in assets.
The contracts for such events typically include strict confidentiality agreements, meaning there are no known video recordings of Clinton's Wall Street appearances. In a now-famous interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer in 2014, Clinton said she thought giving paid speeches was "a much better thing than getting connected with any one group or company as so many people who leave public life do."
But a Crossroads official said that its polls and focus groups of voters in battleground states suggested that Clinton's speaking fee — typically around $225,000, or almost five times the median U.S. household income — could be a potent line of attack.
One poll, from June, found that when informed that the Clintons had made $25 million in speaking fees since the beginning of 2014, slightly more than half of respondents said she "does not understand" the "struggles of ordinary Americans."
"Our focus groups with swing and independent voters, especially women, responded very negatively to the contrast between Hillary's rhetoric on Wall Street and her close financial ties to the industry," said Steven J. Law, the president of American Crossroads.
Clinton's campaign has seized on the group's intervention. Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton's communications director, said Sanders was "taking his cues" from Republicans and "using a Karl Rove attack to go after her."
Still, interviews with voters in Iowa suggest Sanders' attacks are finding an audience.
Russ Gifford, from South Sioux City, said he had always figured that the relationship between Goldman Sachs and the Clintons was beneficial to the Clintons personally and the bank institutionally, but also to Americans who benefited from a strong economy fueled by success on Wall Street.
Now, Gifford said, he is not so sure. "Bernie's calling it into question. 'Just how beneficial is it for us?' " Gifford said.
In race defined by income gap, Hillary Clinton's Wall Street ties incite rivals 01/21/16 [Last modified:
Thursday, January 21, 2016 10:06pm]
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http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/in-race-defined-by-income-gap-hillary-clintons-wall-street-ties-incite/2262281
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This election will be about trust and judgment. This is why she cannot be the nominee. We have the greatest opportunity of our lifetime, in Bernie Sanders running for president!
Profile Information
Name: Kevin FoxeGender: Male
Hometown: Detroit/Michigan/Midwest
Home country: USA
Current location: Florida
Member since: Wed Oct 14, 2015, 09:59 PM
Number of posts: 3,133
