US Presidential Contenders

[Unorthodox]

The law governing the use of the personal server is the Hatch Law.  From 1939.  Ludicrously out of date. 

From what I see its still against the law.  Either she was ignorant of the law and incompetent or she was flat out dishonest.

I know it's being portrayed this way by the media, but as of this moment, no, nothing illegal has happened.  In fact, it would actually have been ILLEGAL for the vast majority of the emails to have been sent using the .gov account.  But, that's a tangled mess that doesn't get reported because it's a tangled mess of laws that is boring.  Much easier to go for the sensational.  If they find actual classified emails, then there would have been shenanigans. 

Then theres the issue of the "deleted" emails. That in itself is a a crime.

Only if it was done after the investigation started.  And you can't prove they were deleted.  This goes to my contention the private servers SHOULD be illegal to prevent this kind of thing. 

Either way it doesn't reflect well.

My opinion is we are in the middle of a witch hunt.  This VERY SAME incident of private server, possible classified, lost/deleted emails has come up time and again over the last 20 years making little splash in the news cycle.  The rules are a muddy mess with some written in 1939.  Really?  Time for an update, as I'm sure the whole digital revolution wasn't even envisioned in 1939. 

So, Clinton is the biggest name to have been caught in this mess, and we are making a circus out of it for whatever reason.  I'd rather that circus be directed at fixing the problem rather than undermining a particular candidate. 

That is not to say I am neccessarily defending her actions.  Is it shady business?  Absolutely.  But is it ILLEGAL?  No.  Of the ~10 emails that I'm aware of that actually DO approach some very grey areas, they were all sent TO Clinton from another party.  They do not handle "classified" per se, but have info that probably should have been treated as if it were.  Yes, confusing technicality, welcome to national security.  Even so, you can't blame CLINTON for someone else using the wrong account, so even there she has a built in scapegoat, whether by design or by facts.   

[Buster's Uncle]

Could Rubio’s crossover message save the GOP?
Yahoo
Andrew Romano  October‎ ‎15‎, ‎2015



Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., rallies supporters during a three-day campaign swing through southern Nevada (Photo: AP/John Locher)



LAS VEGAS — Marco Rubio had just finished wooing a group of Christian businessmen at the posh Canyon Gate Country Club, a few miles east of the Strip. The hot afternoon sun was shining on the Italianate columns of the clubhouse. Golf carts glided silently over flawless green fairways. The mountains of Red Rock Canyon rose in the distance. It was a scene fit for a glossy real estate brochure, or perhaps a Republican campaign commercial.

But in the parking lot, a pair of prominent national political reporters — one male, one female — were complaining.

“He never says anything new,” the woman sighed.

“Very scripted,” the man agreed.

“My editors are like, ‘[Sleezebag] attacked Rubio today. How did Rubio respond?’” the woman continued. “And I have to be like, ‘He didn’t. It was just the same old stump speech. Again.’”

My colleagues weren’t wrong about the junior senator from Florida. Over the course of a three-day trip to the Las Vegas metro area, I heard Rubio address the good people of Nevada five times, and each time his remarks were pretty much identical. Sometimes his riff about how “the world is changing faster than ever” would come before the part about America being “the only nation on earth” where you aren’t “stuck” in the same class as your parents; sometimes it would come after. Sometimes Rubio would deliver six policy prescriptions; sometimes he would stop at five. Otherwise, there was little variation — just the candidate, slightly sweaty in his tie and shirt sleeves, smoothly repeating everything he’d said at the previous stop.

For campaign reporters who have experienced Donald [Sleezebag]’s impulsive braggadocio, Jeb Bush’s clumsy Q&As, John Kasich’s entertaining tangents and Ted Cruz’s spotlight-seeking exaggerations, Rubio isn’t particularly exciting to cover. He studiously avoids “making news,” choosing instead to stick to the script.

But here’s the thing about Rubio’s script: it’s very, very good. Good enough, potentially, to win him the nomination.

***

For the first few months of the 2016 presidential campaign, Rubio loitered in the middle of the Republican pack. Now, after a pair of crisp debate performances, with the rest of the GOP’s so-called establishment candidates in decline — Bush has proven to be a bumbling campaigner, Kasich is losing what little steam he had, and Walker basically imploded before ending his bid last month — Rubio is beginning to rise in the polls. According to the latest RealClear Politics average, he’s  now in third place nationally, behind [Sleezebag] and Ben Carson. He was in seventh as recently as August.

Still, Rubio’s momentum won’t matter unless he performs well in next year’s primaries and caucuses. Not every indicator is pointing his way. Last week, the campaign announced that it had raised  a lackluster $6 million in the third quarter of 2016,  down from $9 million the previous quarter. Bush raked in nearly $12 million.

Rubio’s advisers acknowledge that the summer was slow. Yet they also insist that everything is going according to plan. (In Vegas, Rubio made sure to meet with GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson, who has been trying to decide which candidate to support and is now said to be favoring the Floridian.)

Which brings us back to the script.

The first time I saw Rubio  pitch himself for the presidency was back in April at his campaign kickoff in Miami  . His speech was almost too slick — seductive at first, but ultimately kind of shallow. Like he was auditioning to play the leader of the free world on a new network drama.

Ever since, he’s been road-testing his message in Iowa, New Hampshire and elsewhere. Sharpening it. Refining it. Perfecting it. As a result, the version I heard over and over again Nevada is much stronger than the one I first heard in Florida.

But that’s not just because the script has evolved. It’s also because the moment suddenly seems right for what Rubio has to say.

The early knock on the senator was that he had no natural constituency, and that whatever constituency he did have was going to gravitate toward Bush instead.

But Bush is fizzling. The outsiders — [Sleezebag], Carson and Carly Fiorina — are unlikely to last. And the factional candidates — conservative Cruz, moderate Kasich and libertarian Rand Paul — can’t seem to cross over.

Given the fractured field and the chaos on Capitol Hill, the Republican Party may now need a candidate with the subtlety and skill — the Obama-esque dexterity — to be, if not all things to all people, then at least enough things to enough people: conservatives and moderates, insiders and outsiders, realists and ideologues.

And that, it turns out, is exactly what Rubio is trying to be.

***

Rubio’s first rally in Nevada was at Sun City Summerlin, the largest “active adult” community in the state. Before the senator showed up, I met two active adults named Katie Murrell and Judy Pugmire. They were first in line. Murrell, a whippet-thin and bottle-blonde 74-year-old with a reedy voice and a lot to say, taught for 40 years in Newport Beach, Calif.; Pugmire, 75, the quieter of the two, was still teaching part-time at a local community college. They told me they were neighbors.



Rubio poses for photos with supporters in Las Vegas. (Photo: John Locher/AP)


I asked why they’d decided to come to the rally. Murrell, naturally, answered first.

“You know, I really like [Sleezebag],” she said. “[Sleezebag]’s in town too.” (He’d recently finished rallying voters on the Strip.) “If you want to cover big things, cover [Sleezebag].”

Pugmire nodded. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “This country is sick and tired of politicians. That’s why you see [Sleezebag] and Carly and Ben Carson getting all this…”

Merrill cut in. “The Republicans are so screwed up,” she snapped. “[Sleezebag]’s the only one, maybe, who can deal with things.”

“But what about Rubio?” I asked.

Murrell turned to Pugmire, ceding the floor.

“Well, I came because I’m a conservative,” Pugmire said. “I want to listen to him.”

A few minutes later, Rubio and his entourage arrived. Dozens of top donors filled the VIP seats to the right of the stage. After the rally, they’d be picnicking and playing touch football with Rubio himself; the following day would be spent attending various football-themed events — “Quarterbacking Victory”; “Talking the Playbook” — at the swanky Bellagio hotel and casino.

In person, Rubio looks and acts a little like Matt Damon. The same stocky ex-athlete’s build. The same earnest all-American baritone. The same quick wit followed by the same self-effacing smile, as if he’s trying to charm you and apologizing for trying to charm you at the same time.

The senator started his speech the same way he would start every speech in Nevada: by mentioning that he’d spent part of his childhood in Las Vegas.

“Believe it or not, we still have more family in southern Nevada than in South Florida,” he told the crowd. “So if I only win by 68 votes here, you’ll know why.”

Rubio’s parents moved from Miami in 1979 and stayed until Rubio, now 44, was in the eighth grade. His dad tended bar at an off-Strip casino called Sam’s Club; his mother worked at the Imperial Palace. And yet in Summerlin he explained that “growing up,” he “remember(s) never feeling limited” to following in his parents’ modest footsteps. Why? Because they taught him he was “blessed to be a citizen of the one place on earth where the son of a bartender and a maid could be anything he wanted to be.”

“If we ever lose that,” Rubio said, “we stop being special.”

In typical Republican fashion, the senator went on to warn that America was, in fact, “on the verge” of losing its special status.

But then Rubio pivoted; he stopped sounding like a typical Republican and started sounding like someone who might actually win the White House. The problem, he admitted, isn’t President Obama. It isn’t even the Democrats. It’s ways in which the world is changing, and the speed at which it’s changing too. In the age of Amazon, Uber and Candy Crush, America has “a retirement system designed in the 1930s,” a “higher education system designed in the 1950s” and “tax policies designed in the 1980s and 1990s.”

“I wish I could tell you it’s one party, but it’s not,” Rubio told the crowd. “Both parties are out of touch. Both parties are out of date. And if we keep electing the same kind of people — the people who are ‘next in line,’ the people they tell us we have to vote for — nothing is going to change.”

At this point, [Sleezebag] would have started insulting his rivals. But Rubio’s script is noticeably short on negativity. Instead, he spent the rest of his remarks delivering what he called “the good news”: his belief that if voters approach 2016 “not as a choice between Republicans and Democrats” but rather as a “generational choice” — if they reject the Jeb Bushes and Hillary Clintons of the world in favor of the future, as represented, of course, by Marco Rubio — then “our children and grandchildren will be the freest and most prosperous Americans who have ever lived.”

When I say “Obama-esque dexterity,” this is what I mean. For the next 20 minutes, Rubio talked policy: defense spending, Iran, taxes, regulations, the deficit, entitlement reform, energy, health care, education. His views were predictably conservative, but again and again, he expressed them in the language of empathy rather than ideology.

The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart describes this maneuver well. “Rubio has mastered the same technique Barack Obama used so effectively when he was seeking the presidency,” Beinart recently wrote. “When faced with a controversial issue, he doffs his cap to the other side, pleads for civility and respect, insists that it’s a hard call — and then comes out exactly where you’d expect him to come out. … What [Obama and Rubio] share is their moderate-sounding rhetorical style.”

And so, when Rubio spoke about regulations, he insisted that the reason he wants to get them “under control” is because big businesses use regulations to “keep small businesses from competing.”

“The guys who have made it, who are rich and powerful, they’re going to be all right,” Rubio explained. “The people we have to be fighting for are the people who are trying to make it.”

When the senator spoke about energy, he praised domestic fossil fuels because they make “cooking food and heating a home cheaper” — especially for “a struggling family with a single mother who’s trying to get by on $10 an hour.”

When he spoke about health insurance, he confessed that it’s “a legitimate issue” that “we have to address.” Then he suggested that we scrap Obamacare and make health insurance more like auto insurance instead (which sounds sensible enough, even if it isn’t).

And when he spoke about higher education reform, he focused on expanding vocational education for teenagers who would rather be “welders, pipe fitters, or plumbers” than “philosophers,” while reducing the burden of student loans for their more collegiate peers.

“I tell you all this not just to show you how difficult these problems are,” Rubio said, “but to show you how we can fix them. There is no challenge we cannot solve.”



Rubio works the crowd after a rally at a Las Vegas retirement community. (Photo: John Locher/AP)


It was a message that encompassed many contradictions: conservative policy proposals, working-class rhetoric; insider savvy, outsider spirit. As a U.S. senator from one of the largest states in the nation, Rubio is technically as establishment as they come. But he made sure to remind the crowd in Summerlin that when he ran for the Senate in 2010 against sitting Gov. Charlie Crist, “the entire, and I mean the entire Republican establishment in Washington, D.C., was against me.”

“And by the way,” he added, “it’s very similar now.” In 2010, Rubio campaigned as a full-throated Tea Party candidate, and even though he’s recently been spending more time with the Council on Foreign Relations than the Florida Panhandle Patriots, he is still quick to portray himself as an outsider.

“'It’s not your turn; you gotta wait in line,’” Rubio said, paraphrasing his establishment critics. “Wait for what?”


After Rubio had wrapped up his peroration — after he celebrated his parents for working multiple jobs so he could have a better life; after he insisted that what “unifies us as one people” is that “we’re all but a generation removed from someone who did that for us” — I made my way to the rope line, where Katie Murrell and Judy Pugmire were waiting to snap a photo with the senator.

“I didn’t know he had family here!” Murrell said as soon as she saw me. “That he’d grown up here!”

“I didn’t know that either!” Pugmire added.

“So how did Rubio compare to [Sleezebag]?” I asked.

Pugmire’s reply would have been music to the senator’s ears, assuming he could have heard it over the Kid Rock song blasting through the speakers.

“Oh, for me, I would rather have Rubio,” she said. “There’s no question.”

Pugmire glanced back at the empty stage. “In many ways,” she added, “he reminds me of Ronald Reagan.”

***

If Rubio is going to connect in any of the early primary or caucus states, at least at first, Nevada is probably the place.

As the Summerlin event was winding down, I ran into Mike Slanker, a tall Ohioan in a checked sport coat and jeans. The top political strategist for both the governor of Nevada, Brian Sandoval, and the state’s junior senator, Dean Heller, Slanker signed on in May to run Rubio’s local operation. He told me Nevada could be a bellwether for his boss — a good lens through which to glimpse Rubio’s broader appeal.

Slanker’s basic point was that a Republican needs to click with two kinds of voters to win the White House: a) voters who will pretty much vote for any GOP candidate and b) voters who will only vote for the right GOP candidate. Not only does Nevada boast a more representative mix of both kinds of voters than say, conservative Iowa, moderate New Hampshire, or Tea Party-centric South Carolina; Rubio is already showing that he can appeal to both of them.

Experts in Nevada say that only four campaigns are really competing at this point: Rubio, Bush, Cruz and Rand Paul. Many think that Rubio has the early edge.

At Canyon Gate, I happened to overhear a conversation between one of Rubio’s advisers and legendary Nevada reporter Jon Ralston.

“How do you think we’re doing?” the adviser asked.

“You’ve got the best organization, as far as I can see,” Ralston replied.

“That’s good to hear,” the adviser said. “We think we’ll do well in the first three states … but we could really do well here.”

Nevada first held caucuses in 2008, and in 2012, only 38,000 Republicans participated. A well-informed source predicted that it could take a mere 10,000 votes to win this cycle’s contest. And so, from an organizational standpoint, the Rubio campaign is making sure to focus its fire on Nevada’s most reliable Republican voters.

“You have to remember who’s going to show up to caucus,” Slanker told me. “And who is that in this state? It’s Mormons and seniors.”

This explains why the campaign was targeting Summerlin’s active adults. It explains why Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison — a “big player in the Mormon community,” according to Slanker, and the chairman of Rubio’s Nevada campaign — would go on to introduce the senator at every rally. (As a kid in Las Vegas, Rubio himself was briefly a member of the Mormon Church.) It explains why Rubio would visit Boulder City, a Mormon enclave, the following day. And it explains why Rubio would be introduced there by former Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, a man Slanker described as “the godfather of the Mormon Church in this state.” Some Rubio donors are even claiming the candidate will be “the first Mormon president” if he wins next year,  according to a recent BuzzFeed report  .

At the same time, Rubio is also looking ahead and trying to avoid turning off the crossover voters who will prove critical in the general election — unlike most of his rivals.

“Nevada is a melting pot,” Slanker told me. “We have the fastest-growing Asian population in America. We have an exploding Hispanic population. Heck, we have an exploding population in general. And I think the folks who’ve been unwilling to come to the GOP, or just disinterested in politics in general, are kind of tired of a lot of the personalities in this party. In my mind, Marco is our best chance of reaching out and touching those people.”

If Slanker’s analysis sounds like spin, that’s because it is. But spin isn’t necessarily untrue. Kasich and Bush command little support among conservatives or anti-establishmentarians; [Sleezebag], Cruz, Carson and Fiorina are anathema to most of the rest of the electorate. But Rubio hasn’t alienated anyone, at least not yet.

Two days after Summerlin, Rubio attended a forum hosted by the LIBRE Initiative, a conservative Latino group, at St. Christopher Catholic School in North Las Vegas. (Rubio had briefly been a student there.) When asked about immigration reform, the senator again explained why he no longer supports  the sort of comprehensive approach he once tried to shepherd through Congress. (“Part of being a good leader is figuring out what’s possible,” Rubio said. “And we don’t have the votes.”) But he also admitted that he still believes in a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants somewhere down the line.

“After 10 years with a work permit, I personally support—and some people don’t agree with me—allowing people to apply to for a green card,” Rubio explained. “And obviously, after three or five years, you’d be eligible to apply for citizenship.”

The mostly Latino crowd applauded. “We’re talking about real people here,” Rubio said. “They’re human beings with lives and families.”

On the ground in Nevada, Rubio’s all-things-to-all-people approach — his knack for being conservative while sounding moderate — seems to be working. For me, the clearest proof came in a pair of chance encounters I had at two separate Rubio events.

The first was in Summerlin. I initially assumed that retiree Nancy Garrity was a GOP loyalist, because who else attends Republican rallies?

“Yeah!” she almost shouted when I asked if she was supporting Rubio. “He’s smart. When they ask him a question, he answers it. He doesn’t just insult somebody else.”

But then I asked Garrity if Rubio might be too young for the presidency — and her answer surprised me.

“Kennedy was young too,” she said.

“But Kennedy was a Democrat.”

“Yep,” she nodded. “And so was Barack Obama.”

I must have looked confused.

“I really have to tell you this,” Garrity said. “I’m a registered Democrat. But if Rubio becomes the nominee, I will definitely vote for him. I really will.”

“What about the rest of the Republicans?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she said. “I’d rather vote for Hillary.”


I happened upon very different kind of voter the following day at the Havana Grill, a Cuban restaurant miles from the Vegas Strip. Rubio was scheduled to show up in few minutes for a happy hour speech; in the meantime, I struggled to find a place to stand amid the throng of supporters. Suddenly, I overheard a guy with a goatee and an American-flag T-shirt telling another guy about his recent confrontation with a group of Hispanics.

“We didn’t back down,” said the guy with the goatee. “When they start filling my ears with their bullcrap they’re going to get it back. They said, ‘You’re a racist,’ and I’m like, ‘So what? You don’t like different races? Blame God for it, man.’”

“I think the real racists are Democrats,” said the other guy. “They don’t think black people are smart enough to take care of themselves.”

“They’re not!” said the guy with the goatee. “They have to have all this special stuff. They can run fast, though. They’re making money doing that. I can watch them bash their heads playing football on Sunday. It don’t matter if they become rich basketball players — they’ll still be thugs and try to kill somebody. It don’t matter.”

The guy with the goatee paused for a moment.

“I like Marco,” he finally said. “He’s getting a lot of the establishment support. I’m starting to think he should be the nominee instead of Jeb.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Any Republican skilled enough to secure the support of an avowed Democrat like Nancy Garrity without alienating an unabashed racist like the guy with the goatee — and vice versa — probably has a bright future ahead of him.



Rubio at the Havana Grill restaurant in Las Vegas. (Photo: John Locher/AP)


Fifteen minutes later, Rubio walked on stage. He spotted a waitress carrying a tray of cocktails through the crowd.

“They’re handing out mojitos in the middle of my speech,” Rubio said, smiling. “I love it. I promise that has never happened before.”

A fan in the front of the room offered him one.

“No, no, no,” he said, waving off the beverage. “I drink water.” But the crowd insisted, and Rubio finally allowed himself a Cuban coffee.

“You guys are messing up my stump speech,” the candidate said with a smile. For a few seconds, at least, Rubio had departed from his script.

He took a sip from the tacitas.

“OK,” he said. “I’m ready now.”

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/could-rubios-crossover-message-save-the-gop-113846600.html

[Unorthodox]

He studiously avoids “making news,” choosing instead to stick to the script.  But here’s the thing about Rubio’s script: it’s very, very good.

There's actually a lot to admire about being able to stick to the script.  Especially when I don't know that most the other even HAVE one. 

[Rusty Edge]

Great article, Buncle.

You'll never hear Jeb say that big business uses regulations as a tool against small business, or that the problem is both parties.

I always liked the guy. My concern is his Middle Eastern policy. Of course, to be fair, I fear that most of the GOP candidates would have us at war with both ISIL and Iran at the same time.

[Buster's Uncle]

I... think Rubio hasn't paid enough dues yet -whatever he says about that, experience matters- but is probably one of the better men running on the right.

[Rusty Edge]

-carson-threaten-to-boycott-next-gop-debate/ar-AAfuhRp?li=AAa0dzB&ocid=ieslice]http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/[Sleezebag]-carson-threaten-to-boycott-next-gop-debate/ar-AAfuhRp?li=AAa0dzB&ocid=ieslice


[Sleezebag], Carson threaten to boycott next GOP debate
Ben Kamisar and Bradford Richardson








"Donald [Sleezebag] and Ben Carson are threatening to skip the next Republican presidential debate unless the format is changed.

The campaigns sent a joint letter Thursday afternoon to CNBC's Washington bureau warning they won’t won't participate in the network’s debate on Oct. 28 in Boulder, Colo., unless it lasts no longer than two hours and includes both opening and closing statements by the candidates."

"

"It's the fairest way to ensure that any candidate has an opportunity to be heard both early and late in the debate and not to rely on the good graces of the moderators," he said.

[Sleezebag], meanwhile, was unhappy with the three-hour length of the CNN debate and wants to ensure that the next contest isn't allowed to drag on."

The uproar started, according to one GOP campaign source familiar with the calls, when CNBC told the campaign representatives that there wouldn't be any opening or closing statements for the contest.

"People realized we got the short end of the stick when the Democrats had a 2 minute opening and a 90 second closing [during their debate], so they had three and a half minutes to a 15 million person audience of an infomercial," the source said.

"They get a commercial, we get ‘The Hunger Games.’ "


 The networks prefer to use the time for debate rather than infomercial. Or maybe the journalists prefer to have the facetime themselves. The frontrunner wants a 120 minute limit. Without his presence, there likely won't be the record tv ratings that allow CNN to charge $150K for a thirty second ad.

While I would find a debate without the presence of the two frontrunners interesting in that it would probably be more issue oriented, and might help us thin the herd, I predict money will talk here, and there will be a two hour debate complete with front runners, opening and closing statements and commercials.

What remains to be seen is if they stick to a 10 candidate limit. That's a lot for debate with 35 minutes of built in statement time. I don't know if they are still doing a 2-tier debate or not. They could split them numerically into something more manageable. Or they could draw an arbitrary line such as 5%. That's the one the fed used to use for matching public funds in a general election.

Oh well. We'll see.

[vonbach]

[Sleezebag], Carson threaten to boycott next GOP debate
Ben Kamisar and Bradford Richardson

In that case they'll just have their own probably. Say what you want at least the usual political theatre
is more interesting this year.

[Buster's Uncle]

Bernie Sanders keeps promise made in private to Sandra Bland’s mother
Yahoo
Michael Walsh  October‎ ‎16‎, ‎2015



Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally in Los Angeles on Oct. 14. (Photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)



In an era when every moment is tweeted and politicized, Bernie Sanders elected not to capitalize on a meaningful meeting with the mother of Sandra Bland.

The chance encounter reportedly took place at East Street Café, a Thai restaurant at Union Station in Washington, D.C., five days before the first Democratic presidential debate.

The Rev. Hannah Adair Bonner, a pastor at St. John’s Church in downtown Houston, wrote in her blog about noticing the Vermont senator at another table while she was eating dinner with Geneva Reed-Veal, whose daughter became a face of the Black Lives Matter campaign following her death in police custody in July.

The pastor said she approached Sanders and asked if he would like to meet Reed-Veal and that their group asked the politician if he would take a picture with them.

“He did not impose upon Ms. Geneva to ask for a picture of his own. He did not use the moment as an opportunity to promote his campaign,” she wrote. “He took no record; he made no statement. He did not try to turn it into a publicity stunt.”

Bonner, who is a Black Lives Matter activist, said she was impressed by everyone’s sincerity during the serendipitous moment.

The Democratic presidential candidate told Reed-Veal that the death of her daughter was inexcusable and promised he would continue to “say her name.” At the debate on Oct. 13 in Las Vegas, Sanders stayed true to his word when answering a question submitted by a law student through Facebook: “Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?”

“Black lives matter,” Sanders said. “The reason those words matter is the African-American community knows that on any given day, some innocent person like Sandra Bland can get into a car and then three days later she’s going to end up dead in jail.”

After this response, Google searches for “Sandra Bland” surged.

Later, Bonner shared photos of their meeting with Sanders on Twitter, still impressed that he did not try to capitalize on, or even mention, the moment.

“He simply made space for a sacred moment and then let it pass without trying to gain anything from it,” Bonner said. “For that, I respect him. For that, I am grateful. That choice may not have made him a very good politician, but it made him a better man.”

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/bernie-sanders-keeps-promise-made-in-private-to-145437157.html


Note the use of an unappealing pic of Senator Sanders with the article, instead of the obvious one:



...This happens constantly in what little coverage I find of him...

[Buster's Uncle]

Six cash-strapped Republican White House hopefuls face tipping point
Reuters
By Michelle Conlin and Grant Smith  49 minutes ago



U.S. Republican presidential candidate and Senator Rand Paul speaks during the Heritage Action for America presidential candidate forum in Greenville, South Carolina on September 18, 2015. REUTERS/Chris Keane



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Half a dozen Republican presidential candidates are edging toward financial crisis, raising the specter that some may be forced to drop out of the sprawling field of contenders.

They all spent more than they took in during the third quarter, according to campaign finance reports filed on Thursday. The six are: Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, former New York Governor George Pataki, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.

Together, they raised $6 million but spent more than $9.5 million during the summer on everything from postage to travel to campaign rallies. All six are trailing badly in the polls.

"They are living on the edge," said Lawrence Noble, former general counsel to the Federal Election Commission."We are getting close to the time when a lot of these candidates are going to say, 'We can't do it, it can't be done,'" said Noble, now a senior attorney with the Campaign Legal Center, a campaign finance non-profit.

Campaigns have tipping points: the moment when a candidate does the math and realizes that he does not have enough money on hand or the prospect of more money from donors to stay in the race. One telling sign is the "burn rate" - jargon for how much a candidate spends versus how much he is raising. If the burn rate is high and donor enthusiasm low, then trouble ensues.

The math is simple, said Austin Barbour, who ran Rick Perry’s fund-raising Super PAC before the former Texas governor dropped out. Barbour is now a senior adviser to the campaign of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

When direct donations to campaigns are lackluster, as in the case of these six candidates, there may not be enough money to cover basic operating costs like travel, staff salaries and office equipment. Those costs are not typically covered by big money Super PACs, which are supposed to operate independently of the campaigns.

“It’s really tough to survive with such little money,” Barbour said. “It puts a lot of pressure on a campaign because no one wants to put their candidate in debt.”


DANGER ZONE

The third quarter reports show the challenges. Any burn rate over 100 percent is considered dangerous by campaign finance experts. Pataki’s was 226 percent, Graham 188, Paul 181, Jindal 144, Huckabee 110 and Santorum 101.



U.S. Republican presidential candidate and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal speaks during the Heritage Action for America presidential candidate forum in Greenville, South Carolina on September 18, 2015. REUTERS/Chris Keane


Of those, Paul and Graham have the most money in the bank, with $2.1 million and $1.7 million respectively, while the rest are money-challenged. Pataki, for instance, had less than $14,000 on hand as of Sept. 30, less than the $17,600 billionaire candidate Donald [Sleezebag] spent on yard signs in the third quarter alone.

The campaigns dismissed the suggestion they were in financial trouble.

Rand Paul's campaign stressed it still had the $2.1 million on hand. A Pataki staffer said his burn rate was just the “cost of a campaign for President.” And the Huckabee campaign said their candidate was experienced at running campaigns on shoestring budgets.

Spokesmen for Santorum, Graham and Jindal did not respond to requests for comment.

To be sure, tight budgets at this point in the race do not mean the campaigns are doomed. A candidate could have a breakout moment, like former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, whose fundraising soared after a good debate performance. Candidates can also lend themselves money, as Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton did when she ran low during the 2008 White House race.



U.S. Republican presidential candidate George Pataki listens as he is introduced at the No Labels Problem Solver Convention in Manchester, New Hampshire October 12, 2015. REUTERS/Brian Snyder


But the Republican candidates are bedeviled by another math problem. There are 14 Republicans vying for their party's nomination for the November 2016 election, more than double the number at this point during the 2012 election.

“The Republican field is way too large, there simply isn’t enough money to go around,” said Noble.

Small donors are the lifeblood of any campaign and candidates will live or die by their ability to tap into a broad base of supporters willing to contribute up to the maximum of $2,700.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who is one of the front-runners in the Republican race, reported nearly 22,000 donors in the last quarter who have given more than $200 so far in the campaign. Bush had 7,300.



U.S. Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham takes the stage to speak at the No Labels Problem Solver Convention in Manchester, New Hampshire October 12, 2015. REUTERS/Brian Snyder


In contrast, Pataki had fewer than 80 donors last quarter; Jindal had under 300; Graham had nearly 650; Santorum under 300, and Huckabee more than 800. Among these five, Paul had the most, with more than 3,500.

The candidates could conceivably win the patronage of a millionaire or billionaire, who could funnel unlimited amounts of money into their Super PAC. But these fund-raising groups are prohibited from carrying out certain campaign activities and are therefore of limited help.

For example, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker had a Super PAC with money in the bank, but after burning through $6 million in three months his campaign's coffers were bare and he was forced to drop out in September.

Perry, who quit the same month, hemorrhaged money and ended the third quarter with just $45,000 on hand. His Super PAC returned $13 million to its donors.

(Reporting By Michelle Conlin, editing by Paul Thomasch and Ross Colvin)

http://news.yahoo.com/six-cash-strapped-republican-white-house-hopefuls-face-225408376.html


By way of perspective, I understand Walker had an even million left when he gave up.

[Rusty Edge]

I've read elsewhere that Rand has $2.1 million. So he's not in trouble yet. He has a lean organization. He does have money coming in. He has been asked to withdrawal and concentrate on keeping his senate seat.

Kasich( who seems to be putting everything into New Hampshire ) and Christie ( who seems to be waiting it out ) aren't doing as well in the polls overall. Maybe they should be spending more so as to improve and make the cut for the next debate. Kasich is going to be a consideration for VP. Whoever wins Ohio wins the election, and he knows how to do that.

True, the field is way overcrowded.

Frankly, I kind of hope that Santorum and Huckabee stay in the race, keeping TheoCon money out of Cruz's pocket.

The others- Pataki, Jindal, and Graham should either bow out now, or "suspend" their campaign until they reach their home states and try to snag a couple of delegates there, and maybe bargain for something with them.

[Buster's Uncle]

Real Time with Bill Maher: Interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) - October 16, 2015 (HBO)

[Buster's Uncle]

Jim Webb drops out of Democratic primary race
Yahoo
Michael Walsh  October‎ ‎20‎, ‎2015



Jim Webb speaks during the first official Democratic debate of the 2016 presidential campaign in Las Vegas on Oct. 13. (Photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)



Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary race Tuesday afternoon.

Webb, a Vietnam veteran and former Navy secretary, withdrew any consideration of being the party’s nominee during a news conference at 1 p.m. ET in Washington, D.C., but said he has not ruled out an independent run.

“It was very difficult to fundraise inside the Democratic Party structure right now,” he said to reporters. “I have no doubt that if I ran as an independent we would have significant financial help from people who want me to run as something other than a Democrat.”

Fox News, which broke the story of Webb’s decision to withdraw his candidacy earlier in the day, reported that he has become disillusioned by how campaign financing has, in his view, pushed both major political parties to extreme positions.

During the Tuesday press conference, he said that the very nature of American democracy is under siege by how the current power structure finances both political parties.

“Our political candidates are being pulled to the extremes. They are increasingly out of step with the people they are supposed to serve,” he said.

Webb, 69, said that polls show a great number of Americans consider themselves independents rather than Republicans nor Democrats.

“I’ve said for years that the Democratic Party needs to get back to its more traditional message. I’m not seeing that in a way that I wish that I could see it,” he said.

Webb said he will keep talking to people who have been encouraging him to launch an independent campaign.

“We’ll just have to see what happens next,” he said.

During the Democratic primary debate on Oct. 13 in Las Vegas, he stood out as noticeably more moderate than his main competition for the party’s nod, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Citing an op-ed in which Webb called affirmative action “state-sponsored racism,” CNN anchor and debate moderator Anderson Cooper asked Webb if he is out of step with where the Democratic Party is now.

His debate performance did not make a considerable impact on his poll numbers, and many liberal viewers ended the night feeling that he came across as simply too conservative to win the primary. He acknowledged this state of affairs Tuesday.

“I fully accept that my views on many issues are not compatible with the power structure and the nominating base of the Democratic Party,” he said.

Webb’s campaign had already revealed that he was considering an independent run on Monday. He said that this turn of events does not diminish his concerns for the challenges facing the U.S. or his belief that he would provide the best leadership.

In early July, when Webb announced his candidacy, he argued that fair debate is often drowned out by the huge sums of money funneled to candidates — both directly and indirectly.

“We need to shake the hold of these shadow elites on our political process,” he said at the time. “Our elected officials need to get back to the basics of good governance and to remember that their principal obligations are to protect our national interests abroad and to ensure a level playing field here at home, especially for those who otherwise have no voice in the corridors of power.”

This electoral ailment, to which Webb apparently hoped to be the antidote, appears to have been the death knell of his campaign.

He has had trouble raising enough money to pose a legitimate threat to either Clinton or Sanders. A recent filing, reported by Politico, revealed that Webb had raised only $696,972.18 and had $316,765.34 cash on hand. Contrast that with the $29,921,653.91 raised by Clinton or the $26,216,430.38 raised by Sanders.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/jim-webb-plans-to-drop-out-of-democratic-primary-153500314.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Biden: I’m not running for president in 2016
Yahoo
Olivier Knox  Chief Washington Correspondent  ‎October‎ ‎21‎, ‎2015


Ending months of will-he, won’t-he speculation, Vice President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he will not be running for president in 2016.

Biden said he had always known that the process of grieving for his late son Beau might close “the window on mounting a realistic campaign for president.”

“I’ve concluded it has closed,” Biden declared in the Rose Garden of the White House, with his wife Dr Jill Biden and President Barack Obama standing at his side.

The vice president’s hastily announced remarks capped months of speculation about whether he could build the kind of fundraising and get-out-the-vote structure required of successful modern campaigns.

The announcement came one day before the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, testified before the Republican-run House of Representatives Committee looking into the deadly Benghazi attacks of 2012.

Biden, who has spent his entire adult life in politics and made two failed runs for the presidency, pledged to keep defending Obama’s legacy and fighting for the middle class and warned Democratic candidates against running away from the the president.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/biden-im-not-running-for-president-in-2016-162514730.html

[Buster's Uncle]

...Now, I concluded weeks ago that the mass media group mind has A.) a pretty bad case of ABH, and B.) is pretty unanimously on a spectrum between thinking Senator Sanders is bad for business and/or unelectable.  Between the subtly-but-consistently hostile coverage of Sanders and all-but-openly-begging Biden to run, it seems to add up.  I wonder how this development forcing them to choose between two candidates they don't want will inform future coverage.

With the hopeless clown college on the right, this is shaping up to be a battle of the midgets, no matter who wins the respective nominations.  That was already a tiresome situation two presidential cycles ago...

[Rusty Edge]

I still think Rubio would make a great general election candidate, and that Kasich would make a good president. Of course, without the herd thinning this year, I don't see Rubio getting that opportunity.

I could see Kasich getting the nod as a VP, to deliver Ohio and the electoral college, and to lend credibility to an outsider candidate. But that's the only way I can see Kasich eventually getting into the White House. He's not very exciting as a speaker and candidate.


I'm glad that Biden has finally reached a decision. I can't really blame him. The death of anyone so close has a way of making everything else seem pointless. Even my anti-Hillary passion, if I were in his shoes.