Tag: Hillary Clinton

Book Discussion – Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign

Jonathan Allen covered the White House and the 2016 campaign for Bloomberg News. Amie Parnes is the White House correspondent for The Hill. In 2015, they published a book titled HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton.

Allen and Parnes covered the Clinton campaign starting in 2014, planning to write another book about it. In their introduction, they explain that they thought they’d be writing about the election of a woman for the first time as President. Instead, they, like most of us, were shocked and now we have a book that chronicles infighting, mistakes and strategic errors. It’s: Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign

It’s getting a lot of press. Matt Taibi in Rolling Stone is unforgiving:

Allen and Parnes here quoted a Clinton aide who jokingly summed up Clinton’s real motivation: “I would have had a reason for running,” one of her top aides said, “or I wouldn’t have run.”

The beleaguered Clinton staff spent the better part of two years trying to roll this insane tautology – “I have a reason for running because no one runs without a reason” – into the White House. It was a Beltway take on the classic Descartes formulation: “I seek re-election, therefore I am… seeking re-election.”

— www.rollingstone.com/…

Even if you detest Taibi, which doubtless many here do, it’s worth paying attention to one of his conclusions:

The real protagonist of this book is a Washington political establishment that has lost the ability to explain itself or its motives to people outside the Beltway.

Ron Elving over at NPR reviewed the book more sympathetically:

‘Shattered’ Picks Through The Broken Pieces Of Hillary Clinton’s Dream

There is no Big Reveal, no shocking secret answer. Instead we get a slow-building case against the concept and execution of the Clinton campaign, with plenty of fault falling squarely on the candidate herself.

Far from a juggernaut, the campaign we see in these pages is plagued with division, unease and anxiety practically from the outset. When things go right, it only means they are soon to go terribly wrong. Win a primary, lose a caucus. Quash a rumor, see three more go viral. Close one wound and find another torn open again. […]

The Clinton we see here seems uniquely qualified for the highest office and yet acutely ill-suited to winning it. Something about her nature, at its best and its worst, continually inhibits her. Her struggle to escape her caricature only contributes to it.

— www.npr.org/…

Business Insider has a round-up of staffers who are challenging the depiction of infighting in the campaign. Politico is reporting the same. The NY Times review and the book discuss Clinton’s own puzzlement at why white working-class voters, who were loyal to her in 2008 weren’t on board this time around. The WaPo review focuses on the description of election night, when Obama called Hillary urging her to concede and not drag it out.

Basically, everyone’s talking about it.

I’ll chime in with my own view and then leave it to comments. I still haven’t finished the book, which seems a bit gossipy to me. But I followed along during the campaign to know the arc.

My own take is that some of the mistakes being chronicled are overblown. Presidential campaigns are insanely fast-moving affairs where inevitably, mistakes are made and bad news comes out. Enormous teams are put together at short notice, and sometimes they fuck up. People have personality conflicts and everyone’s working in a pressure cooker, the stakes are high, tempers flare, and dog-eat-dog inclinations are indulged by some. The Trump campaign was a master class of ineptitude, infighting, scandal, distaste and overall disaster.

Basically, I don’t think campaign mis-steps made the difference. In the end, I think the crucial difference was that this was an anti-establishment cycle (in terms of the Beltway establishment) and it was going to be an uphill fight for someone like Hillary Clinton. Some missteps made much earlier snowballed. High level aides okayed the paid speeches and private e-mail server, for reasons that seemed very reasonable when the decisions were made, but then turned into a nightmare when the anti-establishment climate reified. There was likely some foreign meddling, and a candidate on the other side who did his best to outflank Clinton by running as a (fake) populist. Clinton’s natural inclination towards moderation and the center, which should have been a strength, became a weakness, and the industrial mid-west was torn away. It was probably a mistake to not show up in Michigan and Wisconsin, but Pennsylvania was lost though resources were poured into it.

Personally, I regret Hillary Clinton’s loss. I thought she was the most prepared and competent candidate in 2008. I thought much the same in 2016, with several reservations. The Trump administration’s vindictive meanness and ineptitude should shut up all the people who said there was no difference between the candidates.

After all that though, the question we’re left with is why it was so close.

The blame for that cannot be placed on Hillary Clinton’s shoulders alone. Or indeed on her campaign, which was effective on many traditional measures. In a very real sense, this election was a bipartisan indictment of Washington by voters. Yes, not the majority, but we are all adults and knew what the electoral college was going into this.

In my view, to win in the future we have to focus more on local/state level politics rather than the Presidency exclusively. Income inequality is the biggest issue in this country, we have to address it head on, without reservation and our messaging should reflect that. It is actually where the fight is, though they try to hide it, the Republican objective is to maintain the current gross levels of income inequality. We have to show people we are not going to stand for that.

Bernie’s the most popular politician in US. Favorability at 58% among Women.

The Harvard Harris poll sampled over 2000 voters across the country last week (April 14-17).

Sanders is viewed favorably by 57 percent of registered voters, according to data from a Harvard-Harris survey provided exclusively to The Hill. Sanders is the only person in a field of 16 Trump administration officials or congressional leaders included in the survey who is viewed favorably by a majority of those polled. […]

Only 32 percent have a negative view of Sanders, including nearly two-thirds of Republicans.

— thehill.com/…

It’s important to note that the survey looked only at current politicians, not those who aren’t in office today. Obama’s approval rating is also in the high 50s.

Equally interesting is the fact that Bernie’s support is very broad and crosses gender, race and age lines. He enjoys high levels of support among Women, African American and Latino voters. Those demographics favor him more than younger voters who are often assumed to be the overwhelming source of support for Bernie. But older voters support Bernie as well:

Sanders also has majority support among those over the age of 50.

There continue to be concerted efforts to erase the diversity of Bernie’s supporters on DKos and off it. Several diarists have continued the practice they adopted during the primaries, of referring to Bernie’s supporters as “Bernie Bros”, in a blatant attempt to paint all his supporters as white men. Kos has been providing fuel for this narrative throughout, and he continues to do it today, on and off this site:

“I would say that I’m focused on building this inclusive party of tomorrow. There was a contingent of Bernie bros that still exist, that are still whining and crying and making demands, instead of putting their words into actions,” — www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Bernie also enjoys 80% support among Democrats. Yes, that’s despite his not being a Democrat. Apparently, voters don’t seem to care, possibly because most voters are right there with him. Gallup’s party affiliation poll from last month found 40% of Americans consider themselves independents, far higher than the 30% who say they’re Democrats, and 26% who are Republicans. Most Democrats have friends, neighbors and relatives who aren’t, and they understand that values matter more than party affiliation.

Interestingly, Bernie’s name recognition (85%) is higher than that of Vice-President Mike Pence (80%), though lower than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (95% each).

Here’s a view of the 10 politicians with the highest favorables:

Politician Favorable unfavorable Net Fav
Bernie Sanders 57% 32% 25%
Mike Pence 44% 41% 3%
Donald Trump 44% 51% -7%
Hillary Clinton 42% 53% -11%
Elizabeth Warren 38% 32% 6%
Paul Ryan 34% 47% -13%
neil Gorsuch 34% 29% 5%
Nancy pelosi 31% 48% -17%
Chuck Schumer 27% 35% -8%
Rex tillerson 27% 31% -4%

It’s noteworthy that the next highest net favorables are for Elizabeth Warren, part of the Democratic wing which leans left on both economic and social issues.

The table collapses “very favorable” and “favorable” into one number. The rest of the cabinet and advisors like Kushner, Bannon languished in the low 20s or below for approval. Bannon had the worst numbers, 16% favorable, 45% unfavorable, for -29% favorability. Mitch McConnell wasn’t that far ahead, with 23% favorable, 42% unfavorable, or -19%.

Sourced from the results in the Harvard/Harris poll (link to PDF download).

— Also posted at DailyKos and Medium.

If we want to build state parties, we should bypass DNC/JFCs and give to states directly.

I’ll cut to the recommendation first: If you’re a donor, and wish to support state and local parties, then cut the check to them directly. Don’t send funds to the DNC or to Joint Fundraising Committees. If Democrats want to have a 50 state strategy, we should give directly to state parties.

I’ll go into this in detail below the fold, but here’s the gist. I looked at the flows of contributions during the 2016 campaign between the biggest Joint Fundraising Committee (which raised over $530 million), the DNC and state parties. Donations made to the Joint Fundraising Committee end up primarily with presidential campaigns, back at the DNC, or redirected to states that are a priority for the presidential race.

Only a very small amount will actually make it down to non-battleground states to express a 50 state strategy. Fundraisers working for presidential campaigns feel they’ve brought in the money and should be able to direct it where they believe it will best help them. The DNC assisted in the effort.

If we believe that state parties should be strengthened, if we trust they know best how to organize and run campaigns in their states, if we want a 50 state strategy, then we should give directly to the state parties. Take what presidential campaign fund-raisers tell you about helping state parties with a grain of salt. Their priority is always going to be the top of the ticket, the presidential campaign.

If you’re in a state that you think don’t needs help, adopt a different state and give to them (both time and money). My “adopted state” is Montana.

Why am I bothering with this?

Here’s what got me going on this. Back in May and July of last year, Politico published a couple of articles about how little money state parties were getting from Joint Fundraising Committees they’d signed up for.

I did a diary at the time: Dear state party: We’re wiring $1 million, wire 900k of it to the DNC today (wink wink nudge nudge). The story was about the Hillary Victory Fund, a Joint Fundraising Committee (JFC) set up between the presidential campaign, the DNC and state parties. The joint effort allowed the committee to ask a donor for over $700,000 in total. This was accomplished by pooling together all their contribution limits for state, national parties and the presidential campaign. Several donors did in fact make such large donations, and at least some thought (or said) it would be going to state parties or “down-ticket”:

Then he [George Clooney] told Todd, “The overwhelming amount of money that we’re raising, and it is a lot, but the overwhelming amount of the money that we’re raising is not going to Hillary to run for president, it’s going to the down-ticket. — www.politico.com/…

I decided to take another look at this after questions were raised during the KS-4 special election. James Thompson’s campaign wanted the state party to kick in $20k, but they had a lot of other competing priorities. There was some discussion about DNC/JFC contributions and how small they ended up being. They were also meant for the 2016 campaign, but anyway, this is what prompted me to take another look.

So, what did I find?

I used data from the reports on transfer to/from affiliated committees at the FEC for the following committees/parties:

  • Hillary Victory Fund: C00586537
  • DNC Services Corp./DEM. NAT’L COMMITTEE: C00010603

These reports have information on what state parties received from the DNC and JFC, and what they sent to the DNC. The DNC and state parties can legally transfer unlimited funds amongst themselves. The JFC disbursed funds to the state parties based on a pre-agreed allocation formula. Donors who hit their contribution limits for the presidential campaign or DNC would see surplus funds sent to state parties.

Screen_Shot_2017-04-13_at_2.59.59_PM.png
Joint Fundraising Committee disbursements

The Joint Fundraising Committee (JFC) raised $530 million during the cycle. 27.4% of that went to pay for expenses, much of which was advertising that was similar to the presidential campaign and helped drive small contributions (not subject to limits).

$378 million (71.4%) was distributed the committees. Of that, 41% ($158 million) went to the presidential campaign committee which had also raised another $408 million on its own. A further 28% ($107 million) went to the DNC. That left 31% ($122 million) for the state parties.

$122 million sounds pretty good. What’s even better is that $94 million went to the 44 non-battleground states. And then something else happened. The DNC recalled $85 million from the states. That left $37 million with the states. Whoa, doesn’t sound as good.

HVF-DNC.png
Six battleground states got most the money from the JFC and DNC.

Then, the DNC distributed funds to state parties again, and they distributed more than the $85 million they’d taken out. They sent $114 million down to the states. That sounds really good!

But here’s the catch. The redistribution favored the 6 presidential battleground states disproportionately (FL, PA, OH, NC, NV and VA). These 6 battleground states net over $96 million from the DNC and JFC combined. That’s over $16 million per state. The remaining 44 state parties (plus territories) received only $55 million. That’s $1.1 million per state. A fifteen to one disparity. If we think about it another way, the six battleground states between them had 80 House seats at stake. That’s $1.2 million per house seat. The remaining 355 voting house seats got $155,000 each.

CATEGORY RECEIVED FROM JFC LESS TRANSFERRED TO DNC PLUS TRANSFERS FROM DNC
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN $158,200,000 $158,200,000 $158,200,000
DNC $107,533,318 $192,709,118 $68,460,077
BATTLEGROUND STATE PARTY  $18,580,413  $12,001,913  $95,566,561
STATE PARTY  $93,780,949  $15,183,649  $55,868,042
TOTAL $378,094,680 $378,094,680 $378,094,680

PS. Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin should have been in that mix of battleground, but that’s hindsight. Also, not every state participated in the joint fundraising with JFC, only 38 of them did. The DNC also transferred funds to states that weren’t in the JFC. Bernie’s JFC sent 250k to the DNC, I did not include that in this calculation.

What does this tell us? Basically, that the DNC and the Joint Fundraising Committee were focused on the presidential campaign. Heck, that is actually the DNC’s job and the Joint Fund-raising committee was called “Hillary Victory Fund”. It wasn’t called “50 state strategy, down-ballot candidates Victory Fund”. So it should be obvious what the intention is.

However, claims were made that donations would help build state parties and down-ballot candidates. At least when we follow the money, that doesn’t seem to be true.

As an aside, the same thing was happening on the Republican end as well. Kansas Republicans got $1.35 million from their JFC (Trump Victory), and they sent $1.37 million back up to the RNC.

Which states got the least?

I’ll share the complete data set I was working with in a comment after a couple of days. But here are a bunch of states that were part of the Joint Fundraising Committee and received money from the Joint Fundraising Committee, only to send it up to the DNC almost immediately.  They were essentially used as a pass through account.

STATE FROM JFC SENT TO DNC LEFT WITH DNC LATER SENT NET NET AS % OF JFC
MISSOURI  $3,043,700  $3,033,700  $10,000  $693,142  $703,142 23%
INDIANA  $3,015,400  $2,947,000  $68,400  $634,688  $703,088 23%
NEW MEXICO  $2,494,300  $2,494,300  $-  $649,690  $649,690 26%
TEXAS  $2,993,000  $2,978,000  $15,000  $523,625  $538,625 18%
LOUISIANA  $3,018,100  $3,008,100  $10,000  $424,981  $434,981 14%
OREGON  $3,024,500  $3,014,500  $10,000  $339,004  $349,004 12%
UTAH  $3,011,700  $3,001,700  $10,000  $328,576  $338,576 11%
MISSISSIPPI  $3,025,700  $3,015,700  $10,000  $313,120  $323,120 11%
KANSAS  $2,496,300  $2,496,300  $-  $317,766  $317,766 13%
ALASKA  $3,005,700  $2,995,700  $10,000  $298,125  $308,125 10%
OKLAHOMA  $3,013,100  $3,003,100  $10,000  $296,830  $306,830 10%
NEW JERSEY  $2,509,800  $2,509,800  $-  $300,009  $300,009 12%
MONTANA  $2,996,900  $2,986,900  $10,000  $289,273  $299,273 10%
WYOMING  $3,023,500  $2,970,000  $53,500  $225,933  $279,433 9%
MASSACHUSETTS  $3,017,800  $3,005,800  $12,000  $260,809  $272,809 9%
WEST VIRGINIA  $3,015,400  $3,005,400  $10,000  $262,012  $272,012 9%

Many of them have small populations, are deep red/blue and didn’t have a senate race. But they did participated in the JFC and their contribution limits helped raise high-dollar amounts from donors. And these state parties need the money. Let’s take Kansas for example, they raised about $800k from other sources for this cycle. Their total operating budget was $1.2 million, which was better than Kansas Republicans at $423k, but if they’d been able to keep a larger portion of the $3 million they initially received, the party would be transformed.

Mississippi, is an even more extreme example. Mississippi Democrats raised $140k total, their total operating expenses were $454k. That’s for the entire 2016 cycle, start to finish. If Mississippi had been able to keep the $3 million initially sent to them by the JFC, the state party would have had ten times the money they did. They might have been able to run more voter registration drives, help with local campaigns, groom future candidates, support volunteers on the ground. Instead, they sent it back to the DNC, who in turn sent it to Ohio because it was a priority for the presidential campaign.

Yes, this ignores many things. The presidential campaign and DNC spent on technology that arguably helped all. The DNC funded the convention, education and training for state parties. A presidential campaign has coat-tails and presidential campaigns help turn out the vote for down-ballot candidates. But did that really happen in Mississippi?

PS. Let’s avoid the pie fight in this diary, that was not the intent here. When I write a pie-fight diary you’ll know it.

— Cross-posted at DailyKos | @subirgrewal

The Deification of Hillary Clinton: Sarah Jones reviews Susan Bordo’s book.

Susan Bordo’s book “The Destruction of Hillary Clinton” (and an extract published in the Guardian), has been discussed extensively on DKos previously here, here, here and in several other less heavily commented diaries.

Sarah Jones has a review of the book up at TNR which is worth a read.

She begins:

Susan Bordo is right about one thing: Sexism is real and Hillary Clinton has been subjected to it. The spectre of Hillary-the-nasty-woman is persistent and familiar—but it’s only one of the many reasons Clinton lost her latest White House bid. The story of her defeat is a complicated one, encompassing rising anti-establishment fervor, campaign error, and yes, prejudice. But you wouldn’t know it from reading Bordo’s new book.

Sarah goes on to comment on various aspects of Bordo’s book, including the:

  • scapegoating of millennials
  • unwillingness to acknowledge Clinton ran as a pragmatic realist and knowingly took positions to appeal to Republican voters turned-off by Trump
  • claim that Monica Lewinsky “has steadfastly insisted that there was nothing abusive (or even disrespectful) about Bill Clinton’s behavior.”
  • attempt to minimize the “super-predator” speech by claiming it was about “older drug dealers”
  • studious disregard for “moments when the candidate seemed to misread the public mood—such as her repeated claim that “America is already great.” ”

And yes, she addresses Bordo’s focus on tweets by “Bernie Bros” (a pejorative invented by Clinton partisans as a sequel to 2008’s “Obama Boys”):

To Bordo, rude Twitter users prove Sanders’s inadequate commitment to the left. Bordo never asks if her one-sided framing is evidence that she lives in a bubble, and what a telling oversight. Female Sanders supporters would have told her that Clinton backers are also guilty of online harassment—and that the label “Bernie Bro” has been deployed to erase the very existence of left-wing women, drowning out valid critiques of Clinton’s platform.

Bordo’s book is having its fifteen minutes, and perhaps we should perhaps just let that pass.

If it weren’t for this observation:

It crystallizes an emerging tendency in liberal discourse: the notion that critics of Hillary Clinton are either trolls or naive children. […]

Destruction offers no real lessons for Democrats. It’s a hagiography, written to soothe a smarting party. That is precisely why they must ignore it: There is no path forward that does not account for past mistakes. Hillary Clinton’s destruction was at least partly her own making, and if Democrats want to start winning elections it’s time they saw the truth.

Sarah’s review is well worth a read.

“The Destruction of Hillary Clinton” has few lessons and heaps of condescension.

Susan Bordo published an extract from her forthcoming book in the Guardian, under the title: The destruction of Hillary Clinton: sexism, Sanders and the millennial feminists.

A quote from the piece:

They didn’t witness the complicated story of how the 1994 crime bill came to be passed or the origins of the “super-predator” label (not coined by Hillary and not referring to black youth, but rather to powerful, older drug dealers).

Go ahead, watch the video:

https://twitter.com/Chemzes/status/848917896705212416

Your lying ears are probably telling you Hillary Clinton just said “they’re often the kinds of kids that are called super-predators”.

That’s because you’re an empty-headed, inexperienced, young millennial who doesn’t have the benefit of Bordo’s spidey-senses. Which is why you don’t know “kids” is actually a secret code-word for “powerful, older drug dealers”. Silly you.

Sanders’s branding of Hillary as establishment, however, seemed vastly unjust and corrosively divisive to me, especially when delivered to a generation that knew very little about her beyond what Bernie told them.

Not only are you too dumb to understand what “kids” means when Hillary Clinton says it, you’re also largely ignorant about politics in this country over the past 25 years. This generation doesn’t know much about politics or the Clintons and so abjectly failed to recognize HRC as the superior political product.

It’s really quite lamentable how impressionable and stupid we are, to fall for the rock-star charisma of a 75 year old grandpa, and that too only eight years after we fell for the rock-star charisma of a 47 year old black guy:

As I watched Sanders enchant the crowds, it was something of a deja vu experience to see a charismatic male politician on stage telling women which issues are and aren’t progressive.

The entire extract is meant to tell Bernie supporters they’re rubes without any agency of their own, incapable of discriminating between candidates. Apparently, millennial feminists weighed down by student debt were seduced by Bernie’s charisma, not his steadfast call for public colleges to be as affordable as when he (and Bordo and Clinton) attended.

On the off-chance that someone remembered there were substantive policy differences between Bernie and Hillary, Bordo is standing by to explain how silly we are to think that should matter.

As Jonathan Cohn wrote, in May: “If Sanders is the standard by which you’re going to decide whether a politician is a progressive, then almost nobody from the Democratic party would qualify. Take Sanders out of the equation, and suddenly Clinton looks an awful lot like a mainstream progressive.”

Let me paraphrase Jonathan Cohn’s prescription, quoted admiringly by Bordo:

First, forget that strong tea you tasted yesterday. We’re going to give you this weak tea, and just to make sure your little young heads don’t get all confused about it. The weak tea is what you get, and you will and should like it.

Earlier in the piece, Bordo is incensed that Bernie claimed the mantle of “progressive” from HRC, going into a long explanation of what “progressive” has meant over the years. And a couple of paragraphs later, she admits that you can only get Hillary to “mainstream progressive” if you remove Bernie from the data-set.

There’s a rank stench of paternalism, yes paternalism, wafting from this piece.

Bordo knows what is progressive and the silly Bernie supporters seduced by his “charisma” know less than nothing, we were just easy marks for a slick Burlington salesman. That paternalism might explain the next phenomenon that catches her attention:

too many young Democrats made it very clear (in newspaper and internet interviews, in polls, and in the mainstream media) that they were only voting for Hillary Clinton as the lesser of two evils, “holding their noses”, tears still streaming down their faces over the primary defeat of the person they felt truly deserved their votes. Some didn’t vote at all.

Ah yes, the crime of insufficient enthusiasm, which all Bernie supporters are forever guilty of. Of course, this couldn’t have anything to do with the candidate, it’s a product of Bernie supporters’ inherent moral failings, along with their youth, ignorance and inexperience as explained above.

This whole line of thinking is so ridiculous that even Bordo manages to lose the plot:

He was the champion of the working class (conveniently ignoring that black and white women were members, and that their issues were also working class issues)

Yes, for once I agree with her. Working class issues are indeed issues that impact black and white women, and all working people. Bernie reminded us of this throughout the campaign. For example, in his announcement speech:

Now is the time for millions of working families to come together, to revitalize American democracy, to end the collapse of the American middle class and to make certain that our children and grandchildren are able to enjoy a quality of life that brings them health, prosperity, security and joy – and that once again makes the United States the leader in the world in the fight for economic and social justice, for environmental sanity and for a world of peace.

Or when his campaign developed a comprehensive position on racial justice (before HRC’s did). Those are all reasons his campaign spoke to me, and why I knew he was more “progressive” than HRC. Jonathan Cohn’s attempt to adjust the curve and make HRC a “mainstream progressive” wasn’t compelling during the primary. Bordo echoing him a year later won’t do it either.

HRC had an opportunity to join the Congressional Progressive Caucus during her eight year senate career. It counts several dozen representatives as members. She did not.

Which allows me to remark on another prejudice that Bordo has managed to imbibe:

if Clinton had more support from the Democratic party, that was due in large part to the relationships she had cultivated over the years, working with others – something Sanders was not particularly good at.

By the way, that is the same CPC that Bernie helped found when he arrived in the House. So much for not being “particularly good at” working well with others. It’s also worth noting that the CPC overlaps significantly with the Congressional Black Caucus.

The fact is, HRC is a relatively “conservative” Democrat who inhabits a space between the right (on economic issues) and the left (on social issues). During her ascent (as part of a power couple) to the height of political power in our country, she had to make hard political choices, and there were reasons for making those choices. Some of them had to do with her priorities and what she believed, others with the circumstances. For instance, while serving as a board member at Walmart:

Fellow board members and company executives, who have not spoken publicly about her role at Wal-Mart, say Mrs. Clinton used her position to champion personal causes, like the need for more women in management and a comprehensive environmental program, despite being Wal-Mart’s only female director, the youngest and arguably the least experienced in business. On other topics, like Wal-Mart’s vehement anti-unionism, for example, she was largely silent, they said.

HRC was appointed to the board while her husband was governor of Arkansas (where Walmart is headquartered), to address the criticism that the board was composed entirely of white men. While in that role, she advocated for women in managerial roles, but not for rank and file working class women at Walmart who would have benefited from a union.

Some of those choices have been personally taxing for Hillary. For instance, her support for the Welfare Reform act caused a long-lasting rift with Marian Wright Edelman that has never been repaired.

In the end, Bordo’s long essay boils down to, us young ones don’t know what Hillary Clinton had to go through. If we accept that argument, then why not make it in defense of Lindsey Graham? Do we really know what Lindsey Graham had to go through, why he made the political compromises he did? Maybe we should cut him some slack and vote for him for president? Of course that’s a bad idea because much as there is to admire about Graham, his politics don’t align with ours, which is why we’re not enthusiastic about the prospect of voting for him.

The sad fact is that HRC was the wrong candidate for 2016. This was an anti-establishment cycle and she was the establishment candidate. She would have been the establishment candidate with or without Bernie. Without Bernie in the primary, her campaign might have made an even stronger pitch for suburban voters, by down-playing progressive economic issues. Would that have enthused millennial feminists?

There is much to admire in Hillary’s career and life, and even her two unsuccessful campaigns. Appreciating that does not require infantalizing those who supported Bernie as Bordo does.

Empire State of Mind: Yes, New York can FeelTheBern!

Map_of_New_York_congressional_districts_from_2013_to_2022.jpgWelcome to New York! The state so nice, it was covered in ice (until 22,000 years ago).

NY_Congressional_Districts_110th_Congress.pngTo your left you can see what the map of NY’s congressional districts looked like in 2008. If you look up, you’ll see the current CDs scraping the sky. We have 27 districts. Howaboutdat!

12 of our 27 districts are in New York City (5-16 roughly speaking).

Did you know that every faucet in NYC serves the champagne of tap waters? And they run 24×7.

So what is New York about?

We’ve got Niagara Falls (so named by the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois), we’ve got the Finger Lakes (best Riesling in the country!), the Adirondacks (hike the High Peaks!), and the Catskills (Nobody puts baby in a corner! and Woodstock!). We’ve got Lake George (Andiatarocte to the Mohawk), Lake Placid (John Brown is buried here but his soul keeps marching on), the Thousand Islands (Manitouana to the Haudenosaunee), West Point and the Hudson River. The Mohican tribe called the Hudson the Muhheakunnetuk, or “river that flows two ways”. That’s because the lower half is virtually flat (2ft elevation at Troy), making it a tidal estuary sitting in a fjord. The Hudson is also called a “drowned river”, the rising tide sends salt water all the way up to Poughkeepsie, 75 miles north of NYC! And yes Virginia, we have fjords in New York, mother nature carved out some skyscrapers for us too! Alexander Hamilton died on the banks of the Hudson. We’ve also got some of the best public beaches in the world, plus the Hamptons!

Oh yeah, almost forgot, we also have New York City. That means we’ve got Central Park, Van Cortlandt park, Prospect Park, Alley Pond Park has the oldest tree in New York, it’s 400 years old. We’ve got Hell’s Kitchen, Washington Heights, and Harlem, which used to be the Dutch village of Haarleem, just as the city itself was New Amsterdam before it was New York, and it was Manhattan to the Lenape before that. We’ve got a county for Kings, and a county for Queens, two baseball teams, two basketball teams, two airports (three if you count Newark, five if you count Teeterboro and Westchester) five boroughs, and I’m sure we have hobbits, because Frodo Lives!. We’ve got the Empire State Building, the Verrazano Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, a bridge (renamed) for RFK, the Throgs Neck Bridge and the Whitestone Bridge and a bridge for Ed Koch. The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority is a front for the Men in Black. We’ve got Times Square, Broadway, the West Village, the East Village, Chelsea, the Bowery, Madison Ave, Fifth Ave, the Avenue of the Americas, the meatpacking district and Soho. We’ve got the place where Lincoln gave the speech that sent him to the White House, and after that we built Union Square, Grant’s Tomb, and Grand Army Plaza. We’ve got Loisaida, and Alphabet City, Sugar Hill and Spanish Harlem, we’ve got hipsters and hasidim in Williamsburg, Greenpoint used to be Polish now it’s condos, Bay Ridge is still Italian, and Bayside used to be but the Koreans are moving in. Flushing is Asian and Astoria is still kinda Greek Opa!, Elmhurst’s little public library has books in dozens of languages and Jackson Heights has the rest, the Russians are in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn Heights is genteel and Park Slope has valet parking for strollers. The longshoremen are long gone from Red Hook, Bushwick is still edgy, Bed-Stuy is gentrifying and East New York may someday too. We’ve got Columbia, NYU, Cooper Union and FIT, CUNY (25 colleges, 400,000 students), Fordham and the New School (Bernie’s an alum, it’s a socialist utopia in the den of Mammon and Senator Bob Kerrey was once it’s president). We had Zika and Ebola, and everyone still rides the subway! Coz you only live once.

You name it, we got it. And I’m not even going to start on the art, or the literature, or the music, or the fashion, or the money.

We’ve sent a half dozen presidents to DC (you’re welcome America). Grover Cleveland was sworn in twice, but he won the popular vote three times! Teddy Roosevelt had the best result of any third-party candidate in a Presidential election, plus he was fit as a Bull Moose. We sent Franklin Delano Roosevelt to rescue the country from the Great Depression and you liked him so much you elected him four times! Then you had to amend the constitution to make sure no one ever did that again.

And I’m leaving out a lot of stuff so we can begin to…

Talk politics!

Both candidates can claim NY as home. Hillary relocated to Westchester. Bernie was born in New York. He left, but we forgive him for that. Brooklyn had the Dodgers back then, three baseball teams! So you could say we attract and produce the best. It’s a big state though, and we do have our share of idiots. Sorry for Drumpf (and Peter King)!

The last time Hillary Clinton ran for general election in New York was November 2006, her last primary was February 2008. Bernie Sanders hasn’t lived in New York since 1968. He doesn’t know subway tokens are history! But we love him anyway, he reminds us of so many opinionated, passionate New Yorkers we know.

Lots has changed in New York since 2008, and we’re going to have a debate in a week, a key question is whether the candidates can tailor their message for NY. New Yorkers have finely tuned bullshit detectors, pandering won’t help either candidate. It has to be from the gut.

The state is typically divided into two segments. Upstate is anything north of Westchester/Dutchess counties. Downstate is anything to do with New York City. But I’m going use a three part division, NYC, NYC suburbs and Upstate. That makes a lot more sense to me when thinking of New York in political terms.

Virtually every major New York politician has endorsed Hillary and she can count on their organizations. Bernie has an uphill struggle, but a very large number of dedicated volunteers and supporters who can help him bridge the gap.

Broad strokes, Bernie’s got a good chance to run away with New York. Depends on how quickly he can introduce himself to NYers. Upstate is pretty much his for the asking. The suburbs are probably out of his reach. Winning New York City will depend on whether he can hit the right notes for the city’s issues.

I’m going to look at 2008 primary results as a base and make some projections using them. In 2008, New York went for Hillary:

VOTES DELEGATES
HILLARY 1,068,496 139
OBAMA 751,019 93

Obama won only 3 congressional districts back then. They were the old CD6 (South-East Queens), CD10 (Central Brooklyn) and CD11 (Central Brooklyn). These roughly correspond to today’s CD5, CD8 and CD9. All three of those districts are majority African American. He lost Harlem/Upper Manhattan (old CD15, current CD13) 53-47.  That’s Charlie Rangel’s district (he’s my rep), it’s 30% Black, 25% White, 5% Asian, 8% Mixed and a whopping 35% Other. In reality 55% of it is Hispanic.

Obama did very poorly in upstate rural/industrial areas (mid 30s). He didn’t do much better in Nassau (lots of white flight here) and Suffolk (rural). He hit the 40s in the Northern suburbs (Westchester, Putnam etc).

Broad brush, I expect:

  • Rural counties to flip from Hillary to Bernie.
  • Cities hit by industrial decline to go for Bernie (Buffalo, Rochester, Troy)
  • I think Hillary’s strength is limited to Suffolk, Upper East Side, Westchester, Staten Island and possibly, just possibly Harlem, central Brooklyn.

The complete 2008 results at Congressional District are at The Green Papers, you can also view them by county and by congressional district at elections.ny.gov.

Comparing voter registration figures between November 2015 and April 2016, the news doesn’t look good for Hillary. Three district now have between 14,000 and 22,000 fewer registered Democrats. They are:

  • CD7: Nydia Velazquez (LES, Chinatown, Brooklyn waterfront)
  • CD8: Hakeem Jeffries (Central and S-E Brooklyn)
  • CD9: Yvette Clarke (Central and South Brooklyn)

The last two are districts we would expect to go for Hillary. CD7 depends on the Hispanic vote, we’ll talk about that a bit more when we discuss NYC.

On the other hand, upstate and rural districts (CD1-4, CD17-23, 25, 27) now have a few thousand more Democrats each. I would expect Bernie to outperform here.

Okay, let’s talk numbers first and then we’ll delve into explanations.

Where are the Votes?

I’ve pulled together a table below that shows you each Congressional District. You can see the percentage of the vote Hillary got in 2008. These are my own rough estimates based on a reading of how districts were redrawn. They are not as precise as a precinct level tabulation and re-allocation to new CDs would be. Life’s short, don’t have the time to do that.

I assume turnout is the same as 2008, with 1.82 million out of 5.27 million registered Democrats showing up. If turnout is much higher than this 35% estimate, then we may see Bernie up by more.

The columns below are Congressional District, Representative, Delegates Available, Region, HRC Vote Share in 2008, Forecast Vote share for Bernie, Forecast Delegates for Bernie, Forecast Raw Vote for Bernie, Net change in Democrats over last 6 months, Median Household Income for CD. Keep an eye on the median income since we will talk about that a bit.

REP DEL REGION HRC 08 BERN BERN BERN VOTE NEW DEMS INC
CD1 Lee Zeldin-R 6 Suburb 65% 60% 4 23466 3221 85K
CD2 Peter King-R 6 Suburb 67% 60% 4 28220 2951 86K
CD3 Steve Israel-D 7 Suburb 70% 40% 3 16202 2466 101K
CD4 Kathleen Rice-D 6 Suburb 60% 50% 3 26788 3491 92K
CD5 Gregory Meeks-D 6 NYC 62% 55% 3 31105 -1190 59K
CD6 Grace Meng-D 6 NYC 70% 60% 4 46335 59 59K
CD7 Nydia Velazquez-D 7 NYC 64% 55% 4 36177 -14416 48K
CD8 Hakeem Jeffries-D 6 NYC 56% 30% 2 29190 -21874 42K
CD9 Yvette Clarke-D 6 NYC 65% 30% 2 16085 -19362 49K
CD10 Jerrold Nadler-D 6 NYC 56% 60% 4 54182 -2005 81K
CD11 Dan Donovan-R 5 NYC 65% 30% 2 28381 -3776 63K
CD12 CarolynMaloney-D 6 NYC 60% 35% 2 23141 6252 94K
CD13 Charlie Rangel-D 6 NYC 53% 45% 3 18681 -2718 38K
CD14 Joseph Crowley-D 7 NYC 62% 55% 4 53556 921 52K
CD15 Jose Serrano-D 6 NYC 68% 50% 3 56869 -3316 24K
CD16 Eliot Engel-D 6 NYC 55% 40% 2 26321 647 63K
CD17 Nita Lowey-D 6 Suburb 55% 45% 3 34203 3567 91K
CD18 Sean Maloney-D 6 Suburb 55% 50% 3 37871 3888 77K
CD19 Chris Gibson-R 5 Upstate 60% 60% 3 31004 4814 57K
CD20 Paul Tonko-D 7 Upstate 64% 45% 3 18877 6386 62K
CD21 Elise Stefanik-R 6 Upstate 68% 65% 4 41513 3702 52K
CD22 Richard Hanna-R 5 Upstate 70% 60% 3 32574 3645 49K
CD23 Tom Reed-R 5 Upstate 60% 60% 3 21006 3533 47K
CD24 John Katko-R 6 Upstate 68% 60% 4 27202 1 52K
CD25 Louise Slaughter-D 6 Upstate 63% 65% 4 33155 6335 51K
CD26 Brian Higgins-D 7 Upstate 60% 65% 5 29597 -1531 43K
CD27 Chris Collins-R 6 Upstate 60% 65% 4 42238 1600 59K
PLEO 30 14
AT-LARGE 54 26
TOTAL 247 47.5% 128 863,935 -12,709

I didn’t include racial composition in the analysis above. The suburbs are pretty white (70-80%) with sizable Asian populations, the city is very diverse. Upstate New York has a sizable black population (10-20% in many CDs), but is largely white. Clearly, the Democratic electorate may not match the racial composition of the larger population. There are a lot of immigrant population centers within the city and outside it. CD6 is over 40% Asian, CD7 is 20% Asian, 40% Hispanic. CD13 has a number of big Universities (Columbia, CIty College, Yeshiva) so does CD10 (NYU, New School, FIT) and there are a number of CUNY campuses sprinkled across the city with hundreds of thousands of students enrolled. If they turn up and vote for Bernie, he could exceed expectations.

One other thing. No one has a great read on the Jewish vote in NY (which can be up to 20% of the primary vote in NYC). There’s a lot of support for Bernie among younger and more progressive Jewish voters. But older and more religious voters don’t seem to be fond of his largely secular stance. Some people may be turned off by his take on the Israel/Palestine conflict and his insistence that the US deal with both even-handedly. He is getting particularly bad press in Israel for his comments to the Daily News on the Gaza conflict last year. The former Israeli ambassador is accusing Bernie of ‘blood libel’. Both issues are probably going to hurt him with the Orthodox population, concentrated in Williamsburg and Borough Park. About 40% of Jews in NYC identify as orthodox, that number has grown in recent years. Orthodox voters could impact CD7, CD9 and CD10. 10 is balanced by the largely secular/liberal Upper West Side (Jerry Nadler’s district). 7 has a big Hispanic population, 9 is majority African American. I have Bernie winning 10 and 7, but losing 9.

What about the Polls?

The latest Quinnipiac poll has this breakdown of support for a Clinton/Sanders primary among likely voters:

18-44 45-64 65+ WHT BLK
CLINTON 36% 60% 73% 48% 66%
SANDERS 63% 35% 22% 47% 31%

The polls says Hillary leads 54-42, or 12 points. Hillary has a net unfavorable rating in NY, 45-49 while Bernie’s is favorable at 54-30.

I forecast Bernie winning 47.5% of the vote, but walking away with 128 of 247 delegates. That’s largely because I think the delegate math can work out in Bernie’s favor and I wanted to show this path. See Torilahure’s excellent diary on NY delegate math which presents an alternate scenario, a Clinton blowout. I expect Bernie to do well enough to get a 4-2 split in a number of rural districts (1, 2, 21, 24, 25, 27) and some uber-liberal districts in NY (6, 7, 10). That accounts for the lopsided result in delegates.

I think he could do much better than that, but it depends on whether he can hit the right notes in NYC. Also note that NYC is very diverse economically. It has some of the richest, and some of the poorest districts in the state. Lots of working-class people in NYC and the small, though active Working Families Party has endorsed Bernie. More on that below as I discuss each region and what went into the forecast.

Current polls have Bernie and Hillary separated by 10-12 points. When asked about this, Bernie said:

“Well that’s an interesting point. In my home state where the people know me pretty well, I got 86 percent of the vote,”

Upstate (CD19-27)

Our big population centers here are Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Schenectady, Utica, Troy and Binghamton. We used to have a lot of industry upstate thanks to cheap transport and great waterways. The decline of American manufacturing has hit the region hard over the past few decades. We have a number of universities upstate, and a lot of agriculture. The eastern part of upstate New York borders Vermont and looks a lot like it. The Western part sits on top of Pennsylvania, and shares a lot with it.

On the CD map, it’s districts 19 through 27. I figure all of them except CD20 (Albany) go for Bernie by various margins, mostly in the 60s. Hillary swept them in 2008, but the dynamic in this race seems different to me. Think of the Massachusetts/Vermont/New Hampshire primaries, Bernie won virtually all the rural counties. Much of upstate New York is adjacent and has the same demographics/economy. Bernie should theoretically appeal to three key demographics upstate, industrial working-class families, rural/farm families, and students.

I think it’s going to be tough going for Hillary upstate, even though voters there supported her in her senate bids and the 2008 primary:

Hillary Clinton’s political ascent can be traced to the time in 1999 when she expressed her support for dairy farmers in the upstate New York village of Endicott. And the summer that year when she shunned Martha’s Vineyard to vacation in Skaneateles, and promised voters in the depleted industrial city of Schenectady that as a New York senator she would revive the upstate economy.

The strategy helped Mrs. Clinton win her 2000 Senate race by double digits, a victory fueled by the unlikely support of white working-class voters in upstate New York who had previously voted Republican but were won over by the first lady’s attention to their underserved area.

I’m not so sure this is going to work again. After all the talk about speaking fees and the Clinton’s nine figure net worth, I suspect many voters upstate will view Hillary as being somewhat out of touch. Hillary hasn’t driven a car since 1996, while Bernie describes his car as a “red Chevy” and doesn’t know how old it is.

In general election matchups Clinton beats Cruz 53-32, Kasich 46-41 and Trump 53-33. Bernie’s margins are better at 56-28, 47-37 and 56-32 respectively. Much of Sanders’ improvement in margin comes from upstate New York where Sanders does 3-9% better in head to head match ups with the three than Clinton does.

Fracking is a big issue for liberal activists upstate, they managed to force a state-wide ban on the practice (protecting NYC’s champagne of tap waters). And the issue can lead to election victories:

Both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns are said to have studied the progressive Democratic primary challenge to Mr. Cuomo two years ago by Zephyr Teachout, an unknown law professor who won a surprising 33 percent by challenging Mr. Cuomo from the left, partly by highlighting her staunch opposition to fracking.

Ms. Teachout carried counties on the Pennsylvania border and in the Finger Lakes region, where grass-roots anti-fracking groups mobilized voters.

By the way, Hillary Clinton endorsed Teachout’s male opponent Andrew Cuomo, even though Zephyr would have been the first female governor of New York ever. I guess that glass ceiling just wasn’t important enough to smash through.

Down-ballot plug: Zephyr Teachout has endorsed Bernie and is running for Congress in the 19th district. If she wins, she’ll turn the district blue (the incumbent, Chris Gibson-R is retiring). Show her some love folks, primary is June 28th!

College impact: Two bright spots for Obama upstate in the 2008 primary were CD26 and CD28. CD26 was anchored by Binghamton, which has a big SUNY campus with 17k students. CD28 included Niagara Falls and Rochester which has two big colleges RIT and U of Rochester with 30k students between them. Those districts have been redrawn and look very different, their population is spread between today’s CD25, 26, 27. Bernie should do particularly well there.

The Suburbs (CD1-4, 17-18)

Westchester (CD17, 18) and Nassau (CD3, CD4) are solid Hillary. CD3 has the highest median income in the state, at 101k, CD4 (92k) and CD17 (91k) are not far behind. Many commuter towns with a lot of professionals who work in NYC. Wall Street bashing detracts here and in CD12 which is anchored by the Upper East Side.

CD1 and CD2 are a blend of the suburbs and upstate NY. They don’t have many commuter towns since most population centers are over 50 miles from NYC. They have a fair amount of agriculture and fishing and are actually whiter than the Westchester/Nassau. That said, they have high median incomes. They both have Republican reps, the Democrats in the area are either working class or socially liberal. I have them both going for Bernie.

The Big Apple (CD5-16)

In the table above, I included median income to give you a sense of how wealthy different CDs are. NYC contains both extremes. In some cases, median household income (half of families are below, half above) obscures even greater disparities. For example, median income in CD1 is 85K while mean income is 108K. All those Hamptons beachfront mansions drive up the mean/average. CD3 is even more extreme, 101K median and 142K mean. CD10 goes from 81K to 145K. CD12 is the big kahuna though, 94K median, 154K mean. A few blocks on Park Avenue account for that surge.

You want to talk class disparities? New York lives class disparity extremes every day. We have people making billions, literally billions a year and we have people getting by on minimum wage (soon to be $15 yay!). We have several dozen 100 million dollar apartments, and giant towers built specifically for absentee Russian and Chinese billionaires to use as savings accounts or tax dodges. Meanwhile, we have people living on the streets, including families, and thousands in shelters every day because they can’t afford rent. We even have a political party named The Rent Is Too Damn High!

There’s a big local political story that ties some of this together. The former speaker of the NY State Assembley, Sheldon Silver (D) was convicted and is awaiting sentencing in a corruption scandal. He received millions in no-show “consulting fees” from a number of law firms representing real-estate developers. In return, clients of these firms got bills passed reducing property taxes on luxury apartments they were building. That’s just the beginning. The speaker of the NY Senate, Dean Skelos (R) has also been arrested and convicted on bribery, corruption and extortion charges, again related in part to real-estate developers. Our governor (and Clinton ally) Andrew Cuomo (D) abruptly shut down an anti-corruption investigation that looked like it was going to focus on Silver. The US Attorney for southern NY, Preet Bharara (D) led all these investigations and others into Citibank, JP Morgan and Madoff. He said there were no federal charges to be filed concerning the closure of the commission, though he was critical of Cuomo and their investigation continues.

If Bernie were to tackle this as a pattern of political corruption that erodes our tax base, that may strike a chord. Thanks to various property-tax abatements, some of the multi-million dollar apartments going up in NYC have their property taxes reduced by up to 95%. It took a special bill in the state legislature to get an abatement for One57, the 90 story building on 57th street with numerous apartments priced close to or over 100 million dollars. I’ll let the NY Times explain what this meant:

The penthouse at One57, which offers panoramic views from 1,000 feet above 57th Street, recently sold for a record-setting $100.5 million.

But it is not the price that has grabbed the attention of housing advocates, policy analysts, developers and city officials. Rather, it is one of peculiarities of New York real estate: a billionaire’s lair that comes with an incentive that cuts this year’s property tax bill by 95 percent, or an estimated $360,000.

The Real Deal, a NY real-estate blog said this about One57:

But tax breaks at One57 cost the city $65.6 million in property tax revenue, according to a damning new report from the city’s Independent Budget Office. And those subsidies, which underwrote 66 affordable units in the Bronx, could have produced nearly 370 affordable units instead.

In most other parts of the country, wealth is hidden away behind high walls and gated communities. In New York it walks the street accessorized with a tall trophy in Manolo Blahniks and a Hermes tote. Or looks at you from the back seat of a chauffeured Bentley on Madison Avenue. What I mean is, New York is ripe for a conversation about class in a way much of the rest of the country isn’t. We have families with large staffs of nannies, housekeepers and fitness consultants. But they’re outnumbered by families living on a train-conductor or bus driver’s salary of 60k.

If Bernie can connect with families living on fixed incomes for whom the monthly rent payment is a big deal, he will win NYC. I know he can do this convincingly because he’s spoken about his parents’ financial struggles under similar conditions. Affordable housing is a huge issue in New York. You can become mayor of NYC if you can convince folks you’ll deliver on affordable housing and reduce the waiting lists of tens of thousands of families looking for a decent apartment within the city limits. BTW, DeBlasio has walked back some of his campaign promises on affordable housing. If Bernie addresses the issue as well as he has in his platform, and relates it to his work on affordable housing in Burlington, ears will perk up.

If he can find a way to speak to the 38% of NYC residents who are foreign born, he will do well with those of us who came here from somewhere else. He can talk to this with authenticity and has, because his family is an immigrant family.

Bernie is a recognizable character in New York, even if he hasn’t lived here in a long while. He’s someone we as New Yorkers have known all our lives, even if we’ve never met this particular incarnation. All over our great city and state, we have earnest Bernies who have turned their talents to the greater good and spurned the allure of riches. Some of them are young, others have been fighting the good fight for decades. We know them and we admire their rectitude. If Bernie can connect with New Yorkers, and I think he can, he could walk away with NY.

A lot of people around here have suggested Bernie’s critique of Wall Street will hurt him in NYC. They are mistaken. That is only true of small pockets in the city and the suburbs. Roughly 350,000 people work in Financial Services in New York and I’m one of them (some of my colleagues are registered Republicans). Many of us saw the crisis up front and center, and saw friends and co-workers lose jobs. There were over 50,000 layoffs in our world during that period and many thousands of careers were set back years. We are not keen to see it repeated.

That 350,000 sounds like a big number, but we have 5.26 million registered Democrats and there are numerous constituencies among the 350k. We have a few thousands Masters of the Universe pulling serious money who are probably unlikely to vote for Bernie. We have a lot of mid-level executives in revenue and non-revenue roles who probably feel more comfortable with Hillary’s tone and presentation and won’t be voting Bernie (not yours truly). We have a lot of younger people in the ranks who are more receptive to Bernie’s message and saw a lot of friends get hurt in 2008-09. A number of industry jobs are in commercial/retail banking and these folks know they aren’t on Wall Street (they may want to get there since pay is generally better) and most don’t see Bernie as attacking them.

And that is within the industry. Outside the industry, views on Wall Street are much more of a mixed bag. Gentrification, changing neighborhoods and rising rents are a big story and people lay some or most of the blame on the financial sector with its outsized pay packages and a global elite who snap up second homes in NYC. Anyone who thinks bashing Wall Street is a death knell in New York doesn’t know New York. Heck, we elected Rudy Giuliani mayor partly because he was tough on white-collar crime.

Okay that’s it. You made it through one of the longer election diaries. Come visit us in NY sometime, we like people who pay attention.

Bottom line, Bernie can win New York, he can even win it by a yuuuuge margin. But only if we get out and do the work, canvassing and calling for Bernie. We have 12 days, that’s an eternity in New York. Work like your future depends on it. Because it does!

The Six Trillion Dollar Mistake

When someone asks me why I’m for Bernie rather than Hillary, I say it has to do with the Six Trillion Dollar Mistake.

It’s difficult to understand a figure as large as $6,000,000,000,000.

6 Trillion would buy us one of these four nice things:

  1. 50 years of tuition-free public college and 50 years of free universal pre-K.
  2. 7 years of free health-care for 100 million Americans.
  3. $20,000 as a gift to every man, woman and child in America.
  4. Bullet trains connecting every major city,  85 Nuclear-powered Aircraft Carriers, 10 Space Stations, 10 manned missions to Mars, ten million homes for the homeless plus the Starship Enterprise.

But instead of getting these nice things, we got one shitty thing. The war in Iraq. Which was followed by other shitty things like ISIS.

The war was dreamt up and executed by Bush/Cheney. It is their fault. But others acted as enablers:

  • 48 Republicans and 29 Democrats in the senate enabled the war.
  • 215 Republicans and 85 Democrats in the House enabled the war.

And some tried to stop them:

  • 21 Democrats, 1 Republican and 1 Independent in the Senate tried to stop them.
  • 126 Democrats, 6 Republicans and 1 Independent in the House tried to stop them.

The independent in the House was Bernie Sanders.

One little known Illinois state senator knew it was a mistakeand tried to stop it.

Among the 29 Democratic Senators who enabled Bush/Cheney was Hillary Clinton.

What a colossal mistake.

  • A 6 Trillion Dollar Mistake.
  • A 500,000 Iraqis dead  mistake.
  • A 4,425 dead American soldiers mistake.

Hillary defended that decision for 13 years. Only admitting it was a mistake in 2015. Biden said he made a mistake in 2005, ten years sooner.

All that experience and it took 13 years to admit it was a mistake. How can you learn from your mistakes if you won’t admit them for three terms and you only get two?

I’ll take the politician who doesn’t enable such mistakes over the one who does.

That’s what’s at stake in this primary, and why you should be working you butt off to make Bernie the Democratic nominee and the next president of the United States.