Kevin Drum Jun. 8, 2016 1:38 AM
Mother Jones

A few random thoughts about tonight's election results:

Hillary Clinton won a majority of the pledged delegates, a majority of the superdelegates, and a majority of the popular vote. If you can't stand her regardless, that's fine, but a clear majority of Democrats preferred her to Bernie Sanders. Nothing rigged, nothing corrupt, nothing unfair. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

I'd love to see her choose Jeff Merkley as her running mate. I've never thought it was fair that Oregon gets all the cool senators. They should share.

But Sherrod Brown is out of the running, I guess: "Aides say Sanders thinks that progressives who picked Clinton are cynical, power-chasing chickens—like Sen. Sherrod Brown, one of his most consistent allies in the Senate before endorsing Clinton and campaigning hard for her ahead of the Ohio primary. Sanders is so bitter about it that he'd be ready to nix Brown as an acceptable VP choice, if Clinton ever asked his advice on who'd be a good progressive champion."

I find Sanders' bitterness very sad. It's not that it's unusual: presidential primaries often get pretty nasty, and the losers frequently take it personally. But Bernie accomplished a helluva lot. He wanted to move the Democratic Party to the left, and every hack in the party is now keenly aware that young voters bought Bernie's message en masse—young voters who, in a few years, will be middle-aged voters that form the core of the party's base. Sanders has taught the hacks not only that it's safe for the Democratic Party to move to the left, but that it's going to whether they like it or not. How many losing candidates can say they accomplished that? Reagan in 1976? Who else? Bernie may have lost the primary, but he won the more important battle. He should be proud as hell.

Continued at Mother Jones

Hillary Clinton Made History, but Bernie Sanders Stubbornly Ignored It - The New York Times

By MICHAEL BARBARO and YAMICHE ALCINDORJUNE 8, 2016

Revolutions rarely give way to gracious expressions of defeat.

And so, despite the crushing California results that rolled in for him on Tuesday night, despite the insurmountable delegate math and the growing pleas that he end his quest for the White House, Senator Bernie Sanders took to the stage in Santa Monica and basked, bragged and vowed to fight on.

In a speech of striking stubbornness, he ignored the history-making achievement of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, who became the first woman in American history to clinch the presidential nomination of a major political party.

Mr. Sanders waited until 15 minutes into his speech to utter Mrs. Clinton’s name. He referred, almost in passing, to a telephone conversation in which he had congratulated her on her victories. At that, the crowd of more than 3,000 inside an aging airport hangar booed loudly. Mr. Sanders did little to discourage them.

SNIP

“It’s a blown opportunity to build bridges that are going to be extremely important in the fall,” said David Gergen, an adviser to four presidents, both Democratic and Republican. He worried that Mr. Sanders was becoming “a grumpy old man.”

The raw math is brutal and indisputable: Mrs. Clinton has not just crossed the threshold of 2,383 delegates needed to secure the nomination. As of Tuesday night, she had succeeded in winning a majority of pledged delegates, a majority of the states that have held primaries, and the popular vote.

This would be the time, under normal circumstances, for a primary rival to acknowledge insurmountable odds, salute a prevailing opponent and begin the work of stitching together a divided political party.

Continued
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/us/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&rref=politics&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=article

By Peter Daou
April 12, 2016

If the headline of this piece blows some minds, you can thank three decades of relentless lies and smears by the conservative attack machine and its mainstream media enablers, who have labored to create an aura of corruption around Hillary Clinton. Hillary’s detractors on the right, left and center reel off a laundry list of unsupported accusations with an air of absolute authority, as though it is simply a given that she is a terrible, horrible, no-good human being.

And that is precisely the intention: Taint her through innuendo and guilt-by-association, throw enough dirt at her that voters develop an instant negative association with her name. Accuse, accuse, accuse until the accusation becomes the reality, and may the truth be damned.

Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, and billionaire conservative moneymen like Paul Singer have spent inordinate sums to paint a malignant picture of Hillary, using sophisticated propaganda techniques to render her toxic to the American electorate.

Sadly, many on the left imbibe and regurgitate these fabricated narratives, spewing falsehoods and filth at Hillary with gleeful abandon. They are joined by mainstream media operatives with personal vendettas like Maureen Dowd and the Morning Joe crew, whose venomous words reveal more about their own failings than about Hillary.

Continued at Blue Nation Review

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and MICHAEL D. SHEARJUNE 6, 2016

WASHINGTON — President Obama, after months of sitting on the sidelines of the rancorous contest to succeed him, is now ready to aggressively campaign for Hillary Clinton, starting with a formal endorsement of her candidacy as early as this week.

The White House is in active conversations with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign about how and where the president would be useful to her, according to senior aides to Mr. Obama.

Advisers say that the president, who sees a Democratic successor as critical to his legacy, is impatient to begin campaigning. They say he is taking nothing for granted.

“I want us to run scared the whole time,” Mr. Obama told a group of donors on Friday night in Miami.

It has been decades since a second-term president enjoyed the popularity to make him a potent force on the campaign trail and also an invitation from the candidate running to succeed him to be a major presence there.

Full Article at NYT

"Two years ago, my son was killed by a mass shooter. I’ve never spoken about it publicly until now." —Caryn Michaels

[url=https://flic.kr/p/Hs3Vt5][img][/img]

The last two years have been the hardest of my life.

My son Chris was just 20 years old when he and five others were murdered in a shooting rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara. One moment, he was just a sophomore English major, grabbing a snack with friends at a deli near campus — in the next, his life was stolen from him without warning.

SNIP

The media often refer to tragedies like my son’s death as “random” acts. But gun violence has become all too commonplace. Every year, 33,000 Americans — each one of them someone’s son or daughter — are killed by guns. That’s more than three times as many gun deaths as in any other developed country. And there is nothing random about our nation’s inaction.

SNIP

Hillary has spent her career working to end gun violence. She has brought the issue

front and center as a presidential candidate, and I truly believe she’ll make it her mission to address it as president. That means standing up to the all-powerful gun lobby, enacting comprehensive background checks, and keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and other dangerous individuals.

And we can’t wait any longer.

SNIP

I will do anything I can to keep other families from going through the unimaginable pain we’ve been through. That’s why I’m speaking out now, and it’s why I’m putting my faith in Hillary.


GunsGun Violence
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