Posted: Saturday, May 28, 2016 10:00 pm

The New Mexican

Gadzooks! New Mexico presidential primary voters will go to the polls on June 7 and it’s almost certain that the Democratic nominee for president is still undecided.

New Mexicans must take advantage of the race still being in play and turn out to vote for the next president of the United States. That’s right, the next president. Whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee — and we believe it will be Hillary Clinton — must win in November. The nation simply can’t afford a Trump presidency.

However, this is not an endorsement encouraging folks to vote against Trump. This is a call to vote for Hillary Clinton. No one will fight for men, women and children, take a punch, then get back up, harder or longer than Hillary Clinton. She is a person of purpose, with an unbelievable work ethic and incredible intellect. She has been unfairly denigrated over decades of GOP-fueled attacks.

That mud has stuck, and like her opponent, she is deeply unpopular despite being ahead in the fight for her party’s nomination against Sen. Bernie Sanders. She is leading in pledged delegates, popular vote and is the choice of party superdelegates. Because of Democratic Party rules, Sanders is unlikely to catch her, even if he takes the battle to the actual convention. That might prove disappointing to his supporters, but we trust — just as Hillary supporters did in 2008 — they will put the country first and work hard to elect the first female president of the United States. Sanders himself said, “By the way, on her worst day, Hillary Clinton will be an infinitely better candidate and president than the Republican candidate on his best day.”

The New Mexican Editorial

The 2016 Race
Bernie Sanders and Rigged Elections: Sometimes You Just Lose

By NATE COHN and TONI MONKOVIC JUNE 1, 2016

Each week, Nate Cohn, The Upshot’s elections analyst, and Toni Monkovic, an Upshot editor, will discuss the 2016 race and post a lightly edited transcript of their written exchange. The Democratic primary season has led to some grumbling from supporters of Bernie Sanders that the primary system is rigged. This week, we start on that subject, and look ahead to the California contest on June 7.


SNIP

Toni: There is a perception among a lot of his followers that the election system is rigged. What about some of the examples they cite, like the Brooklyn voter purge in the New York primary?

Nate: Well, I think the first thing that’s important to acknowledge is that the American election system is a disaster. It’s administered at the local level, by thousands of jurisdictions across the country. It’s often grossly underfunded. Voter registration systems are truly a mess. Put it all together, and we have a very ineffective voting system that always produces a steady stream of errors.

That said, these errors are not really signs that our elections are rigged.

With Brooklyn, the Board of Elections purged more than 100,000 voters just ahead of the election. This shouldn’t happen: Purges should happen well ahead of an election.

But did it affect the race? Not really. The people who get “purged” from voter rolls are “inactive” voters — people who haven’t voted in two straight elections and didn’t return postcards seeking to verify their address. These are generally people who moved, or have died.

SNIP

So realistically, most of the people who were purged were not going to vote. They probably don’t live in Brooklyn anymore.

And the people who were purged in Brooklyn were probably likelier to be supporters of Clinton than Sanders. Brooklyn voted for Clinton by 20 points. Most inactive voters are older (after all, a 20-year-old hasn’t had the opportunity to skip two consecutive federal elections).

NYTIMES

By Anne Gearan June 1 at 12:01 AM

Retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor plans to vote for Hillary Clinton for president this year, but not because the longtime Republican and former top aide to then-Gen. David Petraeus has had a political conversion. He just thinks Republican Donald Trump is too dangerous to be president.

“It will be the first Democratic presidential candidate I’ve voted for in my adult life,” said Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University.

Clinton’s campaign hopes that there are many more national-­security-minded Republicans and independents who would vote for her, even grudgingly, rather than see Trump win the White House. Those voters are an important part of the audience for her case that she is fit to be commander in chief and that Trump is not.

Clinton has begun making that argument more forcefully as her long primary battle grinds to a close. She will deliver what her campaign calls a major foreign policy address in California on Thursday, focused both on her ideas and leadership credentials and on what she will describe as the threat Trump poses to national security.

Continued at the Wash Post

by Dante Chinni

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Hillary Clinton with a narrow three-point lead over Donald Trump, 46 percent to 43 percent. But if Bernie Sanders were out of the race the NBC News political unit estimates her lead would likely be much larger, perhaps up around eight points, 51 percent to 43 percent.






The difference in those two scenarios is one kind of voter that pops in many polls: The Sanders-only supporter.

The latest set of presidential polls shows two very different races - the tight three-point battle between Clinton and Trump, and a much larger lead for Sanders over Trump. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll had Sanders with a whopping 15 point lead over the presumptive GOP nominee, 54 percent to 39 percent.

Full Article at NBC News

The loss of life does not change the fact that war can, at times, be necessary. It does, however, remind us of the solemn responsibility of those who lead America’s sons and daughters into war. That ultimate responsibility lies with the commander in chief. The president alone has the authority to send America’s most treasured possession into harm’s way.

As a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and as a registered Republican, the thought of Donald Trump being entrusted with that responsibility deeply unnerves me.

Trump is a bully. When he wins a primary, the people of that state are wonderful, amazing, and smart. But, when states like Iowa do not adorn him with the victor’s crown, they immediately become stupid. When a reporter with a physical disability fails to back up one of his outlandish claims, Trump’s bruised ego compels him to mimic the reporter’s disability while verbally berating him.

Bullying is un-American. It doesn’t come from a sense of strength or confidence. It is an expression of fear and insecurity; not the traits required for a commander in chief.

Continued...

Doris Matsui
U.S. Representative, California’s 6th Congressional District


In May, we celebrate Older Americans Month and the fundamental commitment our country makes to its seniors. In November, we will determine whether we honor that commitment.

Every day, thousands of American seniors reach retirement age after a lifetime of working hard to support their families. Because of Social Security and Medicare, older Americans can mark these milestones with the peace of mind that their retirement future is secure. We created these lifelines so that hard working seniors never have to worry about putting food on the table, or landing in debt after their next trip to the pharmacy.

Yet, Donald Trump seems willing to put these programs at risk, and take a gamble on our seniors’ future. He has called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, claiming privatizing the program would be “good for all of us.” He has repeatedly flip-flopped on his position on Medicare, first claiming he would avoid cuts, then having his senior advisor place those cuts back on the table. He won’t even agree to AARP’s call to put out a Social Security plan.

Donald Trump’s radical and unpredictable policies undermine the promises we’ve made to America’s seniors—promises that Hillary Clinton has fought for her entire life, and will honor as president.


Full Op-Ed at Huffington Post

Edit:
Appreciate all the kicks form the Bernie Sanders dead enders, BoBs, and other miscellanious Clinton haters. Thanks!

The Hill
By Niall Stanage - 05/29/16 10:30 AM EDT

Hillary Clinton will have a not-so-secret weapon in her quest for the White House: President Obama.

Obama’s approval ratings have been marching upward since the start of the year.

He retains immense popularity with the Democratic base, including vital groups such as young people, with whom Clinton has struggled. And experts also say that there is no one better positioned to unify the party behind the former secretary of State as her long and sometimes bitter struggle with primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) draws to a close.

If Obama could run for a third-term, “he’d be reelected in a walk,” said New York-based Democratic strategist Jonathan Rosen. “He can play a huge role in bringing the Democratic base and independents, together to unite behind her candidacy.”

That could be particularly important given evidence from the primary season that suggests Clinton has failed to thrill some parts of the Obama coalition, even while she has drawn strong support from other blocs. She has struggled mightily among younger voters, for example, even while beating Sanders by huge margins among African-American Democrats.

Full Article at The Hill

Written by Nick Field, Managing Editor


Just what does the Rust Belt think?

That’s one of the biggest questions of this presidential campaign.

Those states usually go Democratic although Donald Trump’s strategy depends on winning over those electoral votes.

Bloomberg Politics and Purple Strategies sought to poll some of the Rust Belt states, choosing Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Additionally, they targeted middle class voters by surveying households with an income of between $30,000 and $75,000. Unfortunately, they did not provide a state-by-state breakdown of the results yet the statistics still provide some intriguing insights.

First, Clinton leads Trump head-to-head by a 46% to 39% margin with 15% unsure.

42% of respondents, though, believe Clinton will win compared to 34% who think Trump will prevail.

Full Story at Politics PA