Sen. Bernie Sanders Passes Hillary Clinton Faster than Barack Obama Did in 2008

Listen to Military Veteran Talk Radio
iHeart.SmythRadio.com

Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

by MIKE FLYNN18 Feb 201664

A new Fox News poll of the Democrat primary race shows socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) edging past Hillary Clinton for the first time — and at a faster rate than Barack Obama outpaced Clinton in 2008.

The national poll, conducted Monday through Wednesday, shows Sanders with 47 percent support, 3 points higher than Clinton, with 44 percent support.

Just one month ago, Clinton led Sanders by 12 points in the Fox poll. The change in fortunes is due, in part, to Sanders’ landslide victory in New Hampshire and his almost-level outcome in the Iowa caucus.

The most interesting thing about this latest national poll, however, is how quickly Sanders has edged Clinton. In 2008, Barack Obama did not lead a national poll against Clinton until after Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina AND Florida and Michigan had voted.

The first time Obama led a national poll against Clinton was on the eve of Super Tuesday voting in 2008.

In 2008, Super Tuesday was held on February 5th. Twenty-two states and an American territory voted on Super Tuesday. Obama won 12 states, while Clinton captured two and America Samoa.

For the next two weeks, Obama and Clinton traded leads in national polling. After March, Clinton would only recapture the lead in national polling a handful of times.

When Obama first took the lead in national polling in 2008, he had won Iowa and South Carolina. Clinton had won New Hampshire, Nevada and claimed victories in Michigan and Florida. (Because of a dispute over DNC rules, neither candidate campaigned in Michigan or Florida.)

The Clinton and Obama campaigns had also been furiously campaigning ahead of Super Tuesday in 22 states. Again, it was only on the eve of voting in these 22 states, where Obama was poised for victory in a dozen, did he take a lead in a national poll.

The Clinton campaign has tried to argue that the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary aren’t representative of the nation, and Democrat electorate, at large. It has argued that, while Sanders has done well in these early states, Clinton still has the edge for the nomination as voting moves to other contests.

The risk of that argument is that past performance can in fact influence future results. Sanders’ wins, or in the case of Iowa, near win, have made him a more plausible contender for the White House. This is most clear in recent polls in Nevada, which votes on Saturday. In the last few days, Sanders has surged in the Silver State into a tie with Clinton.

At the end of 2015, just about six weeks ago, Clinton had a 23-point lead in Nevada. Clinton’s lead in South Carolina, which votes next Saturday, has also been narrowing in recent days.

Sanders surge to the top of a national poll at this time, then, is simply extraordinary. Nevada and South Carolina haven’t even voted yet and Super Tuesday is still seeks away.

Sanders is simply doing far better than even Barack Obama in 2008. Of course, it could equally be the case that Hillary Clinton is simply that much weaker than she was 8 years ago.

It is certainly fitting to quote Karl Marx here. “History repeats itself,” Marx said. “First as tragedy, second as farce.”

 

Read More Stories About:

Big Government, 2016 Presidential Race,Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders

DNC allowing donations from federal lobbyists and PACs

www.washingtonpost.com

The Democratic National Committee has rolled back restrictions introduced by presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 that banned donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees.

The decision, which may provide an advantage to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, was viewed with disappointment Friday morning by good government activists who saw it as a step backward in the effort to limit special interest influence in Washington.

“It is a major step in the wrong direction,” said longtime reform advocate Fred Wertheimer. “And it is completely out of touch with the clear public rejection of the role of political money in Washington,” expressed during the 2016 campaign.

The change in the rules, already apparent to leading Washington lobbyists, was quietly introduced at some point during the past couple of months.

The ban was both a symbolic and substantive way for Obama to put his stamp on the party in 2008 when he promised voters “we are going to change how Washington works.”

Since it was introduced, lobbyists and corporate advocates in Washington have complained about the ban and other limitations imposed by Obama. The only portion of the old rules now remaining in place is that lobbyists and PAC representatives will still not be able to attend events that feature Obama, Vice President Biden or their spouses, according to Mark Paustenbach, deputy communications director for the DNC.

“The DNC’s recent change in guidelines will ensure that we continue to have the resources and infrastructure in place to best support whoever emerges as our eventual nominee,” Paustenbach said in an email. “Electing a Democrat to the White House is vital to building on the progress we’ve made over the last seven years, which has resulted in a record 71 straight months of private-sector job growth and nearly 14 million new jobs.”

Last summer the DNC announced it was lifting a ban on lobbyist contributions to convention-related expenses. At the time, DNC officials said the move was necessary because Congress had eliminated about $20 million in federal funding for the quadrennial party gatherings.

The DNC’s recent, sweeping reversal of the previous ban on donations from lobbyists and political action committees was confirmed by three Democratic lobbyists who said they have already received solicitations from the committee. The lobbyists requested anonymity to speak freely about the committee’s decision, which has been otherwise kept quiet.

For the most part, they said, the DNC is back to pre-2008 business as usual. The DNC has even hired a finance director specifically for PAC donations who has recently emailed prospective donors to let them know that they can now contribute again, according to an email that was reviewed by The Washington Post.

The decision is the latest move likely to inflame tensions between the DNC and supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who has railed against lobbyist influence, particularly those representing Wall Street.

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, has set up a joint fundraising committee with the DNC and the new rules are likely to provide her with an advantage.

The new rules have already opened up opportunities for influence-buying “by Washington lobbyists with six-figure contributions to the Hillary Victory Fund,” said Wertheimer, suggesting that lobbyists could also face “political extortion” from those raising the money.

Sanders has made his small-dollar-infused campaign a hallmark of his stump speech, boasting that he is the candidate of the little guy, to the point where supporters in Iowa could finish the portion of his stump speech in which he crowed that the average donation was $27.

In recent months Sanders’s supporters have accused the DNC of trying to prevent more primary debates, trying to tilt the race in Clinton’s direction. Just this week his backers were enraged that the DNC allowed the senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus to use the committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters to announce that their PAC had endorsed Clinton over Sanders.

Sanders backers have also expressed concern that the DNC is not playing a more vigorous role in checking out disputes over voting in the recent Iowa caucuses, which Clinton narrowly won.

COMMENTS

Hillary wins more delegates despite getting crushed.

ELECTION 2016

Limbaugh: 'Wait 'til Bernie finds out New Hampshire was rigged'

Published: 2 days ago

 JOE KOVACS 
About | Email | Archive

 

image: http://mobile.wnd.com/wp-content/themes/worldnet-theme/_/images//feed.png

 Read

     1.6K

Republish
Reprint

image: http://mobile.wnd.com/files/2014/08/hillary_clinton_16.jpg

Despite being the victim of a popular vote landslide in the New Hampshire Primary on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton is actually a winner when it comes to the number of delegates earned.

The former secretary of state is leaving the Granite State with at least two more delegates than Sen. Bernie Sanders, even though Sanders won by a margin of 60 to 38 percent of votes.

How is this possible?

New Hampshire not only has 24 “pledged” delegates, which are awarded based on the results of the popular vote, it also has eight “superdelegates,” who are free to lend their support to the candidate of their choice irrespective of the vote.

The ‘Stop Hillary’ campaign is on fire! Join the surging response to this theme: ‘Clinton for prosecution, not president’

Though Mrs. Clinton had only nine pledged delegates through the voting process, she has an additional six superdelegates as of Wednesday morning, giving her a total of 15.

Sanders has 13 delegates, all of which he won through the popular vote. Two superdelegates are uncommitted at this point. So even though the results appeared to be a massive win for Sanders, the delegate count, where it matters, tells a different story.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh commented on the absurdity of the Democratic Party process, saying, “What kind of system is that? You go in and you get skunked, you get schlonged, your get landslided out by 22 points and you leave the state with two more delegates than Bernie. Bernie’s always talking about how this system’s rigged and that system’s rigged, the economy is rigged and Wall Street’s rigged. Wait ’til he finds out that New Hampshire was rigged.”

image: http://mobile.wnd.com/files/2016/01/rush-limbaugh-thinking-thinker-600.jpg

Radio host Rush Limbaugh

Overall, Clinton holds a commanding lead over Sanders, with 394 delegates compared to 42 for Sanders.

Limbaugh, meanwhile, said the left-leaning media is in “full-fledged panic” over the fact that Donald Trump won the Republican side of the New Hampshire primary, collecting more than twice the votes of his nearest competitor, Ohio’s John Kasich.

Do you support Donald Trump’s no-nonsense candidacy? Tell the world with this brand new magnetic bumper sticker: “DONALD TRUMPS THE REST”

As WND reported, the New York Daily News featured a bluntly offensive lead story that calls out voters as stupid for picking Donald Trump.

The newspaper tweeted: “Front page: DAWN OF THE BRAIN DEAD – Trump comes back to life with N.H. win.”

image: http://mobile.wnd.com/files/2016/02/NYDailyNews.png

The New York Daily News responded to Donald Trump’s win in New Hampshire.

The cover itself showed Trump with a white-painted face and huge red-painted lips drawn into a smile – akin to the Joker in Batman movies. And its headline, in all caps, blasted “Dawn of the Brain Dead.”

The subtitle read: “Clown comes back to life with N.H. win as mindless zombies turn out in droves.”

RELATED: Newspaper calls voters ‘mindless zombies’ over Trump win

Limbaugh opined: “When the media starts insulting and blaming the voters as being stupid idiots, you know that full-fledged panic has set in. Because this means that they are unable to control the outcome. And that is what the media lost when they lost their monopoly, their inability now to control the outcome, to control the message, to control how people vote, to control what people think, to control what people’s opinions are. It’s all out the window, and everybody that considers themselves to be part of the establishment is facing a major, big-time rejection today.”

“On the Republican side,” Limbaugh said, “this would not be happening had there been some official, real, serious, consistent pushback to Obama.”

Clinton likely to leave NH with same number of delegates as Sanders

thehill.com

Hillary Clinton is expected to leave New Hampshire with just as many delegates as Bernie Sanders, even after he crushed her in Tuesday’s primary.

Sanders had won 13 delegates with his 20-point victory on Monday, and is expected to raise that total to 15 by the time all of the votes are counted.

Two of the state’s 24 delegates are currently unpledged, but will likely be awarded to Sanders once the results are finalized. That will raise the Sanders total to 15 delegates.

Clinton won 9 delegates in the primary, but came into the contest with the support of six superdelegates — state party insiders who are given the freedom to support which ever candidate they choose.

Superdelegate support is fluid, so it is possible that one of those delegates now committed to Clinton could switch before the national convention.

But as it stands, the superdelegate support gives Clinton a total of 15 New Hampshire delegates — the same as Sanders.

The Clinton campaign has mounted an aggressive effort to secure about 360 superdelegates across the country, according to the Associated Press. Sanders has a total of eight superdelegates.

Two of New Hampshire’s eight superdelegates are uncommitted: state party chairman Ray Buckley and state Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, according to the Associated Press.

Buckley was barred from picking a side until after the primary, while Fuller Clark told The Hill that she remains uncommitted.

“I wanted to ensure that we had a very open and fair process in New Hampshire and I don't t believe as an elected officer of the party that I should be choosing between two very fine Democrats who are running for office,” she said. 

“For the time being, I continue to hold that position and will wait until closer to the convention to decide.”

Clinton's superdelegate supporters includes Gov. Maggie Hassan, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, and Rep. Annie Kuster.

She's also backed by Democratic National Committeemembers Joanne Dodwell, Billy Shaheen and Kathy Sullivan. 

COMMENTS

Revealed: Sanders Volunteered in Israel for Marxist Revolutionary Group

AP Photo/Chris Carlson

by AARON KLEIN5 Feb 201660

TEL AVIV – In the 1960s, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)volunteered at a kibbutz in northern Israel as the guest of a Marxist-socialist youth movement with a revolutionary mission, it was revealed on Thursday.

For months, Israeli reporters have been searching for the name of the kibbutz on which Sanders spent several months in 1963. The presidential candidate, who has not been shy about his affinity for socialism, was reluctant to disclose much about his Jewish upbringing or his time in Israel in 1963, where he traveled with his first wife, Deborah Shiling.

Sanders’ campaign has conspicuously refused to answer inquiries about the identity of the kibbutz.

On Thursday, Jerusalem Post Intelligence and Security columnist Yossi Melman revealed that Sanders volunteered the information about the kibbutz during an interview with the reporter in 1990, while Melman was the intelligence correspondent and analyst for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

The 1990 interview, discovered in the Haaretz archive, cites Sanders saying that in 1963 he spent several months in Kibbutz Sha’ar Ha’amakim in northern Israel as a guest of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, which was affiliated with the kibbutz.

The information has garnered some news media attention from Israel-themed outlets. Yet not a single news report reviewed by Breitbart News mentioned that Hashomer Hatzair was an openly Marxist movement that sought to use Zionism as the first stage of a utopian plan for Israel. The second stage was to be a revolution to transform Israel into an Arab-Jewish socialist paradise.

Hashomer Hatzair is still around. It currently identifies as a progressive Zionist organization and is a member of the International Falcon Movement–Socialist Education International.

Hashomer Hatzair runs a youth program in the U.S. that says it “encourages youth to build progressive Jewish values, explore connections to Israel and the Jewish community, and develop a commitment to social, environmental, and economic justice.”

The organization, founded in Europe in 1913 to prepare young socialists for the move to Mandatory Palestine, has rebranded its mission numerous times. It once was a revolutionary Marxist organization.

Movement members first settled in Mandatory Palestine in 1919 and seven years later founded several kibbutzim as well as a political party called the Socialist League of Palestine.

In a lengthy history for the Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation, Hebrew University Political Science Professor and prolific author Shlomo Avineri in 1977 documentedthe Marxist revolutionary ideology of the Hashomer Hatzair movement.

In a 404-page work titled, “Varieties of Marxism,” Avineri recounted the Marxist “baptism” of Hashomer Hatzair, which he referred to as HH, in the 1920s as “one of the most exciting intellectual chapters in the modern history of Zionism and Palestine.”

He continued:

It bears testimony to the historical essentiality of Marxism in those years, which saw a new wave of Marxism that was to grow and intensify until it reached its political peak in the 1950s, whereupon it would disintegrate in face of political reality.

Unlike other pragmatic socialist movements at the time, Hashomer Hatzair “refused to accept constructivism as the main content of class war in the Palestinian reality, or to contend that socialism could be realized without revolution.”

Hashomer Hatzair saw Zionism, or support for a Jewish national homeland, as an entryway into the Jewish state in order to accomplish a socialist revolution in two phases.  It enumerated this mission by creating its own “Etapist Theory,” according to which “Jewish socialist society would be realized in two stages,” wrote Avineiri.

The historian elaborated:

In the first stage, the Jewish national home would be established in Eretz Israel, based on a productive and self-sufficient economic foundation. In the second stage, the social revolution itself would be accomplished.

The function of the Zionist movement and Zionist cooperation was limited to the first stage only; it would be terminated after the economic, cultural, and political foundations had been laid in Palestine, and after the national funds, based on national donations, were no longer required. Partnership with the Zionists was therefore considered only temporary.

The social revolution was to be realized, however, by the international organization of the workers, i.e. Jewish-Arab collaboration. This “theory of stages” formulated by Meir Yaari had many advantages for HH. It could continue to participate in the Zionist Organization, to build socialist cells within the framework of the existing regime, and, at the same time, to maintain revolutionary radicalism.”

While that radicalism may now be tempered, the group continues to maintain its socialist identity.

In 2008, Haaretz reported on the continuing efforts of Hashomer Hatzair to spread socialism in Israel and worldwide.

The newspaper reported on a world conference marking the movement’s 95th anniversary that attempted to update the organization’s basic tenets. Participants in the 2008 conference could not agree on which style of socialism to adopt. “While Latin American graduates favored classic socialism, the European delegates sided with democratic socialism,” reportedHaaretz.

The newspaper continued, quoting a delegate from Argentina:

According to Dana Merweiss, from Argentina, the way to implement socialism today is by education and creating communities with socialist awareness.

Levine said the movement in the past required its members to work within its community, but today “we say we should also work outside our community as part of the fulfillment of the principle of socialism. In Argentina we work in poor neighborhoods, Jewish and non-Jewish,” he said.

 Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

Read More Stories About:

2016 Presidential Race, Breitbart Jerusalem,Israel, Bernie Sanders 2016, Marxism,Zionism, Jewish faith, Val Leer Jerusalem Foundation, Marxist-socialist youth movement