Donald Trump has threatened on numerous occasions to run as a third party candidate if he feels the Republicans aren't fair with him, but if he doesn't have the magic 1,237 number after the final primary on June 7th he'll have to decide whether he thinks they will before the convention. The reason is ballot access. The Republican convention takes place July 18-21 in Cleveland, but many states have filing deadlines for third party Presidential candidates that are before those dates. Those states are listed as follows.
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Texas.
That's 143 electoral votes that Trump would not have access to right out of the gate unless he chose before the convention. What's worse for him is Texas' deadline is almost a month before the primaries are even over on May 9th. So if he waited until the Primaries were over he would be giving up the biggest prize a right wing candidate can realistically hope to win before he even starts, 38 electoral votes off the table. I suppose he could file there before the deadline but Cruz and Kasich would hammer him on it with Republican voters.
On the Democratic side many people, I think unwisely, are asking Bernie Sanders to run as an Independent if he doesn't win, however Sanders would face the same problems. I personally believe that if he loses the nomination he will support Secretary Clinton and I also believe that may be the right thing to do. On the other hand maybe America needs 4 years of a President Trump or a President Cruz to wake up and stop supporting third way candidates such as Secretary Clinton, but I'd rather seem them get it right the first time and nominate Senator Sanders. Finally, as I wrote earlier a third party candidate would likely result in a Republican President anyway because if no candidate can get to a majority of the electoral college (270) the President is chosen by the U.S. House of Representatives which due to Gerrymandering is almost certain to remain in Republican hands until at least 2022.
It gives me absolutely no joy to write that title. I've admired Rachel for a long time now, ever since she first started filling in for Keith Olbermann on his nights off of Countdown. But it's the truth and I have to tell it, because I'm sick of the media misrepresenting Senator Sanders and his campaign and I'm angry that Rachel has sunk to this level.
Last night as I was going through my Twitter feed I stumbled upon this tweet by Thom Hartmann.
I was surprised because I thought Rachel had been one of the few bastions of integrity left at MSNBC. But she had fallen to the dark side about a week ago when her Maddowblog ran a story entitled Sanders Surprises with Controversial Superdelegate Strategy, in which it was made to look like Senator Sanders had said that he would accept winning the nomination on Superdelegates without having won the will of the people, the pledged delegates. This erroneous assertion was first floated in a Politico story cited in the Maddowblog entry. I'm not going to litigate that story as well, but suffice it to say that story puts words in the Sanders campaign's mouth the same way Maddowblog does. Then, when Rachel interviews Senator Sanders it comes up again.
Rachel tries not once, not twice, but THRICE to get Sanders to say that he would accept being the nominee without the will of the people and each time he refuses to do so. The closest that he comes to agreeing with the premise of her question is on his third answer.
"I think it is probably the case that the candidate who has the most pledged delegates is going to be the candidate, but there are other factors."
What he's really saying there is that it's up to the Superdelegates who they support, he's trying to make a case for Superdelegates to come over to his side like any sane candidate would do, but at no time in the exchanges as you can see for yourself does he ever say he thinks he should win without a majority of pledged delegates. He does say he believes that in states where he won a large amount of the vote the Superdelegates should consider him, which I think is a reasonable way to pressure these undemocratic Superdelegates to switch to him, but you're free to make your own judgment on that strategy. After this incident I shrugged it off, everyone makes mistakes and Rachel has done more than enough for the Progressive movement to earn a pass every now and then.
But, after reading Thom Hartmann's tweet I made it a point to check out the story when I woke up today. I found that Rachel ran a story entitled Sanders Campaign Rewrites History of Losses. If that was indeed the case I was going to be disappointed in Bernie's campaign, and argue that whoever said it should be cut loose. But, it isn't true and here's why.
First, I've highlighted the relevant part of the story below, but I've also included a link to the whole video above for transparency sake.
In the story Rachel cites a Mother Jones article entitled This is How Bernie Sanders Will Win the Nomination in which Senior Strategist for the Sanders campaign Tad Devine says "Her grasp now on the nomination is almost entirely on the basis of victories where Bernie Sanders did not compete." Rachel then goes on to surmise that he is saying "The only reason (we've) lost this far is because (we) weren't trying to win." The problem Rachel is running in to here is that she is mistaken about the definition of "Compete." to her to compete means to try, when in actuality compete means to try to win.
Compete: To try to get or win something (such as a prize or reward) that someone else is also trying to win : to try to be better or more successful than someone or something else.
Rachel then goes on, with this false premise, to conclude that since the Sanders campaign had offices and workers in the states mentioned in the Mother Jones article (Offices and workers that she herself reported on before Super Tuesday) that Sanders did in fact try in those states and thus called the assertion made by the Sanders campaign "Bull Puckey."
But wait, if the Sanders campaign wasn't trying to win in those states what were they trying to do? Well, Rachel alludes to it earlier in this same story.
"No states on the Democratic side are winner take all."
That's right Rachel, Sanders wasn't trying to win the aforementioned states, (although I'm sure he wouldn't have minded) he wasn't trying to compete; which as we all know now means trying to win. He was trying to get as many delegates as he could out of states he knew to be unfavorable to him; a perfectly reasonable strategy in states where he knew he couldn't win outright. This effort was a success, as Senator Sanders got 238 delegates in these contests. Now maybe you're thinking to yourself that I'm a Sanders supporter and so I can't be impartial on this, well you're wrong but even if you weren't Tad Devine says that I'm right in a quote from the article that adds much needed context and is yet conspicuously missing from the Maddow story.
"Where we compete with Clinton, where this competition is real, we have a very good chance of beating her in every place that we compete with her."
Do I accept that a woman who holds a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford and a Doctorate in Philosophy from Oxford doesn't know the definition of the word Compete? Actually I do, because language is funny and sometimes people say things that don't actually mean what they think it does, if you've ever heard someone misuse literally when they mean figuratively you know what I mean.
What I don't accept is that a journalist with the aforementioned education and the experience Rachel Maddow has doesn't know how to look up a word in the dictionary in the internet age, doesn't know how to read an entire article to get much needed context, doesn't ask for clarification from a campaign they have the ability to at least attempt to contact and doesn't acknowledge that trying to get SOME delegates from states that weren't likely to be won is a form of trying BEFORE said journalist accuses them of lying. Come on Rachel, you know better which is why you're full of bull puckey.
Finally, because I'm feeling particularly nitpickey today there's this.
Rachel says
"...that's just the pledged delegates, leave aside the issue of the Superdelegates which is a whole different discussion..."
But then she proceeds to show the current delegate count INCLUDING THE SUPERDELEGATES; And she should know better, because when Chair of the DNC and closet Clinton backer Debbie Wasserman-Schultz chastised the media for including Superdelegates in the totals who was she talking to? I'll give you one guess...
It's been reported by the New York Times that the Republican establishment is seriously considering supporting a third party candidate such as Tom Coburn or Rick Perry if Trump makes it to 1237 delegates and locks up the Republican nomination.
At first blush this may sound fantastic to those on the left, because it sounds like the right will split their vote pretty much guaranteeing we win the White House. But if you look deeper into it you see it may actually do the opposite, because of one huge advantage the Republicans have: The U.S. House of Representatives.
All of us Bernie supporters know that he is just killing Secretary Clinton among independents, which is why he generally does much better in open primaries than in closed ones. So lets posit for a moment that Independents would also shun the Secretary in the general. Trump does well with them so he'd take them by a decent margin and he'd also take the far right vote and the anti establishment vote. Secretary Clinton would take the Democratic vote but not those farther on the left and this third party candidate would take the center right and moderate right.
What happens then? No candidate gets to 270 electoral votes, and then the incoming House of Representatives chooses the next President, just like in 1824. We all know how the Republicans have rigged the House with Gerrymandering so they, barring a miracle, will have control of it until at least 2022 when the next round of post census voting takes place. If the Democrats don't get their down ticket game on soon however it could be 2032, but that's a topic for another day.
The 2016 election gets crazier because the Democrats are widely expected to take back control of the Senate this year. Why would that matter? Because the new Senate chooses the Vice President. So you could have a President Coburn or a President Perry with whoever Secretary Clinton's running mate would be as Vice President.
Of course, all of this is fixed by simply nominating Bernie Sanders, he would take the Democratic and the Independent vote and the blue wall would remain intact. :)
...pretends Bernie Sanders didn’t do anything to help her with Health care in the 90s when there is a video of him STANDING RIGHT BEHIND HER because she's a woman.
Now I know that the establishment media is biased against Bernie Sanders, I also know that they're deathly afraid of Conservatives because of decades of spurious "Liberal Media" media attacks leveled at them by those on the right. But even with all that WHY does CNN choose a right wing "pundit" Buck Sexton to write their obligatory "Who won the debate" story for CNN.com?
Now in case you think "Oh maybe he's a centrist for TheBlaze." Yeah, no, not so much.
Hillary is the only person who isnt insane for hating citizens united, since it was about a movie that told us all how awful she is
This is the equivalent of letting Thom Hartmann write the "Who won the debate" story for a Fox News GOP debate on FoxNews.com. (Which I hope Fox News does by the way)
In addition to this there were some small yet interesting mistakes made on the page for this story. As everyone who uses a tabbed browser knows when you look at the tab it'll tell you the title of the page so you know what the different tabs are. I noticed something odd about mine so I looked at the html code and the <title> tag.
It appears the original title for this piece was "GOP debate: Clinton may regret immigration pledge (Opinion) - CNN.com" but the later title was "Clinton, Sanders may regret immigration vows." I guess after they realized it wasn't a GOP debate after all they decided to begrudgingly acknowledge that despite their hopes Sanders was in fact at the debate. Although maybe this is why they picked this guy to write the piece...
The substance of that first half, however, was so full of blatant pandering to Latino voters and wild promises to wield executive power on their behalf that it could come back to haunt the eventual Democratic nominee (likely Hillary Clinton) in a general election.
The rest of the article reads as the drivel you would come to expect from a Conservative who authored the above tweets. If you care to read it for a good laugh you can find it here, until CNN edits it again.
I know that the establishment media would never talk about this, but I'm curious why this isn't making more of a splash online. Secretary Clinton shockingly said she favors restrictions on late term abortion during the Fox News Town Hall.
"I have been on record in favor of a late pregnancy regulation that would have exceptions for the life and health of the mother." -Hillary Clinton
Meanwhile, Senator Sanders took a much more progressive and quite frankly frankly acceptable stance for progressive voters.
"I am very strongly Pro-Choice, that is a decision to be made by the woman, her physician and her family, that's my view." - Bernie Sanders
Do Secretary Clinton supporters know this? Anecdotally most of the hardcore supporters for her are women, I'm wondering if they know about and accept this blatant attack on their reproductive rights. This isn't the first time the Secretary has said this either, so it's not like it was a slip of the tongue.
I'm also wondering if they know that Planned Parenthood endorsed Secretary Clinton without first checking to see who was the stronger candidate on Reproductive rights. In fact, right after the Town Hall the head of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, tweeted this.
To which I replied "You mean... like herself?" and then I posted a link to the video above. No response. I wasn't the only one who slammed her for this hypocrisy, but the next day she went back to tweeting like nothing had happened, completely ignoring the very valid concerns put forth to her.
Now, to be CRYSTAL clear I fully support Planned Parenthood and the important work they do, I'm not about to have this post come off like I'm some kind of far right jackass who wants to defund it or severely limit it. Planned Parenthood is under siege and it needs the support of all progressives. All I'm saying is it doesn't exactly help its cause with progressives when its leader and board support the candidate with the least progressive views on abortion in the race, and then double down on that support after said candidate is demonstrably shown to be worse on this supremely important issue.
This is what the establishment does, they support their candidate no matter what. Senator Sanders got slammed in the media when he called Planned Parenthood part of the establishment, and I agree that the point was misstated, but I think instances like this show that while the organization as a whole isn't part of the establishment their leadership certainly acts like they are.
