Day: February 10, 2016

Obviously, Sanders absolutely crushed Clinton last night, getting a 20 point victory and necessary momentum. No way to spin this for Clinton, it was a loss, and a challenge. At the same, Sanderistas shouldn't get too excited, just as Clintonistas shouldn't get too depressed. What is next is a long primary, one that I expect Clinton to win. Bernie Sanders absolutely had to have this win, and he had to win it by the margins he did to have any chance going forward (because if he had won only in the single digits, that would have been spun as a Clinton victory). So Sanders gets his day in the sun and he should enjoy it. For a couple hours. Because then it is onto South Carolina and Nevada and then all the states in Super Tuesday. So he has a lot of work to do. And you can take it or leave it from me, but he is still behind the eight ball. If you include the superdelegates, who can of course change their commitments at any time, Clinton is now ahead with a 394-42 delegate lead. But unlike in 2008, when superdelegates did change their mind and go with Obama, do you think that would happen in 2016? Nope, not in a million years. Not unless Hillary dies or drops out. Sanders is not Obama. He does not have a shot in the general election like Obama did. He is not even a Democrat, and does not support Democratic candidates. That's important to superdelegates. So there is no way they will abandon Hillary to go with Sanders. To beat them, he will have to sweep the primaries coming up. And that may prove to be a tough task. The last poll out of South Carolina had Clinton up 64-27, and in Nevada, Clinton was up 50-27. So Bernie has a long way to go. But still, good win.

In 2007 Joe Biden, an esteemed senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted in favor of Bush's vanity war in Iraq. It was a craven vote for a transparently corrupt war intended, ironically, to safeguard his future electoral viability. To their credit, Democratic primary voters remembered that vote and denied Joe Biden the presidency. Votes have consequences. Americans do not favor giving pusillanimous politicians the keys to the White House. Does anyone doubt that Biden would have sailed to the nomination and the Presidency is he had only asked, "What's the REAL reason for this war?" and then voted as his heart and head both advised him? Instead, he (and Jeb Bush) are the only American politicians to ever pay a price for that war, and that price was astonishingly small compared to the price Iraqis continue to pay. Between 2001 and last spring, Bill and Hillary Clinton were paid $153 million for speeches delivered to a range of oligarchs and big banks, including Goldman Sachs, the very company that profited so wildly from pushing the country to the brink of economic ruin. Like the Iraq war vote, these speaking fees are an affront to decency and common sense that Democratic primary voters appear unwilling to forgive. No US bankers have been jailed for their crimes against this country. For their outright attack on our economy that wiped out retirement accounts and life saving, they only got bonuses. Hillary Clinton may now be the only person in the upper reaches of power to pay a price for the reckless criminality of the US financial industry. Is that fair? I don't know. But there is a heart beating within the US electorate and that heart years for the scales of justice to somehow be set right.