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Democratic Party's "Democratic Values" Omit Democratic Process |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Wednesday, 02 September 2015 13:18 |
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Boardman writes: "The Democratic Party is showing some ugly faces these days, as entrenched party leaders find both their president and much of their constituency headed in directions that the 'party' disapproves."
Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Committee meeting in Minneapolis, August 30, 2015. (photo: Jim Mone/AP)
Democratic Party's "Democratic Values" Omit Democratic Process
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
02 September 15
Rigging nominations may or not win elections, but it’s despicable
 he Democratic Party is showing some ugly faces these days, as entrenched party leaders find both their president and much of their constituency headed in directions that the “party” disapproves. From Sen. Chuck Schumer choosing to risk war to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz stifling supporters of her party’s president and the peace deal with Iran, to the insurgent candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, party leaders find themselves leading toward goals widely rejected by others.
This is actually a hopeful sign – that there’s resistance. But the struggle to define Democratic values as more than just another oxymoron is still in its early stages. It’s also something of a shadowy war in which the party “leaders” seek to deny insurgents oxygen by limiting the number of debates, thereby helping Hillary Clinton ascend to her predicted coronation as the party’s nominee. Another way of looking at that is that the party “leadership” is engaged in a delicate game of attempted vote-rigging by ignorance. What about that can be good for the party, never mind the country?
Leading up to the recent Democratic National Committee (DNC) summer meeting August 26-29, the National Journal (NJ) offered an unintentionally hilarious “insider” assessment of the state of the Democratic Party. “Looming” over the meeting, NJ pontificated, was: A Bernie breakthrough? A Hillary resurgence? O’Malley coming up on the outside? No, none of those. What loomed over the meeting was “Joe Biden’s phantom candidacy.” Seriously, according to NJ, Biden was getting “much of the buzz” from the party delegates even though he wasn’t even attending the meeting. NJ quotes two of the DNC’s 450 members as wanting an “interesting race” and not wanting an “anointed candidate” (the unnamed Hillary Clinton). NJ had no trouble mentioning Clinton over and over in its story, treating her as the only looming alternative to Biden (who had a conference call with DNC members on August 26).
So what might these insider tea leaves mean? Apparently the party hierarchy is pretty much solidly behind Clinton and willing to rig the rules (on debates, for example) in her favor. And one might infer that, whatever dissatisfaction the party leaders might have with Clinton, they have no interest in Bernie Sanders or anyone else. NJ doesn’t even mention Bernie till the last paragraph, and then only to say he will be speaking. NPR, on the other hand, wonders if this is “2008 all over again?” when the “unbeatable” Clinton lost to another insurgent. So there’s some ferment in our official media.
Contending for the lead doesn’t make you visible in all media
Omission is a pretty odd way to treat a candidate who is competitive in the first two primary states. In Iowa, Sanders has come from 50 points behind Clinton to trail by just seven, and he leads her in New Hampshire. So it looks like the party poobahs are willfully trying to ignore a candidate who they desperately hope against hope will fade. And it seems designed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy of the wishful calculation that Sanders “can’t” survive Super Tuesday. But it’s still a long way to February 1 when the Iowa caucuses set the real circus on the road (with or without Joe Biden), when the party begins to choose some 3,700 delegates to the Philadelphia convention July 25-28, 2016.
To become the party’s nominee for president, a candidate will need roughly 2,242 delegate votes. That number represents one more than 50% of all the delegate votes (4,483), representing the roughly 3,700 elected delegates together with 450 DNC member-delegates and more than 250 elected-official/dignitary-delegates.
Democratic “leaders” are apparently indulging their dislike of Bernie Sanders so much that their pique threatens to align them with a minority of American voters, committed to nominating a damaged candidate with a 55% disapproval rating, and 43% favorable (Sanders is 36% favorable, 29% disapproval, with 33% still unsure). As the certified frontrunner, Clinton remains well ahead of Sanders in national polling, but recently there have been media pieces like the September 1 Huff Post story headlined:
Polling Trajectory Shows Bernie Sanders Winning the Democratic Nomination. It's Time for America to Notice.
It might also be time for the DNC decision-makers to notice, too, and to level the playing field to allow a more democratic process to choose the candidate. If they’re given a fair opportunity, Democratic primary voters might even choose a truly Democratic candidate for the first time in decades.
At the DNC meeting, campaign reps were lobbying delegates to commit to their candidates, but reports suggest there are few committed delegates yet. Clinton reportedly has more than anyone else, but reporting suggests her total may be fewer than ten.
DNC meeting hears four candidates in beauty-contest setting
Four of the five declared Democratic candidates spoke to the DNC in alphabetical order (Jim Webb did not attend), which turned out to be in increasing order of intensity, substance, and specificity. They were all in agreement in a general way about basic domestic issues and “re-building the American Dream.” They all avoided direct criticism of each other and they all had sharp lines about Republican failures. It was all on C-Span, where differences, both subtle and glaring, emerged, including these:
Lincoln Chaffee spoke only eight minutes (everyone else would go over twenty), mostly in genial generalizations. But he pointedly expressed pride in voting against Sam Alito for the Supreme Court. Of Democrats generally, he said, “We’re right on income inequality,” as well as healthcare, and immigration, and the environment – without getting specific about any of them.
Chaffee said he supported the Iran deal, not just on its merits – keeping Iran from building a nuclear weapon – but also because the deal was the result of important international cooperation among the US, China, Russia, Great Britain, France, and Germany in negotiations that began in 2003 (joined by the US in 2006). He was alone in saying that that kind of cooperation was needed to solve the world’s most serious problems.
And only Chaffee called for ending all American conflicts overseas, calling them “Republican wars.” He did not offer specifics.
Hillary Clinton also spoke mostly in familiar generalities – in support of women, children, the middle class, and working class families. She also took a series of shots at Republican Donald Trump. Clinton said she’s worked her “whole life” to even the odds for the poor and middle class. She mostly spoke in a flat, polished manner, carefully waiting at the expected applause lines. She made clear that she was still running as Bill Clinton’s wife. (The New York Times falsely reported that she delivered “a fiery speech” and “a red-meat speech.”) Clinton hit most of the party’s major domestic policy clichés without any strong show of passion, punctuating her points with lots of deadpan head nodding.
At the end, Clinton promised to help re-build the Democratic Party, a thinly-veiled criticism of the party’s present leadership, including the president. She promised to help candidates up and down the ticket nationwide.
Martin O’Malley didn’t veil his criticism of the party’s leadership, lashing out at policy (but not naming names). He called the party’s decision to have only four debates before the primaries a “rigged process” that left the Democratic Party largely silent and unresponsive to unacceptable Republican racism and trickle-down economics. He particularly mocked the party’s scheduling of the one New Hampshire debate in the middle of the holiday shopping season when almost no one would watch. “This is no time for silence,” O’Malley said, “we need debate.”
O’Malley lamented the party’s abandonment of a 50-state strategy, a reference to former party chair Howard Dean’s effort to turn the Democrats into a truly national party. He proclaimed that “we are the Democratic Party, not the undemocratic party.”
But he also touted a fake populism, saying people could make change on their own, claiming that it was “not about big banks, big money taking over elections – it’s about us.” That was a not-so-veiled jab at the Sanders campaign, with O’Malley claiming he, too, has progressive values. But O’Malley offered no justification for leaving banks too big to fail or allowing big money to buy politicians. This seems to position him as the “populist” alternative to Sanders, but the one who won’t do anything serious to disturb the status quo.
Bernie Sanders was attending his first DNC meeting. After thanking his audience of Democrats “for what you do” for the good of the country, he noted that his campaign “calling for a political revolution” was striking a chord in grassroots America. He compared the current enthusiasm for his message to the Democrats’ “abysmal” showing in 2014, when low turnout contributed to Republicans taking control of both houses of Congress:
In my view, Democrats will not retain the White House, will not regain the Senate or the U.S. House, will not be successful in dozens of governor races across the country, unless we generate excitement and momentum and produce a huge voter turnout. With all due respect – and I do not mean to insult anyone here – that turnout, that enthusiasm, will not happen with politics as usual. The same old same old will not work.
The people of our country understand that given the collapse of the American middle class, and given the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality we are experiencing, we do not need more establishment politics or establishment economics – what we need is a government willing to take on the billionaire class …
Sanders spoke with his usual energy and intensity, enumerating many specific positions unmentioned by others. These included defeating the TPP, rebuilding US infrastructure, ending “cowardly voting suppression by cowardly Republican governors,” leading the world away from fossil fuels, defeating the Keystone XL pipeline, providing free college tuition to all Americans by taxing Wall Street speculation, providing quality childcare, and expanding Social Security.
Sanders, like Chaffee, affirmed that he stands with the president on the Iran deal.
How divisive is the Iran accord for the Democratic Party?
In the twelve years since negotiations with Iran over nuclear weapons, Iran has started no wars. Compare that record with the United States. Or Israel. Or even Saudi Arabia. Then ask yourself why you believe Iran is part of an “axis of evil” (if you do believe that). The reality is that Iran has been successfully demonized beyond all rational reality. Iran is even helping the US and others fight ISIS.
All the same, US senators like Schumer and others are willing to turn on their party’s president, ready to reject a pact negotiated not just by the US but an international coalition with a wide spectrum of interests, none of which is a nuclear-armed Iran. Hillary Clinton endorsed the deal almost as soon as it was announced. Sanders endorsed the deal. But when an apparent majority of members of the DNC proposed a resolution endorsing the Iran deal, DNC chair Wasserman Schultz barred the DNC from voting on it.
The Iranian nuclear bomb program has never been much more real than President Obama’s Kenyan citizenship, yet there are those who fervently believe in each imaginary horror who will not be swayed by any evidence of an actual reality. With potentially game-changing opportunities of such vitality at home and abroad, it bodes ill for democratic values for the Democratic Party to be so heavily influenced by people so deeply in denial.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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David Petraeus' Bright Idea: Give Terrorists Weapons to Beat Terrorists |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=29990"><span class="small">Trevor Timm, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Wednesday, 02 September 2015 13:14 |
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Timm writes: "The latest brilliant plan to curtail Isis in the Middle East? Give more weapons to current members of al-Qaida."
Our new friends? Fighters from al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front drive in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo flying Islamist flags as they head to a front line. (photo: Fadi Al-Halabi/AFP/Getty)
David Petraeus' Bright Idea: Give Terrorists Weapons to Beat Terrorists
By Trevor Timm, Guardian UK
02 September 15
Former CIA director David Petraeus is advocating giving arms to members of al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida off-shoot, to beat Isis. That is madness
he latest brilliant plan to curtail Isis in the Middle East? Give more weapons to current members of al-Qaida. The Daily Beast reported that former CIA director David Petraeus, still somehow entrenched in the DC Beltway power circles despite leaking highly classified secrets, is now advocating arming members of the al-Nusra Front in Syria, an offshoot of al-Qaida and a designated terrorist organization. Could there be a more dangerous and crazy idea?
Petraeus was forced to respond on Tuesday, the day after his article provoked a firestorm, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that he doesn’t want to arm al-Nusra itself, just “some individual fighters, and perhaps some elements, within Nusra”. He thinks the US could somehow “peel off” these fighters and convince to join the much weaker rebel army that al-Nusra recently decimated. Oh okay, then. He’s in favor of arming only the “moderate” members of al-Qaida: that sounds so much better.
Let’s put aside for a second that there’s not much difference between arming al-Nusra and arming “some individual fighters, and perhaps some elements, within Nusra.” How the US can possibly “peel off” fighters from a terrorist group is a complete mystery. In Iraq – Petraeus is apparently using part of the largely failed Iraq “surge” as his blueprint here – he convinced some Sunni tribes to switch sides temporarily, but that was with over 100,000 US troops on the ground to do the convincing. Does Petraeus think we should invade Syria to accomplish the same feat?
The idea that we should add more weapons to the equation, let alone give them to militants who the US considers terrorists, is preposterous at this point. Depressingly, escalating our involvement is the dominant talking point in Washington’s foreign policy circles these days.
History could not matter less to war planners, as the dangerous cycle of arming dangerous factions in the Middle East and escalating US involvement is about to start anew. The CIA armed the Mujahideen in the 1980s in their guerilla fight against the Soviets, many members of the Mujahideen would end up forming the core of al-Qaida in the 1990s.
Isis, which was originated inside squalid US prison camps from George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and which also has billions of dollars in US weapons and armored vehicles thanks to a series of embarrassing mistakes and battlefield routes of all the foreign militaries we arm, eventually turned on al-Qaida. So now an ex-CIA director is suggesting that we also arm a part of al-Qaida directly, since they are now the enemy of our (larger) enemy.
Remember that one of the reasons the US claimed it could go ahead and bomb Syria without any congressional authorization in the first place was because of the allegedly ultra-dangerous “Khorasan Group” which was a group of supposed terrorist masterminds within al-Nusra, and that the US was in “imminent” danger from this previously non-existent group. The US has continued to target with al-Nusra with missiles in recent months.
Continually ignored in the debate over arming Syrian rebels, is that the CIA itself produced a study that concluded that arming any rebel force, whether they are a notorious terrorist group or not, is generally a bad idea. The study found that most of the time such attempts either fail spectacularly or backfire in the face of the US, even if they initially succeed. This study, which is still classified, was apparently disregarded by the Obama administration and there’s no proof Congress even saw it when voted to arm the “moderate” rebels in the first place.
There’s also the much larger question over the Obama administration’s continued refusal to require a war authorization from Congress. As the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui first pointed out, how could this half-baked plan possibly square with the administration’s already-absurd theory that the declaration of war against al-Qaida allows them to indefinitely go to war with Isis as well?
Petraeus is likely not the only one who thinks this plan to work with and arm members of the al-Nusra front is a good idea. There are probably many faceless officials and spooks who are pushing the same agenda in Washington, but Petraeus is the only one with enough clout to go ahead and say it out loud (since we already know he is above the law). Now you can expect a bunch of fresh hot takes explaining how Petraeus is right and we should be arming al-Qaida.
If history and common sense tell us anything, its that this plan won’t succeed. But let’s, for a moment, assume the entire 67-year history of the CIA is wrong and that it this actually does work. The US arms members of al-Nusra, they become a powerful fighting force, push back Isis and eventually lead a rebellion that overthrows Assad. Where are we then? Well, we know US war planners don’t usually think that far ahead.
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Navigating Sustainability and Your Fiduciary Duty |
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Wednesday, 02 September 2015 13:08 |
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Excerpt: "The importance of sustainability to business and investing is intensifying as financial markets are increasingly forced to address challenges posed by the scarcity of natural resources like fresh water and topsoil, the effects of unabated carbon emissions, rapid urbanization and the widening inequality of wealth and incomes, to name just a few."
New York City's Central Park. (photo: Piotr Redlinski/The New York Times)
Navigating Sustainability and Your Fiduciary Duty
By Al Gore and David Blood, Reader Supported News
02 September 15
 teacher, pressing a student to explain why he was late to class, was puzzled by his response "I simply followed the sign." When the teacher asked what the sign said, the student answered "School Ahead, Go Slow."
Misinterpreting signals to make them consistent with a pre-determined outcome is, psychologists tell us, a common phenomenon in human nature. Unfortunately, it is also a frequent dynamic in modern financial markets, particularly when it comes to sustainability. The evidence shows that many investors have been reluctant to react to the numerous signs that, when read properly, point to the growing relevance of sustainability as a key driver of the global economy.
The importance of sustainability to business and investing is intensifying as financial markets are increasingly forced to address challenges posed by the scarcity of natural resources like fresh water and topsoil, the effects of unabated carbon emissions, rapid urbanization and the widening inequality of wealth and incomes, to name just a few. As the context of business and investing shifts, understanding the economic benefits of a sustainable form of capitalism has become more critical. And identifying the best ways to navigate the transition toward it has become essential.
There is a pressing need to re-tool investment frameworks to align with this new economic reality; this view is supported by rigorous research from many mainstream academic experts and respected organizations across sectors and geographies. In the course of collecting and analyzing this research in our most recent white paper, Allocating Capital for Long-Term Returns, we were surprised by the extent to which inertia and the gravitational pull of old mindsets have prevented many business leaders from doing what these persuasive studies, not to mention common sense, ought to lead them to do.
Perhaps the most surprising barrier we found that impedes wider acceptance of the new research is the odd notion held by many that sustainability considerations are somehow incompatible with fiduciary duty. It may be that these investors associate the use of sustainability factors with arguments made decades ago by advocates of "ethical investing" -- an approach predicated principally on negative screening. By misreading the meaning of that genre of investing, they seem to have concluded that whenever the relevance of sustainability is brought up, the "sign" they should follow is "Sustainability Ahead, Go Slow."
But whatever the cause of the obvious inertia in the investment marketplace, fiduciaries have a duty to overcome it. So, in an effort to catalyze overdue action, we would like to address this fundamental barrier to change head on:
Fiduciaries are tasked with the decision to buy, sell, or hold assets. There is no passive behavior as a fiduciary; there is no "do nothing" task. Those who defend an obsolete interpretation of fiduciary duty sometimes justify the active omission of sustainability considerations by asserting that sustainability dynamics somehow have no impact on financial assets. Overwhelming evidence now shows, however, that they are simply mistaken. Sustainability is an important factor in the long-term success of a business.
A meta-study featured in our white paper helps distill the connection between sustainability and financial outperformance. Conducted by the University of Oxford and Arabesque Partners, the research collates findings from over 190 of the premier academic papers, industry reports, newspaper articles and books. Notably, the study concludes that "it is in the best economic interest for corporate managers and investors to incorporate sustainability considerations into decision-making processes." The drumbeat of evidence has continued to build to a crescendo, and is recently corroborated by a new analysis by MSCI analyzing the historical results of companies from February 2007 to March 2015. Over this eight year period, the MSCI report found portfolios comprised of companies with high ESG ratings, or companies who have recently improved their ESG ratings, outperformed the global benchmark.
Indeed we believe that sustainability is a lens to help business leaders and investors make better investment decisions facilitated by the inclusion of more complete information. Therefore as with any other issue related to the prudent management of capital, investors and companies have a fiduciary duty to include sustainability in decisions. Extending this logic one step further, not only is it permissible for fiduciaries to incorporate sustainability into the capital allocation process, failure to do so may constitute a breach of fiduciary duty by intentionally overlooking the possibility of maximizing long-term risk-adjusted returns. A forthcoming report from the Principles for Responsible Investment and the UNEP Finance Initiative, which builds on their ground-breaking 2005 Freshfields report, confirms "A failure to consider long-term investment value drivers, which include environmental, social, and governance issues, is a failure of fiduciary duty."
This updated interpretation of fiduciary duty encourages more comprehensive insights at the industry, company and asset level. Organizing quantitative and qualitative financial and sustainability data into one cohesive narrative facilitates more informed capital allocation decisions as investors can readily identify high quality businesses positioned for long-term success. Using this framework would, for example, help investors better understand issues such as: how a company's strategic vision for growth aligns with a future of natural resource scarcity; the way incentives influence the pursuit of long-term value creation by management teams; the effect corporate culture has on attracting and retaining top talent; or the extent to which a board's composition creates diversity of thought and insight. These select examples highlight how sustainability -- environmental, social, and governance factors -- add significant value to the traditional investment process.
"Dig the well before you are thirsty" cautions a Chinese proverb. Sustainability related risks and opportunities have the profound potential to disrupt financial markets in a non-linear progression and fiduciaries of capital cannot sit idly by to the detriment of the beneficiaries they have a duty to serve.
It is past time to recalibrate the scope of fiduciary duty to include sustainability -- not only because it is permissible to do so, but because it is obligatory for prudent fiduciaries of capital.
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FOCUS | The Best Way for Bernie to Win: An Electoral College Agreement |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=26125"><span class="small">Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Wednesday, 02 September 2015 11:16 |
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Simpich writes: "Bernie Sanders is the best person running for president in a very, very long time. He deserves our votes. An all-out effort should be made for him to win the Democratic nomination. All out. That's Plan A. But if the forces of Mammon prevail, and Sanders fails to win the Democratic nomination, there is an safe-state strategy that Sanders can choose if he starts in the next few months."
Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Getty)
The Best Way for Bernie to Win: An Electoral College Agreement
By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News
02 September 15
 e don’t have a parliament in the United States, like they do in Canada.
In a parliament, two or more parties can join the votes of their representatives to elect a leader. That’s what they do in Canada.
We can take a similar path here if Bernie Sanders will consider a “safe-state strategy.”
Did you know that in 48 states, a candidate can choose electors based on a pledge to vote for the opposing candidate, if the opposing candidate is in a better position than she or he is to win the Electoral College?
Why hasn’t this strategy been adopted in the past by third party candidates? Good question. I would suggest that the major factor is that only now – thanks to people like Nate Silver – do we have accurate polls that reasonable people can rely on. Nate Silver correctly chose the presidential election winner in every state in the Union in 2012.
Look at the situation. In the USA, we choose our leader with an electoral college, with electors chosen by the voters in each state. Whoever wins 270 electoral votes becomes President of the United States.
Forty states are generally out of contention, as either the Democrat or Republican is guaranteed to win those states. The entire presidential race is based on winning over the least engaged voters in ten states who can be swayed one way or the other. What kind of election is that?
Bernie Sanders is the best person running for president in a very, very long time. He deserves our votes. An all-out effort should be made for him to win the Democratic nomination. All out. That’s Plan A.
But if the forces of Mammon prevail, and Sanders fails to win the Democratic nomination, there is an safe-state strategy that Sanders can choose if he starts in the next few months. The use of this strategy will increase Bernie’s chances of becoming the president of the United States.
While continuing to run for the Democratic nomination, Bernie can hedge his bets. Here’s Plan B.
Bernie can qualify for the fifty state ballots (and D.C.) as an Independent, and choose a slate of electors for each site. He can choose his electors based on their willingness to pledge to vote for the Democratic candidate if the Democrat is in a better position than he is to win the Electoral College.
This can be done. The World Heritage Encyclopedia offers a great summary:
Twenty-one states do not have laws that compel their electors to vote for a pledged candidate.[2] Twenty-nine states plus the District of Columbia have laws to penalize faithless electors,[3] although these have never been enforced.[4]
The constitutionality of state pledge laws was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 1952 in Ray v. Blair.[7] The court ruled in favor of the state’s right to require electors to pledge to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged, as well as to remove electors who refuse to pledge. Once the elector has voted, his or her vote can be changed only in states such as Michigan and Minnesota, where votes other than those pledged are rendered invalid ...
[In all states], a faithless elector may only be punished after he or she votes. The Supreme Court has ruled that, as electors are chosen via state elections, they act as a function of the state, not the federal government. Therefore states have the right to govern electors. The constitutionality of state laws punishing electors for actually casting a faithless vote – rather than merely refusing to pledge – has never been decided by the Supreme Court.
The analysis is simple and sweet. The electors are free to vote for the candidate of their choice in every state but two. No elector has ever been punished, even though there are over a hundred instances of electors voting for other candidates. To top it off, assume a public and longstanding agreement between the electors and the candidate as to how to vote. The likelihood of punishment is zero. No harm, no foul.
There are three ways Bernie could go. The first and best way would be based on an agreement between Bernie and the Democratic Party. Bernie could ask the Democratic candidate to sign a mutual pledge that if either he or the Dem candidate won the popular vote in that state, the winner would pledge his delegates to whichever candidate had a better chance of obtaining 270 at the electoral college. The simplest way would be to base it on whoever won more electoral votes.
For the outliers Michigan and Minnesota (I am unaware of any others) that have the ability to render an electoral vote invalid, there could be an agreement by the two candidates to support whichever candidates was leading in the polls for that state a week from Election Day.
Suppose the Democratic candidate refused to enter into this agreement? There is a second path that is almost as promising as the first. Bernie could simply choose delegates who agreed to vote for the Democratic candidate if Bernie was unable to come up with 270 votes by himself. Note that this could mean political horse-trading between Bernie and the Dems right up to the Electoral College vote in early December.
There is even a third way, which Michael Moore unsuccessfully pitched to Ralph Nader in the weeks before the 2000 election. In this scenario, Sanders would pitch his support to the Democratic candidate in the final weeks leading up to the election if it appeared he had no chance of winning the national election. He could even limit this pitch to states remaining “in play.”
All of these three paths provide what is called the “safe-state strategy.” This strategy is not for the purists. Some third party candidates,willing to see a Republican win rather than aid the Democrats, have adopted a “swing-state strategy.” Given the importance of Supreme Court seats and the history of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations, I think most Americans are not interested in being purists.
This safe-state strategy would provide:
- The best odds for the Republicans to lose the national election;
- A path for Bernie to run for President right up to Election Day and maintain a chance of winning;
- A pumped-up and enthused electorate;
- A third party candidate without remorse or punishment;
- A model of civility that is worthy of emulation; and
- The ability to engage in political horse-trading.
What’s not to like?
Bill Simpich is an Oakland attorney who knows that it doesn't have to be like this. He was part of the legal team chosen by Public Justice as Trial Lawyer of the Year in 2003 for winning a jury verdict of 4.4 million in Judi Bari's lawsuit against the FBI and the Oakland police.
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uring the lead-up to the vote on the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP) that the President narrowly won, Obama and his surrogates consistently suggested that those in labor and other allied groups opposing the deal were “fighting the last war” and were against “the most progressive trade agreement the world has ever seen.” Indeed, he even went so far as to accuse critics like Senator Elizabeth Warren of “making stuff up”.
