April 24, 2016


News and Views


BERNIE’S PATH NOW

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-we-are-the-future-of-the-democratic-party/

Bernie Sanders: "We are the future of the Democratic Party"
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS FACE THE NATION
April 24, 2016, 11:01 AM

Play VIDEO -- Bernie Sanders: Election rules are “crazy”
Video -- Face The Nation


Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday that no matter what happens now his campaign is the future of the Democratic Party and that the top issues of his campaign are now the Democratic mainstream.

"I think the ideas we are talking about, (are) what the American people and the people in the Democratic Party want to hear," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation," noting his campaign's strong support among younger voters. "We are the future of the Democratic Party, so I'm very proud of where we are and we look forward to fighting this out through California."

Whether he or former secretary of state Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, Sanders said he believes that the key issues of his campaign will be represented in the platform of the Democratic nominee. He named guaranteed health care, free college tuition, getting money out of politics, a $15 national minimum wage and climate change as top priorities that he believes have broad backing in the party.

"All of those issues are issues that I believe the vast majority of people in the Democratic Party support," he said. "I hope that if I do not win the nomination, that that will be part of Clinton's agenda."

Sanders reassured on Sunday that, despite speculation about the viability of his campaign, he is planning on continuing his candidacy through the last primaries in early June.

"There's not a question whether if we are going to continue -- we are going to continue," he said. "We're going to fight this out until the last vote is cast. That's what democracy is about."

As for the suggestion from senior adviser Tad Devine that the Sanders campaign will need to "reevaluate" things after Tuesday's primaries in five states, Sanders said he doesn't know what that comment meant.

"I have not the slightest idea," he said. "You have to ask Tad."

Asked if the primary process is "rigged" against him in any way -- a frequent complaint from front-runner Donald Trump on the Republican side -- Sanders said no, noting that his campaign has made "enormous" progress.

"We are running against the most powerful political organization in the United States of America and I'm very proud of the campaign that we have run," he said. "We have won 16 states right now."

Sanders also doubled down on his comments this weekend that "poor people don't vote," which he said in response to a question about why Clinton seemed to be winning many of the states with higher income inequality.

"The fact of the matter is is that we have low voter turnouts. In New York state, 3 million independents were ineligible to vote," he said. "I think that that is pretty crazy. And I think that as a nation, we have got to significantly increase the voter turnout. There is no doubt that among low income people, the voting turnout is quite low."



Whether he beats Hillary or not, I agree that unless the Millennials make a complete turnaround philosophically, Bernie’s more Socialistic trend will continue. There is a clear need for it in this country. The article below about the fact that Charles Koch has actually spoken out favoring Hillary over the Republican candidates is causing me to worry. Will all the mainstream Democrats move over toward the Right now?

There still may be a split in both the Republican and the Democratic parties, or maybe a strong and less ideologically pure party of Independents. There are several Independents who appear to me to have better ideas than the Republicans. Bill Maher, at least, is very much like a Democrat, and until a few months ago Sanders was an Independent. The economic divide between poor/Middle Class and the wealthy, plus the strong cultural differences we see today make me think such a reconfiguration is on the way. I think I’m ready to see it, though it can be harder with more than two presidential candidates to achieve a clear win. We should change our system from winner take all to some other system. See the MtHolyoke.edu article below on types.

European elections are like that. The fact that so many different platform positions show up there is, to me, a good thing, because more opinions bring more ways of achieving progress, and if runoff elections become the norm that won’t cause any problem that I can see. When Gore challenged Bush that was really exciting news. We may need to come up with Federal laws to decides runoff elections without have a Republican state attorney general decide the election, however, (for her party’s candidate, of course.) Our whole country has become too blah (conservative) in our thinking patterns for me. I’m ready for a Bernie kind of change. I’ve been waiting for it since the 70s.


https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/BeginnningReading/types.htm

Types of Voting Systems

Much of the material on this web site discusses the advantages of proportional representation voting versus the single-member district plurality voting system. Viewing the choice in these "either/or" terms is useful because single-member plurality voting is the predominant system used for legislative elections in this country and proportional representation is usually considered the main alternative to this kind of plurality voting.

However, the actual range of available voting systems is much more extensive than this. For one thing, there are several other kinds of winner-take-all voting systems besides single-member district plurality. Several forms of PR exist as well. And there are other voting systems that fit into neither of these categories. So you might find it useful to take a brief look here at the full variety of voting systems, if only to put the discussion of PR and plurality systems into a larger context.

There are three basic "families" of voting systems: plurality/majority, proportional representation, and semiproportional. All the voting systems within a particular family tend to produce the same kind of political results and tend to resemble each other in terms of their general political advantages and disadvantages. The main political differences are therefore between the families, not within them. The links below will take you to descriptions of specific voting systems, including sample ballots. (Because of the ballots and other graphics on these pages, they are somewhat slow to download. Please be patient.)

Plurality/majority systems. These are the winner-take-all systems that are usually used in the United States. They include the common plurality systems like the single-member district plurality vote and at large voting, and less common majority systems like the two-round runoff and the instant run-off.

Proportional representation systems. These voting systems are used by most other advanced Western democracies and are designed to ensure that parties are represented proportionally in the legislature. They include party list systems, mixed-member proportional, and the single transferable vote.

Semiproportional systems. Though relative rare worldwide, these systems have garnered some interest in the United State. They tend to produce more proportional results than plurality/majority systems, but less proportional results than fully proportional systems. They include cumulative voting and limited voting.

(The descriptions of voting systems that you will find here are brief, but should be adequate to give you an idea of how they work, and at least some of their general political attributes. More detailed information on the operation of these systems and their political consequences can be found in Behind the Ballot Box: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting Systems. Also, if you are interested in seeing which countries around the world use these various voting systems, you can visit a web site that shows this information either in table form or in map form.)

[ PR Books ] [ PR Web Sites ] [ Bibliography ] [ Articles ] [ Beginning Readings ]

This page has been accessed 90,827 times since April 8, 2005.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-we-lost-primaries-because-poor-people-dont-vote/

Sanders: We lost primaries because "poor people don't vote"
By REENA FLORES CBS NEWS
April 24, 2016, 9:58 AM

Photograph -- Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders gives a short speech after touring the Gettysburg National Military Park in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., April 22, 2016. REUTERS


Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is attributing his recent primary losses to the "fact" that "poor people don't vote," delivering the comments during a taped interview with NBC's "Meet the Press."

NBC News host Chuck Todd told Sanders Saturday that "17 of the 25 states with the highest levels of income inequality have held primaries. Sixteen of those 17 states have been won by Hillary Clinton, not by you. Why?"

Sanders replied: "Well, because poor people don't vote. I mean, that's just a fact."

The Vermont senator, who has made addressing income inequality a cornerstone of his White House campaign, added that in the last 2014 midterm elections, "80 percent of poor people did not vote."

Sanders hoped, however, to "transform" that "sad reality of American society."

Noting that his campaign has done a "good job" engaging younger people in the voting process, Sanders said he hoped to do the same with the population of lower income voters, which he maintained he's had "some success with."

"If we can significantly increase voter turnout so that low-income people and working people and young people participated in the political process, if we got a voter turnout of 75 percent, this country would be radically transformed," Sanders said.

As the Washington Post mentioned, however, higher turnout rates among poorer voters may not have actually helped Sanders.

In the states where exit polls were conducted after primary votes were cast, Sanders still lost to Clinton among Democratic voters with household incomes below $50,000. Clinton won that demographic 55 percent to Sanders' 44 percent.

Sanders' comments come after a recent loss in the state of New York, where Clinton muscled out the Vermont senator by 16 points.

On Tuesday, five more states cast their ballots in the Democratic primary race: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.



“The Vermont senator, who has made addressing income inequality a cornerstone of his White House campaign, added that in the last 2014 midterm elections, "80 percent of poor people did not vote." …. "If we can significantly increase voter turnout so that low-income people and working people and young people participated in the political process, if we got a voter turnout of 75 percent, this country would be radically transformed," Sanders said. …. In the states where exit polls were conducted after primary votes were cast, Sanders still lost to Clinton among Democratic voters with household incomes below $50,000. Clinton won that demographic 55 percent to Sanders' 44 percent.”


I don’t think it’s exactly true that poor people (all of them) don’t (ever) vote, but there are certain costs involved which to Middle Class or wealthy people are totally insignificant -- $15 to $30 for a birth certificate, a lawyer or other consultant for a letter to the state asking to have ones’ voting rights restored after a felony, taxi fare to the polling place, time off work, help with the ballot, personal outreach to the voter to increase their desire to “bother about it.” Discouraged people with low self-esteem very likely will not participate actively in a democracy because they are too depressed. People who may have poor reading skills probably won’t keep track of news issues that affect their choice of who to pick. Poverty does affect our society in many ways, even determining whether or not it is a fully functioning democracy.

“… Sanders still lost to Clinton among Democratic voters with household incomes below $50,000.” I think calling the income of the poor as anything under $50,000 is not the truth about how people really live, at least in the South and other generally low income areas. Most have $30,000 instead, or have three or more children so that $50,000 just doesn’t stretch. In my apartment building which is HUD housing and for the most part black, within a day after Al Sharpton endorsed Hillary, all the talk was about her. There has also been a black backlash against Sanders before now, judging by the harassment by BLM members at least twice during his speeches. I don’t know of anything that he has said against black people, but it is likely that he hasn’t said enough to draw them to him as a group either. His main focus, especially at that time, was on economics, and it is a fact that whites are poor also – starving and homeless, even. His goal is to help the poor of all races.

One of the black women political leaders who spoke in favor of Sanders last week, said that she had been confronted by an Ohio Democrat as favoring the wrong candidate. She should have “voted for the woman.” The (white) Ohioan said to her, “after all we have done for you.” She didn’t mean individually, it didn’t seem, but as a group. In my book, nobody from any group should be telling me who I should vote for, especially in a demanding or hostile way. See the following news article from April 22 -- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-the-democratic-women-fighting-for-sanders/, Meet the Democratic women fighting for Sanders, By KYLIE ATWOOD CBS NEWS, April 22, 2016, 5:50 AM. I’m not saying that Hillary has purposely caused any of her following to be hostile to Sanders people, but it still doesn’t look great to me.



http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/bernie-sanders-acknowledges-narrow-path-nomination-n561266

MEET THE PRESS Bernie Sanders Acknowledges 'Narrow Path' to Nomination
by SALLY BRONSTON
APR 24 2016, 12:24 PM ET

Video -- Sanders on 'Narrow Path' to Victory 2:26
Video -- Full Interview: Sanders on Trump, Clinton, and His Fight for the Nomination 15:22


Are we getting the first preview of what a Bernie Sanders exit interview could look like? The Vermont senator seemed to have a more resigned tone on Sunday during an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Sanders conceded his campaign has only a "narrow path to victory" but that they would "fight…through that path. We hope to win."

This was a different tone than the one he used just a few weeks ago when he confidently assured supporters, "We are going to win New York." He ended up losing the state to Hillary Clinton by 16 points.

Yet Sanders insisted his campaign is "not writing our obituary." Looking ahead, Sanders said, "We're in this race to California, and we're proud of the campaign we ran."

It’s obvious he's not quite ready to link arms with Clinton and skip off to Philadelphia. While he told Chuck Todd that "there is a lot that unites" him and Clinton, namely an "understanding that Trump would be a disastrous president." He also acknowledged that there is "a lot that divides us."

He repeated that he is the "stronger candidate" and "runs better against Trump in almost all of these polls than does Hillary Clinton." And the numbers back him up. For example, in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll of Pennsylvania, Sanders beats Trump by 20 points (57 percent to 37 percent) in a hypothetical general election match-up. Clinton beats Trump in the Keystone State as well, but by a smaller margin.

Asked if he would encourage his supporters to back Clinton should she win the nomination, Sanders replied, "I will do everything that I can to make certain that Donald Trump is not elected president." But he put the impetus on Clinton to "convince all people, not just my supporters, that she is the kind of president this country needs to represent working people in this country, to take on the big money interests who have so much power, to fight for what the American people want."



“Yet Sanders insisted his campaign is "not writing our obituary." Looking ahead, Sanders said, "We're in this race to California, and we're proud of the campaign we ran." It’s obvious he's not quite ready to link arms with Clinton and skip off to Philadelphia. While he told Chuck Todd that "there is a lot that unites" him and Clinton, namely an "understanding that Trump would be a disastrous president." He also acknowledged that there is "a lot that divides us." He repeated that he is the "stronger candidate" and "runs better against Trump in almost all of these polls than does Hillary Clinton." And the numbers back him up. For example, in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll of Pennsylvania, Sanders beats Trump by 20 points (57 percent to 37 percent) in a hypothetical general election match-up. Clinton beats Trump in the Keystone State as well, but by a smaller margin.”


For the last two days, some members of the press have been implying that he was giving up the ghost, but when I read what he actually said it just doesn’t seem that way to me. He’s going for the delegate fight and means he plans to stay the course. Members of the press and mainstream Democrats are trying by the use of negative speech to discourage him to the point that he will give up. I’m willing to bet (at least $5.00) that it won’t happen that way. He’s a very courageous fighter.