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Bernie Sanders Can’t Figure Out Why His Supporters Don’t Like Hillary Clinton

by LatanyaSoper Posted on July 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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MoJo’s ace reporting team tells us what happened when Bernie Sanders addressed his delegates at the Democratic convention. At first, when he talked about the platform and the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, things went fine:

But when he tried to rally the delegates on behalf of Clinton, his audience became restless. “Immediately, right now, we have got to defeat Donald Trump, and we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine,” Sanders said. His delegates shouted their protests and booed, forcing Sanders to pause before continuing in his remarks. Sanders called Trump a “bully and a demagogue” who “has made bigotry the core of his campaign.” Still, the boos continued. “She does too!” delegates shouted. Others yelled, “Only you! Only you!”

Sanders declared that Trump poses a danger to the country’s future, but he could not win over the crowd. “She has ruined communities!” one woman shouted. “She has ruined countries!” Sanders pointed out that Trump “does not respect the Constitution of the United States.” Delegates kept on chanting: “Not with her!” and “We want Bernie!”

Our reporters say that Sanders “looked a bit surprised by the intensity of the Clinton opposition.” I can’t imagine why. This is one of the big problems I had with him back during the primary. It’s one thing to fight on policy grounds, as he originally said he would, but when you start promising the moon and explicitly accusing Hillary Clinton of being a corrupt shill for Wall Street—well, there are some bells that can be unrung. He convinced his followers that Hillary was a corporate warmonger more concerned with lining her own pockets than with progressive principles, and they still believe it. And why wouldn’t they? Their hero told them it was true.

Hillary is no saint. But her reputation as dishonest and untrustworthy is about 90 percent invention. Republicans have been throwing mud against the wall forever in an attempt to smear her, and the press has played along eagerly the entire time. When Bernie went down that road, he was taking advantage of decades of Republican lies in the hopes of winning an unwinnable battle. He was also playing directly into Donald Trump’s hands.

I don’t know. Maybe he never realized how seriously his young followers took him. It’s possible. But he really needs to do something about this. Tonight’s speech would be a good starting point.

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Bernie Sanders Can’t Figure Out Why His Supporters Don’t Like Hillary Clinton

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Bernie Sanders Delegates Threaten Convention Chaos

by DewayneE65 Posted on July 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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“We got her. We got her.”

It’s near midnight. Democratic Party delegates are milling about the lobby bar of the Marriott in downtown Philadelphia. And on the big overhead screen, there’s a CNN report on the news of the day: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, had given up the post after leaked emails showed that some DNC officials had discussed how to thwart Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

Sanders delegates are cheering wildly. The head of the party apparatus many of them despise is out. It’s a victory for the Sanders revolution. Off to the side, a Florida delegate for Hillary Clinton looks on sadly. “I suppose she had to go,” he says. He then sums up the relationship between Sanders delegates and Clinton delegates with one word: “acidic.”

As thousands of delegates to the Democratic convention hit the City of Brotherly Love (and Sisterly Affection), it was clear that the Clinton campaign’s talk of unity, in the wake of announcing Tim Kaine as Clinton’s running mate, was more hope than reality. Sanders delegates throughout the city were grousing about a series of perceived slights and wrongs: the selection of Kaine, with his centrist reputation; the leaked emails, which showed that, yes, the DNC favored Clinton over Sanders, but didn’t contain evidence of much underhanded activity; and Clinton’s inadequate (in their view) outreach to the Sanders crowd. At a pro-Sanders rally on Sunday afternoon, attendees chanted, “Lock her up,” echoing the mantra of Donald Trump’s convention last week. At a Monday morning gathering of the California Democratic delegation, Sanders delegates booed mentions of Clinton. And Florida Sanders delegates jeered Wasserman Schultz at their breakfast meeting.

Many Sanders folks are still grieving and not accepting Clinton’s triumph. Though Sanders nudged Clinton to the left during the campaign, demonstrated the vitality of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, helped craft the party’s most progressive platform in decades, and won a small concession regarding the future of superdelegates within the party, many of his delegates were openly and vigorously expressing disappointment and voicing their dissatisfaction with Clinton.

Lisa Flyte, a Sanders representative on the convention credentials committee, griped that the Clinton campaign “is still taking jabs at us.” Though she noted she believed that a Trump victory would likely be bad news for low- and middle-income Americans, she said Clinton has “supported policies that hurt middle-income people here and abroad.” She blasted Clinton for supporting “oligarchs overseas and big energy companies.” She was ticked off that the Clinton campaign “is saying we’re unified without real accommodations.” She added, “We’re not ready to move on.”

Jason Brown, the vice chair of the Iowa delegation and a Sanders supporter, was peeved that the Clinton campaign has “not yet reached out to us.” He noted that Clinton’s message was not inspiring Iowans who had volunteered and voted for Sanders. “These people are looking for more from her,” he said. Brown is committed to supporting Clinton, but he remarked, “I’m not sure I can convince the Sanders volunteers with a she’s-not-Trump message. They need more.”

At the start of the convention, Sanders delegates were left to their own devices. The Sanders campaign had created a whip system to provide guidance to its delegates. But as of Monday morning, no instructions were disseminating. “That’s been frustrating,” one Sanders delegate from Florida says. “We don’t know what they want us to be saying or doing. We’re in limbo.” (Sanders was scheduled to address his delegates at a Monday afternoon meeting.) A California Clinton delegate pointed out that within her state delegation, there had been little conversation between Clinton delegates and Sanders delegates. “It’s still very raw,” she said. “They’re processing a death in the family.”

At a press conference on Monday morning, the Bernie Delegates Network, an outfit independent of the Sanders campaign that claims to represent two-thirds of the Sanders delegates, presented Sanders delegates outraged at the DNC and Clinton campaign. They were mad that Clinton has named Wasserman Schultz an honorary chairwoman of her campaign. There was talk of launching protests—”an expression of disapproval”—during Clinton and Kaine’s speeches. This could include delegates booing or walking out.

Norman Solomon, a Sanders delegate, asserted, “There is serious interest and exploration…in a formal challenge” to Kaine. Who might that be? Solomon replied that Sanders delegates have approached several politicians, but that “those who want to eat lunch at the White House, they run the other way.” So any names? “We’re working on it.” (Solomon said he has had “zero connection with the Bernie campaign.”)

At this event, Manuel Zapata, a California Sanders delegate, shared his bitter disappointment. “Since the moment we got here, people have looked down on us as we walked past people with our Bernie swag on—as if he’s not still a candidate, as if it’s wrong for us to support our candidate,” he said. He added, “It is disrespectful that a madman like Donald Trump is reaching out for the progressive vote more than Hillary Clinton is.”

Karen Bernal, a leader of the California Sanders delegation, said there would be nothing wrong with Sanders people jeering Clinton when she comes to the podium. She did note that the Sanders campaign was “pressing us not to be involved in protests and not to be so overt in our expressions…My job is to make sure that the wishes of my delegates are heard, that their opinions are heard…They have never been a group to take marching orders.”

Bernal believes Sanders’ endorsement of Clinton was a mistake. She said, “We can still be mad at Hillary Clinton and still say it’s essential to defeat Trump.” But asked if protests by Sanders delegate would help the effort to defeat Trump, Beral noted, “It absolutely helps,” because it will signal to progressives that there is a place for them within the Democratic Party. She didn’t explain precisely how deriding Clinton and her veep pick would bolster the effort to elect Clinton.

It’s uncertain what sway Sanders will have over the Sanders delegates looking to make noise at this convention. The delegates at this press conference repeatedly noted that the movement transcends the candidate and that the activists within it will determine the strategy this week. If they are asked by Sanders not to do something, Solomon said, “we’ll take that under advisement.” He added that Sanders “is not running the show…The activists at this convention will make the social change.”

Update 1:35 p.m.: Sanders addressed his delegates on Monday afternoon and highlighted the successes he achieved in his campaign, boasting of “the most progressive platform ever written in the history of the Democratic Party” and a “major victory” in reforming superdelegates. But when he told the crowd, “We have got to elect Hillary Clinton,” he was met with boos.

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Bernie Sanders Delegates Threaten Convention Chaos

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Democratic Party Chair Announces Resignation on Eve of the Convention

by LouannPhilipp Posted on July 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday afternoon that she would resign her position following the end of the party’s quadrennial convention this week in Philadelphia.

The Florida congresswoman’s decision came just days after WikiLeaks published a trove of internal DNC emails, including one in which a party official discussed pushing stories about Bernie Sanders’ faith to damage the Vermont senator’s chances in southern states.

The Sanders campaign, and many of his supporters, had long held a grudge against Wasserman Schultz, accusing her and the DNC of favoring former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in various ways throughout the primary. But in her five years at the helm, Wasserman Schultz had often clashed with other party leaders. In 2014, Politico reported that her interactions with President Barack Obama were limited to brief exchanges on the rope-line at fundraising events.

Here’s the full statement:

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Democratic Party Chair Announces Resignation on Eve of the Convention

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Senate passes GMO-labeling bill

by ZCFAlphons Posted on July 6, 2016

Senate passes GMO-labeling bill

By on Jul 6, 2016Share

The Senate just voted to usher in nationwide mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods.

The bill, passed Wednesday with strong Republican support, requires food companies to tell consumers if there are any genetically engineered ingredients in their products. Companies wouldn’t necessarily need to do that by writing “contains GMOs” on the package — they could provide that information with a scannable QR code and small businesses could comply by simply providing a phone number or website. More details here.

Republicans did most of the heavy lifting: 47 voted for the measure along with 18 Democrats, giving it enough votes to withstand a filibuster.

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who brokered the deal to get the bill passed, called it a victory for farmers and consumers. “I worked to ensure that any agreement would recognize the scientific consensus that biotechnology is safe, while also making sure consumers have the right to know what is in their food,” Stabenow said, in a statement. “I also wanted a bill that prevents a confusing patchwork of 50 different rules in each state.”

The bill is a compromise, so of course people from both sides of the debate have attacked it. Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) voted against the measure because he believes mandatory labels should be reserved for products that have been shown to harm health. “I fear that this approach puts us on a path that will ultimately hurt Nebraskans by putting a liberal agenda ahead of sound science,” he told the Lincoln Journal Star.

On the other side, Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted that the bill was “confusing, misleading and unenforceable.”

Sanders opposes the bill in part because it would pre-empt a law passed in his home state of Vermont that requires a written label instead of a scannable code.

So, both pro and anti-GMO partisans oppose the bill, but there are a lot of folks in the middle that support it, including everyone from the Organic Trade Association to the generally conservative American Farm Bureau Federation.

The House has already passed a GMO-labeling bill, one that calls for voluntary, rather than mandatory, labeling. The two are different enough that they can’t be reconciled, so that means the House will have to pass yet another bill before this Senate bill could become law.

There’s a pretty good chance that the House will pass a carbon copy of the Senate bill soon. I expect the majority of representatives will eventually come around to the compromise, because the alternative — having labeling rules that vary from state to state — would cause trouble for companies selling food across state lines.

Some companies have already decided not to sell in Vermont, and others have slapped GMO-labels on their products no matter where they are sold. The Vermont law went into effect July 1, but the state won’t begin enforcing it until the end of the year.

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Senate passes GMO-labeling bill

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Sanders and Clinton teams fight over climate language in Democratic platform

by RaymonLinker Posted on June 28, 2016

Walking the plank

Sanders and Clinton teams fight over climate language in Democratic platform

By on Jun 28, 2016Share

The Democratic Party’s platform drafting committee has written a stronger climate change section than the platform had in 2012, but it also rejected a series of more ambitious climate and energy amendments on Friday. That’s raised the ire of Bernie Sanders and his appointees to the drafting committee, like climate activist and author Bill McKibben.

The first draft of the platform, voted on by the 15-member drafting committee, is now complete, though it hasn’t been made publicly available. On July 8 and 9, in Orlando, the full 187-member platform committee will meet and debate further changes before approving and sending its draft on to the party convention, to be held in Philadelphia the last week of July.

Sanders slammed Hillary Clinton’s committee appointees for blocking progressive provisions and pledged to continue fighting for changes to the document. “Despite the growing crisis of climate change, [Clinton’s delegates] voted against a tax on carbon, against a ban on fracking,” said Sanders in a statement on Sunday. “We intend to do everything we can to rally support for our amendments in Orlando and if we fail there to take the fight to the floor of the convention in Philadelphia.”

How did the platform become a big deal this time?

Drama over the party platform is atypical. Usually the document is just a quietly produced, platitudinous summation of the presidential nominee’s policy vision. But if Sanders gets some of the changes he’s still pushing for, this year’s platform could look very different from the last one, adopted four years ago under a moderate incumbent president with a mixed record on environmental issues.

Sanders’ campaign is dedicated to pushing American politics leftward, so he and his team have been focused on influencing the platform. After making a stronger-than-expected primary showing, Sanders asked for seven appointments to the 15-person drafting committee. The party gave him five, Clinton got six, and the remaining four were appointed by party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Now that Sanders has lost the fight for the nomination, he and his supporters see the platform as their chief vehicle for having a lasting impact on the party’s direction.

Sanders and Clinton each appointed a climate expert to the drafting committee. Sanders chose McKibben, cofounder of climate action group 350.org (and a member of Grist’s board of directors). Clinton picked Carol Browner, who served as President Obama’s climate czar from 2009 to 2011.

Sanders’ other appointees were all progressives, of course. Clinton and Wasserman Schultz also chose fairly left-leaning slates. In analyzing the appointees, The Nation’s John Nichols concluded that “the drafting committee has a progressive majority.” That led climate hawks to hope that some of the more aggressive proposals from the Sanders’ camp might pass. But that’s not how things have played out so far.

What they agreed on

The drafting committee members did come together on some critical climate-related decisions. The biggest and most important shift from the 2012 platform was dropping the call for “all-of-the-above” energy development, which reflected the priorities of Obama’s first term. The members also unanimously agreed to call for fully switching to clean energy by 2050.

The draft platform echoes the Paris Agreement in aiming to keep global warming below 2 degrees C over pre-industrial levels, with the hope of staying below 1.5 C if possible. It calls for a Department of Justice investigation into fossil fuel companies (read: ExxonMobil) accused of misleading the public about climate science. It backs elimination of fossil fuel subsidies in the tax code and extension of support for renewable energy development, such as the wind production tax credit.

Browner told Grist that the language supporting renewables was written in from the beginning and never even required an amendment. “There was a lot of stuff where there was common ground that was embedded in the conversation,” she said.

And some amendments proposed by McKibben on Friday were passed unanimously, such as a noncontroversial call for more bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and a statement of opposition to electric utilities’ efforts to quash solar energy. As Browner put it, “The draft has everybody’s fingerprints.”

What they fought over — or, what the Sanders team lost

But while Sanders and progressive climate activists see the current draft platform as a modest step in the right direction, they are far from satisfied. The platform document sets strong big-picture goals for curbing climate change and boosting clean energy, but doesn’t include specific policies that would actually help meet those goals.

“In the draft, everyone agreed that there should be 100 percent clean energy by 2050, but every measure I put forward to actually get us there went down by the same 7-6 vote, with all the Clinton people voting in a bloc against,” said McKibben. Only one non-Sanders appointee, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who was chosen by Wasserman Schultz, crossed over to vote with the Sanders bloc on the controversial climate change amendments. One committee member was absent, and the chair did not vote.

The half-dozen McKibben amendments that went down to defeat included calls for:

a carbon tax,
a fracking ban,
a ban on fossil fuel extraction on public lands,
elimination of support through international lending institutions for fossil fuel projects abroad,
a declaration that eminent domain should not be used to take private land for fossil fuel infrastructure projects, and
a “climate test” for future domestic energy projects, which would reject ones that contribute to climate change — like the test Obama ultimately used to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.

Only one of those was replaced with compromise language: The Clinton side offered and passed an amendment endorsing a gradual phaseout of fossil fuel extraction on public lands.

Climate Hawks Vote, a political action committee that endorsed Sanders, issued a statement praising the Exxon investigation amendment but also warning, “We’re fighting not just the Republicans, but also the incrementalists within the Democratic Party.”

The Clinton campaign says its reluctance to accept some of McKibben’s amendments reflects legitimate concerns about the policy implications, not mere political calculation. Not all experts agree that a carbon tax is the most effective way to reduce emissions, for example. Mary Nichols of the California Air Resources Board had pointed out in her testimony to the committee a week earlier that a carbon tax does not guarantee emissions reductions, while direct regulation, such as Obama’s Clean Power Plan, does. Clinton supporters rejected a blanket prohibition on lending for foreign fossil fuel development projects on the grounds that the U.S. relationship with any given developing country may have competing priorities, and they opposed the climate test for energy projects because they worried it could prevent necessary projects like transmission lines for electricity that may be partly generated from dirty sources.

There are also obvious political concerns about some of these proposals. A carbon tax, for example, would have no chance of passage in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, but a call for such a tax would hand Donald Trump a potentially effective new weapon, letting him claim that Democrats want to raise energy prices.

It’s unlikely that Sanders’ supporters will be able to change many platform planks in Orlando or Philly. Essentially, they are calling for Sanders’ platform to become the party’s platform. But Sanders lost the primary race, and it stands to reason that the party platform would reflect the views of the candidate who won.

And that candidate has to consider not just the best climate policies in the abstract, but the ones that will help her win in November. “We’re going be facing a group of climate science deniers in Congress,” says Browner. “So what some of us are looking at is, How do we get a president elected and use the tools of government to continue to make real advances?”

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Sanders and Clinton teams fight over climate language in Democratic platform

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Clinton Campaign Hopes Progressive Party Platform Will Finally End the Primary

by EsmeraldaDAlbert Posted on June 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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As Hillary Clinton moves to unite the Democratic Party behind her presidential candidacy, her campaign is hoping a progressive party platform drafted this weekend will win over recalcitrant supporters of Bernie Sanders. But even though a number of top liberal priorities made it into the platform, Sanders says the fight over the party’s policy positions is not over yet—and, by extension, neither is the political battle for the support of the party’s left flank.

The draft platform embraces many progressive goals, including long-shot proposals that liberals have pushed for years. The platform supports a $15 minimum wage and an end to the death penalty. (Clinton supports the death penalty in rare cases.) It calls for a modern-day version of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which erected a wall between commercial and investment banks until President Bill Clinton signed its repeal in 1999. It aims to impose a surtax on millionaires, expand Social Security, and repeal the anti-abortion Hyde Amendment.

Sanders had a significant say in the drafting process. He appointed five members of the 15-member Platform Drafting Committee. The Clinton campaign appointed six, and the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chose four. The draft was approved in St. Louis by 14 of the 15 members. One Sanders appointee, Cornel West, abstained.

The Clinton campaign, eager to win over Sanders supporters, quickly praised the platform. Clinton senior policy adviser Maya Harris called it “the most ambitious and progressive platform our party has ever seen” in a statement issued Saturday, and one that “reflects the issues Hillary Clinton has championed throughout this campaign.”

Sanders, on the other hand, was more tepid in his evaluation. In a statement released Sunday, he called it “a very good start,” but added that “there is no question that much more work remains to be done by the full Platform Committee when it meets in Orlando on July 8 and 9″—the next step in the process before the delegates vote on the platform at the Democratic National Convention that begins July 25 in Philadelphia. Sanders points to several priorities that were left out of the platform, including a ban on fracking, a carbon tax, and a provision opposing a congressional vote later this year on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. On these issues, Sanders says, the fight is not over yet. “We intend to do everything we can to rally support for our amendments in Orlando and if we fail there to take the fight to the floor of the convention in Philadelphia,” he said.

Sanders noted that Clinton’s appointees to the Platform Drafting Committee voted down a requirement that the United States run entirely on clean energy by 2050. The Clinton campaign, by contrast, praised the platform’s “ambitious” goal of “generating 50 percent of our electricity from clean sources within a decade.” On trade, Sanders’ slammed the decision by Clinton allies on the committee who voted down the anti-TPP provision. The Clinton campaign touted a different provision that did make it into the platform’s trade language, which calls for prioritizing workers’ rights, labor rights, and the environment. (Clinton now opposes TPP, but while it was still being hammered out, she called it “the gold standard in trade agreements.”)

“An amendment adopted yesterday further emphasized the fact that many Democrats oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership because ‘the agreement does not meet the standards set out in this platform,'” Harris, the Clinton aide, said in her statement. “Hillary Clinton is one of those Democrats, and has been strongly and unequivocally on the record opposing TPP. Just this week, she said, ‘We will defend American jobs and American workers by saying “no” to bad trade deals and unfair trade practices, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.'”

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Clinton Campaign Hopes Progressive Party Platform Will Finally End the Primary

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Median Voter Theorem Crushes the Competition in 2016

by HeidiParamore Posted on June 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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Has anyone noticed that old-school political science was thoroughly vindicated this year? Sure, Donald Trump is a cretinous demagogue who shouldn’t be allowed within a thousand miles of our nuclear codes. But political science has nothing to say about that. What political science does say is that voters tend to elect candidates who are closer to the center.

And they did. Trump’s bottomless ignorance and lying aside, he was a populist candidate who was fundamentally more centrist than modern tea-party ultras like Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. On the Democratic side, despite all the drama, Hillary Clinton ended up beating Bernie Sanders pretty handily. Of the serious candidates with real backing, the two most centrist candidates ended up winning.

How about that?

POSTSCRIPT: Obviously Jeb Bush is the big hole in this theory. Well known, great credentials, lots of money, plenty of party backing, relatively centrist, and…he went nowhere. Of course, the median voter theorem doesn’t guarantee that the median voter will like any candidate who happens to be fairly centrist. In the end, it turned out that Jeb was just a terrible campaigner.

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Median Voter Theorem Crushes the Competition in 2016

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How Bernie Sanders made Hillary Clinton into a greener candidate

by CoralMill3 Posted on June 8, 2016

How Bernie Sanders made Hillary Clinton into a greener candidate

By on Jun 8, 2016 6:47 amShare

Hillary Clinton is her party’s presumptive nominee. Whether Sanders drops out tomorrow or the day he loses the roll-call vote at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, his campaign is over.

But if ever there were a losing campaign that achieved some major wins, it’s Sanders’. Not only did he force Clinton to talk more about economic inequality, he pushed her to promise stronger action to fight climate change and rein in fossil fuel companies. If Hillary Clinton becomes president and keeps some of her more recent promises to restrict oil drilling and fracking, Sanders will deserve a share of the credit.

When Sanders first got into the race, it didn’t look like he would adopt climate change as a major issue. He was one of the strongest climate hawks in the U.S. Senate, having sponsored bills to promote clean energy, reduce carbon emissions, and end fossil fuel subsidies. But for the first few months of his presidential campaign, he did little more than make passing mention of climate change and its importance to young voters. In September of last year, I even wrote a post entitled, “Why is Bernie Sanders neglecting climate change?”

Then, gradually, Sanders started to focus on the issue and develop a strong climate agenda. In October, he said at a debate that climate change is the biggest threat to national security. In November, he cosponsored new Senate legislation, the Keep It in the Ground Act, that would have the federal government stop issuing leases for oil, gas, and coal extraction on public lands and in offshore areas. In December, Sanders rolled out a climate action plan that included the “keep it in the ground” proposal as well as a carbon tax, elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and investments in renewables. He went on to talk more on the campaign trail about climate change and related issues such as reinvesting in mass transit and cities.

By January, the Sanders campaign was using the climate issue to attack Clinton, going after her for the vague and incomplete nature of her climate plan. The two campaigns battled on Twitter over whose climate and clean energy platform was stronger. Clinton clearly felt the need to start competing with Sanders for the votes of climate hawks.

Simultaneously, climate activists from groups such as Greenpeace and 350.org were stalking Clinton on the campaign trail and asking her questions about whether she would restrict fossil fuel extraction. The one-two punch of pressure from the green grassroots and pressure from Sanders pushed Clinton leftward on a number of energy issues.

First, last fall, Clinton finally came out against the Keystone XL pipeline, shortly before Obama rejected it. She also declared that she was opposed to offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean. And she shifted her position on fossil fuel extraction on public land, from saying it was necessary to saying she wanted to move toward an eventual ban.

As Sanders picked up steam, she gave still more ground to climate activists. In February, she voiced her opposition to offshore drilling in the Atlantic. She also moved to assuage concerns that she is pro-fracking, saying in a March debate that she wants more regulation of fracking, and that she opposes the practice in instances when the local community is against it, it causes air or water contamination, or it involves the use of secret chemicals. “By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place,” she said. Clinton had, in fact, started to say some of these things more than a year earlier, but her language has grown stronger and clearer during the primaries. In fact, she’s gotten so forthright about her plans to crack down on fossil fuels that she damaged her standing in coal country when she admitted in March that her administration would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Clinton even tried to get to Sanders’ left on climate and energy issues. During another debate in March, she accused Sanders of wanting to delay implementation of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which will curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. (Asked afterward to give a source for that odd claim, the Clinton camp pointed to an article I wrote about executive actions the Sanders campaign said he might take to crack down on fracking, which included potentially revising the Clean Power Plan. Some experts argue that such revisions would delay it. The Sanders team responded by saying their candidate would not do anything that would significantly delay the plan.) The Clinton campaign was also critical of Sanders’ proposal to swiftly phase out all nuclear power, noting that it would likely cause an increase in emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants.

Finally, in April, the media recognized the salience of climate change to Democratic voters and let the candidates go at it over climate change in a debate. Thanks to Sanders, there was someone to push Clinton toward stronger stances as the two sparred over who would do a better job of saving the planet.

Last month, in recognition of Sanders’ strong showing in the primaries, the Democratic National Committee allowed him to appoint five members to the party’s Platform Drafting Committee, while Clinton got to appoint six. Among Sanders’ choices was Bill McKibben, the climate activist who founded 350.org, led the charge to block Keystone XL, and calls for dramatically reduced fossil fuel extraction. (McKibben is on Grist’s board of directors.)

It may be hard now to remember how unstoppable Clinton seemed only a year ago, when she was expected to dominate in the Democratic primary race. She had nearly tied Obama in the 2008 primary and then gone on to serve as his secretary of state, enhancing her stature and approval ratings while reaching out to die-hard Obama supporters. Her name recognition and fundraising connections alone put her at an advantage so steep that other nationally known Democrats, even those being drafted to run by supporters such as Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, declined to challenge her. Sanders, though, jumped into the race and showed that there is a real appetite for an agenda that more aggressively tackles inequality and climate change, and stands up to corporate power, especially fossil fuel companies. Clinton has moved in his direction to woo his supporters, and the next Democratic presidential nominee will probably start from an even more progressive place on climate and energy.

As Sanders said at a Monday night rally in San Francisco, “When we began our campaign, our ideas were considered a fringe campaign and fringe ideas. That is not the case today.” Sanders lost the primary race, but he has changed the Democratic Party and the politics of climate change.

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How Bernie Sanders made Hillary Clinton into a greener candidate

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Hillary Clinton Wins the Puerto Rico Democratic Primary

by CassandGrassi Posted on June 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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With two days to go before Hillary Clinton likely secures the 2,383 delegates she needs to win the Democratic presidential nomination, voters in Puerto Rico handed Clinton a victory on Sunday. When the race was called by the major networks, Clinton was winning 64 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 34 percent, and a likely majority of the territory’s 60 pledged delegates.

On Tuesday, Democratic voters will go to the polls in six states, including delegate-rich California and New Jersey. Barring overwhelming victories for Sanders, the contests will ensure that Clinton wins both a majority of pledged delegates and a majority of overall delegates, assuming her support does not erode significantly among party-insider superdelegates.

But even if its vote won’t change the outcome of the race, Puerto Rico was in the relatively rare position of playing more than a bit role in this year’s election because of its colossal debt crisis. Candidates from both parties weighed in on whether the US government should allow the island to restructure debts under US bankruptcy laws. Puerto Rico’s government, which owes more than $72 billion, has already defaulted three times on various debt payments.

Clinton and Sanders have different opinions on legislation that would help Puerto Rico restructure its debt but would also create a financial review board with oversight of the island’s finances, harking back to the island’s colonial roots. Clinton said she had “serious concerns” about the review board but urged swift passage. Sanders, on the other hand, said the bill would prioritize creditors over Puerto Rico’s residents and encouraged other Democrats not to support it.

Puerto Ricans are American citizens who can vote in primaries but not in the general election while they live on the island. However, if they move to the mainland United States, they can vote in the general election. That’s made Puerto Ricans a key voting bloc in places like Florida and New York and forced the presidential candidates to devote more attention than usual to the island and its struggles.

On Saturday, the US Virgin Islands also held its Democratic caucuses, and Hillary Clinton easily won the 12 delegates that were at stake.

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Hillary Clinton Wins the Puerto Rico Democratic Primary

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Sanders may not win but he’s about to do something yuge

by CooperMerewethe Posted on June 1, 2016

Yuge!

Sanders may not win but he’s about to do something yuge

By on Jun 1, 2016 2:20 pmShare

Despite the long odds of taking the Democratic nomination this July, Bernie Sanders is fighting on — raising money and giving speeches, even though, barring an astroid, Hillary Clinton will be running against Donald Trump.

And yet, when Sanders sat down with Rolling Stone after a rally in Oregon recently, he acknowledged that his greatest contribution to the race won’t be his victory; it will be pulling the Democratic Party to the left. The candidate told reporter Tim Dickinson that one of his priorities is to see strong language on climate change and a carbon tax in the Democratic platform:

Number one, we want the strongest progressive platform that we can [get]. That would incorporate many of the ideas that we’ve fought for: from Medicare for all; paid family and medical leave; 15-bucks-an-hour minimum wage; very strong language on climate change and a carbon tax; stopping fracking; public colleges and universities tuition-free, et cetera, et cetera.

Now that Sanders has been allotted five out of 15 slots on the Democratic Party’s Platform Drafting Committee, he’s in a better position to make that happen. Sanders announced Monday that his five candidates include academic and political activist Cornel West, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, Arab American Institute head James Zogby, Native American activist Deborah Parker, and climate activist Bill McKibben (a Grist board member). Hillary Clinton has named former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner as one of her picks.

Sanders may not be able to claim victory in the race, but he’ll be able to claim something momentous all the same: bringing in new and needed voices to the very inner workings of the party he hoped to lead.

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Sanders may not win but he’s about to do something yuge

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