Tag Archives: wisconsin

How Bernie Learned to Love the Polls

by TrudyQ67ugzq Posted on April 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bernie Sanders’ campaign used to dismiss poll numbers. The insurgent candidate has long trailed Hillary Clinton in national surveys, and his numbers have tended to only rise state by state as the campaign turns to each new contest.

But now that he’s gained more national attention, Sanders has started to sound downright Trumpian and in love of touting the latest stats on his campaign. While stumping at a high school gym in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on Friday afternoon, Sanders kicked off his normal speech by adding a bit of bragging about a host of favorable numbers.

“When we began this campaign, we were 3 percent in the polls. Three percent. We were about 60, 65 points behind Secretary Clinton. I think it’s fair to say we made up some ground in the interval. A national poll had us a point ahead last week.”

A lonely poll showing a statistically insignificant lead isn’t usually great news for a campaign. And in fact, polling averages suggest Sanders trails Clinton by about 9 percent in surveys of Democrats across the country. But that outlier, from a poll conducted by Bloomberg Politics, was enough to draw loud applause from the Sanders fans packed high into the gym’s rafters.

No 2016 candidate has boasted about polls quite as much as Donald Trump, who has deployed positive numbers to underscore his booming appeal. But Sanders is now using Trump as his foil to brag about his own numbers, arguing that he’d be a better bet for Democrats than Clinton in a general election contest against the Republican front-runner. “What more and more people, I think, are understanding is that our campaign would be by far the strongest campaign against Donald Trump,” Sanders boasted. “This is true.”

Sanders pointed to a CNN poll from last month that showed him beating Trump by 20 percent nationally: “And that’s before he really began to expose what a nutcase he really is.” While Sanders’ citation of the single Bloomberg pool is a thin reed to argue he’s favored by more Democratic voters, the numbers are so far clearly on his side in hypothetical general election matchups with Trump. According to the averages compiled by RealClearPolitics, Clinton would beat Trump by 10 percent, while Sanders leads The Donald by a heftier 15 points.

Sanders closed off the poll-focused section of his Friday speech by turning his attention to Wisconsin. “It’s not only national polls which have us defeating Mr. Trump by a large number,” Sanders said. “A recent Marquette University poll, right here in Wisconsin, had Secretary Clinton beating Trump by 10 points. That’s not bad. We were beating him here in Wisconsin by 19 points.”

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How Bernie Learned to Love the Polls

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Watch Donald Trump Defend His Campaign Manager Over Battery Charges

by BettyTuttle Posted on March 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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The first question Donald Trump was asked during CNN’s town hall in Wisconsin on Tuesday was whether he would fire his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with misdemeanor battery on Tuesday for allegedly manhandling a reporter at an event earlier this month. Trump, noting that he is “a loyal person” who defends people who are “unjustly accused,” said Lewandowski would continue to serve on his campaign team.

Watch the whole exchangebelow.

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Watch Donald Trump Defend His Campaign Manager Over Battery Charges

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Bernie Sanders’ secret weapon on Super Tuesday

by MerryCalloway Posted on March 2, 2016

Bernie Sanders’ secret weapon on Super Tuesday

By on 2 Mar 2016 12:44 pmcommentsShare

Bernie Sanders won four out of 13 Super Tuesday contests last night — his home state of Vermont, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Sanders knew the last three states, as well as Massachusetts (which he lost narrowly) were critical to remaining competitive with Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. He had a natural advantage in these states, given that he polls better among white and blue-collar voters. But he had another secret weapon that gave him an additional edge: In battleground primaries, Sanders emphasized his firm position against hydraulic fracturing to drive a wedge between Clinton and Democratic voters.

Sanders staked out an early position against fracking, a controversial drilling process that extracts oil or natural gas from deep underground. Yet he didn’t do much to highlight this position before last month, in an effort to distinguish himself from Clinton’s environmental platform.  “I do not support fracking,” Sanders said in a statement a week ago. “I don’t need money from hedge fund managers and I don’t want money from those who profit off of the destruction of our planet.” Days before Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders launched an ad campaign in Minnesota and Colorado highlighting his opposition to fracking. If elected, Sanders would be limited in how much he could do to ban fracking outright, but my colleague Ben Adler outlined some of what he could do to reform it.

It’s no coincidence that fracking and its associated operations is controversial in three of the four states he won in. Oil production has doubled and tripled in Oklahoma and Colorado, respectively, since 2009. Besides local concerns over its impact on water quality, there’s also been a corresponding boom in minor earthquakes near fracking sites. Scientists are growing more and more certain the quakes are linked to the wastewater injected in the ground after drilling:

USGS

Minnesota, meanwhile, is a popular source for silica sand, or “frac sand,” a sediment needed to drill in nearby fracking hotbeds. Industry groups say these operations in Wisconsin and Minnesota have more than doubled over the past decade to 75 million metric tons, primarily driven by the oil and gas industry’s demand for frac sand. Silica dust is a carcinogen that causes lung problems.

Sanders emphasized more than just fracking in Minnesota. He drew attention to his opposition to two pipelines that would ship Canada tar sand crude oil across the border. Sanders emphasized his opposition to these pipelines, Enbridge’s Sandpiper and Alberta Clipper, which would ship 1.4 million barrels of oil a day, in a stump speech on Monday. He’d follow the same precedent set by the Keystone XL pipeline rejection, saying those “are exactly the same standards that we need to apply to the Alberta Clipper and the Sandpiper, and that is what I would do as president of the United States of America.”

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Now, Sanders didn’t win big in all major fracking territories. Texas, after all, went to Clinton, by 65 percent.

Tuesday night, Clinton might have unintentionally helped reinforce the contrast Sanders hopes to draw in her victory speech from a city that’s drowning from sea level rise — Miami, Fla. As Clinton now turns her attention to the general election, her Miami speech was light on climate change and environmental issues. Though there was one exception. Clinton adopted Flint’s lead-poisoned water crisis in her stump speech weeks ago, and took time at the end of her remarks to discuss it again. Flint is “a story of a community that’s been knocked down but refused to be knocked out. It is hundreds of union plumbers coming from across the country to help install new water fixtures. It is students raising funds for hundreds of deliveries of bottled water,” ” Clinton closed her speech with. “They’re not about to quit now.”

So, Clinton is championing clean water and Flint, while Sanders’ focus is on clean water and fracking. Expect both to hit on these issues again as we head into primaries in Michigan, North Carolina, and Louisiana, and western states.

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Bernie Sanders’ secret weapon on Super Tuesday

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A Majority of States Now Have Right-to-Work Laws

by TyroneL29aehb Posted on February 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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West Virginia, once a bastion of organized labor, will soon join the ranks of the right-to-work states that have undercut union participation. The Republican-dominated state legislature on Friday overrode Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s veto of a right-to-work bill, becoming the 26th state in the nation to pass such legislation.

Right-to-work laws bar unions from negotiating contracts that require all workers represented by a union to pay dues—in effect guaranteeing workers the union’s protections and representation regardless of whether they contribute. The laws are broadly understood to weaken unions.

The bill faced fierce opposition from unions, who organized protests at the state capitol and launched TV and radio ad campaigns to fight the legislation. But it also had money behind it, courtesy of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group backed by the Koch brothers that has lobbied for right-to-work laws across the nation. One of the West Virginia bill’s key proponents, Republican gubernatorial candidate and state Senate president Bill Cole, touted his efforts to pass the right-to-work bill at a Palm Springs retreat organized by the Kochs earlier this year.

According to the US Census Bureau, West Virginia had a higher poverty rate than all but 10 states between 2011 and 2013. Many communities have been hit hard by the loss of thousands of mining jobs in recent years. Republican lawmakers claimed that loosening labor laws was necessary to attract businesses to the state. Democrats have argued that it will ultimately hurt workers, and that the bill was aimed primarily at diminishing unions’ political clout.

The right-to-work law will go into effect on July 1.

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A Majority of States Now Have Right-to-Work Laws

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This Judge Just Condemned Wisconsin’s Abortion Law as Unconstitutional. Read the Withering Ruling.

by SheenaKatz51691 Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that a Wisconsin law requiring abortion providers to gain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals is unconstitutional.

The law that was struck down is known as a TRAP law—short for “targeted regulation of abortion providers.” According to the Guttmacher Institute, Wisconsin is one of eleven states that have required similar admitting privileges. (Courts have blocked these requirements in six of those states.) The law is particularly effective in conservative regions where hospitals are less likely to grant those privileges to abortion providers. The law’s supporters say the law ensures continuity of care if complications arise from the procedure. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists notes that less than one half of one percent of all abortions involve major complications.

The 2-to-1 decision comes at a time when the constitutionality of TRAP laws are in question nationally. Just over a week ago, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Texas’ “HB 2,” which decreased the state’s number of abortion clinics from 41 to 18 by implementing a host of TRAP laws. The ruling, due next year, will be the most notable reproductive rights ruling since Roe v. Wade.

Judge Richard Posner, writing for the 7th Circuit majority, stated that the regulation qualifies as an “undue burden” and that the medical grounds for such a requirement is “nonexistent.” Posner also had some words for abortion foes: “Opponents of abortion reveal their true objectives when they procure legislation limited to a medical procedure— abortion—that rarely produces a medical emergency.”

Posner—nominated by President Ronald Reagan—is known for his tart legal arguments, as we’ve noted previously. This case is no exception:

A great many Americans, including a number of judges, legislators, governors, and civil servants, are passionately opposed to abortion—as they are entitled to be. But persons who have a sophisticated understanding of the law and of the Supreme Court know that convincing the Court to overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey is a steep uphill fight, and so some of them proceed indirectly, seeking to discourage abortions by making it more difficult for women to obtain them. They may do this in the name of protecting the health of women who have abortions, yet as in this case the specific measures they support may do little or nothing for health, but rather strew impediments to abortion. This is true of the Texas requirement, upheld by the Fifth Circuit in the Whole Woman’s case now before the Supreme Court, that abortion clinics meet the standards for ambulatory surgical centers—a requirement that if upheld will permit only 8 of Texas’s abortion clinics to remain open, out of more than 40 that existed when the law was passed.

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This Judge Just Condemned Wisconsin’s Abortion Law as Unconstitutional. Read the Withering Ruling.

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Here’s What a Store Employee Told 911 After a Milwaukee Bucks Player Tried to Buy a Rolex

by CodyJshmbu Posted on October 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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“I am hiding in the office. I don’t want them to see me out there.”

That’s what a store employee at Schwanke-Kasten Jeweler told a 911 dispatcher last week, after becoming alarmed by the presence of four black men, one of whom was Milwaukee Bucks forward John Henson, who were attempting to enter the Wisconsin jewelry store to buy a Rolex.

The police recordings, which were released on Monday, first began on October 16th when Henson phoned the store to inquire about its closing hours. Convinced the voice on the other end of the line couldn’t possibly belong to a “legitimate customer,” the store employee alerted 911. Here is what the worker said. It was transcribed by NBC Milwaukee:

Store Employee: We just had a couple suspicious phone calls lately at this store, and we were just wondering if for the next hour, one of the Whitefish Bay cops could park in front of the store until we close.
911 Operator: What were the phone calls about?
Store Employee: They were just asking about what time they’re going to close. They just didn’t sound like they were legitimate customers.

When Henson and his friends arrived later that day, they were surprised to discover the store was already closed for the day. Unbeknownst to Henson, a police officer was also stationed nearby. The officer ran his vehicle plates and was unable to confirm the owner of the car.

Henson tried again a few days later, much to the employee’s panic.

Store Employee: The officer told us if they came back, we’re supposed to call again. They’re at our front door now and we’re not letting them in. I am hiding in the office. I don’t want them to see me out there. We’re pretending like we’re closed. They’re looking in the window. They’re just kind of pacing back and forth. I don’t feel comfortable letting them in. I just really don’t at all.

Soon after police identified Henson, he publicized the incident with a message speaking out against racial profiling in a since-deleted Instagram. Just add it to the seemingly unending list of things you can’t do while black— whether you are a professional athlete or not.

You can listen to the 911 calls in their entirety below:

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Here’s What a Store Employee Told 911 After a Milwaukee Bucks Player Tried to Buy a Rolex

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House Hostage Takers Give Up, But Promise Plenty of Hostages in Future

by NestorMcGahan69 Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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The good news today is that John Boehner is apparently making good on his promise to “clean the barn” before he leaves by cutting a budget deal with the White House. From the New York Times: “The accord would avert a potentially cataclysmic default on the government’s debt and dispense with perhaps the most divisive issue in Washington just before Speaker John A. Boehner is expected to turn over his gavel to Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin.”

Then there’s today’s schadenfreude-ish news: House super-conservatives are sad because they don’t think there’s anything they can do to halt this reckless attempt to keep the government running and pay our legal debts. Reuters: “Representatives Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and Mick Mulvaney, founders of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, told Reuters in an interview that there was not enough time for House Republicans to rally around a list of demands for raising the $18.1 trillion U.S. borrowing limit.”

Then there’s today’s bad news:

Leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives’ most influential conservative group told Reuters on Monday it was too late to stop an extension of the federal debt ceiling this week, but they will not hold it against the expected next House Speaker, Paul Ryan.

….The three lawmakers said they wanted to work with Ryan on process reforms that would allow them to get a much earlier start on future fiscal deadlines to demand spending cuts and reforms to federal benefits programs such as Social Security and Medicare. This way, they would not be trying to craft a strategy at the last minute with default or government shutdowns looming in the balance.

….Mulvaney said Ryan’s first big test would be a spending bill to keep government agencies open past a current shutdown deadline of Dec. 11. This would have to produce “at least something better than we would have gotten under Mr. Boehner.”

So they’ve given up on provoking a debt limit/government shutdown crisis for now, but by God they expect Ryan to give them enough time to provoke plenty of them in the future. And that starts in six weeks, Mr. Speaker.

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House Hostage Takers Give Up, But Promise Plenty of Hostages in Future

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Fired Scott Walker Aide Is Tweeting Up a Shitstorm About What He Did Wrong

by anunturigratuiteonlinebucuresti Posted on September 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will announce at 6 p.m. Monday that he is dropping out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The move is surprising—Walker was, until recently, a favorite among major Republican donors—but not unforeseeable. In the past two months, Walker’s support in the Iowa caucuses, the first voting contest of the race, has plummeted, from first in the polls to seventh. His campaign has already racked up six figures in debt to campaign vendors. And he clocked the least amount of time out of the 11 Republicans who shared the stage in the latest GOP presidential debate.

Immediately after the announcement, Liz Mair, a digital strategist for Walker’s bid who was fired for tweeting negatively about Iowa, began spouting her thoughts about why Walker’s campaign failed to attract enough money and momentum to keep it afloat. For example, “Hiring people who spent a lot to build out a massive operation that would not be sustainable unless financing remained amazing forever.” Here’s a selection:

Read the rest here.

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Fired Scott Walker Aide Is Tweeting Up a Shitstorm About What He Did Wrong

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Scott Walker Is Reportedly Dropping Out of the Presidential Race

by BryanO10lat Posted on September 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Scott Walker is preparing to announce that he is dropping out of the race for the White House. The New York Times reports three Republicans confirmed the decision:

“The short answer is money,” said a supporter of Mr. Walker’s who was briefed on the decision. “He’s made a decision not to limp into Iowa.”

The Wisconsin governor, who is polling at less than one-half of 1 percent, will hold a press conference at 5 p.m. central time.

A perfect time for Walker to start focusing his attention on this other little problem.

From:

Scott Walker Is Reportedly Dropping Out of the Presidential Race

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Scott Walker No Longer Understands His Own Base

by ChanteOakley6 Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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A few days ago Scott Walker refused to answer a question about Syrian refugees because “I’m not president today, and I can’t be president today.” This was a novel take on presidential campaign questions, which are—for obvious reasons—all about what you’d do as president. But apparently Walker decided it was unfair to ask him about that before he actually became president. He left unclear what kinds of questions would be left for reporters to ask him.

Today, unsurprisingly, Walker changed his tune. He decided to “clarify” his answer, which turned out to be simple: he doesn’t want the US to take in any more Syrian refugees. We take in plenty already. Instead, he wants to increase our bombing campaign against ISIS. This would probably make the refugee crisis worse, but whatever.

I say that Walker’s clarification was unsurprising because he’s really made a habit of this. Steve Benen provides the blow-by-blow:

Walker’s pattern of stumbling only reinforces doubts about his strength as a national candidate. TPM’s Caitlin MacNeal noted a series of issues and controversies — Kentucky’s Kim Davis, whether sexual orientation is a choice, evolutionary biology, President Obama’s patriotism and religion — on which Walker couldn’t or wouldn’t share his position publicly.

There are a variety of other issues — birthright citizenship, Boy Scouts, building a Canadian border wall — on which Walker managed to state an opinion, but soon after, that position proved untenable, forcing him to “clarify” his actual beliefs. Asked about Walker last week, an Iowa Republican told Politico, in advance of this week’s incident, “For the last two months Walker hasn’t made a single policy pronouncement that he or his staff hasn’t had to clarify or clear up within two hours.”

When the campaign began, I was pretty bullish on Walker. He seemed to have the right combination of respectability and pit-bull snarl to appeal to a wide variety of voters. And since he’s had a long political career, including four years as Wisconsin governor, he’d have a pretty good handle on campaigning.

But no. It turns out he barely has a clue about campaigning. Has this always been the case, or has the rise of Donald Trump completely flummoxed him? Maybe a bit of both, but I think he’s really let Trump get inside his head. He planned to campaign pretty far to the right, and when Trump took that away from him he didn’t seem to know what to do. Agree with Trump? Then he’s just a follower. Disagree with Trump? But that could be dangerous if the base is really enthralled with the guy. What to do?

The answer, apparently, is to make it clear that he has no considered views of anything and merely wants to say whatever will make the tea partiers happy. But he no longer knows what that is. So he tap dances desperately, but does it so bumblingly that he just embarrasses himself. At this point, it’s not clear if he’ll ever get his act together.

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Scott Walker No Longer Understands His Own Base

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