Regardless Of Partisan Affiliation, The Billionaire Class Has Always Been Afraid Bernie Would Take Away Their Toys-- And Now He May

Establishment Democrats have always hated Bernie. Most people are unaware that when Bernie first ran for Congress-- as an independent-- the Democratic Party ran establishment candidates against him. In his first congressional campaign (1988) the Democrats ran a conservative spoiler, Paul Poirier, state House majority leader, who allowed a Republican, Peter Smith win the seat:

• Peter Smith (R)- 98,937 (41.2%)
• Bernie (I)- 90,026 (37.5%)
• Paul Poirier (D)- 43,330 (18.9%)

Some in the Democratic Party didn't give a rat's ass; they opposed Bernie as vigorously as they opposed Smith, maybe more so. And in 1990, they ran an African-American woman, Dolores Sandoval, in the hope of pulling away votes from Bernie, whose popularity was surging. They knew she had no chance to win, but they preferred to see the Republican incumbent reelected than the independent SOCIALIST win. But the independent socialist did win... and by a lot:

• Bernie (I)- 117,522 (56.0%)
• Peter Smith (R)- 82,938 (39.5%)
• Dolores Sandoval (D)- 6,315 (3.0%)

Bernie entered Congress in January of 1991 and began caucusing with the Democrats. The Party didn't like his influence and the Democratic establishment wanted to get rid of him ASAP. He talked about how the Democrats and the Republicans represented the interests of wealthy donors, not the interests of working families. It hit a nerve with the Democrats because it was true and it was embarrassing for them. In 1991, he founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus which he hoped would offer progressives a way of distinguishing themselves from Democrats. (Brief tangent: The current co-chair, Mark Pocan, a more conventional liberal Democrat, must have lost sight of that when he started recruiting New Dems into the caucus, watering it down and wrecking its credibility.) In 1992, the Democrats ran Lewis Young in the hope of taking away enough votes from Bernie to allow the seat to flip back to the GOP. The disgusting strategy failed again-- and Bernie's popularity soared:

• Bernie (I)- 162,724 (57.78%)
• Tim Philbin (R)- 86,901 (30.86)
• Lewis Young (D)- 22,279 (7.91%)

Howard Dean, then Governor of Vermont, had had enough and persuaded the state Democratic Party to back Bernie. Nonetheless, four years later, the establishment Democrats were flipping out about "the Socialist" and tried the same tired trick, which once again, flopped:

• Bernie (I)- 140,678 (55.2%)
• Susan Sweetser (R)- 83,021 (32.5%)
• Jack Long (D)- 23,830 (9.3%)

That pretty much ended it-- although Democrat Larry Drown ran against Bernie in 2004, his last run for Congress-- and Bernie clobbered him and the Republican, taking 205,774 votes (67.5%). People in Vermont liked him, more than they liked either of the establishment political parties and their crappy candidates. Today, the wealthy donor class hates Bernie as much as they ever did-- whether the GOP wealthy donors or the Democratic Party wealthy donors. They know that when he says he's for change, it's real and profound change, not a few tweaks around the edges (Obama change). Last week, writing for the New Republic, Alex Shephard noted that Bernie's loudest opponents are party insiders who don't represent a political constituency of any significance-- and their strategy is self-defeating. Bernie is the frontrunner "and entering the White House in January of 2021 both seem increasingly possible, maybe even probable... [Bernie's] most vocal opponents in the party are an assemblage of establishmentarians and familiar Beltway hands, none of whom speak for a political constituency of any size or significance. Moreover, far from hurting Sanders, this impotent assault is self-defeating, fueling the narrative that party gatekeepers want, at all costs, to keep a political revolution from taking over the Democratic Party."

There is undoubtedly an ideological component of the anti-Sanders wing of the party that is often framed in practical terms. Attacks on Sanders (and other high-profile Democrats like Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez) often contend that left-wing goals like socialized medicine will be an electoral albatross, dooming the party to failure in battleground states. These arguments are rarely presented in policy terms, but it’s easy to draw a line between an opposition to Sanders rooted in the Democratic Party’s donor class and Sanders’s high-tax proposals and class-war rhetoric.

While there’s a growing backlist of articles detailing the resistance within Democratic fundraising circles, most of the criticisms of Sanders center around the question of “electability.” Media Matters founder David Brock told Politico last month that he believed that Sanders would struggle to unite the Democratic Party’s many unruly factions and that his sizable war chest would make it easy for him to stay in the race, even if there were little chance he could win. Former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill echoed this sentiment to the Times, saying, “One thing we have now that we didn’t in ’16 is the uniting force of Trump. There will be tremendous pressure on Bernie and his followers to fall in line because of what Trump represents.”

...There’s another possible, if unintended, effect of the growing challenges to Sanders from Democratic establishment circles, however. Trump’s best chance at victory doesn’t come from a democratic socialist claiming the nomination, but from a third-party candidate splitting the vote. Claims from Democratic stalwarts that Sanders can’t unseat the president are fool’s gold to self-funding candidates like Howard Schultz, who argues that a majority of voters are clamoring for a centrist, corporate candidate. If anyone is splitting the party and undercutting Democrats’ chances, if anyone is paving the way for a second Trump term, it isn’t Sanders—it’s his most obstinate and obstreperous opponents.

And that brings us right to Greg Jaffe's Washington Post piece from yesterday: Capitalism In Crisis: U.S. Billionaires Worry About The Survical Of The System That Made Them Rich. "For decades," he wrote, "Democrats and Republicans have hailed America's business elite, especially in Silicon Valley, as the country's salvation. The government might be gridlocked, the electorate angry and divided, but America's innovators seemed to promise a relatively pain-free way out of the mess. Their companies produced an endless series of products that kept the U.S. economy churning and its gross domestic product climbing. Their philanthropic efforts were aimed at fixing some of the country's most vexing problems. Government's role was to stay out of the way. Now that consensus is shattering. For the first time in decades, capitalism's future is a subject of debate among presidential hopefuls and a source of growing angst for America's business elite. In places such as Silicon Valley, the slopes of Davos, Switzerland, and the halls of Harvard Business School, there is a sense that the kind of capitalism that once made America an economic envy is responsible for the growing inequality and anger that is tearing the country apart."

Americans still loved technology, Khanna said, but too many of them felt locked out of the country's economic future and were looking for someone to blame.

"What happened to us?" he imagined people in these left-behind places asking.

Part of Khanna's solution was to sign on as co-chairman of the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the democratic socialist who rose to the national stage by railing against "the handful of billionaires" who "control the economic and political life of this nation," and who disproportionately live in Khanna's district.

The other part of Khanna's solution was to do what he was doing now, talking to billionaire tech executives like Larsen who worried that the current path for both capitalism and Silicon Valley was unsustainable. Boosted by a cryptocurrency spike last year, Larsen's net worth had briefly hit $59 billion, making him the fifth-richest person in the world before the currency's value fell.

Without an intervention, he worried that wealth would continue to pile up in Silicon Valley and anger in the country would continue to grow.

"It seems like every company in the world has to be here," Larsen said. "It's just painfully obvious that the blob is getting bigger."

At some point, Larsen and Khanna worried, something was going to break.

The 2008 financial crisis may have revealed the weaknesses of American capitalism. But it was Donald Trump's election and the pent-up anger it exposed that left America's billionaire class fearful for capitalism's future.

Khanna was elected in 2016, just as the anxiety started to spread. In Europe, far-right nationalist parties were gaining ground. Closer to home, socialists and Trump-inspired nationalists were winning state and congressional elections.

Conversations of the sort that Khanna was having with Larsen were now taking place in some of capitalism's most rarefied circles including Harvard Business School, where last fall Seth Klarman, a highly influential billionaire investor, delivered what he described as a "plaintive wail" to the business community to fix capitalism before it was too late.



The setting was the opening of Klarman Hall, a new $120 million conference center, built with his family's donation. "It's a choice to pay people as little as you can or work them as hard as you can," he told the audience gathered in the 1,000-seat auditorium. "It's a choice to maintain pleasant working conditions... or harsh ones; to offer good benefits or paltry ones." If business leaders didn't "ask hard questions about capitalism," he warned that they would be asked by "ideologues seeking to point fingers, assign blame and make reckless changes to the system."

Six months after that speech, Klarman was struck by how quickly his dire prediction was coming to pass. Leading politicians, such as Trump, Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) were advocating positions on tariffs, wealth taxes and changes in corporate governance that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

Klarman wasn't opposed to more progressive taxation or regulation. But he worried that these new proposals went much too far. "I think we're in the middle of a revolution-- not a guns revolution-- but a revolution where people on both extremes want to blow it up, and good things don't happen to the vast majority of the population in a revolution," he said.

He wasn't the only one who felt a sense of alarm. One of the most popular classes at Harvard Business School, home to the next generation of Fortune 500 executives, was a class on "reimagining capitalism." Seven years ago, the elective started with 28 students. Now there were nearly 300 taking it. During that period the students had grown increasingly cynical about corporations and the government, said Rebecca Henderson, the Harvard economist who teaches the course.

"What the trust surveys say is what I see," she said. "They are really worried about the direction in which the U.S. and the world is heading."

A few dozen of those students spent their winter break reading Winners Take All, a book by Anand Giridharadas, a journalist and former McKinsey consultant, that had hit the bestseller list and was provoking heated arguments in places like Silicon Valley, Davos and Harvard Business School. Giridharadas' book was a withering attack on America's billionaire class and the notion that America's iconic capitalists could use their wealth and creativity to solve big social and economic problems that have eluded a plodding and divided government.

This spring, Giridharadas took his argument to Klarman Hall. He slammed Mark Zuckerberg, taking aim at the Facebook founder's $100 million effort to fix Newark's faltering schools and his $3 billion push to end disease in a generation. "I'm glad he's trying to get rid of all the diseases, [but] I wish Facebook wasn't a plague," Giridharadas said.

He trashed Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's independent presidential run as an effort to protect the interests of the uber-wealthy. And he lambasted the notion, frequently championed by the likes of Bill Gates and Barack Obama, that Silicon Valley's innovations would disrupt old hierarchies and spread capitalism's rewards. "Really?" Giridharadas asked. "Now five companies control America, instead of 100! And a lot of those companies are whiter and more male than the ones they disrupted."

For many of the students, schooled in the notion that business could make a profit while making the world a better place, Giridharadas' ideas were both energizing and disorienting. Erika Uyterhoeven, a second-year student, recalled one of her fellow classmates turning to her when Giridharadas was finished.

"So, what should we do?" her colleague asked. "Is he saying we shouldn't go into banking or consulting?"

Added another student: "There was a palpable sense of personal desperation."

Khanna experienced a version of this desperation almost every day in his district. He grew up in an overwhelmingly white, middle-class suburb of Philadelphia. After college and Yale Law School, he moved to Silicon Valley in 2003, hoping to use his training as a lawyer to help set the rules for a lawless online world.

In 2014, backed by the tech community and a long roster of billionaire donors, Khanna challenged an eight-term incumbent in a Democratic primary and lost. The defeat caused him to reflect on what he had missed-- in particular, the problems that runaway capitalism were causing in his district, where the median home value in formerly blue-collar cities surged past $2 million.

"The best thing that happened to me was that I lost my 2014 election," he said. "Had I won... maybe I would've been a traditional neoliberal. It really forced my self-reflection and it pointed out every weakness I ever had."

In California, Khanna's home is a small apartment around the corner from a Dollar Tree, one of only two in his district. His wife and two children live most of the year in Washington, where home values are cheaper.

His days are split between meetings with billionaires and his many constituents who are struggling to stay afloat amid Silicon Valley's success. "I am an 11-year renter with a master's degree," a teacher told him at a meeting with school employees. Her question wasn't about whether she would ever be able to afford a home, but about a fellow teacher who couldn't afford health insurance.

A few days earlier, he had met with two activists who wanted his help pressuring big tech companies to pay contract janitorial and cafeteria workers a living wage. Khanna agreed to host a press event on their behalf.

The billionaires in Khanna's district, meanwhile, were consumed by a different worry. Mixed in with the valley's usual frothy optimism about disruption and inventing the future was a growing sense that the tech economy had somehow broken capitalism. The digital revolution had allowed tech entrepreneurs to build massive global companies without the big job-producing factories or large workforces of the industrial era. The result was more and more wealth concentrated in fewer hands.

As technology advanced, some feared things were only going to get worse. Robots were eliminating much factory work; online commerce was decimating retail; and self-driving cars were on the verge of phasing out truck drivers. The next step was computers that could learn and think.

"What happens if you can actually automate all human intellectual labor?" said Greg Brockman, chairman of OpenAI, a company backed by several Silicon Valley billionaires. Such thinking computers might be able to diagnose diseases better than doctors by drawing on superhuman amounts of clinical research, said Brockman, 30. They could displace a large number of office jobs. Eventually, he said, the job shortages would force the government to pay people to pursue their passions or simply live. Only Andrew Yang, a long-shot presidential candidate and tech entrepreneur, supported the idea of government paying citizens a regular income. But the idea of a "universal basic income" was discussed regularly in the valley.

The prospect was both energizing and terrifying. OpenAI had recently added an ethicist-- Brockman sometimes referred to her as a "philosopher"-- to its staff of about 100 employees to help sort through the implications of its innovations. To Brockman, a future without work seemed just as likely as one without meat, a possibility that many in the valley viewed as a near certainty. "Once we have meat substitutes as good as the real thing, my expectation is that we're going to look back at eating meat as this terrible, immoral thing," he said. The same could be true of work in a future in an era of advanced artificial intelligence. "We'll look back and say, 'Wow, that was so crazy and almost immoral that people were forced to go and labor in order to be able to survive,'" he said.

Khanna heard such prophecies all the time but mostly discounted them as sci-fi fantasy. His focus was on fixing the version of capitalism that existed today. He often pleaded with big tech executives to spend just 10 percent of their time thinking about what they could do for their country and 90 percent to their companies.

The tougher question was exactly what he wanted them to do with that 10 percent.

On a warm spring evening, Khanna was trying to answer that question for about two dozen Silicon Valley tech executives, software engineers and venture capitalists. The group gathered at a $5 million Mediterranean-style villa perched atop a hill overlooking Cupertino, which glittered in the valley below.

Khanna described a December trip he organized to tiny Jefferson, Iowa, for a group of tech executives that included Microsoft's chief technology officer and a LinkedIn co-founder. The executives donated to the community college's scholarship fund and paid to equip its computer lab with the goal of training 25 to 35 students for software developer jobs, starting at $65,000 a year.

Khanna had made similar trips to West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky. The total number of jobs these trips produced was small, and the pay wasn't great. Still, Khanna believed they served a larger purpose. They proved that people in Silicon Valley cared about places like Jefferson, a rural town of only 4,200. They gave people hope that even the remotest parts of America could take part in the country's tech revolution.

The next step, Khanna told the executives at the mansion in Cupertino, California, was a $100 million effort to build 50 technology institutes, similar to land-grant colleges, to train workers in left-behind parts of America. Khanna had already introduced a bill that he admitted was unlikely to pass. But that wasn't really the point. "It sets a blueprint," he said.

Khanna's blueprint reflected his broader view of how to unite an increasingly polarized country. Many Democrats blamed Trump's victory and the country's divisions on racial tensions as the nation grew more diverse and whites lost their favored positions.

Khanna had a different view. He saw the country's problems primarily as the product of growing income inequality and a lack of opportunity.

Sometimes Khanna imagined what people in these left-behind parts of the country were thinking: Their grandparents had fought in World War II and helped build the country's industrial age economy. Now they worried people like Khanna, whose parents emigrated from India, were surging past them.

"They just got here, and they are doing really, really well," Khanna imagined these people saying. "What happened to us?"

...A few days after the meeting at the Cupertino mansion, Khanna was standing in front of 16,000 amped-up Sanders supporters. The San Francisco skyline rose in front of him and the Golden Gate Bridge spanned the bay behind him.

In his gray suit and pressed white shirt, the two-term congressman looked a bit out of place-- an emissary from establishment Washington crashing someone else's revolution. Khanna gave a brief speech introducing Sanders, who a few minutes later rushed onto the stage and into the same campaign spiel he had been delivering since the 2016 Democratic primaries.

He bashed the billionaire class and its influence over American elections. "Democracy means one person one vote and not billionaires buying elections," Sanders yelled in his Brooklyn growl.

"We say no to oligarchy," he continued. "Yes to democracy."

Khanna's eyes fixed on Steve Spinner, a big tech investor in Silicon Valley and major fundraiser for Obama's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. Spinner, who chaired Khanna's congressional win, was listening with his arms folded across his fleece vest.

"We dragged him out here," Khanna said. "He's about as far from Bernie as you can get."

Many of Khanna's billionaire supporters-- even those who worried about capitalism and inequality-- seemed genuinely puzzled by Khanna's affection for Sanders.

For Khanna it was simple: In Sanders, Khanna found a candidate who shared his diagnosis of the country's most vexing problems: inequality and the failures of unrestrained capitalism.

Sanders wasn't a perfect match for Khanna. Sanders didn't really understand the tech industry-- though he wasn't calling for the breakup of big tech companies like Warren and some other candidates. Warren's proposal, if executed, would hurt companies in Khanna's district and alienate some of his wealthiest backers.

Khanna wished Sanders would talk more about the greatness of the American economy and the power of the tech industry, when properly taxed and regulated, to lift people out of poverty. But on that score Khanna believed he could help Sanders.

"We can quibble over his plans to solve this issue or that issue," Khanna said. "But I have no doubt that if Bernie Sanders was in the White House, he'd wake up every day thinking, 'How do I solve structural inequality in America?'"

The 77-year-old socialist's speech had passed the one-hour mark and the crowd was still laughing, cheering, hooting and shouting.

"We're probably not going to get a lot of support from the one percent and the large profitable corporations," Sanders said.

A voice in the crowd screamed an expletive.

"That's OK," Sanders continued, "I don't need, and we don't want, their support."

The congressman in the gray suit gazed out at the crowd, which stretched to the back of the park. Khanna saw Sanders' revolution as an imperfect solution to a near-impossible problem. For now, though, it was the best he could find.

In past discussions on the same topic, I always got the idea that Khanna felt that Bernie would bring a moral urgency-- and system-defying zeal-- to issues of income inequality and unrestrained capitalism, which motivate both of them politically. It looks to me that Khanna, as one of the most prominent of Bernie's surrogates, used his interview or interviews with Jaffe to frame Bernie's policies in terms of far brighter American future, not just for the true-believers but for people who haven't been persuaded yet. If anything, it's this kind of perceptive reporting by Jaffe that will help expand Bernie's base. Let's hope so!

Across The Board, Yesterday's Primary Turnout Was Catastrophic For The GOP

A great night for progressives and reformers 

Yesterday Nate Silver said that "In races where insurgent, progressive Democrats are running against party-backed nominees ... the establishment Democrat is winning 89% of the time." If not so sure about definitions that make that even remotely true. And it certainly wasn't true last night. I'll give you two examples. First, the only contested congressional race in Connecticut was in the 5th district. Although Obama is a big fan of Teacher of the Year, progressive Jahana Hayes, the establishment candidate was, clearly the more conservative Mary Glassman, the first Democratic primary candidate to be backed by the U.S. Chamber since they tried to rescue Blanche Lincoln. They failed and Jahana won-- big.

The Republicans had hoped to make a race out of that district but while 39,115 Democrats voted, just 31,394 Republicans bothered showing up to vote, a good harbinger for November-- and a dynamic we'll be discussing in a moment. Another race that puts the lie to Silver's assertion was in Wisconsin's first congressional district. Randy "@IronStache" Bryce, came into the race as a progressive insurgent with ZERO backing from the DCCC and he has no establishment crap attached to his campaign. When the DCCC saw that he had created an invincible brand and was outraging all their own candidates across the country, they added him to their red-to-blue page and tried to run to the front of the parade, which they never quite caught up with. Silver might consider that a win for the establishment but... well, that's another example of a flaw in what Silver does. Randy's results against a fake progressive (who backed Hillary in 2016 and who was heavily backed by Paul Ryan's SuperPAC in the primary) shows how a progressive reformer wins in a swing district without even a nod in the direction of the DCCC's Republican-lite one-size-fits-all prescription for victory:

Again, in a district where both Romney and Trump won and where voters had become accustomed to backing Paul Ryan locally, 61,087 Democrats showed up at the polls, but the GOP could muster only 59,870 Republican voters for a lively primary that featured Bryan Steil, a Ryan clone and establishment pick, and a neo-Nazi millionaire, Paul Nehlen, a guy named Ryan and 3 other white male conservatives.

In both these races and the others in all the states we were following last night, a big story was the turnout. Democrats out-performed and Republicans under-performed. Let's start in Vermont:

The Republican governor, Phil Scott, is popular in the state and the top Democratic candidate-- who wn handily, is a transgender woman, Christine Hallquist. It wasn't only that Hallquist drew more voters than Scott-- 27,558 to 24,206-- it was that 57,102 voters turned up for the Democratic race, but just 35,840 turned up to vote in the Republican primary, where a gun-nut backed by the NRA campaigned vigorously against Scott. In the other statewide races it was the same thing: huge turnouts for the Democratic races, significantly smaller turnouts for the GOP.

The Republicans think they have a shot to grab the Connecticut governor's mansion, but progressive Democrat Ned Lamont alone, took more votes than all 5 Republicans combined! 211,499 Democrats voted but only 142,890 Republicans.

In Wisconsin, the Democrats picked the most likely Democrat-- from a field of 10-- to beat Scott Walker in November, State Superintendent of Education, Tony Evers. But the big news was that 537,840 voters showed up for the Democratic primary but just 456,007 came for the GOP primary. Alarm bells are ringing. In the state's U.S. Senate race, Leah Vukmir beat Kevin Nicholson, even though she was tarred as the anti-Trump candidate and even though he was backed by the big money-- and even though polls showed him performing better than Vukmir against Democrat Tammy Baldwin in November. Nicholson outspent her $3,087,414 to $1,573,068 and the outside money that flowed into the race included around $10,000,000 for Nicholson and just $2.5 million for Vukmir. She took 217,023 votes to his 190,040-- 49% to 42.9%.

And that brings us to Minnesota-- and the same story as in Vermont, Connecticut and Wisconsin: more Democrats, fewer Republicans coming out to vote. In the gubernatorial race-- won by Tim Walz-- 580,962 Dems voted but just 319,276 Republicans. And, better yet, the mainstream conservative, Tim Pawlenty was defeated 52.6% to 43.9% by right-wing extremist Jeff Johnson, making Walz's job in November much easier than anyone expected. Pawlenty told the media that "The Republican Party has shifted. It is the era of Trump, and I’m just not a Trump-like politician." In the two U.S. Senate races it was the same story-- way more Democrats voting. Amy Klobuchar alone won more votes than all 4 Republicans combined-- 554,611 to 288,482-- as did Democrat Tina Smith Smith in the special election.

Even in the contested Republican-leaning congressional districts, Democratic voter turnout out-performed Republican voter turnout. The GOP hopes to pick up two blue seats that Trump won. In MN-08, where Rick Nolan is retiring, the PVI is R+4 and Trump beat Hillary 54.2% to 38.6%-- but 67,083 voters showed up for the Democratic primary and just 49,032 came to vote in the GOP primary. Same story in the first district, where Walz left a vulnerable seat open. The PVI is R+5 and Trump beat Hillary 53.3% to 38.4%.. But bad news for the NRCC: 47,248 Democrats and 42,385 Republicans.

And as long as we're on Minnesota, no one expected a Republican showing in the 5th district (Minneapolis) for Keith Ellison's empty seat but the results were noteworthy because super-progressive Ilhan Omar won in a rout, 48.2% in a 6-person field. And just so you can see what happens in a blue district-- 135,318 voters showed up for the Democratic primary and only 15,367 for the Republican primary. The third highest vote getter among the Democrats won more votes than all 3 Republican contestants combined.

As Chuck Todd mentioned this morning for NBC, "Democratic enthusiasm is still sky-high." In both Minnesota and Wisconsin voter turnout was over 20%, higher than primaries in non-presidential years than anything since decades.

Having tested their messaging with their pathetic and very negative puppet, Cathy Myers, in the WI-01 race, the GOP was out this morning with a vicious radio ad based on the issues they gave her to use against Bryce, issues they pounded with incessant push-polling on her behalf all during the primary. This is what happens when an unserious vanity candidate can capitalize on a high-profile race to make a few greedy consultants rich at the expense of accomplishing something that the progressive community has been craving-- and needs-- so badly. Cathy Myers-- worst and most detrimental candidate to have run in 2018.

The NRA And Two GOP Governor Scotts-- One In Florida And One in Vermont

Vermont's PVI is D+15 and Hillary beat Trump there 178,573 (55.72%) to 95,369 (30.27%). Trump won just one of Vermont's 14 counties (Essex, the least populated). Florida is a more swingy state, although the PVI is R+2. Although Obama won Florida both times he ran, Hillary gave up on the state's crucial 29 electoral votes. Trump beat her (narrowly)-- 4,617,886 (49.0%) to 4,504,975 (47.8%). Of the state's 67 counties, she won 9.

Both states have Republican governors named Scott-- Phil Scott in Verment, who is running for reelection, and Rick Scott in Florida, who is running for the U.S. Senate. And the NRA has turned against each of them. In 2016 the gubernatorial seat was open in Vermont and the Democrats ran a weak EMILY's List nothing candidate, Sue Minter. Scott, the state's lieutenant governor, beat her 166,817 (52.96%) to 139,253 (44.21%).

Rick Scott, a convicted criminal who was caught stealing from Medicare, beat another weak EMILY's List nothing candidate, Alex Sink, in his first run (2010). He was reelected in 2014 against pointless ex-Republican Charlie Crist. In 2010 he beat Sink 2,619,335 (48.9%) to 2,557,785 (47.7%), largely because she allowed EMILY's List run her campaign). In 2014, Scott beat Crist 2,865,343 (48.1%) to 2,801,198 (47.1%) to 2,865,343 (48.1%).

Today the NRA is angry with both governors. How angry? Last week Phil Scott approved a package of gun-related laws passed by the state legislature and the NRA called on gun owners to abandon him. Dana Loesch, a national spokeswoman for the NRA: "This governor in Vermont completely gave a one-finger salute to the Constitution and to gun owners. He is no friend of firearm owners and I hope that all firearm owners remember this betrayal the next time he’s up for re-election." That's in about half a year.

The NRA gave Scott an A rating during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2016, when Scott said he saw no need for new Vermont gun laws. The governor changed his position in February "after deep reflection" after an alleged school shooting plot came to light in Fair Haven, and on Wednesday he signed three gun-related bills into law.

Loesch described Scott's shift as "an attempt to appease the gun-grabbers in his state."

The NRA spokeswoman seemed particularly bothered by S.221, a bill that won support from even the most ardent gun-rights lawmakers and passed both the Vermont House and the Vermont Senate unanimously.

The new law sets up a court process from removing weapons from people deemed to be at "extreme risk" of violence or suicide. State's attorneys or the Attorney General's Office may petition a family court judge to require a person to relinquish their firearms for up to six months. In emergency situations, these orders may be granted without the person's knowledge, and would expire after 14 days.

... Gun-rights advocates have reacted angrily to Scott's decision to sign the bills, and some jeered and shouted during the bill signing ceremony Wednesday.

"I understand I may lose support over the decision to sign these bills today," Scott said, "but those are consequences I am prepared to live with."

Scott will seek re-election for a second term in November. He is facing a challenge from fellow Republican Keith Stern, who has made gun rights a cornerstone of his campaign.

Rick Scott has an uphill battle to displace Bill Nelson-- especially in a blue wave environment. The last thing he needs is his right flank in tatters. And that's what he's got, with gun nuts stepping up their attacks on him for signing gun control legislation after the school shooting in Parkland. First off, the far right Republican Trumpist campaigning to replace him as governor, Ron DeSantis says he would have vetoed the legislation Scott signed. And the gun group to the right of the NRA, the National Organization for Gun Rights, has already attacked him in an e-mail entitled "Gov. Gun Control Running for Senate," for signing a popular bill putting minor restrictions on the sale of assault-style weapons.

One of the most respected Democratic political operatives in Florida, an old friend, Kevin Cate: "The whole guns and NRA situation is very complicated for Rick Scott. This is a guy who sprinted far to the right, who's BFFs with Donald Trump, he signed a gun bill that did have some more moderate positions in it, so he's got to be sprinting back and forth, back and forth, and someone as robotic as Rick Scott, that's tough for him to do. He's got to sprint back and forth to keep that base happy because if they don't turn out, if these Trump folks don't turn out, he doesn't have a chance."

Meanwhile, reflecting one of those back and forth, the Tampa Bay Times reported late last week that mayors of several cities are suing Scott for sticking with the NRA's agenda.

[St. Petersburg] Mayor Rick Kriseman announced Wednesday that he will join 10 other Florida cities and mayors in a lawsuit against Gov. Rick Scott over the issue of being able to regulate firearms in local jurisdictions.

..."What I see is a collective effort at taking away our home rule authority,'' he said. "I also find it incredibly ironic…the Florida legislature complains about Washington telling them what to do…But they don't seem to have any problem telling us, cities and counties, what to do."

The mayor said he would ban military style weapons, bump stocks, and armor-piercing bullets if he could.

"Governor Scott and legislative leaders decided to overstep their authority and use fear and intimidation as a tactic to preserve the NRA's agenda," Kriseman tweeted before the City Hall announcement.

Alex Leary and Steve Bousquet, writing for the Miami Herald speculate that Scott angering the gun nuts would actually help him in November. Yes, gun nuts are angry. Comments on Scott's campaign Facebook page prove that: "Sorry, Governor Scott. You blew it when you signed the anti-gun legislation into law. Will not be voting for you," one person wrote. Another compared him to Democrat Charlie Crist. A third fumed, "Shouldn’t have gone against Americans with your knee jerk pandering to the gun grabbers." Scott’s embrace of Florida’s first gun restrictions in decades has infuriated the gun lobby and its fiercely loyal lieutenants. What will the NRA do about Scott's A+ rating now? It's a lot more important than their stance on Phil Scott in Vermont.

If Scott escapes attacks after weakening gun rights, other Republicans may feel emboldened in a time of soaring public support for solutions to Parkland and other mass shootings.

“It has always been our practice to hold public officials accountable for their actions that impact law-abiding firearms owners and their Second Amendment rights. Nothing has changed,” said Marion Hammer, the NRA’s Florida lobbyist who, pre-Parkland, had achieved a legendary reputation for her control over the agenda in Tallahassee. 
...“She is very much, 'You’re with us or you die,’ ” said Robert Spitzer, an expert on gun politics and chairman of the political science department at SUNY Cortland in New York. “But Scott’s well positioned. It’s certainly helpful to his campaign because he can say that he’s not completely in the thrall of the NRA.

“It’s a pretty clear message that it’s possible to weave a path that amounts to expressing support for gun rights but also some gun measures, even if they are limited.”

Part of the lesson, Spitzer added, “is that the NRA’s bark is worse than its bite. It’s certainly an influential group. But the idea they can just sort of wiggle their finger and make things happen magically in politics, it really isn’t like that. There are many other candidates who have sided with them then parted ways and lived to tell the story.”

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey was an A+ rated NRA darling during his 2010 campaign, the group spending $1.5 million to help him get elected. But a few years later, after the Sandy Hook tragedy, he sponsored bipartisan legislation to expand background checks. It did not pass and the NRA turned on Toomey, but he still won re-election in 2016.

“You can do the right thing and you’ll be fine,” Toomey said in an interview about the climate Scott now faces. “In his state, like mine, a majority of voters feel very strongly about the Second Amendment, as do I, and these folks voted for me. I commend him for being willing to stand up.”

Despite all the social media noise, the legislation just might help the Republican governor win a seat in the Senate.


The law Scott signed last month raised the age to buy a gun in Florida from 18 to 21 with a three-day waiting period. The NRA filed suit immediately. In public comments, Hammer included Scott among “turncoat Republicans” who “caved to bullying and coercion” by passing the changes in response to the shooting at a high school in Parkland that killed 17 people on Feb. 14.

Four years ago, Hammer praised Scott for his “historic” signing of five pro-gun bills.

Florida has long been at the vanguard of NRA-backed policies, including the controversial “stand your ground” law. But the national movement spurred by Parkland, with massive rallies in Washington and cities coast to coast, led to action from state and local governments and companies such as Dick’s Sporting Goods to end some gun sales.

It came just as Scott was preparing to run against Nelson, and Scott’s critics say his change of heart is all about politics. Scott showed no such initiative after the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando or an attack early last year at the Fort Lauderdale airport.

“The fact that Rick Scott in this politically craven way sees opportunity in accommodation with our side is an indication of the weakness of the NRA,” said Peter Ambler, executive director of a gun safety group started by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords. “But elections are about choices. Bill Nelson has had the courage throughout his tenure to do the right thing, to vote for gun safety, while Rick Scott was doing the exact opposite, while he was embracing the NRA.”


Nelson, who likes to tell audiences he’s been a lifelong hunter, charges that Scott “will say and do anything to try and get elected. He highlights an NRA-backed provision of the new law that calls for arming school personnel, though it would not apply to many teachers and school districts have largely said they would not participate in the optional program. (Scott opposed arming teachers but said he had to compromise.)

On raising the purchase age and adding the three-day waiting period, the Democrat said they were “steps in the right direction” but stressed that stricter measures are needed, including universal background checks and limiting large-capacity magazine clips. Nelson also wants to ban assault-style weapons.

For Scott, being under attack from the NRA could attract votes from independents and moderate voters who are more inclined to favor gun restrictions. Scott also has the support of some families of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who stood with him at his Capitol office in Tallahassee on March 23 as he signed the legislation. (Others, particularly Douglas students, say the legislation fell well short.)

Scott can avoid the weight of the NRA because he doesn’t face a serious primary challenger, will have no trouble raising money and is not likely to face an exodus of Republican voters over the gun issue.


... [The NRA] is unlikely to mount a full-throated attack on Scott, though it could withhold formal support. A membership drive mailer that reached homes across the state last week mentioned “anti-gun politicians” but did not say anything specific about Florida.

The showdown with Nelson is expected to be wildly expensive and extremely close. Scott won two races for governor by about 1 percentage point in Republican wave elections against underfunded Democratic opponents.

Four years ago, against Charlie Crist, Scott won 54 of 67 counties. Some of Scott’s most lopsided victory margins were in counties such as Bay, Okaloosa and Santa Rosa in the Florida Panhandle. Even there, in the most conservative region of the state, where opposition to gun restrictions could be strongest, Scott is unlikely to face a political backlash.

Rep. Brad Drake, a Walton County Republican and an A+ NRA-rated lawmaker who voted against the gun bill, said: “I’m going to strongly support Rick Scott. I agree with him on almost every issue. Once in a while we disagree, but it’s never personal. He’s very conscientious.”

Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, one of the NRA’s strongest allies in the Legislature, also voted against the gun bill, but said he has no quarrel with Scott.


“I view people based on their overall competence and effectiveness, and he’s A+ in my book. You’re never going to agree 100 percent of the time,” said Baxley, who represents The Villages, home to a vital bloc of Republican voters in statewide elections.

“It may give pause to some people who view the Second Amendment as a litmus test,” Baxley said. “But compared to the record of Sen. Nelson on the issue, the contrast is huge.”


Scott joins a host of other politicians who are finding daylight with the hard line of the NRA-- out west, in states such as Montana, some Democrats are shifting as well-- and it comes as Republicans face a tough midterm election climate.

Dan Eberhart, an energy executive and major conservative donor, recently held up Scott as an example of candidates needing to appeal to suburban voters and doing so by standing up to the NRA.

“Republicans are going to have to move a little to get 51 percent-plus in elections, and the NRA will have to deal with it,” Eberhart told the New York Times. “The NRA is really out of step with suburban GOP voters.”

Scott hasn’t brought up guns on the campaign trail but Nelson will make it an issue, as will a flood of outside groups trying to paint Scott as an opportunist.

Since The Beltway Democratic Establishment Refuses To Back Progressives Candidates, Why Should Grassroots Dems Unite Behind Their Crap Candidates?

Earlier today, we took a quick look at why Hillary isn't doing better in Florida. Last week, it was Ohio. The latest national polling of likely voters shows Hillary beating Trump 42-36% in a match-up that includes the third party candidates. Part of the reason she isn't doing better in Florida and Ohio is because the Beltway Establishment helped impose vile loser candidates locally-- Wall Street garbage like Patrick Murphy in Florida and pathetic walking corpse Ted Strickland in Ohio, neither of whom brings a single thing to the table other than a prayer that they can ride Hillary's coattails.

Meanwhile, on the generic congressional question in the same Morning Consult poll, about voting for a Democrat or a Republican, Democrats win 46% to 37%. Unfortunately many of the DCCC and DSCC recruits are far worse-- far, far worse-- than a generic Democrat and others, good, solid progressive ones, are being starved of resources by a DCCC more eager to keep progressives out of Congress than electing Democrats to Congress.

Beltway Villagers and establishment goons everywhere reached for their smelling salts when Tim Canova courageously refused to endorse Debbie Wasserman Schultz and when Grayson passed on endorsing Patrick Murphy after both were beaten in the Florida primary at the end of August. This past weekend, Elizabeth Warren had some establishment noses out of joint when she did a Senate Democrats fundraiser and very pointedly left out craven Wall Street shills-- and Schumer favorites-- Patrick Murphy (FL), Evan Bayh (IN), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ) and Patty Judge (IA).

The problem is that neither Canova, Grayson nor Warren sees themevles as mindless cogs in a well-greased party wheel that goes round and round and round. Grayson and Warren have been beyond-the-call-of-duty loyal Democrats but there's a serious question as to whether or not Patrick Murphy fits any reasonable defination of "a Democrat" and there is no serious question about which interests Murphy, Bayh, Kirkpatrick and Judge would be working for were any of them to ooze into the Senate. Each of them could only be viewed as part of the problem Warren's career is built on tackling, not part of any reasonable solution. And her list of endorsed candidates doesn't just include progressives. Aside from Russ Feingold-- a sure-fired ally-- she's raising money for moderates like Katie McGinty (PA), Maggie Hassan (NH), Jason Kander (MO), Tammy Duckworth (IL) and Catherine Cortez Mastro (NV). Murphy, Bayh, Kirkpatrick and Judge, on the other hand, have records of working for the banksters and very much against the crucial issues Warren and Grayson and other progressives are working on.

Sunday, Kevin Robillard and Gabe Debenedetti reported that Bernie is refusing the help the crap-conservative Democrat, Sue Minter, running for governor in his own state-- and that it could cost her the race. They wrote that "Sanders' unwillingness to participate in the Minter race "is starting to generate ill will" with the state's Democratic establishment, according to "a top Vermont Democrat." Before Gov. Howard Dean put a stop to it, corrupt right-leaning Vermont Democrats like Minter and others from the Democratic Party establishment used to run right-wing Democrats against Bernie. In fact, in 1988 they ran someone just like Minter-- Democratic State Rep Paul Poirier-- against Bernie, draining away enough votes from him (19%), to throw the congressional seat to Republican Peter Smith and keep Bernie out of Congress.

How popular is Bernie in Vermont? In his last reelection race in 2012 he beat Republican John MacGovern 207,848 (71.1%) to 72,898 (24.9%). On that same day, Obama was reelected with 199,259 votes (67%). Yep! This year, Bernie beat Hillary in the state primary 115,900 (85.7%) to 18,338 (13.6%). He's been spending his political capital in Vermont trying to get a big turn-out for Hillary and for progressive allies like David Zuckerman (for Lt. Governor), Tim Ashe (for state Senate) and Mari Cordes (for state House). Howard Dean told the two Politico reporters that Minter is "very much a moderate Democrat"-- a polite way for Democrats to point out someone in their own party is a corrupt conservative piece of shit-- "which is probably why Bernie is sitting aside."

Minter, a technocrat who won a three-way Democratic primary by hyping her support for gun control and her role helping the state recover from flooding after Tropical Storm Irene, is still capable of winning without Sanders' help. But some observers believe the senator's endorsement would essentially guarantee a Democratic victory.

It's unclear exactly why Sanders hasn't backed Minter. He's been holed up with a top aide writing his book, mixing in travel to campaign for Hillary Clinton and higher-profile Senate candidates like Pennsylvania's Katie McGinty. Sanders also isn't fond of Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin-- who endorsed Clinton the day Sanders announced his presidential bid and scrapped plans to implement single-payer health care in the state-- and Minter worked in Shumlin's administration.

Minter also simply has a more moderate [again, that purposefully misleading Beltway word for "corrupt right-wing piece of shit"] profile than Sanders does.

“There is always an underlying question of who Bernie will support, but it isn't of the utmost importance,” said Dottie Deans, the state Democratic Party chair. “I certainly would welcome his support for any of our Democratic candidates, but what’s clear in this state is we have three parties: the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and the Progressive Party, and that makes it a little dicey.”

Sanders has marched to his own drumbeat on endorsements this year. National party leaders asked the Vermont independent to back two lower-profile Senate candidates over the summer-- Iowa’s Patty Judge and North Carolina’s Deborah Ross-- but they are not among the candidates Sanders has personally endorsed so far.

During the presidential primary race Schumer threatened Bernie with loss of a committee chair if he endorsed Grayson in Florida, Sestak or Fetterman in Pennsylvania or Sittenfeld in Ohio, where Schumer was desperate to have his conservative handpicked pro-Wall Street candidates-- respectively Patrick Murphy, Katie McGinty and Ted Strickland-- win the primaries. Bernie went along with it and the details of that will be a chapter in my "book" one day.

For establishment monsters like Steve Israel, Rahm Emanuel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Ben Ray Lujan, Schumer, Tester, etc, "party unity" is always a one-way street. The thermometer below goes to a page that has progressive House candidates who won their primaries and have been completely and spitefully abandoned by the DCCC. All are in winnable districts, although some are very winnable and others are tougher shots. Please consider contributing to any-- or all-- of their campaigns:

If Bernie Can Get Voters To Focus On Actual Issues, He'll Be President

Many people were shocked when Bernie came in tied for first place in Vermont's presidential contest-- no not among Democrats (he's at 70% in that race), but among Republicans! They shouldn't have been; Vermont Republicans like him. In 2012, when he was up for reelection, he took 208,253 votes (71.1%), while Obama, also on the ballot that day, did very well but with only 199,259 votes (67.0%). Governor Peter Shumlin took only 170,767 votes (58.0%). Shumlin's Republican opponent, Randy Brock, got 110,953 votes (38%), Romney got 92,700 votes (31%), and the Republican who ran against Bernie, John MacGovern, only got 72,629 votes (25%). It was a good day for Democrats, but a better day for Independent Bernie Sanders.

Over the weekend NBC and the Wall Street Journal released a Marist poll that showed Bernie continuing to lead in New Hampshire-- 48% to 39% against Hillary and 42% to 28% to 18% against Hillary and Biden. On the Today Show yesterday, Hillary gently dismissed Bernie's lead in New Hampshire by saying, "Bernie's a neighbor."

OK, and she is still ahead in Iowa according to the same poll. But since February her lead has steadily and markedly diminished:

• February: Hillary- 68%, Bernie- 7%, Biden- 12%
• July: Hillary- 49%, Bernie 25%, Biden- 10%
• September: Hillary- 38%, Bernie- 27%, Biden- 20%
• October: Hillary- 33%, Bernie 28%, Biden- 22%

Iowa is not a neighbor, and his polling has gone from 7% to 27%, while hers has crashed from 68% to 33%. How is that even possible? As we said a couple weeks ago, informed Democratic voters don't just prefer Bernie's progressive stand-- and record-- on the issues, they also are starting to realize (as Ann Coulter and Thom Hartmann do in the video up top) that Bernie is the candidate most likely to beat whichever garbage the GOP put up after their bloody primary apocalypse is over. He's more electable in a general. That same Marist poll shows that, at least in Iowa and New Hampshire, Bernie outperforms Hillary against the Republican contenders.

In Iowa, Republican Jeb Bush leads Clinton by 10 points in a hypothetical general-election match up among registered voters, 50 percent to 40 percent, and Donald Trump is ahead of her by seven points, 48 percent to 41 percent-- essentially unchanged from the poll's results a month ago.

And Carly Fiorina leads Clinton in the Hawkeye State by 14 points, 52 percent to 38 percent.

But when Sanders is matched up against these same Republicans, his numbers are stronger: Sanders leads Trump by five points in Iowa (48 percent to 43 percent). And he narrowly trails Bush (46 percent to 44 percent) and Fiorina (45 percent to 42 percent).

The same dynamic plays out in New Hampshire.

Clinton leads Trump in the Granite State (48 percent to 45 percent), but she's behind Bush (49 percent to 42 percent) and Fiorina (50 percent to 42 percent).

Yet Sanders has the advantage against both Trump (52 percent to 42 percent) and Fiorina (47 percent to 45 percent), and he's tied against Bush in New Hampshire (46 percent to 46 percent).

Dave Weigel took a stab at explaining this for Washington Post readers yesterday, focusing on Bernie's appeal to rural voters who didn't-- and don't-- back Obama. "Sanders won elections in Vermont, a white, rural and gun-owning state, as a socialist," wrote Weigel. "The social issue 'distractions' bemoaned by red state Democrats seemed to bounce right off his armor. (He also has taken mixed positions on gun control, supporting a ban on assault rifles, for instance, but opposing the Brady Bill.) In the end, is the white guy who voted for him in Vermont any different than the white guy in West Virginia or Kentucky or Ohio who was told to blame liberals for his problems?"

West Virginia has rejected the Obama-era Democratic Party more dramatically than any state outside the South, with Appalachian counties that voted for Mike Dukakis and Walter Mondale turning blood red over the past eight years. But if you think it’s in places like this that the insurgent Sanders campaign faces its most formidable test, here’s what he thinks: It is also one of his greatest opportunities.

The Vermont socialist thinks that white, working-class voters, the sort of people Obama once self-defeatingly said “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them,” are just one honest argument away from coming back.

“We have millions of working-class people who are voting for Republican candidates whose views are diametrically opposite to what voters want,” said Sanders in an interview. “How many think it’s a great idea that we have trade policies that lead to plants in West Virginia being shut down? How many think there should be massive cuts in Pell grants, or in Social Security? In my opinion, not too many people.”

This state, one of the last to vote in the primary, is supposed to be Clinton country. Seven years ago, in 2008’s primary, West Virginia Democrats gave Hillary Rodham Clinton a landslide victory over Obama. She won 69 percent of the white vote, and did even better with voters who lacked a college education. A Democrat who improved a few points on Barack Obama’s 39 percent of the overall white vote in the general election would stroll into the White House.

Sanders, who has won elections only in a white, rural state, thinks his brand of bold democratic socialism can sell. He has never campaigned here, yet at Friday’s rally in Morgantown, miner after miner said they basically agreed with former mayor of Burlington more than they agreed with Clinton. Several were aware that Sanders had actually walked picket lines, something that resonated as they packed a hotel ballroom to demand that Washington fully fund UMWA pensions. When the room quieted, a man recited a prayer against greed. “Lord, we know that Satan has those corporate thieves,” he said, “and they’re still trying to rob us.” Then a singer-songwriter started in:

It’s a long way to Wall Street from 12th and Main and the backroads of my home town
There’s a new world order and times have changed, so they let these deals go down

... “What I’ve found in Vermont and around the country is that we go to people and say, ‘Look, we do have differences,’” argued Sanders. “‘I believe in gay marriage. I’m not gonna change your view if you don’t. I believe climate change is absolutely real, and some of you do not. But how many of you think we should give hundreds and billions in tax breaks to the richest one percent?’” ... A national Quinnipiac survey last month found Sanders polling marginally better against leading Republican candidates than Clinton. A Marquette University last week found Sanders running just as strong as Clinton in Wisconsin, home to some of the white voters who’ve abandoned the Democrats in off years.

Something similar may be happening in West Virginia. In Morgantown, home to West Virginia University, a 62-year old activist named Andy Cockburn went to an early organizing meeting for Clinton and found only 10 other people. In July, when Morgantown hosted one of several hundred Sanders house parties, more than 100 people packed a bar basement and started organizing. Railing against oligarchies and “the one percent” means one thing in New York City or San Francisco. It means more in West Virginia, where coal magnate Don Blankenship is standing trial and Patriot Coal Corp. is trying to spend most of a $22 million settlement for miners on its own lawyers. On Friday night, at the Democrats’ Jefferson-Jackson dinner, Bill Clinton echoed his wife and condemned Patriot.

But Sanders is the candidate with the consistency on corporate greed.

“The whole feeling is that the parties have left the people,” said Doug Epling, a 73-year old businessman in Beckley with close ties to West Virginia’s elected Democrats. “We do need help from the federal government. Sanders is the only one that’s offered anything that I’ve heard.”

That bluntness has helped Sanders slow down a series of labor endorsements for Clinton. According to the New York Times, the International Association of Firefighters hit the pause button on its expected endorsement after too many local leaders blanched. On Saturday, Sanders lost the endorsement of the National Education Association, but only after a similar protest made Clinton work for it.

The UMWA has never endorsed Clinton. In 2008, it went for the doomed campaign of John Edwards, switching to Obama only after he had basically sewn up the nomination. In 2012 it made no endorsement, an avowed protest of the administration’s environmental regulations. This year, the union, with 32,354 of 71,160 members based in West Virginia, is not yet close to a decision.

... “What we have to say is, ‘Look, through no fault of your own, you’re working in an industry which is helping to cause climate change and in fact having a negative impact on the country and world,’” said Sanders. “What the government does have is an obligation to say we’ll protect you financially as we transition away from fossil fuel. We are going to create jobs in your community, extended unemployment benefits. If you lose your job to a trade deal, you get benefits for two years. You get job training. I would take that same approach to energy jobs that are lost because of the threat of climate change.”

Nothing about Sanders’s pitch is easy, but this piece is especially rough. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who has endorsed Clinton, said that Sanders’s economics-first focus makes sense in West Virginia. But he predicted that Sanders’s position on coal would be more damaging here than the socialist label after his name.

“Democrats need to remind people of what we’ve done,” Manchin said. But any candidate who told coal miners that the world had moved on from their industry, he added, would be a “non-starter.”

... On Thursday, at his farm in Grafton, former Democratic state legislator Mike Manypenny stood firm that enthusiasm for Sanders is bigger than the enthusiasm for Obama. Manypenny, one of the many casualties of a 2014 Republican sweep, is running for Congress on the theory that the progressive politics he shares with Sanders-- a living wage, the return of Glass-Steagall’s repealed restrictions on banks-- is the way to break the conservative grip on voters’ imaginations.

“The problem last year was that everybody focused on getting the vote out from the historic Democratic voters,” he explained. “Those are the seniors-- I don’t need to tell you that each year you lose a little more of them. This is something new. Barring anything happening in the Democratic debate, like Bernie stumbling badly, I don’t see anything changing the momentum. I think he wins.”

You can help make sure Mike Manypenny's supposition about Bernie turns into reality here at ActBlue.