Burning Questions: Who Took Tainted Shkreli Money? Why Did DFA and CWA Endorse Bernie? Why Is Putin Backing Herr Trumpf?

As we've reported before, when low-life price gouger and hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli tried to contribute to Bernie's campaign, Bernie very publicly rejected his contribution and turned it over to charity. Chuck Schumer and Jon Tester on the other hand, couldn't wait to get their clammy paws on some of Shkreli's blood money. Now that America's most hated twerp has been arrested by the FBI-- and faces as much as 20 years in prison-- will the DSCC give back the $33,400 he gave them in July? In fact, when he was arrested yesterday, it was for exactly what the was looking to pay political protection money for at the time he wrote Schumer and Tester the check-- securities fraud involving the biotech firm he started in 2011, Retrophin Inc. Other recipients of Shkreli's "generosity" include Michigan New Dem Gary Peters (over $10,000), Eliot Engel (New Dem, $8,000), Mitt Romney ($2,500), Joe Lieberman, Hillary (although in 2006 and 2007), Miss McConnell, the RNC (just $2,000, nothing like what he gave Tester and Little Chucky Schmucky), Jim Himes (New Dem), Mark Kirk, who is in a very tough reelection fight in Illinois this cycle, and assorted other Members of Congress from both grotesquely corrupt Beltway parties.

Early Thursday DFA, despite a plea from the organization's founder, endorsed Bernie Sanders. Howard Dean, for whom the "D" in DFA once stood, is a Clinton supporter but his letter urging members to vote for her had, sensibly, fallen on deaf ears. As DFA Executive Director Charles Chamberlain wrote to all DFA members, "With 271,527 votes cast-- and all three presidential candidates campaigning directly for your vote-- the results are in and they are extraordinary. Bernie Sanders has earned Democracy for America's endorsement in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary with an astonishing, record-breaking 87.9% of the vote (including 77.8% of voters who were already members of DFA prior to the poll being launched on December 7)."

Like DFA members, Bernie has kept the fight against income inequality front and center in the presidential race. The 2016 presidential primary election could’ve been dominated by the same Republican-Lite rhetoric that helped Democrats lose control of the U.S. Senate in 2014. Instead, Bernie’s ideas and solutions for rebuilding the middle class have dominated the debate. His success has helped move critical issues like expanding Social Security, debt-free college, breaking up the big banks and getting big money out of politics-- all issues supported by the majority of Americans nationwide-- into the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

And Bernie is doing all of this while building a powerful, insurgent campaign that is steadily dismantling the conventional wisdom of DC skeptics who claimed he would never have a chance to win.

Bernie has held several huge events with tens of thousands of people in places like Portland, Oregon and Boston, Massachusetts-- but the political revolution hasn’t been limited just to liberal states. Over 8,000 showed up at a rally in Dallas, Texas, over 9,200 at an event in South Carolina, and over 11,000 people attended a July rally in Phoenix, Arizona, during one of the hottest days of the year. All in all, the Washington Post reports that over a four-week period this summer, more than 100,000 people attended Bernie's rallies, proving that his vision for America resonates across the country no matter where you live.

It’s not just the crowds. Bernie is polling in first place in New Hampshire and is in striking distance of a win in Iowa. The campaign broke a record just last night, as the first presidential campaign in history to bring in over 2 million individual contributions this early in the primary contest.

We're excited to be backing a bold progressive champion like Bernie, and we're going into full campaign mode to support him but-- as a grassroots progressive movement organization-- we're going to need some significant resources to make it happen.

Until yesterday, Blue America, PDA and, very recently, the Working Families Party, were the only national progressive organizations to have endorsed Bernie. We're really proud to have DFA join the fight and we hope the others do eventually as well. Many of our members are also DFA members-- as am I-- and we commend their courageous stand. You can contribute to Bernie's campaign here. It was a good day for Bernie. He also picked up the endorsement of the largest union to date to endorse him, the 700,000-member strong Communications Workers of America. Like DFA, the Communications Workers polled their members before endorsing and union president Chris Shelton said that they backed Bernie "decisively." Many of the more corrupt unions that do not give a damn what they members want-- LIUNA, the most corrupt union in America and a disgrace to the union movement, is the perfect example-- have endorsed Hillary but will be basically meaningless in the election since their members are not united around her corporatist, establishment candidacy. National Nurses United and the American Postal Workers Union, each with around 200,000 members, are also enthusiastic Bernie backers. The unions , whose leaders are in the pockets of the corrupt Democratic Party establishment politicians, like AFSCME, are for Clinton of course.

Meanwhile, Herr Trumpf received a very different kind of endorsement. Wednesday Trumpf had very publicly said, "I really don’t want Jeb’s endorsement because he is a low energy person and he does not represent strength." So Thursday a more energetic Trumpf-type fella stepped in. Maybe he was spooked by the clownish slob Christie bragging he would start World War III by shooting down Russian planes in the Tuesday night crackpot debate, but Thursday Putin had a highly irregular public comment on the U.S. presidential race. At a press conference in Moscow, Putin responded to a question about Herr Trumpf by saying "He’s a really flamboyent [or, depending on translation, "lively"] and talented person, without any doubt. It’s not our job to judge his qualities, that’s a job for American voters, but he’s the absolute leader in the presidential race. He says he wants to move on to a new, more substantial relationship, a deeper relationship with Russia; how can we not welcome that? Of course we welcome that." And Romney welcomed an opportunity to take a swing at Herr Trumpf for his silly assertions on Morning Joe about the great Putin today:

Putin, of course, wants the person he will be able to work with best in the White House. Trumpf would probably be the easiest to manipulate and, no doubt, Putin is horrified at the prospect of an aggressive neocon like Rubio or Clinton winning. Trumpf would be a walk in the park for him. Trumpf was tickled pink to get the thumbs up from Putin, who, he said, is "highly respected." Miss Herr Trumpf on Morning Joe today? Here's a little of what you missed:

Scarborough: "Well, I mean, it’s also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?"

Trumpf: "He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader. Unlike what we have in this country."

Scarborough: "But again: He kills journalists that don’t agree with him."

Trumpf: "I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know. There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that’s the way it is."

Last night, John McCain referred to them as "a match made in Heaven."

Is Martin Shkreli The Son Trump Made With Ivanka? (Asking For A Friend)

Have you wondered lately why we haven't heard a peep out of one of America's most reviled media personalities, Martin Shkreli? That's easy; he was arrested in 2015, found guilty in 2017, bad his bail revoked a month later after he posted on Facebook that he would pay $5,000 for a strand of Hillary Clinton's hair and soon after that was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for three counts of securities fraud. (Aside from being thrown into prison, he was ordered to forfeit $7.4 million in assets and pay $388,000 in restitution.) He is federal inmate number 87850-053 and residing at a minimum security federal prison at Fort Dix in New Jersey.

So how has he been behaving in prison? Yesterday the NY Post announced he was thrown into solitary confinement a few week ago for using a cell phone illegally to run his company.

How did the prison find out he was using a contraband cell phone to run his pharma company, Phoenixus AG (a reincarnation of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG)? Someone bragged to the Wall Street Journal and they ran a piece on March 7 that someone in the prison system saw. The Journal reported that Shkreli fired the firm's interim CEO over the phone, though he let him stay on the board. He expects the firm to become a multibillion-dollar business while he directs it from cell phones that he presumably buys from corrupt guards. (The phones go for $1,000 each.)

And speaking of Pharma and healthcare and all,Tim Russo had an eye-opening post on how Bernie is looking at... well doing the opposite of what Shkreli and Trump do. They raise prices on drugs so only the rich can afford them. Bernie has a different plan and if it has to be "socialism," let it be socialism-- like Medicare. Russo wrote on Sunday that Bernie "launched the hardest leftward shot across any bow I’ve ever seen in presidential politics. This morning on Face the Nation Bernie promised to cut prescription drug prices by 50% if elected, which would be standard puffery from a presidential candidate, except of course, this is Bernie. Asked how he would do that, Bernie listed the litany of big pharma’s greed, then said about a 50% cut in drug prices, "if they don’t like that, then we’ll take a look at their patents.” Forward comrades!

An August 2018 poll by Data For Progress has suggested that despite the red scare tactics, a majority of Americans support seizing pharmaceutical patents, with huge net positives even among Trump voters. The poll question’s wording was, “Would you support or oppose having the government produce generic versions of life-saving drugs, even if it required revoking patents held by pharmaceutical companies?”

“Revoke” the means of production, “seize” the means of production, however you wanna phrase it, Bernie Sanders ain’t playin’.

And still speaking healthcare, the gaslighting asshole Putin installed in the White House who's pretending to be president, says his party is developing a "really great" health care plan that will be "far less expensive and much more usable" than Obamacare. The vote will come "right after the Election when Republicans hold the Senate and win back the House."

Most Republicans in Congress are just rolling their eyes and hoping he dies before 2020

There's A Conservative Way At Looking At Martin Shkreli And There's A Progressive Way

Until Friday, the newest controversy around young greed and selfishness icon Martin Shkreli was how he bought the single existent copy of the 31-track Wu-Tang Clan double album, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, for a million or two million dollars (no one who knows for sure is telling) at an auction, after having a trusted staffer listen to a 13 minute snippet. Then Friday the former hedge fund manager-turned-pharmaceutical CEO was in the news again with a plan to sharply increase the price of a decades-old drug for a serious infectious disease, Chagas disease, a parasitic infection that can cause potentially lethal heart problems.

The plan also is upsetting some organizations that supply drugs for neglected diseases because Mr. Shkreli has said he wants to take advantage of a federal program intended to encourage companies to develop such drugs. The program awards vouchers that can be sold to other companies for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. Shkreli has said he hopes to obtain such a voucher by getting the Chagas disease drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for sale in the United States. Critics say that it would be another case of the system being abused by awarding a voucher not for developing a new drug but merely for obtaining F.D.A. approval of a drug already used in tropical countries.

...Last month, Mr. Shkreli led an investor group that took control of a failing California biotechnology company, buying a majority of its shares on the open market at an average price of about $1.50 a share. The stock of the company, KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, now sells for about $28,  based in part on expectations that the company will prosper under Mr. Shkreli.

  As one of his first moves at KaloBios, Mr. Shkreli agreed to license the worldwide rights to one version of benznidazole, a standard treatment in South and Central America, where Chagas disease is most common.

Benznidazole has never been approved for sale in the United States but is provided free to patients by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on an experimental basis.

Mr. Shkreli said on a conference call with KaloBios investors last week that if the company won F.D.A. approval for benznidazole, it would have exclusive rights to sell it in the United States for at least five years. He said the price would be similar to that of hepatitis C drugs, which cost $60,000 to nearly $100,000 for a course of treatment.

In Latin America, benznidazole costs $50 to $100 for the typical two-month course of treatment.

KaloBios’s price would be “pretty devastating,” said Dr. Meymandi of U.C.L.A. “The people with Chagas for the most part are poor” and many lack insurance, she said.

It is estimated that 300,000 people in the United States have Chagas disease, virtually all of them immigrants from Latin America who were infected before they came.

When asked at a recent Forbes health-care summit, how he could have redone his first bout of national publicity around his decision to buy Daraprim, a standard treatment in the care if a life-threatening parasitic infection, just to raise the price from $13.50/pill to $750/pill, he boasted he would have raised the drug’s prices higher. "My shareholders," he said, "expect me to make the most profit. That’s the ugly, dirty truth... I’m going to maximize profits. That’s what people are afraid to say."

Even Republicans are afraid to say that too loud-- and in mixed company-- but that's an underlying principle of their Law of the Jungle philosophy, which, in effect, enshrines price gouging. And that, of course, is why societies protect themselves with one of the bêtes noires of the conservative movement and their Republican Party: regulation that protects the interests of society.



As many people know, especially-- though not exclusively-- as they age, high drug prices are killing people, not rich people, not the millionaires and billionaires, of course, but everyone else. As Social Security Works warned their members this week, "The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is forcing Americans to pay the highest drug prices in the world while stashing their profits in tax havens overseas, even while most of the drugs that they profit from are produced with taxpayer funded research."

This is especially concerned for them because fully 37% of Social Security checks go toward out-of-pocket health care costs. "Big Pharma is gouging the American people with sky-high drug prices, dodging taxes, and eroding our Social Security benefits," something none of the establishment presidential candidates is seriously addressing, although it is certainly at the heart of Bernie Sanders' renegade campaign. Bernie has been working for decades to stop pharmaceutical companies from raking in record profits while avoiding taxes and ripping off American consumers.



In 2013, the U.S. spent nearly 40% more per person on prescriptions than Canada, the next most expensive industrialized nation. This is because drug lobbyists have been able to:

• block Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices,
• block legislation that would require transparency on how pharmaceutical companies set their prices,
• and block legislation that would prevent greedy CEOs and investors from forcing drug prices through the roof-- bankrupting patients.


And while the pharmaceutical industry is raking in record profits, Pfizer-- one of the world’s wealthiest drug companies-- is attempting to move its corporate headquarters out of the United States to a tax haven overseas in order to avoid paying what it owes in taxes here at home. Pfizer already has $140 billion in untaxed profits stashed offshore.

...Congress should recognize that this is not a partisan issue. According to a recent Kaiser Health poll, 86% of Americans-- Democrats, Republicans and Independents-- want Congress to address skyrocketing drug prices by requiring drug companies to release information on how they set their prices.





Taking on the greedy, out-of-control pharmaceutical industry has been a core priority for Bernie for his entire career. And Shkreli is just an extreme manifestation-- a kind of Overton Window version-- of this kind of Republican Party business-as-usual. Shkreli, whose contribution to Bernie's campaign was publicly rejected and donated to charity, went to Fox Business News where he declared that "I don’t think [Bernie] understands pharmaceuticals at all." Unfortunately for price gougers like Shkreli, Bernie, more than anyone else who has ever run for president understands exactly how the pharmaceutical industry actually does work. And he's vowed to change that to make sure the industry serves the public interest not just a narrow and sociopathic profit motive. For Bernie health care is a human right that includes access to safe and affordable prescription drugs.

Americans pay, by far, the highest prices for prescription drugs in the entire world. When we talk about health care, we are talking about the need of the American people to be able to afford the medicine their health care providers prescribe. A life-saving drug does no good if the people who need it cannot afford that drug.

Yet, last year, nearly one in five Americans between the ages of 19 and 64-- 35 million people-- did not get their prescriptions filled because they did not have enough money. In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, Americans should not have to live in fear that they will go bankrupt or die because they cannot afford to take the medication they need.

In any given month, more than half of all American adults take at least one prescription drug. There is no question that medicines help millions of people live healthier and longer lives, and can also prevent more expensive illnesses and treatments. However, it is unacceptable that the United States now spends more than $370 billion on prescription drugs and spending is rising faster than at any point in the last decade.

Instead of listening to the demands of the pharmaceutical industry and their 1,400 lobbyists, it is time that Congress started listening to the American people, who overwhelmingly believe that the cost of medication is too expensive. More than 70 percent of Americans believe drug costs are unreasonable and that drug companies are putting profits before people.

Americans filled 4.3 billion prescriptions last year. The Sanders plan includes six policies to get better deals for the American people. Sanders’ plan will:

1. NEGOTIATE A BETTER DEAL

• Require Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate with the prescription drug companies for better prices-- a practice that is currently banned by law.

• Last year there were more than 37 million Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in private Part D plans. 90 percent of seniors take at least one prescription. Many seniors-- almost two-thirds-- take three or more prescription drugs.

• Not only would negotiation substantially reduce prices seniors and people with disabilities pay for drugs, it could save Medicare between $230 billion to $541 billion dollars over the next decade.

• 83 percent of Americans support allowing the federal government to negotiate with drug companies for better prices.

2. IMPORT PRESCRIPTIONS FROM CANADA

• Allow individuals, pharmacists, and wholesalers to import prescription drugs from licensed Canadian pharmacies.

• The United States spends more than $1,000 per person per year on prescription drugs-- that’s nearly 40 percent more than Canada, the next highest spender.

• In 1999, Sanders became the first Member of Congress to take a busload of Americans across the border into Canada to purchase prescription drugs. Americans should not have to pay higher prices for the exact same drugs than our Canadian neighbors simply because Congress is bought and paid for by the powerful pharmaceutical industry.

• 72 percent of Americans support this policy of allowing Americans to easily import safe and affordable prescription drugs from Canada.

• Prohibit the United States from agreeing to provisions in international trade deals that would raise drug prices in the United States or extend the monopoly period when a brand name drug company has no generic competition.

• Suspend the government’s authority to destroy packages of imported drugs at the border until new legislation is passed ensuring that Americans can import safe and affordable drugs from Canada.

3. RESTORE DISCOUNTS FOR LOW-INCOME SENIORS

• Close the Medicare Part D donut hole for brand and generic drugs by 2017, three years earlier than under current law.

• The private Medicare Part D benefit contains a “donut hole.” It’s a coverage gap, wherein seniors and people with disabilities must pay for their medications even while they are paying monthly premiums. Under current law, this gap in coverage will close by 2020. Sanders’ plan closes the gap by 2017.

• Require generic drug companies to pay an additional rebate to Medicaid if their drug prices rise faster than inflation.

• Brand name drug makers have to pay a rebate to Medicaid if their drug prices rise faster than inflation. This provision ensures generic drug companies are subject to the same rules. Nearly 10 percent of generic drugs more than doubled in price last year.

• According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, this policy will save the federal government $1 billion over 10 years.

• Restore Medicare prescription drug discounts for low-income seniors and people with disabilities.

• Pharmaceutical companies got a huge victory ten years ago, when prescription drug coverage for low-income seniors and people with disabilities was moved from Medicaid to Medicare. Because Medicaid gets a much better price for prescription drugs than private Medicare Part D plans, this policy change meant that drug companies would gain even larger profits on the backs of low-income seniors at the taxpayers’ expense.

• The Sanders plan will restore these rebates for low-income seniors, saving $103 billion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

4. PROHIBIT DEALS THAT KEEP GENERIC DRUGS OFF THE MARKET

• Prohibit anti-competitive deals-- “pay-for-delay” deals-- between brand and generic drug makers.

• Brand name drug companies sometimes try to delay their competition by paying generic drug makers to stay off the market. When these deals occur, drug prices stay high, costing patients and taxpayers more money.

• The Sanders plan prohibits these pay-for-delay deals. According to the Federal Trade Commission, these anticompetitive deals cost consumers and taxpayers at least $3.5 billion in higher drug costs every year.

5. ENACT STRONGER PENALTIES FOR FRAUD

• Terminate exclusivity-- a government-awarded monopoly period-- from a drug company convicted of fraud.

• The Sanders plan holds the pharmaceutical industry accountable when they defraud the American people. Today, nearly every major pharmaceutical company has been convicted of either civil or criminal fraud for violations including off-label promotion, kickbacks, anti-monopoly practices, and Medicare fraud.

• Even though the Justice Department has won suits requiring companies to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, the prescription drug companies simply treat those fines as the cost of doing business.

6. REQUIRE PRICING AND COST TRANSPARENCY

• Require drug companies to publicly report information that affects drug pricing.

• Companies routinely distort the true cost of drug research and development to justify skyrocketing prescription drug prices. Under the Sanders plan, drug makers would be required to report certain price information to the federal government and the public on their products, including the total expenditures on research and development and clinical trials, as well as the portion of their drug development expenses offset by tax credits or paid for by federal grants.

• Companies would also be required to report not only the price information charged to federal payers, such as Medicare, but would also have to submit price, profit, and sales information for other countries in which the drug is sold.

• 86 percent of Americans, including 82 percent of Republicans, think drug companies should be required to release information to the public on how they set their prices.

This is not a partisan issue. Most Americans-- Republicans, Democrats, and independents-- want Congress to do something about drug prices. Tens of thousands of Americans now spend more than $100,000 a year on prescription medications. Drug costs are out of control because that’s the way pharmaceutical companies want it. Other countries have national health insurance plans that negotiate better prices for all of their residents. In this country, however, drug lobbyists have been able to block all of these common-sense solutions that we must work to pass into law. That is unacceptable and that has got to change.

If you'd like to help Bernie win his race for the White House, you can contribute here, on this ActBlue page. And if you need more convincing, take a look at this poll of national Republicans that NBC and the Wall Street Journal just released this morning. Cruz is on the move, my friends. And if you think Trumpf was bad... what 'til you find out more about this maniac!

Grassroots Support For Bernie Keeps Pushing Hillary To Take More Progressive Stands On Issues

Hillary's kitchen cabinet wants her to stop talking about all those Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren "left-wing" issues and start pivoting towards the center-right where they believe the presidential election will be won. They're not comfortable that Bernie's campaign has been forcing her hand on issue after issue after issue, from Wall Street reform, campaign finance reform, Global Warming and college financing to the TPP, medical marijuana and, most recently, deportations, a subject her brain trust doesn't want her talking about in the primary, so she'll sound more credible in the general when she's expected to turn full-Republican on several controversial issues, that being one of them.

On Christmas Eve, Maggie Haberman reported on how Bernie has been forcing her to get more aligned with the Democratic grassroots on key policies than her somewhat right-of-center, establishment orientation dictates. He never mentions that he publicly turned hedge-fund and drug kingpin Martin Shkreli's campaign contribution over to a charity for his victims while Clinton refuses to discuss why she-- like Mitch McConnell, the Schumer-Tester DSCC and the RNC-- happily gobbled up thousands in Shkreli campaign dollars. But he does talk about Shkreli and how campaign finance and the lack of single-payer health care reform are intertwined. "What is stopping us from guaranteeing free, quality health care as a basic fundamental right for all Americans? I believe the answer ties into campaign finance reform, he wrote. "The truth is, the insurance companies and the drug companies are bribing the United States Congress." Without singling out Hilllary by name-- who has taken $1,266,483 from drug companies and their employees, like Shkreli-- he mentioned that the Big Pharma is "flooding my opponents with cash."

In the current presidential race, these are the candidates pharmaceutical industry has invested in:

• Jeb- $1,418,433
• Hillary- $1,059,529
• Christie- $175,000

Yep, very short, very concentrated list, although it's worth noting that since they were elected to the Senate, Big Pharma has been quite generous to Santorum ($799,265), Rubio ($180,800), Cruz ($168,655) and gave Kasich $100,852 while he served in the House. But he did mention that Hillary has received "millions of dollars from the health care and pharmaceutical industries" and more this campaign cycle from those sectors than did the top three Republican presidential candidates combined, the flailing Jebster not being in the top 3.

“Let’s not be naïve about this, maybe they are dumb and don’t know what they are going to get?” Mr. Sanders added. “But I don’t think that’s the case, and I don’t believe you do, either.”

Mr. Sanders has pledged not to run negative ads, but has struggled at times to maintain an issues-based approach. His aides recently took down a digital ad that described Mrs. Clinton as being captive of big banks after reporters noticed it.

...Asked about the tone of the fund-raising email, a spokesman for Mr. Sanders, Michael Briggs, noted he had criticized her on the debate stage, and replied: “Taking factual note of the huge role the health care industry is playing in Secretary Clinton’s campaign is consistent with the senator’s honest and straightforward critique of her Wall Street donors. These are matter-of-fact contrasts between the kind of contributions that are going to the two candidates. Voters have every right to consider how a candidate’s donations would affect policies.”

And that's a message that has resonance with the Democratic base-- even out in western Iowa (aka- Steve King country). The Omaha World-Herald reported that Bernie "continues to draw raucous crowds in Iowa," even in deep red areas like Council Bluffs and Sioux City, both on the Nebraska border, blue enclaves in counties won by Romney.

The energy level at Iowa Western Community College never tapered off, as Sanders mocked Republicans for their climate change skepticism and questioned the “psychology” of Donald Trump. He also drew loud applause when he accused the GOP presidential front-runner of stoking hatred against Muslims and Mexicans for political gain.

Finally, Sanders defended his belief that Muslims and not American “boots” must lead the fight against the terrorist group known as the Islamic State.

“So, what’s the strategy?” Sanders said, referring to Trump. “You try to divide the American people up, try to get us to hate Mexicans, hate Muslims. You keep the minimum wage low, and you give tax breaks to millionaires.”

“Mr. Trump, that is not what makes America great,” Sanders said loudly and clearly.

...Polls consistently show Sanders in second place in Iowa behind Hillary Clinton, although Sanders predicted his energized supporters would show up on caucus night and give him the upset over Clinton.

“I’m getting a very good feeling about Iowa,” Sanders said. “Keep it a secret. Don’t tell anybody. I think we’re going to win here and make history.”

Sanders also noted that he has a solid lead in New Hampshire-- the state that holds its primaries a week after Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses.

If he can win Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders said, he has a “pathway to victory” for the Democratic nomination.

Sanders sounded many of his common themes during his Council Bluffs appearance, including his key argument that income inequality is one of the greatest issues facing America and that rich Americans and corporations don’t pay their fair share in taxes.

“Corporate America and Wall Street, I say, you can hate me all you want, but we’re going to end your greed, which is destroying this country’s economy,” Sanders said.

The most recent Iowa poll of likely Democratic caucus participants shows Hillary still ahead with 50%, while Bernie is at 45%. I thought these two queries and the responses from the poll are with looking at, which makes me believe Bernie has more of a chance to pick up Hillary voters than Hillary has to pick up Bernie voters:

If you would like to help make sure Bernie can continue to get his hopeful message out to Democratic primary voters, please consider contributing to his campaign here. There is no such thing as a contribution being too small-- aggregating enormous numbers of small contributions is how he has out-raised billionaire-backed Marco Rubio, as well as Dr. Ben, Christie, Rand Paul, Fiorina, Kasich, Santorum and Huckabee, each of whom has been taking mammoth amounts of money from special interests.

The Republican Health Care Plan Hasn't Changed: Don't Get Sick-- And If You Do, Die Quickly

Last October-- a month short of a year ago-- I started treatment for a rare form of cancer. The treatment ended, successfully, about a month and a half ago after a month in the hospital for stem-cell transplants. Today I spent the entire day at City of Hope's day hospital getting maintenance treatment, something I'll probably be doing every few months for the rest of my life. I've kept a sporadic running diary of my adventures in the world of medicine that you can check out here if you'd like.

Tuesday you probably read, as I did, the Andrew Pollack piece in the NYTimes that everyone was talking about, Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight. Short version: A typical greed-obsessed 32-year-old Albanian-American hedge-fund manager buys the rights to a life-and-death drug and jacks the price into the stratosphere. He isn't dragged out of his office and killed but goes on TV instead and will soon be talked about as a Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio potential running mate. The piece has been updated because the ensuing uproar caused one of the companies (UPDATE: now Shkreli has partially raised the white flag himself, lowering the cost per pill to a so-far undisclosed price.) involved to rescind the bulk of the increase. Blended, for those who don't have access to the Times, these are the most crucial bits:

A huge overnight price increase for an important tuberculosis drug has been rescinded after the company that acquired the drug gave it back to its previous owner under pressure, it was announced on Monday.

However, outrage over a gigantic price increase for another drug spread into the political sphere on Monday, causing biotechnology stocks to fall broadly as investors worried about possible government action to control pharmaceutical prices. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index fell more than 4 percent.

“Price-gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous,” Hillary Rodham Clinton, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a tweet on Monday. She said she would announce a plan on Tuesday to deal with rising drug prices.

Ms. Clinton was referring to the actions of Turing Pharmaceuticals, which last month acquired Daraprim, a 62-year-old drug used to treat a serious parasitic infection, and raised its price to $750 per tablet, from $13.50.

The cases of Daraprim and of the tuberculosis drug, cycloserine, are examples of a relatively new business strategy-- acquiring old, neglected drugs, often for rare diseases, and turning them into costly “specialty” drugs.

Cycloserine was acquired last month by Rodelis Therapeutics, which promptly raised the price to $10,800 for 30 capsules, from $500. But the company agreed to return the drug to its former owner, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Purdue University, the organization said on Monday.

“We discovered literally on Thursday the strategy that had been undertaken” by Rodelis, said Dan Hasler, the president of the Purdue Research Foundation, which has oversight of the manufacturing operation. “We said this was not what we had intended.”

By Saturday, he said, Rodelis had agreed to give back the drug. Rodelis confirmed this in a brief statement on its website.

The foundation now will charge $1,050 for 30 capsules, twice what it charged before, but far less than Rodelis was charging. Mr. Hasler said the new price was needed to stem losses.

Cycloserine is used to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, a serious form of the disease that does not respond to the usual drugs. There are only about 90 new cases a year in the United States, Mr. Hasler said, and about half those patients get treated with cycloserine.

Turing does not appear ready to surrender. Turing’s founder and chief executive, Martin Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, used television interviews and also Twitter and Reddit to defend his move.

He said that toxoplasmosis, the infection Daraprim is used to treat, had been ignored by the pharmaceutical industry because there was little money to be made. Now that Turing can presumably make money, he said, it will be able to educate doctors about the disease, improve delivery to patients and develop better drugs for the infection.

Infectious disease specialists, who have protested the price increase, question the need for new drugs for toxoplasmosis and say that if Turing wants to develop such drugs, it should use money from investors. They say the price increase will raise the cost of treating some adult patients with toxoplasmosis to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is also vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, sent Turing a letter on Monday demanding information on the price increase.

“Without fast access to this drug, used to treat a very serious parasitic infection, patients may experience organ failure, blindness or death,” Mr. Sanders said in a letter written with Representative Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland. The two lawmakers have been investigating sharp price increases in drugs, many of them old generics.

Last night, Chris Hayes had Bernie Sanders on his show talking about this whole outrage-- specifically and general-- and what he's been doing to work on this problem in the Senate. Watch what Bernie had to say about it. Shkreli is just the latest ugly face of a catastrophic problem that needs to be seriously addressed-- but, because of the way our elections are financed, hasn't been. (You can contribute to Bernie's campaign here.)



It's lovely that Hillary jumped in; none of the Republicans, to my knowledge, have. But it is a subject that Bernie Sanders has been working on for most of his career. Just before I started my treatment, I started covering how generic drug prices have been skyrocketing and how Bernie was taking on an issue that few others wanted to touch.

Remember, Medicare Part D is "Republican Health Care." It was supported by virtually no Democrats except a gaggle of right-wing Blue Dogs, and it demonstrates the inherent unfairness towards working families that is emblematic of the GOP approach to health care. When the House voted on Bush's Medicare Part D scheme on November 22, 2003, it passed by only 5 votes, 220-215. 25 Republicans joined nearly the entire Democratic conference to oppose it. 

The 25 Republicans who opposed the Bush proposal are against all forms of government involvement in healthcare. Tthe 16 Democrats who backed it were almost entirely reactionary Blue Dogs, and only two of them, Colin Peterson (MN) and David Scott (GA), are still in Congress-- where they're still voting for Republican policies that wreck the lives of ordinary working families. The others were subsequently defeated or forced to retire to avoid being defeated. As Xavier Becerra (D-CA) explained recently on the House floor, "Congress should be in the business of making life better, not worse, for everyday Americans."

Bernie's bill, S.1364, the Medicaid Generic Drug Price Fairness Act of 2015, is winding its way through a Republican-controlled Congress hostile to the very idea of, in Becerra's words, "making life better, not worse, for everyday Americans." Since Bernie introduced it, Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) signed on as co-sponsors, joining Bernie, Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Al Franken (D-MN). The bill would make generic-drug manufacturers reimburse Medicaid for excessive price increases (increases greater than the rate of inflation). If Bernie's bill passes, it will save taxpayers $1 billion annually, which would cut into excessive profits by the GOP-enabled pharmaceutical corporations.

One of the most common side effects from chemotherapy is neuropathy, extreme pain in the feet, legs and hands. The pain is nerve damage and normal painkillers have no effect on it whatsoever. Lidocaine-based gels, however, ameliorate the worst pains. And the worst pains are pretty bad; it makes many patients suicidal-- many patients. Lidocaine has always been a relatively inexpensive drug. I used to buy a tube for around $25. A tube lasts two to three weeks. Suddenly, though, the generic-drug manufactures were all bought up and the price went from $25/tube to $300/tube, making it unaffordable to thousands of cancer and diabetes patients in extraordinary daily pain.

That's what Bernie and other champions of working families in Congress are trying to combat.

Attorneys general in Connecticut and Vermont are also looking at possible collusion among some manufacturers. There have been allegations of practices such as buying up several generic drug companies as a way to corner the market-- and set pricing-- for a specific drug.

At the June 6-10 American Medical Association’s House of Delegates meeting in Chicago, the delegates instructed the AMA to pursue efforts to find ways to address the increases.

Many physicians spoke of specific instances of generic drug prices go up multiple times their cost, sometimes abruptly but more often over the past few years. For instance, said Georgia delegate John Antalis, MD, the price of the antibiotic doxycycline now costs $276, up from $70 a few years ago. One physician said a patient called him from a pharmacy to report that the generic version of aripiprazole (Ablilify/Teva) cost more than the brand name of the drug.

At least 12 states require pharmacists to give patients to generic drugs when available and many more allow the substitution. If the plans permitted patients to get whichever version of a drug was cheaper, that could help fight some generic drug price increases. Health plan specifics are a matter of state regulation.

At the AMA meeting, Mario E. Motta, MD, cardiologist in Salem, MA, wondered why generic digoxin, the pharmaceutical version of digitalis (a common garden flower also known as foxglove), cost $180 when it costs about a penny a pill to manufacture and has been used for more than 200 years as an herbal tea.

While I was getting the stem-cell operations, there was another patient of my doctor's in a room down the hall going through the same procedure, a young father who had four small children running around the hospital the whole time I was there. One day my doctor came in and told me he probably wouldn't make it. She was visibly shaken up and grappling with how she was going to tell his wife. Well, since then there's some good news and some bad news since then.

The good news is that, although the operation was not successful, he didn't die. The bad news is that my doctor is keeping him alive with a daily pill. More bad news: The insurance co-pay for the monthly prescription is $10,000. This is not a wealthy family. They can't pay. Right now the hospital appears to be picking up the cost. But it's hard to imagine that that's going to last forever. My doctor is scrambling to figure out a way to make this work out.

The key for the rest of us is to elect more members of Congress to stand with Bernie and the others taking this seriously. Recently I spoke with Donna Edwards, a congresswoman from Maryland currently running for her state's open Senate seat, and she would certainly be an immediate co-sponsor of Bernie's bill were she to be elected to the Senate next year. Same for P.G. Stittenfeld in Ohio, where Rob Portman, as usual, is on the wrong side of the issue. "If elected to the U.S. Senate," P.G. told us, "I will always be on the side of the people, rather than the special interests, and that is why on Day 1, I would support the Medicaid Generic Drug Price Fairness Act, ensuring that generic drugs remain affordable to those who need them. Not only is a progressive vision for our health care system the right thing to do, in the case of this legislation it would also save taxpayers a billion dollars." You can help make that happen right here.

Most Americans (72%) are catching on that we're being ripped off by the Republican-enabled big drug companies. Often, the exact same drugs cost much less overseas. Is this a big enough deal for them to motivate their choice of 2016 candidates? If it is, Bernie Sanders will be the next president of the United States and Donna Edwards, Russ Feingold, P.G. Sittenfeld and Alan Grayson will be in the U.S. Senate.

Bipartisanship-- The Bad Kind

Yesterday I went upstairs to put on my shoes and socks and there was that Ku Klux Klan guy from Louisiana, Republican House Whip Scalise, yapping away on MSNBC about President Obama threatening to veto the "bipartisan Defense appropriations bill" that had gone through the wonderful bipartisan committee process led by Chairman Thornberry. Military families and pay raises and helping our allies (the fascist gang that's taken over in Ukraine) defend themselves... The bill did get through Thornberry's House Armed Services Committee, which has 36 Republicans and 27 Democrats and it did pass the full House, 270-156 on October 1. As for "bipartisan"... well, 146 Democrats voted against it. And the 37 Democrats who voted in favor were mostly Blue Dogs and New Dems who vote with the GOP on most things anyway, the Kyrsten Sinemas, Henry Cuellars, Gwen Grahams, Pete Aguilars, Collin Petersons, Cheri Bustoses, Jim Costas, Kathleen Rices, Sean Patrick Maloneys, Ann Kusters, Denny Hecks, Ann Kirkpatricks, John Delaneys, Patrick Murphys... all the worst Republican-lite garbage from the Democratic side of the aisle.

And the 10 Republicans who crossed the aisle in the other direction and voted with the Democrats against this $612 billion monstrosity of a GOP bill? Walter Jones, the second most senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and a batch of libertarian-leaning Republicans like Justin Amash (R-MI), Johnny Duncan (R-TN), Raul Labrador (R-ID), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA).

Adam Smith (D-WA), the Ranking Member of the Committee, encouraged President Obama to veto the mess (which he did today):

The President has said he will veto the defense bill because it is bad for national security. I agree with his assessment.

This bill misuses the Overseas Contingency Operation fund to evade the congressionally mandated budget caps and is itself a political game. Defense Secretary Carter has said the funding scheme outlined in this bill fails to provide a stable, multi-year budget on which defense planning is necessarily based.  In his words, it provides a “road to nowhere.” That is not the kind of defense bill our troops need. Signing a bad bill does not make us safer.

We can’t give our troops the tools needed to fight our aggressors using this kind of budgeting gimmick. We must eliminate sequestration and enact a long-term, comprehensive budget deal.

If passed, the President should veto this bill, and Congress should fix it. That is what is good for national security.

Obama and most Democrats are concerned that by endorsing the Republican workaround to the sequester for defense spending, they will give Republican lawmakers an excuse not to address the dysfunctional limits in their entirety when Congress gets around to finally negotiating a full budget in December. As Smith said, "too many in the Republican Party don’t care about spending other than defense... If we let defense out of jail, give it all of this money... that makes it even that much more difficult to do anything about the budget caps on the other appropriations bills." And that's just fine with Republicans disguised as Democrats like Blue Dog Cheri Bustos (IL) and New Dem Patrick Murphy (FL).

Along the same lines of phony-baloney bipartisanship, the banksters are again looking for more taxpayer handouts and the most crooked Members of Congress are the ones pushing for them. This time it's an attempt by big recipients of campaign donations urging congressional leadership to not end federal dividend payments to banks. Sounds like TARP, Jr! Although 103 Republicans signed on to a letter from two bank shills-- Republican Bill Huizenga and New Dem Bill Foster-- what's really ugly about this is that so did 47 Democrats! Worst of the crooked Members pushing hardest for the predatory banksters. The dollar amounts are what each candidate took in legalized bribes from the banksters last year only (starting with the 2 chief sponsors of the letter):

• Bill Huizenga (R-MI- $540,180)
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL- $478,450)
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ- $1,172,579)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL- $1,130,150)
• Steve Stivers (R-OH- $1,046,181)
• Ed Royce (R-CA- $999,718)
• Robert Dold (R-IL- $864,500)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY- $834,947)
• Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY- $757,717)
• Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA- $751,485)
• Sean Duffy (R-WI- $747,554)
• Erik Paulsen (R-MN- $743,350)
• Andy Barr (R-KY- $738,173)
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO- $711,230)
• Pete Sessions (R-TX- $702,380)
• John Carney (New Dem-DE- $621,378)
• Carolyn Maloney (New Dem-NY- $588,800)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ- $552,253)
• Mick Mulvaney (R-SC- $525,010)
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY- $512,733)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL- $501,602)
• Farmer Fincher (R-TN- $493,244)
• Rodney Davis (R-IL- $435,680)
• Denny Heck (New Dem-WA- $429,989)
• Lord Charles Boustany (R-LA- $410,947)
• Stevan Pearce (R-NM- $328,625)
• David Jolly (R-FL- $316,524)
• Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH- $310,601)
• Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL- $308,962)
• Mia Love (R-UT- $290,798)
• Michael McCaul (R-TX- $283,384)
• Carlos Curbelo (R-FL- $264,428)
• Bruce Poliquin (R-ME- $254,650)
• Frank Guinta (R-NH- $229,400)
• Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA- $225,350)
• Tom Cole (R-OK- $208,900)
• Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA- $204,596)
• Tim Walberg (R-MI- $190,640)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN- $166,150)
• David Valadao (R-CA- $163,900)
• David Schweikert (R-AZ- $163,150)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR- $153,733)
• David Brat (R-VA- $117,640)
• Steve Womack (R-OK- $111,875)
• Rod Blum (R-IA- $101,386)

This is what Bernie is talking about when he rails against a campaign finance system that rigs the entire economy towards the wealthy. All these Wall Street shills above-- whether Republicans like Scott Garrett and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Republican-lite fake Democrats like Patrick Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema-- are taking huge sums of money, year after year after year, from special interests to serve their needs at the direct expense of ordinary working Americans. No Republican will ever fix this and neither will Hillary Clinton (just as Bill Clinton didn't and Barack Obama didn't). Only Bernie doesn't take money from these crooked banksters and from the corporate predators who are always offering legalized bribes to politicians. Scooping up campaign cash-- a part of the epidemic of ugly careerism that plagues our political system-- is the number one priority for most of the members of Congress. But Bernie isn't that way and has never been that way. This is how he responded when pharmaceutical predator Martin Shkreli tried to bribe him recently:

A Wall Street hedge fund manager named Martin Shkreli decided that he could make a lot of money off a life-saving drug for AIDS patients and other sick people by jacking the price from $13.50 per tablet to $750. Sick people be damned.

I started a congressional investigation into his price gouging. Shkreli promised to reduce the price, though he hasn't done so yet.

But Martin Shkreli was angry. He didn't like that I criticized him, so he tried to get a private meeting with me. And he thought the best way to do that was by donating $2,700 to our campaign.

That may be how other campaigns work. Not ours. We are taking Martin Shkreli's $2,700 donation and are giving it straight to an AIDS clinic in Washington, DC.

...The economic and political systems of this country are stacked against ordinary Americans. The rich get richer and use their wealth to buy elections and legislation.

Saying to Wall Street and the drug companies and the rest of the billionaire class, "please, do the right thing" while taking their money to fund your campaign is both naive and ultimately ineffective.

If we’re serious about creating jobs and health care for all, and addressing climate change and the needs of our children and the elderly, we must be serious about campaign finance reform.

If you'd like to contribute to Bernie's campaign-- and to the campaigns of any of the progressive candidates who have endorsed him, you can do that here... and long as their are no special interest strings attached!

Trump And Shkreli Have Something Else In Common-- Multiple Campaign Contributions To Hillary Clinton

Thursday, when Herr Trumpf pontificated that "you have to be wealthy in order to be great" how offended were you? What a disgusting little man! I wonder how many evangelicals who voted for him are doing penance. But he certainly excited greed-driven drug maker, scam artist and self-proclaimed arch-villain Martin Shkreli who tweeted "all you people who don't like trump are jealous, stupid and poor! don't make me laugh! and if you are employed by media you are worthless." Something tells me worthless media employees in Shkreli-world would include all the writers at Jacobin and certainly Matt Karp, whose political analysis would likely consign predatory parasites like Shkreli to a one-way trip to Madame Guillotine.

Way back in February, Karp was already ignoring the elites-- from Shkreli to Maddow-- and re-assuring progressive true-believers that Bernie could win. Bernie, Karp pointed out, sure wasn't turning out to be a protest candidate who, at best, could push the Republican-lite Clinton a little to the left.

Last fall, Sanders’s early momentum may have pushed an ambivalent Clinton to reject the Keystone Pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But after this half-step to the left, Clinton has spent the winter furiously digging an ideological trench between herself and Sanders-- opposing his major Wall Street reforms, attacking his proposed tax increases, and declaring that single-payer health care “will never, ever happen.”

While Clinton continues to talk up her personal credentials as a “progressive,” in substantive terms the primary campaign has deepened rather than narrowed the ideological gulf between the two candidates.

Her forthright opposition to the Sanders agenda has won Clinton praise from some liberal elites, unable to disguise their hostility toward even the most basic social-democratic reforms. Yet unfortunately for Clinton, most actual Americans do not inhabit the pundit class, and their professional credentials do not depend on gravely denying the existence of puppies, rainbows, and successful single-payer health programs.

In fact, Sanders’s ideas remain extremely popular with voters. As a result Clinton has been forced to rely more than ever on a dryly pragmatic case for her nomination: only she can defeat the Republicans in November.

The death of Justice Antonin Scalia is likely to heighten this discussion of “electability” in the weeks ahead. “If anyone needed a reminder of how important it is to elect a Democratic president,” Clinton argued last weekend, “look at the Supreme Court.”

Leftists sometimes compare this election-year pitch to a species of blackmail. Vote for us, Democrats tell voters, not because we’ll do anything positive for you, but because if you don’t, the other guys will break your legs and take away your abortion rights.

This may not be an inspiring argument. But like most forms of blackmail, it has undeniable force. And so far, many Democrats seem to agree that Clinton, not Sanders, is the best bet to win in November: in both Iowa and New Hampshire, she claimed over 75 percent of the voters who put a premium on “electability.”

But let’s consider the argument on its own terms. Why should we believe Clinton is more likely to defeat a Republican than Sanders?

Notably, the case that Clinton has the best chance to win in November does not seem to depend much on Clinton herself. This is no coincidence: by a number of measures, she profiles as a comparatively weak general election candidate.

According to national polls, nearly 53 percent of Americans have an unfavorable impression of Clinton, which would make her the most disliked presidential nominee in modern history. Even if incumbents are included, the only candidate with worse numbers was Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Public perception of Clinton has been shaped by the intense sexist and right-wing attacks that she has endured since the 1990s. These polarizing assaults, along with Clinton’s own partisan record, have helped make her very popular with loyal Democrats, but unpopular with everyone else.

The problem is that the loyal Democratic vote is simply not enough to win a general election. In 2012, Democrats made up only 38 percent of the general electorate, while registered independents accounted for 29 percent. On his way to defeating Mitt Romney, Barack Obama won almost half of them.

Clinton’s appeal among these non-Democratic voters is extremely limited. Just 29 percent of independents hold a favorable view of her, according to an average of three YouGov surveys taken since January; over 61 percent view her unfavorably. In the most recent poll, Clinton’s count was 24 to 67, with 50 percent saying they hold a “very unfavorable” opinion. These are numbers that should make even Supreme Court-first liberals feel skittish.

It’s too soon to conclude that Clinton’s historic unfavorability will spell defeat in November. Yet as Nate Silver noted with regard to Mitt Romney’s (less pronounced) unpopularity in April 2012, we should not dismiss these early numbers either. At the very least, they make it plain that Clinton faces an image deficit greater than any challenger in recent memory, including landslide losers like Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole, and John McCain.

...Some gleefully apocalyptic liberals have likened Sanders to Michael Dukakis, who held an early polling lead over George H. W. Bush before ultimately losing by a large margin in 1988. Yet the comparison falls apart before it begins.

A stiff technocrat, Dukakis won the Democratic primary not by packing arenas with passionate supporters, but chiefly by having more impulse control than Gary Hart and being whiter than Jesse Jackson. And his early polling strength was clearly a mirage, as contemporaries noted: only 52 percent of voters even had an opinion of him in May 1988. Dukakis was John Kasich, not Bernie Sanders.

None of this means we should expect to see the end of the “wait until the Republicans get him” argument any time soon. It’s a staple of the Clinton primary arsenal.

In February 2008, then-Clinton chief adviser Mark Penn discounted early polls that showed Barack Obama performing well in a general election: “Sen. Obama has never faced a credible Republican opponent or the Republican attack machine, so voters are taking a chance that his current poll numbers will hold up after the Republicans get going.”

Penn was writing about an African-American candidate whose middle name was Hussein, and who had spent much of his childhood in a Muslim country. A month later, a video surfaced showing Obama’s longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright saying, “God damn America!”

Did the vaunted “Republican attack machine” fail to take advantage of what Vox’s David Roberts might have called Obama’s “glaring vulnerabilities”? Of course not: an independent super PAC spent $2.5 million on Wright-themed advertising in swing states. None of it had much impact on Obama’s poll numbers against John McCain, which rose considerably between February and Election Day.

The attacks aimed at Obama may have reinforced his unpopularity with right-wingers, but they did little to dent his appeal among Democrats and independent voters. Why does anybody believe that red-baiting will succeed where racist innuendo failed? When the Berlin Wall came down twenty-seven years ago, today’s median voter was not old enough to drink alcohol.

In addition, this year’s polls show little sign of an electorate ready to abandon Sanders at first exposure to right-wing talking points.

Only 35 percent of Virginia independents said they would be less likely to vote for a “Democratic-Socialist” candidate. And when a conservative push-poll asked Nevada Democrats and independents how they felt about Sanders’s plans to spend “$15 trillion dollars” for “a government run health care program,” 53 percent replied that it made them more likely to support him.

Another and even less persuasive claim is that Clinton, unlike Sanders, has already withstood every right-wing attack she can possibly face. Mark Penn also made this point in 2008-- and today Clinton’s unfavorability is even higher than it was then.

Sanders has famously refused to discuss Clinton’s emails. He has denounced her Wall Street speaking fees, but has largely refrained from discussing the much larger hoard of cash connected to the Clinton Foundation-- an area that Republicans seem eager to exploit. That same Nevada push-poll showed that 64 percent of Democrats and independents were less likely to back Clinton after learning about “foreign donations” given to the foundation while she was secretary of state.

Republican candidates have already made various scattered attacks on these subjects, but we’ve seen nothing like the tornado of Clinton scandal-mania likely to follow if Hillary is nominated.

A final line of argument, exemplified by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, insists that Sanders’s platform is simply too left-wing for a “moderate” American electorate. Usually this is trotted out amid broad national surveys that find the country divided between ostensibly coherent blocs of “liberal,” “moderate,” and “conservative” voters.

But as political scientists Shawn Treier and D. Sunshine Hillygus have argued, two-dimensional surveys of voter ideology do not provide a useful guide to the American electorate. To the great disappointment of the Post editorial board, many self-identified “moderates” are not sober Beltway centrists but in fact “cross-pressured” by a mix of strong liberal and conservative beliefs.

The unstable and multidimensional identity of the “moderate” voter helps explain why Sanders’s own polling numbers have regularly confounded the prejudices of pundits. In New Hampshire, for instance, where experts repeatedly stressed his strength with “liberals,” Sanders actually did even better with “moderate/conservative” voters.

It might also help explain why Sanders polls well in places like Nevada and Alaska-- states not known as liberal bastions, but home to a large number of independent voters.

Who are these independents and “moderates” voting for Sanders? It seems reasonable to believe that they are not confused centrists, but “cross-pressured” voters with a wide range of views, all drawn to Sanders’s left-wing economic message. In fact, Sanders has a long record of winning over these kind of populist “moderates.”

...Sanders has shown an undeniable ability to connect with the same kind of lower-income and less-well-educated white voters all over the country, from Iowa to West Virginia to Oklahoma.

Democrats have been slowly losing these voters to Republicans since the 1970s; in the last decade, they have almost abandoned them entirely. But non-college-educated whites still represent over 40 percent of the electorate in key swing states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

Many of these poor and struggling voters-- however “moderate” according to Gallup-- seem very receptive to Sanders’s call for universal health care and a living wage. A Sanders campaign that made deep inroads with working-class whites across the Midwest would be well-prepared to defeat a Republican in November.

It’s difficult to find an equivalent category of voters where Clinton might outperform Sanders in a general election. Women? Clinton’s most recent favorability ratio with all women voters is strongly negative: 41 to 54 percent. Sanders’s mark stands at 44 to 41 percent. In a general election, those numbers might shift-- but would it be enough to give Clinton a significant advantage?

Clinton’s strongest support in the primary campaign seems to come from the most loyal Democrats, including African-Americans. But in a bitter campaign against an ethnic nationalist like Trump... would loyal party voters refuse to turn out for the Democrats, just because Sanders rather than Clinton was the nominee? It doesn’t seem likely.

None of this is to suggest that Sanders should take loyal non-white Democratic votes for granted. That is exactly what Clinton-style New Democrats did when they pivoted to the center in the 1980s. In a general election campaign, Sanders would have to do the opposite, and build a populist coalition that depended on solidarity between black, Latino, Asian, and white working-class voters.

Unquestionably, it would be difficult work. But the opposition of an ever-more-reactionary Republican Party would surely help. And a successful left-of-center coalition would be well positioned-- in both ideological and electoral terms-- to mount the much larger, long-term struggle necessary to achieve even Sanders’s social-democratic goals.

...[T]here’s no question that Bernie Sanders can win in November-- and there is good reason to believe he would actually be a stronger Democratic candidate than Hillary Clinton.

And by the way, over the years, Trump and Shkreli have contributed multiple times to Hillary Clinton campaigns. I guess they liked the cut of her jib. Please consider a contribution to Bernie's campaign or to the campaign of any of the progressive congressional candidates who have endorsed him and are running on his platform by tapping on the thermometer below: