Bernie's Ahead In Nevada-- But There Are Shady Big Money Forces Trying To Stop Him

He Can Do It by Nancy Ohanian

The Kaiser Family Foundation and Cook just released a fascinating report about the "blue wall states," where last cycle's centrist status quo Democrat did so miserably against Trump. They chose 4 states-- Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Hillary managed to hold onto Minnesota by the skin of her teeth. Minnesota's support for Democrats has been legendary but someone so egregiously in favor of the status quo and so obviously an establishment shill talking out of both sides of her mouth, was just too much for too many voters. The last time a Democrat lost Minnesota was in 1972. Minnesota's votes for Democrats since then:

1976- Jimmy Carter beat Ford- 54.9% to 42%
1980- Carter beat Reagan- 46.5% to 42.6%
1984- Mondale beat Reagan- 49.7% to 49.5%
1988- Michael Dukakis beat George HW Bush- 52.9% to 45.9%
1992- Bill Clinton beat George HW Bush- 43.5% to 31.8%
1996- Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole- 51.1% to 35%
2000- Al Gore beat George Bush II- 47.9% to 45.5%
2004- John Kerry beat George Bush II- 51.1% to 47.6%
2008- Obama beat McCain- 54.1% to 43.8%
2012- Obama beat Romney- 52.6% to 45%
2016- Hillary beat Trump 46.4% to 44.9%

Trump keeps whining about Minnesota because it was so close and he's demanding his campaign try again. Problem with that is that his favorability has crashed by 10 points since inauguration day and now stands at 41% favorable and 58% unfavorable. (11 points underwater. Trump is also underwater in Michigan and in Pennsylvania by 11 points, and underwater in Wisconsin by 14 points.)

Now let's look at the blue wall states today that Hillary managed to lose in 2016 with her miserable status quo campaign. Democratic motivation in all 3 is significantly higher than GOP motivation. The question asked was if voters were more motivated to vote in 2020 than they were in 2016. Democrats are motivated to defeat Trump and Republicans are motivated to destroy America by reelecting him. In Michigan, Democrats are more motivated 65-43%. In Pennsylvania Democrats are more motivated 66-54%. And in Wisconsin Democrats are more motivated 62-46%.

When asked to offer in their own words what one thing will motivate them to vote in the 2020 presidential election, one-fifth of all Blue Wall voters offer responses related to defeating President Trump (21%). This is followed by those who say voting is their civic duty (9%), health care (8%), re-electing President Trump or not wanting to elect a Democrat (8%), and the economy (4%) is their top motivation. Overall, one-fourth (23%) of voters offer issues such as health care, the economy, and immigration, as their motivation for voting in the 2020 presidential election.

Republican voters in the four states don't profess to being anti-American or suicidal but most of them do admit that there is literally no policy that Trump could enact that would make them not vote for him. Think in terms of the cuts he wants to make to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as his erratic and dangerous foreign and trade policies and the way he has run up the deficit with nothing to show for it.

Moving along, we also just saw the first legitimate poll for Nevada, the next state that will be voting. The Las Vegas Review-Journal< Adelson's paper, reported that Bernie "leads the presidential field by a solid margin among likely Democratic caucusgoers heading into Nevada’s four-day early voting period."

• Bernie- 25%
• Status Quo Joe- 18%
• Elizabeth- 13%
• Steyer- 11%
• Mayo Pete- 10%
• Klobuchar- 10%

Bernie and Elizabeth have the highest favorability scores (71%) and Klobuchar and Mayo have the lowest, respectively 62% and 59%. Now, speaking of Nevada, Ryan Grim and Akela Lacy went to town on where all those vicious, negative ads on Bernie blanketing local TV are coming from. Remember that grotesque slob Mark Mellman from the Iowa smear campaign? He's behind the anti-Bernie campaign, which means that AIPAC (Israel) is paying for it. "In the past," wrote Grim and Lacy AIPAC enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Congress. But as it’s cozied up to the GOP in recent years and taken a harder right-wing stance on Israel policy, reflecting a rightward drift in Israel, more Democrats are cutting ties with the group and tacking further left. AIPAC’s faltering relationship with Democrats was the initial spur for Mellman’s new organization, founded by donors and operatives linked to AIPAC." By the way, Mellman's devious ads aren't about Israel; they try drilling a negative and destructive message into voters' heads: Bernie, he asserts, can't win. Yet every head to head match up against Trump shows Bernie winning and yesterday YouGov's new polling showed Bernie beating every conservative running, especially Mini-Mike and Mayo Pete. Look at these numbers:

On Wednesday, Rep. Betty McCollum slammed AIPAC as trafficking in “hate speech” for a recent social media ad campaign that warned that “radicals in Congress” presented a threat “maybe more sinister” than the Islamic State, along with photos of Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and McCollum. Representatives of AIPAC spent Wednesday and Thursday on Capitol Hill apologizing in private meetings with House Democrats for those ads, claiming that they were made by AIPAC’s Democratic digital firm (though how that shifts responsibility from AIPAC is unclear). Omar, Tlaib, and McCollum were not invited to-- nor even aware of-- those meetings, despite being the subjects of the ads, Tlaib and Omar told The Intercept.

Sanders has long been one of the most outspoken critics of unconditional U.S. support for Israel and has become an even sharper critic of the alliance during his 2020 campaign. He said in October that he would condition military aid to Israel on changing its settlement policy, and redirect some military aid to humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. DMFI [Mellman's hate group] sent a fundraising email in January attacking Sanders for that comment. While Sanders would certainly be more sympathetic to Palestinians than any president in U.S. history, he tends to qualify support for Palestinian rights by first prioritizing Israel’s security.

...The DMFI ads have been controversial and represent one of the first Super PAC interventions by a Democratic group against a Democratic presidential candidate in the post-Citizens United era. (Hillary Clinton in 2016 had the benefit of the group Correct the Record, which was legally a Super PAC and attacked Sanders. The group  coordinated with the Clinton campaign, rather than operating independently, yet that coordination went unpunished.) But the revelation that AIPAC has been encouraging donors to fund DMFI suggests how seriously the lobby is taking Sanders’s candidacy and that it is willing to intervene in the Democratic primary. On Thursday night, news leaked that a Super PAC connected to the Democratic group EMILY’s List had been contemplating an attack ad against Sanders. In a statement, the group said the ad had not been approved and that it would support whichever candidate won the Democratic nomination.

Big-money groups are doing all they can to ensure that Sanders doesn’t become the nominee, however, and after the Iowa caucuses, DMFI boasted that its ads had left a mark on Sanders. “Now that almost all of the Iowa results are in, the incredibly close race shows that DMFI PAC’s ad blunted Senator Sanders’ momentum,” the group wrote to its email list after some of the results were in. “The network entrance poll proves it. Among those who decided which candidate to support before DMFI PAC’s ad aired, Sanders was in first place by a 6 point margin. However, among those who made a decision while the ad was airing, Sanders came in 5th, 10 points behind the leader.”

Conservative writer Jonathan Tobin, in a recent piece for Ha’aretz, discussed AIPAC’s posture toward Sanders in a recent column headlined, “AIPAC Must Stop Bernie Sanders-- at All Costs.”

In the lead up to the Iowa caucus, the Democratic Majority for Israel, a year-old political action group and super PAC, invested heavily in negative ads aimed at derailing the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Mark Mellman, the veteran Democratic strategist who leads the group, told me that its efforts-- which are funded by the party’s leading pro-Israel donors-- helped steer late deciding voters away from the Vermont Democratic Socialists.

It’s in that context that the AIPAC Facebook ads that so offended Democrats must be seen. For centrist pro-Israel Democrats, the problem with Sanders is not just that he is the most critical toward Israel of all the Democrats. It’s that the left-wing activist base that is fueling his candidacy is also largely hostile toward the Jewish state. Sanders is backed by Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who are supporters of the BDS movement and are accused of using anti-Semitic language and tropes in their criticisms of Israel’s supporters.

Yesterday, probably because of the far right extremists playing negatively in the election on behalf of Netanyahu and the Likud, the more moderate Jewish Democratic Council of America is warning normal Jewish-Americans about Mellman and others like him loaded with cash from anti-progressive sources. The group's chairman, Ron Klein, and executive director, Halie Soifer, so-wrote a letter yesterday emphasizing that "the U.S.-Israel relationship has been increasingly politicized by Republicans and used to divide Democrats in an attempt to win Jewish votes. It's very harmful to play this cynical game, particularly when we know that Israel is at its strongest when it has bipartisan support. It is essential to arm yourself with the facts in order to refute false narratives and to understand where the Democratic candidates stand on this issue. The Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) is here for you as a resource on this-- and other-- key issues in the 2020 election. Keep reading for more on where the Democratic candidates stand on Israel. So, let’s set the record straight-- all 2020 Democratic presidential candidates:

• Support U.S. military assistance to Israel;
• Support Israel's right to exist in safety and security as a Jewish state;
• Support a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and
• Oppose the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

These are the cardinal principles of-- what has historically been and should continue to be-- bipartisan support for Israel. Some of the Democratic presidential candidates do differ on some issues related to Israel, particularly when it comes to the possibility of conditioning U.S. aid or precluding its use for unilateral Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

...One essential reminder as we navigate the next few months together-- let’s not let Republicans set the agenda or narrative when it comes to Israel, or any other issue. We should judge each candidate on the totality of his or her record on Israel and the myriad of other issues we care about. Most importantly, let’s remember that our goal is defeat Donald Trump in November and elect candidates who share our values.