Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday said he had narrowed his search for a vice presidential running mate down to four or five unnamed establishment politicians, including one former rival who has not endorsed him, according to a Bloomberg interview.
"I’d like to save it, give it the old fashioned way, right?” Trump said of not announcing his choice until the Republican National Convention in July.
The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur has been one of the most visible and vocal supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his bid for the Democratic nomination.
But on Tuesday night, Uygur urged Sanders to suspend his campaign in light of the fact that his rival, Hillary Clinton, has secured the delegates needed to cinch the party's nomination.
"If I was Bernie Sanders, I would suspend the campaign," Uygur said. "And so now Sanders supporters, before you freak out, here's what it means. It doesn't mean that I take all my delegates and I give them to Hillary Clinton preemptively... In this case it would be a literal suspension of the campaign. 'I am not going to continue to run against Hillary Clinton because there aren't any elections left other than the super delegate election at the convention. So for the moment being, I am suspending the campaign.'"
Uygur said unlike other candidates, where "suspending" a run functionally means dropping out of the race, Sanders should reserve the right to re-enter the race in case Clinton is indicted over her use of email and a private server while serving as Secretary of State.
"'If you get indicted and you're arrested, yes I reserve the right to re-enter the race,'" Uygur said, of Sanders.
He then said Sanders should focus his energy now on challenging Donald Trump instead of politically challenging Clinton.
Watch Uygur's comments, as posted to YouTube, here:
A right-wing "constitutional" sheriff is under investigation by California's attorney general for alleged voter intimidation during Tuesday's primary election.
Sheriff Jon Lopey said his deputies assisted the Attorney General's Office and the Siskiyou County investigate alleged voter fraud claims last week, but the ACLU says the sheriff instead used the inquiry to intimidate immigrants and minorities, reported the Record Spotlight.
State officials are investigating reports that Lopey and his deputies set up a checkpoint outside a subdivision near Hornbrook and stopped only those cars driven by Hmongs, an ethnic group of people from some mountainous regions of southeast Asia, and asked whether they were registered to vote.
Hmong residents said county and state officials showed up at their homes carrying military-style rifles and threatened to arrest anyone who tried to illegally vote -- and civil rights activists say many of them stayed home out of fear rather than vote in the primary.
The attorney general and secretary of state sent monitors to polling stations in Siskiyou County, which borders Oregon, to "ensure that all voters are able to cast their ballot free from intimidation, interference or threats of violence,” said Rachele Huennekens, a spokeswoman for Attorney General’s Office.
“We are specifically monitoring reports of alleged voter intimidation among vulnerable minority populations, such as the Hmong community," Hunnekens said. "Anyone who witnesses or is subject to voter intimidation should report it to the Secretary of State’s office."
Andy Fusso, founder of Siskiyou Forward PAC, said the sheriff may have been trying to squash voter turnout to influence the passage of two measures related to banning outdoor marijuana growing and another one that would raise the sales tax by a half cent to build a new county jail.
Lopey, who is active in the right-wing Oath Keepers and Sagebrush movements, issued a press release Friday claiming his deputies were investigating alleged voter fraud -- but he didn't offer any specifics about the allegations or whether any evidence was uncovered.
The sheriff said deputies visited Klamath Country Estates, Mt. Shasta Vista and the Mt. Shasta Forest area outside McCloud, where they issued misdemeanor citations for some unspecified county ordinance violations.
Lopey hosts lectures on his interpretation of the constitution, which match views expressed by the jailed Bundy family and their armed militia supporters, and has appeared in uniform at events sponsored by the Oath Keepers gun organization.
The group, which has ties to many of the armed militants who took over an Oregon wildlife refuge about 350 miles northeast of Siskiyou County, is working to elect like-minded sheriffs and pressure elected officials not to enforce gun laws.
Other CSPOA members have been accused of targeting political opponents and minorities for intimidation with trumped-up voter fraud allegations.
The county sheriffs promote conspiracy theories about the Affordable Care Act and the United Nations to convince others to resist federal authority on public lands -- a goal they share with both the Bundy militants and the Koch-backed American Lands Council, whose officials speak at CSPOA gatherings.
House Minority Leaders Nancy Pelosi took a swing at Republican House speaker Paul Ryan with an Onion-style press release, chiding him for canceling a Wednesday press conference amid controversy over Donald Trump, The Hill reports.
Ryan canceled his weekly question-and-answer session on Wednesday, saying it was due to an address by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a joint session of Congress. That reasoning didn't stop Pelosi from capitalizing on recent acrimony within the Republican party over Trump's comments about a federal judge overseeing a case against Trump University.
Trump has insisted the judge has a bias against him because of his Mexican heritage, which has prompted party members -- including Ryan -- to rebuke him.
“Speaker Ryan has cancelled his regular Wednesday press conference so you don’t ask him about Donald Trump’s racist commentary against a federal judge, and why, ahead of their national security agenda rollout tomorrow, the House GOP wants to hand the nuclear codes to a person who engages in textbook racism," Pelosi's mock press release stated.
While Republicans like Ryan have rebuked the statements, which they called racist and not in-line with party principles, they have been chided for continuing to support him.
“He’s right — Trump isn’t what Republicans stand for,” comedian Samantha Bee said. “He’s what they bend over for.”
Hillary Clinton and Republican rival Donald Trump kicked off what is shaping up to be a bitter five-month general election battle after the Democrat became the first woman to lead a major political party in its quest to capture the U.S. presidency.
Big wins for Clinton on Tuesday in California and elsewhere catapulted her to victory in the Democratic primary race over opponent Bernie Sanders.
If elected on Nov. 8, the 68-year-old Clinton would return the Clinton family to the White House 16 years after her husband, Bill Clinton, completed two terms as president.
All signs point toward a negative campaign as Clinton accuses Trump of being temperamentally unfit to serve and the New York billionaire charges Clinton has a dark past with shades of corruption and a weak record as President Barack Obama's first-term secretary of state.
The Clinton campaign drew on comments from Trump's fellow Republicans to portray the 69-year-old Trump as not fit for the Oval Office after the real estate developer repeatedly accused a Mexican-American judge of showing bias against him because of his ethnic heritage.
"The most effective thing to do with Donald Trump is just to get his words out there and let him speak for himself," Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told CNN on Wednesday.
Mook charged Trump with a history of "erratic behavior," the same language leveled by the Obama campaign in its defeat of Republican nominee John McCain in 2008.
Trump, smarting from days of criticism from fellow Republicans fed up with his attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, gave a carefully crafted victory speech on Tuesday night laying out his plan of attack.
To keep him from straying off message, he used a TelePrompter and avoided his typical stream-of-consciousness delivery.
Trump said the money flowing into the Clinton Foundation charity from foreign donors has earned the Clintons millions of dollars and had a corrupting influence when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and used a private email server to conduct official business.
"Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into her private hedge fund - the Russians, the Saudis, the Chinese - all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return. It's a sad day in America when foreign governments with deep pockets have more influence in our own country than our great citizens," Trump said.
CLINTON LEADS
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday showed Clinton leading Trump by 10 percentage points nationally as they launch their general election battle, little changed from a week earlier.
Both Clinton and Trump have work to do to unite their parties behind them but the Democrat appeared to face the easier path with Sanders, a leftist U.S. senator from Vermont, nearly out of options to challenge her.
Trump has an uphill battle, with many party leaders still opposed to him. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday described Trump's comments about the judge as "racism" but said he would still support him.
Republicans complain that Trump still engages in petty battles with former rivals and is way behind in building a fund-raising organization.
"We like parts of Donald Trump's message but he does need to act more presidential and he does need to transition to a general election approach," U.S. Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, told CNN.
"He is the one who keeps bringing up grievances against those who ran against him. He needs to unite the party and he needs to unite the country," she said.
Clinton edged Sanders out in a rough-and-tumble battle that stretched over four months and 50 states. She won support, especially among older voters, with a more pragmatic campaign focused on building on the policies of her fellow Democrat, Obama.
The president called both Clinton and Sanders on Tuesday. The White House said he congratulated her on securing the delegates necessary to clinch the nomination and would meet Sanders on Thursday at Sanders' request.
The Associated Press called the race in California for Clinton early on Wednesday. Clinton won 56 percent to Sanders' 43 percent, avoiding what would have been an embarrassing loss for her in America's most populous state.
The California win came on the heels of a decisive win in New Jersey and narrower victories in New Mexico and South Dakota in Tuesday's nominating contests. Sanders won Montana and North Dakota.
(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell)
CNN host Carol Costello speculated on Wednesday that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton could be hurt her campaign by selecting Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as a running mate because two women would be "too much" for voters.
During an interview with former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chaffee, Costello noted that Clinton "has to say something to get Bernie Sanders supporters on board."
"Might it be as simple as picking the right running mate because Elizabeth Warren's name has been floated out there?" the CNN host explained. "And she's like a big opponent of Wall Street, she wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, etc., etc."
But Caffee suggested that picking Sanders for the VP slot would send a "fabulous message of unification."
The CNN host turned the discussion back to Warren: "Some people say Elizabeth Warren would not be a good choice because it would be two women on the ticket. Perhaps that would be too much."
"Do you agree with that?" she wondered.
"It's a factor," Chaffee agreed.
"You think a two woman ticket would turn people off?" Costello pressed.
Chaffee, however, avoided the question of gender, instead arguing that Sanders had more "experience" as a politician.
"I think that's important," he said.
Watch the video below from CNN's Newsroom, broadcast June 8, 2016.
A liberal Jewish political action group will mark the anniversary of the murder of three Civil Rights workers this month by holding anti-Trump vigils around the country, Haaretz reports.
The group, Bend the Arc-Jewish Action, will hold vigils on June 21, the anniversary of the murders of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, Texas.
“It is an opportunity for us as the Jewish community to come out and demonstrate our horror at a possible Trump candidacy and to say we’re going to fight for the democracy that we so deeply believe in,” Bend the Arc CEO Stosh Cotler told JTA.
Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were working on gaining voting rights for black people in the South when they were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. Goodman and Schwerner were Jewish New Yorkers and Chaney was an African-American from Mississippi, where they were shot to death in a horrifically violent crime. Chaney was beaten before his death, and Goodman was buried while still alive.
The three men have become symbolic of the cooperation between the Jewish and black communities on civil rights causes, according to JTA.
Participants will carry yahrzeit, which are Jewish memorial candles, and signs reading #WeveSeenThisBefore.
Trump has been condemned by various Jewish organizations for his rhetoric -- and the fact that white supremacists support him. Trump has attacked Muslims and immigrants while his supporters have also expressed anti-Semitic sentiments.
Says Cotler, “We are doing this both as commemoration and in memory of the values that they held and the legacy that they had fighting for democracy and fighting for a country that was free of political danger."
Mary Katherine Ham on Wednesday became the latest conservative commentator to call out Donald Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord over racist statements about U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel.
During an appearance on CNN's New Day, Ham issued a warning to Republicans who supported Trump that the candidate could not be trusted to stay on message.
"Donald Trump tells you every day that he will be Donald Trump and he will not be managed or advised or contained," she explained. "This is like living with the grizzlies, you can think that you understand the grizzly and he understands you. But he's still a grizzly, you ain't gonna change it, and someday he might come at you."
Lord countered that leaders of the Republican Party who opposed Trump's anti-Hispanic statements about Curiel were "embracing identity politics."
"As the descendant of slavery and segregation, there's no room for that," Lord said.
"Hold on," Ham interrupted. "Donald Trump brought up the ethnicity of the judge many times unprompted. That was identity politics of the ugliest kind in of itself and it is the reason we are still talking about this."
"And it is not some leftist capitulation to say that saying a man cannot do his job because of his ethnicity is a problem," she added. "It should be a problem for many people who are conservative and are in the Republican Party."
"He said his Mexican heritage! That's Latino! Hello!" Lord shot back. "This is a judge who has made much of his Latino background."
"This goes to the larger point of Republicans bowing down to the god of identity politics," he continued. "And there should be no room for it in the Republican Party. Period. Ever. This is the party of Abraham Lincoln."
Ham acknowledged that liberals and the media needed to do some "soul searching" about "crying wolf too many times."
"Because now a wolf is here saying wolf things," she concluded. "And everybody goes 'shrug'."
Watch the video below from CNN, broadcast June 8, 2016.
Donald Trump is really taking that "my African-American" thing seriously. Despite support from former KKK leaders, Trump's acceptance speech from last night's primary wins included a bizarre moment in his typical ramblings.
"We’re going to rebuild our inner cities, which are absolutely a shame and so sad," Trump said. "We’re going to take care of our African-American people that have been mistreated for so long."
This was the second time in a week Trump has taken ownership of African-Americans in a speech. The first time was during a speech in Los Angeles when Trump pointed to Gregory Cheadle in Trump's rally crowd calling him "my African-American." Cheadle later admitted he was at the rally to see the show and doesn't actually support Trump for president.
Twitter was not happy about it either. Many tweeted that statements like this were indicative of Trump's historically racist perspective. It only adds to the problems Trump has had this week with members of his own party calling him out for racist remarks against a California judge presiding over his Trump University case.
Watch the part of the speech with the comment below:
Teleprompter jokes are as reliable a staple of conservative comedy as fart jokes are to class clowns.
Conservatives mock President Barack Obama's reliance on teleprompters pretty much any time they gather in public -- but what happens when Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, strays from his usual off-the-cuff insults to read a speech?
"Fox & Friends," naturally, invited a black conservative to explain.
"I thought the speech was absolutely right-on and spot-on, and it set exactly the tone he needs to set," said Herman Cain, a 2012 Republican presidential candidate. "Now, a lot of people are going to make a big deal out of the fact that he used a teleprompter so he could stay on message -- and he did a good job."
Cain, who peppered his own campaign speeches with teleprompter jokes, established a guideline for acceptable use of the device.
"He wouldn't have read the information on the teleprompter if he didn't agree with it," Cain said. "Obviously, he did. Now, they're going to make a -- when I say 'they,' not y'all -- other people are going to make a big deal out of the fact that he was using a teleprompter. We have a teleprompter president we've had for the last seven years."
Cain and the Fox co-hosts began giggling at the mere mention of Obama using a teleprompter.
"So Donald Trump finally uses one to make sure that he is clear, concise and pivoting to what's important, and I think that's why that was such a great speech," Cain said.
Maybe that's how Trump will finally make good on his promise to act presidential, by reading speeches off a teleprompter like virtually all presidents have done since the device's invention.
During his barnstorming rallies to massive audiences, Bernie Sanders is fond of declaring “enough is enough!” And after the latest round of primary results, many Democratic party leaders will be hoping Sanders now feels similarly about his own campaign.
Sanders and his team should take immense pride in what they’ve achieved over the past 12 months. On July 8 2015, the RealClearPolitics polling average had the Vermont Senator on a mere 14.3%, almost a full 50 points behind the apparently bulletproof Clinton. To the extent he was noticed at all, Sanders was treated by the press and Clinton supporters as a benign but crusty uncle, well-meaning but toothless.
One year on, Sanders has emerged victorious in more than 20 states, and at one point in April he reduced the gap in that same average to just 1%. And those victories are just half the story.
Most importantly, Sanders and his followers have played a role in forcing Clinton to embrace her own progressive instincts rather than taking to the safety of the centre ground. He has also ensured that “socialism” is no longer a taboo word in American politics, at least not in a Democratic primary. Meanwhile, Winnie Wong, the digital strategist behind #FeelTheBern, will probably never want for work again.
Despite all these achievements, Bernie has fallen short. So what should he do now? If we look to the recent past, there are a few well-trodden routes he can take.
Path #1: unity at all costs
Sanders doesn’t have to set his own example of how to unify the Democratic party after a divisive and close primary campaign. Eight years ago, Hillary Clinton herself showed everyone how it’s done.
After an equivocal statement on the night of the last primaries, Clinton formally dropped out four days later and gave Obama a full-throated endorsement. Later that month, in a symbolic gesture, the two former rivals made a joint appearance in the aptly-named New Hampshire town of Unity, where they had both captured 107 votes in the state’s primary.
And to cap it all, it was she who stopped the (well-choreographed) roll-call of delegate votes at the Democratic convention to formally seal Obama’s nomination. She then used her convention speech to declare: “Barack Obama is my candidate, and he must be our president.”
Despite the lingering bitterness of a rancorous nomination battle, her friendship with Republican nominee John McCain, and the encouragement of hardcore supporters (rallying under the slogan Party Unity My Ass), she then hit the trail and worked hard to help secure Barack Obama’s victory.
But this year, things are rather different. For one thing, Clinton was a natural potential successor for Obama; to have a shot, she was always going to need his supporters and the goodwill of the party. At 74, it seems unlikely that Sanders will entertain similar ambitions. And while Clinton and Obama endured a fiercer battle in 2008, their policy positions and visions of how politics should be were far closer than Clinton’s and Sanders’s are today.
Path 2: Berning down the house
Another option for Sanders is to act as a disruptive force and weaken Hillary Clinton ahead of the general election, as Senator Ted Kennedy did to President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
John F Kennedy’s younger brother had already shown he cared little for party unity by challenging a sitting Democratic president, and he continued to show contempt for the principle even after Carter won enough delegates to secure the nomination.
Indeed, Kennedy spent the time between the final primary in June and the August convention trying capitalise on Carter’s increasing unpopularity in the country. His aim was to enact a rules change at the convention that would allow Carter delegates to jump ship, thinking he could save the Democratic ticket from certain failure with Carter at the helm.
Kennedy ultimately secured neither his rule change nor the nomination, but his staunchly liberal campaign still managed to reverse much of Carter’s policy platform. Most conspicuously, the senator gave one of the most memorable speeches of any recent convention, ending with what became his signature line: “The dream will never die.”
Rubbing salt in the wound, Kennedy then refused to hold Carter’s arms aloft in victory, making the deep rift in the party all too clear.
There are those speculating that Sanders will choose this path to the Philadelphia convention this July, but even given the intransigence of many core Sanders supporters, the rationale for the candidate himself is hard to see.
The Vermont Senator has made it clear that he wants no part in helping to elect Donald Trump in November. A futile act of political arson would achieve the opposite – and it would close off another more appealing path.
Path 3: viva la revolución!
Perhaps the best parallel for Sanders is the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who ran two trailblazing campaigns for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988. Sanders, mayor of Burlington at the time, was one of the few white politicians to endorse Jackson’s 1988 run – and like Sanders today, Jackson was hardly beloved by the Democratic establishment, but on his second attempt he finished a surprisingly strong second place to the eventual nominee.
The culturally and racially diverse “rainbow coalition” that Jackson formed in 1984 helped propel Democrats to victories in the 1986 midterms, and his strong performance in 1988 suggested that the power of the coalition was only growing.
While Jackson hoped to become the first African-American to run on a national ticket, Dukakis refused. He nonetheless enjoyed a primetime speaking slot at the convention, and his campaign secured changes to primary rules that made the voting process fairer and more proportional. These changes are now credited by some with opening the door to Obama’s victory a generation later.
While Dukakis ultimately met a crushing defeat at the hands of George H W Bush, Jackson kept the rainbow coalition alive, working tirelessly to bring young and minority voters into the party.
Certainly, the Democrats will hope that Sanders plays a similar role in keeping his millions of young voters involved in politics – particularly during the midterm years that have so confounded Democrats over the past decade.
As did Jackson, he will undoubtedly have some concessions to bargain for. We may well be about to see the end of “superdelegates”, the hundreds of party grandees who get to cast convention votes for the nominee. And we may soon see the back of the party chair, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, with whom the Sanders campaign’s relationship has all but broken down.
While the Sanders camp has continued to insist he will fight for the nomination all the way to the convention, this will probably turn out to be at most a negotiating ploy. Over the past year, he has captured lighting in a bottle; rather than steal Clinton’s thunder, he’ll probably use it to electrify the Democratic convention, secure himself a lasting legacy, and fire up his troops for the fight against Donald Trump.
On June 7, Hillary Clinton won enough pledged delegates to win nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate, the first woman to do so. Three prominent scholars of U.S. electoral politics react.
The importance of treating women well
Valerie M. Hudson, Texas A&M University
As an American woman, I am proud to tell my sons and daughters that for the first time in U.S. history a woman is the presidential nominee of one of the two major political parties in the country. And though I have some policy differences with Hillary Clinton, there is one thing she understands better than any of the others who vied for the nomination – that the security of women and the security of the world are integrally linked.
The empirical evidence for this linkage is now copious. For example, using the largest extant database on the status of women in the world today, my colleagues and I found that the best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is not its level of wealth, its level of democracy or its ethno-religious identity. The best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is how well its women are treated.
Our findings echo those of other scholars who have found that the larger the gap between the treatment of men and women in a society, the more likely a country is to be involved in intra- and interstate conflict, to be the first to resort to force in such conflicts and to use higher levels of violence.
The situation, status and security of women affect multiple dimensions of national security, such as levels of food security, stability, prosperity, bellicosity, corruption, health, demography, regime type and (yes) the power of the state. The days when one could claim that the situation of women is a “small bore” issue in foreign policy should now be emphatically over.
When Clinton was secretary of state, the global empowerment of women was enshrined as a key foreign policy objective. While there were failures as well as successes in that endeavor, Clinton is right to insist, as she did in 2012, that “the subjugation of women is a threat to the common security of our world and to the national security of our country.”
Valerie M. Hudson is professor and George H.W. Bush Chair, and directs the Program on Women, Peace, and Security, in the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
Today, for the first time, a major political party has made a woman their standard-bearer. On the one hand, it’s a really big deal. On the other hand, ambivalence reigns among Democrats and Secretary of State Clinton is deeply unpopular for a major party nominee. There is not the same fanfare and pride that Democrats felt when nominating another pathbreaker in Barack Obama.
The history of women in politics suggests it had to be like this.
Female social movement leaders in the U.S. have often been vilified as they pushed progressive, and not so progressive, agendas. Unlikeable, unfeminine and shrill are familiar adjectives. Within the movements, cross-cutting cleavages of age, race, ethnicity, class and political ideology regularly splintered women’s organizing.
Whether change can come from joining government and business, or must come from dismantling these institutions, is a defining question for all three major waves of women’s organizing. Elite white women have disproportionately benefited from each wave of women’s organizing in the United States. And, importantly, while left-leaning men, and men more generally, now theoretically endorse women in power, they often undermine or abandon those women who dare to unapologetically seek office or rank.
Hillary Clinton has experienced all of this. Recall she used to be Hillary Rodham – before voters weighed in that the “Rodham” was too much. She was the Wellesley graduation speaker – outspoken, challenging, left wing and feminist.
The Clintons, 1992.
Reuters
Yale Law followed, and then a move to Arkansas promoting her husband’s career. Vilified in the White House by the right, undermined for her “improper” policy role as First Lady, critiqued as her husband’s cheating become so very public, ambition questioned when running for the New York Senate seat, boxed in to not question her own vote on Iraq because of gendered expectations that a woman could not run and win if she admitted a failure on foreign policy. Institutional Democrats abandoned her, even with all the money, for the Obama candidacy. And now the young left sees her as hopelessly institutional, while institutional Democratic men and the voters who favor them have always held her at arm’s length. Bernie Sanders gains traction only because of the ambivalence felt for her on the left and hatred by many on the right.
These reactions are telling. Hillary Clinton has worked the highest levels of power. She has worked the Democratic Party – bringing a major institution toward her – and it required the compromises of insider politics. The right hates her for wanting the power, the ambition. Elements of the left deplore her for the calculation – for going moderate or going hawk as it advanced her.
All this has made her a major party candidate. And it’s a really big deal both for the skill, delay and finesse it took to get here and for the disproportionate venom she has felt from the right and far left. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry are her political kin, after all, but garner nowhere near such emotive reactions. They could tell Bernie to just get out. She cannot.
No other woman in American history has successfully negotiated the cross-cutting pressures of the feminist movements that bore her, the party that took years to truly embrace her and an electorate that is so deeply polarized about her.
There is no denying that she is “badass.” And that’s a good thing. It got her here. Wounded in some ways, disliked by many, but firmly at the fore. The first realistic female president had no other path.
Erin O'Brien is co-editor of Diversity in Contemporary American Politics and Government and the chair of the politic science department at UMass Boston.
Elated, but cautious
Andra Gillespie, Emory University
Young and old supporters of Clinton cheer, June 7, 2016.
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
We would all be remiss to ignore the significance of Hillary Clinton’s nomination. It is further evidence of the opening of American society. Her nomination will no doubt serve as an example and inspiration to many girls and women who aspire to the pinnacles of political leadership in this country and around the world.
Clinton enters the general election season with a unique set of advantages and disadvantages. She became a household name as First Lady. This notoriety helped her in the primaries against the lesser known Bernie Sanders, but it also repels some voters, who, fairly or unfairly, did not appreciate her role in her husband’s administration or trace her perceived corruption back to the days of Whitewater.
Her opposition also presents opportunities and challenges. She and Donald Trump both enter the general election season with high negatives. The question remains whether Trump can continue to offend with impunity and whether Clinton looks relatively better by comparison.
Then there is the issue of the change mandate.
As my colleague Charlton McIlwain pointed out after the 2008 election, voters preferred Barack Obama’s change over Hillary Clinton’s strong leadership. The insurgent candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders evince a strong desire for change, perhaps even change at all costs. Clinton is going to have to figure out how to use her experience as a credible asset and present herself as ushering in policy and not just descriptive change. And she is going to have to contend with the reality that she is running for a third Democratic presidential term in an era marked by regular shifts in partisan control of the executive branch.
Ultimately, this race is going to come down to organization and mobilization. This race is poised to be divisive and demoralizing. Clinton will need to harness her experience to mobilize effort of all of her election constituents to guarantee herself a victory.
Andra Gillespie is the editor of Whose Black Politics? Cases in Post-Racial Black Leadership.
Bernie Sanders will not become president of the United States. But he could still become president of Vermont if the Green Mountain State secedes.
It’s not such a far-fetched notion. Vermont was an independent republic from 1777 to 1791, and despite signing the Constitution, Vermont reserved its right to leave the union. New York, Rhode Island and Virginia explicitly did so.
One nation, divisible
In researching “Free Dakota,” my novel about secession, I discovered that in the early 1800s, talk of secession was more common among the New England states than among the southern states. Few people questioned a state’s right to secede.
Voters recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
It is the Pledge of Allegiance that claims the United States is an indivisible nation. And, of course, the Pledge of Allegiance is not a founding document. It was written in 1892 and popularized by the American Legion and other groups in the 20th century.
For its part, the Declaration of Independence clearly recognizes the right to form a new government when “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.”
The Constitution, on the other hand, may say otherwise. Most constitutional scholars interpret the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War, as prohibiting secession. The language of the amendment is not explicit in terms of secession, though. The relevant text of the amendment simply says:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Most constitutional scholars interpret this citizenship clause as asserting that each citizen’s allegiance is first and foremost to the federal government, and a state may not interfere with that allegiance by seceding. This interpretation may be ripe for a challenge, though.
Two new nations
The emotional desire for stability in union is understandable, but it comes at a high price. What if there are irreconcilable differences? Everyone wants a marriage to last until “death do us part” but wedding vows are no longer sacred in that way. Why should things be different with states? As with amicable divorce, peaceful secession is possible and would not be unprecedented. In the Velvet Divorce of 1993, for example, Czechoslovakia peacefully divided into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.
If only there were empty land claimed by no nation. Who would object to a bunch of malcontents from Vermont moving there and starting their own republic? But the world is no longer such a place. There are no new lands to be discovered, no places to plant new flags and try new ideas. That is why Vermont should look to its neighbor, New Hampshire.
In the spirit of their motto “live free or die,” some residents of New Hampshire have begun the Free State Project. The goal of the movement is to entice people to move to New Hampshire and to form a critical mass that would change local laws to allow for greater personal liberty. Nearly 2,000 people have moved to New Hampshire already, and more than 20,000 have pledged to move within the next five years.
It may be difficult for the Free State Project to grow beyond those numbers, however. The best-case scenario would position them to change local laws such as those concerning the legality of marijuana. New Hampshire would still be subject to all federal laws and the limits they place on individual freedom – unless they secede, that is.
Secession is exactly what an offshoot of the Free State Project, called the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence, has in mind. Perhaps because secession is a dirty word with ugly associations, the foundation prefers to speak in terms of independence. But make no mistake about it: they are planning for New Hampshire to leave the United States.
A kinder alternative
Secession could be the answer for progressives too. Plenty of people are saying they will move to Canada if Trump is elected, but maybe they should just move to Vermont. As Thomas H. Naylor, the originator of the Second Vermont Republic, says, “Vermont provides a kinder, gentler, more communitarian alternative to a nation obsessed with money, power, size, speed, greed and fear of terrorism.”
At the high point of its polling, only 13 percent of residents supported the Second Vermont Republic’s aim of secession, but a strong majority support the democratic socialist ideals of the movement as embodied in Senator Sanders.
To make the secession a reality, the Second Vermont Republic should take a page from the Free State Project’s playbook by inviting people to move to Vermont. Once a majority of the state population favors secession, then serious action could be taken.
It is highly unlikely that Vermont or New Hampshire will secede any time soon. But if they did, we would have two new nations existing side by side in North America, one a democratic socialist republic and the other a libertarian republic. People would have a genuine choice. The only problem is Bernie Sanders may not live long enough to see it happen and become the first president of Vermont. And for that matter, Ron Paul may not live long enough to become president of New Hampshire.
