Group items tagged

There are crucial differences between Trump’s and Sanders’s solutions to the problems they’ve identified, of course. Trump says our elites are weak, stupid, and corrupt. Sanders says our elites are being corrupted

Trump says the elites are cheating ordinary Americans by helping illegals, major corporations, and China, and vows to break this corrupt system over his knee and get it working again, because he’s not one of those elites

We’re being ripped off, and Trump and Sanders are the only two candidates who are really saying that. They are speaking to people’s sense that our economic and political systems are cheating them, that they are being failed because the underlying rules of those systems have themselves been rigged.

Sanders, by contrast, is making a sustained argument for political and campaign finance reform. For him, the culprit is not an elite that is actively trying to help illegals and China and allowing the country to slide into ruin out of national security weakness and ineffectiveness. Rather, it’s an oligarchy that has enriched itself by rigging the economy to effect a massive transfer of wealth upwards and to paralyze our political system from doing anything about it, thus corrupting our political classes.

While Clinton tends to focus on incremental solutions aimed at boosting wages and opportunity, and mitigating people’s economic difficulties on the margins, Sanders wants to rid the system entirely of its dependence on big money in order to actively reverse the upward redistribution of wealth

What both Trump and Sanders share is that they treat the problem as one of political economy, in which both the economic and political systems are rigged in intertwined ways, thus speaking directly to people’s understandable intellectual assessment of what is deeply wrong with our system and why it no longer works for them.

The Trump/Sanders indictment of our political economy may end up not having long term potency, after all. But this is the account that both Trump and Sanders have offered for their success, so maybe it’s worth taking seriously.

Of course, Clinton can make a persuasive argument for her preferred solution on any policy area you can name. She also has a strong argument for why Sanders is being unrealistic about much of what he wants to do, an argument I basically agree with. And if you asked, she could tell you all about her ample qualifications for the presidency. But it doesn’t add up to a coherent story.

the fact is that human beings understand the world through stories, which help bring coherence to complex situations. And there’s no reason a campaign can’t offer voters both lengthy policy plans and a simple, broad structure that organizes them into an understandable whole.

it’s a message that only addresses some of the problems the country faces. In contrast to broad ideas like Sanders’ call for revolution or even Trump’s claim that we’re a country of losers, it can’t be easily and logically applied to any problem a voter might see as urgent. And it doesn’t tell you much about Hillary Clinton in particular, other than the fact that this is something she cares about.

Hillary Clinton hasn’t told the country a story that connects their worries with her potential as a president. But she’d better find one soon.

eeds to make it clear that if the President won't stand to protect America from wholesale open borders, then Republicans will."

In a radio interview with Bill Bennett, Ryan also said he has tasked all committees of jurisdiction to come up with recommendations about how to ensure the thousands of Syrian refugees the President wants to settle in the United States won't be involved in terrorism

"When I hear folks say that maybe we should just admit the Christians and not the Muslims (refugees), when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who's fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted -- when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution -- that's shameful. That's not American," Obama said

The refugees have been admitted to 138 cities and towns in a total of 36 states -- with California, Texas, Michigan, Arizona and Illinois taking the most, according to wrapsnet.org, where the U.S. government keeps its official numbers

"Scapegoating an entire religious community and rejecting those fleeing ISIL's terrorism and persecution is what the terrorists want," O'Malley said in a statement.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, took a more direct shot at Obama in previewing a Thursday subcommittee hearing on the Syrian refugee crisis.

"When will President Obama take ISIS threats seriously, as well as the warnings of national security officials within his own administration, and cease his plan to bring thousands of Syrian refugees into the United States?" Goodlatte said in a statement. "His disconnectedness to reality is needlessly jeopardizing national security and Americans' lives."

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence similarly ordered his state to suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees, "pending assurances from the federal government that proper security measures have been achieved."

New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan is the only Democrat to oppose Syrian refugees' resettlement in the United States -- a stance that's particularly notable since she is challenging Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte in 2016. A spokesman said Hassan "believes that the federal government should halt acceptance of refugees from Syria.

On gun control, health care, financial regulation, her "many hours in the Situation Room advising President Obama" and more, Clinton cast herself as the defender of Obama's legacy and Sanders as someone who'd toss out his accomplishments.

Obama remains popular with Democrats. She has a strong claim to the President's legacy having served in his Cabinet as his top foreign policy officer. And minority voters favor Obama and Clinton over Sanders.

She accused Sanders of calling Obama "weak" and "ineffective" when it came to perhaps Clinton's most vulnerable subject, Wall Street reform, and said he'd tried to recruit a primary challenger against Obama in 2011.

"President Trump and I have spoken many times since we've left office, and I don't know if we'll ever see eye to eye on that day," Pence said, "but I will always be proud of what we accomplished for the American people over the last four years."

He tried to turn Jan. 6 onto Democrats, saying their calls for an independent commission to investigate the events of that day and what led up to it were political.

Two days after President Biden attended a commemoration marking the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, in which a Black community was torched by a white mob, Pence asserted that "America is not a racist country," and that it was "past time for America to discard the left-wing myth of systemic racism." He also said, "Black lives are not endangered by police. Black lives are saved by police."

Pence called Biden "the most liberal president since FDR," and added, "They've proposed trillions of dollars in a so-called infrastructure bill that's just a thinly disguised climate change bill."

Speaking to reporters in Conway, New Hampshire, on Sunday, Sanders said he was "very proud" to have Jayapal's endorsement while touting her advocacy of "Medicare for All."

The Sanders campaign also announced on Sunday that Jayapal will join the presidential hopeful in Des Moines, Iowa, on Monday for a campaign rally.

With an impeachment trial looming in the Senate, the presence of high-profile surrogates on the campaign trail has taken on an added importance to senators like Sanders, Warren, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Meanwhile, primary rivals like former Vice President Joe Biden and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg are free to campaign across Iowa.