Democratic Candidate for President 2020 - 1

Dear Friends,

The number of people seeking the Democratic nomination for President in 2020 is huge, and we need to start winnowing it down.  I have yet to determine exactly what criteria I should use to decide for myself who to support.  There are, however, some criteria that are quite foundational for me.

The person must be able to motivate a broad electorate to participate in the process and to vote.  Democrats win elections when more people vote and especially people who do not traditionally vote. In order to have this appeal, the person must not be too old.

The person should not carry the baggage of being a member of the Democratic Party establishment.  Those people who have received the Democratic nomination who were from the Democratic Party establishment have lost time and time again.  Since Lyndon Johnson, the only Democrats to win the Presidency have been Jimmy Carter (a little known Georgia governor), Bill Clinton (a little known Arkansas governor) and Barack Obama (a one term Senator from Illinois); and the losers have all been candidates of the Democratic establishment-Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

The ticket must be diverse.  I am sympathetic to, but not yet persuaded by, the argument that the candidate should be a person of color.  I am, however, certain that the ticket must not consist solely of white men.

With these foundational criteria in mind, I am prepared to rule out the following potential candidates in alphabetical order:

Joe Biden
I like Joe Biden.  He is a very nice person and has for the most part served our country well.  However, he will be 78 in November 2020.  He is the epitome of the Democratic Party establishment and carries with him all of his and the Democratic Party's prior sins (think Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill, credit card companies, Iraq war, etc.).

Michael Bloomberg
Bloomberg will also be 78 in November 2020.  While he has not always been a Democrat, he is certainly establishment and if anything represents the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party establishment.  The last person we need as the nominee is a person who will self fund from his Wall Street gains and have the enthusiastic support of the 1%.

Andrew Cuomo
While Cuomo will only be 63 by the end of 2020, he has been around forever as a member of the Democratic Party establishment.  I cannot think of any good reason for him to the nominee.

Terry McAuliffe
Unless Hillary Clinton were to run again, there is no candidate more tied to the Clinton centrist wing of the Democratic Party establishment than McAuliffe.  He is at best a centrist and more like a center right candidate with all the baggage of the past and nothing for the future.

Bernie Sanders
As those of you who read this blog in the lead up to the 2016 Presidential election know, I was a big supporter of Bernie Sanders.  If it were not for the unfair intervention of the Democratic Party establishment, he would have been the Democratic nominee and would now be our President.  Nevertheless Bernie will be 79 by November 2020.  I still love his policies, but he is no longer the right candidate.  We need a person who supports the same policies but is younger and can avoid the issues that impacted Bernie's campaign last time.

Beto O'Rouke
Obviously, Beto is not too old.  I have two concerns about his candidacy.  First, his voting record is not at all progressive.  Second, he has never even won a statewide election and has little experience.  Even though he has demonstrated that he can motivate a broad electorate, I do not believe that he is yet capable of being on the national stage.  In his race for the Senate people saw in him what they wanted to see, not what his record actually shows.  That worked for Obama, but I doubt that he can do that on the national stage, and I certainly do not want a candidate that we don't really know.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Democratic Party Establishment finds fault in everyone except themselves

Dear Friends,

The leadership of the Democratic Party has not changed much since Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992.  Unfortunately the Democratic Party and its influence has been greatly diminished since that time.  Here is a little comparison of political control by the Democrats.

Senate Seats:              1992               Democrats 56  Republicans 44
                                   Post 2016       Republicans at least 51
House Seats:              1992               Democrats 267 Republicans 167
                                   Post 2016       Democrats 193 Republicans 239
Governorships           1992               Democrats 28 Republicans 20
                                  Post 2016        Republicans at least 33
State Legislatures     1992                Democrats 26 Republicans 7  Split 16
                                  Post 2016       Democrats 14 Republicans 32 Split 3
Since 2008, the Democrats have lost control of 30 State legislative chambers (910 seats) and 11 Governorships.

During that same period the Democratic Party Establishment led the Democratic Party further and further to the right as it became Republican lite and courted and did the bidding of Wall Street and the economic elite.  The Democratic Party Establishment became more and more out of touch with the traditional base of the Democratic Party.  It ignored the rapidly diminishing middle class and the working poor.  It failed to fight for unions and trade policies that established level playing fields.  It embraced the military industrial complex and the constant pressure for more militarization to feed the profits of that complex.

When the Democratic Party Establishment had the opportunity to return to its roots and embrace its historic values by endorsing Bernie Sanders, it doubled down on its move to the right and selected Hillary Clinton, one of the leaders of the Democratic Party Establishment who epitomizes the rightward movement of the Democratic Party and its too cozy relationship with Wall Street and the military industrial complex.  Now that she has been defeated by a racist, misogynist, homophobic, islamophobic, egotistical demagogue, the Democratic Party Establishment is finding fault in everyone else except themselves.

In an interview with Chris Hayes (here) Senator Harry Reid, retiring Democratic leader in the Senate for years, said,

She would have won this election without any problem if Comey had not been the Republican operative that he is...He is the reason she lost the election.

He went on to say, "I want everybody in America to understand if Harry Reid can make it in America, anyone can...it doesn't matter what your race is, it used to but it shouldn't anymore".  Harry Reid was born into a very poor family and has been a great success, but he was born a white man in America.  For him to say that because a white man can overcome birth into a poor family any black man can do the same shows how out of touch with the real America he is.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House for the last 16 years said

...We cannot be taking the full responsibility for what happened in the election. We have to do our after-action review thoroughly and see what we could have done differently. But a lot of it was beyond our control.

Senator Chuck Schumer who will replace Harry Reid as the Democratic leader in the Senate was probably the most honest when he said, "we needed a much sharper, bolder, stronger economic message".  Senator Schumer was not taking any responsibility for the fact that the Democratic Party has "needed a much sharper, bolder, stronger economic message" for a long time during which he was in a position to promulgate that message but instead he helped move the Democratic Party to the right.  He voted for NAFTA, he voted to get rid of Glass-Steagall, he voted for the Iraq War, he voted for the Patriot Act, he protected Wall Street, etc.

The Clinton campaign continues to refuse to acknowledge that Hillary and her campaign were completely out of touch with the economic woes and anxiety of the country.  Sure, they moved to the left when forced to by Bernie Sanders, but it was not believable particularly in light of the decades during which the Democratic Party Establishment ignored the middle class and working poor.  In an interview on CNN (here), Karen Finney, a spokesperson for the Clinton campaign had a whole list of reasons why Hillary Clinton lost, including sexism, voting rights act, third party candidates, FBI Director Comey, media coverage and Bernie bros.  Interestingly enough, she did not mention the lack of an economic message to address the economic woes of the middle class and working poor.  When she was pointedly asked what mistakes the Clinton campaign made, there were none of significance.

In fact it is probably true that the Clinton campaign did not make too many mistakes.  The problem was that Hillary Clinton was the wrong candidate, and she could not overcome the fact that the Democratic Party Establishment had ignored the middle class and working poor and moved the party to the right for the last several decades.  Probably the best analysis of the election that I have seen was the op-ed in The New York Times by Naomi Klein entitled "Trump Defeated Clinton, Not Women" (here).  You should read it, if you have not already.  I selected some of my favorite paragraphs.

Voters chose a loose cannon of a man with zero government experience over a calm, collected and supremely qualified woman. The root cause of this injustice, many have suggested, can only be sexism — proof that the glass ceiling protecting the highest reaches of power cannot yet be shattered.
The reaction is understandable. It’s also wrong and unnecessarily demoralizing.

...

Yes, she had a gold-plated résumé that more than qualified her to be president. But that overlooks an important fact: Virtually everything about Mrs. Clinton’s biography made her uniquely unsuited to draw blood where Mr. Trump was most vulnerable.
This election needed a Democrat who could call out, again and again, the myriad hypocrisies and absurdities of Mr. Trump’s claim to be a hero for the downtrodden working class. In the debates, Mrs. Clinton landed points when she exposed Mr. Trump’s history of outsourcing and tax dodging. But by then Mr. Trump had already spent the summer mocking his opponent for her private parties with oligarchs, painting her own lifestyle as profoundly out of touch with ordinary Americans (which it is).
In short, she landed on many of the right messages, but she was the wrong messenger.

...

Here is the biggest problem with elevating sexism to the defining explanation of Mrs. Clinton’s loss: It lets her machine and her failed policies off the hook. It erases the role played by the appetite for endless war and the comfort with market-friendly incremental change, no matter the urgency of the crisis (from climate change to police violence to raging inequality). It erases the disgust over Mrs. Clinton’s coziness with Wall Street and with the wreckage left behind by trade deals that benefited corporations at the expense of workers.

...

That Mrs. Clinton could be defeated by the likes of Mr. Trump remains disgraceful. But Mrs. Clinton was too flawed a candidate for this disgrace to go down in history as a defeat for her gender.

The Democratic Party needs new leadership and needs to return to its core values.  Keith Ellison is running for head of the DNC and even Senator Schumer understands that he needs to support him.  Tim Ryan is challenging Nancy Pelosi for leadership of the House Democrats.  The traditional values of the Democratic Party should not simply be relegated to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, they should be the values of the entire Democratic Party.  We need new leadership to reclaim the Democratic Party.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Tim Kaine and Fracking

Dear Friends,

In my last post I neglected to point out that Tim Kaine is in favor of fracking.

Hillary Clinton has put Bernie Sanders in a very difficult position.  He will be asked about Tim Kaine.  So far Bernie has not commented, but he did post this tweet yesterday.

 

Bernie SandersVerified account‏@BernieSanders

Fracking is a danger to our water supply, the air we breathe and it’s contributing to climate change. Time to phase out fracking nationwide.

• RETWEETS 1,835
• LIKES 4,759
• 

6:23 PM - 22 Jul 2016

1,835 retweets4,759 likes

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton wants Bernie Sanders and all his supporters to support her, but she is making it very difficult.  I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton, but I will vote against Donald Trump.  Voting for someone is much more motivating than voting against someone.  Secretary Clinton needs to start giving us reasons to vote for her rather than just against Trump.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Advice for Hillary Clinton, her supporters and pro-Hillary media

Dear Friends,

Last night Bernie Sanders made a great speech to his supporters.  It was done over the internet (here) and as far as I can tell was not broadcast by anybody else.  In the speech he made two very clear points.  First, he said that the most important thing in the next five months was to defeat Donald Trump and that he would soon be devoting his time to obtain that result.  Second, he said that the political revolution must continue so that we can transform the Democratic Party and our country.  He did not endorse Hillary Clinton nor did he drop out of the race but neither did he mention his own candidacy for President or a third party.  He focused on transforming the Democratic Party and our country from within the Democratic Party.

Hillary Clinton has continually said during this campaign that she is working hard to earn everybody's vote.  The clear implication from Bernie Sanders' speech was that the ball is in her court to earn the votes and perhaps even the enthusiastic support of his supporters.  Unfortunately, so far Secretary Clinton has failed to make any attempt to earn the votes of the Sanders's supporters.  I can find no statement by her about the speech, not even an acknowledgement that it happened.  Ignoring Bernie Sanders will not help her earn the votes of his supporters.

Secretary Clinton was not the only one to ignore him, the media ignored him as well.  Rachel Maddow, who has been unable to hide her support for Hillary Clinton, gave his speech just a few minutes of coverage and in that time she ridiculed him and misconstrued what he had said.  In the part of the speech where Senator Sanders encouraged his supporters to get involved at all levels of politics to elect progressive candidates, he encouraged them to run for office.  What he was proposing was that the Democratic Party work to elect city council members, school board members, state legislators and governors in all 50 states.  Rachel Maddow's voice was full of ridicule as she reported that he encouraged his supporters to run for office.  This strategy has been incredibly successful for the Republicans.  Unfortunately, the Democratic Party establishment only embraces populist efforts to reach out to all people in Presidential elections.  Ridiculing what has been demonstrated to be a very effective strategy is not the way to earn the votes of Sanders' supporters.

My advice to Hillary Clinton (and her supporters) if she wants to earn the votes of Sanders' supporters is that she should:

• Truly, passionately and vocally embrace the new positions that she has taken on things like the TPP, Keystone Pipeline and drilling in the Arctic.
• Take the final step to eliminate small policy differences with Bernie Sanders on issues such as (1) fracking (If she is going to regulate it out of existence, why not just ban it?); (2) breaking up the big banks (She says she will consider it.  She has had plenty of time to consider it, and she has never made a cogent argument against it, so break up the big banks.); and (3) $15 an hour minimum wage (she says she supports the $15 an hour movement but refuses to endorse it stopping at $12 which while a big improvement falls short of lifting people out of poverty, so endorse a $15 an hour federal minimum wage.)
• Passionately embrace bold plans to transform our country including, significant tax increases on the very wealthy (Her very minimal increases are not sufficient to address our needs for funds or to reduce with the wealth and income inequality.) and meaningful infrastructure spending (Her proposal for $275 billion is without detail and completely insufficient to meet our needs and stimulate our economy.  Consider a plan more like Senator Sanders' detailed plan for $1 trillion.)
• Embrace healthcare as a right and lay out a clear plan for how her changes in Obamacare will lead to healthcare for all.
• On issues where she cannot in good faith move toward Senator Sanders' positions, engage in an open dialogue about those issues in which she truly listens and engages even if she does not ultimately change her position.  
• Demonstrate her commitment to getting big money out of politics.  Even though she takes big money, lay out a clear plan for how she will move from our money tainted and broken system today to a political and economic system not dominated by big money in the future.
• Enthusiastically embrace the reformation of the Democratic Party's primary process: eliminate caucuses; eliminate super delegates; hold open, same day registration primaries; and ban big money contributions to the DNC as President Obama did.
• Do not rely on the "I'm better than Donald Trump" approach.  Demonstrate that she is progressive and wants the Democratic Party and the country to transform itself.
• Appoint a true progressive, not an incrementalist, as her vice president.

There are, of course, many other things that Secretary Clinton could, and I hope, will do but these might give the Sanders' supporters the confidence in her that they need in order to vote for her and perhaps even work hard for her election not just against the election of Donald Trump.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Voter Turnout

Dear Friends,

The Clinton campaign and its supporters have been spending a lot of time lately telling supporters of Bernie Sanders that they need to vote for Hillary Clinton or they are essentially voting for Donald Trump and that Bernie Sanders need to drop out of the race and work for Hillary Clinton because he has no chance of winning.  Besides Hillary Clinton has already announced that she is the nominee.  I have read a couple of articles that are worth your time to read.

The first is by Seth Abramson on Huffpost Politics entitled " How to Explain the Sanders Campaign to an Idiot, Paul Krugman or a Clintonite in 8 Sentences" (here).  Despite the snarkiness of the title, the post contains a cogent argument for why the Sanders campaign should continue until all the votes are cast at the Democratic convention.

The second is a post by Jake Johnson on Common Dreams entitled "No, I Won't Work for Hillary Clinton: A Response to Robert Reich" (here).  It is a very thoughtful and thought provoking piece in response to a Facebook post by Robert Reich (here) who had given advice to the supporters of Hillary Clinton and to the supporters to Bernie Sanders.  The advice to the supporters of Bernie Sanders is as it always is - Hillary Clinton is better than Donald Trump and if you do not vote for her you are essentially voting for Donald Trump and how can you stand to do that.  Anyway, while I will vote for Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee, the post certainly made me think.

All of this talk of blaming Sanders' supporters if Hillary Clinton gets the nomination and loses to Donald Trump got me thinking about voter turnout.  So I did some research.

Counting caucuses, Bernie Sanders has received probably somewhere around 11,000,000 votes so far.  For my purposes I would divide that group into a group of Democrats like me who vote every election and certainly every Presidential election and for whom this year will be no different.  The other group is a group of people who do not vote every election or even every Presidential election.  Who knows the percentages but let's say 50/50.  So maybe by the time the voting is done there will be   7,000,000 but certainly less 10,000,000 Sanders' supporters who are at risk of not voting.  That sounds like a large number, and it is but it pales compared to the number of Americans who just plain do not vote.

A little over a year ago, the Pew Research Center published a report on the voter turnout for the 34 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (here), basically the world's leading industrialized democracies.  Of the 34 countries, the United States ranked 31st in turns of voter turnout with just 53.6% of voting age people voting.  Belgium ranked first with 87.2% of voting age population, and Germany was right in the middle at 17th with 66% of voting age population.  To put these percentages into perspective.  In 2008 Obama got 69.3 million votes and beat McCain by 9.7 million votes.  If 66% of the voting age population had voted (same as Germany), there would have been an additional 17.5 million votes cast, more than double the margin of victory.  If 87.2% of the voting age population had voted (same as Belgium), there would have been an additional 65.3 million votes, almost 7 times the margin of victory.

The problem with the American electoral system is that we do not have a culture of voting.  I believe in large part the lack of voting is the direct result of the lack of exciting candidates and the almost constant problem of voting for the lesser of two evils.  I calculated the percentage of the voting age population that the winners in the last nine Presidential elections.  In only two elections did the winner get more than 30% of the voting age population - Reagan in 1984 with 31.1% and Obama in 2008 with 30.7%.  The average is about 27%, just over a quarter of the voting age population voted for the person who became President.  A democracy should not work like that.

This year both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are making the lesser of two evils argument all the time.  Donald Trump's best argument for Republicans and Independents is that he is not Hillary Clinton and many Republicans and Independents will vote for him as the lesser of two evils.  Hillary Clinton's best argument for Democrats and Independents is that she is not Donald Trump and many Democrats (including me) and Independents will vote for her if she gets the nomination for just that reason - the lesser of two evils.

As a country, we must do more to develop a culture of voting so that the majority can govern.  We could start with automatic voter registration and a national holiday for election day.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Hillary Clinton makes her own problems

Dear Friends,

I have long believed that Hillary Clinton is a flawed candidate and not just because of her policies and positions.  She continues to create problems for herself.  Two of these problems were apparent upon reading the news this morning.

First, the State Department's Inspector General (not the Republicans) came out with a report severely criticizing Secretary Clinton for using her personal email account for official business.  One need only read the first paragraph of the story in The New York Times (here) about the report.

The State Department’s inspector general on Wednesday sharply criticized Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, saying that she had not sought permission to use it and would not have received it if she had.

Buried deep in the first section of The New York Times this morning (here) was an article comparing the Clinton campaign's spin on what the Inspector General's report said with the reporter's analysis.  Here are a couple of the comparisons.  The bold is from a statement by the Clinton campaign.  The rest is the reporter writing.

From the statement: “The inspector general documents just how consistent her email practices were with those of other secretaries and senior officials at the State Department who also used personal email.”
Only one other secretary of state — Colin L. Powell — exclusively used his personal email for official communications. Condoleezza Rice said she did not use personal or government email. Madeleine K. Albright did not use email, which was in its infancy when she was in the job. Secretary of State John Kerry said he occasionally used personal email, mostly to reply to people who emailed him on his personal account. But the report said that after discussing the issue with his aides and other staff members, “he began primarily using his department account to conduct official business.”
“As this report makes clear, Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email was not unique, and she took steps that went much further than others to appropriately preserve and release her records.”
Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email and server stored in her home was, in fact, unique. She left the State Department without turning over any emails, and only did so after she was contacted by the department’s lawyers, who were under pressure to produce documents from the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The 55,000 pages of emails she delivered did not include anything from the first three months of her tenure.

If Secretary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, Donald Trump will use this report and her campaign's statements to attack her as being untrustworthy and lacking judgment.  Her statements and those of her campaign about her emails are at best misleading and at worst completely inaccurate.  Since she will want to attack Donald Trump as being untrustworthy and lacking judgment, he will easily distract with his own attack on the same issues.  The conclusion of the public will, I am afraid, be that they are both untrustworthy and lack judgment.

This problem was not created by the Republicans or the press or Bernie Sanders, it was created by Hillary Clinton.  In my view it was some combination of bad judgement, arrogance and paranoia.

Problem number two results from her decision to back out of the fourth debate that she had agreed to have with Bernie Sanders before the California primary.  Let's be clear, she did not just decline to debate, she broke her agreement to have four debates including one before the California primary.

Of course the conventional political wisdom is that the frontrunner can only lose by having a debate.  I think Hillary Clinton is making a terrible mistake.  If she wins the nomination and wants to have Bernie Sanders' supporters vote for her, she needs to show that she listens to them, has views similar to them, respects them and will make big not just incremental changes.  Right now she is ignoring Senator Sanders and claiming out loud that she will be the nominee.  By breaking her agreement to debate, she is fueling the narrative that she cannot be trusted, that she is going to move to the right as soon as she can and that she doesn't really care about the issues that Senator Sanders' supporters do.

After last night when both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders said they would be willing to debate the other, Secretary Clinton's decision to break her agreement looks really bad.  If a Trump/Sanders debate happens, she will look even worse.  If Senator Sanders does really well in that debate, it will be clear to everybody that Senator Sanders will be a better candidate against Donald Trump than Secretary Clinton.

This problem was not created by the Republicans or the press or Bernie Sanders, it was created by Hillary Clinton.  Secretary Clinton does not understand that times have changed, that she should not be running her campaign according to the conventional political wisdom, and that if she wants the votes of the Bernie Sanders' supporters she needs to truly court them.

While it is a very narrow and steep path for Bernie Sanders to obtain the Democratic nomination, it is possible.  If Bernie Sanders has a big win in California, particularly if he debates Donald Trump and has a really good night, I would hope that the super delegates would face the reality that Bernie Sanders has the better positions and policies, is the better candidate and is the best bet to beat Donald Trump.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Why is Clinton Disliked?

Dear Friends,

As you know, I seldom, if ever, agree with David Brooks, but I thought that his column, entitled "Why is Clinton Disliked?" this morning in The New York Times (here) was quite insightful.  While I am an avid supporter of Bernie Sanders, I do not dislike Hillary Clinton.  I dislike many of her positions and believe that Bernie Sanders is the better candidate and the better choice for President.

There are, however, many people who dislike or really dislike Hillary Clinton.  David Brooks has a very plausible reason for the phenomenon that such an accomplished person can be disliked by so many people.

At least in her public persona, Clinton gives off an exclusively professional vibe: industrious, calculated, goal-oriented, distrustful. It’s hard from the outside to have a sense of her as a person; she is a role.
This formal, career-oriented persona puts her in direct contrast with the mores of the social media age, which is intimate, personalist, revealing, trusting and vulnerable. It puts her in conflict with most people’s lived experience. Most Americans feel more vivid and alive outside the work experience than within. So of course to many she seems Machiavellian, crafty, power-oriented, untrustworthy.
...
Even successful lives need these sanctuaries — in order to be a real person instead of just a productive one. It appears that we don’t really trust candidates who do not show us theirs.

Whether this widespread dislike is fair or justified, it is real and is the cause for her extremely high unfavorability ratings.  If she becomes the Democratic nominee for President and expects to win, she will need to change this image and clarify her positions to attract the supporters of Bernie Sanders who are new to the political process.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Which candidate beats Trump? Part 2

Dear Friends,

The mainstream American press (including MSNBC) is obsessed with Donald Trump and is covering him while ignoring Bernie Sanders and even reducing its coverage of Hillary Clinton.  In the meantime, media outlets and people outside of the establishment are actually watching and reporting on what is going on.

Aljazeera just published an article (here) entitled: "Polls: Sanders has more potential to beat Trump" with a subtitle, "Recent data show Sanders has double-digit lead in support over Republican candidate while Clinton would face tight race."

It is a well researched and written article worth your time to read.  I am not saying that just because it agrees with my prior post.  The article focuses on the fact that independents heavily favor Bernie Sanders and that the polls tend to underrepresent independents.  This fact helps to explain why in open primary states Bernie Sanders has quite frequently outperformed the polls.  Donald Trump also gets support from independents which is why some experts feel the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is much closer than the polls show.  Of course the polls already show that Hillary Clinton will have trouble beating Donald Trump.

It is really sad that you will never see any of this in the mainstream American press.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Which candidate beats Trump?

Dear Friends,

The mainstream media continues to proclaim that the Presidential race will be between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  These same media giants and their pundits, all of whom failed to recognize that Donald Trump was a real candidate regardless of his lack of qualifications and personality and who were certain that he would never be the Republican nominee and that Bernie Sanders would never pose a real threat to Hillary Clinton, are now saying that Hillary Clinton will beat Donald Trump by a landslide.

They continue to fail to understand that the American people are angry and scared.  Many Republicans are angry because they are finally figuring out that the Republican Party establishment has been using them for years.  People are angry because the establishment including big corporations, Wall Street, the mainstream media and the two major political parties have created a political and financial system that has concentrated all of the wealth and power in the hands of the few at the top of the economic heap.  They are scared for a variety of reasons and not all reasons apply to all the people.  Old white men are scared because they are losing their privilege.  Most everybody is scared about their financial futures.  Thoughtful ones are scared for the lives their children and grandchildren will live because of climate change.  Those who have fallen for the Republican fear mongering are afraid of Muslims, blacks, hispanics and GLBT people.  The establishment types in the mainstream media do not understand that the American electorate is ready for real and significant change, and they are looking for leaders who agree with them and can lead them in achieving that change.

I cannot imagine anything worse for the world and our future than Donald Trump beating the Democratic nominee and becoming President of the United States.  In addition to all the reasons that I have put forth in prior posts demonstrating why I think that Bernie Sanders is the best candidate to effectuate the real and radical changes that we need, I now want to make the case for why Bernie Sanders is the best candidate to beat Donald Trump.

I have created my own spreadsheet of the Electoral College results by State for 2000 through 2012 and my predictions based on history and the polls to date.  Under my analysis, there are 10 states that are up for grabs this year.  I have given the electoral votes from the others to either Donald Trump or the Democratic candidate.  The result being
Donald Trump          180
Democrat                  226
Undecided                132
Keep in mind that a candidate needs 270 votes to win.  Under my analysis and virtually all the others I found online, the Democrat has a big lead but does not get to 270 without some of the undecided states.

Here is what I have gleaned from the polls about the undecided states.

In three states there is no worthwhile polling: Colorado (9 votes), Nevada (6 votes) and New Mexico (5 votes).

In one state, Indiana (11 votes) both Democratic candidates lose to Donald Trump in recent polls but Hillary Clinton loses by 7.5 percentage points while Bernie Sanders loses by only 1 percentage point indicating that he might win Indiana.

Florida (29 votes) is the only state where the polls indicate that both Democratic candidates would beat Donald Trump where Hillary Clinton wins by more than Bernie Sanders.  Hillary Clinton wins by 4.3 percentage points and Bernie Sanders wins by 0.5 percentage points.

In all the other states Bernie Sanders beats Donald Trump by wider margins than Hillary Clinton.

Iowa (6 votes)                               Sanders +9        Clinton +4
North Carolina (15 votes)             Sanders +7.3     Clinton +3.3
Ohio (18 votes)                             Sanders +5        Clinton +3
Pennsylvania (20 votes)                Sanders +12.7   Clinton +7

Based on the current polling numbers, Bernie Sanders is a much better bet to beat Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton and her surrogates claim that Bernie Sanders has not been fully vetted and attacked they way that Donald Trump will attack him.  The Clinton Campaign has attacked Bernie Sanders repeatedly, and his campaign gets stronger.  The more people know Bernie Sanders the more they like him.  The more people are exposed to Hillary Clinton the less they like her.  The Huffington Post tracks the trends for the favorable and unfavorable ratings of both Bernie Sanders (here) and Hillary Clinton (here).

According to the Huffington Post analysis, Bernie Sanders currently has a 51.6% favorable rating and a 41.1% unfavorable rating, a net 10.5% positive.  Since July 2015, both his favorable and unfavorable ratings have gone up as people have been exposed to him, but his net positive rating has steadily increased since that time.

Conversely, the Huffington Post analysis shows that Hillary Clinton currently has a 41.5% favorable rating and 54.6% unfavorable rating, a net 13.1% negative.  Except for a small bump up in February 2011, Hillary Clinton's favorability rating has declined since October 2010 and her unfavorable ratings have steadily increased since February 2011.  The last time she had a net positive favorable/unfavorable rating was in April 2015 and her net negative rating has continued to grow since then.  The Clinton campaign likes to say that her bad ratings are the result of decades of unfair treatment by the Republicans, but just over a year ago she had a net positive rating which during the campaign has rapidly become a really significant 13.1% net negative rating.

Of course Donald Trump has worse ratings than Hillary Clinton.  The Huffington Post analysis (here) shows that Donald Trump currently has a 58.6% unfavorable rating and a 36.5% favorable rating for a net negative rating of 21.1% which is worse than Hillary Clinton's net negative rating of 13.1%.  If you only read the mainstream media you would not believe that Donald Trump's favorability ratings have been increasing and his unfavorability ratings have been decreasing since April when he had a net negative of 31.3%.  If the trends of Hillary Clinton's net ratings getting worse and Donald Trump's net ratings getting better continue, Hillary Clinton's chances of winning would be further diminished.

While I understand that Bernie Sanders has a narrow chance of winning the Democratic nomination, if he continues to win the primaries/caucuses between now and the convention and the polling numbers and favorable/unfavorable numbers continue their present trends, I would hope that the Super Delegates would do their job for the good of the world, country and party and nominate Bernie Sanders.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

War v. Peace, Status Quo v. Real Change and Obfuscation v. Transparency

Dear Friends,

The debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders last night could not have done a better job of highlighting the choice that we have between these two candidates and their policies, opinions and positions.

War v. Peace

On foreign policy, except for a short discussion about NATO where the candidates are in basic agreement, the Middle East was the focus.  Senator Sanders laid out a very clear and articulate position that acknowledged the right of Israel to exist in peace and security, but also acknowledged the same right for the Palestinian people.  Senator Sanders made it clear that the Israeli  response to the latest conflict in Gaza was an over-reaction by Israel.  Secretary Clinton refused to acknowledge that Israel over-reacted.  You cannot achieve peace between Israel and Palestine until you acknowledge the atrocities on both sides.  Senator Sanders' approach is the only one that has any chance of bringing peace.

With respect to Syria, Secretary Clinton, who has frequently chastised Senator Sanders for criticizing President Obama, laid the blame for the Syrian situation on President Obama because he did not take her advice to more aggressively arm the "friendly forces" fighting against Assad and establishing a no-fly zone which virtually all experts say would lead to more US troops fighting in Syria.  She also refused to take any responsibility for the debacle in Libya.  President Obama has said that one of the biggest mistakes of his Administration was not planning for what happens after Gaddafi is deposed.  Secretary Clinton refused to accept any responsibility even though she was a strong proponent within the Obama Administration for regime change in Libya.  She blamed the Libyan people for failing to take her advice and accept American troops in Libya.

We have a clear choice - Secretary Clinton, a clear hawk or Senator Sanders, a thoughtful person who will acknowledge reality, seek peace and use force only as a last resort.

Status Quo v. Real Change

On issue after issue, it is clear that Secretary Clinton supports the status quo, with only incremental changes, and it is equally clear that Senator Sanders believes we need big and substantive changes now.  This difference represents a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party.  When Secretary Clinton says that Senator Sanders is not a real Democrat, what she means is that he is not part of the move to the right, Republican light, Democratic Party establishment founded by her husband.  There is a great sentence going around the internet - "There is only one moderate Republican running in this election, and she is running as a Democrat."  I have said before that President Obama is about as far right as President Eisenhower was.  Secretary Clinton is clearly to the right of President Eisenhower particularly on the use of force.  President Bill Clinton formed an unholy alliance with big business.  Secretary Clinton will continue that alliance.  Senator Sanders will break up that alliance.

Secretary Clinton claims that she wants to get to universal healthcare coverage but has only plans to add an incremental number of people and attacks Senator Sanders' plan for Medicare for all.  She says he would throw out Obamacare which is not true.  He would keep Obamacare until the Medicare for all was in place.  She wants incremental change and calls it pragmatism.  She says she supports the movement for a $15 minimum wage, yet she refuses to support Senator Sanders' bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 instead she supports a competing bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour.  She claims that she wants to protect the economy from another melt down but continues to fight against breaking up the big banks even though they are bigger now than before the great recession and the Fed and FDIC have recently called them too big.  She continues to say we should regulate them but, in an implicit criticism of President Obama, says that she would be tougher.  However, she fails to acknowledge that the big banks have successfully stalled on developing "living wills" for more than five years.  She says that she stood up to the big banks before the great recession but fails to acknowledge that she completely failed in changing their behavior.  The time has come to stop coddling the big banks and break them up.

She uses the overturning of the Citizens United case as one of her two litmus tests for any Supreme Court nominee and states that big money is corrupting our political system but refuses to acknowledge that it has any impact on her.  Apparently she is immune to all the pressures that other politicians are not immune to.  She cannot answer the simple question of why she will not release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street.  Her only response is that she will not release them unless everybody does, obviously including all Republican candidates.  Senator Sanders has not made closed door speeches to Wall Street.  The only logical conclusion that I can reach is that she would be embarrassed by those speeches if the transcripts became public.

The most important area where Secretary Clinton's incremental only approach to change cannot be accepted is with respect to climate change.  With every new report we are closer to a cataclysmic tipping point than was previously thought.  The time for incremental action has passed.  We need big change now.  Senator Sanders would ban fracking, would ban further drilling on federal lands, would place a tax on carbon and would focus completely on moving to sustainable, renewable energy.  Secretary Clinton promoted fracking around the world as Secretary of State, she refuses to say she would ban fracking, she refuses to say she would stop drilling on federal lands, and she refuses to say that she would support a carbon tax.  She says we need to move to sustainable energy but will do it in a "practical" and "possible" way, which is to say with small incremental steps.  That approach will destroy the earth for my grandchildren and is unacceptable.

Of course the debate was full of moments when Secretary Clinton obfuscated the facts while Senator Sanders was transparent about his positions.  While saying she would fight climate change, she refused to indicate immediate actions she would take that would have a significant impact, while saying she supports a $15 per hour federal minimum wage, she actually supports a move to $12 per hour, while claiming she supports Senator Sanders' policy of extending the life of the social security trust fund she refuses to support raising the income cap on social security taxes or endorsing any other particular approach, while saying she would be tough on the big banks, she refuses to support doing anything more than have the regulators be "tough" which has failed miserably so far and while saying she will work for peace between Israel and Palestine, she refuses to acknowledge the Israeli atrocities only the Palestinian ones.

She also continues to distort Senator Sanders' record.  She claimed that most of the gun deaths in New York resulted from guns from Vermont which is absurd.  While acknowledging that her statement was incorrect, she refused to apologize.  Instead she made the even more absurd statement that Senator Sanders does the bidding of the NRA in the Senate.  That statement is blatantly false as everyone including the NRA knows since it gives him a D- rating.

She claims that Senator Sanders could not answer the questions in the New York Daily News interview correctly even about breaking up the big banks.  I have actually read that interview in total and either Secretary Clinton is lying or she has not read the interview.  But you do not have to believe me, you can listen to this segment of Democracy Now today (here), it is entitled, "Juan González: Clinton Has 'Really Distorted' What Happened When NY Daily News Interviewed Sanders".  Senator Sanders answered the questions of the interviewer precisely and accurately.  The question to which he answered that he didn't know was whether the Fed has the right to break up the banks.  That is a correct statement, nobody knows for sure if the Fed does have that authority.  When asked about the President's authority to break up the banks, he correctly stated the process under Dodd-Frank by which the President can break up the big banks including that in the end the banks themselves determine exactly what assets to shed, etc.

We have a clear choice and in my opinion Senator Sanders is by far the better choice.

I should also point out that Senator Sanders will win a general election against any Republican while Secretary Clinton is quite vulnerable against any Republican other than Trump.  In the most recent polls reported by RealClearPolitics (here), both Clinton and Sanders beat Trump although Sanders beats him by quite a bit more.  The interesting results are that Clinton is in a statistical tie with Cruz beating him by 1 point in one poll and 3 points in another poll.  Sanders on the other hand defeats Cruz by 12 points in both those polls.  With respect to Kasich, Clinton loses to him by 9 and 6 points while Sanders beats him by 4 and 5 points.

Sanders is by far the better candidate both because of his positions and because of his electability.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Who is more electable??

Dear Friends,

One of the arguments I hear all the time about why I should support Secretary Clinton instead of Senator Sanders is that she can win the general election and he cannot.  I disagree with that argument.  In fact I think a very strong case can be made that Senator Sanders can win and that Secretary Clinton cannot win.

While the polls are not the best way to analyze who is more electable, they do provide some insights. Real Clear Politics provides a very helpful service in compiling all the major polls.  I strongly recommend that you visit their website (here) because the information is very interesting and available in lots of formats.  In the average of the polls they follow for March through the 22nd, here are some interesting averages,

Clinton beats Trump on average by 11.2 percentage points
Sanders beats Trump on average by 17.5 percentage points
In both cases, the spread increased in March.

But it is also important to consider what happens if the stop Trump movement is successful.
Clinton beats Cruz on average by 2.9 percentage points (well within the margin of error)
Sanders beats Cruz on average by 8.4 percentage points
Whereas Clinton's lead over Cruz has dropped during 2016, Sanders' lead over Cruz has widened considerably.

With respect to the Democratic nomination, the average of the polls in March so far give Clinton a 9 percentage point lead over Sanders but that is down from 24 percentage points at the beginning of 2016.

The truth is that the more people find out about Senator Sanders, and the more they hear and understand his message, the more popular he is and the better he does against all other candidates, Democratic and Republican.  In addition, Senator Sanders is the only candidate with a positive favorability rating.  According to the averages on Real Clear Politics for March, here are the results:

Sanders      Favorable  48.7%  Unfavorable  41.3%   +7.4
Clinton       Favorable  40.7%  Unfavorable  53.9%  -13.2
Cruz           Favorable  33.4%  Unfavorable  51.0%  -17.6
Trump        Favorable  30.4%  Unfavorable  63.2%  -32.8

The latest polls indicate that perhaps Donald Trump is beginning to lose ground, but we have heard that before, so who knows.  Also the latest Democratic nomination poll shows Sanders ahead of Clinton by 1 percentage point.  The daily and weekly variations among polls should not receive too much weight but the overall direction is important.  Also so far in this election cycle, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders tend to out perform the polls.

So if you believe in polls, it is clear that Bernie Sanders is more electable than Hillary Clinton.

Clinton has won 14 states by more than 1 percentage point and 4 by 1 percentage point or less.  Nine of the 14 states are very red states.  Trump has won 12 of those states as well, and all but 3 of those states are very red states.  The only two states that Trump has not won that Clinton won were Texas (home of Cruz) and Ohio (home of Kasich).  So the states where Clinton performs well are states that have been won by Trump and are overwhelmingly red states.  So it is impossible to say that Clinton has demonstrated that she can win against Trump based on her current performance.

Sanders has won 11 states.  Of those states, the Republicans have not yet had a primary/caucus in 2 of them.  In the nine states that have voted, Cruz has won 5, Trump has won 3 and Rubio won 1.  Six of the 11 states that Sanders won went for Obama in 2012, 2 of which are on the list of the closest races in 2012.  The results so far suggest that Sanders would win the traditionally blue states and be apt to win the close states that went for Obama last time.  If anything, this analysis says that Sanders has a better chance of winning the general election than Clinton does, but the analysis is far from certain.

There is a lot of talk about Sanders supporters who say they will vote for Trump rather than Clinton if Clinton is the Democratic nominee.  Clinton supporters attribute this position to the privilege of those Sanders supporters.  This allegation is yet another example of Clinton supporters and others in the "Establishment" not understanding the anti-establishment sentiment that exists in this country.

For the last 30 years at least, the middle class has lost ground while the rich and powerful have gained incredible wealth and power.  Many Sanders supporters are active in the political process today because they are tired of the status quo and are appalled at the inequality, in all respects, in this country.  They did not become involved to fight for a Democrat or a Republican.  They became involved to get rid of the "Establishment" and make big changes to the status quo.

It is not showing white privilege or any other kind of privilege for these voters to say that the most important thing is to get rid of the status quo.  These voters will not vote for Clinton because she represents the Democratic Establishment.  They might vote for Trump just to get rid of the "Establishment" or they might just drop out of politics.   I disagree with that approach and will most certainly vote for Clinton if she is the nominee, but to tell those voters that they are rejecting Clinton because of their privilege is not only wrong, it is stupid and offensive, particularly if you want their vote.

I believe the reason that Sanders does better against Trump and Cruz than Clinton does is that these voters will stay involved and vote for Sanders rather than either Trump or Cruz.  If, however, their choice is Clinton or either terrible Trump or Cruz, they will either vote for the terrible person or they will just drop out.  This result will be even more certain if Clinton wins the nomination and then moves to the right during the general election campaign.  Certainly her history of positions suggests that she has only moved left because of pressure from the success of the Sanders campaign.  If she wins the nomination, moves to the right and continues to denigrate Sanders supporters by calling them uninformed, sexist, naive and now privileged, she will surely lose their support and votes.

Neither Trump nor Cruz is actually crazy.  They are fighting for the Republican nomination now.  They will run a different race once they get the nomination.  Cruz is an ideologue who will have trouble changing his positions but can probably change his demeanor.  Trump has no scruples so he will change to whatever he thinks will win.  He will certainly try to become less awful as a general election candidate and who knows what positions he will take.  He might even try to make himself look normal, as difficult as that is to believe right now.  If he does that, Clinton will have an even more difficult time defeating him because she will sound like the pot calling the kettle black if she criticizes Trump for changing positions. Sanders, on the other hand, has not changed his positions and  will be able to call Trump on his change in positions without fear of hearing the same back.

The nomination of the Democratic candidate for President is a long way off and much can change.  While it is true that Senator Sanders has an uphill battle, that has always been the case.  The Democratic Establishment, the media, the elites and the general establishment are all against him, but together we can overcome all of that and have a Presidential nominee and a President that will change this country and who will make us proud.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Hillary Clinton and Climate Change

Dear Friends,

As this campaign for President has progressed, Secretary Clinton has moved closer to Senator Sanders' long held positions to fight climate change.  She eventually came out against the Keystone XL pipeline, although she said it was a distraction, she eventually came out against Shell drilling in the Arctic, she eventually came out against the Trans Pacific Partnership which among other terrible things is an environmental disaster, she came out eventually against offshore drilling after a long record of support for it, and she has a plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels over time.  I have written about these issues before here and here.

I am happy to see that she has moved closer to Bernie Sanders on these issues, but she is still an Obama "all of the above" in terms of what our energy policy should be.  Bernie Sanders wants to keep the carbon in the ground and truly accelerate our move to alternative renewable energy sources. Bernie Sanders' tweet from last August says a lot about the difference between Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton.

We need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and move to 100 percent renewable energy - and we need to act immediately.

In addition to the sense of urgency expressed by Bernie Sanders compared to Hillary Clinton, fracking is an issue that clearly separates these two candidates.  In fact, Senator Sanders is the only Presidential candidate calling for a ban on fracking.  Hillary Clinton has no recent statements on fracking, but has supported it historically both domestically and internationally.  Clinton entities, particularly their network of charities have taken million of dollars for the oil and gas industry, much of it when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and promoting fracking abroad.  If you are interested in more on this topic, I commend a couple of articles: the first entitled "Bernie Sanders Will Ban Fracking.  Hillary Clinton 'Sold Fracking to the World'" at Huffpost Politics (here), and the second entitled "There's Only One Presidential Candidate Who Wants to Ban Fracking" at Mother Jones (here).

The only argument for fracking is that it enables the use of natural gas which is cleaner than coal as a bridge from fossil fuels to renewable energy.  Even if you assume that argument to be valid, it is clearly an incremental approach to a problem that requires immediate and bold action.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Bernie Sanders v. Hillary Clinton and the new media

Dear Friends,

Two articles showed up on my Facebook feed this morning.  The first was from U.S. Uncut (here) entitled, "How Tonight's Bernie Sanders Rally Compared to Hillary Clinton's (PHOTO).  The article used photos of Hillary Clinton's rally in New York City and Bernie Sanders' rally at Michigan State University to demonstrate the relative level of enthusiasm for the candidates.    This picture is from the Sanders rally at Michigan State University.

This picture is from the Clinton rally in New York City.

The article described the Clinton rally as follows:

For most of the attendees, being at the rally was mandatory, while some groups, such as the Carpenters Union, gave attendees “comp time” for the hours they were at the event. Even with such incentives, there were fewer than 1,000 people there.

The other article was from the local New York City affiliate of CBS (here) entitled "Thousands Rally For Hillary Clinton At Post-Super Tuesday Victory Event In New York".  The article quotes the Clinton campaign as saying that there were more than 5,000 people at the rally.  I am always suspect of campaign estimates of the number of people at an event.  A news organization should be able to make its own estimate.

I also search CBS to see what it had to say about Bernie Sanders' rally at Michigan State University.  Apparently CBS did not cover that event.

So how can I figure out what is really going on?  I am sure that the picture of the Clinton rally used in the U.S. Uncut article was designed to show as small a rally as possible.  But even if I believed the Clinton campaign that there were over 5,000 people at her rally, the Breslin Student Events Center at Michigan State University holds 15,000 people and appears to be full.  I have no doubt that the enthusiasm surrounding the Sanders campaign far exceeds the enthusiasm of the Clinton campaign.  I also have no doubt that the news media are for whatever reason downplaying the Sanders campaign and supporting the Clinton campaign.

Despite what most of the pundits are saying Bernie Sanders still has a viable path to the nomination unless the super delegates decide they know better than we the voters do.  The voting in the next two weeks will tell us a lot more about who the Democratic candidate will be.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

What is this Presidential election really about?

Dear Friends,

There are many very important issues in the current Presidential election including income inequality, institutional and persistent racism, universal healthcare, gender equity, tax fairness, discrimination in the workplace, religious bigotry, women's reproductive healthcare, and the list goes on and on.  However, in my view, there are two issues that rise above all the others because they are each, in their own way, existential issues, and they are interrelated.  The two issues are global warming and America becoming an oligarchy.

There can be no question that the monied interests control the Congress and our political system.  The monied interests had disproportionate impact prior to the Citizens United decision and have almost completely taken over the political process today.  All of the campaigns of the Presidential candidates from both major political parties, except for Bernie Sanders' campaign, are funded by monied interests.  Bernie Sanders' success, despite the fact that the average donation to his campaign is less than $30 and despite the fact that his campaign has no PAC supporting it, is nothing short of a miracle.  If we do not break the control of the monied interests soon, we will have a very well entrenched oligarchy which will be difficult, if not impossible, to dislodge.  There is no way that "money controlling politics" can be changed incrementally.  The monied interests will not permit it.  Bernie Sanders is right.  Only with a political revolution can the "money in politics" problem be solved.

I have written before about the fact that climate change and global warming are the biggest threat to us (here).  Depending on who is doing the estimating, climate change is responsible for somewhere between 100,000 and 400,000 deaths worldwide per year and those numbers will be increasing for the foreseeable future regardless of any actions that we take now.  The economic cost of climate change is so staggering that I cannot comprehend the numbers.  In 2015 in the United States alone there were 10 weather events where the damages for that event were in excess of $1 billion.  Worldwide the damages caused by climate change were $1.2 trillion.  In addition there will be millions of people displaced as the sea levels rise and persistent droughts occur, which will continue to happen even if we take bold action now.

There are also substantial health risks associated with global warming.  The zika virus is the latest one to hit the news.  While it may be too early to say that the zika epidemic is caused by global warming, it is clear that the spread of the virus is facilitated by global warming, just as other health problems will be accelerated by global warming.  The following paragraphs from an article in The New York Times (here) summarize the point very well, and for sure it will not just be mosquitos that will rapidly expand the scope of health problems as the world warms.

But these same experts added that the Zika epidemic, as well as the related spread of a disease called dengue that is sickening as many as 100 million people a year and killing thousands, should be interpreted as warnings.
Over the coming decades, global warming is likely to increase the range and speed of the life cycle of the particular mosquitoes carrying these viruses, encouraging their spread deeper into temperate countries like the United States.
Recent research suggests that under a worst-case scenario, involving continued high global emissions coupled with fast population growth, the number of people exposed to the principal mosquito could more than double, to as many as 8 billion or 9 billion by late this century from roughly 4 billion today.

History is replete with examples of scarcity and shortages causing hatred, bigotry, violence and war.  When, as a result of global warming, we do not have enough water to drink and grow food, millions of people are displaced from their homes by drought and rising sea level, and rising temperatures speed the spread of diseases, we will experience even more hatred, bigotry, violence and war than we do today.

We are well past the point where incremental changes can have a significant impact on the terrible devastation of global warming.  The carbon that we have already released will increase these problems for a long time regardless of what we do now.  Incremental changes will simply delay for a few years when we hit the tipping point after which the cumulative impact of human activity will cause warming that will destroy us.  A blog by Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly at HuffPost Science (here) entitled "Five Climate Tipping Points We've Already Seen, and One We're Hoping For" makes my point very well.  The blog discusses five tipping points that have already occurred.  The one the authors are hoping for is a groundswell of political support and will to actually make the necessary changes.  Here are excerpts from the final paragraphs of that blog:

All of these examples, and many more, indicate that the changing climate has already tipped the world into a new normal, compared to what life was like when today's middle-aged adults were born. So far, we're coping, but not without great expense. 

The costs, both in personal suffering and economic losses, will increase dramatically as new, bigger climate-triggered tipping points hit in the next few decades, if we continue business-as-usual green-house gas emissions...

While it is too late to go back from the climate-triggered tipping points we've already caused, it is not too late to avoid the more severe ones that threaten our near future. Just as solid science alerts us to impending dangers, it also maps out feasible paths to minimizing risks. In the case of climate change, the solution is quickly reducing greenhouse gas emissions to essentially zero, through replacing fossil fuels with clean energy. Studies indicate it is technically and economically feasible to replace coal, oil, and gas by 2050 with a combination of carbon-neutral approaches, including solar, wind, wave, and sustainable biofuel energy. 

That cannot be accomplished of course, without another kind of tipping point: a groundswell of popular support and political will to deal with the problem. If we do not cross that critical threshold soon, it will be too late...

The monied interests that control our political process today for the most part resist the scientific proof of man-made global warming and even those that acknowledge the science want only incremental changes so as not to disrupt the status quo in the short term.  It is clear that incremental changes will not reverse the horrific trend of global warming.

Hillary Clinton is running as the candidate for incremental change.  Bernie Sanders is running as the candidate for a political revolution with bold solutions for both of these existential problems as well as the other important issues facing us today.

I will be 70 years old later this year.  My white privilege and financial situation will protect me from the worst impacts of these two existential problems, but there will be no amount of wealth or privilege that will protect my grandchildren and all people of future generations.  We need to act now and to act boldly and radically to prevent the United States from permanently becoming an oligarchy and to leave the carbon in the ground so that our grandchildren can live in peace and harmony on an Earth that is healthy and stable.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal