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

Terrorists and Bigots

Dear Friends,

The terrible terrorist attacks in Paris last week have brought back into the front of our consciousness the fact that terrorism is alive and well in the world.  My heart goes out to all of those who suffer as the result of terrorist acts whether they take place in Paris or Beirut or Charleston.  We need to do all that we can to end terrorism, but to do that we need to understand and admit the facts surrounding terrorism today.

There is a very common misconception that terrorist attacks are most often perpetrated by those claiming to be acting on their Islamic beliefs.  This misconception is reinforced by politicians who are using fear and hatred of "others" for their own selfish political gain.  Here are some facts which clearly counter the common wisdom.

The chart below, courtesy of ThinkProgress (here) is based on information from Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency.

Most of the terrorist attacks in the EU have been by separatist organizations.

The ThinkProgress article goes on to discuss the statistics in the United States.

Religious motivations makes up just a slightly larger portion of terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Islamist militants lag far behind other groups when it comes to carrying out terrorist attacks in the U.S. too. According to FBI data compiled by the Princeton University’s Loon Watch, Islamist extremists were responsible for just 6 percent of terrorist attacks between 1980 and 2005 — falling behind Latino groups, Extreme left-wing groups, and Jewish extremists.

While the coverage by the media in the United States has helped to perpetuate the myth that most terrorist attacks are related to Islam, an article in The New York Times (here) from June 24, 2015 actually does a good job of summarizing the facts.

But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come as a surprise. Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C., compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center.

Here is the table from New America showing the incidents that is cited by The New York Times.

The tables below show the lethal terrorist incidents in the United States since 9/11.

Deadly Jihadist Attacks
Total number of people killed:
26
Plot name Persons killed2014 Washington and New Jersey Killing Spree 4
2014 Oklahoma Beheading 1
2013 Boston Marathon Bombing 4
2009 Little Rock Shooting 1
2009 Fort Hood Shooting 13
2006 Seattle Jewish Federation Shooting 1
2002 Los Angeles Airport Shooting 2

Deadly Right Wing Attacks
Total number of people killed:
48
Plot name Persons killed
2015 Charleston Church Shooting 9
2014 Tallahassee Police Ambush 1
2014 Las Vegas Police Ambush 3
2014 Kansas Jewish Center Shooting 3
2014 Blooming Grove Police Shooting 1
2012 Tri-State Killing Spree 4
2012 St. John's Parish Police Ambush 2
2012 Sikh Temple Shooting 6
2011 FEAR Militia 3
2010 Carlisle, PA Murder 1
2010 Austin, TX Plane Attack 1
2009 Pittsburgh Police Shootings 3
2009 Holocaust Museum Shooting 1
2009 George Tiller Assassination 1
2009 Ft. Walton, FL Shooting 2
2009 Flores Murders, Pima County, AZ 2
2009 Brockton, MA Murders 2
2008 Knoxville, TN Church Shooting 2
2004 Tulsa OK, Bank Robbery 1

An article on the Huffington Post website (here) entitled "White Supremacists More Dangerous To America Than Foreign Terrorists, Study Says" describes very clearly the misconception itself as well as a view on it based on the history of the United States.  I recommend the article to you.

The politicians and the press do not call terrorist groups that claim to have Christian views, Christian terrorists, but they should if they are going to call terrorist groups that claim to have Islamic views, Islamic terrorists.  Salon, reprinting an article from AlterNet, has a great article entitled "6 modern-day Christian terrorist groups our media conveniently ignores" (here).  Below is the first paragraph of that article.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) recently released an in-depth report on terrorism in the United States. Covering April 2009 to February 2015, the report (titled “The Age of the Wolf”) found that during that period, “more people have been killed in America by non-Islamic domestic terrorists than jihadists.” The SPLC asserted that “the jihadist threat is a tremendous one,” pointing out that al-Qaeda’s attacks of September 11, 2001 remain the deadliest in U.S. history. But the study also noted that the second deadliest was carried out not by Islamists, but by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995—and law enforcement, the SPLC stressed, are doing the public a huge disservice if they view terrorism as an exclusively Islamist phenomenon.

You will note that while the time frame for the data from the Southern Poverty Law Center is different from the New America report that the conclusion is the same - non-Islamic related domestic terrorists are a greater threat.  The article then goes on to discuss six terrorist groups that claim to have Christian views.  You can find another list of eight terrorist groups that claim to have Christian views here.

In the last two days the Republican Presidential candidates and the media have given us many perfect examples of our unwillingness to accept the fact that Christian extremists are just as bad as Islamic extremists.  Yesterday, The Washington Post published an article entitled "Cruz: 'No meaningful risk' of Christians committing terrorism" (here).  Cruz's comment is patently false and provided the perfect opportunity for the media to expose the false narrative that we only need to be concerned about terrorists who claim to believe in Islam.  However, the author of the article, Katie Zezima, never once mentions the fact that Cruz's comment is factually incorrect.  Cruz was making the point that the United States should only take Christian refugees from Syria. Cruz was using fear of the "others" and the terrible attacks on Paris for his own selfish political gain, and Ms. Zezima and The Washington Post let him do it.  Jeb Bush has taken a similar position without coming out and saying that Christians are safe and Muslims are not.

The Washington Post is not alone in missing the opportunity.  Time and President Obama both missed today.  Time published an article (here) about President Obama's reaction to Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush.  Neither President Obama nor Time mentioned that the premise for the Bush/Cruz position was blatantly false.  President Obama focused only on not having a religious test for refugees.

The Republican governors are now lining up to declare that their states will not take any Syrian refugees because they do not want to put their populations at risk for terrorist attacks.  While they do not say out loud what Bush and Cruz have said about accepting Christians only, it is clear that they are focusing on creating fear and hatred of "others".

We must stand up to bigotry in all its forms, just as we must have compassion for those who feel the pain of terrorism.  We must not permit people to fuel hatred and fear for their own selfish political gain, just as we must not give into the fear that terrorists strive to create.

Thank you for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal