Charlie Brown of TN

Elizabeth Warren

“We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing. Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent,” Sanders said.

No ties to big banks, a solid progressive economic platform, Medicare for all. Yep, he's having trouble raising the gazillion dollars Citizens United says is needed to run. The country, the working class and the democrats would do well to hear what he has to say. Not a Leninist, he's an unapologetic, straight talking liberal democrat as opposed to a neoliberal democrat.

On another note for gits and shiggles here's PPP's most recent poll of potential presidential candidate polling.

Clinton's position is unchanged from February- she was at 54% then and she's at 54% now. Elizabeth Warren at 14%, Joe Biden at 7%, Bernie Sanders at 6%, Martin O'Malley at 3%, and Jim Webb at 2% round out the field.

Sanders 12-point economic program

* Invest in our crumbling infrastructure with a major program to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools.

* Transform energy systems away from fossil fuels to create jobs while beginning to reverse global warming and make the planet habitable for future generations.

* Develop new economic models to support workers in the United States instead of giving tax breaks to corporations which ship jobs to low-wage countries overseas.

* Make it easier for workers to join unions and bargain for higher wages and benefits.

* Raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour so no one who works 40 hours a week will live in poverty.

* Provide equal pay for women workers who now make 78 percent of what male counterparts make.

* Reform trade policies that have shuttered more than 60,000 factories and cost more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs.

* Make college affordable and provide affordable child care to restore America’s competitive edge compared to other nations.

* Break up big banks. The six largest banks now have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product, over $9.8 trillion. They underwrite more than half the mortgages in the country and issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards.

* Join the rest of the industrialized world with a Medicare-for-all health care system that provides better care at less cost.

* Expand Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs.

* Reform the tax code based on wage earners’ ability to pay and eliminate loopholes that let profitable corporations stash profits overseas and pay no U.S. federal income taxes.

John Cassidy at the New Yorker 12/2014
Bernie Sanders’s Progressive Manifesto

P.S. Did you read about how she was so nervous about being on The Daily Show for the first time that she threw up twice (IIRC)? It was not all that long ago. Hillary, OTOH, has probably been working on her acceptance speech since college. I don't mean that in a bad way. She just has the ovaries to make it happen. Wish I liked her more in the personal appeal column, though. Her stock there has been falling with me for a long time. Way too much pandering. But she may have calculated it will help more than hurt.

Compared to virtually anyone the republicans run and by virtue of her qualities standing alone, Hillary is sane and competent.

She may not be the best bet for America, but those two qualities put her heads and tails above anyone the Republicans are likely to run.

The Citizens United assholes (Assholes United?) will really pull out all the stops against her. She'll be the Willie Horton who murdiddlyured Vince Foster or some mixed metaphor like that. I really dread it, and I really don't want to contribute any dollars anymore, though I shelled out as much as I could in the last two elections. Will she be able to fundraise anywhere near as well as Obama did? Could be more, of course.

It would be interesting, though, to see if society will be less or more tolerant of the bigotry toward her after the tactics that have become commonplace on this president.

I don't want to have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton.

Spokesman: Sanders 2016 run choice by April 30

In a statement issued through a spokesman, Sanders said Clinton and other candidates must address "the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that is crushing our middle class; high unemployment and low wages; the threat that global climate change presents to our future and the future of our children; and the fact that democracy itself is at risk because of the catastrophic decision of the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case."

Sanders, who describes himself as a "democratic socialist," frequently cites the high court's 2010 decision, which said the government can't restrict the size of independent campaign expenditures made by a nonprofit corporation, as a key consideration as he approaches his decision whether to run.

"We are … trying to determine whether or not we can raise the very substantial sums of money one needs in this day and age to run a campaign against people who have unlimited sums of money," he told New Hampshire Public Radio during a recent visit to that early primary state.

And about her logo. Bad? Or worst ever?

identifies as both "left" and "anti-war", it makes me feel a bit ill when i see fellow tennesseans express support for HRC -- we live in a giveaway red state, we don't have to face the existential crisis "select the lesser of two evils"...

While HRC voted for the Iraq war, I think (hope) it was on the basis of lies promulgated by the Bush administration. I suspect (hope) a lot of pro-war votes were cast on this basis. She has made vague statements like "based on what I knew at the time", but she needs to spell this out more clearly.

..and you probably did, because the traditional media has somehow ignored it, Wayne LaPierre told the NRA meeting in Nashville last weekend that the next president should really be a white guy, saying "eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough."

I guess that isn't really shocking, but maybe it should be.