Op-ed: After insulting the Arab American mother of a Medal of Honor winner Donald Trump is under pressure from leading Republicans worried that Hillary is building her lead in polls.
“In recent days, Donald Trump disparaged a fallen soldier’s parents,” said Sen. John McCain, who was taken prisoner during the Vietnam War. “He has suggested that the likes of their son should not be allowed in the United States — to say nothing of entering its service. I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement. I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.” Other leading Republicans shared McCain’s comments. Trump also goofed in several interviews, denying that he was buddies with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Trump also said Russia would never invade Ukraine. Both were demonstrable lies, and the networks showed videos and published stories proving that with glee. Trump also is fighting the powerful National Football League, claiming they sent him a letter saying their schedule will interfere with presidential debates. The league published a statement denying it had sent any such letter. Numerous outlets have published articles saying Trump’s manager, Paul Manafort, has close ties with Putin and the former dictator of Ukraine, who was ousted and now lives in Russia. The theory has been that even ties to Russia would not hurt Trump; he is invincible. But some polls Monday had him behind by 7 percent, one even by 11. Reuters-Ipsos had him behind by 6 percent. Last week the Republican-leading Rasmussen site gave Hillary the first ever lead, one percent. It even gave President Obama a positive approval rating. Real Clear Politics, which averages polls, has dropped Rasmussen. The 538 poll site, which had shown Hillary dropping, now has her rising again. She had dropped to 51 percent but it now has her at 53, based on polls. That means she has a 53 percent chance to win. Its analytic forecast gives her a 62 percent chance to win. http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/07/30/trump-nfl-dispute-whether-league-asked-debates-to-be-moved/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/theres-plenty-of-time-for-trump-or-clinton-to-become-likable-enough/ http://www.newtekjournalismukworld.com/robert-weller/traitor-and-draft-dodger-trump-doesnt-know-what-a-hero-is
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Op-ed: Hillary Clinton is building a double-digit lead in the U.S. presidential race despite all the hijinks of Bernie Sanders and golfing blunders of Donald Trump. Pundits, who depend on a race for their jobs, are focusing on a poll that shows the race close. MSNBC has Clinton ahead by only one point when all the third-party candidates are thrown in. The Washington Post-ABC poll released Sunday shows Clinton leading by 12 points. NBC only mentions its own poll. What kind of journalism includes only the news that supports its views? Later, they did mention the 12-point lead but played it down. NBC says the polls are worrisome. Will they continue to say that if Hillary gets a 20-point lead? The most respected Republican columnist, George Will, had said he would support Clinton. On Sunday he said he was no longer a Republican. Describing the poll showing a 12-point lead, Politico said: “Respondents overwhelmingly said that Clinton is more qualified to be president and has a better personality and temperament than Trump.” If Sanders begins supporting Clinton her numbers could rise. “Support for Donald Trump has plunged as he has alienated fellow Republicans and large majorities of voters overall in the course of a month of self-inflicted controversies, propelling Democrat Hillary Clinton to a double-digit lead nationally,” the Washington Post and ABC said. It didn’t help that the whole world watched as Trump admitted he didn’t know what Brexit was. As he did when the recession hit a decade ago Trump saw the decline of the British pound as good news for him. It meant more people would travel to his Scottish golf course. For Americans, as Clinton worried, it would mean fewer British tourists in the U.S. For the first time ever, Americans will have the choice of a woman as their president. Hillary Clinton won’t have to worry about fighting off a challenge from Bernie Sanders based on technicalities. Clinton won enough votes in the last Tuesday of primaries to prevent Sanders from arguing that she was counting on delegates picked by the party, not voters. Even Sanders’ dream of winning in California, the nation’s most populous state, failed. He had hoped that might give him leverage to take to the convention but he lost by more than 400,000 votes. But at the end it was a somewhat boring evening that cable television had been trying to make it seem like it would be decided at the last minute or perhaps not until the Democrat convention in July in Philadelphia. The New York Times reported Sanders had already begun laying off workers. Even his threat to keep his campaign going drew mostly yawns. He was under pressure from President Obama to withdraw and most pundits expected he would comply within days. Clinton, whose husband, Bill, served two terms as president, has been playing down the fact that she would be the first female president. On Tuesday night she let it all out. “Tonight’s victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible,” she said. “In our country, it started right here in New York, a place called Seneca Falls, in 1848, when a small but determined group of women and men came together with the idea that women deserved equal rights,” she said in a speech in Brooklyn, N.Y. Many leaders around the world are likely to be happy to see her contesting Republican Donald Trump, who is considered too inexperienced to run the most powerful nation in the world. In her speech, she repeated an earlier comment, that the New York billionaire businessman was unfit to be president. “So we all owe so much to those who came before, and tonight belongs to all of you,” she added. She made special mention of her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham, who died in 2011. “I really wish my mother could be here tonight. I wish she could see what a wonderful mother Chelsea has become and could meet our beautiful granddaughter, Charlotte,” she said. “And of course, I wish she could see her daughter become the Democratic Party’s nominee.” Op-ed: Even before results were in from Pennsylvania Tuesday night the national television had declared Donald Trump the winner. It wasn’t the first time. And then some spent an hour talking about Trump as a winner, declaring themselves fools for thinking otherwise Hillary Clinton had a 58-41 lead over Bernard Sanders but the networks delayed declaring her the winner. They didn’t mention their mysterious exit polls. These were the same polls that declared John Kerry the winner over George W. Bush. Some felt people lied to polltakers because they were ashamed. Four years earlier former Vice President Al Gore got half a million votes more but lost due to the electoral college. One major “narrative,” to use a newly popular word, that has changed. But it is not talked about. Democratic voters, meanwhile, described as very small, and they were at the start. Now they outnumbered Republicans in New York and Pennsylvania. It may have been that since Clinton was the presumptive winner few bothered in the early months. And there was a sexy race among Republicans. Now exit polls find that Democrats are “energized” by the Sanders-Clinton race. Even more likely to energize Democrats is for Clinton to choose a woman as her VP. It received almost no publicity on television during the weekend. It finally was mentioned on Tuesday, but pundits focused on Trump picking a woman. Elise Jordan, a Republican commentator on MSNBC, was quickly cut off when she said Trump couldn’t beat one woman, let alone two. The Washington Post said: “It doesn’t matter if Sanders continues his candidacy until the last votes are cast in June. What matters is that he quits gracefully, and there should be every expectation that he will, for a simple reason: Sanders is not a fool." Simply recycling unproved claims that Hillary is dishonest - most apparently based on discredited Benghazi claims – is boring. It won’t write headlines. Journalists want new things. Trump will try to plagiarize previous claims. Although CBS is on record as saying Trump makes money for them, that doesn’t mean they have chosen to elect him. They chose to make money. They don’t care who the president is. Hillary already has a YouTube channel. She needs to update it hourly, not every two days. It would take little work. Most of it would be just quote the network when they report on something other than Trump. Her tech staff can do a split screen when Trump’s fraud trial opens on the same day as the Cleveland Republican Convention. The judge could grant a delay but they were loathe to do this in cases that have been going on for years. If there was any doubt what Sanders would do he answered it by saying he would "do everything that I can to make certain that Donald Trump is not elected president." More: Biggest surprise of Presidential campaign Hillary Clinton appears presumptive nominee Say goodbye to Bernie Sanders Op-ed: Hillary Clinton may win all five primaries Tuesday, four of them are closed. Only Democrats can vote.
Sen. Bernie Sanders hasn’t won one primary in which only Democrats can vote. As many as 2 million people could vote in Pennsylvania, the most populous state. Clinton beat President Obama in 2008. In 2012, when Obama had no real competition only 600,000 voted. Primaries also are being held in Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. Clinton leads in polls in most. Hillary Clinton already has nearly a 3 million lead in the popular vote. Bernie Sanders declined to withdraw. Media outlets are undecided whether Sanders wants to use his popularity to influence the party’s platform, or whether he will fight all the way to the competition. Doing both will be difficult. His supporters are making it even harder with snide remarks, bringing up former President Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Many pundits think that will backfire. It also is hypocritical for Sanders to complain that closed primaries are preventing him from winning. On one of his websites he said closed primaries are needed to prevent “political sabotage.” Why should Republicans or Democrats be allowed to disrupt the vote of the other party? As for Millennials being wedded to Sanders, Politico reports Clinton has a 36-point advantage when asked to choose between her and Trump. Former Vermont Gov. Madeleine Kunin, who thrashed Sanders in the gubernatorial race 30 years ago told USA Today her former competitor will endorse Clinton. Clinton reportedly is already looking for a vice president, and created a buzz during the weekend when she said it could be another woman. http://www.newtekjournalismukworld.com/robert-weller/biggest-surprise-of-presidential-campaign Op-ed: The leading candidate in the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, a strong candidate to be the first female president of the United States, is reportedly considering choosing a woman as her vice president. So we’d get two in the White House at once. Even more surprising, Hillary Clinton’s list includes a woman who many had wished had run against her, Sen. Elizabeth Warren. What better candidate to deal with the kind of bankruptcies, Donald Trump. Warren specialized in bankruptcies as a law professor at Harvard. Trump has a lot of explaining to do about how he could manage multiple bankruptcies while families who lost everything in the 2008 recession couldn’t afford the lawyers’ fees charged for them. The web was full of stories considering the possibilities, not only of Warren as a candidate, but that Clinton might choose another woman. Several were on lists published by sites as powerful as the New York Times. “Regardless of how things shake out in the weeks to come, having two women on a single ticket would be an electrifying, historical occurrence.” Vanity Fair said. It is not too soon for Clinton to start finding a running mate. Next week she is likely to add hundreds of thousands of votes to her popular vote lead over Bernie Sanders. Sanders strategy of focusing on caucuses got him much publicity on the national TV. But by early April he was behind Clinton by 2.5 million votes, according to a review by Pulitzer-winning site Politico. Since then she has added nearly 300,000 votes in the New York primary and will win three or four of the primaries in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and Rhode Island. She leads by double digits in the biggest, Pennsylvania. She is being called the presumptive nominee, and no matter how many paths pundits can find for Sanders to stay in competition not even Hawkeye in the Last of the Mohicans could do it. Perhaps most ironic is that the nation has been hearing non-stop that Citizens for United, the Supreme Court case that removed all rules of corporate political spelling, Sanders is still going. All on small donations from private citizens, he claims. Check out: Donald Trump’s Aging Air Fleet Gives His Bid, and His Brand, a Lift - NYTimes Donald Trump’s Jet, a Regular on the Campaign Trail, Isn’t Registered to Fly - NYTimes Op-ed: Sanders won’t go away even after crushing defeat.
Sen. Bernie Sanders isn’t going to withdraw from the presidential campaign even after a crushing defeat in New York by Hillary Clinton. Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, told MSNBC that even if Clinton still holds the delegate and popular vote lead after all the primaries to come his candidate will try to win the race at the party’s convention in Philadelphia at the end of July. This is the same campaign that predicted it would surprise pollsters and win Clinton’s home state despite polls showing them behind by up to 17 percent. Some pundits had supported their claims that they were catching up with Clinton. In the end, they lost by about 16 percent. Weaver told MSNBC that if all the votes of caucuses were counted Clinton would have a huge lead in the popular vote. Most caucuses draw about 4 percent of the their party’s voters. Primaries get around 20 percent. Clinton has claimed more than a 2.4 million-vote lead. Tuesday night she added 265,000 votes to her lead. Polls indicate Clinton has big leads in several northeastern states voting next week, including Pennsylvania. Clinton’s delegate lead is boosted by the primaries she has won as well as so-called “super delegates” picked by the party leadership. The election website 538 said the New York vote “is a devastating result for the Sanders campaign. The outcome almost certainly ensures that Clinton will beat Sanders in the elected delegate count after the final Democratic votes are counted in June.” Weaver, after having the math pointed out to him, said the campaign would go on anyway. “Absolutely,” he said. Clinton, in her victory speech, said there was nothing important dividing her camp from Sanders. The campaign could get even nastier than it has been in recent weeks. Some pundits suggested Sanders should accept his losses and push for a movement that will have influence in a party that he is not even a member of. He is an independent. |
Robert Weller
2016 US election news and other news from the USA
Bio
Worked in journalism, including on the Internet, for more than 40 years. Started as a news editor at the Colorado Daily at the University of Colorado, joined a small Montana newspaper, the Helena Independent-Record, and then United Press International. Archives
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