Clinton Camp Says One-Fifth of Delegates Secured for Nomination

As Hillary Clinton's campaign seeks to project dominance in a field that could soon include Vice President Joe Biden, her top advisers are touting a decisive edge on a little-discussed metric: superdelegate commitments. 

At the Democratic National Committee meeting in Minneapolis, where Clinton spoke on Friday, senior Clinton campaign officials are claiming that she has already secured one-fifth of the pledges needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination. They come from current and former elected officials, committee officeholders, and other party dignitaries.

The campaign says that Clinton currently has about 130 superdelegates publicly backing her, but a person familiar with recent conversations in Minneapolis said that officials are telling supporters and the undecided in the last few days that private commitments increase that number to more than 440—about 20 percent of the number of delegates she would need to secure the nomination.

ALSO: Why Rank-and-File Democrats Are Hoping Biden Runs

EARLIER: Why Hillary Clinton Decided E-mail Issue Was No Joke

THE REPUBLICANS: Donald Trump Says He Wants to Raise Taxes on Himself

After her speech, Clinton told reporters that her campaign's attention to delegate totals is about ensuring that her support from voters translates into the nomination. “This is really about how you put the numbers together to secure the nomination. As some of you might recall, in 2008 I got a lot of votes but I didn’t get enough delegates. And so I think it’s understandable that my focus is going to be on delegates as well as votes this time,” she said.

Clinton campaign aides at the DNC meeting are privately briefing uncommitted superdelegates there on their mounting totals as a way to coax them to get them aboard the Clinton train now. Campaign manager Robby Mook, chief administrative officer Charlie Baker, political director Amanda Renteria, and state campaigns and political engagement director Marlon Marshall are among the top Clinton aides in attendance.

Final numbers are still in flux, but current estimates peg the total number of delegates to next summer’s presidential nominating convention at about 4,491, meaning that a candidate would need 2,246 to win. The Clinton camp’s claim to more than 440 delegates means she’s already wrapped up the support of more than 60 percent of the approximately 713 superdelegates who, under party rules, are among those who cast votes for the nomination, along with delegates selected by rank-and-file voters in primaries and caucuses beginning next February. Delegate totals won’t be finalized until the DNC determines the number of bonus delegates awarded to states, a party official said.

To be sure, Clinton had a superdelegate edge early against Barack Obama in 2008, and superdelegates are free to change their allegiance at any time between now and next summer's convention. But Clinton is ahead of the pace she had eight years ago in securing these commitments, and her support from the core of the establishment represented by these superdelegates is arguably the most tangible evidence of the difficulty Biden would have overtaking her with a late-starting campaign.

While Clinton said earlier this week that Biden “should have the space and the opportunity to decide what he wants to do,” her campaign is at the same time flexing its muscles to stress the strength of her candidacy. The campaign this week unveiled its first endorsement from a sitting member of the Obama Cabinet, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who just happens to be a former governor of Iowa and who spent Wednesday touring the state with Clinton.

The Clinton campaign also released memos on Thursday touting the strength of its field operations in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The memos include specific tallies of thousands of volunteer commitments, dozens of paid organizers, and offices opened, including 11 in Iowa.

Barring some major scandal or controversy, and given Hillary and Bill Clinton's long-standing ties to Democratic Party elites, overcoming her superdelegate edge would be quite a challenge for Biden or the major candidates already competing against her for the nomination, including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The 300-or-so gap between Clinton's public and private superdelegate commitments derives mostly from state party officials who have yet to reveal their backing of the frontrunner, but have privately pledged to cast their convention votes for the former first lady, according to the person familiar with the campaign's tally.

In their Minneapolis discussions intended to persuade additional uncommitted superdelegates to commit to Clinton, her team is taking care not to mention Biden, but the message is clear: Much of the party establishment is supporting Clinton and the math is in her favor. In 2008, Clinton’s team made a version of this argument before being overtaken by Barack Obama. After Obama took the lead in overall delegates, his campaign began to make a comparable argument about the mathematical inevitability of his ultimate victory.

The attention to delegate counts, Clinton said Friday, was the “result of the lessons that I learned the last time –how important it is to be as well-organized and focused from the very beginning on delegates and those who are superdelegates."

Via: Bloomberg

Continue Reading.....

[VIDEO] MARK STEYN EXPLAINS WHY PEOPLE LIKE TRUMP SO MUCH, ANSWERS WHETHER HE THINKS TRUMP CAN WIN THE NOMINATION

Maybe that’s why Trump is so hated by the GOP establishment – he is showing them just how much they’re hated by so many Americans.

Via: The Right Scoop

Continue Reading....

[VIDEO] LEFTWARD LURCH IMPERILS DEMOCRAT PARTY

At the annual NetRoots Nation gathering, two leading progressive candidates for the Democrat nomination were booed and heckled by protesters. The event could easily be remembered as a water-shed moment that confines the Democrat Party, at least in the near-term, to a weak national party that is only competitive in certain regions of the country.

NetRoots Nation is a conference of the Democrat Party’s most progressive and left-wing activists and bloggers. As part of its meeting, NetRoots hosted a “Presidential Town Hall” featuring socialist Vermont 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

16%

 and progressive former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

Few national political figures have embraced the full kaleidoscope of leftist policy proposals as eagerly as Sanders and O’Malley. The panel was even moderated by a celebrated leftist journalist who is also famously an illegal immigrant. Only a drum-circle and piped-in scents of patchouli were missing from what ought to have been a leftist dream-team of Presidential politics.

For the NetRoots activist crowd, though, it wasn’t enough. The event was loudly interrupted by a throng of activist from #BlackLivesMatter who challenged the panels’ commitment to progressive change. Both O’Malley and Sanders were flummoxed, with Sanders, at one point, asking the illegal immigrant moderator if he had “control” of the event.

O’Malley tried to address the activists by assuring them that, of course, “black lives matter.” He went on to make the equally true statement that “all lives matter.” For this “gaffe,” he had to make an awkward apology tour.

In the aftermath of the debacle, both the Sanders and O’Malley campaigns sought one-on-one meetings with the organizers of the #BlackLivesMatter protest group.

The entire episode could have been a farce out of a Tom Wolfe novel, but is, in fact, a sad reality facing today’s Democrat Party.

After more than a decade of cynically manipulating class and race rhetoric for short-term political gain, the Democrat Party faces a growing cadre of activists who bought into the rhetoric. For them, only the most extreme leftist or progressive policies will satisfy their political blood-lust.

In this brave new world, all lives matter, but some matter more than others.

For the past six years, the media have been obsessed with concern-trolling over whether a resurgent conservative movement would push the Republican Party “too far to the right.” The Establishment Republican class, fueled by its donors at the US Chamber and other corporate groups, have bought into this narrative.

While this silly debate has played out in the salons of 6th Avenue, K Street and Capital Hill, a far more dramatic political story has unfolded.

Since Obama won the Presidency, the Democrat party has been eliminated from large swathes of the country. When Obama was sworn in in 2009, Democrats controlled over 30 Governors’ mansions. After the 2014 elections, they hold just 18. They have been wiped out in the South and most of the Midwest.

The current political make-up of Congressional and state legislative seats is even more dramatic. Outside of the coasts and urban areas, the Democrat party is simply not competitive in most of the country.

“The national Democratic Party’s brand makes it challenging for Democrats in red states oftentimes and I hope that going forward, the leaders at the national level will be mindful of that and they will understand that they can’t govern the country without Democrats being able to win races in red states,” Paul Davis, who lost a close race against Kansas GOP Gov. Sam Brownback last year, told Politico.

Obama won office largely on the strength of historic levels of voter turnout by minorities and very young voters. Even with those high levels of turnout, he would have lost if the GOP hadn’t failed to motivate working class white voters to support its candidates.

The GOP presently has at least a decent chance of nominating a candidate conservative enough to attract working class voters. If it does, the Democrats will again need historic turnouts from minorities and college-age voters to be competitive nationally. It is not at all clear that any candidate other than Obama has that electoral power.

It isn’t even clear that Obama himself still has that draw. Obama’s last-minute campaign push for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in his political home base wasn’t enough to save Rahm from an historic run-off. Rahm was crushed in the very same minority precincts where Obama campaigned.

Rahm ultimately survived his run-off with a deluge of campaign spending and strong support from Republican voters, but, for Democrats, it was a clear warning shot that their activist and minority base wants far more change than the party is willing to deliver. Even attempting to deliver than change will further alienate the party from a large majority of the voting public.

Vincent Sheehan, who lost the South Carolina Governor’s race to Republican Nikki Haley, worries that recent party rhetoric reflects an “antagonism toward or a hostility toward the moderate elements of the Democratic Party.”

If self-described socialist, former activist organizer, Bernie Sanders is deemed to passive or even moderate for this new breed of progressive activists, then the long-nightmare of the Democrat Party is just beginning.

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading.....

A Speech to Win The GOP Nomination

The Republican Candidates in 2016.

“The Crown of France Was Lying In The Gutter. I Just Leaned Over and Picked It Up.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

Is there an actual Conservative left in America? Does anyone in the herd trolling for the 2016 GOP Nomination actually want to stand up against post-modern American Progressivism? Will someone, anyone stand up to the Paris Commune Left before they sodomize all that is decent? Literally.

One person can make this stop. One person can make these people back off. One person can end it now. They just have to fight back in a ruthless and punitive fashion. Let one candidate, just one candidate stand up in front of the GOP voters and say the following.

“Today, my fellow Americans. Today is the day the Special Snowflakes get melted with the white phosphorus. Today is the day that we cut the dole out and you can go read 2 Thessalonians 3:10 if you don’t like it. Folks, you can defend this flag right here. Or; you can get used to living under this one, orthat one.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I take my hat off to our enemies, The American Progressive. They sure have made me care. They have woken me up from my epistemological slumber and I’m as cranky as an old, curmudgeonly codger ever gets when he gets woken up an hour or two too early. They made me care and I’m running for the Presidency to make those sons of insect-sucking anteaters sorry they ever woke me the (expletive-deleted) up. “

“Yes the presstitutes, the Hollywoods, and the world-class swimmers in post-modern America’s lifestyle septic tank are all running me down. They think I’m a loathsome cross between Elmer Gantry and Gomer Pyle. The sorry misbreeds have this ½ right. I’m a simple man from a simple town and I don’t get the coruscating brilliance of glorifying sadistic and societally lethal deviance. I don’t get where others get off taking the money of the citizens and using those funds to bribe corporate scumbags and activists hoodlums not to shut down our workplaces or burn our major cities.”

“I just don’t get why anyone would trust the people who are in charge. I attend a simple old-fashion church that may soon be litigated out of existence under the 14th Amendment thanks to the suave and sophisticated Justice Anthony Kennedy. I get told silly, old-fashioned things like ‘You can’t expect lost people to behave as if they’ve been saved.’ And I’ll take that cornpone sermon and extend it a bit without loss of generality. You can’t expect lost people to wind up either happier or safer than those who are saved. You see it in Iraq where the homosexuals get thrown from the rooftops and the straight women get herded to the rape camps. You see it in Greece where the cash and the groceries are dwindling while the empty Marxists tell empty lies.”

“And my fellow Americans, I’ll tell you where else you can see it. You can see it on Puerto Rico, this morning. And you can see it in California, Illinois, Alabama and probably 47 other states tomorrow. Don’t kid yourselves. We are in the existential battle for tomorrow. Keynesianism has failed. Enforced multi-cultural diversity is merely a Trojan Horse for a coming Reign of Terror that would make Robespierre blush with envy. Globalism is the gateway for you to train that H1B Visa replacement who will force you out of your IT position 6 months before your benefits vest.”

“If you aren’t seeing it, you aren’t thinking. If you aren’t thinking than Jesus better help you because I, and everyone else you will listen to in this Primary Season cannot. The time has come to man that barricade. The time has come for the zero-hour charge. The time has come to stand for what we stand for or fall for what they’ll be jamming right through our every orifice. You can stand on America’s fort or you can die in some dirty ditch. Are.You.With.Me?”

The man who states a better and more articulate version of this will win America. It’s right there in the gutter. Let’s hope a better and more moral man than Napoleon picks this particular crown up.

Via: Red State

Continue Reading...