Today in Campaign 2016
As the stakes of the Democratic and Republican presidential contests rise higher and higher, the scale of the victories bringing the remaining candidates to those heights are, somewhat contradictorily, becoming smaller.
There has hardly been a better example of this phenomenon than today’s showdowns in the Mountain west, as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders squared off over a vanishingly small number of delegates in Wyoming and the Republican field jostled over 27 new delegates to be apportioned at the Colorado party convention.
Questions of “momentum” and “inevitability” have been tossed aside in the light of cold, hard math – and with delegate-rich state contests in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey on the horizon, today may have been a dress rehearsal for delegate battles that will require a TI-83 calculator to sort out.
Before you break down into fits of long division, however, here are the key takeaways from the campaign trail on this cold, windy Saturday in April:
- Vermont senator Bernie Sanders once again declared victory in a white, rural, Western caucus state, this time taking Wyoming by a smaller-than-expected margin over former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Early estimates indicated that the 14 delegates up for grabs today would be approximately evenly split, with the remaining six delegates to be pledged at the state Democratic convention in May.
- Meanwhile, at the Colorado state convention, members of the Rocky Mountain State Republicans are meeting to elect 13 delegates and 13 alternates to the national convention in Cleveland. With more than 600 candidates on the ballot, voting takes place by Scantron and state convention delegates bubble in circles next to the number of their choice. All three presidential campaigns are handing out sample ballots to ease the process, but organization problems abounded for Donald Trump, whose campaign put out sample ballots with wrong numbers. The campaign originally put out a sample ballot with wrong numbers for seven delegates. Once that was corrected, there were still four numbers wrong.
- At a campaign rally in the New York City borough of the Bronx this afternoon, Sanders highlighted policies that would positively impact racial minorities. “We’re gonna invest in our young people in jobs and education, not jails and incarceration!” Sanders said, to loud cheers and chants of “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” from the crowd.
- In keeping with his winning mood today, Sanders’ presidential campaign is claiming an updated pledged delegate total in a new email to supporters, saying that a state-by-state analysis of delegate totals “more accurately reflects the state of the race than many media reports”. The new delegate total, according to the campaign: 1,086 pledged delegates, an increase from the 1,030 pledged delegates estimated by the Associated Press.
- A full third of Republicans who support the party’s troubled billionaire frontrunner say that they would not support the party’s nominee if Trump is blocked from the nomination, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released this morning.
That’s it for today – check back soon for more up-to-the-minute updates from the campaign trail.
Clinton courts Latino voters
“My very first experience with Latinos, with Hispanics, I was about 11 years old,” Hillary Clinton said during a rally in Sunset Park, Brooklyn on Saturday that was billed as a Latino organizing event.
At the time, Clinton said, recounting a story she has shared before on the campaign trail, Chicago was surrounded by farmland. Clinton described how migrant farmworkers from Mexico would come to harvest the crops.
Through her church, Clinton said, she volunteered with a friend to babysit the children of the migrants while their parents and older siblings worked in the field. At the end of the day, a bus made its way down the long, dirt road leading to the shanties where the migrant workers stayed.
“When those little children saw that bus … they started running down the road,” Clinton said. “As the door of the bus opened and the parents were coming off, kids were throwing themselves into their parents’ arms. And I just stood there thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s what I used to do when I was a little kid when my father would come home. I would run and hold out my arms.’ And I thought: ‘These are people just like me, these are people who have the same values.’”
The crowd burst into applause. Clinton promised she would fight for comprehensive immigration reform in her first 100 days in office. She noted that her opponent, Bernie Sanders, had voted against a 2007 bill supported by the Democratic senator Ted Kennedy and the Republican senator John McCain, a bill she called the “best chance in the past” to pass immigration reform.
Democrats have long courted Latino voters in presidential elections, but this time the vote is expected to be especially consequential, as the Republican frontrunner has made building a wall on the border with Mexico the lynchpin of his campaign.
Clinton said she look forward to running against whoever emerges as the Republican nominee – Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.
“Both of them have really put anti-immigration statements at the core of their campaigns,” she said. “Donald Trump started his campaign calling immigrants rapists and criminals and he’s gone on from there. So this is an issue that I am committed to.”
Clinton was introduced by congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the US House of Representatives. She applauded the former secretary of state for doing “so much for women, for Latinos!”
Before Clinton arrived on stage, guests were treated to a performance by Puerto Rican singer Toby Love, who serenaded the crowd with the rhythmic bachata beat.
“We gotta get Hillary Clinton into that White House,” Love implored the crowd, adding: “I’m speaking to you as a Latino, as a Puerto Rican.”
Updated
A last despatch from Sarah Betancourt, who has been watching Bernie Sanders speak in Harlem, New York City this evening…
The historic Apollo Theater was packed with almost a thousand mostly local supporters, and a few undecided voters.
Under a large banner bearing the campaign slogan “A Future to Believe In”, Sanders held a community event with the former congresswoman Nina Turner, the entertainer and social justice figure Harry Belafonte, and Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, the man who was killed by police in Staten Island in July 2014.
Sanders focused his opening comments primarily toward former president Bill Clinton’s controversial comments toward Black Lives Matters protesters earlier this week in Pennsylvania.
Belafonte spoke heatedly against the prospect of another Clinton presidency. “We’ve been there, done that,” he said.
Sanders talked extensively about criminal justice reform and police brutality, and looped back to welfare reform of the 1990s, when the Clintons were in the White House. “Going after the most vulnerable for votes was unacceptable,” he said.
Sanders also let out a more personal side, speaking of the death of family members during the Holocaust.
Updated
More from Sarah Betancourt, who is in the audience at the Sanders event in Harlem, speaking to members of the audience…
Daniel Melendez is a 25-year-old barista at Starbucks, making $11.50 an hour, and a supporter of Bernie Sanders’ economic message. A student of biochemistry at Queens College, he is hoping to become an entrepreneur.
“I see myself engaging in the green economy,” he said, “or maybe doing research on cancer and immunology.”
Right now, he lives with his mother in Queens.
“My mom was a single mom and a preschool teacher. She knows what it’s like. She felt the effect of [former New York City mayor Michael] Bloomberg’s policies. I’m just very critical of establishment politics.”
Asked if he would consider Sanders to be a member of the establishment after so many years in Congress, Melendez said: “Absolutely not.”
He hoped the senator would clarify a question that is very important to him.
“I want to know how he is going to [achieve] a break-up of the big banks without hurting the pockets of the middle class people,” Melendez said.
Interviews with residents of Hillary Clinton’s adopted home town suggest that while she will garner most votes here on 19 April, writes the Guardian’s David Smith, and the email scandal is a non-issue, her husband remains a star whose light is difficult to eclipse.
Founded by Quakers in the 1730s, Chappaqua – derived from the Native Indian name Shepequa, meaning “a place where nothing is heard but the rustling of wind in the leaves” – sits in the wooded suburbs of Westchester County. It was previously home to Horace Greeley, the founder and first editor of the once mighty New York Herald Tribune and losing presidential candidate.
Chappaqua is unquestionably well off by American or world standards, and will do little to dispel critics’ portrayal of Hillary as an establishment figure. But the wealth does not ooze from every pore and is more understated than in Greenwich, just 13 miles from here in Connecticut, home to hedge-fund executives, Wall Street bankers and the Bush political dynasty.
Grace Bennett, publisher of Inside Chappaqua magazine, who has interviewed Hillary and travelled with her on an official trip to Africa, said: “It’s a caring town. Yes, there’s affluence here but you don’t have a lot of the ladies who lunch and play tennis. There’s a lot of intelligence running through it. It’s an extension of the city: a lot of people moved here from there.”
In an open letter to the Clintons published by the New York Times in 1999, Timothy Jack Ward wrote: “The friendliness here has an edge to it. Ours are reinvented personalities, hardened by jobs in Manhattan. However bucolic our little hamlet might appear, many people drive their lives the way they do their jumbo-size expeditions, with a peculiar aggression, a hyper-busyness, that takes some getting used to.”
Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Toby Love serenaded the crowd with the rhythmic bachata beat at Hillary Clinton’s Brooklyn rally.
Performing in front of a large American flag at Industry City, an open industrial space in the largely Hispanic neighborhood of Sunset Park, Love peppered his hits with shout outs to “Hillary” and paused to urge the crowd to vote for her in the state’s April 19 primary.
Swoon! @TheRealTobyLove serenades a somewhat unmoved crowd pic.twitter.com/rkzKG8QRHq
— Lauren Gambino (@LGamGam) April 9, 2016
“We gotta get Hillary Clinton into that White House,” Love told the crowd, adding, “I’m speaking to you as a Latino, as a Puerto Rican.”
Four dancers dressed in black hip-hop gear moved energetically behind but the crowd was mostly stoic. At the rally, a Latino organizing event, Clinton will speak directly to the challenges facing Latinos and immigrants. Though the crowd was diverse and heavily female, the rally seemed to draw as many – or likely more – plaid shirts than Latino supporters.
At the end of his performance, Love asked the crowd to put their hands together for his last song. They appeased the Bronx native and clapped along. Some even dared to sway a bit.
If current polls accurately measure voter behavior, Donald Trump is on his way to a median of 1,356 delegates at the conclusion of the Republican primary calendar – almost 120 more than the 1,237 he needs for a first-ballot victory at the national convention in Cleveland.
At least, that’s according to a meta-analysis of current polling from the Princeton Election Consortium, combining national leads with individual state leads in upcoming nominating contests, as well as factoring in congressional district-level rules.
In the back and forth battle to prove who has more New York street cred, Hillary Clinton swung by Junior’s for a slice of cheesecake before her Brooklyn rally on Saturday night.
Clinton was joined at the Flatbush location by US representative Hakeem Jeffries, New York state assemblyman Walter Mosely and New York City councilwoman Laurie Cumbo.
The former secretary of state ordered an “original” cheesecake served with strawberry and pineapple at the beloved New York restaurant chain, according to a pool report from the afternoon stop.
How’s the cheesecake, a reporter asked?
“I learned early on not to eat in front of all of you,” she replied smugly. Her compatriots laughed and clapped their hands.
“So, I’m sitting here just pining, pining for a bite!” she said.
Another reporter shouted a question about Bernie Sanders, who had not yet won the Wyoming primary at this point. Clinton brushed it aside.
Clinton: “Oh, I’m talking cheesecake. Cheesecake! Look at this fabulous cheesecake,” she said gesturing to the slice on the table in front her.
Wouldn't be a Brooklyn campaign stop without a visit to @JuniorsCheeseck. pic.twitter.com/4o4KPo16Aw
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 9, 2016
Then Cumbo told Clinton that she had helped so many people in her district. Clinton nodded graciously.
“You know, I was a Girl Scout. I was a Brownie and there’s a great song we used to sing in Brownies: Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold, and I also am particularly committed to helping …”
Before she finished, reporters were escorted out of the restaurant leaving them to forever wonder just who or what she is committed to helping.
Sarah Betancourt is in the audience at Bernie Sanders’ current New York event, a discussion of criminal justice issues at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She sends this dispatch…
Asha Lewis was jumping up and down like a Taylor Swift fan-girl. ‘I’m here to see Bernie Sanders,’ cried the 10-year old charter school student from Brooklyn. She is already a diehard supporter, but her mother, Monisha, was undecided.
“I’m here for the concert,” she said, grinning. “But I do want my daughter to get involved in community.” Monisha said that although she had seen growth from Sanders on issues important to her, she was hoping to hear more about everyday working people from both candidates.
“I want them to talk about people, not each other,” she said, to several nods of approval from bystanders. “I want to hear more about their visions.”
Florida governor Rick Scott got an earful at a Gainesville Starbucks on Tuesday, when a Florida voter read him the riot act over his decision not to expand Medicaid to low-income Floridians.
Now, after video of Scott being called an “asshole” and “an embarrassment to our state” went viral, his political action committee has released an attack ad on Cara Jennings, the woman who delivered the tirade. The 60-second ad, titled Latte Liberal Gets an Earful, attempts to counter the woman’s claims, particularly her criticism that Scott has failed to deliver jobs to the state.
After declaring that Jennings “clearly has a problem,” the ad claims that Scott has boosted the Gainesville area economy to the tune of 9,300 jobs.
“Who here has a great job?” the voiceover asks rhetorically. “Well, almost everybody - except those sitting around coffee shops demanding public assistance, surfing the internet and cursing at customers who come in.”
Jennings told the Sun-Sentinel that she was confused as to why the governor would release an attack ad on a private citizen.
“So I guess this means that he doesn’t want to meet me for coffee?” she asked.
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign has dropped a new advertisement produced by filmmaker Spike Lee.
Featuring a diverse cast of activists, the 30-second ad depicts Black Lives Matter supporters Harry Belafonte, Erica Garner, Shaun King and Linda Sarsour telling voters that minority communities have “a deeply vested interest” in Sanders’ platform.
“People of color have a deeply vested interest in what Bernie Sanders brings to us in this election,” Belafonte says. “People like Michael Brown, Sandra Bland and my father Eric Garner,” Garner continues, naming African-American men and women who have been killed by police.
“They’re not just hashtags and trending topics,” says King, an online activist who writes for the New York Daily News. “But these are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.”
Lee, who has been nominated for two Academy Awards, is perhaps best-known for directing Do the Right Thing, a 1989 comedic drama depicting racial tension in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn.
The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs has more on the organizational mishegas taking place at the Colorado Republican convention:
Alan Cobb, a top operative from the Donald Trump campaign, told the Guardian “our numbers were correct at the time of printing” and suggested the issue lay with the state party making constant revisions to the delegate order.
He noted though that “it’s unlikely to make any difference in the final result”. A state party spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Both John Kasich and Ted Cruz had every number on their respective slates correct and Cruz, who came to address the gathering in person, even had his delegate slate displayed behind on a big screen while on stage.
Furthermore, at a congressional district convention on Thursday, the Trump campaign handed out slate cards that featured two candidates who were not listed on the ballot.
Neither Kasich nor Trump attended the gathering in a state that has long been a stronghold for Cruz, a senator from Texas.
The Trump campaign has long been pessimistic about its chances in Colorado. The Kasich campaign has often promoted its delegates on an “open convention slate”, instead of using the Ohio governor’s name on its material.
In the seven congressional district conventions held in the state over the past week, Cruz won all 21 delegates at stake.
A full third of Republicans who support troubled billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump say that they would not support the party’s nominee if he is blocked from the nomination, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released this morning.
The numbers could spell electoral disaster for Republican leadership currently caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. A Trump nomination could scuttle the chances of down-ballot Republicans in Congress due to the candidate’s deep unpopularity among almost every demographic group, but denying the nomination to Trump, whose popularity among his followers is matched only by his unfavorables with everyone else, could incite his acolytes to stay at home.
According to the poll, 66% of Trump-supporting Republicans said that they will vote for the Republican candidate, regardless of who wins the nomination, while the remaining third said that they would either vote for a Democratic, vote for a third-party candidate or stay home entirely.
Bernie Sanders’ win in Wyoming isn’t nearly the blowout expected by his supporters - in fact, the state’s 14 pledged delegates will now likely be split down the middle, depending on the results of the Wyoming state convention in May.
A little nitty-gritty: Out of the 14 pledged delegates up for grabs in Wyoming, eight delegates are pledged in proportion to the support received in each of the state’s 23 counties, each of which held their own caucuses. The remaining six delegates will be pledged at the state Democratic convention in May in proportion to the support each of the two candidates receives there.
Of course, when discussing the smallest state in the Union by population, with a marginal delegate count, a split Wyoming delegation won’t make a massive difference in the gulf between Clinton’s lead and Sanders’ delegate count.
Bernie Sanders wins Wyoming Democratic caucus
As expected, the Associated Press has called the Wyoming Democratic caucus for Bernie Sanders. With 78.2% of precincts reporting, the Vermont senator/former secretary of state has garnered the support of 56.4% of the state’s delegates, to opponent Hillary Clinton’s 43.6%.
Although polling was nonexistent in the Cowboy State ahead of the caucus, the demographic profile of Wyoming - white, rural and Western - matches the profile of previous states wherein Sanders has been declared the victor, including Idaho, Nebraska and Kansas.
Given Clinton’s current delegate lead over Sanders (1,280 to 1,030, discounting superdelegates) a victory in today’s caucus bolsters the Sanders camp’s argument that the momentum is behind the Vermont senator. Sanders has now won seven nominating contests in a row, and the win in Wyoming bolsters his rationale to continue onward to more numerically important contests in New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut later this month.
In a district that Donald Trump won overwhelmingly in the Virginia primary - his strongest showing in the entire commonwealth - Ted Cruz has walked away with half of the delegate slate being sent to the Republican National Convention in July.
As I expected @va9gop. Kilgore and Labiosa (Cruz) and Davis (Trump) elected as delegates to the Republican National Convention.
— Greg Habeeb (@GregHabeeb) April 9, 2016
A young and multicultural New York crowd braved a light dusting of snow on Saturday afternoon to see Bernie Sanders speak at the Bronx Community College.
“I keep hearing that Bernie is only supported by white men,” said New York assemblyman Luis Sepulveda, who introduced the leftwing Democratic candidate, currently locked in a primary battle for this state with rival Hillary Clinton. “I see here all this beautiful mosaic of all walks of life.”
Sanders seemed to take up the theme, delivering a version of his stump speech that - while ranging over his usual panoply of issues - returned repeatedly to those of most concern to African American and Latino voters, pointing out that levels of child poverty were disproportionately high for those groups and promising immigration reform and a path to citizenship, key for many Hispanics. “If Congress does not do its job we’ll do it for them through use of the executive powers of the presidency,” he said, although Barack Obama’s attempts to use these powers in the field of immigration have been stymied by the courts.
Telling African American voters he was listening to them, the Vermont senator asked: “How does it happen that we can spend trillions on war in Iraq yet inner cities from one end of this country to another are falling apart?”
He slammed the black unemployment rate, private prisons and the war on drugs - “Drug addiction and substance abuse should be seen as a health issue and not a criminal issue” - and during his call for “pay equity for women workers, who should not be making 79c on the dollar,” he added: “African American and Latino women make much less than that. Women in this country want the whole damn dollar and that’s what we’re gonna do!”
Condemning “demagogues” such as Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for attempting to win by “dividing people up”, Sanders vowed: “We are not going to let Trump play that old and tired game. We are going to stand together. We are proud of the diversity of this country.”
New York votes on April 19 and Sanders was bullish about his chances.
“We are in striking distance here in New York. I think we have the momentum in this campaign. It will be a huge moment and we can do it.”
Twenty-year-old Oscar Salazar from Westchester, who was dressed in a striking sweatshirt covered with images of Sanders’ face, agreed - “big time”. “He’s already got momentum and he’s getting closer and closer,” he said.
Salazar (“you can call me the Bernie Boy”) supported Sanders primarily because “he wants to get money out of politics”, and called Clinton “a corrupt liar [who] flip-flops too much”.
Diana Finch of the Bronx took a similar view. Whereas with Sanders “his platform is the platform he has had his whole life long,” Clinton stuck too close to “the political zeitgeist as she sees it”.
But would she support her if the general election was Clinton v Trump? “I’d vote for her,” she said. “I’d campaign for her.”
But most seemed to hope it wouldn’t come to that.
“Tell your kids that you were on the right side of history,” actor Susan Sarandon told the crowd. “We’re in a revolution.”
Update: With 14 out of 23 precincts reporting in Wyoming, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has a 13-point lead in the Cowboy State, 56.3% to Hillary Clinton’s 43.7%.
As the results roll in Wyoming, Hillary Clinton is campaigning in her home state - while avoiding eating one of its signature foods in front of the press:
Clinton won't be eating cheesecake in front of the press: "I leaned early on not to eat in front of you." pic.twitter.com/o9ORDIEDkr
— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) April 9, 2016
Iowa is holding district conventions today and earlier indications there are that Ted Cruz will have a banner day in the Hawkeye State to partner with what is expected to be a delegate sweep in Colorado.
In Michigan, however, Cruz lost out in internal party wrangling as the Trump and Kasich campaigns came together to guarantee that they were well represented both in the state’s delegation as well as among the state’s representatives to the crucial internal party committees like the Rules Committee and the Credentials Committee.
Hillary Clinton’s early, unexpected victory in Laramie County, Wyoming, is being undercut by results coming in from less populated areas in the Cowboy State, according to journalists on the ground:
Sweetwater county second ballet results: Sanders- 254 Clinton-222 12-10 delegates. Wyoming Democratic Caucus
— Timmy Lew (@TimmyLew11) April 9, 2016
Campbell County elects:@HillaryClinton: 6@BernieSanders: 12#wyocaucus @The_News_Record
— Steel Brooks (@SteelBrooksGNR) April 9, 2016
#ParkCounty #WYCaucus 155 votes for @BernieSanders; 97 votes for @HillaryClinton #ParkCounty has 13 delegates: 5 for Hillary & 8 for Bernie.
— Renee Dechert (@sreneed) April 9, 2016
The results are, however, narrower than expected between the two candidates. With 34.7% of precincts reporting, Sanders leads Clinton 55.4% to 45.5% in Wyoming.
Updated
Donald Trump’s problem in Indiana, in one quotation:
If Satan had the lead on him and was one delegate away from being nominated as our candidate, and Donald Trump was the alternative, I might vote for Donald Trump.
According to a report from Politico, Republican leaders in the Hoosier State in charge of selecting 27 of the state’s delegates to the national convention are likely to shut Trump out entirely.
While another 27 delegates will be elected at a state committee meeting next week, and all 54 will be bound to the results of the state’s impending primary on May 3, where Trump is expected to mount a competitive race, they will be unbound in the event of a contested convention - giving Indiana Republican leadership a chance to engineer a mass delegation defection on subsequent ballots.
Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is claiming an updated pledged delegate total in a new email to supporters, saying that a state-by-state analysis of delegate totals “more accurately reflects the state of the race than many media reports.”
The new delegate total, according to the campaign: 1,086 pledged delegates, an increase from the 1,030 pledged delegates estimated by the Associated Press.
“Sen. Sanders won these recent contests by large and impressive margins,” Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager, said in a statement. “As a result, we have cut Secretary Clinton’s delegate lead by 101 since April 15, which amounts to one-third of her then-total margin. That dramatic gain leaves us only 214 delegates behind - a margin we can and fully intend to surpass by the conclusion of voting on June 14.”
“As we have pointed out since Iowa, the enthusiasm and commitment of Sen. Sanders’ supporters will enable us to add delegates to our total in many caucus states as the process moves from precinct to county and then to the final state and congressional district level,” Weaver said. “There is no better example than the state of Nevada, where last weekend Bernie Sanders gained four delegates at county caucuses with a decisive 55 to 45 percent victory in Clark County.”
Clinton has early lead as Democratic caucus in Wyoming closes
With early results out of Laramie County, Wyoming, the most populous county in the state, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has come out with a surprising boon: Of Laramie County’s 51 delegates, 26 will go to Clinton, while 25 will go to Sanders.
Clinton lost Laramie to then-senator Barack Obama by 23 points in 2008.
For about 12 minutes this week, Bill Clinton defended his presidency to protesters who accused him and his wife of harming black communities with their policies on crime and welfare, as well as their language about “super-predators”. “You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter,” Clinton told them, though protesters insisted that he contributed to the mass incarceration of black people and increases in poverty.
Were the protesters “trying to get good television”, as Clinton later said in a half-hearted apology? Or was Clinton not telling “the whole story”, as protesters claimed?
‘Because of that bill, we had a 25-year low in crime’
The law under scrutiny is the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which made sweeping changes in the US justice system, including tougher sentences and money for police officers and prisons.
Clinton is right that in 1995 crime rates fell, though he can’t take all the credit for a decline in crime that began before he took office. In 1995, the crime rate (defined as the total number of property and violent crimes per 100,000 people) fell from 5,374 to 5,275, a its lowest level in 10 years – not 25, as Clinton claimed on Thursday. Statistics and studies also show that crime had been falling since 1991, long before his crime bill was passed. Clinton’s claim that crime rates were immediately and dramatically affected by the law lacks support.
‘A 33-year low in the murder rate’
Clinton also credited the bill with lowering murder rates, specifically. Here again, there’s a similar obfuscation of statistics. In 1995, the murder rate was 8.2 per 100,000 US inhabitants, the lowest level since 1985 and not the 33-year low Clinton claimed.
These statistics vary little once you account for race. In 1995, 31.2 out of every 100,000 black Americans was a homicide victim – the lowest level since 1987 but still almost seven times higher than the white victimization rate. Those who are keen to focus on the issue of crime committed by African Americans against other African Americans should keep in mind that victims and offenders usually know each other, making intra-racial violent crime a general trend in the US. Black-on-black crime accounts for a similar percentage of all homicides as white-on-white crime.
‘The largest drop in African American poverty in history’
In 1996, Bill Clinton signed into law a contested welfare reform bill. Much like Clinton’s other claims on Thursday, his defense of it has some support. During Clinton’s presidency (1993-2001), black poverty rates did fall to historic lows. By 2000, the percentage of black Americans living in poverty had fallen to 22.5%, the lowest level since 1974. However, like the crime statistics mentioned above, the downward trend began in 1991, and the effect of the law was not so clear cut as to work for the general good of all African Americans. Single mothers benefited from the reform bill, for instance, but the number of Americans living in extreme poverty – a minority within the group living in poverty – more than doubled from 1996 to 2013.
Donald Trump's failing ground game in Colorado could boost Ted Cruz
At the Colorado state convention, Rocky Mountain State Republicans are meeting to elect 13 delegates and 13 alternates to the national convention in Cleveland.
With more than 600 candidates on the ballot, voting takes place by Scantron and state convention delegates bubble in circles next to the number of their choice. There are no names on the ballot. All three presidential campaigns are handing out sample ballots to ease the process. They provide a slate of names with the number to each candidate.
The problem for Trump campaign is that they are putting out sample ballots with wrong numbers. The campaign originally put out a sample ballot with wrong numbers for seven delegates. Once corrected, there were still four numbers wrong.
Corrected Trump sample ballot still has three wrong numbers pic.twitter.com/6EeS1rUDIY
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 9, 2016
Even worse: One of the four uncorrected errors would lead to Trump voters casting their ballots for a candidate pledge to support Ted Cruz. It’s yet another example of the Trump campaign, which only hired its current state director on Tuesday, struggling to organize in the state.
Bernie Sanders rallies in the Bronx
At a campaign rally in the New York City borough of the Bronx this afternoon, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders highlighted policies that would positively impact racial minorities.
“We’re gonna invest in our young people in jobs and education, not jails and incarceration!” Sanders said, to loud cheers and chants of “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” from the crowd.
“We are going to reform a very, very broke criminal justice system,” he continued. “I am tired and you are tired of seeing videos on television of unarmed people, often minorities, being shot.” Sanders cautioned that the vast majority of police officers are law-abiding citizens who face danger in their day-to-day work keeping American cities safe, “but when a police officer, like any other public official, breaks the law, that officer must be held accountable.”
Sanders also called the abolishment of for-profit prisons, telling the crowd that “corporations should not be making money by getting more people into jail - that’s wrong.”
With a few notable exceptions, Sanders has underperformed among African-American voters and Latino-heavy communities in primaries and caucuses, and still falls behind opponent Hillary Clinton in polling of those groups.
We know virtually everything about the presidential candidates, and as primary season presses on we’re gaining a better sense of their national electability. In addition to covering their campaigns, we want to know which issues matter most to you. Tell us and help shape our coverage.
Open contributions: Which election issue matters most to you?
Meanwhile, in a neighboring rectangular state, Texas senator Ted Cruz’s ground game in Colorado is poised win him a vast majority of delegates in the state’s Republican convention today, a possible window into the senator’s strategy for the the seemingly inevitable contested convention in Cleveland this summer.
Cruz has already won every delegate available in the district elections held over the past week in Colorado, and appears on the verge of shutting out opponent Donald Trump, whose organizational woes have contributed to delegate attrition even in states that he won handily, like Louisiana.
Case in point: The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs reports from the state convention that Trump’s campaign apparatus has bungled its ballots for pro-Trump delegates - at the Colorado state convention, attendees vote for delegates who support certain candidates, rather than candidates themselves - almost beyond belief.
Looking at the Trump sample ballot, they have the delegate numbers wrong for 7 different people there. Votes cast on scantrons here.
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 9, 2016
Of the 7 wrong numbers on the Trump sample ballot in CO, four lead to votes for other Trump delegates, two go to unpledged and one to Cruz
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 9, 2016
Also, Trump sample ballot misspells the names of two delegates in CO. One of whom also has the wrong number
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 9, 2016
Corrected Trump sample ballot still has three wrong numbers pic.twitter.com/6EeS1rUDIY
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 9, 2016
As Democrats in each of Wyoming’s 23 counties begin the caucus process, here’s a quick rundown of what’s at stake for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the Cowboy State.
Wyoming will send a scant 18 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this summer, of which only 14 will be selected by today’s caucus results. Given Clinton’s current delegate lead over Sanders (1,280 to 1,030, discounting) a victory in today’s caucus is less about math than “momentum.” Sanders has won the last six nominating contests in a row, and a win in Wyoming would give him another notch in his belt ahead of more numerically important contests in New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut later this month.
The demographics are good for Sanders: Wyoming, like many of the states in which he has claimed victory, is a rural, white, Western caucus state with a small but vocal Democratic minority. Additionally, Wyoming is a state that has not traditionally fallen behind Clinton: In 2008, then-senator Barack Obama defeated Clinton 61% to 38% in the state’s caucus.
An extension of his current winning streak has been high on Sanders’ to-do list - which might explain why he gave his victory speech after his success in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday in Laramie, Wyoming, a college town of 30,000 people.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton face off in Wyoming caucus
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Wyoming’s Democratic caucuses and Colorado Republican convention, contests in which Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz are trying to clear paths to the presidency with unorthodox campaigns.
Bernie Sanders, who has won six contests in a row and polls well in western states, is hoping to continue his string of victories ahead of the next primary, in New York. Although Wyoming has far fewer delegates than New York’s 291, a resounding defeat for Hillary Clinton there would play to Sanders’ argument that he is as electable as the Democratic frontrunner, who still has a huge lead in delegates.
Both Sanders and Clinton are holding competing events in New York City, and my colleague Lauren Gambino will report on their attempts to court the city’s diverse electorate. On Friday, Brooklyn welcomed its native son warmly, and Democrats in Buffalo heard Clinton turn her ire toward Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner.
Bill Clinton is still on the trail for his wife, though not without controversy. Data editor Mona Chalabi has fact-checked the former president’s defense of crime and welfare laws that he signed, and which protesters said are responsible for the mass incarceration and poverty of black Americans.
In Colorado, Ted Cruz continues to chip away at Trump’s lead in the delegates. Cruz’s well-organized campaign has outplayed Trump’s clumsy operation at nearly every turn in Denver, where local party members have far more control of the process than in open primary elections that have given Trump his lead.
My colleague Ben Jacobs is in Denver to report on Cruz’s creep toward the frontrunner, and Trump’s struggle to make his campaign functional on the ground. Scott Bixby will be here shortly to host their reporting and give live results from the caucuses and convention as they come in.
Updated
