An image from the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show is being shared on social media as a photograph of Bernie and Jane Sanders at a 1975 march in support of transgender equality.
The photograph’s actual subjects are Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon, with Tim Curry as “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania,” Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
Spotted outside Ted Cruz’s event in New Hampshire:
One of two anti Cruz protesters outside his event with Canadian flags. They refused to talk. pic.twitter.com/JQhbBRB8wK
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 5, 2016
I’m not saying that it rises to the level up Benghazi, I’m saying it’s the same kind of attitude.”
That’s one-time Republican presidential frontrunner Ben Carson, telling Buzzfeed that the antics Ted Cruz’s campaign got up to in Iowa are in the same vein as, well, whatever Dr. Carson thinks happened in Benghazi, Libya.
The Guardian’s Sam Levin has more on the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s endorsement of Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign:
The Las Vegas Review-Journal, now under the ownership of billionaire casino mogul and GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, has endorsed senator Marco Rubio in the presidential race.
The high-profile endorsement comes after months of speculation surrounding Adelson’s initially secretive purchase of Nevada’s largest newspaper, with the news organization’s own staff forced to investigate the identity of their new boss.
The endorsement published Friday afternoon includes a prominent disclaimer distancing Adelson from the decision: “The RJ met with Sen. Rubio on Oct. 9, two months before the announcement of the newspaper’s sale to the family of Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson. The Adelsons have detached themselves from our endorsement process, and our endorsement of Sen. Rubio does not represent the support of the family.”
That disclosure, however, is unlikely to quell speculation that Adelson had a hand in selecting Rubio in advance of the Republican caucus in Nevada on 23 February.
The timing of the sale and purchase of the Review-Journal as the 2016 presidential race was heating up sparked widespread rumors that Adelson was interested in using the paper to exert his influence over the race in Nevada, a key swing state.
Adelson donated more than $92m to conservative Super Pacs in an effort to help elect a Republican in the 2012 race. Adelson has interests in the state’s gaming and tourism industries as the principal owner of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation.
Rubio, meanwhile, has aggressively courted Adelson’s backing, having met with the billionaire several times in Las Vegas and often staying in close contact by phone.
Immediately after the purchase of the Review-Journal, Adelson was silent, leading staffers to demand on Twitter that the buyers disclose themselves. Reporters at the paper eventually revealed the new owner and Adelson himself published a page-two note saying: “It was always our intention to publicly announce our ownership.”
In a front-page editorial in December, the paper said it would not allow Adelson to skew coverage: “We will fight for your trust. Every. Single. Day. Even if our former owners and current operators don’t want us to.”
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Bernie Sanders accused the Republican Party of hypocrisy over their stance on abortion at a campaign event in New Hampshire today. The Republican candidates for president, he explained, claim to want less government intervention in the lives of voters, but when it comes to “a very, very personal decision that a woman has to make, they love government.”
After the Iowa caucuses, Ted Cruz’s campaign organisation has been accused of electoral dirty tricks.
Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager, has been linked to hardball political tactics before.
Roe, an astute strategist, is often described as Ted Cruz’s David Axelrod, after the adviser who helped guide Barack Obama to the White House. In a previous role, he was a consultant for Catherine Hanaway, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Missouri, when her potential opponent Tom Schweich killed himself last year.
Roe was linked to a campaign effort that constantly targeted Schweich personally. In April 2015, Roe told the Kansas City Star he paid $8,300 for a radio ad which said among other things that Democrats would “squash [Schweich] like the little bug that he is”.
Hanaway, Roe told the Star, “knew nothing” about the ad and “had a very aggressive conversation with me afterwards”.
Roe, who also told the paper he was saddened by Schweich’s death, has also been accused of sending staffers to go through rivals’ trash and implying that one rival candidate was a pornographer.
The controversy in Iowa came on caucus night, when Cruz supporters spread rumors – prompted by a CNN report that Carson would go to Florida after the caucuses for “a fresh change of clothes” – that Carson was dropping out of the race, and urged Carson supporters to instead back their man.
This effort included calls to Cruz precinct captains on caucus night, encouraging them to share the news with Carson supporters.
The resulting controversy prompted Cruz to apologize to Carson, who in turn held a strange press conference on Wednesday in Washington, at which he condemned Cruz without mentioning his name.
“Let me put it this way,” said Carson. “When there were things in my campaign I couldn’t agree with after doing an investigation, I made changes. I think that’s what a good leader does: if there are things going on that you don’t agree with, you need to make changes. If he agrees with it, he doesn’t need to make changes.”
Cruz’s links to such bare-knuckle tactics could, however, prove a plus among many Republican voters. There has long been discontent among the Republican base that Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008 held back from getting down and dirty against Barack Obama.
Many base GOP voters hope the party will nominate someone who would engage in “no holds barred” tactics. With Roe on board, and given the Cruz campaign’s aggressive push on caucus night, it seems clear that is not a complaint that will be levied against the Texas senator.
- In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here
The Las Vegas Review-Journal - the most widely circulated newspaper in second-in-the-nation caucus state Nevada - has endorsed Florida senator Marco Rubio’s campaign for the Republican nomination.
In and of itself, the endorsement wouldn’t amount to much more than the endorsement by a local paper of a candidate who performed better than expected in the Iowa caucuses, but given the Review-Journal’s new ownership, the editorial has drawn massive attention.
The newspaper was recently purchased for $140 million by Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO of casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp. and heavy Republican donor. The support of a newspaper whose editorial operations are coming under increasing scrutiny might indicate that Adelson himself has shifted his favor to Rubio.
Despite the speculation, the Review-Journal’s editorial board has declared in no uncertain terms that its ownership had nothing to do with the endorsement:
The RJ met with Sen. Rubio on Oct. 9, two months before the announcement of the newspaper’s sale to the family of Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson. The Adelsons have detached themselves from our endorsement process, and our endorsement of Sen. Rubio does not represent the support of the family.”
The reaction to the endorsement on social media has been... skeptical.
Bruises, reddened marks and bandaged body parts featured in nearly 200 images of US detainee abuse that the Pentagon was forced to release today, the result of a court battle that has lasted more than a decade.
While the American Civil Liberties Union – which has fought for the publication of the photos of Bush-era torture in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2003 – hailed the belated disclosure, it pledged to keep fighting for approximately 1,800 more images the Pentagon continues to withhold, which it believes documents far more graphic detainee torture.
The photos are part of a cache relevant to investigations of detainee abuse at two dozen US military sites around Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps Guantánamo Bay. Many showed detainees in states of undress having their bodies inspected, with rulers and coins held up for comparison and placement of injuries.
Updated
Got a minute? Marco Rubio gains on Trump – and everything else you need to know today from the campaign trail today.
Marcomentum
A trio of polls showed the Florida Republican moving into second place in New Hampshire behind Donald Trump. Rubio came third in Iowa – will he ever be first?
In the Iowa Democratic party’s chaotic attempt to report caucus results on Monday night, the results in at least one precinct were unilaterally changed by the party as it attempted to deal with the culmination of a rushed and imperfect process overseeing the first-in-the-nation nominating contest.
The shift of one delegate at a county convention level would not have significantly affected the ultimate outcome of the caucus, but rather, it raises questions about the Iowa Democratic party’s management of caucus night.
Ad break, Florida rivals edition. Marco Rubio’ friends hit Jeb Bush where it hurts: Americans who play knock-off Scrabble. He needs that bloc(k)!
Pro Rubio superPAC running anti-Jeb! ad on Words a With Friends here in NH
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 5, 2016
And Jeb fires back with Rubio’s newest surrogate, former candidate Rick Santorum, being unable to list off any of the senator’s accomplishments.
NB: Alan Yuhas has signed off and Scott Bixby is now hosting the blog.
Updated
A glance at the latest polling numbers from New Hampshire, by data editor Mona Chalabi.
With the New Hampshire primary just three days away, a poll from CNN and WMUR published this morning is particularly interesting. It’s based on interviews with 837 adults in New Hampshire before the Iowa Caucuses, and then with 556 adults after the caucuses. Not all of those individuals said they planned to vote in either primary and the margin of error on these numbers is over five percentage points – in other words, be cautious interpreting these numbers!
The poll suggests that Sanders hasn’t been harmed by his very narrow loss in Iowa. The Senator could win 61% of support in New Hampshire while Clinton is backed by just 30% of possible voters. Those numbers are largely consistent with the averages Real Clear Politics creates across dozens polls which also suggest that Sanders has a 31-point lead.
Another poll from NBC/WSJ/Marist poll published yesterday tells a slightly different story. The 2,551 adults they interviewed on 2-3 February gave Sanders a 20-point lead on Clinton. Finally, a survey from the Lowell Center for Public Opinion suggests that the race is even tighter, with just 15 points between the two Democratic candidates.
Among Republicans, polls published since the Iowa caucus suggest a slight dip in support to Donald Trump but not enough to make a dent in his considerable lead in the state. An average of all polls currently suggests Trump is 17 points ahead of his closest rival Marco Rubio (who overtook Ted Cruz two days ago - a trend that might yet be reversed).
Gilmore mania on the trail
My colleague Adam Gabbatt has spent a day with Jim Gilmore, meeting voters at a diner and a gun range. Yes, that very same Jim Gilmore, the famed former Virginia governor and counter-intelligence officer who won 12 votes – count ‘em, 12 – in Iowa. Never heard of him? That won’t stop Jim Gilmore.
It’s 8.50am on the last Thursday before the New Hampshire primary, and I’ve travelled to Rindge, a tiny town in the south-west New Hampshire wilderness. I’m there to spend the day with a Republican presidential candidate: Jim Gilmore.
Later on we will visit a shooting range, where he has promised to show me how to fire a gun. But the first stop is at the Hometown Diner, where Gilmore has planned a “retail stop”, to talk with voters one to one.
Arriving at the diner, I’m not sure if I am at the right place. There are no Gilmore signs. No satellite trucks. No other members of the press. There are precisely six people in the diner, eating breakfast and drinking coffee.
“Hi,” I say, to a woman behind the counter. “Is Jim Gilmore hosting an event here?”
“Who?”
“Jim Gilmore. He’s … err … running for president.”
Bonnie, the owner of the diner, is summoned to the counter. I repeat the question.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is.”
This is a problem. Gilmore launched his presidential bid last July. He has been running for the White House for six months. In that time, he has concentrated almost exclusively on New Hampshire.
Jim Gilmore is a former governor of Virginia. He is also a former counter-intelligence agent in the US military. He is 66 years old, is married to Roxane and has two grown children who work in Washington, DC.
His platform is based around “three principle themes”.
“Number one,” he says, “foreign policy. Number two: veteran’s issues. Number three: the second amendment. Gun rights.”
Gilmore says there actually is a fourth theme – “the economy” – but he says he talks about that less.
“I have actually made that a signature issue for the last two years but I just think people are more interested in the first three right now.”
‘I might have gotten zero, I might have gotten one’
We meet three days after the Iowa caucus. Texas senator Ted Cruz won it, with 51,666 votes. Donald Trump, who led in Iowa polls, has been humiliated, coming in second with 45,427. Marco Rubio has enjoyed a last-minute surge to finish third, with 43,165.
Jim Gilmore got 12 votes. He did not win 12 precincts, or win 12 delegates. In a state of 3.1 million people, where 186,000 voted in the Republican caucus, 12 people voted for him.
What’s interesting is that Gilmore says he doesn’t mind.
“I wasn’t campaigning there,” he tells me. “So I might have gotten zero, I might have gotten one, I might have gotten 12. It didn’t matter because I wasn’t campaigning there.
“If we had campaigned there we would have done better than 12 votes. But I wasn’t trying to do that.”
‘Ooh, move voters back here’
When he arrives at the Hometown Diner, Gilmore works the room in earnest. He certainly looks like leadership material. He’s straight-backed and broad-shouldered, dressed well in dark blue pinstripe suit, pristine white shirt, red tie and shiny black loafers with tassles. But there is no disguising the fact that there are very few people there, and that none of them have come to see him.
“Hi folks, I’m Jim Gilmore, I’m running for president,” he says to a middle-aged couple eating eggs. “Y’all voters in New Hampshire?”
They are not. Gilmore disengages himself from the conversation with impressive speed. He spins 180 degrees and addresses two people in the next booth.
“Y’all voters in New Hampshire?” he asks the couple in the next booth. They are. But they don’t seem that interested in Gilmore’s pitch that he is a veteran and that he supports gun rights.
It turns out there’s another seating area at the back of the diner.
“Ooh, there’s more voters back here,” Gilmore says.
“We’ve seen you on television!” says an elderly woman.
Gilmore tells her he is on the board of the National Rifle Association.
“Well, he’s a lifelong member,” the woman says, pointing at her husband.
Gilmore tells a young man at the next table that he is the only veteran in the race. He will say this many times during the day.
“Well, I think that should be a requirement,” the man says.
No one commits to vote for Gilmore, but there’s evidence that his message has appeal. A success.
You can read the rest of Adam’s account from the front lines of Gilmore-mania down through the link below. He follows some elderly women home, sees a nerd, shoots guns with Jim Gilmore, and is terrified. It’s worth the click.
Updated
“Live free or die,” is the state motto getting recited by every candidate and their mother (seriously) this week, as they all try to persuade voters to their cause.
But one candidate and his fiery, erumpent mane loom over the race, even from New York. What does New Hampshire’s motto mean to Donald Trump?
It means so much to so many people. All over the world they use that experssion. It means liberty. It means freedom. It means free enterprise. It means safety and security. It means borders.
“What a great slogan. Congratulations, New Hampshire. Wonderful job.”
Updated
Donald Trump, though absent from the trail today because of snow, has never strayed far from the heart of Republican politics this campaign season.
He says he’s got no problem with showing up for the next Republican debate, even though host Fox News will include Megyn Kelly, the moderator whose incisive questions so irked him that he skipped the debate right before the Iowa caucuses.
“I’ll be there,” Trump told Newsmax on Friday. “I have no objection to being there. And that had nothing to do with Megyn Kelly, the fact that I went out on that last one. It had to do with a memo sent out by Fox that was a little taunting.”
Hillary Clinton has also hit the road in snowy New Hampshire, shadowed by a flock of reporters from around the US. She’s got Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan in her corner, too.
Per the AP’s Lisa Lerer:
"When folks talk about a revolution, the revolution is electing the first woman president of the united states," says Sen. Stabenow in NH.
— Lisa Lerer (@llerer) February 5, 2016
She’s pitching young people in this speech, Mother Jones’ Timothy Murphy tweets. It’s an echo of a line she made in the debate on Thursday night: that young people should be comforted by her commitment to hear Bernie Sanders’ ideas and counsel, if not to follow them word for word.
Hillary now has a line in her speech where she addresses millenials who back Bernie--reiterates pledge to call Sanders for advice as nominee
— DENALI (@timothypmurphy) February 5, 2016
“I want you to know, you may not be supporting me, but I am supporting you,” the Times Amy Chozick quote-tweets Clinton. “We need to keep our eye on the November election.”
Clinton has argued hard in recent weeks that she’s the more viable candidate against a Republican in the general election, and in the debate Thursday night framed Sanders as a dreamer, rather than a doer.
Lineup of power women surrogates for @HillaryClinton in NH today. @SenGillibrand says she has a "heart of gold." pic.twitter.com/W7QqtlOUoY
— Amy Chozick (@amychozick) February 5, 2016
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Sanders to appear on SNL
The Guardian can confirm: Bernie Sanders plans to appear on Saturday Night Live this weekend.
His campaign manager told reporters by the bus that Sanders will be in New York and is expecting a call from the comedy show.
Larry David is hosting … apparently the campaign enjoys David’s impression of the senator as much as David enjoys doing the impersonating.
Updated
DC bureau chief is on the Sanders bus as the snow heaps down on all the campaign’s … except Donald Trump’s. The billionaire retreated to his Manhattan home for the night, and got stuck in New York when the storm hit New Hampshire.
Trump may have bailed but Vermonters made of sterner stuff. This is #berniebus reversing uphill from blocked bridge. pic.twitter.com/Xn3g03UK7Y
— Dan Roberts (@RobertsDan) February 5, 2016
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Dating app Tinder has banned two supporters of Bernie Sanders for campaigning for him instead of looking for a date, Reuters reports.
Two women, one from Iowa and the other from New Jersey, confirmed to Reuters on Friday that they received notices from Tinder in the previous 24 hours that their accounts were locked because they had been reported too many times for peppering men on the site with messages promoting Sanders’ candidacy.
Robyn Gedrich, 23, said she sent messages to 60 people a day for the past two weeks trying to convince them to support Sanders.
“Do you feel the bern?” her message to other Tinder users read, parroting a Sanders campaign slogan. “Please text WORK to 82623 for me. Thanks.”
The text would subscribe the user to campaign updates and information about how to get involved. Gedrich has been unable to sign back into Tinder since logging off on Thursday.
Haley Lent, a 22-year-old, married photographer from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told Reuters in a Twitter message that she also got locked out of the app on Thursday night after sending messages trying to convince people to vote for Sanders the previous night.
Lent said she talked to 50 to 100 people on the app. “I would ask them if they were going to vote in their upcoming primaries,” she said. “If they said no or were on the fence, I would try to talk to them and persuade them to vote.”
Tinder didn’t immediately respond for comment. Gedrich said she got 300 users to reply, some of whom had questions, others who thought she was a bot. None of her matches resulted in an actual date, she said.
Checking in with the Republicans. Trump says there’s a big storm. Tremendous snow. Event postponed. Bad!
Big storm in New Hampshire. Moved my event to Monday. Will be there next four days.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2016
John Ellis Bush pursues elderly voters with his mom.
Mom’s prediction on who’s going to win #FITN:https://t.co/6c8fOAHHbN
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) February 5, 2016
Chris Christie is running weird Twitter attack ads … maybe he’s thinking about that Springsteen concert he went to last night.
For your afternoon playlist we have a couple of @marcorubio classics from the album "Scripted". pic.twitter.com/STLD5MS3NS
— Chris Christie (@ChrisChristie) February 5, 2016
And John Kasich is inviting people to come see him and Arnold “I’m surrounded by bad impressions of a guttural Austrian accent”. Schwarzenegger tonight.
The presiding governor of Ohio and the former governor of California will be … fighting off undocumented aliens? Terminating debt? It’s not clear but you can bet the jokes will be bad.
RSVP Now! Join @Schwarzenegger & @JohnKasich for a live Tele-Town Hall TONIGHT at 8:15PM EST https://t.co/lHjw77qv9n pic.twitter.com/Kt06tHmj6B
— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) February 5, 2016
You can see Kasich holding an umbrella for Arnold here.
Updated
DC bureau chief Dan Roberts, in attendance at the emotional debate between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton Thursday night, stopped by WNYC’s Brian Lehrer to share his thoughts on why the match-up was so different from previous, more polite clashes.
Dan jumps in about six minutes in, noting that Sanders is the frontrunner in New Hampshire – and that Clinton’s strategy was much more aggressive than in the past.
Data editor Mona Chalabi breaks what Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy stumble during last night’s Democratic debate might mean for his standing with voters.
In the last Democratic debate before the New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton went on the attack for rival candidate Bernie Sanders. His weak spot: foreign policy. That could yet prove a fatal vulnerability, given that many voters say they care a great deal about America’s role in the world.
The Vermont senator, who polls predict will easily win New Hampshire next week, appeared out of his depth when pressed about how a Sanders administration would handle foreign policy issues. Two particular stumbles stand out from last night’s debate.
First, when asked about the presence of US ground troops in Afghanistan, Sanders replied: “we can’t continue to do it alone” (America isn’t alone in Afghanistan where the NATO coalition is still present, Sanders’ answer is far more relevant to US troops in Iraq).
Second, when asked whether North Korea, Iran or Russia pose the greatest threat to the US, Sanders said Isis. Pressed further, Sanders said North Korea, he explained: “because it is such an isolated country run by a handful of dictators, or maybe just one”.
Clinton’s vote for the Iraq war 14 years ago could also leave her vulnerable, but the former Secretary of State was quick to shift the focus back towards Sanders’ inexperience. “When New Hampshire voters go on Tuesday to cast your vote, you are voting both for a president and a commander in chief.”
But does foreign policy even matter to those who were watching the debate and making up their minds?
The short answer is a yes. Foreign policy might even be the defining issue of this election, if public polling from Pew Research Center is anything to go by. When US adults were asked about the most important issues facing the country on the eve of the 2012 election, back in December 2011, 55% mentioned economic concerns and only 6% mentioned foreign affairs. When Pew offered the same options to respondents in December 2015, only 23% chose economic concerns, compared while 32% said foreign affairs.
More specifically, terrorism is a growing concern. In December 2014, just 1% of respondents said terrorism was the most important issue facing the country – a year later, that had risen to 18%, likely because of massacres in Paris in November and in San Bernardino, California, in December. Whether that interest hold through the next 10 months is an open question.
There are clear partisan divides on these issues, too. Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say that Iran’s nuclear program, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and China’s power are top threats to national security. By contrast, Democrats are almost as likely to consider global climate change a national threat alongside Isis.
Unless Sanders can build confidence in his ability to handle foreign policy – or convince Democrats that the economic issues are the most pressing issue facing the country – his efforts to reach the White House may face more trouble like what he saw in the debate.
Updated
Dubya ad endorses Jeb
And that’s it. “Politics and egg” convenes.
Donald Trump has cancelled the 12.30pm rally he scheduled.
Here’s George W Bush, back from the past to endorse his brother Jeb, in what’s probably his first political ad since he went into hiding and learned to paint.
Updated
Sanders is talking about “moose being infested with these ticks, draining the blood out of them, which is horrible, just one manifestation of climate change”.
Someone asked about transitioning to biofuels, but your blogger must confess that he missed how Sanders pulled off a segue to moose ticks.
Back to energy: “We can do this, this is not rocket science. We know what good windows, good insulation can do.”
We don’t look at our part of the world as having great solar exposure but actually we are not that different than Germany, we can do it. The cost of solar panels is plummeting … I think climate change is one of the great crises facing our planet and we have got to be extremely, extremely aggressive in taking on the fossil fuel industry and transforming our energy.
Sanders coughs a bit, drinks some water. Next question is about private vs public college tuition. Sanders says he’ll help lower costs for private schools too.
Updated
“Here we are in 2016. We live in a wonderful, extraordinary country,” Sanders says, finally reaching some kind of conclusion. But there’s more that needs to be done.
No president can do it alone, we need the involvement of [all] people to stand up and help transform this country.”
He drinks some water. He’s going to take questions. Everyone must’ve finished their breakfast an hour ago. He’s asked about drug addiction.
You just cannot throw these drugs out. … People are getting ahold of these drugs. Someone fairly close to me. she was in pain. Started taking the opiates. Absolutely became addicted.
He says pharmaceutical companies will have to start looking at the drugs they’re making, doctors will have to stop over-prescribing opioids, and, the US will have to stop treating substance abuse and addiction “not as a criminal issue but as a medical issue”.
Updated
Sanders links science denial to campaign donors
“Climate change is real. Climate change is caused by human activity,” Sanders says, raising an issue that was neglected in the latest Democratic debate. Climate change is already doing harm to our country and the world.
“We’ve got a short opportunity to transform our energy,” he says
The planet we will be leaving our children and our grandchildren will be increasingly unhealthy. Now what is interesting about this debate is that the scientific communitiy is virtually unanimous
He makes it personal for New England: “By the end of this century this planet could be five to 10 degrees warmer than it is today. That Vermont and New Hampshire could have climates that are similar to Georgia.
And we all know what that means. It means more floods, more droughts, more rising sea levels, the acidification of oceans, … it means more international conflict as people fight over limited natural resources. That’s what we are looking at and that is a tragedy.”
He says he’ll work with China, Russia and the whole world to deal with climate change. And then he notes that Republican candidates have tried hard to avoid talking about climate change at all.
“Are the Republican candidates dummies? No,” he says. “We disagree, to be sure, but they don’t go around attacking cancer researchers. … How does it happen that on this issue they deny science?
It’s about money, Sanders says. “They lose their campaign, the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel … That is just one example of the corrupting impact that campaign money plays on our public policy.”
(Not all the Republican candidates deny climate science; several agreed in a symbolic vote that climate change is real. Most, however, say they don’t buy human activity causes change, and last December Ted Cruz staged a hearing, with a Canadian jazz vocalist, that attempted to discredit climate science.)
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He says he wouldn’t nominate anyone to the supreme court unless he or she is on his side about the rules of campaign finance.
“No nominee of mine will get that position unless he or she makes it publicly clear, crystal clear, that they would vote to overturn Citizens United”
The supreme court hasn’t always been so fraught – and justices’ politics haven’t always mattered this much, and still don’t, to a degree, on the court. Earlier this week chief justice John Roberts lamented how political feuds had tainted coverage of his court.
“In fact, our ruling is that whoever does get to decide this or that is allowed to do it, and that it’s not unconstitutional, that it’s consistent with the law,” he told a law school audience in Boston. “But we often have no policy views on the matter at all, and that’s an important distinction.”
Nor does political acrimony change the bonds between the justices, he added, even when antipodes like Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader-Ginsburg sit on the same bench. The Post wrote up Roberts’ speech, if you’d like to read more.
Sanders is rambling, but he’s getting into it. He’s talking about the revolving door that links Goldman Sachs and government, noting how top executive have landed jobs in presidents’ cabinets and at the top of the Federal Reserve.
That’s political power, he says, even as Goldman Sachs paid a $5bn settlement with the government. “How many Wall Street exeuctives will have a police record for destroying the lives of so many Americans?”
He contrasts that story with that of a young man who gets caught with a small amount of marijuana and ends up with a record at minimum, if not also serving some time in jail.
“Criminal justice means justice. It means that if you are poor, if you are wealthy or powerful, you need to be treated the same under the laws of the United States of America.”
He is indefatigable. The small, polite crowd applauds when he reaches the heart of each of his stump points, but the senator powers on.
“I love democracy, I love debate, but I do not love the situation we have today where billionaires can buy elections.”
He goes on to decry the Koch brothers and their $900m spending pledge to support conservative candidates in 2016. “It is undermining American democracy.”
Updated
Sanders says that over the last year he’s seen a lot of frustration and anger in Americans, over his favorite theme: “the issue of wealth and power that dictates what happens in America”.
When people look at Wall Street what they see is a rigged economy, what they see is a corrupt finance system, and what they see is a broken criminal justice system. All wrapped up in Wall Street.
He says he was right and Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Fed, was wrong. Sanders spins out the story of how financial firms demanded that DC “get government off our backs” so that they could reinvigorate the economy with their creativity.
They went out and did their thing. And what a thing it was.
He talks about the financial collapse, and how the big banks came to Washington – he says they’re the same people who want to cut social security and Medicare – and demanded a bailout from the government.
“Turns out the three out of the four largest banks are bigger than they were when we bailed them out.”
Sanders warns that on its current course the US will have to bail out the banks again, and should re-enact Glass-Steagal banking rules and break up the biggest banks.
“What I want to see is a financial system that is not an island unto itself,” he says, and whose sole intent is to make money for itself.
I want to see banking become boring again. Remember boring banking? Small business goes to get a loan? … Helps people buy homes?
He saves some quiet anger for the Republicans, calling their philosophy of small government alongside “family values” a basket of contradictions.
They may want to abolish the IRS and EPA, he says, out of concern for government making decisions in the lives of Americans, but “somehow when it comes to a very, very personal decision that a woman has to make, they love government.
They want the state and the federal government to make that decision … that is hypocrisy, that is wrong.”
He turns the pro-reproductive rights argument into one for paid family and medical leave, and is upfront that it will cost the average American a tax of $1.60 a week. (About $83 a year.)
Sanders goes on to his stump speech call for reform of the criminal justice system, noting that the US has more people incarcerated than any other country in the world.
He says he’s glad to note that Republicans are on board with reform – he doesn’t mention that even the Koch brothers have joined the push to reduce prison populations and change how police and prosecutors handle minor crimes. That might come up at a hearing led by Republicans next week on the issue.
From here he segues into infrastructure investment, saying his plan would create 13 million new jobs. “Infrastructure does not get better if you don’t invest in it. It doesn’t. It just gets worst.”
He talks about research by the Society for Civil Engineers, cracking: “what a sexy name for those guys.”
He wants a trillion dollar investment: “How do we pay for it? Well as some of you know there’s a large loophole, a large corporate loophole, that allows large multinational corporations to stash their money in the Cayman Islands.”
Close the loophole, he says.
Today's NH forecast: Bernie Blizzard! pic.twitter.com/CGlGGZBDA7
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) February 5, 2016
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The senator says that one of the good points of running a presidential campaign was being able to force inconvenient conversations: to “get it outside of the soap opera and the baseball game.”
The good news and it is very good news. When President Bush left office, we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. Everybody remembers that. … For those people concerned about deficits, we ran up that year the largest … [more than $1tn].
There was real fear that you could put a debit card in an ATM and nothing would come out, he says.
But he segues into a discussion of real unemployment, including the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve stopped looking for work in the years of struggle after the 2008 financial crisis.
Then he says that unemployment for young people is staggering, especially for people without college degrees and African Americans and Hispanic people.
“That is a crisis but don’t you think it’s a little bit amazing that nobody talks about this?”
Sanders chooses the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, as an example of what he calls “the rigged economy”.
“The Walton family is the major recipient of welfare in America,” he says. while their employees are “on medicaid, on food-stamps or on subsidized housing - which you are paying for with your taxes.”
He invokes senator Elizabeth Warren, of neighboring Massachusetts, and continues:
A rigged economy is when the middle class of this country pays taxes to subsidize the wealthiest family in this country because the wealthiest family in this country is paying [benefits and wages] that are too low.
“Tell me why in the year 2016,” he goes on, “so many people in New Hampshire, and so many people in Vermont, should be working not one job but two jobs and three jobs, trying to cobble together some income.
“The answer is, of course, wages are too low.” He gets applause for saying the US needs to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
To my mind people working 40 hours a week or more should not be living in poverty and too many of them are.”
Sanders speaks in Manchester
Bernie Sanders takes the stage in Manchester, New Hampshire. He remembers the start of his campaign “on a beautiful day in Burlington”, when “a lot of media pundits were commenting on my hair, on my clothes”.
A lot has changed in the last nine months. And I think the reason for that is because we are discussing issues that for a variety of reasons are not often discussed in our country.
He says his campaign is “tapping into a feeling of ordinary Americans, that there is something profoundly wrong with a government that seems, every day, to be deeply concerned with the interests of the wealthy and powerful, but somehow ignores working people and the middle class, and seems to pay not attention at all to poverty.”
Sanders seems subdued, not his usual fiery self. But he’s building up to more familiar levels of Brooklyn indignation as he speaks to the room of breakfast diners.
No president, not Bernie Sanders or anybody else, can bring about the changes we need in this country alone. That what needs to happen is we need what I call a political revolution. Which means that millions of people who have given up on the political process, that believe that their vote doesn’t matter …
The media is in part to blame, he says, for making Americans cynical about politics. “Media to a significant degree sees politics as a football game or a soap opera,” he says.
Sanders counters that he sees democratic politics as more akin to going to your doctor. “You say doc what’s wrong with me, what’s the diagnosis, and how do I get better?”
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Still waiting on Bernie Sanders to speak at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, where campaign reporters are getting a taste of New England in February. This tweet from the Times’ Jonathan Martin.
Looking a lot like...the NH primary pic.twitter.com/bbTfoBSEZ0
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) February 5, 2016
Ben Carson, the Republican candidate and retired neurosurgeon who’s won popular support from many evangelicals, has turned all his ire toward Ted Cruz, whose campaign falsely told Iowans that Carson had dropped out of the race.
Carson’s campaign has uploaded voicemails with the message on YouTube, as a de facto attack ad on Cruz. The Texas senator has apologized for the maneuver, but his enemies remain outraged by it. Donald Trump has accused Cruz of fraud, and Iowa governor Terry Branstad threatened “repercussions” for the “unethical and unfair” tactic.
Cruz won with 26% of the vote; Carson came in fourth, with about 9.3%, behind Donald Trump’s 24% and Marco Rubio’s 23%.
At a press conference on Wednesday Carson refused even to say Cruz’s name, only suggesting that the senator’s actions were hardly Christian and spoke for themselves.
Here’s what a Cruz staffer told an Iowan precinct captain, per the recording:
… from the Ted Cruz campaign calling because you’re a precinct captain, and it has just been announced that Ben Carson is taking a leave of absence from the campaign trail, so it’s very important that you tell any Ben Carson voters that for tonight that you not to waste a vote on Ben Carson and vote for Ted Cruz. …
All right? Thank you. Bye.
There’s a second uploaded voicemail here.
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The Clinton campaign has a message to Bernie Sanders – and Iowa’s leading newspaper – get over it. Lauren Gambino reports from wintry New Hampshire the day after Clinton and Sanders clashed in person.
Note to the Sanders campaign: Hillary won Iowa. End of Story.
So writes Matt Paul, the Iowa state director for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in a Medium post published on Friday morning.
In the post, Clinton’s campaign blasts Bernie Sanders’s campaign for peddling “conspiracy theories” about the results of the Iowa caucuses, which Clinton won by an extremely narrow margin.
“There’s been even more bluster than usual from the Sanders campaign, this time in an effort to disqualify Hillary Clinton’s historic victory in Monday night’s Iowa caucus.
“Disparaging good news for Hillary Clinton has become a pattern for the Sanders camp. If you support someone else? You’re dismissed as part of the ‘establishment,’ unless of course they want to claim your support in ads anyways. If a process doesn’t go their way? It’s invalid or flawed or they blame the Iowans who ran it.”
Sanders has not yet challenged the result but his team has asked precinct captains around the state to verify every official count. On Thursday, the The Des Moines Register editorial board, which endorsed Clinton, called for an audit of the final numbers.
The fire in last night’s Democratic debate showed Clinton’s campaign hadn’t anticipated such a narrow victory, and such a strong challenge by senator Sanders.
New Hampshire wakes up to a snowy campaign trail. Bernie Sanders is first up this Friday morning with a “politics and eggs breakfast” in Manchester.
Made it through the snow to a Kasich event in Atkinson, NH. Still waiting for @bluestein pic.twitter.com/Lh1HHZ0Oo0
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) February 5, 2016
Braving the elements to provide this morning's 10:00 @BernieSanders Politics and Eggs event. @nhiop @cspan pic.twitter.com/iT1pKMObTr
— C-Spanner (@dallaswhill) February 5, 2016
Who won the final pre-New Hampshire debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders? Richard Wolffe writes about the highs, lows and draws for the candidates.
For once, a televised political debate lived up to its breathless hype. The first head-to-head debate of the 2016 election cycle on Thursday night was a spirited, direct exchange of personal attacks, policy differences and at times, plain old agreement between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Both candidates seemed unusually well-prepared for combat. Bernie Sanders had combed his normally unruly hair, in perhaps the clearest sign that he is the runaway favorite in New Hampshire. He also sported an unidentifiable lapel pin: for an anti-establishment candidate, it was an unusually establishmentarian sartorial statement.
Clinton’s preparation was of an entirely different kind: she and her campaign executed several well-planned attacks and counter-attacks on some of Sanders’ best-used debate lines.
In her most effective attack, she pivoted away from her own weak spots on Wall Street to a piece of opposition research on Sanders’ voting record: he voted twice to deregulate derivatives, which had a far more direct impact on the financial collapse of 2008 than the unwinding of Glass-Steagall separation of traditional and investment banking that Sanders tends to harp on in speeches and debates. Strangely, Sanders let the attack pass him by without comment.
This was a debate about definitions: about what it means to be “progressive” and “moderate”, and what and whom the candidates represent. It may even turn out to be a defining debate in what promises to be a bitterly contested – and protracted – primary contest.
Clinton called herself “a progressive who gets things done” and her opponent – by implication – as someone who couldn’t get anything done. “I am not making promises I cannot keep,” she said with a sweet smile.
Within minutes of portraying her opponent as a candidate limited by a myopic focus on income inequality and Wall Street, Clinton was back painting him as a hopeless dreamer.
Still, while under sustained attack – from both Sanders and the MSNBC debate moderators – Clinton conceded that she had responded poorly to questions about the speaking fees she had earned from Wall Street.
“I may not have done the job I should have, explaining my record,” said Clinton, in a tortuous fashion. “I did go on the speaking circuit.”
Pushed repeatedly to expand on his foreign policy, Sanders sounded unusually subdued. When asked about his foreign policy advisers, Sanders demurred. When asked about his assessment of the risks posed by North Korea, Russia and Iran, he could only offer that he was “very, very worried” about North Korea.
Still, there were glimpses of genuine respect between two candidates who offer such contrasting views of what their party should represent.
Bernie’s best moment was his mensch-like refusal to attack Clinton on the saga of her private emails at the State Department, stating publicly that he had rejected repeated media requests to do just that. If consistency and principle are the hallmark of the Sanders campaign, the candidate reinforced his signature characteristic.
The moderators tried to lure Clinton into a similar attack on Sanders, offering her a chance to get a dig in on the number of apparent ethical questions surrounding Sanders staffers. But she politely declined the opportunity to jump in.
Such moments are likely to become ever rarer as this primary season continues. “Sometimes in these campaigns things get a little out of hand,” Sanders said near the end of the debate. At the New Hampshire debate they certainly did, at least for a moment.
How I learned to stop worrying and love The Donald, a meditation by Oliver Burkeman.
Was there some other way to think and feel about this absurd and terrifying man that might actually make a difference – or, failing that, make it slightly less distressing to see his face pop up on TV?
I began by asking Gregg Henriques, a professor of psychotherapy at James Madison University in Virginia, to explain what’s going on inside Trump’s head.
“Classic narcissist,” he said, barely giving me time to finish the question. “He has this unquenchable drive to demonstrate success, a bottomless pit of need for evidence that he’s the one, the saviour.”
Henriques also suspects that Trump is obsessive-compulsive, with a fixation on cleanliness and disgust. That figures: Trump famously hates shaking hands, and there was something odd about the vehemence with which he described Hillary Clinton’s visit to the bathroom, during a recent debate, as “too disgusting” to discuss – a discussion about what he wouldn’t discuss.
From this perspective, Trump’s endless insistence that he is a winner isn’t a sign that he is convinced of his greatness, or how widely he’s adored. Rather, it shows that he isn’t yet sufficiently convinced, and perhaps never could be. It sounds an exhausting way to live: one imagines his inner world as an exhausting high-wire walk, in which every defeat or insult must be swiftly counterbalanced by seeking a new victory.
Thinking about Trump in this way might not be sufficient to render him sympathetic, but it does make him a little harder to hate. And if it’s possible to take that view of the candidate himself, it’s surely easier with his supporters. In Henriques’s view, the “traditional Christian white males” who make up Trump’s core support don’t necessarily believe, in a rational way, that his ideas would help them. Instead, they are using him to live out a vicarious experience of power as they sense their own slipping away.
This is how politics works, Henriques and many other psychologists argue: we’re attracted to certain candidates and parties for intuitive, emotional reasons that barely register in conscious awareness. Then, we use our rational minds to construct convincing-seeming arguments for views we already hold. The tricky part is that you can’t condescendingly think about Trump supporters this way for very long before realising that it must be true for you, too.
“If you look at life like a psychologist,” Henriques said, “one of your first principles is: we’re all full of shit.”
Clearly, it wasn’t going to be enough simply to understand the emotional motivations of Trump and his sympathisers; it was time to up the ante. So I called Sharon Salzberg, one of the US’s most prominent meditation teachers, to see if she could help me learn to love them.
But all living beings – really? Surely the Buddha reckoned without the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz? And anyway, if I became capable of compassion towards all, smiling beatifically upon even the most infuriating wearer of a Make America Great Again baseball cap, wouldn’t I lose my motivation to stand up for what’s right?
Oliver’s adventures meditating with Trump don’t end there. Will he find inner harmony? Will the search for harmony with Trumpistas drive him to drink? Find out through the link below.
Updated
Hello and welcome to our coverage of race for New Hampshire – the second state to vote for president in the election of 2016.
Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders faced off on Thursday night in their final debate before the primary election next week, and they did not disappoint voters who wanted to see fireworks.
Clinton accused Sanders of an “artful smear” and “innuendo and insinuation”, over suggestions her speaking fees from Wall Street were a sign that financial firms have her in their pocket.
“If you have something to say, say it,” she demanded, before insisting that she has far more enemies in finance than friends.
Sanders declined to confront Clinton head on over her donors or her use of a private email server while secretary of state, and won applause with impassioned versions of his stump speech on corruption and inequality more generally. But he struggled on questions of foreign policy, for example calling North Korea a “very, very strange country” ruled by “a handful of dictators, or maybe just one”.
The senator from Vermont, who leads by 22 points in New Hampshire, according to poll averages, managed to draw some sharp distinctions with Clinton, who leads nationally by 15 points. They disagreed on the death penalty, on whether their plans were possible, and, angrily, about the meaning of “progressive” in 21st century America.
“I am not making promises I cannot keep,” shot Clinton. “A progressive is someone who makes progress.”
Donald Trump leads in the polls of the Republican contest by more than 20 points, according to poll averages, ahead of the senator who beat him soundly in Iowa – Ted Cruz – and the senator who nearly beat him for second place, Marco Rubio.
Trump wasted no time denigrating his opponents on the trail on Wednesday, accusing Cruz of fraud. Iowa’s governor was only too happy to echo the billionaire, saying Cruz’s campaign tactics were “unethical and unfair”.
The remaining Republican candidates are getting a little antsy. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich have more or less staked their campaigns on a good showing in New Hampshire. They’ve respectively gotten a single hug, questions about complicity in a corruption case and a guy with a guitar for their trouble.
