elections

There are three separate but related issues about the Clinton e-mail server:

1) Via her poor practices she put operational security at risk, demonstrating that she does not have the judgment to hold any position of responsibility or trust. (Though you might think that would be well-established after Iraq, Libya, and Honduras, a lot of people still don't seem to get it.)

2) She violated the spirit, and quite possibly the letter, of federal records retention laws, demonstrating that she has little regard for transparency or oversight.

3) She may have violated laws regarding the handling of classified information.

Clinton faulted on emails by State Department audit (www.yahoo.com)

Hillary Clinton disregarded State Department cybersecurity guidelines by using a private email account and server, an internal audit found Wednesday. Her staff twice brushed aside specific concerns that she wasn't following federal rules.

Every time this happens, it strengthens the "we need to 'take our country back' from 'those people'" narrative. It plays right into an Agnew/Nixonesque appeal to the "silent majority". Young Elijah Martinez is absolutely right: this is giving Trump what he wants.

Anti-Trump protesters at Trump rally throw rocks, bottles at Albuquerque police (Washington Post)

ALBUQUERQUE — What began as an assembly of about 1,000 peaceful protesters outside a Donald Trump rally at the Albuquerque Convention Center morphed into madness Tuesday evening when mostly young, raucous rioters joined the ranks, hurling burning T-shirts, rocks and bottles toward the police and police horses trying to contain them.

Several Albuquerque police officers were injured by the projectile rocks, and at least one rioter had been arrested by the end of the night, the department tweeted....

At Counterpunch, Doug Johnson Hatlem has a good breakdown of the manufactured myth of violence by Sanders supporters at the Nevada Democratic convention. Nobody threw chairs, nobody made death threats, and there is a legitimate grievance at the root of it. If you had any doubt that the corporate media has had an anti-Sanders bias all along, their coverage of this clusterfuck ought to put that doubt to rest.

The Faux Fracas in Nevada: How a Reporter Manufactured a Riot (www.counterpunch.org)

Fifty-eight Sanders supporters were denied entry to the Nevada Convention and were told they weren’t Democrats. Other than the one guy who acknowledged he switched his registration on his own, this is ludicrous. Nevada had onsite registration for the original caucuses in February, and no one could participate in them unless they were registered as a Democrat.

It's a Fox poll, so, take with salt. But still, good job Democrats on picking the candidate who consistently polls worse against Trump.

Trump leads Clinton in Fox News poll (POLITICO)

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical general election matchup, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday evening.

Trump leads Clinton 45 percent to 42 percent, within the poll’s 3-point margin of error. In the same poll conducted in April, Clinton led by 7 points — 48 percent to 41 percent.

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More than seven in 10 — 71 percent — said the phrase “will say anything to get elected” describes Clinton, while 65 percent said the same of Trump.

Clinton holds double-digit advantages among women (50 percent to 36 percent), African Americans (90 percent to 7 percent), Latinos (62 percent to 23 percent) and those under the age of 35 (46 percent to 35 percent).

Trump, meanwhile, has the upper hand among independent voters (46 percent to 30 percent), men (55 percent to 33 percent), white voters (55 percent to 31 percent), those without a college degree (45 percent to 40 percent), and varying majorities of voters 35 and older.

You sometimes hear about "intersectionality", the ways in which systems of oppression like patriarchy and racism overlap, and so the interests of those working against them also intersect. You almost never hear about the intersectionality of economic class. It's as if today's "liberals" (so-called) and Democrats don't actually care whether society is built as an oppressive hierarchy, just so long as being an oppressor is an equal-opportunity position. It's no wonder that since the days of the Reagan Democrats -- indeed, going back to the 1960s -- the Republicans have been able to catch this demographic "on the rebound" as it were, after the Democrats dumped the to pursue identity politics.
(Contrast this with how the radical Black Panthers reached out to work with poor whites; and for interesting history, read Kenneth D. Durr's Behind the Backlash: White Working Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980.) The reunion that Sanders suggests would be a powerful thing -- and those in power now sure as hell don't want that.

Burying the White Working Class | Jacobin (www.jacobinmag.com)

These kinds of statements are the name of the game for today’s Democratic elite. The party has established a clear line on the white wage-earning class: they’re all either dying (demographically or literally), irrelevant in an increasingly nonwhite country, or so hopelessly racist they can go off themselves with a Miller High Life-prescription-painkiller cocktail for all they care. As liberal hero and Sanders nemesis Barney Frank put it a couple of weeks ago, “the likelihood that fifty-eight-year-old coal miners are going to become the solar engineers of the future is nil.”

The problem with this line is not just that it’s gross and elitist — it’s that it’s not even true. The working class is bigger than ever, is still really white, and is broadly supportive of a progressive populist agenda.

It just turns out that the Democratic Party outside of Sanders isn’t too interested in that agenda. And it’s even less interested in that specific chunk of the working class that forces liberals to confront head on the naked brutality of the economic system they cherish.

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After decades of being told white workers would never support socialism because they’re racist, we’re now told that they support the socialist candidate because they are racist. Yes, this is where liberals are in the year 2016.

One of the reasons that we haven't heard much about Americans in the Panama Papers scandal is because they don't need to go to Panama. We have Delaware. It's not illegal for the Clinton's to use a on-shore haven to dodge taxes, but it's their usual hypocrisy to do so while promising to go after other millionaire tax dodgers.

The Clintons are using 5 shell companies to save on taxes in Delaware (theweek.com)

The Clintons and their family foundation have at least five shell companies registered to the address 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware — which is also home to some 280,000 other companies who use the location to take advantage of the state's low taxes, limited disclosure requirements, and other business incentives.

Surprise surprise, the critics -- Bernie Sanders among them -- were right, and Clinton and Obama were wrong. Yet again.

Panama Papers: Obama, Clinton Pushed Trade Deal Amid Warnings It Would Make Money Laundering, Tax Evasion Worse (International Business Times)

Soon after taking office in 2009, Obama and his secretary of state — who is currently the Democratic presidential front-runner — began pushing for the passage of stalled free trade agreements (FTAs) with Panama, Colombia and South Korea that opponents said would make it more difficult to crack down on Panama’s very low income tax rate, banking secrecy laws and history of noncooperation with foreign partners.

A certain amount of dissatisfaction has, sadly, become par for the course. And with the voting process become more and more partisan and opaque, distrust has naturally grown. But this seems to go beyond the usual grumbling.

'Nuts, nuts, nuts': Anger in Arizona builds over long voter waits (azcentral)

Gov. Doug Ducey ripped election officials for their handling of hours-long lines during Tuesday's presidential preference election, saying the problems were "unacceptable."

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Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton asked U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to launch an investigation into what he called "a fiasco."

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U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., urged people to contact his office with their complaints, which he said he will use to propose legislation to fix voting irregularities.

The chairman of the state House Elections Committee has set a 10 a.m. hearing for Monday to explore why Maricopa County provided only 60 polling places, leading to such long lines.

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Barnett Lotstein, now retired from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, called the whole episode voter suppression. Count him and wife among the suppressed: They gave up on voting after driving to two polling places in Phoenix in late afternoon, where they were told to expect a three-hour wait.

So far, Hillary Clinton has been able to count on the support of African-American voters. But that support is founded on inaccurate perceptions of Bill Clinton's record. If Sanders supporters are able to get the facts out, her support there will crumble and the Dems will nominate Sanders; if not, she may take the nomination and remove any reason for progressives to stay in the party, hastening its well-overdue collapse. Going to be interesting either way. Get your marshmallows ready to roast over the flaming wreckage of the American political system as we know it...

Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote (The Nation)

What have the Clintons done to earn such devotion? Did they take extreme political risks to defend the rights of African Americans? Did they courageously stand up to right-wing demagoguery about black communities? Did they help usher in a new era of hope and prosperity for neighborhoods devastated by deindustrialization, globalization, and the disappearance of work?

No. Quite the opposite.

A new nationwise Quinnipiac poll puts Sanders two points behind Clinton -- in a poll with a margin of error of 4.5 points. In other words, since December he's gone from being 30 points behind to a statistical tie.

New Poll Shows Sanders Obliterating Clinton's 31-Point National Lead (Talking Points Memo)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) lags behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by just two points, nearly wiping out Clinton's previous 31-point lead, according to a nationwide Quinnipiac poll released Friday.

The poll showed support for Clinton at 44 percent, with Sanders close behind at 42 percent. This represents an enormous change since the previous national Quinnipiac poll in December, which showed Clinton beating Sanders 61 percent to 30 percent.

The poll also shows Sanders doing better than Clinton in hypothetical match-ups with Rubio, Cruz, or Trump. So maybe the Dems are wising up about voter's rejection of Hillary Clinton.