The 2016 Presidential Election Is Finally Here

And it's a mess.

    [Image Source]


The 2016 Presidential election is now in full swing with the presumptive nominees of each party having been nominated at each parties respective conventions at the end of July. The candidates have also chosen their Vice-Presidential candidates, Trump picking Indiana Governor Mike Pence who is anti-abortion, against equal marriage rights for LGBT and is a climate-change denier. Clinton chose Virginia Senator Tim Kaine who has praised the TPP and called for bank deregulation, which conflicts with Hillary's reversal on the trade deal, having switched from supporting it to now being opposed to it, but further skepticism about the sincerity of her change was roused after longtime Clinton ally and surrogate Terry McAuliffe stated in an interview that she would reverse back to supporting the TPP once elected.


Although the Democratic Primary is well and truly over for Hillary Clinton, recent news stories concerning the neutrality of the Democratic National Committee in the primary have caused a rift in the Democratic party.

In June, a hacker who identified themselves as 'Guccifer 2.0' breached the DNC servers (and gave the documents to WikiLeaks according to The Hill), with WikiLeaks then posting 20,000 DNC emails that reveal the DNC to have been biased in favour of Hillary Clinton as far back as May of 2015. An email sent to the DNC dated May 26th 2015 outlines suggested strategies for contrasting the Republican candidates to HRC, Hillary Rodham Clinton, implying that she is the assumed Democratic nominee.

One email appears to show the CFO of the DNC writing about a plan to attack Bernie Sanders on his religious beliefs leading up to the Kentucky and West Virginia primaries.

Other emails sent from DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz show an attempt to influence the media, namely MSNBC, with her emailing the host of Meet The Press, Chuck Todd with the subject of the email reading "Chuck, this must stop", concerning Mika Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe, and her calls for DWS to step down as DNC chair. After the release of these emails DWS eventually resigned, only to be made honorary chair of Hillary Clinton's campaign.


Polling after the RNC showed Trump taking the lead nationwide, most likely as a result from the ratings boost from the convention with the Real Clear Politics average showing a 0.9 point lead, and the highest single poll lead of 7 points (with the latest polls ending on the 27th July, 2 days into the DNC).

      [Screenshot of RCP polling, link here]

Polling after the DNC showed a similar case for Hillary nationwide, a boost in the polls with the Real Clear Politics average showing a lead of 5.1 points with the highest single poll lead of 10 points. Recent polling by PPP done after both conventions shows Hillary with a 5 point lead nationwide.

      [Screenshot of RCP polling, link here]


With the general election 3 months away and no debates held yet, expect polls to continue to fluctuate, as Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks has promised more leaks to come that could damage Clinton in the polls, and as Trump continues to shoot himself in the foot with whatever outrageous story of the week he manages to create, whether it be attacking a Muslim family whose son died while in Iraq or kicking a mother and her crying baby out of a Trump rally, you can also expect his standing in the polls to vary.

Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Nomination

The media's pre-emptive anointment and the June 7th Primaries

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On the Monday before the June 7th Primaries of 6 states (Including California) the Associated Press ran a breaking news story, that Hillary had clinched the nomination, which was quickly picked up and touted by the majority of American press. The most curious aspect of the AP story was that no votes were cast on that day. Their announcement was based off a survey of Superdelegates, the Democrat party elite, who don't vote until the convention in July, these Superdelegates also chose to remain anonymous, preventing any efforts to see which superdelegates were supporting Clinton. Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept summarised it aptly; "The nomination is consecrated by a media organization, on a day when nobody voted, based on secret discussions with anonymous establishment insiders, and donors whose identities the media organization - incredibly - conceals".

Clinton won 4 of the 6 states on Tuesday, bringing her total pledged delegates to 2203 and if you were to include superdelegates it comes to 2777, well over the 2383 needed for the nomination, but those superdelegates don't vote until the convention, which Bernie Sanders has vowed to campaign all they way to.

Book Review : Your Country Is Just Not That Into You

 Your Country Is Just Not That Into You

 By Jimmy Dore

Your Country Is Just Not That Into You is a hilarious manifesto that spares few among the political and media elite of America, brought to you by Jimmy Dore,veteran stand-up comic, host of The Jimmy Dore Show and regular guest host on The Young Turks. He takes on the powerful and privileged (In my mind the best comedy punches upward, hitting those who are comfortable) and succeeds spectacularly in knocking them down multiple pegs, exposing their double standards and true agendas, making them look like transparent schmucks in the process. Whether it be insane/criminal Republicans, corrupt Democrats or faux journalists on Corporate News Networks, nobody is safe from Jimmy Dore's righteous anger.

The main portion of the book is divided among different entities that Dore rips into, both Republican and Democratic parties, corporate news channels and Wall Street, as well as a few more that are briefly covered. Although these chapters are all individually themed there is frequent crossover between them all which alludes to the revolving-door nature of the political/media apparatus, the unholy union that sees out-of-office political figures being hired by news outlets to serve as talking heads, and currently in-office politicians receiving softball questions during interviews because of the concern that they may not be able to book these politicians as guests again, losing ratings as a result.

Jimmy Dore wears his progressivism on his sleeve in this book, so he pulls no punches when it comes to Democrats, who are supposedly the party that represents progressives. ridiculing "moderate" Democrats who are embedded in the party/donor establishment that are elected by liberals but instead regulate like they're centrists. Republicans get the full work-over by Dore on their outdated positions towards women, minorities, immigration, the criminal system and lastly their war-hawking.

Despite the feeling of hopelessness you can get while reading about how broken the system is in American politics, Jimmy wraps up his book by  noting that although the system may have been rigged and the political spectrum pushed far to the right, the American people are inherently progressive on several key issues (money in politics for example) and that history favours progress, and progressive values. It's a great note to end on and one I find is very true as evidenced by this years election cycle, with the dramatic rise of Bernie Sanders who had next to no name recognition when compared to Hillary Clinton, but his progressive message has resonated on such a large scale with the people. Even though this cycle has also seen an underbelly of regressive fear, xenophobia and ignorance come to the surface through Trump, it is Sanders who has captured the support of the American youth which is cause for optimism as the new generation of America will be overwhelmingly liberal.

A preview of the 2016 General Election

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The Primary season is nearing its end in the United States, with the Democratic Convention now two months out, and Donald Trump having essentially secured the Republican Party nomination as Cruz and Kasich have both suspended their campaigns. While Bernie Sanders is still in the race for the Democratic Party nomination it is looking increasingly unlikely, as he is currently 283 pledged delegates behind Clinton. Although there are still several primaries left, including the delegate-rich California, Bernie would have to win by large margins in these primaries to be able to secure the nomination, unless there is a contested Democratic Convention or July or Hillary Clinton is indicted as a result of the FBI's ongoing investigation.

Regardless of who the nominee is, one thing is certain; they will have to run against Trump in a general election, and the idea of a President Trump is somewhat unnerving. But if you were to look at polling around favorability of both Clinton and Sanders compared to Trump you would notice something undeniably interesting/terrifying, depending on who you think the Democratic nominee will be.

It is not surprising that Donald Trump has the highest unfavorables of all the candidates, the Huffington Post currently has him at 58.6% Unfavorable - 36.5% Favorable.


























Donald Trump Favorability rating from the Huffington Post [screen grab] 

In fact Trump is so unpopular that Public Policy Polling recently release an interesting list of things that are MORE popular than Trump, it includes:

• Nickelback
• Used Car Salesmen
• Traffic Jams
• Hipsters
• The DMV
• Root Canals
• Jury Duty
• Lice

You can have a look at the rest of their findings here.

Now the terrifying part. Hillary Clinton, who at this point looks to be the Democratic nominee, has terrible favorability ratings, although less than Trumps, they are bad enough to warrant concern, considering their possible general election matchup. The Huffington Post has her at 54.6% Unfavorable - 41.5% Favorable.

Hillary Clinton favorability rating, from Huffington Post [screen grab]

A recent article by Reuters highlights a curious phenomena which has been brought out by these two candidates, that is Negative Partisanship, when voters support one candidate only to block the other from entering office, and vice versa for voters supporting the opposition candidate. A Reuters/Ipsos poll of Clinton and Trump supporters showed a large amount of voters engaging in Negative Partisanship. The poll shows that among Clinton supporters polled, at least 46% were doing so in order to prevent Trump from winning (at least 40% supported her based on her positions) while among Trump supporters 47% were supporting him in order to prevent Clinton from winning (at least 43% supporting him based on his positions). Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, says in the article that "If we were trying to maximize the effect, we couldn't have found better nominees than Trump and Clinton".


Another poll conducted by Public Policy Polling shows that currently, Hillary Clinton only has a 4 point lead over Trump among voters nationwide. More cause for concern over Clinton v Trump in a general is Trumps appeal to independent voters. An exit poll of Sanders voters in the West Virginia primary (which Sanders won) showed that 44% would back Trump if the general election were to be Trump v Clinton, while only 23% would back Clinton and 31% backing neither candidate.

Speaking of Bernie Sanders, there a polls indicating that in a hypothetical general election with him against Trump, Sanders has a much wider lead than Clinton does. with one PPP poll showing that Sanders leads Trump by 11 points, and a NBC News/Survey Monkey poll showing Sanders leading by 13 points.

Although Hillary Clinton may well be the Democrats nominee, based from these recent polls, it shows that Bernie Sanders is the more electable candidate. If the Democratic Party wanted to choose the best candidate for the general election, as it currently stands,the Superdelegates should consider a switch to Sanders' side. There are still 10 primaries to go before the convention in July, and Sanders has vowed to campaign to the end. so it will be interesting to see how the rest of the Democratic Primary plays out.

NY Daily News attacks Sanders after interview

An example of Media bias against Bernie 

(Above: Some of the stories run by the New York Daily News after

 their editorial board interview with Senator Sanders)

After his win in the Wyoming caucus earlier this month, Sanders extended his winning streak to cover 8 of the last 9 contests, closing the delegate gap between Sanders and Clinton to roughly 200 delegates (counting only pledged delegates, not "superdelegates", see here for an explanation of superdelegates and why they shouldn't be included in the count thus far). The stakes are now raised considerably, with the New York primary tomorrow, with a whopping 247 pledged delegates up for grabs it is undoubtedly a critical state for either candidates to lock down.

We now turn to earlier in the month, on the 1st April Bernie Sanders met with the editorial board of the NY based print publication, the New York Daily News. Unfortunately for Sanders, the editorial board had laid out an ambush for the Senator, with their first question asking him directly if companies, specifically Apple, are "destroying the fabric of America" and had laid out the context for the question in a way that would frame Sanders response in a negative light, by highlighting that Apple was a company that "grew from nothing to 115,000 permanent employees" and in its 40th year anniversary as a company. Sanders repeatedly tried to include nuance and context in his answers, but was pressed a further 2 times to answer if they were "destroying the fabric of America". The height of the interview focused on Sanders proposal to break up the large Wall Street banks responsible for the financial crisis of 2008, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America etc. The editorial board pressed Sanders on how exactly he would go about breaking up the large banks, first with questioning who exactly would have the authority to break them up (asking if the Fed or the Secretary of Treasury would be able to), and then strangely focusing on which specific statutes would be used in legal proceedings, i.e statutes from existing legislation, which is something that no candidate would be able to tell the media, without having spent considerable time consulting experts, because you know, the Constitution, and as Sanders said "The President is not a Dictator". Sanders responded by pointing out that he also has the option of going after Wall Street banks on fraud charges, as they were selling Subprime mortgages that had false ratings, see this exchange between Sanders and the editorial board. 

The rest of the interview followed a similar trend, with the board trying to guide Sanders towards the rocks on several issues, from Israel to Gun Control, later running stories on those topics with incredible headlines such as "Bernie's Sandy Hook Shame". The real headline of this story is the possible motivation for the NY Daily News obvious bias against Bernie, which leads us to the Billionaire owner of the Daily News, Mort Zuckerman. On the matter of Israel Zuckerman happens to be of the right-wing state of thinking that holds that Israel is never at fault, even when Israeli settlers are illegally moving into Palestinian lands. What is interesting are his ties to Hillary Clinton, with him contributing to the Clinton Foundation, its also probably coincidental that the Daily News endorsed Hillary Clinton sometime after the interview with Sanders. With this kind of blatant bias from the Daily News and other "establishment" publications such as The Washington Post, The Hill, The New York Times, aswell as practically all cable networks (save Fox), its no wonder why Americans, especially young Americans, are leaving traditional media for new, independent and online media, 

You can read the entire transcript of the Interview here.

Additional reading:

On the attacks regarding Israel

Sanders policy on breaking up Wall St. Banks

Book Review: Saving Capitalism

Saving Capitalism-For the many, not the few

By Robert B. Reich 

Written by former Secretary of Labour (In Bill Clinton's administration) Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism is a highly informative piece of work which lays out in great detail and context, how the American political process has been altered throughout the years in order to be incredibly responsive to the needs of Corporations, wealthy individuals and other special interest groups, and the effect that has on the American middle class, which is the weakening of workers rights, their right to unionize, and that such massive inequality of wealth stacked at the top of society hurts the economy, leading to economic crisis in which the American taxpayers bail out big businesses, with little accountability on their part for the role they played in causing such crisis.

Throughout the entire book, Reich takes a methodical approach to providing a wealth of context for the problems he tackles. The book is divided in 3 parts, the first in which he rigorously debunks the myth of the "free market" which holds that Governments should not regulate intrusively, since the rules of the free market will determine which financial endeavors will succeed, and which will fail, based on consumer choice/opinion and which businesses can outperform the competition. Reich takes a sledgehammer to this notion, and explains that there is no naturally occurring free market, it is always legislation that determines the conditions of the market, and the more pertinent question is who the market is regulated in favor of, which Reich later points out, is toward giant Corporations, and certain monopolies in their respective industry, such as cable companies Time Warner and Comcast. The current conditions of the "free market" heavily favor these monopolies, and perpetuate their continued success, as consumers have the illusion of choice.

In Part Two of Saving Capitalism Reich continues the debunking, this time turning his focus to the myth of work and worth, the idea that you are paid what you are worth, which fails miserably to explain the massive pay inequality between workers and CEO's. Reich explains that CEO's are not worth the work they perform, that it is corporate mechanisms and cronyism that gives them their outrageously high income. Reich also lays out the decline of the American middle class worker, and gives context to the days of FDR and the New Deal which saw American workers at their strongest point in U.S history, which is a stark contrast from todays American workers, where there is now a new class, the working poor, who work full time jobs, even multiple jobs, yet whose wages have not been matching the productivity of the American workers and the inflation rate over the years.

It is in Part Three of the Book that Reich lays out his recommendations as how to save capitalism, by reinforcing the bargaining power of the working class through Unions, and other methods of Countervailing Power by which to force Corporations to negotiate fair wages for their workers, which in turn benefits the economy in the long term, as the middle class have purchasing power by which they further economic growth by spending money on products manufactured by the titans of industry, such as car manufacturers. Reich also brings focus to threats to capitalism from other areas, such as globalization, the prospect of  workers from less economically prosperous nations willing to do the same work for lower wages, and also the growing robotics industry, which could see the replacement of certain jobs with an automated workforce, these make for fascinating topics to find solutions to.

I highly doubt I could do this book justice as to how well it lays out the problems in American politics and economics, and how closely woven they can become, so here is renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz' take of Saving Capitalism.

"Robert Reich has written a riveting guide to how our economic and political system has become so badly flawed, distorted by pervasive rent seeking and monopolies. He explains our rising inequality and our poor economic performance. Wholesale reform is needed- far beyond the usual prescriptions of raising the minimum wage and spending more money on education."

And if that doesn't give you enough of a tease as to the contents of this book, I have a few quotes that Robert cites within the book that sometimes perfectly capture Americas current reality.

"There are two modes of invading private property; the first by which the poor plunder the rich - sudden and violent; the second, by which the rich plunder the poor, slow and legal." - John Taylor: Foreword

"We can have a Democracy or we can have great wealth in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both"- Louis Brandeis

"Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred." Franklin D. Roosevelt, on attacks against him from Wall Street and other big business.

The Onion predicted Trump

Kind of.

As many in America who aren't batsh*t insane struggle to cope with Donald Trump's increasingly unbelievable actions, and those who support them, there is one group of people in the media who kind of saw something like this coming, and when I say sort of I mean they did not predict Trump himself but more like what he espouses, and also because the media outlet that gave this prediction was satirical comedy site The Onion. Back in 2012 after Obama's victory in the election they posted a video on Youtube depicting a spoof news network covering possible GOP candidates for 2016, namely the Shrieking White-Hot Sphere of Pure Rage and the possible VP ticket candidate Dark Ominous Cloud of Racism.

Check it out:

I think it speaks volumes about Trump that he embodies the values of both spoof candidates, and I might also award them extra points for having predicted the GOP flocking to this enigma in the form of Trump, as now there are numerous Republican members of Congress and the Senate who have thrown in with Trump. This is just another example of Satirical Prophecy at its finest. So the lesson of today? Forget CNN. Forget MSNBC. The Onion is the one true prophet. So grows the orb.