Sanders tries to pin Clinton to the left Politico

“There are some conventional rules of politics that I do not think apply here,” said Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director. She said the issues that are front and center in this primary are wildly appealing not just to Democrats. Rather, they’re what “the actual general election’s going to be about too. And on our side, she’s going to have offered solutions for months that people really care about.”

Come November, Clinton’s campaign and allies say, they get to be the ones talking about what another era would have called liberal or lefty ideas, and attack the Republicans, namely Donald Trump, for being the extremists.

“Nothing that they discussed today was unreasonable or so far out there. The folks that are talking about radical proposals are folks like Donald Trump,” said Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, who’s endorsed Clinton.

Garry Kasparov: Hey, Bernie, Don't Lecture Me About Socialism. I Lived Through It. The Daily Beast

My goal was to remind people that Americans talking about socialism in the 21st century was a luxury paid for by the successes of capitalism in the 20th. And that while inequality is a huge problem, the best way to increase everyone’s share of pie is to make the pie bigger, not to dismantle the bakery. Much to my surprise, my little rant went viral, as the saying goes. Instead of the usual few hundred Facebook shares, this paragraph quickly reached tens of thousands. By the next morning it had reached several million people, more than any of the day’s political posts by the leading candidates. A week later and it has over 3000 comments, 57,000 shares, and a 9.3 million reach that is in the category usually reserved for photos of pop stars and kitten videos.

My conclusion that “the idea that the solution [to inequality] is more government, more regulation, more debt, and less risk is dangerously absurd” apparently had great resonance, and I think I know why. There is a growing consensus that America has deep troubles, and no one can agree on solutions. Everyone agrees that Washington should change, and some want the government to do much more while others want it to do much less. Many of the traditional economic numbers say that America is doing fine, and yet polls say that Americans—especially Sanders supporters—are angry about the present and fearful about the future.

5 Takeaways from Bernie's Michigan Miracle Politico

Both campaigns Democratic campaigns are working to figure out exactly what the hell happened -- "contrary to the CNN talking heads who confidently blamed Clinton’s loss on her attacking Sanders’ gimmick-y position on the auto bailout". Michigan’s impact is for real: Sanders is alive and potentially dangerous, and Clinton needs to look hard into her campaign (yet again), especially on the topic of white male voters.

Here are five takeaways.

1. Clinton leaned too hard on a black voter strategy.
2. She's probably going to win anyway.
3. Democrats don't want the primary to end.
4. Free trade is Clinton's albatross.
5. Sanders has a big edge in open primaries.

Clinton and Democratic establishment types are always talking about how Bernie Sanders, who switched his affiliation from independent to Democrat last year, isn’t even one of them. Turns out that’s a huge advantage in a state, like Michigan, that allow independents and Republicans to crossover vote on election day. Sanders won roughly three-quarters of independent voters (who tend to be overwhelmingly white and working-class) on Tuesday.

Clinton has scored victories in open-primary states, but with the exception of her impressive Super Tuesday win in Massachusetts, they all came in the deep and upper South. And now comes a string of Michigan-like states with large, monochromatic independent voter bases – Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana. Clinton has an edge in Illinois – with its highly engaged African-American population and connections to Obama – but her big leads in the polls in other three could turn out to be a Michigan mirage.

Hillary Clinton Headlines March 10, 2016

Chelsea and Ivanka put their friendship on ice Politico

In debate, Hillary Clinton's known negatives vie with Bernie Sanders' unknown ones LA Times

Bernie Sanders: Biggest Loser Snopes.com

Bernie Sanders's most vitriolic supporters really test the meaning of the word 'progressive' Washington Post

Gerald Friedman's Analysis of the Sanders Spending Plan Just Took A Hit Below the Waterline by Kevin Drum for Mother Jones

I've questioned Bernie's math assumptions and refusal to be explicit about his policies for weeks. Most of all I've criticized his banking his radical monetary policy on the papers of one economist -- who is voting for Clinton, btw. It will be interesting to see if the TV media expresses ANY coverage of what is becoming an explosive tent of incompetency in the Sanders camp. We'll be posting the analyses from a variety of sources, beginning with Mother Jones, as a gift to Sanders supporters. Kevin Drum has questioned the economic assumptions of Bernie's plans and then backed off a bit, after hearing Bro rage.

"The saga of Gerald Friedman's analysis of Bernie Sanders' domestic spending plan continues. I initially said it was ridiculously optimistic, but then backed off a little bit. In the meantime, defenders of Sanders and Friedman demanded that critics do an actual analysis of the plan before slagging it further. So now Christina and David Romer have done that. It's not pretty:

Unfortunately, careful examination of Friedman’s work confirms the old adage, “if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

....Friedman says that the additional spending under the proposed policies would rise from $300 billion in the first year to close to $600 billion in the fifth....An output increase of 9% in 2026 from this amount of spending is grossly out of line with all existing evidence about the impact of changes in government spending.....Friedman’s figures for the effect of additional government spending exceed conventional ones by at least a factor of four."

Romer and Romer on Sanders Economic Plan: Sorry Bernie, It's A Crock Forbes

Not a crock of anything you understand, we wouldn’t be so rude here in the pages of a family magazine like Forbes. Rather, Christina and Paul Romer have done an analysis of the Bernie Sanders economic plan and looked at Gerard Friedman’s analysis of it and come to the conclusion that it’s a complete crock. They are in places rather more polite about some of the assumptions than I would be (specifically with reference to the financial transactions tax) and they also, very interestingly, think they see a ghastly logical flaw in the reasoning behind Friedman’s estimation.

It should be said here that the Romers are not economic lightweights: Christina was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers for a couple of years for Obama. It should also be said that the are party partisan (not in their economic work, in their politics) Democrats even if tending rather more to the Clinton axis this time around. Just so that people know where this critique is coming from.

Their paper is here and it’s worth a read in full:

Among Dems, Clinton Regains Popularity Advantage Over Sanders Gallup

Hillary Clinton has reclaimed her position as the best-liked presidential candidate among Democrats and independents who lean Democratic, a sign that her candidacy is recovering a key advantage she recently surrendered to rival Bernie Sanders. Clinton's net favorable score stands at +55 for the week of Feb. 18-24, 2016, a 10-percentage-point increase from her low point recorded over Jan. 27-Feb.10. This latter time period overlapped with her landslide loss to Sanders in the New Hampshire primary. Sanders' net favorable over the past week, by contrast, stands at +44, well below Clinton's score and a steep fall from the +57 he boasted in late January/early February.