In South Caroline poll, younger blacks lean towards Clinton, not Sanders MSNBC

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll of South Carolina Democrats shows Hillary Clinton leading among voters under 45. This result pops up in numerous polls across the South where people of color make up substantial segments in the electorate. These projected results contrast with Bernie Sanders' strong showing among younger white voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Clinton’s advantage among younger blacks, if she is able to maintain it, will have deep implications beyond South Carolina. Starting on March 1, there will be a series of primaries in states throughout the South with huge black populations, such as Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. If Clinton remains the candidate of both younger and older black voters, she could run up big victory margins in these states.

The Only Strategy For Hillary Clinton Is To Scorch The Earth BuzzFeed

Even David Axelrod, the architect of President Obama's 2008 campaign, says that the upcoming election will be ferocious. With the high probability of Donald Trump being the Republican nominee, “The slogan is ‘Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid,’” said Paul Begala, who is an adviser to the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA.

Begala's team represents the "hit men", so to speak, whose job is to go negative in what will be "a contrast election".

“It will be her versus a fucking asshole in almost any scenario,” mused one prominent Obama loyalist. “It’s going to be a lot of fear, but she’s going to have a lot of room to run, and she’s not going to have to destroy the other person, because the other person is going to be so eminently destroyable.” A broad campaign theme will be that the Republican party has gone insane.

Begala, who will be manning the wrecking ball in the summer and fall, said that if Rubio, seen as the hardest of the Republican targets, is the nominee, one issue presents itself clearly: “He will be the first major party in American history who believes that a woman should be forced by law to bring a rapist’s baby to term,” he said.

Poll: Clinton crushes Trump among Hispanics Politico

A new poll of registered Hispanic voters out Thursday from Univision and The Washington Post puts Hillary Clinton as the top choice of Hispanics in any party with 39%, with Bernie Sanders behind her at 19%.

Among Republicans, Rubio is 8%; Trump 7%; and Cruz 7%.

Among Hispanic Democrats, Clinton's lead is 57%, compared to Sanders at 28%.

More than half of those surveyed consider themselves a member of the Democratic Party (56%), 27% identify as independent, 14 % are members of the Republican Party and 3% did not know or didn’t answer.

Black Women Vote!

For Black Women in the US, Voting Is About So Much More Than Who's President MIC.com

Black youth, long derided for their alleged political apathy, form the nucleus of a modern American political movement centered on black lives. It's a movement that's largely been led by young black women who have made it clear to the Democratic Party that their votes, which have propelled candidates in every recent national election, are not a given.

The irony is that Clinton, long a beacon of hope for feminists aching to see a woman take office, has also stacked her campaign with black women — Maya Harris, a policy expert; LaDavia Drane, her director of African-American outreach; and black feminist writer Zerlina Maxwell — who know exactly what's at stake.

"We're sophisticated voters, sophisticated thinkers, we're not just going to hand out our vote to anyone," Drane told Mic. "I believe that [Hillary's] earning black voters' trust, [and] she's been doing it for a long time now.

Here's How Black People Actually Fare in Bernie Bansers' Home State MIC.com

A colleague of mine noted that between 1993 and 2007, the black incarceration rate grew faster in Vermont than in any other state. This 2007 study got us digging around.

Shortly before its peak, the Sentencing Project reported that Vermont had the second-highest black-to-white incarceration rate in America — topped only by Iowa, a similar state with a small black population.

In this excellent article from MIC.com, we learn that black people in Burlington, Vermont, were arrested at a rate of 243.2 per 1,000 compared to the rate for Ferguson, Missouri, which was 186.1, when the Feds got involved.

Hillary Clinton Headlines February 25, 2016

Why a smart woman should vote for Hillary Clinton San Francisco Chronicle

Study: Bernie Sanders's health plan is actually kind of a train wreck for the poor Washington Post

While Hillary Clinton talks about race, Bernie, Bernie Sanders turns elsewhere to reach minority voters LA Times

Dear Bernie: I Like You, But These Red Flags Are Too Frequent to . . . Huff Po

Some families of Columbine, Aurora, Sandy Hook victims endorse Clinton Denver Post

Hillary Clinton: The Leader You Want When The World Ends BuzzFeed

Black Lives Matter protesters confront Clinton at a fundraiser CNN

The Superpredator Myth, 20 Years Later Equal Justice Initiative

This Is The Date Bernie Sanders Berns Out The Daily Beast

Sanders, the self-professed anti-establishment candidate, has run on a platform that attacks income inequality, as well as promises to expand access to healthcare and college education. His message has attracted support from mostly white progressives who are convinced that Sanders is the best candidate to carry the Democratic banner in the fall campaign. For them, Clinton represents all that is wrong in Washington.

The problem for Sanders is that he has nowhere to grow. Black voters, who will dominate many of the coming primaries, have not responded to his message. Even black millennials, thought to be good prospects, are breaking in favor of Clinton. They are, it appears by the ballots cast in Nevada and polling in upcoming states, voting with their parents and grandparents. It must be said that Clinton won the Nevada black vote by a 3-to-1 margin and that crossed age and income. And despite what entrance polling data said in Nevada, according to analysis published by NBC News, she may have won Hispanics as well.

Bernie's South Carolina Problem Politico

In the first-in-the-West caucuses, African-Americans cast just 13 percent of the vote. In the upcoming first-in-the-South primary, they’re expected to cast nearly 60 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Then, several days later, comes a burst of Super Tuesday primaries where Sanders must run in nine states with higher black populations than Nevada.

Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, laid out Sanders' quandary in direct terms.

"This is Bernie Sanders' problem: If you cannot compete for the black vote, you cannot be the Democratic nominee for president," Belcher said. “If Bernie Sanders can crack her black wall in South Carolina, it is real problematic for her moving forward because right now he's competing very strong for white progressive voters and certainly dominating certain segments of the electorate."

Why Bernie Sanders's campaign makes me worry about how he'll manage the White House VOX

My worry about Sanders, watching him in this campaign, is that he isn't very interested in learning the weak points in his ideas, that he hasn't surrounded himself with people who police the limits between what they wish were true and what the best evidence says is true, that he doesn't seek out counterarguments to his instincts, that he's attracted to strategies that align with his hopes for American politics rather than what we know about American politics. And these tendencies, if they persist, can turn good values into bad policies and an inspiring candidate into a bad president.

The reason I care about the puppies-and-rainbows promises of his single-payer proposal is that I think Sanders believes them — I don't think he's a cynical politician simply eliding the weaknesses of his plan. The reason I care about his campaign's circulation of fairly outlandish economic projections is that it makes me worry there's no one around Sanders with the sense to say that those results don't pass the smell test. The reason I'm frustrated by Sanders's promise that a political revolution will overcome all opposition to his plans is I think he believes it, and so I'm not sure he has a real plan B for when the political revolution doesn't happen. The reason Sanders's persistently superficial answers on foreign policy matter to me is that they're a test of his ability to learn on the fly about topics he's not terribly interested in.

In a democratic polity, wonks are the help. But that only underscores the importance of electing someone good at hiring and managing them. A President Sanders could hire excellent technocrats to help him make policy, but would he want to? A President Sanders could surround himself with experts who know the shortcomings of his ideas, but would he listen to them? A President Sanders could become deeply engaged on foreign policy, but would he decide to?