Hillary Clinton Imagines Half Female Cabinet -- She's Got The Connections

The stakes for Sanders in the state of Clinton Capital New York

“What you do in political movements is you take what you can get, nail it down, and don’t give it up,” Tom Hayden, former California state senator and 1960s student activist who is supporting Clinton, told POLITICO New York. “But Bernie keeps pressing his demands.”

Hayden said it's time for Sanders to be thinking about his "legacy."

Sanders is reviving the role which William Jennings Bryan made famous in 1896, when he took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and delivered a stinging assault on the party’s moneyed interests. History remembers Bryan’s speech as an argument for the free coinage of silver, a phrase which sounds oddly like a reference to the business practices of a certain former Assembly speaker. In fact, Bryan’s speech was a jeremiad against his own party’s leaders — especially those in New York — who had grown rich in their defense of the era’s laissez-faire dogma.

Bryan said the convention that it had a choice to defend either “the idle holders of idle capital” or “struggling masses … who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party.”

Bernie's Immigration Record Assailed

Standing with Activists, Mark-Vivierto Pillories Sanders' Immigration Record Politico New York

Hillary had a very different day from Bernie yesterday. As always, Bernie was revving up huge crowds, and policy wonk Hillary was surrounded by supporters, hammering out another policy idea. In this case -- while supporters skewered Bernie from being "entirely absent from our community", Hillary promised to create a national Office of Immigrant Affairs "tasked with coordinating policies and programs across federal agencies and local governments."

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito took to the steps of City Hall Wednesday to assail Sen. Bernie Sanders’ immigration record ahead of next week's competitive New York primary.

“It’s important that New Yorkers understand that while Hillary Clinton has been fighting throughout her entire life, Senator Sanders has not only been entirely absent from our community but has also stood on the wrong side of the issues that matter most to Latinos,” Mark-Viverito said.

Mark-Viverito has served as one of Clinton’s campaign surrogates throughout this week as Clinton continues to lead in polls despite Sanders’ popularity among younger voters.

Standing alongside labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers, and Dream Act activist Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Mark-Viverito accused Sanders of being inactive in the years-long effort for comprehensive immigration reform and chided him for siding with Republicans.

Hillary's Network Could Populate a Half Female Clinton Cabinet

Hillary Clinton says she wants half her cabinet to be women Quartz

Not only does America rank behind 75-95 other nations, depending on the survey, in electing women to political office, only seven out of 23 cabinet-ranked positions in the Obama administration are occupied by women. Cosmopolitan writer Prachi Gupta interviewed Hillary Clinton recently and broached the practice employed by Canada's new prime minister Justin Trudeau's decision to make his cabinet 50% women. Gupta queried Clinton on her own feelings on the topic.

Candidate Clinton answered: “That is certainly my goal. A very diverse Cabinet representing the talents and experience of the entire country. And since we are a 50-50 country, I would aim to have a 50-50 Cabinet.”

Barack Obama’s cabinet breakdown doesn’t rise to that level, but its 30% of women is more than in other branches and levels of the US government. Nationwide, only 24.5% of state legislators are women, 20% of US senators, 19.3% of US representatives, according to theCenter for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Only 6 US states have women governors, and 19 of America’s largest 100 cities have women mayors.

Hillary Headlines April 14, 2016

Jane Sanders: Clinton will fall short of pledged delegates Politico

Why Is Bernie Sanders Slamming Southern Democrats? The Daily Beast

Sanders gets his chance to shake up the race Politico

Bernie's backers rage against Democratic machine Politico

Poll: Trump more u npopular than anyone but David Duke in last 30 years of presidential elections Politico

Mothers of Black Victims Emerge as a Force for Hillary Clinton New York Times

Harvey Weinstein on Bernie Sanders: We Won't Get Fooled Again Variety

Sharon Stone on Trump's 'Hubris' and Bernie: 'How Much Acid Has This Guy Taken?' Hollywood Reporter

Hillary And Bernie Do Brooklyn Medium

New York Daily News Calls Bernie 'Utterly Unprepared For The Oval Office' With Heaps Of Praise On Hillary Clinton

Daily News Editorial Board Says Vote Hillary Clinton: Her Plans To Give Working and Middle-Class Americans A Fighting Chance at Rising Incomes Are Far Superior To Bernie Sanders' New York Daily News

Not only is this a strong endorsement for Hillary Clinton, but it is an epic takedown of Bernie Sanders.

"On April 19, New York Democrats will have unusual say over the party’s nominee. They have in Clinton a superprepared warrior realist. They have in opponent Bernie Sanders a fantasist who’s at passionate war with reality. By choosing Clinton, Empire State Dems would powerfully signal that the party has gotten real about achieving long-sought goals.

Clinton is unsparingly clear-eyed about what’s wrong with America while holding firm to what’s right with America.

She fully understands the toll that adverse economic forces have taken on the country.

She is supremely knowledgeable about the powers a President can wield to lift fortunes in need of lifting.

She possesses the strength and the shrewdness to confront the tough politics of advancing an ambitious Democratic agenda in the White House.

Still more, she is a cauldron-tested globalist who had the spine to give Obama a thumb’s up for taking out Osama Bin Laden and who is far the wiser about the use of American power, having served as secretary of state and seen the consequences of the war in Iraq.

These truths about America’s most well-known public figure are long past debating among Democrats, above all in New York, the state Clinton represented in the U.S. Senate.

Here then the moment has arrived to reckon, instead, with truths about Sanders and his programs:

Subjected to meaningful scrutiny for the first time, the senator from Vermont proved utterly unprepared for the Oval Office while confirming that the central thrusts of his campaign are politically impossible.

Which, paradoxically, is good news, because some of the most prominent Sanderisms would likely wreak epic economic damage.

As a basic premise, Sanders calls for enormously expanding the federal government’s role in American life, supported by equally huge tax increases — most of them falling on the wealthy but also hammering average middle-income earners to the tune of $4,700 a year.

On that score, he assumes that wage earners would happily shell out big bucks year after year because, trust him, health care would be free.

And trust him, raising government spending by 40%, perhaps by more than 50%, would be a boon to America — never mind that the prospect of smothering the economy frightens even left-leaning experts.

And trust him, the government would have enough money to provide free public college education to all — never mind that credible studies say he would fall short of financing all of his ideas by more than $3 trillion over 10 years.

And trust him, he would arrive in Washington as leader of a “revolution” powerful enough to bulldoze congressional Republicans — even in a time-wasting drive to replace the Obamacare they hate with a still more hated full government takeover of health insurance.

And trust him, he would end income inequality by launching an all-out assault on America’s largest banks — never credibly explaining how forcibly breaking up the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Citibank would add a dime to a single paycheck.

As would happen with any ideological phenomenon, close inspection of Sanders’ thinking clarifies that trust is misplaced. So it was when he appeared before the Daily News Editorial Board.

Although Sanders has vowed a shock-and-awe bank-busting campaign that would risk global financial chaos, he was at a loss to show how he would execute the assault or to cite legal authority for such sweeping and unprecedented exercise of presidential power.

Although Sanders has repeatedly said, “It is an outrage that not one major Wall Street executive has gone to jail for causing the near collapse of the economy,” he was also at a loss to say what specific criminal statute the execs might have broken."

{There's lots more.}

Ideological Purity in Sanders Campaign

Young Hillary Clinton Supporters Decry 'Ideological Purity' TIME

TIME explains that Hillary Clinton's millennial supporters in New York, young people like Edward Delman, say they are troubled by the views of some of their Sanders-supporting peers, who are obsessed with 'ideological purity'.

“There’s a culture that’s developed where we are assigning moral values to political positions,” he said. “I think they see it as ‘if you haven’t had a spotless record, if you’ve ever changed your mind on anything, you must be tainted.’”

Iconic Activist Tom Hayden Changes Support to Hillary

I was very struck today, reading Tom Hayden explain his many reasons for deciding to vote for Hillary.  in The Nation. We don't think of Tom Hayden as any great feminist -- which is totally unfair and just based on the sexism that ran rampant among leftist male radicals in the late 60s and early 70s. Girls were good for making coffee and copies. That reality and a few choice comments from his ex Jane Fonda.

Tom Hayden — a lifelong progressive activist and politician — was a “freedom rider,” former president of Students for a Democratic Society, drafter of the seminal Port Huron statement and an indicted member of the “Chicago Eight.” From 1982-2000, Hayden served in the California State Assembly and State Senate. In more recent years, he’s been an environmental and animal rights activist.

Hayden gave his primary reasons for supporting HIllary as no longer being at peace with his white male privilege -- with his wife and daughters.

Despite Bernie's popularity with young millennial women, the majority of Democratic and Indy women do support a Hillary presidency. So do the vast majority of African Americans and Latinos. Hayden was no longer comfortable arguing against all the disempowered groups in terms of political power that HE -- the white male -- knew better. We really respected his frankness on this topic.

Read also: Tom Hayden's Feelings on Occupy Wall Street Run Hot and Cold The Daily Beast

Within this reality of Hayden's transition to our side, we are so pleased to share the endorsement of Hillary by one of America's most famous and highly regarded African American newspapers: (New York's) The Amsterdam News.

We need Hillary.

Our country sits on the precipice. We will either continue to rise up out of the ashes of the Bush presidency or go down in flames. The past seven years have been a struggle, to say the least. President Barack Obama has done a remarkable job trying to right this ship we call America, while having to ride the storm surges of the right wing trying to sink us at every turn. We have come a long way, but there are still so many challenges ahead of us.

As New York heads to the polls in just a few short weeks, we must be clear in our objectives. We must understand our history and who has written it. So now it is our turn to correct some of the misnomers and half truths as we go forward to this pivotal election, which, as many pundits have noted, may be the most consequential in our lifetime.  Read on at Facebook HIllaryWomen News.

The Strange Silence about Sanders's Tax Proposals The American Prospect

Clinton promises 'my door is open' to Americans Washington Post

Democrats aren't good at the political revolution thing Washington Post

Clinton promises 'my door is open' to black Americans Washington Post

How Convention Costs Put Bernie Sanders in a Bind TIME

Progressive groups target Julian Castro Politico