2016 Presidential Race Calms Down

Even with networks and reporters trying to keep the U.S. presidential vote alive as long as possible it is starting to calm down.

First, Hillary Clinton has regained gained her edge. This was no surprise. The pundits had sought to portray Bernie Sanders as capable of beating Clinton.

They knew the chronological would make it an easy sell because the first two states for Democrats were Iowa and New Hampshire, more than 95 percent wife.

Plus Sen. Sanders is from Vermont, a neighbor of New Hampshire.

But these early races meant nothing. According to Wikipedia, Hillary had led polls in 46 of 50 states in the past 18 months.

In Nevada, networks trying to get people to watch media sought to make it appear Sanders might upset Clinton. This despite a total lack of reliable polls because the major companies said it was too risky in such a caucus situation.

Within minutes of declaring Hillary the winner some pundits had been saying they believed Sanders could pull an upset.

Guess what. Hillary did carry the Latino vote.

The New York Times said Sanders is falling farther behind in delegates. The Times reported: “After Mrs. Clinton’s defeat in the New Hampshire primary, she sharpened her political message to focus on breaking “barriers” that keep black and Hispanic Americans from rising in society and earning a high-quality education, good jobs and fair treatment from police officers and the criminal justice system.

“Mrs. Clinton, her campaign surrogates and her television commercials repeated these themes throughout Nevada, and her campaign aides portrayed Mr. Sanders as preoccupied with attacking the political system and Wall Street rather than helping real people.

“According to entrance polls, Mrs. Clinton won among women and low-income voters — two groups she lost to Mr. Sanders in New Hampshire. Moreover, she seemed to hit on a message that showcased her caring side, a quality that some voters have wanted to see.”

The mainstream is still treating Donald Trump like Alexander the Great. But did Alexander ever settle for a third of the vote?

That seems to be Trump’s ceiling.  In South Carolina, two Republican U.S. senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio, about 22 percent of the vote each. They got 100,00 votes more than Trump. Three other candidates still another 100,000. So Trump, together, got 200,000 fewer than the other candidates out of a total.

One of those candidates, Jeb Bush, withdrew from the campaign last night.

Trump is going to find things much tougher when more candidates withdraw. How would he do against just or two opponents?

No one knows where the votes would do. It seems unliklely that would attack more votes. He has probably already threw just about every insult in the sink against the Pope, John McCain, Apple, female journalists and editors and others. Those who support him are probably on board.

Columbine mother's interview angers victims and families and leads no where

                                                                        Wikipedia

The television interview given by the mother of Columbine killer Dylan Klebold leaves out important information, actually reducing the amount known about WHAT led to the 13 killings.

No one is suggesting Sue Klebold knew the young men were preparing a massacre.

But the carefully choreographed televised interview leaves out important things that were known.
Some parents are angry that she waited so long to say virtually nothing.

Several so-called experts appeared but did not talk about bullying. Many believe that bullying of the killers by athletes was a major factor.

Columbine had very successful athletic teams.

“It was clear in the first hours after the shootings that vengeance against athletes was a preoccupation of the two killers. Harris and Klebold began firing with the words  "anybody with a white hat" stand up,  the Washington Post reported.

Washington Post

The Post, in a review of the Klebold’s book, mentions that bullying was endured by the killers.

It was reported by the Denver Post that Wayne Harris, father of Eric Harris, had found at least one pipe bomb in his son’s belongings before the shootings.

Denver Post

The idea that Klebold would make no money from a book being promoted by the ABC interview with former Nixon speech writer Diane Sawyer is disingenuous. The settlement of lawsuit filed by victims and their families prohibits making any money from any media accounts of what happened at Columbine or the events that preceded the killings.
It is unlikely that anyone will be able to tell whether Klebold got any money from book through back channels.

That settlement included depositions in which both families answered questions with the condition that what was said would not be released for 20 years years. This information will only be available in 2027.

The interview also made no apparent attempt to look at why Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies did not pay attention to warnings that the teens were threatening to kill people.

Colorado’s state government dropped its own investigation.

Whack a Repubican mole

Donald Trump is running out of one-liners.

At one time there were 20 or so Republican presidential candidates. That meant Trump could get away with one-liners instead of talking policy.

Assuming he does have some ideas, he soon will have to talk about them.

What was once 20 Republican candidates is now down to four or five.

Nobody has heard from Ben Carson.

Chris Christie and Carley Fiorina are the latest to withdraw.

On Saturday, in Houston, there will only be four five on the stage, depending on whether Carson shows up and is admitted.

There won’t be such great pressure to make sure Trump, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and present and former Govs. John Kasich and Jeb Bush get their chance to speak.

Kasich has tried to show he is the only moderate. This week he is expected to sign a bill taking money away from Planned Parenthood.

There still may be too many on the stage to deal with serious issues, and Trump has shown no sign of being interested in them.

If billionaire Trump does become the GOP candidate that could bring the even richer former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg out as an independent.

Despite Bernie Sanders so far in two very small, nearly all white states, roadblocks lay ahead. Starting with Nevada and South Carolina, both with large minority populations.

Clinton may be so embedded in the Democratic party’s structure that she cannot be stopped

White racists win in all-white state. Who cares?

Two candidates whose candidacies are based on winning the declining white vote have captured the first primary in the 2016 presidential race.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and real estate tycoon Donald Trump had lost a week before.
Now the media “narrative,” this year’s term, will declare them victims and the likely presidential nominees of the Democrat and Republican parties.
How can this be given that the share of whites, meanwhile Caucasians of Anglo-Saxon descent, is declining each year?
Imagine, a jeweler using an arthroscopic surgeons’ tools, removed two tiny areas from the nation and added up the votes.
Iowa and New Hampshire, combined population less than 5 million of the total of 319 million in the country.
That is not quite 2 percent.
As late night TV hosts repeatedly said, there were more blacks on the university basketball teams in the two states than in their black populations.
The two states both allow people to cross lines and vote for a candidate in either party. Most states require primary voters to be registered members of the party whose race they are voting in.
Next up are Nevada and South Carolina, both with big minority populations, and polls show Clinton with big leads. She lost to Sanders by 18 points, less than the 30 the polls predicted.
Trump may do better since there are so few blacks and so many evangelical, Confederate flag lovers.
As for New England,
It used to be joked that the New England states were in their own world. “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.”
This evening’s Huffington Post banner headline said: “NH Goes Racist Sexist Xenophobic.”
Sanders and Trump appeared to share one thing. But they were opposite sides of the coin.
Sanders wants to be a socialist. Trump want build walls around the country.
Sanders approves of same sex marriage and legal abortion and even legal weed.
Trump wants to put anyone who marries someone of the same sex in jail along with any woman who had an abortion, even if raped.
Here is where the polls seem at odds with each other.
Majorities approve of the gay marriage, legal abortion and legalizing marijuana.
With the two major parties apparently under the control of leftists and rightwing nut cases, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, also a billionaire, may enter the race as an independent.
He has been a Democrat, a Republican and now an independent.
The biggest problem with Trump and Sanders is that they are both boring. The media has supported Trump and opposed Clinton.
Bloomberg might give the nation the solid third-party choice most countries already have.
Lastly, the good news. Fatso Christie is out.

Old man wins Super Bowl

Even here in Denver most people didn’t think a lame 39-year-old quarterback, Peyton Manning, could win a Super Bowl.

He did, 24-10 over the Carolina Panthers and their 25-year-old stud quarterback.

Having lost three of five previous Super Bowls, Mile High City residents were accustomed to losing.

John Elway, who won two before retiring, was the oldest to have ever won in the past.

Elway was different. Most years he was the entire team. Elway, now the manager, took a bet, and signed Manning despite neck surgery that left him questionable.

Manning was annihilated by Seattle in his first trip for Denver two years ago. But this year Elway and defensive coach Wade Phillips, had created the best defense in the National Football Leage.

Time after time, despite a tendency for penalties due to rough play, the Broncos won the game when its offense failed to show up.

Backup quarterback Brock Osweiler won some of those games. And it would not have been a huge surprise if had replaced Manning when the going got tough.

Manning was sacked and forced to fumble but Panthers’ quarterback Cam Newton missed on many throws and a few of his runs out of the pocket made no difference.

Fireworks were going off all over the Denver Metro area.

On Monday there probably be just as many people wearing orange jerseys. They used to the Orange Crush, because of their defense in the 1970s. Now they are the Orange Rush, again for their defense.

It might have been more of a surprise if the Broncos hadn’t destroyed New Englands Patriot Tom Brady.

Both Newton and Brady frequently had to throw balls away to avoid being sacked.

Hillary leads in 46 of 50 states

Wikipedia is the last place to look for breaking news. But today the New York Times chose to publish a list of polls since 2014 in all 50 states.

Hillary Clinton was the winner.

Bernie Sanders led in his home Vermont, neighbor New Hampshire, Alaska and Maine. All the rest went to Hillary.

A few of the polls were taken in 2014, but a majority in 2015 and a significant number this year.

The winners were the ones who led in the last poll taken in a state.

Clinton not only led in the vast majority of polls, she took all 10 of the most populous states: California,
Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan.

Polls of Democrats

Clearly, things may have changed since some of these polls were taken. Network television has been taken over by non-stop coverage of Donald Trump, plus claims that Hillary is a liar, dishonest, shouts, killed soldiers at Benghazi, cozies up with Wall Street, and that husband Bill was promiscuous.

Yet some polls, and in big states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and California, show Clinton still ahead.

Pundits begun last year declaring that Clinton was unstoppable. Then they began trying to stop her.

There is no story, and thus no work for them, if the race is over before it began.

It was somewhat pathetic that two almost lily-white states, with a combined population of less than 5 million, Iowa and New Hamsphire were seen as ways to give evangelicals control of the nation.

Seen many of these zealots lately. Not in my town, Denver.

Of course much can happen between now and next November, and I may decide not to vote for a Clinton for the first time in life. But the shrieking of Trump won’t be a factor. Whenever he is on I turn the channel as fast as I can.

And most people, even old fogies like me, do get all that much content off commercial television the days. Thank heavens for Netflix, Amazon and the others.

Trump threatens to take his ball back

Accusing Iowa of stealing its primary from him, Donald Trump is threatening to take his ball back and stop the game.

Abe Lincoln would have called Ted Cruz out and met him with fists.

He has warned networks, in frequent calls that became interviews, that if the Iowa caucus is not redone he will not talk to them anymore.

Surprisingly, he has gotten support from Bernie Sanders, who is accusing Hillary Clinton of not only shouting at rallies, but claiming a victory she did not win.

If anyone thinks he is kidding, Trump took his road show to Arkansas on Wednesday, where there was no competition going on.

He lost in Iowa, where he told people they were stupid, by more than 3 points. Trump had been predicting victory though he had done little on-the-ground campaigning.

Clinton and Sanders were virtually tied, but Hillary had a handful more votes. The thing is, close only accounts in horse shoes and hand grenades.

It’s too soon to speak definitely, but it does seem Trump is getting less time on the networks after his fall from grace.

The withdrawal of several less candidates means giving Trump carte blanche on the air will be more noticeable. It is somewhat surprising that a rich capitalist who thinks he owns the country can be so clear about it.

The next race is in New Hampshire, another nearly entirely white state. However, its residents are a bit more polished than the Texas style rednecks who love the Donald. Many may not want to be seen as Trump lovers, if only to not annoy the college educated tourists it trys to draw.

Clinton is under attack again. Not for emails or Benghazi. Critics say she talks to loud at rallies. The idea of a woman talking at all doesn’t sit well with many of these volk.

Whinny Little Girl