Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

Donald as the Princess and the Pea

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As Donald Trump and Paul Ryan, on behalf of the entire RNC, engage in the dance of mutual castration, Democrats have reason for cautious optimism.

By the time the Democratic Convention crowns its nominee, Mr. Trump may be showing a little wear even for his most devoted accolades. That’s because the Republican nominee is as sensitive as the ‘Princess and the Pea.’

Behold a few of the metaphoric mattresses atop which his presidential hopes fitfully sleep:
1)    Cooperating with anybody, let alone ‘establishment’ Republicans is not a good look for the Donald; yet, he now needs them as much as they need him because he isn’t prepared to self-fund his campaign in the general.

2)    He can no longer claim to be self-funded and not beholden to anyone. We already
know by his own words that he understands the quid-pro-quo game all too well and
accepts as fair that there will be no “quid” without the requisite “quo.”

3)    His almost uncontrollable inclination to contradict himself, sometimes going back and forth in a dizzying display of indecision, has finally caught the attention of the media. Decisive he can’t claim to be.

4)    His unlimited need for attention has provided a life-time of stupid and offensive remarks ripe for the picking. If the Republicans didn’t have the balls to do it, Democrats will not hesitate to dispatch them in volleys.

5)    Unlike his Republican rivals, the Democratic nominee can and will resist the temptation to get down in the mud with him because there are plenty of capable surrogates like Elizabeth Warren (not Bill Clinton, please!) to do the job for her or him. Elizabeth Warren ties knots in Donald Trump without breaking a sweat…and both Hillary and Bernie are cool heads under pressure. The Bloviator-in-Chief  is decidedly not.

If, as seems increasingly inevitable, Hillary walks away with the nomination, she just has to leave Bill at home watering the plants, and she’ll be fine.  She’ll owe Bernie BIG time for mobilizing his minions to support her, but I think they can work out that deal so long as he keeps the faith with his supporters all the way to the Convention. It’s the policies that matter most to Bernie and its the White House that matters most to Hillary.

6)    Just because none of Donald Trump’s “unforgivable” insults have proven to be the ‘silver bullet’ necessary to disqualify him for Republican primary voters doesn’t mean
he’s out of the woods. The power high of winning the nomination will only curb his appetite for sensation temporarily. Dollars to donuts, he’s just one or two soundbites away from the next big goof. He’s programmed to offend. He can’t help himself.  And he’ll find that general election voters, reflective of the true diversity of the country, are not nearly so forgiving.

7)    No one even pretends anymore that he might know what he’s talking about. Ignorance ispretty much baked into his identity at this point. His supporters don’t care, but anyone not already in that delusional state is not likely at this point to be persuaded that he is the ‘smart’ candidate, no matter how much money he has…or says he has.

8)    Which brings us to his taxes. The longer he resists releasing them, the more everyone will be convinced they contain a bombshell. Why is the guy whose brand is supposed to be
spontaneity and transparency suddenly so secretive?

9)    Donald Trump has no sense of humor. We’ve all known people like that. They love to
ham it up and make jokes at other people’s expense, so long as they themselves aren’t the
butt of the joke.  In fact, they are particularly thin-skinned; apt to flush in anger and behave unwisely when teased.   I think we can guess what lies ahead in that department.  We’ve all seen the tape of his angry face at the Correspondent’s Dinner when the President poked fun at him.

10)   Donald Trump himself is not at all sure he wants or can even do the job for which he is
competing.  I swear I read somewhere that Trump once said that if he ever ran for President, he’d do it as a Republican because they’ll believe anything. Maybe I dreamt it, but it just seems so like him.

11)   DT says he “does great” among women; but what he really means is Republican women, which is, of and by itself something akin to an oxymoron.  He maintains the same fiction about his popularity with minorities. It was difficult to adequately test those assertions in the Republican Primary, since relatively few minority voters were involved, and there is a certain expectation of dysfunction from  women who identify with the party that would consistently act against their best interests.

The general election is a whole different animal. As unmotivated as minorities were to
vote in the Republican Primary, they will be doubly so motivated to vote Democratic in
the general election; firstly, out of a sense of outrage; and secondly, in preservation of
their own best interests that have been so conspicuously under attack from Donald Trump.

More than half of all women self-identify as leaning Democratic. Roughly 36% self identify
as Republicans. It can safely be assumed that most of these are women who also
self-identify as ‘conservative’ and many generally support conservative principles and
regional Republican candidates, but see Donald Trump as neither conservative
nor invested in their regional Republican concerns.

According to Newsweek (March 15 2016) female voters in the Michigan Republican Primary dividedtheir vote more or less equally between Trump and Cruz and Katich. That’s not a very impressive validation even from the relatively narrow pool of Republican women. As late as March of this year, 47% of Republican women “could not imagine themselves voting for Trump.”

This weekend, the New York Times  announced open season on Donald’s ‘female troubles’ with a scathing retrospective on his playboy years.

A theory that’s been going around is that Trump never really wanted to be president. This whole campaign was just an opportunity to burnish his brand and get a whole lot of face-time.

Now, it’s “Be careful what you wish for” time.

He clearly never prepared to win the nomination. Assured as he thought he was that the GOP would never let him have the nomination, I think he honestly believed he could play the aggrieved losing candidate to a sea of adoring Twitter followers for years to come, ensuring a new reality TV show and all the sycophants he could exploit for the remainder of his vapid life.

He’s not stupid (although he plays a stupid person on TV). He knows that if, God forbid, he ever did land in the White House, he would quickly become the most unpopular president of all time. His negatives would dwarf those of his campaign, and provide absolutely no amusement for him, because he would be stuck in the narrative that he himself recklessly created.

If Obama has had to endure eight years of abuse, can you imagine what thin-skinned Trump would experience in the same office?

I think he can.

Instead of being able to fling his feces at both the President and Congress,
from the safe distance of an ivory Trump Tower, he would himself be the target, day-after-day-after- endless day of blunders, indecision and head-on collisions with reality.

He’s already uncomfortable answering demands for his taxes and questions about his butler.  Even attempts to deflect to Hillary Clinton are failing to engage as the news media belatedly tries to drill-down on his pathological lies.

In what may have signaled the beginning of cognitive breakdown under pressure, Trump now appears to have double-punked the press, first by leaking an old tape of himself pretending to be a press agent boasting about Trump’s romantic conquests, then lying about the lie.  The permutations of his deceits are positively dizzying.

And I expect it isn’t fun anymore.

 

A movement, not just a campaign.

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Not surprisingly, Bernie Sanders intends to remain fully engaged in the primary process right to the end. He has promised to focus on the issues, which suggests he may feel he’s devoted as much energy as he is prepared to invest in Hillary Clinton’s record.

If Democratic voters haven’t followed the bouncing ball of her reluctance to disclose the content of paid Wall Street speeches to its obvious conclusion yet, there’s little hope in this election cycle that they will. Likewise the implications of her judgement on Iraq, Libya, “Free” trade agreements, criminal justice etc. etc.

Faced with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of winning at the delegate game, Bernie needs to use his bully pulpit in the remaining primaries to advocate strictly on policy issues. The relatively few months that were available to him to introduce himself to the entire U.S. voter population and bring media attention to the issues about which he cares most deeply, were never going to be enough to realize a complete revolution in the Democratic Party, and now they are drawing to a close.

Bernie himself acknowledged that to the people who flocked to his rallies, from the very first one which we were privileged to witness in Burlington. A single election cycle would never be sufficient to change the politics that have condemned the U.S. to growing income inequities,declining opportunities, social injustice and the quashing influence of big money on any possibility of meaningful reform.

His candidacy is the vanguard of a new political movement that is still evolving on the left in the footprints left by Occupy Wall Street. It’s adherents are mostly younger, with much of their voting life ahead of them. If the Democratic party fails once again to live up to the progressive expectations of this base, like the Republicans before them, they can look forward to declining influence as young voters demand effective third and fourth party options within the primary process.

I look forward to the day when someone challenges the constitutionality of closed primaries in a voting system already dominated by two monopolies.

In the meantime, we are left with what can only be thought of as a caricature of democratic choice as reflected in the two likely nominees.

On the one hand, we have Donald Trump, a narcissistic billionaire, whom we can safely say will be the most unqualified nominee for President in the history of the office.

On the other hand, we have Hillary Clinton, a career politician and multi-millionaire, who, based solely on experience, must be one of the most qualified candidates in recent memory. Unfortunately, that experience is blotted both by her meathead of a husband’s own famously poor judgement, and costly mistakes that she herself has made in an official capacity.

Though jubilant at their almost certain victories in the nomination process, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton share the distinction of being the most unpopular candidates in either party… practically, ever!

Each is also campaigning under a false flag of ideology: Donald Trump insists he is a Conservative, but his positions are rarely conservative in any sense of the word. They range from neo-facist, through cracker-conservative, all the way to conventionally ‘liberal.’

Hillary Clinton’s own politics have mirrored those of her husband and surrogate Bill, who was more right of center than left when he held the reigns of power. She now styles herself a “progressive” with Bernie’s personal comb. Since her days in the White House, she’s remained pretty much dead center with a dash of social liberalism, hawkishly veering right on many foreign policy issues. One gets the impression that the very word “progressive” was anathema to her until Bernie rolled into town and started getting all the attention.

The distrust for Hillary that is felt by some of Bernie’s supporters stems from her inconsistency over the years and her reluctance to ‘fess up to glaring errors in judgement.

In fairness, if Donald Trump were running for ‘President of American Enterprise,’ the only higher office for which he might arguably be qualified, he would be dogged by his own equally glaring failures of judgement over the years.

The fact remains that, all things being equal, come election day, American voters will be limited in their choice to a highly competent but ethically challenged Hillary Clinton or that wholly incompetent, wholly unpredictable, self-serving loose-canon, Donald Trump.

She might say one thing now and then do something else once in the Oval Office.

…But with Trump as Commander in Chief? There is a real possibility that he might wake up one morning feeling petulant over a sleight  by some other bellicose demagogue, and exercise his command of the nuclear codes.

I’ll hold my nose and vote for the competent, sane choice every time.

Is Judd Gregg really blind to socialism or just a fool in The Hill?

Business, National, , , ,

New Hampshire’s former senator and governor Judd Gregg is menaced by socialism and worried, very worried about growing support for Bernie Sanders’ bid for president. I wonder what trigger threshold, visible only to financial industry lobbyists and certain Democratic pundits Bernie just reached.

In an opinion piece in The Hill titled: Sanders fans are blind to reality of socialism Gregg wonders where “a significant percentage of the Democratic ‘base’ is headed.”

chartdemos
Charts documenting Denmark’s socialist “hell”. [not from Gregg’s opinion piece]

Says Gregg in The Hill: Now large segments of the Democratic Party are embracing with gusto the socialist creed as carried forth by Sanders — and at a less dramatic level by the likes of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Gregg suggests Sanders’ support comes from naive college age voters, schooled in the dark arts of socialism by professors who fail, he says to teach of “the horrors of socialism.”

They might start with the experience of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Notice the name. Or the National Socialist movement called Nazism. Notice the name again. Or Maoist China, a socialist state again in name. Millions of people died under these banners of socialism and millions more were impoverished.

Notice this name: The Securities Industry & Financial Marketers Association.  I imagine they wouldn’t welcome any extra scrutiny from Sen. Warren or a President Sanders and for years they paid Gregg millions to help avoid that possibility. Juddsifma

It is no secret but The Hill doesn’t bother to mention in his bio that most recently Gregg was not senator or governor but the CEO of the Securities Industry & Financial Marketers Association, an industry lobby group. SIFMA in 2014 spent $7,430,000 on lobbying, and made political contributions totaling $833,175.

Thankfully Gregg (or his ghostwriters; could he actually write this stuff?) doesn’t belabor the fascist/red baiting theme for more than a beat before trying a different angle. He evokes American exceptionlism and chants the holy names of the American hyper rich: Zuckerberg, Musk, Schultz, and Gates.

They all give America a unique economic edge in a competitive world. And they are all products of America, and our market economy.

Try to find such opportunity or such prosperity in a socialist nation.

Well Gregg might be shocked — shocked! — to learn that socialist Denmark has a rapidly rising number of dollar millionaires [individuals whose net wealth exceeds one million US dollars]. This in part is due to Danish stock prices increasing more rapidly than those in other European countries, according to a 2015 report on worldwide wealth patterns by the Royal Bank of Canada.  That’s a kicker — a growing number of millionaires and a thriving equities market in a nation where socialism has been allowed to run rampant!

 Some 69,000 Danes can proudly call themselves millionaires when measured in US dollars, reveals RBC’s annual World Wealth Report.

“[…] the Danish dollar-millionaire club is growing significantly faster than in most European countries. In 2011, there were only 45,600 Danes that fell into this category – a figure that has since risen by 51 percent.

“The number of dollar millionaires is rapidly rising,” Jacob Graven, chief economist at Sydbank, told Ekstra Bladet.

So Judd, who is going to tell all the Danes and their recent millionaires they are living and thriving in a socialist hell? Or maybe if he closes his eyes real tight, he can keep pretending they just don’t exist.

The Little Bill Who Cried Wolf

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It would be a shame to see the Democratic primary race descend into the sort of food fight we‘ve lately witnessed from the GOP.

One would think that there are enough differences on policy between the candidates so that hyperbolic characterizations might be set aside. Sadly that doesn’t seem to be the case.

When the candidates begin to show a little strain, the media is right there to stir the pot, dangling ‘he said/she saids’ and hoping for a strike. All too often, they are rewarded with a juicy bite of red meat that keeps them coming back for more.

Bernie Sanders was finally provoked into suggesting something which I am sure he regrets: that Hillary Clinton might be ‘unqualified’ to be president, based on a series of regrettable decisions from her political career. He was responding to a leaked Clinton campaign plan of attack on Sanders described as “disqualify, defeat, and then reunite (the party).”

It was a war of words with a candidate who is extremely capable of dishing it out herself. Neither came out of the exchange smelling like a rose; however, it is Bill Clinton who ought now to be apologizing for his implication that somehow Bernie was being sexist in his remarks.

Of course, he was not; Bernie was simply hitting her on the issues in response to her campaign’s implication that he might not ‘qualify’ as a real Democrat.

It is an insult to women everywhere when a man such as Bill Clinton cries ‘wolf’ as he has in this case.

Sexism is a very real and pernicious obstacle that women deal with every day. It is not a false flag of political convenience to be trotted out whenever a female candidate is exposed to criticism for her policies. Most female candidates use the accusation only rarely, and even then, judiciously. They recognize the damage done to legitimate outrage when sexism is invoked without cause.

Certainly Bill Clinton should be the last man on earth to challenge Bernie Sanders on his feminist credentials. I have the impression that he still doesn’t ‘get’ that he is the very embodiment of sexism for many American women.

It is a mistake for the Clinton campaign to let Bill off the leash. He made a hash of her campaign against Obama and he may just do it again if somebody doesn’t send him on a long vacation.

Not your father’s horserace

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I know that everyone from the conventional media to Hillary Clinton is racing to discount Bernie Sanders in the 2016 race for the nomination, insisting that the “math” is already against him.

What they don’t seem to understand is that the “math” is of little consequence to Bernie’s supporters who are focussed on issues of economic and social justice; and the only way progress will be made on those issues is if we bring them all the way to the convention.

Personally, I think that Bernie should continue doing exactly what he has been doing. Campaign on the issues that are important to most Americans and contrast his record with that of Hillary Clinton. Every voter in every state deserves an opportunity to weigh-in before the convention.

This is doubly important in a turbulent election year like 2016, when so many new voters are engaged in the conversation. There will never be a better chance to move progressive values forward in the political dialogue.

Were Bernie to simply fold his tent and steal silently into the night, as President Obama and the conventional pundits so fervently desire, not only would Hillary Clinton suffer the immediate uptick of slings and arrows from Donald Trump, she would also be likely to seek the conventional security of a centrist position. This would mean death to the forward-looking face of the 2016 Democratic party which has excited so many new voters.

It would also mean that Hillary’s campaign would languish in the ‘old news’ department, relegated only to responding to each outrageous new attack that DT slings her way. This is not the way any candidate wants to capture voter attention. Better she should be forced to flesh-out her positions on important issues in response to Bernie’s legitimate questions and that Barack Obama remains neutral a little longer. His interference would not exactly burnish her progressive credentials and could further alienate Bernie’s not inconsiderable bloc of loyalists.

The fact is that the president’s endorsement will not serve to peel away any support from Bernie since Bernie’s supporters are inclined to be disappointed in President Obama’s underwhelming performance on some key progressive issues.

If our democracy is to limp forward with any hope of regaining public confidence, it is necessary that the Democratic party do just as much soul-searching as will be required of the Republicans.

The writing is on the wall. We can’t keep shorthanding the political process to the advantage of just a few big power brokers and high rolling lobbyists.

It’s time to recognize that this not your father’s horserace.

Updated: Jim Condos backs Bernie…& it’s a Michigan blowout!

local/regional, National, , , ,

Following a shockingly unexpected victory for Bernie Sanders in the Michigan primary, these folks must feel especially good about their gutsy decision.

Vermont Secretary of State, Jim Condos, and Rep. Tim Jerman of Essex Junction have announced that, as superdelegates to the Democratic party convention, they will be joining Peter Welch in supporting Bernie Sanders’ bid to become President of the United States.  I completely overlooked the news that Democratic Party Chair, Dottie Deans, also threw her super support behind Bernie!  I must have been suffering from double-Dean vision.  Well done, Ms. Dean!

The pair waited until after Vermont’s voters had spoken in the primary to announce their choice because both felt it important to lend their weight to the choice of the people of Vermont.

Bernie Sanders, as we all know, walked away with all of the pledged delegates, when he scored more than 86 % of the popular vote in the Vermont primary.

It is unfortunate that Governor Shumlin and Senator Leahy could not wait to see what is the will of their constituents before throwing their own superdelegate support behind Hillary Clinton, who gained less than 13% of the popular vote. Howard Dean, who as a former Democratic Chairman also enjoys superdelegate status (and who once defeated Senator Sanders in a gubernatorial race) was another early Hillary supporter.

It would have been nice to see them also refrain from endorsement until after the people had spoken, but the Clintons represent a formidable bloc in the Democratic party, demanding and receiving loyalty based on their combined history of  electoral success; and nobody ever said that party politics were fair…or even particularly democratic.

Anyway, thank you Secretary Condos, Dottie Deans and Tim Jerman for resisting the siren’s song of power politics and instead remembering your own loyal constitutents.

Your contribution puts you on the right side of American history at what we can only hope will prove a pivotal moment.

Frankln County: Bernie decimates Hillary and GOP field

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The front page table in today’s St. Albans Messenger tells it all: Bernie Sanders is the best candidate the Democrats can field in the general election.

As one of the most conservative counties in Vermont, Franklin County is a pretty good place to consider in an up-close examination of the primary results.

According to today’s table, here is how things shook out:

Donald Trump got a total of 1,782 votes.

Hillary got a total of 888 votes in all municipalities, roughly half of Trump’s total.

Of the other Republicans, only Ted Cruz got less votes than Hillary, at 508.

Bernie got a total of 7,060 votes!!  That is six times Trump’s total.

Bernie got more votes than all of the others together!

When voters really get to know Bernie, they are overwhelmingly drawn to his message.  For months now, Bernie’s strength against all of the Republicans (and Hillary’s relative weakness) has consistently shown up in all the polls.

Primaries are relatively poor tests of ultimate match-ups.

As we discovered in 2008, the super delegates are party loyalists above all.  When they began to see the groundswell of support for Obama toward the end of the primary season, they didn’t hesitate to throw-over Hillary for Obama.   I have to believe that they will eventually come around to recognizing where their best hope of winning lies.

Otherwise, we are in deep doo-doo.

Bernie vs. Hillary: duelling meme’s in the dead of night

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Like many of our GMD readers, I was up late last night searching the intertubes for early
comments on Super Tuesday results.

If you are among our saner readers and simply went to bed, you might have missed a couple of contrasting blogposts that deserve greater attention.

The first, by Bernie supporter Cenk Uygur, appeared on HuffPost at 12:56 AM.

The piece focuses on a campaign narrative that I myself sensed was developing last night, but could not possibly have so well-articulated. It is well worth a read.

Hillary (predictably) won in all the deep southern states, but other than that, only Massachusetts went to her, and by the narrowest of margins.  Remember, despite all of her union endorsements, Hillary only scraped by in Nevada because the turnout was poor; and Iowa was a virtual tie.

This Tuesday, Bernie won in every state in which he actually spent some time letting people get to know him. The problem with Hillary’s southern wins is that in almost every case, Donald Trump outdrew her at the polls. . Those states aren’t even likely to be competitive; and when she lost to Bernie,  she lost big time.

In fact, in the states she won, Democratic turnout overall was down from the Obama years.

Her electoral delegate count looks impressive at this point, but so it did against Barack Obama.  The difference of course is that at this point in 2008, lots of super delegates were moving to Obama; but the super delegates are party loyalists like no others.  If they see that Hillary is not as likely as Bernie to win in the general, they will gradually begin to come around.

The second blogpost to consider is by Hillary supporter, Richard Wolffe, writing at 2:39 AM in the Guardian, presumably after reading Mr. Uygur’s earlier post.

I was not familiar with Mr. Wolffe’s reputation but was astonished by the ungracious tone. Mr. Wolffe seemed to have a major bug up his ass, making statements like

‘…it’s only a matter of time before Sanders stops perpetuating his own hoax and looks at the data of the delegate count.’

and

‘…“In Vermont,” Sanders explained, “billionaires don’t buy town meetings.” Well, they would be strange billionaires if they did.’

okay…

This is where all the dark energy goes in the really underground campaign…to seeding the ‘news’ shows, the blogosphere, Facebook and what-have-you with memes that favor your candidate. The Clinton’s are masters of that resource with an impressive network of seasoned operatives and powerful contacts.

What’s interesting is not so much the vitriolic and completely over-the-top attack Mr. Wolffe unleashes on Bernie, but the pushback in the comments section…all 3,282  of them!!   It’s a real reflection of those ‘unfavorable’ numbers we’ve seen for Clinton.

Somewhere in the first page of comments, I came across one that spelled out the connection of the writer to the Clinton campaign, something the casual reader wouldn’t know. Unlike Mr. Uygur, who wore his heart on his sleeve, Mr. Wolffe was not so transparent. Suddenly the angry tone of the article made perfect sense, and I read it in a new light.

Unfortunately, it would be a full time job spotting these things and where they come from.

Why more young people don’t vote.

National, Uncategorized, , , ,

Republicans, whose star seems to be on the wane, have been trying to suppress the vote of all but the narrow sector to whom their message still appeals.  Democrats, on the other hand, project a message of inclusion which should bring far more people into the process. Why is it not more successful?

Bernie Sanders’ support demographic is a particular challenge, being heavily weighted with new voters.

It annoys me when media types refer to young people as being ‘unreliable’ when it comes to voting. The implication is that they are a monolith with one defining characteristic: they are undependable.  That is so unfair.

In fact, younger voters tend to be far more mobile than their established elders…not because of any particular lack of reliability, but out of sheer necessity. They must move much more frequently simply to be in the vicinity of their schools and employment opportunities.

If they have already left school and have a job, they are probably renters. In the tight rental market young people on skimpy budgets often must move from one municipality to another nearby in order to pursue more affordable housing opportunities. Theirs is a constantly shifting environment of economic instability, something that the current voter registration practices do not recognize.

As teenagers, these good citizens registered to vote as soon as they were of legal age, and then life took over and set them on a dead run.  A couple of years go by, an important national primary or election looms; and thinking of themselves as already registered, a lot of busy young voters completely forget that, having moved once or twice in the interim, they are no longer qualified to vote without re-registering.

They show up at the polls on election day and are turned away, after which some simply abandon the democratic habit.

As of this writing, same day registration is available in only eight states. Vermont will soon join that number, but only in 2017.

Bummer.

This is another stupid flaw in the system that no doubt disenfranchises huge numbers of individuals who would otherwise be gladly participating in the process.

Why should national elections be subject to restrictive voting rules imposed by the individual states? Shouldn’t there be a national voter registry, accessible anywhere in the nation?

Like efforts by the Republicans to disenfranchise minority groups whom they view as unfriendly monoliths rather than individual constituents, the voter registration practices that make it difficult for students and people with no fixed address to participate in the process strongly favor the continuance of establishment politics over those of innovation and progressive

This does not serve the best interests of our democracy, nor does it bode well for our international competitiveness in the future..

Tulsi Gabbard: A new face for the future.

National, Uncategorized, ,

I’d just like to take a moment to celebrate Hawaii’s Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who is being hailed by the New York Times as “a new rising star in Democratic politics.”

As a vice-chair of the DNC, Gabbard has publicly criticized DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz over the dramatically poor debate scheduling that most took to favor the campaign of presumed nominee Hillary Clinton, by minimizing her exposure to debate scrutiny.

She has now gone one step further, resigning her position at the DNC in order to boldly endorse Bernie Sanders for President.

This gal has chutzpa, a commodity sadly lacking in the world of DC cronyism.

Ms. Gabbard explained her decision in a video on YouTube in which she said that, as a military veteran, she wanted the United States to avoid “interventionist wars of regime change.”

Her statement has extra gravitas, given that it comes from a seasoned veteran of foreign conflicts:

“As a veteran of two Middle East deployments, I know first hand the cost of war,” said Ms. Gabbard, one of the first female combat veterans to serve in Congress. “I know how important it is that our commander-in-chief has the sound judgment required to know when to use America’s military power and when not to use that power.

Once more, the island state of Hawaii, way out in the Pacific has put forth a leader for a new generation of Mainlanders. I look forward to following her future.Tulsi-gabbard-promoted-major