Monday, February 1, 2016

Sanders Defeats Clinton...

...in the latest Iowa poll. But it's still unclear who won the Iowa Caucus. Hillary squeaked by with 4/10ths of a percent.

Feel the Bern!

UPDATE: Tonight I watched the Iowa caucus minute-by-minute — on both CNN and MSNBC. Yes, it was a surprise Ted Cruz won the GOP vote (and Trump place 2nd while Marco Rubio took a victory lap for coming in 3rd). But the real nail-biter was the Democratic race.

The last count (as 10:43 pm Pacific, 1:43 Eastern) Hillary had 696 delegates (49.8%) to Bernie's 692 delegates (49.6%) — with 99% of the votes in. It doesn't get any closer than this.

But what's odd is, 2 hours earlier — when Hillary had 601 delegates (50%) to Bernie's 594 delegates (49%) — Hillary was already declaring victory. Media pundits weren't sure if it was a victory speech or not. (It could have been a calculated move by her to discourage Bernie supporters from voting).

At the time, NBC News still said it was too close to call. During her angry-sounding "victory" speech, when Hillary said she was a "progressive", some people in the crowd started booing her.

Then about an hour later Bernie took to the stage and spoke: "Even though the results aren't in, it looks like we have about half of the delegates." He didn't concede defeat, but he did congratulate Hillary for running a good campaign (something Hillary didn't do, congratulate Bernie during her speech.)

MSNBC had last reported that they still can not announce a victory to anyone (not tonight anyway) because it's still too close to call. Media pundits (Chuck Todd, etc.) were asking why Hillary had already announced a victory -- and that maybe that was a "blunder" by the Clinton camp.

The Iowa director of elections also says they can not declare a victory yet. And the pundits said there could also be recounts and legal challenges as well.

Just now (on MSNBC) they’re saying it could literally come down to a coin toss!

The Hill (February 02, 2016, 12:33 am) Clinton wins Iowa delegate after coin toss

"Hillary Clinton on Monday night secured an Iowa delegate over Bernie Sanders by the flip of a coin. A video captured by a Univision reporter shows caucus officials resorting to a coin toss to decide which Democratic presidential candidate would receive the precinct's fifth delegate ... The Iowa Democratic caucuses too close to call, with Sanders and Clinton locked in a dead heat. With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton had 49.8 percent of state delegates to Sanders's 49.6 percent. The candidates will likely split the delegates almost evenly."

UPDATE: As of Feb. 2rd at 1:30 a.m. PT — so far, with 99.99% of the results.

Hillary Clinton --699.57 delegate equivalents (49.9%)
Bernie Sanders -695.49 delegate equivalents (49.5%)
Martin O'Malley ---7.68 delegate equivalents (00.6%)

* Commentary: I suspect the popular vote was very different, but the Democratic Party won't release those numbers. I wonder why? It was mostly older voters voting for Hillary and younger voters voting for Bernie. So in essence, older voters have already made their way through life (locking up their college educations, jobs, Social security, pensions, etc.) and they are now just voting selfishly to deprive younger voters a voice in their own futures. Oh well, all's not lost. 49 States to go!

A brand new Quinnipiac poll released this morning has Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton in Iowa 49% to 46%. Among first-time voters, Sanders leads Clinton 62% to 35% percent, while Clinton holds a 9-point lead among those who have caucused before — who are mostly older voters. (The survey of 919 likely Democratic caucusgoers was conducted Jan. 25–31 via landlines and cellphones with a margin of error of 3.2 points.)

In Michael Moore's recent endorsement of Bernie Sanders, he notes that the pundits, politicos and the mainstream media talking heads are claiming that there’s no way a "democratic socialist" can get elected President of the United States:

That is the main talking point coming now from the Hillary Clinton campaign office. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary recently announced the most looked-up word in their online dictionary in 2015 was “socialism.” If you’re under 49 (the largest voting block), the days of the Cold War and Commie Pinkos and the Red Scare look as stupid as Reefer Madness. If Hillary’s biggest selling point as to why you should vote for her is "Bernie’s a socialist!" or "a socialist can’t win!" — then she’s lost.

Hillary Clinton has also been making false claims about Bernie Sanders and lying about her so-called "accomplishments".

Hillary Clinton's husband deregulated the banks in 1999 by revoking Glass-Steagall, which greatly contributed to the Great Recession. Hillary downplays this because it would be admitting that her husband screwed up, and wants to only direct our attention to "shadow banking" (which is also a part of the problem, but only a part). That's why she says she won't reinstate Glass-Steagall, and defends her husband's actions while criticizing Senator Bernie Sanders (who voted against revoking Glass-Steagall).

Now Hillary is in Iowa trying to convince voters to elect her to be our next president, putting her husband back in the White House as one of her economic advisors. She says she's not running for her husband's third term in office, but wants to build on his and her "accomplishments". In other words, maintaining the status quo.

With Bernie, we can move the Overton window further to the left (where FDR was) — much more so than Hillary Clinton would ever go (she will just mostly maintain the status quo and give us another 8 more years of Obama or another 8 more years of Bill Clinton.

But the people want real change — not more lying politicians who pander for votes, take money from banks and make promises they think people want to hear, without any intention of really changing much of anything at all. Some people are just hungry for the job as POTUS for personal ambition, not because they want to do anything of any real significance for working people. Authenticity counts, and Hillary has zero.

We are where we are today partly because of the Clintons and their current supporters in Congress; now she wants to build on her husband's and Obama's "legacy", but she says she's not running for her husband's third term — or Obama's third term.

Edited excerpts from the Nation: Note to Hillary: Clintonomics Was a Disaster for Most Americans (By Robert Pollin / January 26, 2016):

In trying to burnish her credentials as a can-do populist and to portray Bernie Sanders as a purveyor of naive socialist fantasies, Hillary Clinton has increasingly invoked Bill Clinton’s presidency as her economic policy lodestar. When Hillary was asked at the January 17 Democratic debate whether Bill Clinton would be advising her on the economy, she responded, “I’m going to have the very best advisers that I can possibly have, and when it comes to the economy and what was accomplished under my husband’s leadership in the ’90s—especially when it came to raising incomes for everybody and lifting more people out of poverty than at any time in recent history— you bet.”

Wall Street flourished under Clinton. By 1999, the average price of stocks had risen to 44 times these companies’ earnings. Historically, stock prices had averaged about 14 times more than earnings. A major driver here was Wall Street’s craze for Internet start-ups. Throughout the bubble years, Clinton’s policy advisers, led by Robert Rubin (co-chair of Goldman Sachs) and Larry Summers, maintained that regulating Wall Street was an outmoded relic from the 1930s. They used this argument to push through the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall financial regulatory system that had been operating since the New Deal. The Clinton team thus set the stage for the collapse of the Dot.com bubble and ensuing recession in March 2001. They also created the conditions that enabled the even more severe bubble that produced the 2008 global financial crisis and Great Recession. [The Clintons got $125 million from the banks for speeches since they left the White House when they said they were dead broke. Later, Obama's administration never prosecuted any of the bankers, they just find them.]

Clinton’s position on global trade was virtually identical to that of his Republican predecessors, proclaiming the universal virtues of free trade. Clinton moved quickly after taking office to push through the final passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that had been promoted by Presidents Reagan and Bush. The Clinton administration did almost nothing to support unions or working people generally. [And there was PNTR for China as well, costing the U.S. over 3 million good-paying union manufacturin jobs.]

Spending on food stamps and other nutritional assistance programs dropped sharply under Clinton. Clinton’s campaign to “end welfare as we know it” was one major factor. Under Clinton, the pressures on private soup kitchens and food pantries increased dramatically ... The unemployment rate did begin falling after Clinton took office in 1993, but unemployment started rising again soon after the bubble burst. [And there were the bankruptcy laws as well. See this video of Elizabeth Warren talking about when she met Hillary Clinton.]

In sum, Bill Clinton’s presidency accomplished almost nothing to improve conditions for working people and the poor on a sustained basis. Gestures to the poor and working class were slight and back-handed, while wages for the majority remained below their level of a generation prior. Wealth at the top exploded with the Wall Street bubble. But the stratospheric rise in stock prices and the debt-financed consumption and investment booms produced a mortgaged legacy. The financial unraveling began even as Clinton was basking in praise for his economic stewardship. Throughout the current presidential campaign, this reality needs to be recognized every time Hillary Clinton invokes her husband’s record as a compelling argument for supporting her own candidacy. [Much more is documented in compelling detail by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in his 1994 book, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House]

And what can Hillary do that Bernie can't (if elected) — or what Obama couldn't do right now? If she has some great "plan" now, why doesn't Hillary present her ideas to her BFF Obama to implement it right now? After all, why wait until the next president is elected? The Republicans despise her — maybe more than Obama. What can she get passed through Congress that Bernie can't?

Speaking of which, I thought Hillary said she wasn't running for President Obama's third term. But her recent op-ed says otherwise. From Hillary at the Huffington Post (January 20, 2016)

"On January 20, 2017, America will begin our next chapter. A new president will stand on the steps of the Capitol, raise one hand, and take the oath of office. From that moment on, he or she will decide whether we defend and build on the progress we've made under President Obama -- or tear it all away." [Or make it much better perhaps? You and your husband had a chance, and you led us to where we are today. You can't blame the Republicans for all your "mistakes".]

The Guardian (January 31, 2016):

Obama's true heir is Hillary Clinton. But that is a blessing for Bernie Sanders, who should let Clinton claim Obama’s legacy while he strikes out for something new ... For the first-time voters who flocked to the polls [in 2008], inspired by a candidate who spoke of lasting changes, the past eight years have been ones of political disappointment ... Today it seems that the Gilded Age is back and entrenched even more deeply than before. Back in 2008, Clinton presented herself as the realist’s alternative to Obama the dreamer. She’s describing herself the same way today ..."

Hillary Clinton (January 26, 2016) "I'm not running for his [Obama's] third term, I'm running for my first term."

(Listen to a great discussion in the video below) Is Hillary’s narrative now “I’m Running for Obama’s third term?" Hillary Clinton has decided to wrap herself in the mantle of the Obama administration. In the last debate, that was what her reason to attack Bernie for being “anti-Obama”. Clinton apparently thinks that making Bernie out to be “anti-Obama” will convince voters that she’s the right person to carry on the President’s legacy. In other words, her campaign has finally found a narrative. It’s “Hillary Clinton is running for Barack Obama’s third term while Bernie Sanders is running against it. ”

  • Hillary Clinton (October 28, 2015) "I'm not running for my husband's third term. I'm not running for President Obama's third term. I'm running for my first term. But I'm going to do what works."
  • Hillary Clinton (September 19, 2016) "I’m not running for my husband’s third term or President Obama’s third term."
  • Hillary Clinton (May 22, 2015) "I'm not running for my husband's third term and I'm not running for Barack Obama's third term. I'm running to continue the positive results oriented policies that both of them worked for."

* Related Post: Hillary Loses 4th Debate while Running for Obama's 3rd Term

What Bernie Sanders can do in the elections.

As an aside: A great quote from Dean Baker in his recent article: "We got out of the first Great Depression in 1941 by spending a ton of money fighting World War II. It is hard to see any reason why we couldn’t have ended the depression a decade sooner by spending a ton of money in 1931 on infrastructure, health care, and education. The same story would have applied in 2009." [Bernie Sanders wants to impose a financial transaction tax on the bankers to fix our infrastructure.]

64 comments:

  1. Bernie Sanders ("A man of the People") brought in a jaw-dropping $20 million from 770,000 campaign contributions last month. (That would be about 4 hedge-fund mangers for Hillary Clinton).

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/31/bernie-sanderss-campaign-brings-in-jaw-dropping-20-million-in-january/

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    1. * Who can get more more things done with the bully pulpit — Obama, Hillary or Bernie? Hillary thinks she can. But I’m still trying to figure out who the Republicans in Congress will hate more as our president: Muslim/Marxist/socialist/food stamp president Obama; or Benghazi/Wall Street shill/private email server Hillary Clinton; or a democratic-socialist Bernie.

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    2. Hillary Clinton has been regularly criticizing the recent merger between the companies Johnson Controls and Tyco International (known as an inversion to dodge taxes). Hillary says: “It’s not an inversion; it should be called a perversion”. But she doesn't mention her ties to the firm. Since 2009, Johnson Controls has been a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, which is led by Bill Clinton, and the firm has donated as much as $250,000 to the charity in membership dues.

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  2. The Nation: 9 Things You Need to Know About Tonight’s Iowa Caucus -- By D.D. Guttenplan

    We’ll probably never know who got the most votes [Hillary or Bernie]. That’s because what gets announced tonight are the totals for delegates to the county conventions, who in turn elect delegates to the state convention, who in turn elect a delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July. The actual caucus-vote totals for each candidate are never officially recorded or reported ... Shortly after 7 pm, when the caucuses officially kick off, supporters for each candidate will be asked to publicly identify themselves. Any candidate who doesn’t get at least 15 percent of the voters in attendance in a given caucus is ruled “not viable,” freeing [Martin O'Malley's] supporters to be courted, publicly, by the other candidates ... Jeff Cox, a former county chairman who’s supporting Sanders, told [The Nation], “The whole caucus system is subject to manipulation by the party leadership ... MSNBC reported that this time around the Sanders camp, worried about Microsoft’s role in tallying the count, has developed its own app to allow it to double-check the results.

    http://www.thenation.com/article/9-things-you-need-to-know-about-tonights-iowa-caucus/

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    1. The Clinton campaign has trained 4,000 volunteer precinct captains to throw some bodies into O’Malley’s corner when it tactically makes sense as a way to hurt Sanders. If O’Malley gets 15 percent of the caucus-goers at a precinct, then he is considered “viable” and his supporters do not need to pick between Sanders and Clinton. In many cases, Sanders is the second choice of O’Malley supporters. Both are looking for an outsider and uncomfortable with Clinton. Making O’Malley “viable” prevents people who would like to back Sanders in the second round from doing so. BuzzFeed reported over the weekend that there is a proprietary Clinton campaign iPhone app to help precinct captains calculate when to engage in such chicanery. The Sanders campaign said it would not play such games.

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  3. Fourth-quarter campaign fundraising reports — by order of the most raised:

    •Hillary Clinton raised $37 million (mostly from big corporations, banks and hedge funds) - *See Super PACS below
    •Bernie Sanders raised $33.6 million (mostly from small individual donors)
    •Ben Carson raised $22.6 million
    •Ted Cruz raised $20.5 million - *See Super PACS below
    •Marco Rubio raised $14.2 million - *See Super PACS
    •Jeb Bush raised $7.1 million - *See Super PACS
    •John Kasich raised $3.2 million
    •Chris Christie raised $2.95 million
    •Carly Fiorina raised $2.84 million
    •Donald Trump raised $2.80 million
    •Rand Paul raised $2.10 million
    •Mike Huckabee raised $703,000
    •Rick Santorum raised less than $500,000

    ------------------ Super PACS ----------------

    •Hillary Clinton: Priorities USA Action, the lead super PAC backing Clinton, has raised $50.5 million to date and ended January with nearly $45 million in the bank. The group’s chief strategist, Guy Cecil, said donors have committed to give another $42 million. George Soros has given $6 million.

    •Jeb Bush: The pro-Jeb super PAC Right to Rise raised just $15 million in the second half of the year after taking in more than $100 million during the first six months. Of that, $10 million came from "Hank" Greenberg, former chief of AIG.

    •Marco Rubio: Billionaire hedge fund managers Paul Singer and Ken Griffin each gave $2.5 million to the super PAC backing Rubio, part of the $14.4-million haul the group raised in the second half of 2015.

    •Ted Cruz: Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam have not yet made public contributions to any of the super PACs backing the presidential candidates, but they each maxed out to Cruz with $2,700 checks in mid-November. Super PACs supporting Cruz raised only slightly over $1 million dollars in the second half of 2015.

    * The O’Malley super PAC received $100,000 from Eliot Spitzer and his mother. Generation Forward only raised $514,000 during the past quarter, including in-kind donations. “Until recently, Spitzer had been dating Lis Smith, O’Malley’s deputy campaign manager,” John Wagner notes.

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  4. Everyone agrees that the more people who show up at caucus sites tonight, the more likely Trump and Sanders are to win. Record turnout is widely expected on the Republican side, but many Democrats don’t think their 2008 record, which Barack Obama helped set, can be broken.

    Maybe, maybe not. College kids aren't home on break like they were when Obama ran (bad for Bernie) — but the weather may turn bad, keeping older voters home (good for Bernie). We'll see what happens...

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    1. Asked whether he believes the thousands of people who have attended Sanders’s rallies would show up at the caucuses, Bernie's campaign manager said: “I have a lot of confidence in Bernie’s supporters. They come to his hour-and-a-half-long rallies and listen to his speech about the rigged economy and the corrupt political system, laden with a lot of specifics and details and policy proposals. So I think they’ll come to caucus as well, absolutely.” But advisers to both of the leading Democrats also privately agreed that Clinton was only narrowly ahead — and neither campaign expects turnout to top 200,000 (although, if it did, that would be high enough to give Sanders a real opportunity to win.)

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-big-iowa-test-can-trump-and-sanders-turn-enthusiasm-into-votes/2016/01/30/949eb078-c768-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html

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    2. The Sanders campaign has been urging college-aged supporters to “Go Home for Bernie”

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-voting-just-a-day-away-candidates-are-sprinting-across-iowa/2016/01/31/0da45bb2-c831-11e5-88ff-e2d1b4289c2f_story.html

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    3. Speaking at the University of Iowa Saturday, Bernie Sanders told thousands of students that they could help him “make the pundits look dumb” by turning out.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/30/sanders-to-iowa-students-make-the-pundits-look-dumb-by-coming-to-caucus/

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    4. Bernie said on CNN: “If people come out, I think you're going to look at one of the biggest political upsets in the modern history of our country."

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  5. Excerpts from the WaPo;

    Hillary Clinton’s "play-by-the-rules" campaign has left many Democratic voters looking for inspiration elsewhere. Her campaign message is similar — it’s about pragmatism, experience, avoiding risks. Bernie Sanders goes exactly the other way — talking political revolution ... If polls are right, he stands a good chance of topping Clinton both in Iowa today and in New Hampshire next week.

    And Bernie’s got the crowds. Nearly 63,000 Iowans have attended his rallies since he began campaigning in April. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has tended toward smaller events with smaller crowds to prevent empty seats.

    Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who watched Clinton stump in Des Moines, said: "With Bernie Sanders you are hearing something new, and with Hillary Clinton you are hearing the same thing you heard eight years ago. She doesn’t show her emotions. Iowa isn’t just about policy, it’s also about people and who you are as a person. All you have to do is look around. Did you see anyone screaming or excited to be there? I didn’t.”

    Nicole Spencer arrived at a Clinton event at a middle school gym in Marshalltown last week and looked disappointed. “This is rinky-dink; this is very unprofessional,” she said. She’d just been mesmerized by a Donald Trump rally, held in a much grander venue at the town’s domed high school gymnasium, where the crowd was packed to the rafters. “For me, it was like going to Las Vegas. You know he is going to put on a good show.”

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    1. Check out a 360-degree view of the thousands of people who rallied for Sanders on Saturday -- just drag your mouse around the screen (To watch 360 degree videos, you'll need the latest version of Chrome, Opera, Firefox, or Internet Explorer on your computer. On mobile, use the latest version of the YouTube app for Android or iOS.)

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTnIf5_7xbs

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  6. The Democratic candidates agreed to participate in a newly scheduled CNN town hall on Wednesday night in New Hampshire (Feb. 3) scheduled for 8 p.m. EST (It will not be a head-to-head debate. It will feature moderator and audience questions for each of the candidates separately.)

    Anne Gearan reports: “It was not clear whether the newly added town hall will affect a proposed debate hosted by MSNBC on Thursday. Clinton, Sanders and O'Malley have agreed in principle to attend that debate, provided it is approved by the Democratic National Committee, and MSNBC announced details Sunday: 9 p.m. EST at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The DNC issued a cryptic statement Sunday tabling discussion until Tuesday.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/31/democratic-rivals-say-yes-to-another-town-hall/

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  7. Clinton plays down latest email revelations as Iowa contest looms

    Hillary Clinton dismissed revelations that 22 emails on her private email server, spread across seven chains, were labeled top secret. She said on ABC's This Week" that the Friday news dump from the State Department was politically motivated. "This is very much like Benghazi. I think it's pretty clear they are grasping at straws."

    Bernie Sanders, who famously said he did not care about the frontrunner's "damn" emails during the first debate, called the issue "very serious" on CNN. He said that there is a "legal process in place" for understanding what happened. “Well, look, in terms of what people are going to get slapped with, look at the front pages today in terms of what Secretary Clinton is getting slapped with. You know as well as I do, it has to do with emails."

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/31/clinton-plays-down-latest-email-revelations-as-iowa-contest-looms/

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  8. Mounting evidence from Iowa suggests that, notwithstanding Hillary Clinton's endorsements of union leaders, she might not be able to count on the same level of support from actual union members in Monday's caucuses.

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/iowa-unions-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-afl-cio

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  9. Check out a 360-degree view of the thousands of people who rallied for Sanders on Saturday -- just drag your mouse around the screen (To watch 360 degree videos, you'll need the latest version of Chrome, Opera, Firefox, or Internet Explorer on your computer. On mobile, use the latest version of the YouTube app for Android or iOS.)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTnIf5_7xbs

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  10. There's been a big surge in Iowa GOP [and Democratic] voter registrations... could be good news for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. (A general election debate between these two would be entertaining.)


    http://www.businessinsider.com/iowa-gop-voter-registration-caucus-trump-2016-2

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  11. Bernie Sanders could very well blow right through Hillary Clinton's firewall in the South.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/iowa-bernie-sanders_us_56aa3483e4b0d82286d51290

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  12. Hillary takes a early lead with 54% to 46% --- but it's still very early. (I can't believe they ran out of first time registration forms and making people wait in lines!!!! WTF? It's sabotage, I tell you...the machine trying to rig the votes favoring Hillary!

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  13. Only 25% reporting? Those younger first-time voters have got to hang in there...

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    1. Caucuses closing in 5 minutes, thousands still outside. Will they close the doors on those mostly young voters?

      https://twitter.com/Lnnie/status/694324080254652417

      Waiting in a long line outside the caucus site. Positive sign for Sanders?

      https://twitter.com/FallonForum/status/694319107986976768

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  14. It sucks that the Democrats don't release the number of votes each candidate gets (like the Republicans do), and instead uses assigned delegates for each district. That's not "democracy" -- the popular vote should decide. I saw caucus centers where Bernie's side of the room had much bigger crowds, but he received fewer delegates than Hillary. That is total B.S.!

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    1. ...But even still, Bernie is now only trailing 49% to 51% to Hillary. If it were by popular vote, who knows, maybe it would be 65% for Bernie to 35% for Hillary at this point. If Bernie wins Iowa by only a few points with delegates, then he really WON Iowa by a landslide.

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    2. 70% reporting right now according to CNN.

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    3. SO FAR: 517 delegates for Hillary --- 507 for Bernie

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  15. Martin O'Malley (with 0%) is dropping out of the presidential race.

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  16. Hillary 556 delegates (50%) to Bernie 543 delegates (49%)

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  17. Update: 50.1% for Hillary to 49.2% for Bernie (81% reporting)

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  18. UPDATE: Hillary now has 601 delegates (50%) to Bernie's 594 delegates (49%) but Hillary is already declaring victory,

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  19. Hillary now has 612 delegates (50%) to Bernie's 605 delegates (49%) with 87% of the results reported.

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  20. Hillary now has 617 delegates (50%) to Bernie's 610 delegates (49%) with 88% of the results reported.

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  21. Hillary now has 620 delegates (50%) to Bernie's 614 delegates (49%) with 88% of the results reported. 52 delegates up for grabs.

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  22. Hillary now 49.6% to Bernie's 49.4%

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  23. Hillary now has 629 delegates (50%) to Bernie's 626 delegates (50%) Wow!

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  24. UPDATE: Hillary now has 633 delegates to Bernie's 628 delegates

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  25. UPDATE: Hillary now has 638 delegates to Bernie's 634 delegates

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  26. UPDATE: Hillary now has 640 delegates to Bernie's 636 delegates

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  27. UPDATE: Hillary now has 642 delegates to Bernie's 638 delegates

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    1. 52 delegates up for grabs. 92% of the results are in.

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  28. UPDATE: She has 671 delegates (50%) to Bernie's 661 delegates (49%) with 95% of the results reported and 52 delegates up for grabs.

    Media pundits aren't sure if it was a victory speech or not. It could be a calculated move by her to discourage voters. NBC News still says it's too close to call.

    During her speech, when she said she was a "progressive", some people in the crowd started booing her.

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  29. CNN shows 49.8% for Hillary Clinton to 49.6% for Bernie Sanders to 0.5% for Martin O'Malley.

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    1. I can hear her now: "The American people have spoken. This gives me a mandate" --- even though the popular vote would probably show Bernie beating her 70% to 30% --- just like all the online polls show.

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    2. 44 delegates still up for grabs with 94% of the results in. So why is Bernie getting ready to take the stage to make a speech? TOO EARLY!

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  30. UPDATE (This is odd) Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 657 delegates and Bernie with 653 delegates with 94% of the results reported and 52 delegates still up for grabs.

    He's speaking now: "Even though the results aren't in, it looks like we have about half of the delegates."

    He didn't concede defeat, and he congratulated Hillary (something she didn't do, congratulate Bernie).

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    1. MSNBC just admitted they "goofed" on these numbers, which were later corrected.

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  31. UPDATE Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 659 delegates and Bernie with 655 delegates.

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  32. UPDATE Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 660 delegates and Bernie with 656 delegates.

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  33. UPDATE Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 661 delegates and Bernie with 657 delegates --- only a difference of 4

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  34. UPDATE: Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 663 delegates and Bernie with 660 -- a difference of 3 with 95% of the results reported and 52 delegates still up for grabs.

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  35. MSNBC just said they can not announce a victory yet to anyone tonight because it's still too close to call ... media pundits (Chuck Todd, etc.) are still asking why Hillary already announced a victory -- and may be a "blunder" by the Clinton camp. Iowa director of elections also says they can not declare a victory.

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    1. There could also be recounts and legal challenges as well.

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  36. UPDATE: Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 682 delegates and Bernie with 678 -- a difference of 4 with 97% of the results reported

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  37. UPDATE: Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 683 delegates and Bernie with 680 -- a difference of 3 --- with 98% of the results reported.

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  38. * All week long Bernie has been surging. If the Iowa caucus were held next week, it may have been an easier victory for Bernie.

    UPDATE: Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 688 delegates and Bernie with 685 --- a difference of 3

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  39. Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 689 delegates and Bernie with 686 --- with 98% of the results reported.

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  40. Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 691 delegates and Bernie with 688 --- 99% of the results reported

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  41. "Iowa doesn’t report votes (for Democrats), but instead something called “state delegate equivalents.” It’s possible that more people caucused for Sanders tonight but that Clinton will win more state delegate equivalents because her vote was distributed more evenly. Then again, Clinton did lead in the Iowa entrance polls. Without an actual vote count from Iowa, we’ll never know.

    http://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/iowa-caucus-presidential-election-2016/

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  42. I'm not sure if this is true -- but there is a video.

    The Hill: February 02, 2016, 12:33 am --- Clinton wins Iowa delegate after coin toss

    http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/267844-clinton-wins-iowa-precinct-after-coin-toss

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    1. "Hillary Clinton on Monday night secured an Iowa delegate over Bernie Sanders by the flip of a coin. A video captured by a Univision reporter shows caucus officials resorting to a coin toss to decide which Democratic presidential candidate would receive the precinct's fifth delegate ... The Iowa Democratic caucuses too close to call, with Sanders and Clinton locked in a dead heat. With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton had 49.8 percent of state delegates to Sanders's 49.6 percent. The candidates will likely split the delegates almost evenly."

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  43. Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 694 delegates and Bernie with 692 --- a difference of 2 votes! --- 99% of the results reported.

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  44. Now the MSNBC screen shows Hillary with 694 delegates and Bernie with 692

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  45. Signing off .. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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