Bernie Edges Hillary in New Hampshire
By Matthew Vadum
Insurgent radical Bernie Sanders' passionate anti-American campaign is eating away at the once-commanding lead of frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary race, according to new polling.
Although Hillary is still edging out Bernie at the national level, according to a new Monmouth University poll for the first time Bernie is now leading Hillary by 7 points in New Hampshire, the first state to vote in 2016. New Hampshire allows unaffiliated voters to participate in the primary of their choice.
Clinton still clings to a small lead among Democrats in the state. She has 43 percent support among Democrats, compared to Sanders' 39 percent support. Sanders enjoys 49 percent support from registered Independents and new voters, way ahead of Clinton's 26 percent.
Vice President Joe Biden, who is pondering joining the race, has 13 percent. A mere 2 percent back Martin O'Malley and Lincoln Chafee, Larry Lessig, and Jim Webb each receive 1 percent.
Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post reports with apparent alarm that Hillary "is suffering a rapid erosion of support among Democratic women — the voters long presumed to be the bedrock in her bid to become the nation’s first female president."
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll indicates that while in July 71 percent of Democratic-leaning female voters expressed support for Clinton, only 42 percent do at the moment, a dramatic 29 percentage point collapse in eight weeks. Tumulty blames Hillary's slide on continuing adverse media coverage of the disappearing emails scandal and a focus on the Clintons' perfidious behavior in the 1990s in the White House.
That Sanders is beating Clinton in New Hampshire and nipping at her heels nearly everywhere else is seeming proof that his hate-filled blame-America-first rhetoric is turning on the radical left-wingers who make up the Democratic Party's political base. Sanders has been getting away for years with describing himself as a "socialist," sometimes a "democratic socialist," when in reality he is an outright America-loathing communist. Clinton, of course, isn't much better with her communitarian-sounding "it takes a village" rhetoric and her close ties to the late radical organizing guru Saul Alinsky.
Sanders' belief in communism is reflected in his platform, which the actual Communist Party USA is openly praising. Even a brief glance reveals his plan to be hopelessly utopian. It will extinguish freedom and shutter businesses and cause widespread suffering especially among the poor people he claims to want to help. It is a program for exporting the best and the brightest to places that appreciate them.
But from a conservative's perspective at least, most of Clinton's policy platform doesn't seem much different from Sanders'. Both want to cripple the United States internally and externally. Both want to go after the so-called 1 percent and tax them aggressively. Both are pandering to the ugly, racist Black Lives Matter movement.
On Monday Bernie said the U.S. was founded on “racist principles” and that police shootings of unarmed black men constitute proof the country hasn't evolved from the days of slavery. “We have got to stand up and say, in America you’re not going to do that. Racism is unacceptable."
The Democratic Party establishment, uncomfortable at the prospect of a Sanders presidency, is now attacking the rising Independent from Vermont.
The Washington Post editorial board weighed in with a fatuous, nitpicking editorial titled "Bernie Sanders isn’t as progressive as you think." It's the kind of treatment a Republican candidate, especially a conservative, gets from the Post.
The newspaper acknowledged that Sanders "delivered a forceful message in a speech at Liberty University on Monday: Inequality is too high, the wealth gap is immoral and rich people have rigged the economy."
Sanders' message, the newspaper asserts, seems to resonate with voters who are anxious about the nation's economic prospects even though it is "hyperbolic." Hyperbolic isn't exactly an adjective the newspaper routinely uses whenever Polarizer-in-Chief Obama exaggerates the so-called wealth gap and how much racism there is in the country.
"Beyond the hyperbole, however, must be real policy," continues the yawn-worthy journalistic pontification. You get the picture.
Although Hillary's campaign apparatchiks have been saying for a while that they won't attack Sanders, she is letting a pro-Clinton super PAC headed by one of her lapdogs do her dirty work.
Correct the Record has been sending emails trying to hit Sanders from the right by tying him to controversial remarks by Jeremy Corbyn, the radical new leader of Britain's Labour Party. Corbyn lauded Hugo Chavez, the dead Marxist dictator of Venezuela who gave Vermonters low-cost fuel oil as part of a program backed by Sanders. He also has said that Chavez's "electoral democratic credentials are beyond reproach."
Correct the Record tried to get the Huffington Post to associate Sanders with Corbyn's assertion that the assassination of Osama bin Laden was "a tragedy." Corbyn also said he would invite his "friends" from Hezbollah to visit the United Kingdom to talk about Middle East peace. Correct the Record flagged an opinion piece Corbyn wrote that claimed NATO's "attempt to encircle Russia is one of the big threats of our time."
Sanders mouthpiece Michael Briggs accuses Correct the Record of "distorting the record." Briggs said:
it is disappointing that Secretary Clinton's super PAC is spreading disinformation about Bernie. This is exactly the kind of politics that Bernie is trying to change. To equate bringing home heating oil to low-income Vermonters with support for the Chavez government is dishonest.
It is no secret that Corbyn and Sanders are ideological soulmates. Corbyn said he is tracking Sanders' campaign "with great interest." When Corbyn won his new post Sanders he was "delighted" at that result. The Correct the Record email also points out that both men have tried to scuttle the nuclear weapons programs of their respective nations.
Correct the Record is controlled by longtime Clinton supplicant David Brock who also heads the George Soros-funded propaganda machine, Media Matters for America. The mentally unstable Brock, a left-wing character assassin who has complained that right-wing "snipers" are trying to kill him, has been whining a great deal lately about the media's coverage of Hillary's campaign and the fact that media outlets are daring to actually report on the multiple scandals that have sprung from her time as secretary of state.
Right now Clinton and Sanders are tripping over each other in an effort to pander to the most hardcore progressives.
Given the intensity of the Democratic establishment's attacks on Sanders so far and the growing anti-incumbent feelings of voters, it is far from clear who will ultimately capture the Democratic nomination.
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