http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/cassidys-count-bernie-sanders-is-gaining-in-iowa-and-it -matters/

The New Yorker

Cassidy’s Count: Bernie Sanders Is Gaining Ground on Hillary Clinton

By John Cassidy

Fewer than three weeks before voting day, the Democratic Presidential race in Iowa is neck and neck between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton—and that’s quite a feat for Sanders.
Fewer than three weeks before voting day, the Democratic Presidential race in Iowa is neck and neck between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton—and that’s quite a feat for Sanders. Credit Photograph by Jae C. Hong / AP

In Iowa on Monday, Senator Bernie Sanders said that his rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign was in serious trouble, and claimed that this explained why she was attacking him on such issues as gun control and health care. “I think a candidate who was originally thought to be the anointed candidate, to be the inevitable candidate, is now locked in a very difficult race,” Sanders told reporters. “Obviously, what people in that scenario do is start attacking. . . . That is not surprising when you have a Clinton campaign that is now in trouble and now understands that they can lose.”

Obviously, Sanders isn’t privy to the minds of Clinton and her top aides. Nonetheless, his analysis makes sense. In the past few days, three new opinion polls have been released in Iowa. They all show Sanders closing what had been a considerable gap between him and Clinton, and two of them show him edging ahead. As recently as the end of last week, the RealClearPolitics poll average, which combines recent surveys, had the former Secretary of State retaining the double-digit lead she held for most of 2016. By Tuesday afternoon, the poll average was showing the race as a virtual tie: Clinton 45.5 per cent; Sanders 45.3 per cent.

Iowa is a quirky state, and, because of the primary calendar, what happens there matters quite a bit. For months now, most of the polls in New Hampshire, which will be the second state to vote, have shown Sanders with a narrow lead. Four of five polls released in the new year confirm this picture, and one of those four, from Monmouth University, shows Sanders fourteen percentage points ahead. If Sanders defeated Clinton in Iowa, he would have an excellent chance of following up with another victory in the Granite State—at which point questions would be raised about Clinton’s electability. She could well answer them by scoring comeback wins in Nevada and South Carolina, which will vote later in February. But, still, the sight of the longtime front-runner losing the first two Democratic votes would be pretty shocking.

Adding to the impression that the contest is now in flux, a new CBS News/New York Times national poll of likely Democratic voters also shows Sanders surging. Last month, this survey put Clinton ahead by twenty percentage points. In its latest iteration, her lead was reduced to seven percentage points. (Clinton is at forty-eight per cent, and Sanders is at forty-one per cent.)

To be sure, the shape of the race could shift again before the Iowa caucus, which will be held on February 1st. In addition to criticizing some aspects of Sanders’s record, Clinton has been laying out more policy proposals, which appear designed to shore up her left flank. On Monday, she pledged to introduce a four-per-cent tax surcharge on people who earn more than five million dollars a year. Such a measure would raise the effective tax rates of high earners, such as hedge-fund managers and private-equity partners, who often exploit tax loopholes that aren’t available to ordinary taxpayers. “It’s outrageous that multi-millionaires and billionaires are allowed to play by a different set of rules than hard-working families, especially when it comes to paying their fair share of taxes,” Clinton said in a statement.

It remains to be seen whether Clinton’s proposal, which a spokesman for Sanders described as “too little too late,” will sway the voters. For now Sanders appears to be the one with the momentum, particularly in Iowa. A Quinnipiac University poll that was released on Tuesday showed him leading Clinton among Iowans likely to participate in the Democratic primary by forty-nine per cent to forty-four per cent. That’s a big turnaround from a Quinnipiac poll carried out in December, which had Clinton in front by eleven points.

A second Iowa poll was also released on Tuesday, by the research firm Public Policy Polling. This one showed Clinton retaining her lead, by forty-six per cent to forty per cent. However, it also showed the race moving in Sanders’s direction. “Clinton is down 6 points from her 52% a month ago, while Sanders is up 6 points from his previous 34% standing,” a press release from P.P.P. said.

Evidently, the shift in voting intentions reflected a rise in positive feelings toward the Vermont Senator, who has been attracting big crowds throughout Iowa. P.P.P. noted that, over the past month, Sanders’s favorability/unfavorability rating “has shot up from a 65/23 spread to now 79/13 so his popularity is clearly growing as the voting nears.” The firm said that Clinton’s score was holding steady, at seventy-two/twenty-two. The pollsters from Quinnipiac University found that Sanders’s rating was a stunning eighty-seven/three, compared with seventy-four/twenty-one for Clinton.

“Sen. Sanders’ surge seems based on the perception by Iowa Democrats that he is a better fit for Iowans,” Peter A. Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll, said in a release. More than ninety per cent of respondents to the survey said that Sanders was honest and trustworthy and that he cared about their needs and problems. Sixty-six per cent of respondents said that Clinton was honest and trustworthy; twenty-nine per cent said she wasn’t. And seventy-six per cent said she cared about their needs and problems.

On the other hand, Clinton outscored Sanders when it came to the leadership qualities and experience needed to be President. Her campaign will also take solace in the fact that, although Sanders scored higher marks on the economy and climate change, Clinton was perceived to be best able to handle foreign policy, terrorism, health care, and guns. She also did well on perceptions of her electability in the Presidential contest: eighty-five per cent of the respondents said that she stood a good chance of defeating the Republican candidate, while sixty-eight per cent said Sanders had a good chance.

The new polls also confirmed the existence of glaring gender and age gaps among likely Democratic voters in Iowa. The Quinnipiac poll suggested that Sanders is leading Clinton among men by a whopping margin: sixty-one per cent to thirty per cent. Among women, the survey showed Clinton ahead by a considerable but somewhat smaller margin: fifty-five per cent to thirty-nine per cent. The P.P.P. poll also showed a considerable gender gap, and demonstrated that Sanders is currently getting the lion’s share of young voters, whereas Clinton is more reliant on the elderly. Among likely voters between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, the survey showed Sanders leading by fifty-five per cent to thirty-three per cent. Among seniors, the survey showed Clinton ahead, sixty-four per cent to twenty-six per cent. (The new CBS News/Times poll demonstrates that the age gap isn’t confined to Iowa. Among Democratic voters under forty-five, this national survey shows Sanders leading Clinton by a two-to-one margin.)

It is worth remembering that there are sizable margins of error attached to both of these polls. The same applies to two more-recent surveys, from NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College and the American Research Group. Rather than trying to say who is leading, the safest thing to conclude is that, fewer than three weeks before voting day, the Democratic race

I gotta admit...never saw this coming. Ol Bernie is making a race of it....He has a shot.





....I just got an odd feeling Bernie is about to have an "accident" or "commit suicide"

Brainstroke most likely!

Yea...from a bullet....fired by a Clinton operative

Doing himself in with a Sniper-Rifle at 300yards?

Hey...dont tempt her

Hey, she was under sniper fire herself in Bosnia.

Yea she should get a combat action ribbon for that and be like all those other stolen valor morons.

He has a shot at the nomination for sure, but not the Presidency. There's no way that nut job will get elected.

"" Hillary Clinton’s national lead
is slipping faster in 2016 than it
did in 2008

In 2008 , Hillary Clinton saddled up for the
Kentucky Derby on a thoroughbred that
was a sure thing. Her campaign was the
finest colt in Kentucky , at odds that barely
made it worth betting on her . The race
began, and she was up by a quarter mile .
Then, as another jockey started to gain , she
slipped out of her saddle . She was barely
hanging on , bumping along against the
dirt, bruised and struggling and still
hanging in there a half -a - length back . And
then she lost and grudgingly wished the
victor luck in winning the Triple Crown.
So you have to figure that , when 2016
rolled around and everyone was saying ,
"No , this horse is a sure thing," she was a
bit wary. But she got on. She ran strong .
She did well. And now , in the final turn ,
there might be something wrong with the
saddle.
If we compare where Clinton is now in the
Real Clear Politics polling average , the
2016 picture and the 2008 picture aren 't
really all that similar. Nationally, she was
doing much better in 2008 than she is right
now, perhaps in part because the anti-
Clinton vote in 2008 was still split between
two people -- Barack Obama and John
Edwards - - instead of just one. But that
recent trend line, a function of two new
national polls that were close after a bit of
a lull, is not very good news.
In Iowa, Clinton is running a bit better
than she did in 2008 -- though, again , she' s
dipped significantly recently. It wasn' t until
the last week in 2008 that she fell out of
the lead . She eventually came in third.
She's doing far worse in New Hampshire
than she did in 2008 , thanks to New
Hampshire being very much the home turf
(and home demographics) of her main
opponent. In 2008 , her lead in New
Hampshire evaporated after her Iowa
finish, but she then managed to win
anyway.
A critical point to take away from this -- a
point that we 've made often before - - is
that voting changes polling. If you look at
her national numbers after Iowa in 2008 ,
she lost three-quarters of her lead after the
caucuses - - but gained some of it back after
her win in New Hampshire.
In 2016 , there' s also a big difference
between the demographics in Iowa and
New Hampshire and other early states,
which are much less white. Bernie Sanders
struggles with non- white voters , so we can
expect to see more dramatic changes after
these early states vote .
National numbers don' t mean much right
now. They 're fickle. You can slip out of
your saddle , you horse can stumble , and
you can still win the race . But it can' t be
much fun to have it happen in two big
races in a row .""
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/14/hillary-clintons-national-lead-is-slipping-faster-in-2016-than-it-did-in-2008/

Hilliary has lost her protection from the lib media, she's old, ugly and is a compulsive liar. Bernie looks good compared to her.
Biden will step in as the hero and they'll kick Bernie's azz under the bus.

Biden/Moochelle?

Campaign

January 14, 2016 - 06:00 AM EST
Chelsea Clinton goes on the attack; Democrats ask why

By Jonathan Easley and Amie Parnes 9584 Shares

Chelsea Clinton is stepping onto the 2016 battlefield against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a shift that some Democrats are interpreting as a sign of trouble for her mother’s presidential campaign.

Making her first solo appearance on the stump, Chelsea Clinton late Tuesday ripped Sanders over his proposals on healthcare and college affordability, arguing the White House hopeful wants to “dismantle” ObamaCare and Medicare.

Democrats have almost universally panned the attack, believing it to be ineffective and a misuse of her talents.

They note that Chelsea Clinton has mostly been used to highlight Hillary Clinton’s softer side as a mother and grandmother and say she seemed uncomfortable shedding her first daughter persona for the role of attack dog.

“The thing that tells you as much as anything about [the Clinton campaign’s] current state of mind is Chelsea going on the attack. It tells you everything you need to know,” said one Democratic strategist. “That this [challenge from Sanders] is real and they’ve got to be freaking out.”

The attack caught many Democrats, including Sanders and his supporters, by surprise.

Following Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, CNN played the clip of Chelsea Clinton’s criticism directly to Sanders. The Vermont senator held back a wry smile as he offered a measured rebuke of Chelsea, who is nearly 40 years his junior.

“As much as I admire Chelsea, she didn’t read the plan,” he said.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who is one of only two members of Congress who has endorsed Sanders for president, told The Hill the attacks are a sign the Clinton campaign is worried about Sanders’s rise in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“I perhaps could see it coming from Bill, but I was taken aback hearing it from Chelsea,” said Grijalva, who backed President Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008 after first endorsing John Edwards.

“I was surprised and thought it was out of character. It seems the Clinton campaign is going into full destruction mode very early in this process.”

In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon defended Chelsea Clinton as a “very spirited and fierce advocate for her parents.”

Asked if she would continue to attack Sanders and whether she’s suited for the role, Fallon called Chelsea Clinton “policy-obsessed” and said the attack lines had not been planned.

“Her comments were spontaneous and spoke to the fact that she follows these issues closely herself and is deeply studious of the details of the candidate’s policy proposals,” he said.

While the media zeroed in on the Sanders lines, they represented only a small portion of Chelsea Clinton’s remarks at the event in New Hampshire, where she spoke at length about her upbringing and how it has influenced her as she raises her own family.

That’s similar to the role she played during the 2008 presidential campaign, when she worked to soften her mother’s image, particularly during events on college campuses. Rather than attack then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama directly, Chelsea Clinton sought to make inroads among the young voters that her mother was struggling to reach.

But having grown up in politics, Chelsea Clinton likely knew that her criticism of Sanders would make headlines.

Democrats interviewed by The Hill were scratching their heads over why she’d be so aggressive in taking on her mother’s rival for the Democratic nomination at this stage, with new polls showing Sanders in the lead in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

“I’m 100 percent for sharp elbows and blunt contrasts in campaigns, including paid negative ads in every possible medium,” said Democratic strategist Craig Varoga. “But I cringe at the idea of using close family members to carry personal attacks, especially when the opponent is well-positioned to say the attack is untrue and desperate.”

It’s not just the messenger that’s drawing scrutiny.

Many Democrats are puzzled that the Clinton campaign would open up a front against Sanders on healthcare, arguing that the questions the campaign is raising over how he intends to pay for his plan resemble Republican talking points.

Furthermore, Sanders’s desire for a single-payer system is wildly popular among the grassroots liberals who are key in the early-voting states.

“I really regret that the Clinton campaign sent Chelsea out to make the attack that she made,” former Obama adviser David Axelrod said on CNN on Tuesday night. “I don’t think it was the right attack. ... It’s not really an honest attack, and it’s not something that they should have sent her out to do.”

Democrats note that Chelsea Clinton taking on a more aggressive role in the campaign could make her a target, particularly for Republicans.

She has given paid speeches on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, has close ties to Wall Street and benefited from the Clinton name in securing a media job with NBC in 2014 that reportedly paid $600,000 annually.

Nobody expects Sanders will go down that road. Speaking Wednesday on MSNBC, he avoided a question about whether he thinks Chelsea Clinton is a powerful voice for her parents, saying only that “I think she is wrong” about his healthcare plan.

But the list of Clinton enemies is long, and at the top of it right now is GOP front-runner Donald Trump, for whom nothing is out of bounds.

“This makes Chelsea just another political player in the arena, and if I was Chelsea, that’s not where I’d want to be,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.

Democrats say she should reprise her role from 2008 and try to help her mother connect with voters on a personal level.

“The best role for her is to help in humanizing Hillary and talking about what a great mother and grandmother she is,” Bannon said. “Hillary has plenty of edge on her own, she doesn’t need help there. She has such an asset in her family if only they can use them the right way.”


http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/265839-chelsea-goes-on-the-attack-dems-ask-why/[/ur]

It doesn't take much to look good in comparison to Hillary.

wonder if she's prepared for the $hitstorm that's about to unload on her!

Hillary Clinton Is LYING About Bernie Sanders:

http://youtu.be/EN-vbANx4WM/ 05:25


Chelsea Clinton Attacks Bernie Sanders & Medicare…:

http://youtu.be/vLpudbQSQ8c/ 07:30

Out of all the candidates on the left I saw Bernie as the lest likely. I really thought it would be Senator Webb or Governor O'Malley who would beat her.

I bet Elizabeth Warren is really kicking her self in the a$$ right now. She didn't run because she was giving Hillary her chance and didn't think she could win against Hillary. If she was in the race, she would have been the nominee.