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Less than a day after the third and final 2016 presidential debate, GOP nominee Donald Trump faced new accusations from a woman who recounted a story of her sexual assault at his hands. Karena Virginia told members of the press how Trump groped her in public at the U.S. Open in 1998 while asking, "Don't you know who I am?"
Less than a day after the third and final 2016 presidential debate, GOP nominee Donald Trump faced new accusations from a woman who recounted a story of her sexual assault at his hands. Karena Virginia told members of the press how Trump groped her in public at the U.S. Open in 1998 while asking, "Don't you know who I am?"
Two days later, two more women, Kristin Anderson and Summer Zervos, made similar allegations. Earlier this year, a woman named Katie Johnson said Trump raped her in 1994 when she was 13 years old; she filed a lawsuit against him that was later thrown out on a technicality. Trump's ex-wife, Ivana Trump, has also accused him of raping her. To date a dozen women have publicly alleged that Trump in some way assaulted them.
Jane Piper, an activist who faced her rapist in court in 2014, told me in an interview that she believes the women who have accused Trump. "I take their word as their word, and I believe them," she said. "We have this documented evidence of [Trump's] attitude and behavior toward women," added Piper, referring to his numerous public statements revealing a callous and disrespectful attitude toward women. To Piper, the idea that Trump might be a serial perpetrator of sexual assault is consistent with his language and the attitude he has publicly displayed.
Think about Bill Cosby. While he has not been convicted on charges of sexual assault, in the court of public opinion, he is already considered guilty. He has admitted to drugging women in order to have sex with them, and the sheer volume of accusers against him leaves one wondering: "How could they possibly all be lying?" As Fox News' Chris Wallace asked Trump during the final presidential debate, "Why would so many different women from so many different circumstances, from so many different years, why would they all ... make up these stories?"
Indeed, in cases such as those involving Cosby and Trump, there is little to be gained by publicly proclaiming oneself the victim of rape and assault. All a woman gains is to be forever known as someone who accused a famous man of a vile crime. According to Piper, "It is not comfortable to be known in this way. It makes no sense, and it is ridiculous and offensive and insulting" to imply that a woman might make it all up for fame.
Like Cosby, Trump has bragged about assaulting women. In a now infamous recording obtained by The Washington Post, Trump revealed to TV host Billy Bush that he simply has his way with women: "Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." And, as in Cosby's case, women are emerging from the woodwork as the election looms to reveal sordid stories about Trump's alleged assaults on them.
One major difference here is that Cosby is an actor (who will indeed face the accusations against him in court), while Trump is running for the highest office in the nation. While all men, including Cosby, need to be held to high standards on sexual assault, those who run for president deserve the utmost scrutiny.
Piper dismissed the response by Trump's supporters that the timing of the accusations now emerging is suspect. "Of course, this timing is perfect," she told me, "because [Trump's accusers] just listened to him in that video describe what he did and [be] proud of it, and the next day, in the debate, lie and say that he never ever actually did that." Piper said that if she had been one of the women who had alleged assault by Trump, she "would be doing everything in my power to make sure that the public knew what kind of person this man was so that they would know what kind of leader they were choosing to elect." Essentially, anyone running for president of the United States should expect his or her past and present to be scrutinized under the most stringent of microscopes.
"Womanizing," or having affairs, as presidential candidate Gary Hart was accused of in 1987, is very different from being accused of sexual assault or rape. Hart was brought down by a media frenzy that began with a single, provocative photograph. Trump is heading straight into an election dogged by repeated accusations of crimes--not affairs--and all he has offered are simplistic denials and deflections.
Rape is not a minor phenomenon in the U.S. It is not something that used to happen regularly but has now subsided. It is not something that happens only in other countries. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, one in six American women has experienced an attempted or completed rape. Campus rape incidents are particularly rampant, with female college students three times more likely to be raped than women in the general public.
Piper pointed out that women who have suffered the worst forms of sexual violence, such as rape and battery, "so often ... do not get to see justice because it's basically their word against the perpetrator's, and often, district attorneys don't even want to bring it trial because they see that they will never win." She added, "This happens over and over and over again." Women who are touched, grabbed, kissed or violated in a way that is less severe than rape are even less likely to be taken seriously and are simply expected to walk away and forget it ever happened.
That a man who is running for the nation's highest office is being accused of sexual assault by so many women ought to be extremely disturbing to all Americans. Indeed, new polls show that American women are rejecting Trump by large margins, so much so that some Trump supporters took to Twitter to call for a repeal of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
The fact that so many men are willing to back Trump despite his sexist attitudes, his bragging about sexual assault and the chorus of women accusing him of assaulting them is a hugely depressing statement on our society. The GOP nominee seems to embody the most regressive streak in the nation--one that is dangerously close to being represented in the White House.
The vast majority of U.S. establishment media organizations report Democratic Party "super delegates," as if they are part of the delegate totals presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are winning in primaries. However, this is incredibly misleading, and whether intended or not, it essentially serves to strengthen Clinton's campaign against Sanders.
The vast majority of U.S. establishment media organizations report Democratic Party "super delegates," as if they are part of the delegate totals presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are winning in primaries. However, this is incredibly misleading, and whether intended or not, it essentially serves to strengthen Clinton's campaign against Sanders.
The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press report Clinton has 1,121 delegates after primaries and caucuses in Kansas, Nebraska, and Louisiana. The outlets report Sanders has 481 delegates. These numbers are untruthful.
True and accurate numbers are the following: after "Super Saturday," Clinton has 663 pledged delegates. Sanders has 459 pledged delegates. Clinton needs 1,720 delegates to win. Sanders needs 1,924 delegates to win.
"And any media outlet, which reports 'super delegates' as part of one lump sum, is doing the Clinton campaign a huge favor, whether that outlet intends to do so or not."
Sanders is a few hundred delegates behind Clinton, and Clinton has over a thousand delegates to go before she clinches the nomination. Put like that, one's view of the race is probably dramatically different than the views being pushed by establishment media outlets.
The above numbers are accurate because "super delegates," or party leaders, can shift their support at any time. If Sanders wins more primaries than Clinton, there is no reason to think the vast majority of "super delegates" would defy voters and go with Clinton over Sanders. Doing so would be devastating for the party, especially going into an election against a populist Republican candidate like Donald Trump.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's Jim Naureckas has called attention to the fact that the Times used to report delegate counts as if they were only a result of "voters who mattered." Naureckas wrote, "The unpledged superdelegates can only indicate who they intend to vote for, which is not necessarily who they will actually vote for; they can and in the past have changed their minds. Counting them the same as pledged delegates is a bit like counting delegates from states that haven't voted yet because voters in those states tell pollsters they intend to vote for one candidate or the other. They may or may not feel differently when the time comes."
In 2008, when Clinton ran against then-Senator Barack Obama, the Times treated the number of pledged delegates as the accurate and current delegate count in the race. The Times counted "only delegates that have been officially selected and are bound by their preferences."
"The way the media has been reporting this is incorrect," DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said on MSNBC on February 27. "There aren't pledged delegates, i.e. super delegates, earned at any of these primary or caucus contests. Those unpledged delegates are elected officials, party leaders, people who have spent years and years in the Democratic Party. Members of Congress, our DNC members are super delegates. And they have the ability to decide who they choose to support at the convention at any point."
"They're really free to decide all the way up until July," Wasserman Schultz added. She later added that combining "super delegates" with "pledged delegates" from primaries or caucuses at each phase of the contest does not provide an "accurate picture" of how this works.
In other words, when MSNBC puts up graphics like this, it is not reporting the truth of what is unfolding in the primary race:
It also is important to acknowledge Google has a data visualization for each primary result that appears when people are searching for news related to primaries or caucuses in the election. Google includes "super delegates" in their delegate totals, and this has the effect of deceiving millions into believing Sanders has no chance at all because Clinton's lead is too vast to overcome.
Tad Devine, who is now a senior adviser for the Sanders campaign, wrote in a column for the Times in 2008, "If the superdelegates determine the party's nominee before primary and caucus voters have rendered a clear verdict, Democrats risk losing the trust that we are building with voters today. The perception that the votes of ordinary people don't count as much as those of the political insiders, who get to pick the nominee in some mythical back room, could hurt our party for decades to come."
He recounted an experience he had working for Walter Mondale's presidential campaign, which is exceptionally relevant to what is currently unfolding:
On the first Wednesday in June, the morning after the last day of voting in the 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, the long, drawn-out battle that began with Gary Hart's stunning victory in New Hampshire ended -- but only after one last plot twist. I was Walter Mondale's delegate counter, and I had stayed up all night to estimate the delegates won and lost in the five states, including California and New Jersey, that had voted the day before. I realized we were in big trouble. Mr. Mondale was not going to deliver on his pledge to be over the top in the delegate count by noon on the day after the last primary. He fell 40 delegates short of a majority.
We began a frantic morning of telephone calls to superdelegates, the party leaders and elected officials who only two years earlier had been given 15 percent of the vote in the Democratic nominating process. By noon, the former vice president had persuaded enough delegates to ensure himself the nomination. The superdelegates did the work they were created to do: they provided the margin of victory to the candidate who had won the most support from primary and caucus voters.
Given this history, a similar shift could easily happen again. Sanders could win a majority of primaries and caucuses, and "super delegates" could follow the will of citizens and provide the margin of victory necessary for his campaign to win the nomination.
One can make a case that the "super delegate" system was instituted to guard against insurgent campaigns, like the one mounted by Sanders. He promotes a vision that runs counter to the corporate and special interests, which the Democratic Party leadership is perfectly willing to serve. And, in fact, Wasserman Schultz has been frank, saying, "Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don't have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists."
But, regardless of how one views the "super delegate" system, "super delegates" are not part of the pledged delegate count. They should not be part of delegate counts reported after the results of each primary or caucus is tallied.
Sanders has an exceptionally difficult route ahead of him if his campaign and supporters expect to win. However, it is not wholly unreasonable to suggest there is still a "path to victory" for Sanders. And any media outlet, which reports "super delegates" as part of one lump sum, is doing the Clinton campaign a huge favor, whether that outlet intends to do so or not.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's stunning 22-point loss to Sen. Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire is even more devastating when looked at in the context of the modern history of this first-in-the-nation primary: No one has ever lost by such a margin and gone on to win the presidency.
Among Democrats, no one who lost by even half that margin in New Hampshire has recovered. In 2008, Barack Obama lost to Hillary Clinton by 2.6 percentage points; in 1992, Bill Clinton lost to Paul Tsongas by 8.4 percentage points; in 1984, Walter Mondale lost to Gary Hart by 9.4 percentage points; in 1972, George McGovern lost to Edmund Muskie by 9.3 percentage points.
In two of those cases, New Hampshire did favor neighboring politicians - Sen. Tsongas from Massachusetts and Sen. Muskie from Maine - but Tuesday's 22-point margin for Vermont Sen. Sanders cannot be explained simply by making the "nearby-favorite-son" argument. Sanders swept nearly every demographic group, including women, losing only to Clinton among New Hampshire's senior citizens and the state's small number of non-white voters. Sanders's margin among young voters was particularly impressive, 82 percent, roughly the same proportion as the Iowa caucuses last week.
If Hillary Clinton hopes to overcome her New Hampshire drubbing, she would have to look for encouragement from the legacy of Republican George W. Bush who lost the 2000 New Hampshire primary to Sen. John McCain by a margin of 49 percent to 30.2 percent, but even Bush's landslide loss represented a smaller margin of defeat than Clinton suffered on Tuesday.
A Worried Establishment
Clinton's failure to generate momentum or much enthusiasm in her pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination presents the Democratic Party establishment with a dilemma, since many senior party leaders fret about the risk that Sanders, a self-described "democratic socialist," might lead the Democrats to the kind of electoral disaster that Sen. George McGovern did in 1972.
Though the Democrats rebounded in 1976 with Jimmy Carter's victory amid Republican disarray over Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal, the Republicans soon reestablished their domination over presidential politics for a dozen years with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. For the Democrats to reclaim the White House in 1992, it took a "New Democrat," Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, to repackage the Democratic message into one proposing "neo-liberal" (anti-regulatory, free-trade) economics, embracing Republican tough-on-crime tactics, and rejecting "Big Government."
President Clinton also emphasized "micro-policies," best illustrated by his call for "school uniforms," rather than proposing "macro-policies" for addressing poverty and other structural problems facing Americans. Though the economy performed fairly well under Clinton - his success lessening pressures from liberal groups - he also opened the door to Wall Street and other corporate excesses (by supporting deregulation of the financial and media industries).
At that point in the 1990s, the "neo-liberal" strategies had not been tested in the U.S. economy and thus many Americans were caught off-guard when this new anti-regulatory, free-trade fervor contributed to a hollowing out of the Great American Middle Class and a bloated Gilded Age for the top One Percent.
The full consequences of neo-liberalism became painfully apparent with the Wall Street Crash of 2008 and the resulting Great Recession. The suffering and hopelessness now affecting many Americans, including the white working class, has led to an angry political rejection of the American Establishment as reflected in the insurgent candidacies of Donald Trump and Sanders.
A Legacy Campaign
Hillary Clinton (like Jeb Bush) faces the misfortune of running a legacy campaign at a time when the voters are angry about the legacies of both "ruling families," the Clintons and the Bushes. Though Sanders is a flawed candidate faulted for his muddled foreign-policy prescriptions, he (like Trump) has seized the mantle of fighting the Establishment at a time when millions of Americans are fed up with the Establishment and its self-serving policies.
In some ways, the Iowa and New Hampshire results represented the worst outcome for establishment Democrats. Clinton's razor-thin victory in Iowa and her slashing defeat in New Hampshire have left Democratic strategists uncertain as to whether they should rally behind her - despite her lukewarm to freezing-cold reception from voters - or try to recruit another candidate who could cut off Sanders's path to the nomination and represent a "more electable" choice in November.
If Clinton continues to stumble, there will be enormous pressure from Democratic leaders to push her aside and draw Vice President Joe Biden or perhaps Sen. Elizabeth Warren into the race.
If that were to occur -- and, granted, the Clintons are notoriously unwilling to admit defeat -- the Democrats could experience a political dynamic comparable to 1968 when anti-Vietnam War Sen. Eugene McCarthy challenged the prohibitive favorite President Lyndon Johnson and came close enough in New Hampshire to prompt Sen. Robert Kennedy to jump into the race -- and to convince Johnson to announce that he would not seek another term.
Many idealistic Democrats who had backed McCarthy in his seemingly quixotic fight against Johnson were furious against "Bobby-come-lately," setting up a battle between two anti-war factions of the Democratic Party. Of course, the history of the 1968 campaign was marred by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and then Robert Kennedy, followed by the chaotic Chicago convention, which handed the nomination to Johnson's Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Then, after Republican Richard Nixon secretly sabotaged Johnson's Vietnam peace talks, Nixon managed to eke out a victory over Humphrey.
While Campaign 2016 reflects a very different America - and the key Democratic issue is "income inequality," not the Vietnam War - some parallels could become obvious if the presumptive nominee (Johnson in 1968 and Clinton in 2016) is pushed out or chooses to step aside.
Then, the Democratic choice would be plunging ahead with a back-bench candidate (McCarthy in 1968 and Sanders in 2016) or looking for a higher-profile and more mainstream alternative, such as Biden who (like Humphrey) would offer continuity with the sitting president or Warren who shares many of Sanders's positions (like Robert Kennedy did with McCarthy) but who might be more acceptable to "party regulars."
A Warren candidacy also might lessen the disappointment of women who wanted to see Hillary Clinton as the first female president. At the moment, however, the question is: Did New Hampshire deal a death blow to Hillary Clinton's campaign or can she become the first candidate in modern U.S. political history to bounce back from a 22-point loss in the first-in-the-nation primary?