2015

February 19 Bernie Sanders announces he is running for president. The announcement leads to a $6 million fundraising number in 24 hours.

March Oh, no, emails.

April 12 Via YouTube video, Hillary Clinton announces she is running for president.

September 15 Rep. Kevin McCarthy appears on Hannity. He essentially admits that the Benghazi hearing was meant to do political damage to Hillary Clinton. Hannity agrees this is a good thing.

October 22 Hillary Clinton testifies before the Benghazi Committee for 11 hours.

November 2 The Benghazi Committee hearing was good for Clinton’s numbers. Specifically, fewer voters are concerned with the email issue. Fewer voters also are expressing dissatisfaction with Clinton’s handling of the Benghazi incident.

December 16 A data breach gives the Bernie Sanders campaign staff access to some of the Hillary Clinton campaign’s voter information.

2016
January 7 Planned Parenthood Action Fund announces it will endorse Hillary Clinton for President of the United States. This is the first time in the organization’s history that it has endorsed a candidate in a presidential primary.

January 20 In an interview with Rachel Maddow, Bernie Sanders addresses Clinton endorsements from groups such as Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign. He says:

“We’re taking on not only Wall Street and the economic establishment, we’re taking on the political establishment. So, I have friends and supporters in the Human Rights Fund [sic], in Planned Parenthood. But you know what, Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time, and some of these groups are in fact part of the establishment. I will challenge anybody with regard to my record on LGBT issues. I was one of the few, relatively few, to oppose and vote against DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act], et cetera. In terms of women’s rights, I believe we have a 100 percent lifetime pro-choice record.”

To Bernie, Clinton’s PP endorsement was because she’s “establishment.” Not because she is the most-likely-to-win candidate ever who also is the owner of a uterus. Not because of her bold declaration of September 1995 before the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing that “women’s rights are human rights.”

February 1:
Hillary Clinton wins the Iowa Caucus. Pledged delegates TTD: Hillary, 23; Bernie, 21.

Martin O’Malley leaves the race.

February 9 Bernie Sanders wins the New Hampshire Democratic primary, the first primary and the second nominating contest in the election. Pledged delegates TTD: Bernie, 36; Hillary, 32.

March 1 Super Tuesday. States voting include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, American Samoa. Pledged delegates TTD: Hillary, 606; Bernie, 415. Clinton leads by 191 delegates.

March 5 Louisiana, Kansas, Nebraska. Pledged delegates TTD: Clinton 653, Sanders 467. Clinton leads by 196 delegates.

March 8 Michigan and Mississippi. Pledged delegate TTD: Clinton 765, Sanders 556. Clinton leads by 209 delegates.

March 15 Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio. Pledged delegates TTD: Clinton 1,166 Sanders 852. Clinton leads by 314 delegates.

March 22 Arizona, Iowa, Utah. Pledged delegate TTD: Clinton 1,219, Sanders 930. Clinton leads by 289 delegates.

March 26 Alaska, Hawaii, Washington. Pledged delegate TTD: Clinton 1,257, Sanders 1,034. Clinton leads by 223 delegates.

April 5 Wisconsin. Pledged delegate TTD: Clinton 1,295, Sanders 1,082. Clinton leads by 213 delegates.

April 19 New York. Pledged delegate TTD: Clinton 1,141, Sanders 1,197. Sanders leads by 56 delegates.

April 24: The date of an e-mail from Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, responding to an article describing the ways Sanders felt the DNC was undermining his campaign. She wrote back, “Spoken like someone who has never been a member of the Democratic Party and has no understanding of what we do.”

She’s not wrong.

April 26 Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island. Pledged delegate TTD: Clinton 1,667, Sanders 1,364. Clinton leads Sanders by 303 delegates.

May 2: Sanders says there will be a contested convention and that the system is “rigged.”

May 3: Sanders wins the primary in Indiana. This is seen as a surprise victory in the Indiana primary, as he won by a five-point margin despite trailing in all the state’s polls. Pledged delegate TTD: Clinton 1,706, Sanders 1,408. Clinton leads Sanders by 298 delegates.

May 5: The date of a leaked Democratic National Committee email suggesting that, at least in some regions, Bernie Sanders’ faith might be a vulnerability to exploit.

“It might may [sic] no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”

The email was from Brad Marshall, then CFO of the DNC. Marshall’s Wikipedia article From 1976 to 1980, Marshall held positions at PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte & Touche in Lexington, followed by some time as a CPA. So he may have figured he knew the territory.

Later that day, Marshall responded to the email thread he had started: “It’s these [sic] Jesus thing.”

There was a reply from DNC CEO Amy K. Dacey, who simply replied, “AMEN.”

That was the end of this e-mail thread. This was a single brain fart from the DNC’s money guy that went nowhere. A single person threw this idea against the wall one day, and it did not stick. The DNC did not call Bernie Sanders out on his faith.

But you’d better get ready if he’s the nominee because you can bet your Gideon’s Bible that the Republican Party will.

May 6 Let’s clear up some confusion about the superdelegates and Bernie Sanders (Vox)

May 14-15 Nevada. Nevada, Nevada, Nevada.

https://youtu.be/W_7c0I8ODKw

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/17/this_is_what_nv_democratic_chair_roberta_lange_did_to_anger_sanders_supporters.html

May 17: Date of a leaked e-mail from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who took exception to Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver’s defense of his candidate’s supporters.

“Damn liar,” she wrote. “Particularly scummy that he barely acknowledges the violent and
threatening behavior that occurred.”

Weaver had said:

“There was a horrendous breakdown, where the leadership there in Nevada hijacked the process on the floor, created a tremendous amount of angst among people who were there attending the convention, who were supporters of Sen. Sanders, by ignoring the regular procedure and ramming through what they wanted to do.”

Politifact flagged this claim as “false.”

http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff-weaver/allegations-fraud-and-misconduct-nevada-democratic/

Jeff Weaver was a “damn liar.”

May 18: The New York Times reports:

“Advisers to Mr. Sanders said on Wednesday that he was newly resolved to remain in the race, seeing an aggressive campaign as his only chance to pressure Democrats into making fundamental changes to how presidential primaries and debates are held in the future.

“Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Mr. Sanders, said the campaign did not think its attacks would help Mr. Trump in the long run, but added that the senator’s team was’œnot thinking about’ the possibility that they could help derail Mrs. Clinton from becoming the first woman elected president.”

Also, CNN reports that a Sanders spokesman indicated the campaign would ask for a recount in Kentucky.

May 21: The date of a leaked DNC e-mail suggesting a narrative could be used to show that the Sanders campaign is a mess. The idea is nixed. National Communications Director Luis Miranda responds to the idea: “…the chair has been advised not to engage. So we’ll have to leave it alone.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/damaging-emails-dnc-wikileaks-dump/story?id=40852448

May 26: The Associated Press announces that Donald Trump achieves 1,237 delegates required to guarantee his nomination for the Republican Party.

Sanders tweets that he is willing to debate Trump. Very funny.

June
The Democratic National Committee and its cyber response team publicly announces that Russian hackers had compromised its computer network. (The Mueller Report)

June 1: The New York Times reports:

SPRECKELS, Calif. — Bernie Sanders signaled Wednesday that he would continue his presidential campaign beyond the California primary next week, saying he had the money to keep running until the Democratic National Convention next month.

…

While Mrs. Clinton is just 71 delegates shy of the 2,383 needed to clinch the nomination, Mr. Sanders said he was “feeling pretty good” about his campaign and hoped superdelegates would realize that he was the best candidate to beat Donald J. Trump in the general election. He also said he hoped the next week would bring victories that could help him make his case at the party’s convention in Philadelphia.

June 4 By now, there were recent contests in Guam, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, and the Virgin Islands. Pledged delegate TTD: Clinton 1,781, Sanders 1,492. Clinton leads Sanders by 289 delegates.

June 6: The Associated Press and NBC News state that Hillary Clinton is the presumptive nominee.

June 7: California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota. Pledged delegate TTD: Clinton 2,185, Sanders 1,833. Clinton leads Sanders by 352 delegates.

Sanders marks the occasion by shitting all over the Democratic Party.

“The message to the Democratic leadership is that if the Democratic Party is to be the party of working people and young people and the middle class, they’ve got to open up the doors,” said Sanders, noting the strong support he’s received from young adults. “You are the future of this country … and the Democratic Party has got to be a party that is more than its candidates going to wealthy peoples’ homes to raise outrageous sums of money.”

http://www.latimes.com/la-na-trailguide-05312016-bernie-sanders-insists-democra-1464733727-htmlstory.html

Also: Why the media were ready to call Clinton the ‘presumptive nominee’ (CNN)

June 9: Sanders meets with President Obama. After the meeting, he pledges to “…work as hard as I can, to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States.”

This does not apparently include conceding to the presumptive nominee.

Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren formally endorse Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile on this date: Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort meet with a Russian lawyer, ostensibly to get opposition research on Hillary Clinton.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/11/politics/trump-campaign-june-9/index.html

June 16: Sen. Bernie Sanders declines to concede the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton.

http://time.com/4372644/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-speech-democratic-nomination/

July 6 Politico reports that Sanders met with House leaders and is cagey with them about if and when he intends to concede and endorse Clinton. At one point, he tells them: “The goal isn’t to win elections, the goal is to transform America.”

The House contingent booed Sanders.

July 12: Bernie Sanders finally concedes and endorses Hillary Clinton in Portsmouth, N.H.

Days between Clinton’s win as presumptive nominee and Bernie’s concession: 36. Hillary Clinton led by 200 to 300 delegates in most every voting event, and yet Bernie Sanders stayed in the race for 36 days after she was declared as the presumptive nominee and 47 days since the Republicans have declared DJT as their nominee. What a waste of resources for the Clinton campaign, to have to continue fighting off an adversary who was no longer mathematically able to achieve the nod for 36 days. This was an act of political malpractice on the part of the Sanders campaign that certainly contributed to Clinton’s loss, IMHO.

Bernie Sanders helped to get us Trump, like it or not. 

Candidate Trump holds a political rally in Westfield, Indiana. Introducing Trump, Stephen Miller tells the crowd that Sanders’ concession to Clinton means that “the system is rigged from top to bottom.”

https://youtu.be/ewMhP-V1ed8

July 22: Wikileaks releases its e-mails hacked from the Democratic National Committee. Many of these e-mails are referenced in this timeline.

July 25: The Washington Post reports on some of the worst revelations to come out of the DNC e-mail dump. Many of these references are included in this timeline. The Post’s reporting acknowledges, yet couches, an important point:

“Basically all of these examples came late in the primary — after Hillary Clinton was clearly headed for victory — but they belie the national party committee’s stated neutrality in the race even at that late stage.”

July 22 WikiLeaks releases online tens of thousands of messages leaked from the e-mail accounts of seven key DNC staff. In her book What Happened, Clinton notes the timing of this release was meant to cause the most damage, released the week of the Democratic National Convention.

July 25-28The Democratic National Convention is held in Philadelphia.

July 25 The Democratic National Committee releases a statement apologizing to the Sanders campaign and to the Democratic Party for some comments revealed by the Wikipedia email dump.

__

And by the way his “let’s go get ’em” speech to his own supporters at the DNC convention was pathetic.

July 31
The FBI opens an investigation into whether individuals associated with the Trump campaign were coordinating with the Russian government in its interference activities. (The Mueller Report)

Oct. 7
The Washington Post publishes a video and accompanying article about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and television host Billy Bush having “an extremely lewd conversation about women” in 2005.

30 minutes later, WikiLeaks begins publishing thousands of emails from John Podesta’s Gmail account.

Oct. 28: FBI Director James Comey announced in a letter to Congress that the FBI learned of the existence of emails that appeared to be pertinent to the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s email server and that the FBI would take steps to allow investigators to review these emails “to determine whether they contain classified information as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”

Nov. 6 FBI Director James Comey writes a second letter to Congress: “Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July.”

Nov. 8Election Day. Hillary Clinton wins the popular vote by 2.8 million but loses the electoral vote 304 to 227.

Aug. 25, 2017. A federal judge in Florida dismisses a class-action lawsuit brought by supporters of Sanders against the DNC. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/08/25/florida-judge-dismisses-fraud-lawsuit-against-dnc/?utm_term=.6665d8128efb

I heard on the radio the other day a bit of the story about how Leonard Cohen, who died this week, wrote his best-known song, “Hallelujah.” The song had 80-some verses and sometimes drove Cohen crazy.

Cohen wrote around 80 draft verses for “Hallelujah”, with one writing session at the Royalton Hotel in New York where he was reduced to sitting on the floor in his underwear, banging his head on the floor.

John Cale eventually covered the song, as did a youngster named Jeff Buckley, whose version of the song became the standard bearer. Buckley’s album “Grace” is likely to be number one on many “albums you need to have” lists, and his version of Cohen’s masterpiece is key as to why.

Other covers abound with different interpretations. Rufus Wainwright has performed it, as have k.d. lang, Regina Spektor, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Bono, Amanda Palmer, Willie Nelson, I mean, here, here’s a list of 60 (thanks, Newsweek).

And, last night, on live national television, it was covered by Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton. And that was brilliant. That is why Kate McKinnon holds a doctorate in what she does. It was so bittersweet, so effective, the jiu-jitsu of feeling the loss of a great American songwriter while playing through what many of us feel was a loss of the great America itself.

I hadn’t cried yet over the loss to Trump. But boy, that brought it out of me. Thanks, comedian.

Because that’s what this feels like. It’s been slipping away for a while now, what with the idiocy-as-a-leadership-quality approach seen in folks like George W. Bush and Prudence Palin. Now we’ve elected a man who ran on a platform of pointing to specific groups of people and saying THEY are the problem, and we are going to get rid of THEM to solve the problem.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

Newt Gingrich on Face the Nation this morning poo-pooed such allusions. He called it “garbage.” Said he’d never heard of the “alt-right” before this. Republicans don’t mind riding such ugly, Bircher-powered waves, but confront them to acknowledge them, and you will face a cloudburst of denial and false outrage.

Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in part by tapping into scapegoatism, via a radical jingoism, racism, misogyny, and general angry hatred. If you are a Republican and you deny that, you are simply doing more of your putting your head in the sand.

I was a supporter of Hillary Clinton early on. I don’t think I was “wrong,” per se. As I write this, Mrs. Clinton leads the popular vote by 600,000 votes. She only lost the presidency by losing Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Three states. And we cannot possibly know how Mr. Sanders would have fared in the general election. I maintain that he was an utterly unvetted candidate who would have been trounced.

However, I think my party needs to beat a path to Bernie’s door now. Because, mark my word, this new Republican regime in Washington will over-reach. It’s what they do when they assume all levers of power. And, when they do, we had better have an organization that’s ready.

I say now that the way to get ready is to line up behind the socialist.

What have we got to lose?

In Other News

An analysis of Donald Trump’s election win and the prospects for his presidency

I don’t often engage in politics here, not directly; I have a whole other Web space for that, but it’s under a pseudonym and it’s a shared space, so I think that writing it here offers some level of clarity. This is me talkin’. Not Brady Bonk.

Now, if you know me, you know I won’t be voting for any Republicans any time soon. So that makes my process easier, especially since the Democratic field has been thinned to three now. I have certainly considered, briefly, the possibility of the fellow from Maryland; he seems like a fine candidate and should be on the short list for running mate, but there’s a gravitas deficit there somehow. No, I think for me as well as for many in my party, it comes down to Bernie v. Hillary.

And most of the folks I know are batting for Bernie. As a regular listener of The Thom Hartmann Program, I can understand why. Bernie Sanders is a fierce, effective, outspoken advocate for vital progressive issues, most specifically correcting America’s insane trade policies, expanding the availability of health care, ceasing insane and never-ending wars, investing solidly in education, getting tough with Wall Street, et-chetera. There is no doubt that Bernie Sanders is correct on a buncha issues and that he’s an effective advocate for them. I’m a fan of his. Big-time.

That doesn’t mean he’s convinced me he’s the best person to run for this office.

In 2008, I was a rabid Obama supporter and in fact a fairly early adopter (I crafted my endorsement of Mr. Obama in February 2008). My logic on this was fairly straightforward: We had just got our asses handed to us running a candidate from the Senate who had voted for the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq. Why, when Iraq was still a hotly contested political issue, why would we do that again?

Now, I can’t tell you the Hillary wouldn’t have won, necessarily. But I can tell you that my political calculus made sense, and that the candidate we nominated has since been one of the most electorally successful people to run for the office in recent history. I know, to paraphrase the man himself, because he won both of them.

He also cleared that political trap for Mrs. Clinton. Iraq is a hot political issue no longer. Her vote, though still unfortunate, is no longer a political liability. And, she has admitted to the error and has apologized. Not that she doesn’t have new political baggage, of course. With Clintons, there’s always baggage. Always. But not like the Iraq vote at that moment in time. Nothing like that, nosiree.

So, let’s do one of those list things that the kids are all reading on the Internet these days. We’ll start with

1. Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate for the office, not just among her Democratic counterparts, not just among the whole bag of candidates this year, but than has ever run, certainly in my lifetime. In 2008, when people would level the charge that Barack Obama was not “experienced” enough and that Hillary Clinton had all this “experience” brimming out every pore of her body, I cried bullshit, and I was right. The candidates’ resumes, when objectively compared, were actually quite equivalent, considering that aside from her Senate experience at the time, Mrs. Clinton had never served in elected office.

Since then, though, she’s been kinda busy.

As Secretary of State:

• Hillary Clinton was the last person to get representatives from Israel and Palestine in the same room together.
• She was primarily responsible for creating the sanctions that brought Iran to the table.
• She successfully led an effort to restore the reputation of the United States worldwide after the bufoonery of the Bush years.
• She helped secure ratification of the START treaty.
• She influenced President Obama in the decision to end Osama bin Laden.

Was Hillary Clinton’s record at State perfect? No. I have found it to be a bit of a mixed bag. She leaned strongly toward the NATO effort in Libya, which like or not ended disastrously, and she wanted the United States to intervene more strongly in Syria, on which she was thankfully demured.

The best analysis I can find of Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at Foggy Bottom are here, in a piece by Walter Russell Mead. He believes it to have been a fairly mixed result.

Regardless, she is the only Democrat running who has served in such a global capacity. In terms of international issues, Hillary Clinton will be crafting and executing policy where Bernie and Martin will be trying to figure out which fork to use.

2. The next Democratic President needs to be able to go nose to nose with Republican intransigence and needs to be able to whip its ass. In my circle, we have a joke, based on a surreal line from the long-running animated show “The Simpsons.” It is: “I’m not not licking Republicans.”

President Obama has been a vastly effective executive. But only recently has he seemed to come to the realization that the political opposition is nothing but that: Opposition. He has operated much of his administration on the mistaken notion that he would be able to achieve consensus with his political frenemies. This mistaken notion has sometimes led to horrifying disaster, such as his seeming willingness to accept Chained CPI as a policy matter, or his extension of the Bush tax cuts, which he has promised to allow to sunset.

I am a big fan of the Obama years, but we need a cleanup batter now, someone with no illusions about bi-partisan warm fuzzies, somebody who will kick ass and who will take names. If only there were some instance I could point to in order to show that Hillary Clinton is the person who can fulfill this requirement, like, say, 11 hours of testimony in front of the House Benghazi committee in October 2015.

Or, say, her often-pilloried but as it turns out TOTALLY ACCURATE coining of the term “vast right-wing conspiracy” in 1998.

Remember, Obama came to office with a vision of “…one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America…”

Mrs. Clinton won’t come to the office quite nearly as wide-eyed. And she has concretely shown that she is uniquely suited to manage, disorient, and destroy the Republicans’ obstructionist agenda.

3. Nothing would piss off conservatives more than another Clinton administration. Besides maybe another black guy, of course, but that ship has sailed. No, I have witnessed first-hand the burgeoning spiky forehead vein that is created when a “conservative”-minded person refers to a Clinton who is occupying the White House. It cannot be eclipsed by any other visceral experience for a “conservative.” Nothing would cause their eyeballs to boil in blood more readily than at least four more years of somebody named “Clinton” in the Oval. Such a thing makes me giggle like a little girl.

4. Houston, June 2015. One of the first campaign events of Hillary 2016 was a stunning speech given at Texas Southern University, deep in Rick Perry country, in which she declared the really weird idea that Americans should be allowed to vote. In fact, she called for what may ostensibly seem like a radical idea: Universal voting registration for every American adult. You can watch the speech here (you can skip to about 18 minutes to get through all the grip-and-grin bullshit). It is a seminal speech and an impressive campaign kick-off.

5. The Planned Parenthood endorsement. Yes, it’s that important. As an organization, as an issue, as an advocacy group, the Planned Parenthood endorsement is that incredibly important. The political fire PP has taken of late makes its endorsement ring that much more clearly. They cite her stances on family planning, on abortion, and on the vital nature of Planned Parenthood itself and concluded they had to endorse for the first time ever. I for one am not surprised they picked the one with the uterus. Not sure why other folks are. But their endorsement carries more weight in my opinion than any others.

Trust women.

6. Because My Grandma asked me to. My 92-year-old Grandma was a Clinton supporter in 2008 but gladly came around to support Barack Obama despite her misgivings, and she’s become an ardent Obama supporter since. She makes a strong case for Hillary in 2012 as well, and this year, I am right with her.

I mean, if I don’t include among my reasons that I would like for my Grandma to see a woman in the Oval Office in her lifetime, I’d be lying. I would really like that. So yes. That is one of my reasons.

7. You Bernie PUMAs are really pissing me off. It’s odd that the PUMAs are in the Bernie camp this year, and they’re just as annoying as they were in Hillary’s camp in 2008. Generally, they are saying they will write Bernie in if he doesn’t get the nod, which is a terribly destructive stance that I find horrifying. You can believe that if Mr. Sanders garners the nomination, I will be first in line to cast my vote for him in November, but for some reason among Bernie boosters, that courtesy does not extend in the other direction. And specifically, I’ve seen these people source Breitbart hit pieces on Hillary Clinton and go SEE? SEE? SEE? It’s ridiculous. Mainly, though, this threat to write him if Hillary is the candidate? Fine. Don’t come crawling to me when President Trump rounds up all the brown people and frog-marches your ass to church.

8. Bernie Sanders is not a Jedi Knight. I’m not sure what Bernie boosters think he will be able to accomplish in office that Mrs. Clinton won’t. He will still face an obstructionist legislative body unless we can turn some results around there. He will still face the same inevitable political pressure every President faces from the inside. He will still be bound by law and precedent. As powerful as the Presidency is, it still has its limits and its powerful challenges. Bernie boosters act like the man has a magic wand he’ll wave at 1 p.m. January 20 and then peace and love and free vasectomies for everyone. SO besotted are they of this notion that they’re willing to mount a write-in effort and derail a nominee’s chances?

Yep. I’m Team Hillary ATW now. Do yer wurst. If she can take it, I sure can.