Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday backed a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow him to seek re-election after his current term ends in 2024, ending uncertainty about his future.

Putin gave his support to the amendment put forward by lawmaker Valentina Tereshkova, who as a Soviet cosmonaut in 1963 became the first woman to fly to space. She proposed either scrapping Russian’s two-term limit for presidents or resetting the clock so Putin’s four terms wouldn’t count.

Lawmakers in the Kremlin-controlled State Duma quickly endorsed Tereshkova’s proposal, along with a sweeping set of constitutional changes proposed by Putin.

In a speech to lawmakers Tuesday, Putin spoke against scrapping presidential term limits altogether but backed the idea that if the constitution is revised, the two-term limit only would apply from 2024 on. The president’s current six-year term expires in 2024.

Putin, 67, has been in power for more than 20 years, becoming Russia’s longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. After serving two presidential terms in 2000-2008, he shifted to the Russian prime minister’s office while protege Dmitry Medvedev served as a placeholder president.

Putin reclaimed the presidency in 2012 and won another term in 2018.

A series of constitutional amendments Putin proposed in January were widely seen by Kremlin foes as part of his efforts to stay in power. However, it wasn’t clear until Tuesday how Putin could achieve that goal.

Observers had speculated that Putin could use the changes to scrap term limits; move into the prime minister’s seat with strengthened powers; or continue calling the shots as the head of the State Council.

He rejected all those options and finally revealed his cards Tuesday after Tereshkova, a legendary figure widely revered for her pioneering space flight, offered her ideas.

“I propose to either lift the presidential term limit or add a clause that after the revised constitution enters force, the incumbent president, just like any other citizen, has the right to seek the presidency,” she said to a raucous applause.

After Tereshkova spoke, Putin quickly came to parliament to address lawmakers.

He said he was aware of public calls for him to stay on as preisdent and emphasized that Russia needs stability above all.

“The president is a guarantor of security of our state, its internal stability and evolutionary development,” Putin said. “We have had enough revolutions.”

However, he said that since the constitution is a long-term document, scrapping the term limit wasn’t a good idea.

Then he dropped the bombshell, saying he positively viewed Tereshkova’s alternate proposal to restart the term count when the revamped constitution enters force.

“As for the proposal to lift restrictions for any person, including the incumbent, to allow running in elections, this option is possible,” Putin said.

He added that the Constitutional Court would need to judge if the move would be legal, although the court’s assent is all but guaranteed.

Putin’s statement came as lawmakers were considering the amendments in a crucial second reading when changes in the document are made.

The Kremlin-controlled lower house, the State Duma, quickly endorsed the proposed amendments by a 382-0 vote with 44 abstentions. A vote on a third reading will be a quick formality. A nationwide vote on the proposed amendments is set for April 22.

Source: AP

US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, surging in the polls and with several weighty endorsements in his pocket, and rival Bernie Sanders hit the campaign trail in Michigan on Monday on the eve of a primary vote in the key battleground state.

Biden, 77, was joined at an event in Flint, Michigan, by Cory Booker just hours after the New Jersey senator and one-time presidential hopeful announced he was throwing his support behind the former vice president.

“This could be the turning point not just of a primary campaign,” Booker said. “This could be the day we turned a whole nation around.”

Michigan is the biggest prize of six states that hold primaries on Tuesday to decide on a Democratic candidate to face Republican incumbent Donald Trump in November.

Speaking at the event with Booker in Flint, Biden said Michigan “is an important contest not just for the Democratic primary.

“The outcome of Michigan in November may determine who the next president of the United States is going to be,” he said.

“We’re not looking for a revolution,” Biden said in a jab at Sanders, the 78-year-old senator from Vermont who is a self-described democratic socialist.

“What we ought to be able to do is trust the water that comes out of the pipes,” Biden said in a reference to a drinking water pollution crisis gripping Flint for the past six years.

Sanders was campaigning in Detroit, Michigan, on Monday and held a roundtable with experts on the coronavirus, which has left at least 26 people dead in the United States and sent stock markets plunging.

Sanders criticized Trump’s handling of the crisis.

“Donald Trump does not have a natural ability to understand the coronavirus and his reckless statements are confusing people in this country and all over the world,” Sanders said.

Booker, the charismatic former mayor of Newark who dropped out of the race in January, is the latest prominent African-American politician to back Biden’s bid for the White House, his third following unsuccessful runs in 1988 and 2008.

California Senator Kamala Harris, who ended her campaign for the nomination in December, also endorsed Biden, who served for eight years as vice president to Barack Obama, America’s first black president, as did another also-ran, former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.

Booker and Harris, both touted as possible vice presidential picks for Biden, were to join him for a “Get Out the Vote” rally in Detroit on Monday evening.

Biden leads in polls 

Biden has surged since scoring a decisive victory in the South Carolina primary on February 29, with endorsements from key African-American leaders helping him claim the frontrunner mantle in the race.

Former Democratic candidates Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bloomberg and Beto O’Rourke have also swung behind Biden, seeing a moderate as having the best chance of defeating Trump.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who dropped out of the race last week and has a sizeable following on the left, has yet to decide whether to endorse Biden or Sanders.

Tuesday’s primaries will be the first one-on-one duel between Biden and Sanders since all the other major candidates dropped out of the grueling nomination battle that began more than a year ago.

Besides Michigan, Democrats will also be voting in Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington.

Michigan is shaping up as a must win for Sanders, who narrowly won the state over Hillary Clinton during his failed 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination.

The latest polls for Michigan, however, have Biden with a lead of between 15 and 20 points.

The latest Missouri poll has Biden up there by nearly 19 points while he leads Sanders by a narrow two-point margin in Washington.

Sanders, desperate to reboot his campaign after losing 10 of the 14 states which voted on Super Tuesday last week, cancelled plans to speak in Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois in order to focus on Michigan.

Sanders gained the endorsement of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson on Sunday.

Jackson endorsed Sanders at a rally on Sunday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, repaying the Vermont senator for having supported his 1988 bid for the White House.

“I stand with Bernie Sanders today because he stood with me,” Jackson said. “I stand with him because he stands with you.”

Biden’s Super Tuesday surge brought an influx of donations — $22 million in the past few days, his campaign said in a statement Sunday.

It said $12 million would be spent on hiring new staff and launching a major media campaign in battleground states.

(AFP)

A resurgent Joe Biden rode a wave of momentum to win Texas and eight other states, while Bernie Sanders was leading in Super Tuesday’s biggest race in California, setting up a one-on-one battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In a surprisingly strong showing, Biden rolled to victories across the South, Midwest and New England on the biggest day of voting in the Democratic campaign. Americans in 14 states cast ballots to select a challenger to Republican President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 election.

In what would be the day’s biggest upset, Biden was projected by Edison Research to have won Texas, the biggest prize after California. Sanders invested heavily in Texas and was counting on its sizable Latino population to propel him to victory.

“For those who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind, this is your campaign,” said Biden, the former vice president who had performed poorly in the first three nominating contests but broke through with a win in South Carolina.

“We are very much alive,” he told roaring supporters in Los Angeles.

Sanders, the one-time front-runner who had hoped to take a big step toward the nomination on Tuesday, won Colorado, Utah and his home state of Vermont, Edison Research said.

Fox News and AP projected Sanders won California, whose 415 delegates represent the largest haul in the nominating contest. But Edison Research and other networks held off declaring a winner as results trickled in. Maine was a toss-up, with both Biden and Sanders winning roughly a third of the vote with 73% of the precincts reporting.

With overwhelming support from African-American, moderate and older voters, Biden also swept to wins in Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia.

It was a spectacular turn for Biden, whose campaign was on life support after poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. Until a week ago he trailed Sanders in most state and national opinion polls.

But Biden’s blowout win in South Carolina on Saturday provided a burst of new momentum, fueling a wave of endorsements from elected Democratic officials and former presidential rivals including Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

Biden spent most of the past few months in the early voting states and did not personally campaign in several of the states he ultimately won, including Minnesota, in the months leading up to Super Tuesday.

Biden called Klobuchar Tuesday night to thank her for the Minnesota win, after she dropped her own presidential bid and publicly endorsed Biden at his rally in Texas the night before, a Biden campaign official said.

One-third up for grabs

More than one-third of the delegates who will pick the eventual nominee at a July convention were up for grabs on Tuesday, which provided some clarity at last in a muddled race for the White House.

The results left Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor who spent more than half a billion dollars on advertising, largely out of the running, with his only victory coming in the U.S. territory of American Samoa.

Bloomberg campaign officials said he would reassess whether to stay in the race on Wednesday, but they said that did not mean he would drop out.

The results were also disappointing for Senator Elizabeth Warren, who finished well behind Sanders and Biden in most states and trailed them in her home state Massachusetts.

Just a week ago, Biden was hoping to stay within reach of Sanders in delegates, giving him a chance to catch up as the race moved on. But initial tallies showed him leading Sanders in delegates for the day 268 to 194, with hundreds more to be allocated.

To date, Biden leads Sanders in delegates 321 to 254. A candidate needs to win 1,991 delegates to win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention in July.

The campaign continues an accelerated pace through the next two weeks, when nearly another 1,000 delegates are up for grabs, including the swing state of Florida on March 17.

Biden also accomplished his main Super Tuesday goal of muscling aside Bloomberg and consolidating support from moderates to turn the race into a one-on-one contest against Sanders.

Without naming him, Sanders took direct aim at Biden during a rally with supporters in Vermont, criticizing his 2002 vote to authorize war in Iraq and his support for global trade deals that Sanders opposed.

“We’re going to win the Democratic nomination and we are going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country,” Sanders said, referring to Trump.

Bad night for Warren, Bloomberg

Bloomberg was a wild card heading into the voting, as he joined the competition for the first time. He was winning 15% or more of the vote, enough to pick up some delegates, in Tennessee, Texas, Colorado, Utah, California and Arkansas.

Democratic presidential hopeful former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg speaks during a rally at Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020. (AFP photo)

The moderate skipped the first four contests and bombarded Super Tuesday and later voting states with ads, but saw his poll numbers slip after coming under fire during Democratic debates over past comments criticized as sexist and a police policy he employed as New York’s mayor seen as racially discriminatory.

Biden is hoping to build a bridge between progressive Democrats’ desire for big structural change and more moderate Democrats’ yearning for a candidate who will be able to win over enough independents and Republicans to oust Trump.

That effort gained fresh momentum on the eve of Tuesday’s voting as moderates Buttigieg and Klobuchar endorsed Biden after withdrawing from the race.

In Texas, which Biden unexpectedly won with 33% of the vote compared to Sanders’ 30%, 56% of the voters said they favored a candidate who could beat Trump over someone who they agreed with on major issues. Among those voters, nearly 40% chose Biden, over Sanders who had 26%, according to Edison Research exit polls.

Biden pulled off his victories despite being vastly outspent on ads by Bloomberg, who had spent $377 million on ads by Feb. 23, and Sanders, who spent $20 million. Biden spent $4.7 million during the same period, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks ad spending and content.

The pace of the Democratic race begins to accelerate after Super Tuesday, with 11 more states voting by the end of March. By then, nearly two-thirds of the delegates will have been allotted.

The next contests, on March 10, will be in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington state.

(Source: Reuters)

An outpouring of black voter support propelled Joe Biden to a convincing projected victory in South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Saturday, resurrecting his faltering White House bid and giving the former vice president a chance to present himself as the moderate alternative to front-runner Bernie Sanders.

The win gives Biden a burst of momentum as the Democratic race to find a challenger to Republican President Donald Trump broadens quickly, with Super Tuesday primaries in 14 states in three days that will award one-third of the available national delegates.

With 85% of the precincts reporting, Biden had 49% of the vote and U.S. Senator Sanders of Vermont was a distant second with 20%, according to official state results. Billionaire activist Tom Steyer had 11% and all of the other contenders were well behind with single digits.

After the vote count rolled in, Steyer, who had been spending heavily in South Carolina to court African-American voters, ended his presidential bid later on Saturday as it emerged he was coming in a distant third.

Exit polls conducted by Edison Research showed the former vice president with 64% of African-American support to Sanders’ 15%. He also beat Sanders, the national front-runner among a broad range of demographic and ideological groups, including those who identified themselves as “very liberal.”

It was the first primary win for Biden, who is making his third run at the White House. The commanding margin will allow Biden, vice president under former President Barack Obama, to argue he is the most electable moderate alternative to Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist whose surging campaign has rattled a Democratic establishment worried he is too far left to beat Trump in November.

In the wake of his decisive victory, Biden was endorsed by Terry McAuliffe, a former governor of Virginia and ex-chair of the Democratic National Committee, and U.S. Representative Bobby Scott, an influential African-American lawmaker from Virginia – a possible sign that the Democratic establishment was starting to coalesce around his candidacy.

It will also raise questions about the continued viability of most of the other contenders. Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar all were trailing well behind with single-digit support with more than 60% of the precincts reporting, with dwindling chances to mount a comeback.

Biden and all of the Democratic contenders will face competition for the first time on Super Tuesday from billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has blanketed the country with half a billion dollars in advertising. Bloomberg skipped the first four state primaries.

Biden desperately needed a win after poor showings in the first two nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire and finishing second in Nevada. He had viewed South Carolina, where his popularity among the state’s big bloc of black voters proved decisive, as his firewall against disaster.

“For all of those who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind – this is your campaign,” Biden told a victory party in Columbia, South Carolina.

The resounding win could slow the momentum of Sanders, who had grown stronger with each contest, finishing in a virtual tie for first in Iowa with former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Buttigieg, before notching wins in New Hampshire and Nevada.

‘Cannot win them all’

“You cannot win them all,” Sanders told supporters in Virginia Beach, Virginia. “This will not be the only defeat. There are a lot of states in this country and nobody wins them all.”

Biden, a mainstream Democrat with decades of experience on the U.S. political stage, was powered in South Carolina by support from a broad range of voters, including men and women, black and white, middle-aged and old, those with and without college degrees, independent, liberal and conservative, exit polls showed.

The data showed Biden beating Sanders, who has based his argument on his ability to bring out new voters, among those who were voting in a Democratic primary for the first time.

Exit polls found about six of 10 of South Carolina voters said influential black congressman James Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden on Wednesday was a factor in their decision. Clyburn introduced Biden at his victory rally.

“My buddy Jim Clyburn, you brought me back!” Biden told the No. 3 House Democrat before addressing supporters.

Biden was projected to win at least 27 of the 54 pledged delegates in South Carolina and Sanders 7, with more to be allocated. No other candidate was projected to have won any delegates in the state. Heading into the primary, Sanders had 54 delegates, Buttigieg 26 and Biden 15.

Exit polls showed about half of voters wanted a candidate who would return to Obama’s policies, a key argument of Biden. Nearly eight of 10 voters in South Carolina said they had a favorable view of Biden, compared with five of 10 who saw rival Sanders favorably, exit polls showed.

(REUTERS)

Bernie Sanders has overtaken Joe Biden and opened up a seven-point lead over President Donald Trump, according to a new Fox News poll.

The survey published by Fox News on Thursday night found that Senator Sanders (I-Vt.) jumped eight points since the same poll was conducted in January, with 31 percent of Democratic primary voters backing him for the 2020 nomination.

By comparison, former Vice President Biden slumped by eight points into second place as just 18 percent of Democrats favored him, according to the poll’s finding.

Biden’s plunge in the national primary rankings has put him two points above former New York City Mayor and late primary entrant Mike Bloomberg.

When asked which candidate they would like to see become the Democratic nominee, 16 percent of polled party voters said they backed Bloomberg, putting the billionaire six points up on his January rating.

The former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) were close behind, winning 12 and 10 percent support among Democrats, respectively.

No other candidate in the primary field polled at double-digits, with the once-insurgent Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) seeing herself backed by 5 percent of party voters, despite a surprisingly strong performance in the New Hampshire primary.

Fox News reported that its latest poll of the 2020 Democratic primary field was the first not to show Biden as the frontrunner, and the only one to show five candidates with double-digit support. A plurality (45 percent) also said they would support whichever candidate was chosen to face President Trump in the November presidential election.

But just less than a fifth of polled primary voters (18 percent) said they would refuse to support Sen. Sanders or Bloomberg in 2020, while 13 percent said the same of Biden and Warren.

When asked who they believed could beat President Trump later this year, Democrats put the most faith in Sen. Sanders.

Almost two-thirds (65 percent) said they fancied the Vermont senator’s chances of winning, while 57 and 56 percent said the same of Bloomberg and Biden respectively.

But only a little more than a third of party voters said they believed either Sen. Warren or Buttigieg could beat Trump.

In hypothetical head-to-heads between primary candidates and President Trump, a cross-party sample of registered voters told Fox News they preferred much of the Democratic field to the commander-in-chief.

Biden and Bloomberg had the joint-greatest leads over the president among Democrats, with both being separated from Trump by eight points.

Sen. Sanders was found to come seven points ahead of the president, with 49 percent opting for him and 42 percent supporting the commander-in-chief.

Both the former Mayor Buttigieg and Sen. Warren were found to be three points ahead of the Republican incumbent, putting them within the margin of error.

A total of 1,000 registered voters were surveyed nationwide between February 23 and February 26 for the Fox News poll, which has a 3 percentage point margin of error.

(Source: Newsweek)

Ambitious, exhilarated and a little nervous, a freshly elected Democratic congressman was buzzing with the possibilities of his new office when he first encountered Bernie Sanders. “You do realise this place is a complete waste of time, don’t you?” growled the independent senator from Vermont, by way of welcome to Capitol Hill. And, to be fair to Mr Sanders—and to the millions of Americans who set such great store by his integrity and plain speaking—he could not have summed up his own legislative history better. Mr Sanders has grumbled persistently about real problems—a broken health-care system and inequitable college education above all—while rarely making any headway in fixing them. During 30 years in Congress he has been primary sponsor of just seven bills that became law, two of which concerned the renaming of post offices in Vermont. An uncharitable observer might consider this the record of a blowhard.

Mr Sanders has taken his preference for speechifying to the big time. With only momentary interruptions, he has spent five years campaigning to be president—ever since he decided to play spoiler to Hillary Clinton’s coronation. America’s most famous socialist is running for the presidency on more or less the same set of problems he has emphasised for all those many years (plus a more recent focus on climate change). Though his proffered solutions, in the form of fantastical reforms and vast spending pledges, look ruinously expensive and unlikely to pass Congress, a committed faction of Democratic voters like them enough to have made Mr Sanders the indisputable front-runner. A candidate could scarcely have hoped for better results in the all-important early-primary states. Betting markets give him a 60% chance of winning the nomination. If he does well on March 3rd, Super Tuesday, when 14 states vote and one-third of delegates will be allocated, he will be uncatchable.

That worries many Democrats. Mr Sanders is a 78-year-old self-described socialist pulling his party hard to the left in an election in which the centre is wide open. Among those who feel the Bern, Mr Sanders’s ideological consistency over his three decades in Washington is usually the first thing they mention. Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters had similar feelings about their candidate, before he led the Labour Party off a cliff in Britain’s most recent general election. In some ways, Mr Sanders’s proposals are more radical than Mr Corbyn’s were. If he got his way, all American residents, including undocumented immigrants, would receive free health care, child care and education at state universities. Workers would have a jobs guarantee, seats on corporate boards and receive 20% of the equity of large firms. Billionaire clout would be broken by a wealth tax.

There are two hurdles to achieving all this: a general-election contest against Mr Trump, and gaining control of Congress.

Like a Goliath company swallowing start-ups to preserve its dominance, Mr Sanders has embraced all the new progressive-sounding ideas that have recently emerged—borrowing heavily from the innovations of Elizabeth Warren in America and Mr Corbyn in Britain. From Ms Warren, he has taken on the idea of a wealth tax—though with higher rates set at 8% at the top—co-determination of corporate boards, and the creation of federal charters for big corporations. From Mr Corbyn, he has borrowed the idea of national rent control and the forcible expropriation of corporate wealth to workers (though he has doubled Mr Corbyn’s suggested 10%, to 20%). The Green New Deal, proposed by climate activists and espoused by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a first-term representative, has found a welcome home in his agenda.

Promises are expensive. Our accounting shows Mr Sanders proposing $52trn in additional spending over a decade—although some plans, like a federal jobs-guarantee, are impossible to price. He has proposed some revenue-raisers: the wealth tax, and a significant rise in payroll taxes for the middle class. But these look likely to cover just $24trn of the cost. Even this estimate is rosy. It assumes that nationalising the generation of clean electricity, rather than costing money, will raise $6.4trn; $4.4trn from a wealth tax that the European experience shows the rich are good at avoiding; and $2.4trn from a financial-transactions tax (the Tax Policy Centre, a think-tank, estimates that the maximum possible revenue is one-quarter as much).

Perhaps the Green New Deal is not as grand as all that, and the 20m jobs he anticipates do not materialise. Taking his maths as given, however, Mr Sanders seems to be setting himself up for additional annual deficits of $2.8trn per year, or 13% of current gdp. Given that one of his senior economic advisers is Stephanie Kelton, a proponent of “modern monetary theory” whose forthcoming book is called “The Deficit Myth”, this may not be a concern.

Gimme, gimme, gimme

All these plans would need assent from Congress, which looks highly unlikely at the moment. But though Congress can tie the hands of the president on domestic matters, foreign affairs are less circumscribed. Some Democrats bristle at the thought of Mr Sanders at the helm of the national-security apparatus. Like old-school leftists, Mr Sanders has appeared blind to the horrible things left-wing governments have done to their own citizens in the name of solidarity—a tendency that will be a gift to Republican makers of attack-ads if he becomes the nominee. In the 1980s he campaigned for the Socialist Workers Party, which sought “the abolition of capitalism.” Mr Sanders wrote praise to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and attended a rally there on a visit in 1985 featuring the chant, “Here, there, everywhere, the Yankee will die.”

More recently, Mr Sanders has pledged not to use America’s military might for regime change, either overtly or covertly. Nor would he use it to secure American oil supplies. He has promised to use force only with congressional approval. His scepticism of America’s global role echoes Donald Trump’s, and has led some to caricature him as a left-wing isolationist.

That is not quite right. On the stump and in campaign materials, Mr Sanders has called for a foreign policy centred on human rights, economic fairness, democracy, diplomacy and peace. For voters of a certain age, that rhetoric may conjure up echoes of Jimmy Carter’s human-rights-focused foreign policy. But some of his advisers say Mr Sanders’s foreign policy would be more like Barack Obama’s.

He shares Mr Obama’s belief in talking to America’s opponents, and said he will continue Mr Trump’s personal dialogues with Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader. He also wants to re-enter the nuclear deal with Iran. He would probably try to reset—to use an unlucky word—America’s relationships with Russia and China. Like his Democratic rivals, he has vowed to re-join the Paris Climate Agreement, and wants America to take a leading role in combating climate change. He does not share Mr Trump’s hostility towards nato, and is unlikely to set out to further erode the country’s alliances. Mr Sanders has recently said that he would honour Article v commitments to nato members, including for countries that do not meet their commitment to spend 2% of gdp on defence.

The president is also relatively unfettered in matters of trade policy. Like Mr Trump, Mr Sanders has been sceptical of America’s trade deals for decades. He seems never to have found one he liked. Not only did he vote against the deal that ultimately brought China into the World Trade Organisation (wto), but he also voted for America to leave the wto altogether. He has pledged to “immediately” renegotiate the recently signed usmca and to “fundamentally rewrite all of our trade deals to deals to prevent the outsourcing of American jobs and raise wages.”

Mr Sanders is a more nuanced protectionist than Mr Trump. His criticisms of the uscma include its omission of any references to climate change. Mr Sanders frames his attacks on past trade deals as reflecting his concern with labour, environmental and human-rights standards. Though he may be less erratic than Mr Trump and have purer intentions, his trade policies may not have better outcomes. Protection from foreign competition will make it easier for domestic companies to fatten their profit margins while providing worse services. If and when other governments retaliate by restricting their own markets, American workers will not be immune. His tenure in office might continue the country’s inward turn.

The presidency comes with other policy-making perks that Mr Sanders would wield: executive action gives considerable leeway in some domestic arenas. Some would be the standard stuff of Democratic administrations. Many of the Trump executive actions would be countermanded. Those that loosened environmental protections, attempted to destabilise health-insurance markets and tightened immigration restrictions would be the first to go. That might all be welcome. Mr Sanders has signalled he would also go further, banning the export of crude oil, legalising marijuana and allowing the import of prescription drugs. He would appoint heads of federal agencies from outside the Democratic mainstream. Taking a page from Ms Warren (who might occupy a post in a Sanders administration), he could appoint zealous enforcers for antitrust, consumer protection and labour-relations posts.

Take a chance on me

Mr Sanders’s supporters argue that this programme is not electoral suicide but strategic brilliance. Head-to-head polling against Mr Trump shows Mr Sanders ahead by 3.6 percentage points nationally. In pivotal states like Michigan and Wisconsin, which Ms Clinton narrowly lost, he looks ahead by slim margins of five and one points, respectively.

Mr Sanders, his supporters argue, would expand the electorate, bringing in new and disengaged voters. His showings in the first three states give no evidence of such a stampede to the polls. A recent paper by David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, political scientists at Berkeley and Yale respectively, found that Mr Sanders would fare worse against Mr Trump than a moderate Democrat would, in part because he drives wavering voters away. To make up for that loss, he would have to raise youth turnout by 11 percentage points. To put it another way, the proportional increase among young voters would need to be significantly larger than the Obama-inspired African-American voter bump in 2008—far above historically plausible levels.

So far Mr Sanders has dealt only with primaries and caucuses, where his fellow Democrats have treated him comparatively gently, refraining from criticising his character and preferring to disagree with his policy. Mr Trump will be less kind and restrained—and will amplify his attacks with $1bn-worth, or more, of negative advertising. Whether the monied Democratic donors that Mr Sanders so evidently detests would put up enough cash to counteract this onslaught of digital and television advertisement is an open question. The fact that Mr Sanders once seemed enamoured enough of the Soviet Union to honeymoon there, that he plans to ban fracking (vital to the economy of Pennsylvania, a swing state), or that he would like to eliminate private health insurance and raise taxes to pay for undocumented immigrants to get free coverage, all seem untapped veins for negative advertisements. Whereas Mr Trump’s liabilities are well-covered and relatively well-known, Mr Sanders’s may not yet be known by less attentive voters—meaning that his slim lead in national polls could slip away. Drawing the contours of the coming general-election contest is a necessarily speculative exercise, but for Democrats it does not inspire confidence.

The choice could not look starker. Should Mr Sanders win the nomination, November’s election will pit a right-wing nativist with authoritarian tendencies who wants to Keep America Great against a democratic socialist who wants to turn it into the Sweden of the 1970s. The horseshoe theory of politics holds that the extreme left and extreme right sometimes resemble one another more than might be thought. Mr Sanders does not share Mr Trump’s contempt for the rule of law, which is important. But they do share a populist dislike of elites. As Mr Trump was, Mr Sanders is deeply distrusted by party stalwarts. The contempt between that camp and Mr Sanders’s is mutual. A day before his Nevada triumph, he tweeted: “I’ve got news for the Republican establishment. I’ve got news for the Democratic establishment. They can’t stop us.”

A further worry among moderate Democrats is that a Sanders-led ticket could doom their plan to seize control of Congress—it already looks unlikely because of the combination of Senate seats that are up for election this year. In 2018 Democrats engineered a takeover of the House by running moderate candidates focused on kitchen-table issues such as health care—not promising Medicare for All, but preserving and expanding the aca. That resulted in a 36-seat majority, including victories in 31 districts that Mr Trump won in 2016. One first-term Democrat believes that “the easiest way to hand most of [those seats] back is to put Bernie Sanders at the top of the ticket.” Matt Bennett of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think-tank, warns that Medicare for All and Mr Sanders’s intent to provide free health care to undocumented immigrants “take an advantage that Democrats have on health care and turn it into a liability.”

Socialism may play well in cities and on college campuses, but not in the suburbs, which are vital to the current House majority. Some have already started to speak out. Joe Cunningham, who in 2018 flipped a South Carolina congressional seat last won by a Democrat in 1978, said earlier this month that “South Carolinians don’t want socialism,” and said he would not support “Bernie’s proposals to raise taxes on almost everyone”. In the wake of favourable comments he made about Fidel Castro on February 23rd, virtually every elected Democrat in Florida, a perennially important state in presidential elections, distanced themselves from him. Mr Sanders has a history of fringe political views (though so does Mr Trump). The fact that he even now seems incapable of muting his admiration for Cuban social policies worries Democrats. It risks turning what should be a referendum on Mr Trump, which should be a winning argument, into one on socialism, which could well be a losing one.

SOS

The odds of Democrats winning the Senate, which are already long, could look even worse with a radical at the top of the ticket. Down-ballot Democrats could try to distance themselves, but Republicans will not let them. Martha McSally, a vulnerable incumbent Republican senator from Arizona trailing her Democratic challenger, Mark Kelly, in the polls, recently released an ad titled “Bernie Bro”, linking Mr Kelly to Mr Sanders’s unpopular policy to give free health care to undocumented immigrants. Doug Jones, the Democratic senator from Alabama, might find his chances of victory narrowed to zero. Against a candidate as unpopular as Mr Trump, Mr Sanders might still achieve victory—only to find that there are insufficient Democrats left on Capitol Hill to carry out his revolutionary marching orders.

Sandernistas often vacillate between the idea that their agenda is the one, true route to restoring the American dream and the idea that it is merely a maximalist opening bid in the bruising negotiations with Congress. Rather than Medicare for All, for example, they might end up with a government agency that could provide public health insurance, if they wanted it, to middle-class people who did not qualify for Medicare. Mr Obama got so little done, the story goes, because he compromised with himself, rather than playing hardball. “The worst-case scenario?” asked Ms Ocasio-Cortez, not usually known for her pragmatism, in an interview with the Huffington Post. “We compromise deeply [on Medicare for All] and we end up getting a public option [which means allowing people to buy government-run health insurance]. Is that a nightmare?” Asked about it, Mr Sanders did not yield, saying that Medicare for All was “already a compromise”.

“There will be absolutely no difference between what Bernie has been fighting for in the primaries, in the Senate and in the House and what he will be fighting for as the Democratic nominee, and more importantly in the White House,” wrote Warren Gunnels, a longtime adviser on economic policy to the senator. Mr Sanders’s idea for how he would achieve victory, given the hard political maths facing the Democrats, is not terribly convincing. He says that he would use the bully pulpit of the presidency to shame Republican senators into voting for the good of their constituents. That is naivety befitting a novice, not a 30-year legislator. Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader in the Senate, has proved himself happy to halt all lawmaking for years, if necessary. The Sanders revolution would not shake his resolve.

The likeliest outcome for a Sanders presidency would therefore be a slew of ambitious legislative plans all gleefully thwarted by Mr McConnell. Should his political revolution take him inside the gates of the White House, it is likely to stop there. Perhaps after four years of this, Mr Sanders would kvetch to his successor that it, like Congress, is a lousy place to work.

Culled from The Economist

US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has criticized the US government for its massive military spending and tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations while eliminating social benefits for low-income and middle class families.

Sanders on Monday proposed spending $1.5 trillion over 10 years to create a universal child care and early education system, to be funded by taxing the wealthiest Americans.

The proposal is the latest by the frontrunner Democratic candidate that would vastly expand America’s social welfare system as he seeks the nomination to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in the November election.

Sanders is proposing massive overhauls of the US economy, including taxing the wealthiest Americans to provide free colleges and ban private health insurance in favor of a government-funded system that guarantees universal health coverage, a system already carried out by many developed countries.

“We have a moral responsibility as a nation to guarantee high-quality care and education for every single child, regardless of background or family income,” the Sanders campaign said in a proposal posted on his website.

During an interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” Sunday night, he was asked how much those programs would cost and how his administration would pay for them.

“I get a little bit tired of hearing my opponents saying how you going to pay for that impacts and helps children or middle class families, and yet where are people saying how you going to pay for over $750 billion on military spending,” Sanders told Anderson Cooper.

Source: Presstv

US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has opened a 12-point lead to former former Vice President and front-runner for the Democratic presidential candidates, Joe Biden, according to a new poll.

Sanders got 31 percent of the votes in the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released early Tuesday, pushing him up to the top spot, which had belonged to Biden.

Sanders’s support has risen 9 points since last month’s poll, following his victory in the New Hampshire.

Biden’s support, however, has decreased 9 points, dropping to 15 percent in the new survey.

Biden in third place, behind former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who surged into second place with 19 percent.

Bloomberg’s support increased by 15 points since last month’s poll. The billionaire, who is self-funding his campaign, also qualified for Wednesday night’s debate with his performance in the survey.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had a 5-point decrease to 12 percent support, based on the new poll. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) had a 5-point increase to 9 points in the wake of her third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary.

Former South Bend Ind, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who appears to be leading the field in the delegate count, is closely trailing Klobuchar at 8 percent support, a 5-point decrease in one month.

No other candidates registered at more than 2 percent support.

The poll surveyed 527 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and was conducted between Feb. 13-16. There is a margin of error of 5.4 percentage points.

In the meantime, US President Donald Trump has once more accused the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which is the governing body of the Democratic Party, os plotting against Sanders.

Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump

The Crooked DNC is working overtime to take the Democrat Nomination away from Bernie, AGAIN! Watch what happens to the Super Delegates in Round Two. A Rigged Convention!

“The Crooked DNC is working overtime to take the Democrat Nomination away from Bernie, AGAIN! Watch what happens to the Super Delegates in Round Two. A Rigged Convention!” Trump tweeted.

Source: Presstv

US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has overtaken former Vice President Joe Biden in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a new poll.

The Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday and run by the Hiil on the same day showed Sanders had captured 25 percent support against Biden at 22 percent.

The latest poll, which is Sanders best results in a Morning Consult tracking survey since last March. indicated Biden’s support dropped 6 points from a similar poll conducted between late January and early February.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg saw his support rise to 17 percent, while former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg gained support, as well, finishing the latest poll with 11 percent. 

Only one other candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), notched double digits in the Morning Consult poll, coming in with 11 percent support. 

The poll suggests that Sanders’s near win in the Iowa caucuses last week has bolstered his standing in the race and given his campaign a surge of momentum nationally. It’s also unwelcome news for Biden, marking the first time since he launched his presidential campaign that he has fallen out of first place.

Sanders isn’t the only candidate that benefited from a strong finish in Iowa.

Buttigieg’s support surged 5 points since the last Morning Consult poll. He currently leads in the delegate count in Iowa. 

The Morning Consult poll surveyed 15,436 Democratic primary voters from Feb. 4-9. 

Source: Presstv

Former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg takes the lead among other rival candidates in Iowa’s caucuses, according to an announcement late Sunday by the state Democratic Party.

Buttigieg was officially awarded the most delegates from last week’s Iowa’s caucuses after a recanvass of 55 precincts was completed, holding a 0.1% lead over Vermont Sen.Bernie Sanders in the state delegate equivalent count.

While Buttigieg will get 14 delegates from the caucuses, Sanders will receive 12, according to the Iowa Democratic Party’s website.

Meanwhile, no other candidate received a double-digit number of delegates, showed the updated results.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar will get eight, six and one respectively.

However, major broadcasters have not yet declared an official winner from Monday’s caucuses because of confusion resulting from the vote-reporting process.

In the first batch of long-delayed results from the chaotic Iowa Democratic Party caucuses released on Tuesday, Buttigieg was leading with about 28 percent of the delegates and Sanders came second with 25 percent.

Both Buttigieg and Sanders had claimed victory earlier in the day long before the actual results came in.

The results were published nearly 21 hours after Iowans cast their ballots, with officials blaming inconsistencies related to a new mobile app used for vote counting for the unusual delay in the Midwestern US state.

Republicans questioned the Democrats’ capability to run the country if they could not conduct a caucus, while President Donald Trump mocked the Democrats on Twitter and called the delay an “unmitigated disaster.”

Before the results were released, campaign aides for Biden had cited gross failures in the caucuses. The caucus kick-starts the five-month process of picking a challenger to the incumbent Republican president.

Source: Presstv