Discounting the possibility of fraud, former First Lady Hillary Clinton eked-out a victory over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucuses. This despite her attempt to use Senator Sanders’ vote for The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act to drive a wedge between herself and the Vermont septuagenarian. Because of her attempt to use her position on gun control to drive a wedge between herself and Senator Sanders? I’m so confused! You may say I’m a gun blogger. But I’m not the only one . . .
Anti-ballistic billionaire bully boy Michael Bloomberg’s agitprop generation operation, The Trace, is having trouble parsing Clinton’s win.
Quinnipiac University’s caucus day poll showed that only 3 percent of Democratic Iowa caucus goers ranked guns as their most important issue. That’s not nearly as high as the percentages listing the economy, health care, or even climate change as their top priority — but it’s also well more than the margin separating Clinton and Sanders in the final result.
Perhaps more significantly, other survey data shows that the gun issue may have helped prevent more Clinton voters from defecting to Sanders as the race tightened. The highly regarded (though obviously not perfectly accurate) Des Moines Register-Bloomberg Politics poll, which released its final pre-caucus poll on Saturday, found that 10 percent of Clinton supporters had backed Sanders at some earlier point in the race before coming home to Clinton during the race’s closing stretch.
Separately, surveys of caucus-goers entering their precincts found that among those making up their mind on election day, 45 percent broke for Clinton, versus 42 percent for Sanders. Some of those voters no doubt made their decisions based on the bigger question of electability. But by using Sanders’s gun record to paint him as just an ordinary politician, Clinton provided another reason — perhaps a crucial reason — not to feel the Bern.
Hmmm. With just three percent of left-leaning Iowans voting their guns, I think it’s wishful thinking to think that Secretary Clinton owes her razor-thin victory margin (again, discounting fraud) to her superior anti-gun animus. But boy do Bloomberg’s bilious bloggers have it in for Senator Sanders.
Gun-safety advocates will never absolve Sanders for his perceived sins of backing the gun-industry legal shield law and his subsequent attempts to explain his position as one intended to protect mom and pop gun shops in Vermont.
Look in the mirror much? Doubtful. Anyway, The Trace has one thing spot-on: the formerly soft-on-guns Democratic front-runner (discounting fraud) or her eventual replacement will have some ‘splainin’ to do to Americans who reckon if they like their guns they should be able to keep their guns.
. . . we have not heard the last gun policy-centric ad or talking point of the 2016 cycle. The distinctions between Clinton’s and Sanders’s gun records may not tip the Democratic contest, but the differences between the parties on the issue is vast. No matter who the Democrats and Republicans nominate, on guns there will be much to debate when the race turns to the general election.
Copy that. With the Republican candidates who are squidgy on gun rights — New Jersey Governor Christie and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush — fading at the first furlong, the question for firearms freedom lovers will be: how important are gun rights to middle America? We shall see.
Clinton not getting the nomination would be a huge victory in and of itself. I would move multiple times a year and switch my affiliation to Democrat just to vote against her.
Be careful what you wish for.
Be careful indeed. Which ever one of them wins (big “IF”), California and New York “solutions” to non-existent problems are going to be coming to your states soon.
Democrats really want Sanders but if pressed they’ll bail to Clinton. This is what you saw in Iowa and you’ll see Clinton gain more and more as we get closer to the election, especially if Trump is in front. The only way Democrats will nominate Sanders is if the race becomes a shoe-in because the Republicans nominate somebody completely unelectable like Cruz. Clinton is their safe bet, but if the Republicans give the election away by nominating some nutcase then they’ll back Sanders like he’s the second coming of Obama.
Her “Winning” speech just goes to show you that she’s only 10% as batsh_t crazy as her supporters.
“eked out”, unless the intent is to describe Hillary’s disgustingly scary and shocking nature and its impact on others around her.
D’oh! Text amended.
Is it just me, or does the fact that an establishment Democrat like Clinton, and an avid Socialist like Bernie Sanders, split the vote right down middle something about the state of the Democratic Party in this country?
The blind walking next to the blind?
Yeah… Somehow I would almost love seeing Clinton get the nomination. That would cause a vast majority of hardcore Sanders supporters to stay home. (If she can even stay out of jail until November.) We might have a historical first here. A GOP candidate running unopposed because his counterpart is under indictment.
I have zero doubt the Democratic party has a means of replacing their candidate if they die or otherwise can’t complete the run. It would probably go to the vice presidential nominee.
If she’s indicted BEFORE the convention, there’s no question they’ll simply nominate someone else at the convention, and it will be like she never happened.
sure, they’ll stick in biteme/biden. He “dropped out” to avoid looking, as stupid as he is, in the “debates”. He’d be a rubber stamp for o’bama (who seems has to have the aim of running the UN and thus running the world from there) and gladly throw away US sovereignty to the UN!
Hildabeast will not be indicted. Presidents/politicians get to break the law. You and me – not so much.
It (kind of) amazes me that half the people of Iowa are ignorant about hitlery’s crimes or they think it’s par for politicians or at least par for the clintons and not important
It’s not that they are ignorant of them. To those people the crimes don’t even matter. The ends justify the means, and all republicans are evil baby eaters. Anyone that opposes the GOP is obviously the correct choice and anything they did while in power benefits the greater good and is excused.
Well, not really. The Iowa process is pretty weird. “Voters” show up to caucuses that last two hours during which speeches are made, after which the vote is held. According to RealClearPoltics, six of the democratic contests were decided by a coin flip, all of which went to Hillary. So this easily could have gone the other way. Further, according to the same site, as reported to me by a friend, the Democratic turnout was around two thousand, the Republican turnout a new record of over 165,000 voting. (I can’t confirm that, ’cause I can’t find the actual numbers on the site). So most Iowans, it would seem, are not too interested in the Democratic Party race.
That number can’t be right. If only 2000 voters turned out, that would only be like 20 from each county, on average. It’s got to be more like 200,000.
The report I heard on the radio this morning said that the Democratic caucus turnout was about 171k people.
The total caucus voter participation for 2008 was 16% of the eligible electorate (around 350K voting). Its actually frightening that Iowa has such an impact on the political field, going into an election run, considering the low voter participation and the completely unrepresentative population of Iowa as a whole.
Politico had an interesting article on the phenomenon – http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/how-iowa-hijacked-our-democracy-213557#ixzz3yw4PP0XA
If you think about it, it’s not really Iowa’s fault that they have such outsized influence. It’s the fault of the pubic for buying into the media hype about Iowa and New Hampshire. If everyone would just shut the hell up about it and stop acting like it’s this enormously significant bellwether, the rest of the country’s votes might actually count (as much as any votes can count in this corrupt, rigged system, anyway).
Probability of 6 50-50 fair tests all coming up the same way (Clinton): 1.6%
Thanks – but that would be 1/2 of the moronic marxist demtards “don’t care”
And the reason Iowa works is that is a pretty fair 1% microcosim of the entire US. Education better than US average. NO big city hive TV so it is easy and relatively in expensive to flood the zone with narrowly targeted radio and TV, mass mailings.. To succeed candidate has to one on one – face to face with his market/voter. Unless the voter’s preferred flavor is BS (see Hillary) BS doesn’t work as can easily see the candidate multiple times over the course of a year or more.
I’m a Rep Conservative inside activist, not a demtard, so no all that up on their process. It is totally different that the Rep caucus process and as described to me is as moronic and corrupt as you would expect from the party of Tammany Hall, Boss Tweed, Daleys, and Huey Long etc etc etc and infintum. Arm twisting, “disenfranchisement”, corruption. All the BS the Clintons excel at and she still only could pull in 50%? Got her fanny kicked.
Do employees of the various Iowa media organizations add up to 3%?
/snark
Discounting fraud? Really? Never discount fraud, or any other dirty deeds, when the Clintons are involved.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4578575/clinton-voter-fraud-polk-county-iowa-caucus
What a mongolian cluster *cough* that was.
I wonder what Bill thinks of his wife’s strong anti-gun branding.
He probably doesn’t care too much, as long as it keeps her on the campaign trail and leaves him home alone with the interns.
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I’m curious as to why you care?
What makes you think it isn’t the same as his? it was Bill who said gun ownership in this country is based on a “national consensus” that it’s OK to own guns “for hunting”.
He only said that because Hildabeast was glaring at him at that moment… and he would face this later that night if he said otherwise:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aPX3JaS1XOI/hqdefault.jpg
Bill probably couldn’t care less – he was busy with the interns around the office.
Or the younger voters whom Sanders attracted didn’t care a bit about his (correct) vote to shield gun manufacturers from lawsuits. They are coming of political age in a time of expanding gun rights and a safer society. They are more afraid of their economic future. Compare that to the Hillary voters who came of political age in the ’60s and ’70s when political correctness was being born and it was easier to blame high crime rates on guns than on the people whose lives were being degraded by progressive policies. Those voters are older and more financially secure, and are more comfortable playing progressive by restricting gun rights.
More importantly none of the remember any part of the decades or USSR, commies, Stalin, purges and genocide etal. 1989 is ancient history for anyone under 40 (what is “history”?)
‘Discounting the possibility of fraud…’
Nothing to see here. Nobody needs to see the other side of the coin.
The fact that people still talk how Hillary should still be considered eligible, let alone electable is all the proof required to prove that most people should not be allowed to vote.
The only conversation that should be taking place is not about her political future, but rather how many packs of smokes she will be traded for in prison.
Egads, Man! What are you trying to do to us??? I just threw up a little.
Mr. Bolan, I often disagree with you. In our shock and disappointment that anyone in this country is still hoodwinked into supporting this criminal trash, we are in complete agreement. The fact that she is not getting her HIV treatments from the federal prison system is a shame on our nation.
Clinton blew a 30 point lead and barely beat Sanders. This shows how weak and terrible she is.
Ditto that. She couldn’t close against Obama in 08 and now she barely muster a tie with a socialist. Either it shows how politically weak she is, or the educational system failing young one’s on economics 101.
In which they don’t teach economics at all in public school and I graduated in ’05. I can only imagine how worse it has become since then. Heck I was only able to take an economic course in my post-graduate studies so if your focus does not revolve around economics then you won’t learn anything about it. No wonder Bernie is so popular because the vast majority of Americans don’t know or understand economics!!
On the Democratic side, Clinton and Sanders were tied. That counts as a “loss” for Clinton. She trails Sanders badly in the New Hampshire polls. The good news is that we are rid of O’Malley.
On the Republican side, Cruz, Trump and Rubio were tied. Trump didn’t just lose to Cruz, he also “lost” to Rubio.
Right! Because its not like the Republican establishment would ever pay Democrats to switch their vote or anything *cough* Thad Cochoran *cough*
“Can’t beat a socialist 74 year old gad-fly”…best quote of the day. Reince(?) Priebus(?). Hildebeast hilarity ensues. She ain’t popular…
With the Republican candidates who are squidgy on gun rights — New Jersey Governor Christie and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush — fading at the first furlong,
Good riddance of the RINOs.