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Hillary’s hurting! Hillary could lose! The media’s mini-panic over Bernie Sanders

At some point in this long slog of a presidential campaign, I expected to see the media declare that Hillary Clinton was in trouble.
After all, journalists crave a race, she’ll inevitably hit some speed bump, and the pundits can all wring their hands until she resumes her march to the Democratic nomination.
When I chatted with John Podesta after her Roosevelt Island launch, he was quick to note that “Bernie has a following,” and that Hillary will have to fight for Iowa and New Hampshire. I figured the campaign chairman was just offering the we-take-no-vote-for-granted refrain, given that no candidate wants to be seen as taking a race for granted.
Now, however, the rumblings are growing louder. But are they real?
The Hill declares that “it may be time for Hillary Clinton to take the challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders more seriously.
“Sanders is surging in the race for the party’s presidential nomination."
But there’s a risk in Hillary attacking the Vermont socialist head on, the paper says: “Doing so could rally his supporters, alienate liberals the Democratic nominee will need in the fall of 2016 and elevate Sanders as a challenger.”
Republican pollster Glen Bolger, according to Roll Call, “made a bold prediction that Clinton would not win the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary.”
And after Sanders wins the first caucuses and the first primary, “then Democratic primary voters will go, ‘Oh my God, what are we doing here?’”
Except that, as the lead sentence noted, Bolger still believes that Hillary “is almost certain to be the Democratic nominee,” and he later told the paper he’d just been making a “bold, fun prediction.”
The most dramatic statement comes in this Salon headline: “Hillary Is Going to Lose.”
Except that turns out to be clickbait. Author Bill Curry, a former Clinton White House counselor, doesn’t go that far:
“Democratic elites don’t want to hear it but Hillary Clinton’s in trouble ... Bernie Sanders is the only candidate in either party who seems to feel the tectonic plates of our politics shifting, perhaps because he’s expected the change for so long. His is still an improbable candidacy, but less improbable than it was a month or even a week ago.”
All right, so this is mostly preseason stuff, like sportswriters chewing the fat over who’s the favorite for the 2016 Super Bowl. But there’s no question that Sanders is drawing large crowds—more than 5,000 at the University of Denver over the weekend--and has some momentum. He hits the right notes for liberal Democrats who don’t like Wall Street, big corporations or Barack Obama’s trade deal. A classic protest candidate—unless it turns out he’s more than that.
Is Hillaryland adjusting? Democratic strategist Maria Cardona said of Sanders on ABC’s “This Week”:
“We shouldn’t be surprised that there is so much enthusiasm for him, and in fact, we shouldn’t be surprised if he does very well in New Hampshire or in Iowa and perhaps even wins. I think this is good for the Democratic Party … As a Hillary supporter, I think she will be the nominee, but she will be that much better of a nominee and that much better of a general election candidate because of Bernie.”
This smells like lowering expectations, as host Jon Karl noted.
Sanders did raise $1.5 million in the 24 hours after he launched, more than several Republican candidates. And the senator, from a neighboring state, is trailing Hillary by just 41 to 31 percent in one New Hampshire poll. (Keep in mind that Gene McCarthy knocked LBJ out of the race in 1968 with 41.9 percent of the vote to Johnson’s 49.6 percent, in a vastly different situation.)
Lots of successful candidates have lost Iowa but won their party’s nomination. Losing the first two states would be an earthquake.
I still think this is mainly media hot air, something to match the 90-plus temperatures here inside the Beltway.
In fact, in a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll out last night, Hillary leads Bernie among Democrats by a humongous margin, 75 to 15 percent (and holds an 8-point lead over Jeb Bush). But the same survey shows 62 percent of Democrats want her to have a challenging primary.
That would include 100 percent of the media. But it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan says he has cancer of lymph nodes

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has "very advanced" and "very aggressive" cancer of the lymph nodes, but he said Monday he will continue to work as the state's chief elected official.
Hogan said the cancer is B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He says it may be Stage 4, or at least a very advanced Stage 3.
He spoke at a hastily organized news conference in Annapolis, surrounded by members of his family and cabinet.
Hogan, a Republican who took office in January, says he's "shocked" by the news.
At the news conference with his wife, daughters, sons-in-law and granddaughter, Hogan said that he had noticed a painless lump along his jaw earlier this month. He also felt some back pain, which, he said, was caused by a tumor pressing on his spinal column.
While vowing to continue to work, Hogan allowed that he will miss days of work while undergoing intensive chemotherapy. He said he will lose his hair — "I won't have these beautiful gray locks" — and maybe lose some weight.
Hogan says his doctors have told him he has a good chance of beating the disease.
He was mostly upbeat at the news conference, joking that his odds of beating cancer were better than his chances were of beating his Democratic opponent as an underdog in last fall's election, or of repealing the state's so-called rain tax.
He says he's been feeling good and has had few symptoms, but has tumors, a low appetite and some pain. Chemotherapy is planned.
Hogan said he will miss some meetings while he undergoes chemotherapy, but won't stop working, like thousands of other Americans who undergo cancer treatment and stay on their jobs.
"I'm still going to be constantly involved" in running the state, Hogan said, adding that Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford will fill in more for him. "Boyd has my back," he said.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley says Confederate flag has 'no place' on statehouse ground

Maybe any History books or other things that offend someone should be burnt or banned also.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called Monday for the removal of the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds but defended the right of private citizens to fly it.
“The time has come,” Haley said. “That flag, while an integral part of the past, does not represent the future of our great state.”
The Republican governor, who avoided calls to remove the flag in the first few days following Wednesday’s shooting death of nine black members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, said taking the flag down would unite the state.
“We are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer,” she said. “The fact that people are choosing to use it a sign of hate is something that we cannot stand. The fact that it causes pain to so many is enough to move it from the capital grounds. It is after all a capitol that belongs to all of us.”
The push to remove the Confederate flag – which has flown in front of the state capitol for 15 years after being removed from atop the statehouse dome -- comes after last week’s shooting deaths of nine black members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
State Sen. Clementa Pinckney, was among those killed.
President Obama and Vice President Biden will both travel to Charleston at the end of the week to attend the funeral services for Pinckney. Obama will deliver the eulogy, a White House spokesman confirmed to Fox News.
Late Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted that Haley was "right to call for removal of a symbol of hate in SC."
Momentum has grown since last Wednesday’s murders to take down the flag. The accused killer, Dylann Roof, was photographed holding the the flag and with other symbols of white supremacy.
Over the weekend, nearly 2,000 protesters braved triple-digit heat to call for the flag’s removal in the state capital of Columbia .
The Sons of Confederate Veterans said it plans to vigorously fight any effort to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of South Carolina's Statehouse.
The group said it was horrified at last week's shooting but there is "absolutely no link" between the massacre and the flag.
Leland Summers, South Carolina commander of the group, says the group is about heritage and history, not hate. He offered condolences to the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and said now is not the time to make political points.
Summers said the Sons of Confederate Veterans have 30,000 members nationwide that will fight any attempt to move the flag.

Pentagon says ISIS-linked suspect in Benghazi attack killed in airstrike

The Pentagon said Monday that a suspect in the deadly 2012 Benghazi attack with ties to the Islamic State terror group (ISIS) had been killed by a U.S. airstrike in Iraq.
Defense Department spokesman Col. Steve Warren said Ali Ani al-Harzi, a Tunisian national, was killed in Mosul, which was overrun by ISIS last year.
Al-Harzi "operated closely with multiple ISIL-associated extremists throughout North Africa and the Middle East," Warren said in a statement, using another acronym for the militant group. "His death degrades ISIL's ability to integrate North African jihadists into the Syrian and Iraqi fight and removes a jihadist with long ties to international terrorism."
Al-Harzi was a leading suspect in the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack, and was quietly added to the State Department's global terrorist list this past April, when his affiliation with ISIS was also confirmed. He had previously been a member of Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AAS-T), an extremist group with ties to Al Qaeda, since 2011. He was a high-profile member known for recruiting volunteers, facilitating the travel of AAS-T fighters to Syria, and for smuggling weapons and explosives into Tunisia.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said al-Harzi "was responsible for planning hundreds of suicide attacks across the world and was one of the first foreign fighters" to join ISIS. Schiff said al-Harzi "was also responsible for recruiting foreign fighters and sending them to the fight in Syria."
Four Americans were killed in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, including Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Another suspect, Abu Khatallah, was arrested last year and is awaiting trial in a U.S. federal court.

More on this...

• A look at one of the key suspects in Benghazi attack

Al-Harzi was detained by Turkish authorities in October 2012 after he was linked to the Benghazi consulate attack through social media postings. He then was transferred to Tunisian custody, where FBI access was blocked until Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., intervened.
Fox News reported in January 2013 that FBI agents had interrogated al-Harzi for two hours the previous month, but did not have enough evidence to determine whether he was involved in the attack. On Jan 7, 2013, al-Harzi was released by a Tunisian court, which cited a lack of evidence. An investigative source familiar with the case told Fox News that the Tunisians did not give the FBI advance notice that al-Harzi would be released.