Why Bernie won't acknowledge Hillary's win, despite the obvious math

Is Bernie Sanders in denial, or just milking his moment?
With Hillary Clinton having now captured the 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination today—as declared last night by the AP—the long contest would seem to be over.
But no.
Sanders says he’s heading for a contested convention in Philadelphia.
The Vermont senator risks looking like a sore loser, but at this point, what else has he got to do?
Many people forget that Sanders was not a Democrat until adopting the label last year to make his run. The Democratic establishment has been clearly lined up behind Clinton.

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He doesn’t really owe the party anything.
Sanders was kind of marginalized as an independent member of Congress. Now he’s drawing huge crowds, raising big money and garnering endless media attention. Of course he doesn’t want to give up the limelight.
Plus, the man is 74 years old. It’s not like he can bide his time until 2020. Ted Cruz dropped his campaign against Donald Trump, despite repeatedly vowing to take the fight to Cleveland, because he’s young enough for another presidential bid. This is it for Bernie.
Now obviously he’s accomplished far more than anyone expected and gained a measure of clout within his new party. He’s already pushed Clinton significantly to the left. He can make demands for such things as platform concessions at the convention. I don’t see Hillary picking him as her running mate, given that he’d be 78 at the end of the first term, but stranger things have happened.
Maybe he's engaging in pregame bluster. Sanders told a presser he'll be returning to Vermont to "assess where we are" rather that discuss things based on "speculation." (Hillary had a media availability yesterday, perhaps signaling a shift in her limited-access policy.)
It’s clear, in retrospect, that Sanders might have had a shot at beating the Clinton machine. And that is prompting some early political obituaries.
“According to interviews with the candidate, his advisers, allies and other Democrats,” says the Washington Post, “Sanders fell short because of missed opportunities, a failure to connect with key constituencies and stubborn strategy decisions.”
Once his campaign got hot, “he struggled to connect with black and Latino voters, as well as with older Democrats, groups that carried Clinton’s candidacy. Sanders repeatedly clashed with another vital constituency — the party leaders whose votes as superdelegates he would ultimately need to pry the nomination away from Clinton.
“Sanders also overestimated the power of his economic message and, adamant that he run the kind of positive campaign that had been his trademark in Vermont, initially underestimated the imperative to draw sharp contrasts with Clinton.”
By failing to compete with Clinton in minority communities, Sanders won states with large white populations but fell behind to the point where he couldn’t catch up. Clinton, for instance, swept 73 percent of the vote in South Carolina.
By spending limited time on the trail and tending to Senate business in 2015, Sanders acted like a message candidate who didn’t expect to win—and by the time that changed, it was too late.
By saying he didn’t care about Clinton’s “damn emails,” Sanders gave up a major weapon and showed he wanted to fight only on “the issues.” But that only takes you so far.
Even if he ekes out a slight victory in California, the math is totally against Sanders. Of the superdelegates who have announced their support, 547 are for Hillary, 46 for Bernie. The weight that the Democrats give superdelegates may be totally unfair, but the notion that large numbers of them are going to flip for a guy who attacks the party system as rigged seems far-fetched.
The real question is whether all those Feeling the Bern will transfer their allegiance to Clinton, or whether a sizable number will defect to Trump or simply stay home. And that’s why Sanders’ tone is important.
Of course, reporters can also be tendentious. A female journalist asked Sanders yesterday whether it would be “sexist” for him to keep resisting the first woman to win a major-party nomination. He dismissed the question as not serious.
Clinton is talking about unifying the party. Her spokesman Brian Fallon told MSNBC yesterday, “I think it would be helpful to not seek to delegitimize the process that has led to Hillary Clinton clinching this nomination as will happen tomorrow night.”
So Hillary is going to declare victory. The press will say she’s the winner. And Bernie Sanders will have a hard time convincing anyone that he’s still got a shot at the nomination.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. 

Clinton has delegates to win Dem nomination, AP reports; Sanders questions tally

Hillary Clinton has earned enough delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, according to an Associated Press count released Monday night – an assessment swiftly challenged by primary rival Bernie Sanders and his campaign.
The AP released its updated tally, showing the former secretary of state winning enough delegates to become the first woman to top a major party’s presidential ticket, on the eve of the last major day of primary voting.
The AP said Clinton reached the 2,383 delegates needed to become the presumptive Democratic nominee with a weekend victory in Puerto Rico and late burst of support from superdelegates. Those are party officials and officeholders, many of them eager to wrap up the primary, free to support whichever candidate they want.
"We really need to bring a close to this primary process and get on to defeating Donald Trump," said Nancy Worley, a superdelegate who chairs Alabama's Democratic Party and provided one of the last endorsements to put Clinton over the top.
"It's time to stand behind our presumptive candidate," said Michael Brown, one of two superdelegates from the District of Columbia who came forward in the past week to back Clinton before the city's June 14 primary. "We shouldn't be acting like we are undecided when the people of America have spoken."

Clinton touted the news at a Long Beach, Calif., campaign event, saying the campaign is now on the “brink of a historic … unprecedented moment.” But even she stressed that six states are yet to vote on Tuesday and urged supporters to cast their ballots for her in those contests.

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The six states to vote Tuesday include New Jersey, North Dakota, New Mexico, Montana, California, and South Dakota.
Campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement: “This is an important milestone, but there are six states that are voting Tuesday, with millions of people heading to the polls, and Hillary Clinton is working to earn every vote. We look forward to Tuesday night, when Hillary Clinton will clinch not only a win in the popular vote, but also the majority of pledged delegates."

Democratic Path to Nomination | InsideGov

The Sanders campaign rejected the declaration that Clinton had clinched the party nod, citing its longstanding position that the superdelegates should not count until they actually vote at the convention – as they are free to switch sides before then.
"There is nothing to concede," Sanders told KTVU late Monday at a rally in San Francisco. "Secretary Clinton will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to win the Democratic nomination. She will be dependent on superdelegates. They vote on July 25th so right now our goal right at this moment [is to] do everything we can to win the primary tomorrow."
Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs accused the media of “a rush to judgement" and "ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer."
"Our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump," Briggs said.
On Monday, Sanders' supporters expressed disappointment that the calls were made before California's primary and urged the senator to continue on despite the pronouncements. "We're going to keep fighting until the last vote is counted," said Kristen Elliott, a Sanders' supporter from San Francisco who attended the rally.
Said another attendee, Patrick Bryant of San Francisco: "It's what bookies do. They call fights before they're over."
Clinton has won 1,812 pledged delegates in primaries and caucuses. She also has the support of 571 superdelegates, according to an Associated Press count. The AP surveyed all 714 superdelegates repeatedly in the past seven months, and only 95 remain publicly uncommitted.
All the superdelegates counted in Clinton's tally have unequivocally told the AP they will back her at the convention and not change their vote. Since the start of the AP's survey in late 2015, no superdelegates have switched from supporting Clinton to backing Sanders.
Clinton’s presumptive victory Monday came nearly eight years to the day after she conceded her first White House campaign to Barack Obama. Back then, she famously noted her inability to "shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling."
Campaigning this time as the loyal successor to Obama, Clinton fended off a surprisingly strong challenge from Vermont Sen. Sanders. He mobilized millions with a fervently liberal message and his insurgent candidacy revealed a deep level of national frustration with politics-as-usual, even among Democrats who have controlled the White House since 2009.
Clinton outpaced Sanders in winning new superdelegate endorsements even after his string of primary and caucus wins in May. Following the results in Puerto Rico, it is no longer possible for Sanders to reach the 2,383 needed to win the nomination based on the remaining available pledged delegates and uncommitted superdelegates, according to the AP.
Clinton leads Sanders by more than 3 million cast votes, by 291 pledged delegates and by 523 superdelegates. She also won 29 caucuses and primaries compared to his 21 victories.
Echoing the sentiments of California Gov. Jerry Brown, who overcame a decades-long rivalry with the Clinton family to endorse her last week, many superdelegates expressed a desire to close ranks around a nominee who could defeat Trump in November.
Beyond winning over millions of Sanders supporters who vow to remain loyal to the self-described democratic socialist, Clinton faces challenges as she turns toward November, including criticism of her decision to use a private email server run from her New York home while serving as secretary of state. Her deep unpopularity among Republicans has pushed many leery of Trump to nevertheless embrace his campaign.
"This to me is about saving the country and preventing a third progressive, liberal term, which is what a Clinton presidency would do," House Speaker Paul Ryan told the AP last week after he finally endorsed Trump, weeks after the New Yorker clinched the GOP nomination.
Yet Clinton showed no signs of limping into the general election as she approached the milestone, leaving Sanders behind and focusing on lacerating Trump. She said electing the billionaire businessman, who has spent months hitting her and her husband with bitingly personal attacks, would be a "historic mistake."
"He is not just unprepared. He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility," Clinton said last week in a speech that was striking in its forcefulness, previewing a brutal five-month general election campaign to come.
Even without the nomination, Sanders can claim ideological victory. His liberal positions pushed the issue of income inequality into the spotlight and drove Clinton to the left on issues such as trade, Wall Street and campaign finance reform.
But she prevailed, in part, by claiming much of the coalition that boosted Obama. She won overwhelming support from women and minorities, catapulting her to decisive victories in diverse, delegate-rich states such as New York and Texas.
When Clinton launched her campaign last April, she did so largely unopposed, having scared off more formidable challengers by locking down much of the party's organizational and fundraising infrastructure. Vice President Joe Biden, seen as her most threatening rival, opted not to run in October.
Of the four opponents who did take her on, Sanders was the only one who emerged to provide a serious challenge. He caught fire among young voters and independents, his campaign gaining momentum from a narrow loss in Iowa in February and a commanding victory in New Hampshire. His ability to raise vast sums of money online gave him the resources to continue into the spring.
But Clinton vowed not to repeat the failings of her 2008 campaign and focused early on winning delegates, hiring help from Obama's old team before launching her campaign. They pushed superdelegates into making early commitments and held campaign appearances in areas where they could win the most pledged delegates.
Her victory in Nevada in late February diminished concerns from allies about her campaign operation. Decisive wins in Southern states on Super Tuesday and a sweep of March 15 contests gave her a significant delegate lead, which became insurmountable by the end of April after big victories in New York and in the Northeast.
She now moves on to face Trump, whose ascent to the top of the Republican Party few expected. The brash real estate mogul and reality TV star has long since turned his attention from primary foes to Clinton, debuting a nickname — "Crooked Hillary" — and arguing she belongs in jail for her email setup.
After a long primary campaign, Clinton said this past weekend in California she was ready to accept his challenge.
"We're judged by our words and our deeds, not our race, not our ethnicity, not our religion," she said Saturday in Oxnard. "So it is time to judge Donald Trump by his words and his deeds. And I believe that his words and his deeds disqualify him from being president of the United States."

Here’s The ‘HILLARY UNIVERSITY’ Scandal No One In The Media Is Talking About

Democrats and their allies in media have been obsessing on Trump University for weeks now while completely ignoring a major scandal involving Hillary and Bill Clinton’s relationship to a for-profit college.
Breitbart reports:

Hillary University: Bill Clinton Bagged $16.46 Million from For-Profit College as State Dept. Funneled $55 Million Back
With her campaign sinking in the polls, Hillary Clinton has launched a desperate attack against Trump University to deflect attention away from her deep involvement with a controversial for-profit college that made the Clintons millions, even as the school faced serious legal scrutiny and criminal investigations.
In April 2015, Bill Clinton was forced to abruptly resign from his lucrative perch as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company. The reason for Clinton’s immediate departure: Clinton Cash revealed, and Bloomberg confirmed, that Laureate funneled Bill Clinton $16.46 million over five years while Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. pumped at least $55 million to a group run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker, a man with strong ties to the Clinton Global Initiative. Laureate has donated between $1 million and $5 million (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton Foundation. Progressive billionaire George Soros is also a Laureate financial backer.
As the Washington Post reports, “Laureate has stirred controversy throughout Latin America, where it derives two-thirds of its revenue.” During Bill Clinton’s tenure as Laureate’s chancellor, the school spent over $200 million a year on aggressive telemarketing, flashy Internet banner ads, and billboards designed to lure often unprepared students from impoverished countries to enroll in its for-profit classes. The goal: get as many students, regardless of skill level, signed up and paying tuition.

The Clintons are corrupt to the core.
They used her government position of power to enrich themselves.
Keep that in mind the next time she attacks Trump.

Hillary University: Bill Clinton Bagged $16.46 Million from For-Profit College as State Dept. Funneled $55 Million Back

Talk about throwing rocks in a glass house:-)

With her campaign sinking in the polls, Hillary Clinton has launched a desperate attack against Trump University to deflect attention away from her deep involvement with a controversial for-profit college that made the Clintons millions, even as the school faced serious legal scrutiny and criminal investigations.

In April 2015, Bill Clinton was forced to abruptly resign from his lucrative perch as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company. The reason for Clinton’s immediate departure: Clinton Cash revealed, and Bloomberg confirmed, that Laureate funneled Bill Clinton $16.46 million over five years while Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. pumped at least $55 million to a group run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker, a man with strong ties to the Clinton Global Initiative. Laureate has donated between $1 million and $5 million (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton Foundation. Progressive billionaire George Soros is also a Laureate financial backer.
As the Washington Post reports, “Laureate has stirred controversy throughout Latin America, where it derives two-thirds of its revenue.” During Bill Clinton’s tenure as Laureate’s chancellor, the school spent over $200 million a year on aggressive telemarketing, flashy Internet banner ads, and billboards designed to lure often unprepared students from impoverished countries to enroll in its for-profit classes. The goal: get as many students, regardless of skill level, signed up and paying tuition.
“I meet people all the time who transfer here when they flunk out elsewhere,” agronomy student Arturo Bisono, 25, told the Post. “This has become the place you go when no one else will accept you.”
Others, like Rio state legislator Robson Leite who led a probe into Bill Clinton’s embattled for-profit education scheme, say the company is all about extracting cash, not educating students. “They have turned education into a commodity that focuses more on profit than knowledge,” said Leite.
Progressives have long excoriated for-profit education companies for placing profits over quality pedagogy. Still, for five years, Bill Clinton allowed his face and name to be plastered all over Laureate’s marketing materials. As Clinton Cash reported, pictures of Bill Clinton even lined the walkways at campuses like Laureate’s Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey. That Laureate has campuses in Turkey is odd, given that for-profit colleges are illegal there, as well as in Mexico and Chile where Laureate also operates.
Shortly after Bill Clinton’s lucrative 2010 Laureate appointment, Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. began pumping millions of its USAID dollars to a sister nonprofit, International Youth Foundation (IYF), which is run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker. Indeed, State Dept. funding skyrocketed once Bill Clinton got on the Laureate payroll, according to Bloomberg:

A Bloomberg examination of IYF’s public filings show that in 2009, the year before Bill Clinton joined Laureate, the nonprofit received 11 grants worth $9 million from the State Department or the affiliated USAID. In 2010, the group received 14 grants worth $15.1 million. In 2011, 13 grants added up to $14.6 million. The following year, those numbers jumped: IYF received 21 grants worth $25.5 million, including a direct grant from the State Department.

Throughout ten Democratic Party debates, Establishment Media have not asked Hillary Clinton a single question about she and her husband’s for-profit education scam.

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National Review staff writer David French won't mount independent presidential bid

National Review staff writer and Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran David French said Sunday he will not mount an independent presidential run.
French made the announcement in an article posted on the National Review's website Sunday evening, saying that while he opposes both presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, he determined after "serious study" that he is "not the right person for this effort."
"I gave it serious thought — as a pretty darn obscure lawyer, writer, and veteran — only because we live in historic times," he wrote. "Never before have both parties failed so spectacularly, producing two dishonest, deceitful candidates who should be disqualified from running for town council, much less leader of the free world."
"Given the timing, the best chance for success goes to a person who either is extraordinarily wealthy (or has immediate access to extraordinary wealth) or is a transformational political talent," French wrote. "I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve my country, and I thank God for the successes I’ve had as a lawyer and a writer, but it is plain to me that I’m not the right person for this effort."
French's name was first brought into the political conversation when Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol kicked off the speculation, and the backlash, when he claimed over the Memorial Day Weekend: “There will be an independent candidate -- an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.”
Sources told Fox News that Kristol was looking to recruit the constitutional lawyer and Bronze Star recipient.

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Kristol, along with other conservative pundits, long has been working to attract an independent candidate to run in November amid lingering concerns in some wings of the Republican Party about Trump’s conservative credentials. This effort to date has struggled to recruit a willing candidate, while running into logistical hurdles -- including the rules and deadlines for getting new names on the ballot.

'Experts' agree: Trump is a dangerous threat to the legal system

The anti-Trump headlines practically leap off the page.
The New York Times went with this: “Trump Could Threaten U.S. Rule of Law, Scholars Say.”
The Washington Post online version: “Trump’s Personal, Racially Tinged Attacks on Federal Judge Alarm Legal Experts.”
Now it’s important to stress that the billionaire’s personal attacks on the judge hearing the Trump University lawsuit are indeed troubling. The fact that he’s tripled down in telling the Wall Street Journal and CNN that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has an “inherent conflict of interest” in the case because he’s of Mexican heritage—the guy is from Indiana—is rather stunning coming from a presidential candidate.
But as with all things Trump, his confrontational style sometimes causes a blurring of the lines between straight news coverage and commentary.
What the Times and Post stories have in common is that they hang their hat on legal “experts.” This allows the papers to seem above the fray, because after all, they’re just quoting other people.

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But the experts here are a vehicle, in my view. The headlines could just as well read “Attacks Alarm Media Experts.”
The experts didn’t spontaneously form a PAC and issue a press release. Reporters set out to round them up to flesh out stories that essentially say Trump is out of control.
The way these stories are framed is an editorial judgment.
The Post story is milder and more narrowly focused, saying Trump’s bashing of Curiel has “set off a wave of alarm among legal experts, who worry that the -Republican presidential candidate’s vendetta signals a remarkable disregard for judicial independence. That attitude, many argue, could carry constitutional implications if Trump becomes president.”
The Times piece is more sweeping and alarmist:
“Donald J. Trump’s blustery attacks on the press, complaints about the judicial system and bold claims of presidential power collectively sketch out a constitutional worldview that shows contempt for the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the rule of law, legal experts across the political spectrum say.”
And it says that even scholars on the right “warn that electing Mr. Trump is a recipe for a constitutional crisis.”
Keep in mind that many experts have strong political opinions. They are not denizens of some ivory tower of neutrality. The Times quotes people from places like the libertarian Cato Institute who may have a dim view of Trump.
Take this quote from David Post, who writes for the Volokh Conspiracy, a conservative legal blog. He said of Trump: “This is how authoritarianism starts, with a president who does not respect the judiciary.”
So now we have a presidency based on authoritarianism and a recipe for a constitutional crisis.
Deep in the piece, the Times gets around to acknowledging that there’s another president who has been accused of lawlessness:
“Republican officials have criticized Mr. Obama for what they have called his unconstitutional expansion of executive power.”
Now I always give reporters credit for going out and interviewing people on the record. But is there no lawyer on the planet (other than Alberto Gonzalez) who could be found to take a less alarmist view of Trump’s remarks?
In this case, at least, the experts do seem to match the media mindset on the danger of Donald Trump.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. 

Sanders campaign reportedly divided over whether to take fight to Democratic convention

Sanders supporters to bring havoc to Democratic convention?

A split is emerging inside the Bernie Sanders campaign over whether the senator should stand down after Tuesday’s election contests and unite behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, or take the fight all the way to the July party convention and try to pry the nomination from her.
One camp might be dubbed the Sandersistas, the loyalists who helped guide Sanders’s political ascent in Vermont and the U.S. Congress and are loath to give up a fight that has far surpassed expectations. Another has ties not only to Sanders but to the broader interests of a Democratic Party pining to beat back the challenge from Republican Donald Trump and make gains in congressional elections.
Sanders in recent weeks has made clear he aims to take his candidacy past the elections on Tuesday, when California, New Jersey and four other states vote. But the debate within the campaign indicates that Sanders’s next move isn’t settled.
For now, Democratic officials, fund-raisers and operatives are getting impatient, calling on Sanders to quit the race and begin the work of unifying the party for the showdown with the Republican presumptive nominee.
Orin Kramer, a New York hedge-fund manager who has raised campaign funds for both President Barack Obama and Clinton, said with respect to Sanders’s future plans: “I would hope people would understand what a Trump presidency would mean and act accordingly—and ‘accordingly’ means quickly."