Free Republic

When Leah Daughtry, a former Democratic Party official, addressed a closed-door gathering of about 100 wealthy liberal donors in San Francisco last month, all it took was a review of the 2020 primary rules to throw a scare in them. Democrats are likely to go into their convention next summer without having settled on a presidential nominee, said Ms. Daughtry, who ran her party’s conventions in 2008 and 2016, the last two times the nomination was contested. And Senator Bernie Sanders is well positioned to be one of the last candidates standing, she noted. “I think I freaked them out,”...

Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders announced he will release 10 years of his tax returns and revealed he is a millionaire thanks to his best-selling book 'Our Revolution.' 'I wrote a best-selling book,' he told The New York Times. 'If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.' Sanders said he would release his returns by Tax Day on Monday and said he hoped President Donald Trump would do the same. 'On the day in the very immediate future, certainly before April 15, we release ours, I hope that Donald Trump will do exactly the same. We...

Shortened title. Full title: Crazed Bernie Supporter With Mohawk Attacks Elderly Man Wearing MAGA Hat – Chases Him Out of Starbucks screaming ‘Get the F*ck Out’ A crazed leftist with a mohawk attacked an elderly gentleman minding his own business inside of a Starbucks in Palo Alto, CA because he was wearing a red MAGA hat. A ‘woman’ who goes by the name Parker Mankey, posted photos of the elderly Trump supporter to her Facebook page Monday and called on her Facebook friends to find out who the “freak” is and “confront him.” Parker Mankey, who declared her support for...

WASHINGTON — Setting up an explosive general election battle, a Donald Trump-backed Republican and a Bernie Sanders-endorsed insurgent Democrat who prevailed in an upset will face off in the Florida governor race following primaries Tuesday night, NBC News projects. In a surprise win, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, a black progressive who never led in a major poll, edged out former Rep. Gwen Graham, the politically moderate daughter of popular former governor and senator Bob Graham, in the Democratic primary. Gillum had 34.2 percent, or 510,450 votes, to Graham's 31.4 percent, or 468,448 votes, with 96 percent of precincts reporting. For...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated that, despite winning the Democratic primary, he will run for re-election in 2018 as an Independent. Sanders said, “I have always run as an Independent, and that’s what I will do. And I think people in Vermont understand that. We have a very good relationship with the Democratic Party. I suspect that this coming campaign we’ll be putting more money — our campaign will be putting more money into the Vermont Democratic Party than anybody else and supporting a whole lot of good Democratic candidates.” Host Ali Velshi...

While Democrats have always embraced socialist policies to a certain extent, claiming to be a “socialist” was taboo until recently, with the change thanks in large part to a surge in millennial candidates running for office. Even though the 2018 midterm elections are more than three months out, Democrats have quickly lost control of their agenda for the American people. Any plan that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi may have had for their divided caucus is now being forcibly pulled further to the left by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria...

Sen. Bernie Sanders said President Trump "sold the American people out" last week in Helsinki, Finland, during his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Vermont senator made the remarks in a joint interview with breakout Democratic Party star and candidate for Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The interview will air Sunday morning on CBS News' "Face the Nation." Asked whether Mr. Trump should withdraw an invitation to Putin for a second meeting in Washington this fall, Sanders said it's "hard to comment on anything that Trump says because he could change his mind tomorrow."

Democrats seem to agree: A job guarantee will be part of the 2020 election debate. What they don't yet agree on is what a "job guarantee" is. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is working on a full blown national bill to enshrine the right to a job. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has a bill that would essentially run a test pilot of Sanders' program. The Congressional Full Employment Caucus has been pushing yet another national job guarantee bill, with some differences from Sanders' plan, for years. Finally, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) just introduced his own bill, which would subsidize more private...

The Russia conspiracy theory hinges on the single creaky claim that the Democratic National Committee hacks were a Russian plot to elect Trump. The theory and all its illegitimate stepchildren, including Robert Mueller and his infinitely expanding corps of prosecutors, lives or dies by the DNC hacks. Trying to elect Trump by releasing damaging insider information from the DNC never made any sense. The DNC was already a dysfunctional organization that was being run by the Clinton campaign. Undermining its leadership had little impact on the election, but a great deal on control of the DNC. There has never been...

Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is no longer left enough for some Democrats, because he has been reluctant to join calls to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That’s according to the New Republic, once a reliable center-left organ. Writer Sarah Jones has declared that Sanders is “undermining his position as the nation’s most prominent left-wing politician” by suggesting that ICE should be reformed, rather than endorsing the total elimination of border enforcement. Jones writes: Sanders could be a source of consistent, left-wing pressure on party leadership, whether or not he runs in 2020. If he intends to...

When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Bernie Sanders on Sunday if he wants to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the senator was uncharacteristically vague. “I think that what we need is to create policies which deal with immigration in a rational way. And a rational way is not locking children up in detention centers or separating them from their mothers,” he said. “What we need is Trump to sit down with members of Congress and work on a rational program which deals with this serious issue.” Sanders wasn’t the only potential 2020 presidential candidate on Sunday to refuse to...

In her first press conference since a self-identified socialist defeated one of her top deputies in a primary, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that socialism is not ascendant in the Democratic Party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rocked the political world on Tuesday night when she defeated New York Rep. Joseph Crowley in a Democratic primary. Crowley, a longtime congressman who was touted as a possible successor to Pelosi, has been in office since 1999 and risen to the fourth-highest post in the Democrats' House leadership. Ocasio-Cortez is a 28-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists in America, and the political left...

In the most shocking political upset since Trump defeated Hillary, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Joseph Crowley in New York’s 14th Congressional District. Crowley was a 19-year incumbent and had not faced a primary challenger in 14 years. Crowley was also the number four Democrat in the House of Representatives and was expected to rise to the speaker’s lectern if Democrats retook the lower chamber this fall. This was a true David and Goliath moment in politics. Although it seems good that an establishment figure like Crowley was defeated, this election result could be the beginning of a new and dangerous chapter...

New York Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is pushing back on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) characterization of her surprise primary win, saying the Democratic Party is in the midst of a movement. “I think that we’re in the middle of a movement in this country,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN's Erin Burnett late Wednesday. “I feel this movement, but that movement is going to happen from the bottom up. That movement is going to come from voters.” **SNIP** Pelosi dismissed speculation in a news conference earlier Wednesday, saying Ocasio-Cortez's win should not be seen as a larger movement within the...

When Mayor Bill de Blasio picked Bernie Sanders to swear him in for his second term, it was a sign, much like a groundhog signaling six more weeks of winter, that the heart of the Democrat Party was changing — even if Bernie himself still refuses to acknowledge that he belongs to it. And while Sanders-endorsed candidates have floundered nationally, they got a big win last night when 28-year-old Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez breezed past establishment figurehead Joe Crowley in the primary for the relatively safe 14th District. Nancy Pelosi tried to wave away the obvious Tea Party parallels by...

How many times do we have to learn that socialism doesn't work, that, as Margaret Thatcher said, at some point you run out of "other people's money," that sooner or later all the teary idealism, the stirring strains of The Internationale, devolve into gulags and death squads? Wasn't the Soviet Union enough, Communist China, Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba, etc....? Now those death squads appear to have surfaced in Venezuela, the wealthiest country in Latin America before Hugo Chavez brought his brand of socialism to the then oil-rich nation. Venezuelan security forces have carried out hundreds of arbitrary killings under the...

The campaign manager for Bernie Sanders in his 2016 presidential run hinted that the Independent senator from Vermont may run for the White House again in 2020. Sanders is “considering another run for the presidency,” but for now is completely focused on his congressional re-election campaign in November, Jeff Weavers said in an interview with C-Span host John McArdle on Monday. Sanders made waves as the progressive who consistently challenged former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in his 2016 primary bid. His platform largely focused on issues like universal healthcare and income equality. When Sanders announced his candidacy for president...

<p>Sen. Bernie Sanders’ new big idea: Have Uncle Sam offer a $15-an-hour job (with benefits) to anyone who wants one. First question: Why’d he wait until unemployment was down to 4.1 percent, rather than offer this when it was 10 percent?</p>

There he goes again. Despite the lowest unemployment rate in 17 years, including declining rates for minorities, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), affectionately called "crazy Bernie" by some conservative talk show hosts, is again flirting with the idea that the federal government should guarantee every American a job, paying a minimum of $15 an hour and health care benefits. The Washington Post reports the plan would "...fund hundreds of projects throughout the United States aimed at addressing priorities such as infrastructure, health care, the environment, education and other goals. ... every American would be entitled to a job under one of...

A commission has been set up to reform the DNC’s nominating process after Hillary Clinton high-jacked it and turned the institution into a Clinton-ized (criminal) organization in a desperate attempt to become President. The changes are backed by the Bernie Sanders wing of the party with the goal to empower the party’s grassroots movement to avoid nominating another loser like Hillary Clinton. Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States October 14, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson – RTS4IJU According to POLITICO: The Democratic Party’s Unity Reform Commission is recommending cutting the number...