Author Archives: Brick Wahl

Bernie and Barney

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I suspect Bernie’s demand that former congressman Barney Frank and Connecticut governor Daniel Malloy be removed from the Democratic Platform committee has more to do with his being thin skinned than with politics…both have gone after him in ways that Bernie found upsetting (not to mention effective). Frank has exposed weaknesses in Bernie’s Wall Street reform policies (he was brutal after Bernie’s stumble with the Daily News) and Malloy has been furious with Bernie since Bernie unfortunately sided with the NRA on a couple votes after the Sandy Hook shooting. Bernie lost Connecticut, in part because of Malloy’s impassioned campaign against him, and he earlier lost Frank’s state of Massachusetts. But in particular Bernie got stomped in New York after a huge investment of resources, money and credibility, and doubtless Frank’s incessant appearances in the news after Bernie’s tongue-tied Daily News interview helped with that stomping.

But such an angry demand leaves Bernie’s own Platform Committee choices–e.g., James Zogby, Cornel West–open to demands they be booted on the same basis (especially West, who has been extremely critical of Hillary Clinton and President Obama) and as such it seems less driven by strategy than by temperament. Perhaps it actually is a sign that he, as Rachel Maddow suggested, is planning on forcing a contested convention by any means possible…but I am not convinced this was all that Machiavellian. I just think that Bernie hates the guys. He and Frank, in particular, have been arguing for decades. They have never gotten along and it has carried over into the campaign.

Of course, things like this are also a useful way to drive fundraising, as the Sanders campaign’s already weakened cash flow money will start drying up even more once the primaries are over. The campaign will have to force a series of such confrontations that will get lots of media and social media coverage and keep some funding coming in. The fact that Bernie is making these demands now, before the primaries are even over, is probably not accidental. He is still telling his supporters that they will win all the remaining contests, a belief that is critical in driving social media debate on this. He won’t win all of them, as he must know–he will lose New Jersey, Washington DC and Puerto Rico definitely, New Mexico probably and is still behind in California, where he would have to win his first ever primary in a state with less that 75% white voters–and if he does lose those races, his demands will have a lot less force behind them. So now is the time, as Bird said so emphatically on his horn.

The debate that ain’t happening.

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(I dashed this off late last night (or early that morning, actually) and then before I posted it, word came down that The Donald don’t debate with no losers. So the great Trump-Sanders confrontation never happened. But here is my analysis anyway.)

I think the reason that Trump is considering debating Sanders is that he knows it will get him some of Sanders’ votes after Hillary is nominated. Sanders’ angry young white male supporters are ripe for the picking. Trump will wind up with maybe 20% of them in November. Maybe more. None of the female Sanders supporters, but a fat slice of the men. It’ll vary by state. Probably fewer from California, not that it matters. But lots from West Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Florida…states where the race will be tight and the impact of those voters switching from Sanders to Trump could be decisive. Remember that 44% of Sanders male voters in West Virginia said they plan to vote for Trump in November. West Virginia is doubtless an extreme example. But 25% of Sanders’ Millennial males in Ohio, where races tend to be extremely close, could turn the state.

The angry Millennial men voting for Sanders are not a monolithic bloc. Most will vote against Trump–over 50% anyway–but maybe 40% will vote for Trump simply because he will shake things up. Men tend to vote for other men, more often Republican than Democratic men, and are suckers for an angry man. Reagan got most of that vote in 1980, including a lot of liberal Democrats, Nixon got the men’s vote in ’72, and a George Wallace got nearly 20% of Gene McCarthy’s vote in 1968, again mostly men.

And keep that in mind, this debate would be a brilliant coup by Trump. The Bernie Sanders movement is not immune to Trumpmania. There is an element among them–white men, nearly all of them, mainly young white men–to whom a crazy macho guy like Trump is exciting. You may think he’s an idiot. I may think he’s an idiot. But for a great many of us dudes, Donald Trump is somebody who can shake things up.

As the campaign heads into the fall, I think one of the top stories will be that large bloc of Bernie voters who, like the 27% of Kennedy voters in 1980, will say they will vote for Trump because he will shake things up. And in fact, for such an event not to happen, Millennials will have to be completely different from their equivalents in 1980 and 1968. To preclude the prospect of a huge number of Bernie voters becoming Trump voters you have to assume that the almost 90% of Bernie Sanders supporters among Millennials will vote as a solid bloc in November, something that has never happened before in American electoral history, ever. Far more likely is that at least a quarter of them will vote for a populist Republican.

It’s important to remember that white men almost always vote for the conservative, and by a large margin. And they will vote for Trump, by a considerable margin. Bernie must have his reasons for offering to debate Trump–it was his idea, he slipped the question to Jimmy Kimmel–but Bernie will not stomp Trump in the debate. He might score points, and his supporters would love it, but he won’t dominate Trump as we wish somebody could for once. It’s a Hail Mary pass, though, probably scoring Bernie a few points in California, but in the long run Trump benefits more. Bernie is looking to pull off an impossible upset at the convention. Trump is looking at all those angry young men who will vote for him in November.

Millennials are evenly split between Trump and Hillary.

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Here’s a shock no one expected. Millennials are evenly split between Trump and Hillary.

Which means the reason that Trump has closed with Hillary is due almost entirely to a massive swing by Millennials to Trump if Bernie Sanders is not the nominee. In March Millennials preferred Hillary to Trump 64-25. In May it is 45-42. No other age group shows differences of more than low single digits. Bernie’s fierce attacks on Hillary these past two months have not changed many voters’ minds except among those under thirty years old, nearly half of whom now detest Hillary and the Democratic party so much they see Donald Trump as the better alternative. It’s not Bernie or Bust for those kids, it’s Bernie or Trump. Racist Trump, misogynist Trump, bullying Trump, some even say fascist Trump, he has now become the choice of half of the under thirty vote. Keep in mind that only 20% of Bernie’s supporters still believe he can be nominated. So most of those who are prepared to switch their allegiance to Trump after the primaries are done have already made up their minds, and somehow they are able to transition from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump like it was nothing. How I have no idea. Bernie and Trump have nothing in common except a mutual antipathy for Hillary Clinton. But apparently that is enough.

I just read a long, beautifully written and scary piece by Josh Zeitz in Politico (“Why Bernie’s Bros Might Go for Trump“) that showed that in 1968 18% of the young white supporters of Eugene McCarthy voted for George Wallace that November, rather than voting for the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey, a quintessentially New Deal Democrat with an excellent record on civil rights, was seen as the enemy who had stolen the nomination. McCarthy’s voters switched to Wallace in huge numbers, though many came back, reluctantly, to Humphrey after Wallace selected super hawk Curtis LeMay as his running mate. Still, that 18% who voted for Wallace in the end was more than enough to give the election to Nixon.

And in 1980, when Ted Kennedy’s challenge to Jimmy Carter failed after a strong finish, twenty-seven per cent of Kennedy’s primary voters voted for Ronald Reagan rather than vote for Carter. But it gets worse:

A New YorkTimes/CBS exit poll revealed that 38 percent of Reagan voters cast their lot with the former California governor because they believed it was “time for a change.” Only 11 percent voted for him because “he’s a real conservative.” “It’s the first time I ever voted Republican,” said a Michigan resident. “But I’m sick and tired of the mess that’s going on in this country.” (Zeitz, Politico)

That is, over three times as many people voted for Reagan in 1980 because “it was time for a change” than voted for him because he was a conservative. They wanted change for the sake of change. That is Trump all over, who seems to be running for the sheer fuck of it. How many voters will vote for him for the sheer fuck of it? Apparently half of Millennials, who would not benefit one iota from a Trump presidency. Just two months ago, in March, Millennials were overwhelmingly opposed to Trump. He was the butt of their jokes. But that was before the Bernie Sanders campaign began its scorched earth campaign, driving his voters into a frenzy of anti-Hillary and anti Democratic Party hatred. And a lot of them do hate Hillary now, and it’s a mean and angry hatred–remember that scene in Nevada? And as Trump is mean and apparently angry–if his is genuine anger instead of crude political theater–he is a natural draw as Bernie’s campaign comes to a bitter end. Thus the stunning result of half of voters 18-29 years old becoming Trump voters. Just as the Bernie campaign swelled to huge crowds out of nowhere, this transition was stunningly fast. If Trump wins this November, it could well be white Millennials that put him over. Bernie’s voters. He had nearly 9 out of 10 millennials at the beginning of the year, but that didn’t mean they were socialists after all. Maybe half were. The others just like rallies and excitement and free college, apparently.

This is a kick in the stomach to Bernie Sanders. Perhaps he and his campaign manager are so caught up in their war to reform the Democratic Party they haven’t noticed. But early on, in New Hampshire, this was all about a huge wave of Millennials who would rise up as one and vote for democratic socialism. That was forgotten sometime in March and April, when the campaign got caught up in a series of ferociously contested caucuses. He won all of them, but in doing so the message changed from winning hearts and minds in primaries to the bitter intra-party trench fighting that is a caucus. Suddenly rules and parliamentary tricks and backroom chicanery takes precedence, and the two sides glare and shout at each other across crowded rooms. Democracy is not really important there, it’s all power games, and the other side becomes the enemy. Bernie’s campaign piled their fervent activists into these caucuses like they were at war to make up for their catastrophic losses in the South. By the time the race got to New York, Bernie’s revolution had degenerated into accusations of cheating and fraud and voter repression, and Hillary’s campaign and its supporters became blood enemies. It was an unrequited hatred, mostly, though I don’t think Hillary’s campaign and its supporters realized they were hated with such intensity until that explosion in Las Vegas.

So now nearly half of Bernie’s voters are Trump supporters. It’s a potential electoral disaster for Hillary, but its worse for Bernie’s legacy. His kids, the Millennials, the ones who cheer his every word and are the foot soldiers of the Bernie Revolution, well half of them aren’t revolutionaries at all. Indeed, they have abandoned his revolution in droves for its real arch nemesis, Donald Trump. Half of Bernie’s young army has deserted democratic socialism, his revolution is in tatters, and he may well have spawned a wave of very angry white men reactionary politics. Feel the burn.

Living Wage

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(2013)

The Huffington Post continues its strong coverage of the campaign to get fast food workers a livable wage while not giving its own writers a livable wage, or any wage at all. Of  course when you dominate the progressive media, no one will ever notice.

The CEO of McDonald’s makes a ridiculous 14 million dollars a year while Arianna makes a paltry 4 million.  McDonald employees make $7.66 an hour. That’s about $16K per year. So the CEO of McDonald’s makes 875 times more per year than the person who prepares your hamburgers.

Arianna Huffington makes four million times more than most of the people who write for her website.

Which might just be the single most egregious example of income inequality you will find in America. Even in the most outrageously crooked Wall Street firms the bosses don’t make four million times more money than their basic employees.

Muckraking journalists used to call these kind of executives robber barons. I don’t know what to call it when the muckrakers have become robber barons themselves. Ironic, I guess.

We are becoming a nation of interns. Incidentally, some interns pay the Huffington Post to work for the Huffington Post. And I can’t figure that one out at all. But then one of the saddest facts about income inequality in America is that it doesn’t appear to bother Americans that greatly. Perhaps they all know, in their heart of hearts, that they too will be rich someday. This is the land of opportunity, after all. And that same psychology is prevalent among bloggers, many of whom see no reason why anybody should pay them to write. Every blogger in America thinks they are just a few blogs away from being a best selling author. That’s the dream. Then they’ll be rich and famous and never have to eat or even work at McDonald’s again.

Timing is everything

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(2014)

A friend posted:

Just saw that people in America living at or below the “poverty level” has doubled in the past 5 years! Good times!!!!!

Well, when this last recession ended companies did not respond by rehiring but instead did the opposite. So the returning profits went into executive bonuses and shareholders (often those same executives) instead of labor force. Wages also stayed depressed, benefits have been cut back, and changes in the tax code made during the Reagan Administration gave financial incentive to ship American jobs overseas where wages are a fraction of ours (in India, a tenth of ours). Weakening labor protections have allowed permanent employees to be replaced by temps, and in a trend that makes one wonder if anyone is enforcing labor laws at all, many entry level positions in companies are filled by unpaid interns. It’s very likely that you if you are over fifty then you are making one third to one half less than you were making even a decade ago. Worse yet, chances are good that you are now making, when inflation and loss of benefits are factored in, about the same as you were making when you got your first real job. Your entire working life has left you where you started.

There is a logic at work here. It’s the logic of Wall Street and is inexplicable unless you read how executive bonuses are tied to the profit margin in the annual reports. If you can’t increase the price of your stocks, you are not a successful business. The mission of businesses is now to serve the big shareholders, instead of shareholders providing capital to improve the business which in turn will raise the value of the shares. T Boone Pickens turned the model inside out. The people who master the art of accumulating the most shares of stock and then selling them at a profit now run the economy. It makes no sense. We try to survive at their whim. It’s capitalism gone utterly mad, turned into something as warped and destructive a socio-economic philosophy as its arch-enemy communism.

There’s no sign we can yet see that any of this will reverse. I’m not saying it is irreversible, but we can’t  see how it will change, not yet. It’s a trend that began 40 years ago and really went into overdrive during George W. Bush’s two terms which pretty much validated pure greed as a positive social force. Much as happened in the decades immediately following the American Civil War in the age of the Robber Baron. As a result, today most of the former working and middle classes have been pushed into poverty or near poverty. Hence the doubling of that poverty rate in the last five years. The recession knocked middle class people over like nine pins, wiping them out, leaving them with nothing.

However, about 20% of the US is doing really well, and continue only to do better. People who focus on the top two or even top one per cent miss that point. It’s not just a tiny few but an entire class that dominates the US economically. This is a true class war, the top twenty per cent versus the rest of us, and we have lost. That upper twenty per cent have achieved total victory. In 2008 figures the top 20% held 85% of the total wealth in the country.  Eight five per cent. And over 90% of the cash money. Over ninety per cent. It has not been like this since the end of the twenties. The FDR social revolution was completely reversed by the Reagan Revolution. 1980 was the beginning of the end. We lay vanquished now beneath the feet of that top twenty per cent. If you want to see how vanquished, take a drive through the Westside of Los Angeles, or up in the Hollywood Hills, or through the vast swathes of the San Gabriel Valley where they live, segregated from the rest of us. Wealth segregation has long surpassed racial segregation in this country. It’s a de facto apartheid. Park your beat up old car on a quiet Beverly Hills street for an hour or so and read the paper. See how long it is before the cops show up and tell you to get out of there. Doesn’t even necessarily matter what color you are. If you aren’t rich, you are not supposed to be there.

The Reagan Revolution, though, has burned itself out. It is held in power only by clever gerrymandering, and the fact that rural districts and small state are over represented in Congress, or by the aging populations of small states that have more elderly voters than do the larger, growing states. Elderly voters are Reagan voters. In 1980 the elderly were FDR voters. But they died out and the Reagan voters took over and what a mess they made of things. But they are disappearing now, taking their party with them. Their blatantly restrictive voting laws just show how terrified they are. Change is coming. Slowly, the wealth of the country will even out more. Greed will return to its rightful place amid the seven deadly sins. Too late for those of us in our fifties, but your kids will benefit.

Here’s a cycle for you….the 1890’s was economically catastrophic. the 1930’s were catastrophic. The 1970’s were catastrophic. And the 2010’s are proving catastrophic as well. The economic system that was put in place by the American Civil War (which completely replaced the pre-Civil War system in which slaves accounted for more dollar value than all the assets in the North combined) seems to have these forty years cycles. People our age–I am 56–were born at just the right time to begin and end our working lives right at the low points. Timing, they  say, is everything.

Bernie Sanders appoints Dr. Cornel West to the Democratic Platform Committee

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Dr. Cornel West called “Brother Trump” (his term) “an authentic human being” and has called Obama things I would not feel comfortable writing here. He has since rescinded on Brother Trump (Brother Trump is now a narcissistic neo-fascist) but has doubled down on President Obama. What I can’t figure out is why Bernie put him on the Democratic platform committee. For his service to the campaign? West helped to bury Bernie in the South. He actually cost Obama African-American voters, voters who remembered Dr. West campaigning against Obama in 2012, not to mention his incessant pounding on Obama’s skin tone. As a vote getter Cornel West was a catastrophe, his campaigning on Obama’s behalf and his absurd late sixties marxist hipster rap only resulted in even more African-American votes for Hillary in every single state until they pulled him off the campaign bus. But white progressives love the guy. He’s on PBS talking trash about Brother Obama all the time. He’s the guy progressives would point to when they say that black people don’t like Barack Obama. And apparently they are the ones being awarded with this appointment. There were vastly better choices, even among the relative few African-Americans who endorsed Bernie Sanders, but Cornel West is the man who all those Hillary voters did not like. Maybe it’s payback time. In any case, Dr. Cornel West will probably make the most of this opportunity, saying outrageous things about Brother Obama and not gaining Brother Bernie any new friends. Brother Trump should find it all very amusing.

Class war

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(I wrote this back in 2012.)

From the Harper’s Index in the Sept 2012 Harper’s magazine:

Percentage change since 1970 of metropolitan American families residing in affluent neighborhoods: +121
Residing in poor neighborhoods: +108
Residing in Middle Class neighborhoods:  -34

The math is brutal. There are more than twice as many–almost two and a half times as many–affluent households now than there were in 1970. There are over twice as many poor households as they were in 1970. And the number of middle class households is down a whole third. If you consider that the country’s total household wealth is fairly fixed over time, you can see how this happened. The upper class has increased their share by taking it from the middle class. Their increased wealth didn’t come out of nothing. It’s not like there was a Gold Rush that increased the money supply several fold over night. Nope. It’s just that the salary structure and profit taking and were fundamentally altered so that most of that cash went to the rich and upper middle classes (who are now the lowest rung of the affluent  class.) They’ve locked in this bias, too–when the recession hit, a catastrophe that they themselves brought about, the upper class–the top 20%–suffered almost not at all. All the pain was born by the middle and lower classes, especially the middle class, who have been so stripped of cash that they can no longer even afford to be middle class. That’s what has made this downturn so devastating, and why the middle class can’t seem to recover: there’s no money for us. Almost all of the benefits of the recovery have gone to the top twenty percent.

The redistribution of wealth in this country has been profound–one of the greatest economic shifts in our history. The recession made that gulf even wider, and hardened it–a process that continues. There can’t be a reversal of this trend for a generation or two, it has been too profound a transfer for a quick fix. The middle class of even twenty years ago will not regain their position, not in their lifetimes. Our best years are long behind us. So we’ve adapted. We live poorer, spend less. We live in a totally separate world from the top twenty per cent. The businesses that succeed nowadays are ones that cater to the twenty percent. Businesses that cater to the middle class are prone to failure.

I don’t see a way out. We’ve lost the class war. Got our asses whipped before we even realized that there was a class war.

Way too many bedrooms

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With the steady and dramatic drop in the US birth rate–it has never been lower than it is now, and it continues dropping–most couples now rarely have more than one or two children, if they have children at all. And single mothers follow the same pattern, one or two children. This means that there will soon be–within a decade, maybe–a glut of homes with three, four and five bedrooms. Indeed, as boomers die or sell off their large homes, these houses will begin hitting the market in huge numbers. Very few families with one or two kids will buy a five bedroom home. Childless couples will be even less likely to buy one. Yet suburbia, older urban neighborhoods, small towns and rural America contain far more homes with more than two bedrooms than they do homes with one of two bedrooms. Who will buy these houses? The prices will have to fall, indeed, a five bedroom house might be cheaper than a two bedroom house. And will renters, as there will still be a lack of places to rent (in large part because there are so many homes with too many bedrooms that make them expensive for a single family to rent) begin moving into these large homes, four or five tenants per home? It could be cheaper to rent a bedroom in a plush four or five bedroom home in Palos Verdes Estates than it would be to rent a studio apartment in Silver Lake. And I think we will see this begin happening within ten years. This is becoming a country of families with very few children or no children at all, in a land full of houses built for families with four and five children. We’re not the only country having less kids, of course, but we’re the only one that’s so full of sprawling ranch houses and three floor Victorians and four bedroom row houses. Things will be a lot better soon enough. Those Generation X kids will live out their fifties and sixties without spending half their monthly income on rent. As for us late period baby boomers, those of us born in the late fifties and early sixties….well, we’re screwed. We came of age in the 70’s and are getting old in the teens, two economically fucked up decades, complete messes, with politics just as horrid and everyone too broke to make the mortgage or rent. Oh well. It’s all in the timing.

abandoned farmhouse

Abandoned farm house in eastern Colorado. The great plains have been depopulated, the children grew up and moved away, the old people died, and their houses can be had for a song.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

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That incredible scene by Bernie delegates at the state convention in Vegas was basically a huge temper tantrum because there were more Hillary delegates present than Bernie delegates. If you remember back to February 20 when this campaign was still fresh and new, Hillary had won the initial caucuses (step one of the ridiculously complex Nevada process) which appointed delegates to the county conventions. The Bernie campaign made sure all their delegates showed up to the county conventions (step two of the process), while Hillary’s campaign did not, so Bernie wound up with more delegates present at the various county conventions, thus flipping the results of the February caucuses. So Bernie wound up with 2,124 delegates to this past weekend’s state Democratic convention, and Hillary 1,722. But this time it was the Bernie campaign who slipped up, and only 1,662 of Bernie’s 2,124 delegates showed up at the state convention (the third and final step of the states delegate selection process), while all but 27 of Hillary’s showed up. Basically, about 22% of Bernie’s delegates flaked out, and less than 1.5% of Hillary’s did. To make things worse for Bernie, a number of his delegates who did show up had forgotten to register as Democrats by the May 1 deadline, and so were denied entry. After a procedural tussle (with a lot of screaming and threats) about Bernie delegates supposedly not allowed in, an additional six more Bernie delegates were found that were officially registered. The final result–1,695 Hillary delegates to 1662 for Bernie meant that there were 33 more Hillary delegates than Bernie delegates at the convention. A razor thin 1% majority but a majority nonetheless. The Sanders delegation was not happy about the turn of events but rather than ask why one out of five of Bernie’s chosen delegates could not be bothered to attend, they began grumbling about conspiracies. Hillary’s 32 delegate margin gave her seven of the available 12 delegates seats to the national convention, and Bernie five, which was actually in line with the original caucus results back in February. What seems like a fairly even split, however, did not sit well with the Bernie Sanders contingent. Apparently they expected to sweep the slate with their huge majority of delegates they’d picked up at the county conventions. Which was impossible, of course, even had all of them attended. But Bernie’s campaign manager Jeff Weaver keeps telling them that the path to the nomination is possible if they win 60% or 70% or even 80% of all the remaining delegates. Nothing is impossible, he tells them, if we are united. Apparently 22% percent of the delegates didn’t get the message. The Bernie delegates who did show up responded to their embarrassing minority status with rage, screaming, booing, chanting, throwing chairs and finally, after the Casino management turned the lights off in the hall, holding the inevitable sit-in in the dark. Sheriffs finally got them to leave.

Bernie Sanders has lost all but nine of the primaries but won every non-primary state delegate selection contest since the original Nevada caucuses because he could pack them with supporters. Alas, in Nevada Hillary’s campaign at last did a much better job of getting their delegates to the state convention, something the Bernie delegates could not accept. Darn that democratic process anyway. So what is a revolutionary to do? Of course, occupy the darkened hall. Hey hey, ho ho, they chanted by the light of their iPhones, Hillary Clinton has got to go. Then they went. The Nevada Revolution was over.

Bernie Sanders supporters Las Vegas

Bernie Sanders delegates booing that notorious reactionary Barbara Boxer. (Photo by Chase Stevens, Las Vegas Sun)

A lot more than twenty seven dollars.

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Oh, irony of ironies….by far the most campaign finance violations and irregularities in 2016 are by the Bernie Sanders campaign. Thousands of them. No one else even comes close. Turns out their online donation program does not have a way to keep donors from giving more than $2700 (the individual legal limit), nor does it have a way to preventing foreigners from donating. I assume that Bernie’s campaign never imagined that anyone would be contributing thousands of dollars or that people in other countries would want to donate. The price of success. The FEC has been complaining about this for months, to no avail. And that FEC process has only just begun, too. It can go on for years. I suspect the campaign will be required to return some money to some people. Hopefully it has done a better job maintaining those records than it has done with some people’s tax returns.

It’s a lesson learned for those who will want to use this method of fundraising in the future–which will be everybody. By 2020 this will be a non-issue for campaigns, as consultants will have taken over this viral fundraising revolution and turned it slick and professional. The last campaign that had a problem like this–too much money coming from everywhere, much of it unaccountable–was Nixon’s CREEP in 1972. Of course, that was sleazy as hell, while Bernie’s is just his Frank Capra idealism run rampant. And while people will be looking for one, there will be no scandal in the classic sense. No men in trenchcoats with bags of money. Still, this story will probably have some legs. Just follow the money is still the reporter’s mantra. There will certainly be an audit. And lots of news stories. Fingers will be pointed, excuses given. And some people may wind up on Capitol Hill, answering Republican questions. Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi.

Anyway, here’s the article from The Atlantic:

“The Donors Who Love Bernie Sanders A Little Too Much–The FEC has notified the campaign that thousands of its 2.4 million contributors may be violating federal limits.”

Bernie

Bernie with rosy cheeked potential campaign finance law violators.