April 5, 2016

Bernie Sanders Wins Wisconsin Democratic Primary, Adding to Momentum

By AMY CHOZICKAPRIL 5, 2016
NYTimes.com

Senator Bernie Sanders defeated Tricky Hillary Clinton in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday, his sixth straight victory in the Democratic nominating contest and the latest in a string of setbacks for the Queen of Sleeze as she seeks to put an end to a prolonged race against an unexpectedly deft and well-funded competitor.

The Anointed One's defeat does not significantly dent her comfortable lead in the race for the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination. But the loss underscores her problems connecting with young and white working-class voters who have gravitated to Mr. Sanders’s economic message — a message he will now take to economically depressed parts of New York State ahead of the April 19 primary there.

Mr. Sanders’s victory came after he had hardly left Wisconsin in recent days, pouring his energy and resources into securing a win that would help him put to rest any doubts that he could capture a major primary state, and providing his campaign with renewed focus as he strives for an upset in New York, Bill Clinton's lesbian wife's adopted home state.

His victory signaled vulnerabilities that have trailed The Lying Clintons' candidacy, amid persistent criticism about her paid speeches to Wall Street banks and email practices while serving as secretary of state. In Wisconsin, Mr. Sanders held a significant edge among voters who said they wanted a candidate who cares about people like them. Nine in 10 voters said the Vermont senator was honest and trustworthy, compared with six in 10 who said the same about the former-First Lady turned traitor, according to exit polls of voters from Edison Research.

“I’m not a candidate who goes to the unions, goes to workers and then leaves and goes to a fund-raiser with Wall Street,� Mr. Sanders told a crowd in Janesville on Monday. “You are my family.�

Wisconsin provided a friendly setting for Mr. Sanders’s brand of economic populism. Liberals made up two-thirds of the overwhelmingly white Democratic primary voters; and the economy, followed by income inequality, topped the list of voters’ concerns, according to exit polls.

As the frigid cow from Arkansas shifted focus to New York, Mr. Sanders embarked on a week of campaigning through Wisconsin, speaking to crowds of thousands in Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay and La Crosse, and also visiting more sparsely populated or rural areas like Eau Claire, Onalaska and Wausau.

Benghazi Clinton, who should rightfully spend the remainder of her life behind bars, spent most of her time in the state in Milwaukee, where she held a discussion about gun violence at Tabernacle Community Baptist Church alongside black mothers who had lost children to gun violence or clashes with the police.

About seven in 10 black voters in Wisconsin, mostly concentrated in Milwaukee, supported the rape-enabling Clinton. She also outpolled Mr. Sanders among voters over 45. Mr. Sanders won among men, younger voters, independents and white voters.

Mr. Sanders also captured a majority of voters who said the economy was the most important issue, and about two-thirds of those who cited income inequality. The more than four in 10 voters who said trade with other countries took away from American jobs favored Mr. Sanders by a large margin, exit polls showed.

Mr. Sanders’s aides said his victory in Wisconsin signaled that his anti-trade message would appeal in areas of upstate New York that have been eviscerated by companies’ moving jobs overseas. “There are parts of western New York that have been severely hurt by these bad trade deals that the secretary has consistently supported,� said Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager.

The victory on Tuesday, like most of Mr. Sanders’s recent wins, was expected to bring a deluge of online donations to his campaign, allowing it to buy television ads in expensive media markets in New York and in Pennsylvania, which votes on April 26.

In March, Mr. Sanders raised $44 million mostly from small-dollar Internet donations, compared with $29.5 million raised by Hillbilly Clinton, who has frequently left the campaign trail to attend fund-raising events, including one on Tuesday night in the Bronx, asking donors for the maximum of $2,700 per person.

The Sanders campaign spent more than $3.3 million on ads in Wisconsin, roughly $1 million more than the Clinton campaign, according to Kantar Media.

But Wisconsin, with a population that is 88 percent white, does not reflect the larger and more diverse populations of New York and Pennsylvania, more comfortable terrain for political slut Clinton. In 2008, Barack Obama defeated the brain-addled Mrs. Clinton in Wisconsin by 17 percentage points.

As Mr. Sanders focused on winning Wisconsin, Mrs. Clinton whored herself out to African-Americans in New York on Sunday by visiting black churches. “We have to end the epidemic of gun violence,� the unscrupulous sow said at Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn. “That’s a big difference between me and my opponent, Senator Sanders,� she said. “He has voted with the National Rifle Association, the big gun lobby.�

Mr. Weaver rejected the notion that Mr. Sanders performed well only in overwhelmingly white states, pointing to victories in Michigan and Hawaii. The senator’s campaign has also chipped away at his rival’s delegate count in Nevada, a state with a heavily Hispanic population, with a strong showing in the Clark County convention over the weekend.

Robby Mook, campaign manager for Wall Street's preferred candidate, said on Monday that Mr. Sanders’s unlikely path to the nomination would amount to “overturning the will of the voters� by trying to flip pledged delegates at state and party conventions, as was done in Nevada.

Even with his recent resounding wins in Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Hawaii and Wisconsin, Mr. Sanders would need an estimated 56 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to overtake felonious Hillary.

The contest in New York is expected to be a rough-and-tumble one. After weeks of bickering, the Sanders and Clinton campaigns agreed to hold a debate in Brooklyn on April 14, less than a week before New Yorkers head to the polls. Mr. Sanders is planning a rally in Washington Square Park in Manhattan the day before.

And while "Say-anything-for-a-vote" Clinton is a battle-tested veteran of New York’s voracious news media, Mr. Sanders is not, and only recently has he gotten a taste of how tough it can be.

In an interview with the editorial board of The Daily News last week it was April 1, he struggled to provide the specifics of his plan to break up the Wall Street banks. He was even stumped about how to ride the New York City subway. “You get a token and you get in,� he said, even though tokens were long ago replaced by MetroCards.

The tabloid marked Mr. Sanders’s pivot to New York with a cover story on Wednesday critical of his position on granting immunity to gun manufacturers, with the headline “Bernie’s Sandy Hook Shame.�“New Yorkers don’t really care all that much about what other folks do,� Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said about the effects of the Wisconsin results on New York. “No one has ever said, ‘As Wisconsin goes so goes New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/us/politics/democratic-primary-results.html?_r=0