Weekly Jobless Claims Graphic. Number of Americans applying for first-time jobless benefits.
The Labor Department said on Thursday weekly jobless claims fell slightly by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 267,000 for the week ending May 28. Claims for the prior week were unrevised.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the number of Americans filing first-time claims for state unemployment benefits would rise to 270,000.
A Labor Department analyst said and no state was triggered “on” the Extended Benefits program during the week ending May 14. Worth noting, claims for Tennessee, Virginia, Wyoming, Puerto Rico and Hawaii were estimated because of the Memorial Day holiday.
The four-week moving average–which is widely considered to be a better gauge as it irons out volatility–came in at 276,750. That’s a decrease of 1,750 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 278,500.
While claims have now been below 300,000 for 65 straight weeks, or the longest streak below the threshold associated with a strong job market since 1973, the historically high number of long-term unemployed Americans impacts the data. Basically, the number of people eligible to apply for unemployment insurance is so low it is not comparable to many of those years.
There were 7,712 former Federal civilian employees claiming UI benefits for the week ending May 14, a decrease of 42 from the previous week. Newly discharged veterans claiming benefits totaled 13,526, a decrease of 30 from the prior week.
The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending May 14 were in Alaska (3.6), Wyoming (2.8), West Virginia (2.6), New Jersey (2.4), Puerto Rico (2.4), California (2.3), Pennsylvania (2.3), Connecticut (2.1), Illinois (1.9), Massachusetts (1.9), and Nevada (1.9).
The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending May 21 were in Tennessee (+2,426), Oregon (+1,882), Illinois (+859), Maryland (+565), and Mississippi (+552), while the largest decreases were in Michigan (-3,075), California (-2,952), Missouri (-2,352), Pennsylvania (-2,016), and New York (-1,570).
State Department headquarters in D.C. (Photos: AP)
What do the State Department and Katie Couric have in common? They both just admitted to intentionally doctoring video footage to hide something damning, subsequently resulting in the further loss of trust and credibility.
In a truly stunning admission on Wednesday, the State Department admitted that an official intentionally deleted several minutes of video footage from a controversial 2013 press briefing, where then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki appeared to admit to misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal.
Psaki, who has run up a long list of misleading statements to the press, is now outrageously the White House Communications Director.
“There was a deliberate request [to delete the footage]–this wasn’t a technical glitch,” Admiral John Kirby, the currently State Department spokesman said Wednesday. Mr. Kirby said that a video editor did “excise” the segment.
When the the State Department originally came under fire earlier this year over the missing tape from a December 2013 briefing, they suggested it was a “glitch” and not an intentional edit. At the particular briefing, Psaki was asked by Fox News’ James Rosen about an earlier claim that no direct, secret talks were underway between the U.S. and Iran–when, in fact, they were.
“There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that,” Psaki said at the time.
However, Fox News later discovered the 8-minute exchange between Rosen and Psaki was missing from the department’s official website and its YouTube channel. It was edited out, as in deleted, and replaced with a white-flash effect.
“I had no knowledge of nor would I have approved of any form of editing or cutting my briefing transcript on any subject while at the State Department,” Psaki said in a statement.
Why would they want to delete the footage?
In February 2013, then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland claimed during a briefing there were no secret, direct talks with Tehran taking place at that time. That’s significant considering the recent New York Times Magazine profile of Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, who flat-out bragged about creating an “echo chamber” to sell the Iran deal.
Meanwhile, in unrelated yet related news, EPIX has pulled an anti-Second Amendment documentary “Under the Gun” after director Stephanie Soechtig and executive producer/narrator Katie Couric were caught replacing the gun rights activists’ answers to a question with footage shot at a different time. Instead of showing a lucid answer by a member of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, they replaced it with 8 seconds of silence in an attempt to portray them as ignorant.
“As of today, the doc moves out of the premium window — off of EPIX — and into a transactional VOD and EST window,” Epix said in a statement. “This is part of the original agreement struck when we acquired the doc coming out of Sundance.”
Whether that is true or not, Ms. Couric also tried to defend the blatantly dishonest move and deny the intention behind doctoring the footage. Now, she joins the State Department in making a stunning admission.
On the film’s website, she wrote that she regrets the edit and claims to have questioned the “beat” when she screened an early version of the film with Soechtig and the documentary’s editor.
“I regret that those eight seconds were misleading and that I did not raise my initial concerns more vigorously,” Couric wrote. “I hope we can continue to have an important conversation about reducing gun deaths in America, a goal I believe we can all agree on.”
Couric’s views on gun rights, that is to say she doesn’t believe Americans should have any, are well known.
People show their support as Donald Trump speaks in Charleston, West Virginia, on May 5, 2016. (Photo: Chris Tilley/Reuters)
Here is how Donald Trump suckers the little people. What follows is a telling of his methods, not commentary on his lack of scruples.
The Question: Why didn’t the trail of wreckage left by Trump’s failed businesses deter students from forking over as much as $35,000 for a class at Trump University? The Answer: They wanted to believe in a plot that favored them.
The skilled con artist knows how to identify chumps and work their emotions. As Trump U salespeople were instructed to tell prospective students, “let them know that you’ve found an answer to their problems.”
Trump’s been at this a long time. In 1995, he raised $140 million from ordinary stock investors for Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. Why would people put good money in a company built on two casinos that had already gone bankrupt under Trump management?
Because Trump had convinced them that he had become a rich man — not by inheriting his father’s real estate empire but through his celebrity magic. Note that the company’s stock ticker symbol was DJT, Trump’s initials.
Trump controlled a third bankrupted casino hotel, which he later persuaded the company to buy at a grossly inflated price. The bankers finally took over in 2004, sending Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
When Trump was done working his “magic,” the stock had lost 90 percent of its value. For every $10 that the believers had invested at the initial public offering, they had $1 left.
A turndown in the casino business could take blame for some of Trump’s other casino problems, but not in this case. During this period, the stock of Harrah’s Entertainment more than doubled. Shares of Starwood and MGM quadrupled.
Trump’s explanation for the diving stock price? “People don’t understand this company.”
Maria Konnikova has studied the psychology of chumps and how they get taken. The skilled con men, she writes, “are exceptional creators of drama.” They spin a story “that makes everything seem legitimate, even inevitable.”
It’s a very human desire to believe the good we’re told will come our way, and it’s not limited to the uneducated. Konnikova tells of a University of North Carolina physicist who fell for an online dating swindle that led to his smuggling cocaine from South America. Elsewhere, the president of a famous New York art gallery was conned into selling forged paintings, including one with the artist’s signature misspelled.
The two patsies conceded the psychological tricks played on them. Konnikova explains, “Faced with incongruous evidence, you dismiss the evidence rather than the story.” Actually, you don’t even see the evidence.
Over at Trump University, economically struggling students ate up the story that Trump himself would be instrumental in blessing them with his secrets to real-estate wealth. They so believed a video promising to teach them “better than the best business school” that they maxed out their credit cards to pay tuition. For those lacking an adequate line of credit, salespeople urged taking on more credit cards. And they did.
Trump University is now defunct and about to go on trial amid charges it defrauded students by $40 million. Trump smeared the judge in the case for his Mexican heritage.
Business reporters trying to get at the truth of Trump’s wealth already assume it is a fraction of what Trump claims. A wish to keep that amount under wraps may account for his refusal to release tax returns.
Evidence of Trump’s confidence games keeps growing, but the pile was already high before he ran for president. Thing is, evidence doesn’t matter to the saps he plays with. It’s always the story.
State Department headquarters in D.C., left, and, right, Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to the reporters at United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, March 10, 2015. (Photos: AP/Seth Wenig)
Late last week, the inspector general of the State Department completed a yearlong investigation into the use by Hillary Clinton of a private email server for all of her official government email as secretary of state. The investigation was launched when information technology officials at the State Department under Secretary of State John Kerry learned that Clinton paid an aide to migrate her public and secret State Department email streams away from their secured government venues and onto her own, non-secure server, which was stored in her home.
The migration of the secret email stream most likely constituted the crime of espionage — the failure to secure and preserve the secrecy of confidential, secret or top-secret materials.
The inspector general interviewed Clinton’s three immediate predecessors — Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — and their former aides about their email practices. He learned that none of them used emails as extensively as Clinton, none used a private server and, though Powell and Rice occasionally replied to government emails using private accounts, none used a private account when dealing with state secrets.
Clinton and her former aides declined to cooperate with the inspector general, notwithstanding her oft-stated claim that she “can’t wait” to meet with officials and clear the air about her emails.
The inspector general’s report is damning to Clinton. It refutes every defense she has offered to the allegation that she mishandled state secrets. It revealed an email that hadn’t been publicly made known showing Clinton’s state of mind. And it paints a picture of a self-isolated secretary of state stubbornly refusing to comply with federal law for venal reasons; she simply did not want to be held accountable for her official behavior.
The report rejects Clinton’s argument that her use of a private server “was allowed.” The report makes clear that it was not allowed, nor did she seek permission to use it. She did not inform the FBI, which had tutored her on the lawful handling of state secrets, and she did not inform her own State Department IT folks.
The report also makes clear that had she sought permission to use her own server as the instrument through which all of her email traffic passed, such a request would have been flatly denied.
In addition, the report rejects her argument — already debunked by the director of the FBI — that the FBI is merely conducting a security review of the State Department’s email storage and usage policies rather than a criminal investigation of her. The FBI does not conduct security reviews. The inspector general does. This report is the result of that review, and Clinton flunked it, as it reveals that she refused to comply with the same State Department storage and transparency regulations she was enforcing against others.
Here is what is new publicly: When her private server was down and her BlackBerry immobilized for days at a time, she refused to use a government-issued BlackBerry because of her fear of the Freedom of Information Act. She preferred to go dark, or back to the 19th-century technology of having documents read aloud to her.
This report continues the cascade of legal misery that has befallen her in the past eight months. The State Department she once headed has rejected all of her arguments. Two federal judges have ordered her aides to testify about a conspiracy in her office to evade federal laws. She now awaits an interrogation by impatient FBI agents, which will take place soon after the New Jersey and California primaries next week. Her legal status can only be described as grave or worse than grave.
We know that Clinton’s own camp finally recognizes just how dangerous this email controversy has become for her. Over the Memorial Day weekend, John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s campaign, sent an email to her most important donors. In it, he recognizes the need to arm the donors with talking points to address Clinton’s rapidly deteriorating support with Democratic primary voters.
The Podesta email suggests attempting to minimize Clinton’s use of her private server by comparing it to Powell’s occasional use of his personal email account. This is a risky and faulty comparison. None of Powell’s emails from his private account — only two or three dozen — contained matters that were confidential, secret or top-secret.
Clinton diverted all of her email traffic to her private server — some 66,000 emails, about 2,200 of which contained state secrets. Moreover, Powell never used his own server, nor is he presently seeking to become the chief federal law enforcement officer in the land.
The inspector general who wrote the report was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2013, after Clinton left office. He did a commendable job — one so thorough and enlightening that it has highlighted the important role that inspectors general play in government today.
Today every department in the executive branch has, by law, an inspector general in place who has the authority to investigate the department — keeping officials’ feet to the fire by exposing failure to comply with federal law.
If you are curious as to why the inspector general of the State Department during Clinton’s years as secretary did not discover all of Clinton’s lawbreaking while she was doing it, the answer will alarm but probably not surprise you.
There was no inspector general at the State Department during Clinton’s tenure as secretary — a state of affairs unique in modern history; and she knew that. How much more knowledge of her manipulations will the Justice Department tolerate before enforcing the law?
The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Report On Business Survey. (Photo: REUTERS)
The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Report on Business shows the manufacturing sector expanded in May for the third consecutive month. However, while the overall economy grew for the 84th consecutive month, manufacturing has lagged behind.
“The May PMI registered 51.3 percent, an increase of 0.5 percentage point from the April reading of 50.8 percent,” Bradley J. Holcomb, CPSM, CPSD, chair of the Institute for Supply Management Manufacturing Business Survey Committee. “The New Orders Index registered 55.7 percent, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the April reading of 55.8 percent. The Production Index registered 52.6 percent, 1.6 percentage points lower than the April reading of 54.2 percent.”
MANUFACTURING AT A GLANCE
MAY 2016
Index
Series
Index
May
Series
Index
Apr
Percentage
Point
Change
Direction
Rate
of
Change
Trend*
(Months)
PMI®
51.3
50.8
+0.5
Growing
Faster
3
New Orders
55.7
55.8
-0.1
Growing
Slower
5
Production
52.6
54.2
-1.6
Growing
Slower
5
Employment
49.2
49.2
0.0
Contracting
Same
6
Supplier Deliveries
54.1
49.1
+5.0
Slower
From
Faster
1
Inventories
45.0
45.5
-0.5
Contracting
Faster
11
Customers’ Inventories
50.0
46.0
+4.0
Unchanged
From
Too Low
1
Prices
63.5
59.0
+4.5
Increasing
Faster
3
Backlog of Orders
47.0
50.5
-3.5
Contracting
From Growing
1
New Export Orders
52.5
52.5
0.0
Growing
Same
3
Imports
50.0
50.0
0.0
Unchanged
Same
2
OVERALL ECONOMY
Growing
Faster
84
Manufacturing Sector
Growing
Faster
3
Manufacturing ISM® Report On Business® data is seasonally adjusted for New Orders, Production, Employment and Supplier Deliveries indexes.
*Number of months moving in current direction.
Still, the ISM’s closely-watched gauge of manufacturing activity nationwide follows regional data indicating contraction. Earlier this week, the Chicago Business Barometer, the ISM’s gauge of Midwest manufacturing, fell in May to 49.3 from 50.4 the month prior. The Empire State Manufacturing Survey plummeted in May further into contraction, as well.
“The Employment Index registered 49.2 percent, the same reading as in April. Inventories of raw materials registered 45 percent, a decrease of 0.5 percentage point from the April reading of 45.5 percent,” Mr. Holcomb said. “The Prices Index registered 63.5 percent, an increase of 4.5 percentage points from the April reading of 59 percent, indicating higher raw materials prices for the third consecutive month. Manufacturing registered growth in May for the third consecutive month, as 14 of our 18 industries reported an increase in new orders in May (down from 15 in April), and 12 of our 18 industries reported an increase in production in May (down from 15 in April).”
Of the 18 manufacturing industries, 12 are reporting growth in May in the following order: Wood Products; Textile Mills; Printing & Related Support Activities; Fabricated Metal Products; Paper Products; Plastics & Rubber Products; Computer & Electronic Products; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Machinery; and Primary Metals. The six industries reporting contraction in May — listed in order — are: Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Petroleum & Coal Products; Transportation Equipment; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Chemical Products; and Furniture & Related Products.
Presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, center, and New York businessman Donald J. Trump, right. (Photos: AP)
With the release of a [content_tooltip id=”38038″ title=”Quinnipiac University (Q-Poll)”] on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton has retaken a small lead on the PPD average of general election polls. Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state and likely Democratic nominee, leads presumptive Republican nominee nationally 45% to 41% in the new poll and 0.6% on the PPD average of polls.
When former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the nominee for the Libertarian Party, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein the race actually gets a bit closer. In a four-way race, Mrs. Clinton gets just 40%; Trump gets 38%, which is too close to call. Gov. Johnson gets 5% and Ms. Stein gets 3%.
“This is a very tight race that will divide Democrats and Republicans, the young and the old, white, black and Hispanic voters – and husbands and wives – in the months ahead,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
Looking at who would best handle important issues, American voters say:
52 – 41 percent that Trump would be better creating jobs;
51 – 43 percent that Clinton would be better handling immigration;
49 – 41 percent that Trump would be more effective handling ISIS;
53 – 40 percent that Clinton would better respond to an international crisis;
46 percent would trust Clinton more on sending U.S. troops overseas, while 44 percent would trust Trump more;
55 – 33 percent would trust Clinton more to make the right decisions regarding nuclear weapons;
48 – 45 percent that Clinton would do a better job getting things done in Washington.
“Trump may be the guy voters want flipping burgers in the backyard and flipping companies in the board room, but when it comes to making deals in DC and stepping up to confront an international crisis, voters want Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office,” Malloy said.
From May 24 – 30, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,561 registered voters nationwide with a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points. Live interviewers call land lines and cell phones. The survey includes 678 Democrats with a margin of error of +/- 3.8 percentage points.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the F8 summit in San Francisco, California, on March 25, 2015. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
The first step in inventing something shouldn’t be waiting for government approval. What would ever get done?
“Regulators like to see new types of law and regulation imposed upon the internet and emerging technologies,” warns Adam Thierer, author of “Permissionless Innovation.”
“From drones to driverless cars to the ‘internet of things’ … they want to put the genie back in the bottle of all this wonderful innovation that’s out there.”
“Think about 20 years ago. If Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, if Steve Jobs of Apple or anybody from Google had to come to the government, say, the Federal Communications Commission and get their blessing or a license to operate, you have to wonder how many of them would even exist today,” said Thierer.
I assume that most would not exist, or if they did, they would be much less useful than they are now. All Silicon Valley innovation would have been slower and dumber had they been forced to apply for FCC permission each step of the way.
Luckily, in the ’90s, a Republican Congress and President Bill Clinton gave entrepreneurs a green light. Shrinking regulation was a popular idea then. As a result, American innovation pulled ahead of the rest of the world. We got iPhones, Google and Facebook because competing private businesses ran the show.
In Europe, politicians took control. French bureaucrats created a computer network called Minitel and spent a fortune giving free computers to millions of people. The Minitel computers replaced paper phone books. People also used them to chat, book train reservations, etc.
Lots of people celebrated the “forward-thinking” French bureaucrats, but by 2012, Minitel was dead — replaced by unplanned innovation from America.
Europe treated innovation as something that could be run by centralized industrial policy. Today, many in the U.S. want to follow that example.
Try anything with a drone that involves making money, and government says you have to wait for permission from the Federal Aviation Administration.
“That’s not the way innovation happens,” says Thierer. “It’s a bottom-up spontaneous kind of thing. Create the right environment and innovators innovate.”
Government worries about irresponsible things you might do with your drone, like fly it into an airplane. But drones weighs less than seagulls, which hit planes all the time.
“If you base all public policy on hypothetical worst-case scenarios, then best-case scenarios never come about,” says Thierer. “We’ll never get life-saving or life-enriching innovations.”
Fortunately, not everyone listens to regulators. At one hospital, volunteers use 3-D printers to create prosthetic hands for kids with missing limbs. It’s illegal to make such a device without FDA approval, but they do it anyway.
Things can go wrong. But we have mechanisms for dealing with mistakes other than requiring licensing that prevents new things from ever being. Parasitic lawyers will sue you if you injure someone. Property rights and common law can be used to punish those who violate the rights of others.
Says Thierer, “There are always risks in the world. But we have ways of solving that without preemptive, precautionary, permission-based controls.”
When we consumers see a new invention or new way of doing business, we ask whether we might benefit from it. Politicians and bureaucrats ask whether the innovator got their permission. Can we tax it? Is it fair? Is it safe? Government errs on the side of saying no.
When we assume that everything new must be approved by the state, innovation heads to other countries. Drone-makers now are moving to Canada and Australia, warns Thierer. Driverless car companies are going to the U.K.
It might seem prudent to have a rule that says: Don’t try anything new unless we’re sure it’s safe. It’s actually called “the precautionary principle,” and that’s basically the law in Europe. But reasonable as that sounds, “make sure it’s safe” also means: Don’t do anything for the first time.
This is a recipe for stagnation. Think of all the innovation that came out of Europe lately. I can’t think of much either — Ikea, the wireless heart rate monitor. Of course, they were invented years ago, before regulation grew and European innovation died.
Donald J. Trump holds a campaign rally in Vienna, Ohio, ahead of the March 15 Super Tuesday 2.0 winner-take-all primaries. (Photo: AP/Gene J. Puskar)
Donald Trump, in recent comments to Bill Clinton’s former White House mouthpiece, George Stephanopoulos, told an ABC television audience that while a unified Republican Party is a good idea, he isn’t going to lose sleep if certain GOP members who oppose his candidacy don’t ever stop opposing his candidacy.
“We want to bring the party together,” Mr. Trump said, on “This Week” on ABC News. “Does the party have to be together? Does it have to be unified? I’m very different than everybody else, perhaps that’s ever run for office. I actually don’t think so.”
Mr. Stephanopoulos, for his part, seemed mystified by the response, and pressed the point that Speaker Paul Ryan, who refused to immediately board the Trump train, was “different,” that he was the “highest elected Republican in the country right now,” and dismissing this simple reality could result in a crushing blow to the billionaire businessman’s entire campaign.
Well, it won’t. In fact, failing to kowtow to the established powers-who-be in and around Washington – not only Mr. Ryan, but other respected Republicans like George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney – will only give yet another notch to the Trump belt of candidacy. Note to GOP: the more the party cries, the higher Mr. Trump’s numbers rise.
It’s the outsider image that’s fueled his campaign thus far – that, and the simple vow to take down the establishment, brick by border wall brick. Just a few months ago, the argument against Mr. Trump was he was a buffoon. But he’s beaten back all his Republican challengers and now stands alone, the sole pick of the party.
So the argument’s shifted to focus on his chances of beating likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. And his detractors say, with just as straight a face and just as much vehemence as they did months ago while calling him an imbecile, circus act and worse, that he can’t beat Mrs. Clinton.
Yet polls are starting to show otherwise on that point.
A Military Times survey conducted in early May of 951 active duty members, reservists and National Guardsmen found favor for Mr. Trump over Mrs. Clinton, 54 percent to 25 percent, and over the self-declared socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, 51 percent to 38 percent.
A Rasmussen Reports poll conducted in late April gave the General Election win to Mr. Trump, not Mrs. Clinton, by a margin of two percentage points. And while several other polls paint Mrs. Clinton as the clear leader in a face-to-face matchup against Mr. Trump, the closer election day comes, the tighter the margins become and in fact, it won’t be long before more headlines, like this May 10 one from Vox, appear on the horizon: “Reality check: Hillary Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump is not that big, and could vanish.”
And you know what else will likely vanish in the weeks to come?
Mr. Trump’s inner-party detractors, particularly ones presently in office. They’ll have to, else face the ire of Republican voters at the polls in their own upcoming elections. Talk of third party candidates is all smoke and mirrors; little more than howling and hubris from the diehard disbelievers – just the type who would during this nation’s formative years rally around Alexander Hamilton while scoffing at Thomas Jefferson.
The reference is not casual.
Founding Fathers didn’t intend for the country’s politics to be run by parties. Rather, as George Washington himself warned in his 1796 Farewell Address, political parties would bring partisanship, division and ultimately, “despotism” and tyranny. He thought this even while appointing Alexander Hamilton as Treasury secretary and Thomas Jefferson as secretary of State – two men whose views of the rightful role of government couldn’t be more different. Hamilton favored a strong federal government; Jefferson, a stronger system of states’ rights. It’s their contrasting views that helped solidify the two-party system of politicking that stands to this day.
What would Washington say today?
He’d likely look at the division within the GOP, the rancor and very “spirit of revenge” he warned of taking root with a two-party system – a spirit that seems aimed in modern times at Mr. Trump — and shake his head sadly while muttering, in some manner of speech more natural to his era: Told you so.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally, May 26, 2016, in San Francisco. (Photo: AP/John Locher)
California Gov. Jerry Brown and the Natural Resources Defense Council endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton ahead of the state’s primary on June 7. The announcements come as the former secretary of state attempts to fend off a challenge from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist who was never supposed to give the favorite much of a fight.
For the NRDC, a major environmental group, it marks the first political endorsement for the leftist group ever in a presidential election. The group’s president specifically cited Donald Trump’s “America First” energy speech in North Dakota as a main reason for the decision.
“Hillary Clinton is an environmental champion with the passion, experience and savvy to build on President Obama’s environmental legacy,” Rhea Suh, president of the NRDC Action Fund, said in a statement. “More than any other candidate running, Hillary Clinton understands the environmental challenges America faces, and her approach to solving them is grounded in the possibility and promise our democracy affords us.”
“Donald Trump, on the other hand, has recently outlined a disastrous and frankly nonsensical environmental agenda — suggesting that he would tear up the Paris Climate Agreement, and that there is no drought in California,” Suh said. “His plan for his first 100 days would take us back 100 years, and America cannot afford to indulge his climate conspiracy theories.”
In a statement, Mrs. Clinton said she is “honored” to get the group’s endorsement and that the “stakes for our children’s health and the future of our planet have never been higher.”
But with roughly 6 in 10 Californians approving of his job performance, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign believes Gov. Brown’s endorsement will carry the real weight when Democratic primary voters make their final decision. It’s a stunning development that at least on the surface ends Gov. Brown’s nearly 25-year feud with the Clinton family. Gov. Brown once flat-out said during a 1992 presidential debate that Bill Clinton was “funneling money to his wife’s law firm for state business.”
[brid video=”39627″ player=”2077″ title=”FLASHBACK: Bill Clinton, Jerry Brown Trade Jabs at 1992 Democratic Debate”]
Sen. Sanders is campaigning hard in the Golden State, but Mrs. Clinton is now up by 8% in the PPD average of polls and needs fewer than 100 delegates to clinch the nomination (with superdelegates). The former secretary of state is expected to hit that mark on the final day of primaries, though Sen. Sanders vowed to go all the way to the convention even if he loses both California and New Jersey on Tuesday (3 other states also hold primaries on June 7).
Still, rather than the governor giving Mrs. Clinton a ringing endorsement he instead praised Sen. Sanders, saying he is “deeply impressed” with his performance in the Democratic race. He called for party unity and conceded her delegate lead was “insurmountable.”
I have closely watched the primaries and am deeply impressed with how well Bernie Sanders has done,” Gov. Brown wrote in an open letter to Democrat and independents. “For her part, Hillary Clinton has convincingly made the case that she knows how to get things done and has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda. In other words, Clinton’s lead is insurmountable and Democrats have shown – by millions of votes – that they want her as their nominee.”
There are 475 pledged delegates are up for grabs in the state’s open primary.
Donald Trump visits Turnberry Golf Club, after its $10 Million refurbishment, June 8, 2015, in Turnberry, Scotland. | Hillary Clinton speaks at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials’ (NALEO) 32nd Annual Conference at the in Las Vegas, June 18, 2015. (PHOTO: GETTY)
Likely Democratic nominee Hillary R. Clinton now leads presumptive Republican nominee Donald J. Trump in New Jersey by just 4 points, 38% to 34%. A new [content_tooltip id=”38870″] also presented registered voters with a four-way race including Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. In the four-way matchup, Mrs. Clinton leads Mr. Trump by a slightly wider 6-point margin, or 37% to 31%.
Gov. Johnson received 5% of the vote and Ms. Stein received 4%. However, it is historically the case that third-party candidates lose vote share as the election draws closer post-Labor Day, though that doesn’t guarantee future results.
“Blue Jersey doesn’t appear quite so blue at this stage of the campaign, but we should keep in mind that neither major party candidate has fully locked in the support of their partisan bases. When and if that happens, the benefit should accrue more to Clinton than to Trump simply because Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.
What is stunning about these results is that New Jersey, with its 15 Electoral Votes, is one of only two states to give Barack Obama a greater margin of victory in 2012. In 2008, then-Sen. Obama won the Garden State with 2,215,422 votes, or 57.27% of the vote to 1,613,207 votes, or 41.70% for Sen. John McCain. In 2012, that margin increased with 2,125,101 votes, or 58.38% of the vote for President Obama, to 1,477,568 votes, or 40.59% of the vote for Gov. Mitt Romney.
“New Jersey hasn’t voted for the Republican nominee for president since 1992, when it chose then-Gov. Bill Clinton over President George H.W. Bush with a third-party spoiler,” said PPD’s senior political analyst Richard D. Baris. “But Donald Trump’s path to flipping this traditionally Blue state, among others, runs right through black voters. More specifically, Republicans need to appeal to and win a larger share of black men.”
In the Monmouth Poll, Mrs. Clinton has the backing of 72% of self-identified Democrats and Mr. Trump has the support of 73% of Republicans. While Mr. Trump holds a 44% to 29% lead among non-Hispanic white voters, Mrs. Clinton leads 54% to 14% among black, Hispanic and Asian voters. However, only 68% of black voters in New Jersey say they will vote for Mrs. Clinton, while only 1% back Trump.
A whopping 21% say they are undecided, which presents an enormous opportunity for the Republican candidate. Historically, these voters would eventually coalesce behind the Democratic nominee, but other Republican candidates haven’t made much of an attempt to reach out to them. As PPD has previously reported, we know that will not be the case with Mr. Trump, who nevertheless has an enormous amount of work to do.
“Based on historical precedent, these undecided minority voters should break strongly for the Democratic nominee. On the other hand, not much about the 2016 race has followed historical precedent,” said Murray.
Worth noting, picking New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as his vice presidential running mate would not only not help him win the state, but could hurt. A full 4 in 10 voters say it would make them less likely to vote for Mr. Trump. On the flip side, the state’s freshman senator, Corey Booker, wouldn’t help or hurt Mrs. Clinton’s ticket.
“Trump claims he can turn New Jersey competitive in November. These results suggest he probably needs to look elsewhere for a running mate if he wants to make that a reality,” Mr. Murray said. “Tapping Booker would be a no harm, no foul call for Clinton as far as New Jersey’s electoral votes are concerned.”
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