September 16, 2016

Bernie Sanders Update

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Was I too hard on Bernie Sanders yesterday? Maybe! I mentioned that although he hadn’t done much for Hillary Clinton, he seemed to have plenty of time to campaign against Debbie Wasserman Schultz in her primary race. However, a reader who lives in her district says Bernie didn’t actually do anything:

Sanders was a total no-show, who spent his time between the conventions and now doing nothing as far as anyone can tell.  One visit here might have been enough to swing the election, actually calling around would have helped. So don’t give Sanders even the credit of doing more than saying he was endorsing Canova and then checking out.

OK. Maybe Sanders didn’t really care all that much about DSW. And anyway, as of today he’s finally campaigning for Hillary Clinton. Eric Levitz reports:

At present, the Democratic nominee is struggling to win over the septuagenarian senator’s strongest demographic: Recent polls have shown more than 30 percent of millennial voters defecting to third-party candidates.

In a separate interview on Friday morning, Sanders implored such voters to “think hard” before casting a “protest” ballot. “Think about what the country looks like and think about whether you’re comfortable with four years of a Trump presidency,” Sanders said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “And I would suggest to those people: Let us elect Hillary Clinton as president. And the day after, let us mobilize millions of people around the progressive agenda, which, by the way, as you know, was passed in the Democratic platform.”

“This is what I know. In politics too much we look at personality….Don’t get hung up on Trump’s kids and whatever, the story of the birther issue. Stay focused on the issue of relevance to your life. I think Clinton is far and away the superior candidate.”

And Sanders will be campaigning for Clinton this weekend in the uber-swing state of Ohio. I wonder if there’s a live feed available? I’ll be very interested to hear what he says. Will it basically be a repeat of his stump speech, focusing on TPP and income inequality and so forth, or will he really campaign for Hillary Clinton? If he does, and if he was just waiting for Labor Day to get going, then all is forgiven.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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