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Today’s Hillary News & Views begins with Clinton’s essay on Equal Pay.
Hillary Clinton writes for Medium:
There’s no question that the pay gap costs women and their families thousands of dollars every single year. It devalues the work women do — from minimum-wage workers to chief executives to the best athletes in the world. And it holds our economy back.
And yet we know that not everyone is convinced. There’s still a lot of misinformation out there — so let’s dispel the myths.
Myth #1: The gender pay gap doesn’t exist.
Some people believe there isn’t really a gender pay gap. That’s just wrong. The typical woman working full time in 2014 was paid 79 percent of what men were paid. Black women earned just 60 percent of what white men made, and Latinas earned just 55 percent. Last I checked, there’s no discount for being a woman. Groceries don’t cost us less. Rent doesn’t cost us less. And raising a family isn’t any less expensive. So why should women be paid less?
Myth #2: This is a women’s issue and men don’t need to worry about it.
Wrong again. If you’re a man married to a woman, this is your problem. When your wife isn’t paid fairly, your family loses out. If you’re the father to a young woman, or the son of a working mom, this is your problem, too. Plus, plenty of decent men care about this issue because they believe in fairness, and they know this isn’t right. It’s as simple as that.
Myth #3: Gender pay discrimination is already illegal and therefore not a problem.
Some may wonder why we’re still talking about this. It’s because it still takes place everyday. I’ll never forget the young man I met in New Hampshire who got a job working as a cashier right next to his mother. They were so excited — then he brought home his first paycheck. They opened it together and discovered that, after one week on the job, he was making a dollar an hour more than his mom. She had worked there for four years.
Yes, it still happens today. In 2016.
That’s why organizations like Glassdoor that promote transparency are important for helping women negotiate equal pay. It’s why we need legislation like the Paycheck Fairness Act, so people won’t be fired or retaliated against for asking what their co-workers make. And it’s why we need to build on President Obama’s pay transparency rules that require companies to report their pay data. If you’re scared of people having more information, it’s a good sign you’re doing something wrong.
We know there are a lot of other reasons why women end up earning so much less over the course of their lifetimes. And if we’re serious about supporting women, we’ve got to take all of these issues on.
For starters, we’ve got to raise the minimum wage. Women make up nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers and two-thirds of workers in tipped jobs. These jobs are hard, they’re often insecure, and they don’t pay nearly enough. New York is leading the way on this issue, and it’s time for the rest of the country to catch up. Women all over America deserve a raise.
We also have to encourage more women to enter higher-paying fields, like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These were boys’ clubs for a long time, but today more and more women are venturing in. They’re contributing every day as innovators, inventors, tinkerers, coders, builders, and discoverers. And those good jobs mean better pay.
And we have to do more to support working parents, moms and dads alike, so they can stay on the job and keep more of their paychecks. It shouldn’t be punishingly expensive for new parents to take time off to care for babies. It shouldn’t be impossible for working parents to arrange their workdays so they can be there when the kids get home from school. And it shouldn’t cost so much for parents to afford quality childcare or for daughters or sons to be there when their aging parents need them.
Perhaps the biggest myth of all is that we can’t solve these problems. We absolutely can — if we summon the political will.
These aren’t just women’s issues. These are economic issues. Other countries are making it easier for women to be mothers and have careers — not out of altruism, but because they know that it’s foolish to let half the population’s talent and energy go unused. If America wants to compete and win in the global economy, we’ve got to make it possible for everyone to contribute to the fullest extent possible.
Here’s the bottom line. All people — men and women — should be able to dream big dreams and then follow them wherever they lead.
So this Equal Pay Day, let’s recommit to doing our part to make America a more equitable place.
Parents, teachers: Encourage our girls.
Bosses: Treat women fairly, and go the distance to support employees with family responsibilities.
Congress: Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. Support paid family leave—New York and California have done it, and it’s time to make it the law of the land.
And I would urge everyone to keep these issues in mind when at the polls: Anyone asking for your vote should have a plan to address them. I’ve been fighting for these issues my whole life, and I’m not stopping now. This is too important, for too many people.
So let’s keep fighting — on Equal Pay Day, and every day — for girls, for women, and for families.
Clinton spoke with Cosmopolitan on various topics. Here are some highlights.
On young voters, and Sanders’ accusation that she is condescending to them:
Well, he's criticized me for so many things in the last week, I'm not going to respond to his comments. I will say this. I'm excited that so many young people are involved in this campaign. I think it's great if they support me, if they support Senator Sanders, the fact that they are committed to being part of the political process is a great development. And for those who don't support me, I'm going to support them. I'm going to make sure that what I promote in my campaign, what I will work on if I'm fortunate enough to be president, will be to give every young person in this country the chance to go as far as their hard work and talent will take them. But I do believe that it's important not to accept at face value what any candidate says. You know, PolitiFact just did an independent analysis of where the candidates stood on being factual, and I was found to be the most factual, the most accurate, of any of the candidates running, above Senator Sanders and all of the Republicans. I really try to be accurate. People may disagree with me, and that is everyone's perfect right. But I think it's important to get the facts, and [according to] the independent assessments, the claims that the Sanders campaign has been making about big oil and fossil fuel have been determined to be false. And I want people to know that.
On her own experiences with unequal pay:
Well, I think that's a great question, and I hope that more people will begin to address that. Over the years, I learned in the jobs that I had where I stood relative to others who were working with me. A few times, I had jobs that were public jobs, so the compensation was public information, but in the private sector, I was a lawyer and I, at the very beginning of my career, did not know where I stood in terms of pay, but as I got more experience and more confidence about my work, then I felt much more free to ask and so I did to find out where I stood.
On splitting the tab:
Look, I think splitting the cost on a date has to be evaluated on a kind of case-by-case basis. You know, many years ago I remember doing that, and I know a lot of young people who even today do because they kind of consider more casual dates, group dates, to be ones where everybody pays their fair share, but I think you also have to be alert to the feelings of the person that you are dating. If it's important to that person to either split in the beginning of the relationship, or for one or the other of you to pay for whatever combination of reasons, you know, you just have to evaluate that and take it into account. So I don't think there is a hard and fast rule, at least that I have ever seen followed in every instance.
On Donald Trump:
Well, first of all, I'm already beating Donald Trump. I have a million more votes than he does, and we've competed in the same contest. Obviously we've drawn different voters, but my voter base is deeper and broader than his. I believe that what he is saying and what he is representing is a very dangerous trend for our country. So even though I am working hard to secure the Democratic Party nomination, I am going to keep speaking out against him, calling him out. I was the first person who called him out after he was nominated and he began to insult so many different groups of people, starting with calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. I spoke to a large group, I said "basta" which is Spanish for "enough." So I have been taking the lead and holding him accountable. I think much of what he says is not only offensive and even shameful, but it's dangerous. He is now making it difficult for our leadership in the world to continue, to stand strong for our values when he says things like, you know, let Japan and South Korea have nuclear weapons. We've been trying to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons for decades. When he says, "Let's pull out of NATO," people in Europe don't know what to think. When he says, "Stop Muslims from coming to our country," Muslim nations don't know what to think. What he is saying is dangerous to our security and our standing in the world.
On having a gender balanced Cabinet:
That is certainly my goal. A very diverse Cabinet representing the talents and experience of the entire country. And since we are a 50-50 country, I would aim to have a 50-50 Cabinet.
Clinton also participated in a roundtable discussion on equal pay yesterday.
New York Daily News reports:
Hillary Clinton enlisted a player from the World Cup-winning U.S. women's soccer team Tuesday to help kick the gender gap into the past.
Speaking at a roundtable in Times Square on Equal Pay Day, Clinton urged the audience "to elevate this issue."
"Last time I checked, there's no discount for being a woman," Clinton said. Women overall make 77 cents for a man's dollar. Black women make 60 cents, Latina women make 55 cents.
"It's important to make the point that the failure to ensure equal pay for women also impacts families and the broader economy," Clinton said, adding that the gap has "almost universal repercussions."
An egregious example of the gap could be found in Megan Rapinoe and her U.S. soccer teammates who were praised all over the country after their World Cup triumph last year.
"We cheered when they won the World Cup and we cheered when they won the Olympic gold medal. And we noticed that our men's team hasn't yet done that. And yet somehow the men are making hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the women," Clinton said.
New York Times reports:
During a roundtable discussion hosted by Glassdoor, democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton urged for greater transparency in the private sector to combat the gender pay gap. “There are already laws at the federal level and in many states that make the failure to provide equal pay illegal, but the problem is there is not enough transparency,” said Clinton, adding that the government is really in the dark regarding how big or small the pay gap may be within certain settings.
Clinton noted that the gender pay gap is even greater for African-American women and Latinas, who earn 60 and 55 cents on the dollar respectively. “We still have to be willing to address these implicit biases,” said Clinton. “The research is absolutely conclusive that people — men and women — carry different ideas in our brains about how to evaluate men’s and women’s work, so it’s the same with racial and ethnic disparities.”
President Obama follows up Vice President Biden’s almost endorsement with one of his own.
Politico reports:
Obama, speaking on Equal Pay Day at the site now known as the Sewall-Belmont House, then spoke of the increasing role of women in business and in government.
"I want them to be astonished that there was ever a time when women were vastly outnumbered in the boardroom or in Congress, that there was ever a time when a woman had never sat in the Oval Office," he remarked.
The comments from Obama follow an interview that Vice President Joe Biden gave with Mic that published Monday, in which he said, "We’re gonna be able to elect a woman in this country. I would like to see a woman elected.”
Tom Hayden writes for The Nation:
The Democratic primary may deepen this antagonism and result in defections among Hillary supporters. Hillary wants limits on fracking: a ban where individual states have blocked it, like in New York; safeguards against children’s and family exposures; a ban where releases of methane or contamination of ground water are proven; and full disclosure of the chemicals used in the process. Bernie’s position is that he’s simply against all fracking.
But Hillary’s position goes beyond what virtually any state has done. The New York Times writes that she “has pledged to end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry to pay for her ambitious climate plan” and intends to install 500 million solar collectors in four years. If and when Obama’s Clean Power Plan is upheld in the federal courts, now a likelihood after Justice Scalia’s death, that will bring a even greater change.
Meanwhile, Bernie’s total fracking ban leaves the question of how to do so unaddressed. His energy platform is comprehensive, but he offers no strategy to implement the Paris Summit in the short term. Instead, Bernie will call his own summit of experts in the first hundred days he is president. There is no recognition of the overwhelming wall of opposition from the Republican Congress, which can only be broken on state-by-state organizing. The climate clock is ticking towards doomsday. Where are we moving next, beyond waiting for the overthrow of Citizens United?
I intend to vote for Hillary Clinton in the California primary for one fundamental reason. It has to do with race. My life since 1960 has been committed to the causes of African Americans, the Chicano movement, the labor movement, and freedom struggles in Vietnam, Cuba and Latin America. In the environmental movement I start from the premise of environmental justice for the poor and communities of color. My wife is a descendant of the Oglala Sioux, and my whole family is inter-racial.
What would cause me to turn my back on all those people who have shaped who I am? That would be a transgression on my personal code. I have been on too many freedom rides, too many marches, too many jail cells, and far too many gravesites to breach that trust. And I have been so tied to the women’s movement that I cannot imagine scoffing at the chance to vote for a woman president. When I understood that the overwhelming consensus from those communities was for Hillary—for instance the Congressional Black Caucus and Sacramento’s Latino caucus—that was the decisive factor for me. I am gratified with Bernie’s increasing support from these communities of color, though it has appeared to be too little and too late. Bernie’s campaign has had all the money in the world to invest in inner city organizing, starting 18 months ago. He chose to invest resources instead in white-majority regions at the expense of the Deep South and urban North.
Emer O'Toole writes for Irish Times:
From serving as the sole woman on the Nixon impeachment team in the 1970s to her decades-long activism on behalf of children’s rights; from efforts towards universal healthcare that date back to the 1990s to her election as the first female senator for New York; from her global fight against maternal mortality to her partnership and friendship with Obama; from her pioneering approach to American diplomacy to her launch of the Women in Public Service Project: there is so much about Clinton’s career to celebrate.
Incremental change is powerful. It has won rights and opportunities for people of colour, women, LGBTQ communities and people with disabilities. It has led to a world in which violence is decreasing.
In democratic societies there are, inevitably, competing ideologies. And, in an ideologically divided society such as the US, candidates who promise policies that run radically contrary to the deeply held beliefs of almost half the population are at best unrealistic and at worst disingenuous. Compromise drives change; just look at Obamacare.
Clinton learned this lesson 20 years ago. In Living History she describes a painful experience when her former legal mentor, Marian Wright Edelman, inveighed with vitriol against Bill Clinton’s Welfare Reform Act.
“I realised I had crossed the line from advocate to policy maker,” Clinton writes. “I hadn’t altered my beliefs, but I respectfully disagreed with the convictions and passion of the Edelmans and others who objected to the legislation . . . [U]nlike Bill, they didn’t have to negotiate with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole or worry about maintaining a political balance in Congress.
“I remembered all too well the defeat of our healthcare reform effort, which may have happened in part because of a lack of give-and-take.”
These are the pragmatics of progress. I am not convinced by the rhetoric of revolution, nor by the political purism of opting out of electoral politics because it is flawed.
Those most convinced by Sanders’s rhetoric of revolution are white men. Black and female demographics support Clinton. If we move beyond a purely economic conception of “the establishment” towards an intersectional analysis of power, then those raging against the machine with Sanders actually constitute the machine.
Sanders has invested much energy in positioning Clinton as Wall Street’s candidate, citing the well-compensated speeches she gives financial institutions as evidence of implicit corruption.
But Clinton is – in a far more demonstrable sense – the candidate of racial minorities and women. Her campaign’s success is down to her popularity with black voters, a popularity due to decades of carefully cultivated relationships with African-American communities.
Women of all races support Clinton over Sanders, despite warnings from their progressive peers that they shouldn’t “vote with their vaginas”. But why shouldn’t disadvantaged groups vote for members of their demographic? Voting for someone who has experiential knowledge of the obstacles to participation that affect you makes perfectly good sense. And Clinton’s exemplary record on women’s rights is evidence of this.
I’m sceptical of the progressive credentials of a political movement that attracts predominantly white men and routinely dismisses the considered voting tactics of people of colour and women as ignorant or complacent. Hillary Clinton worked long and hard to win those loyalties. I very much hope she is given the chance to repay them.
New York Daily News endorses:
On April 19, New York Democrats will have unusual say over the party’s nominee. They have in Clinton a superprepared warrior realist. They have in opponent Bernie Sanders a fantasist who’s at passionate war with reality. By choosing Clinton, Empire State Dems would powerfully signal that the party has gotten real about achieving long-sought goals.
Clinton is unsparingly clear-eyed about what’s wrong with America while holding firm to what’s right with America.
She fully understands the toll that adverse economic forces have taken on the country.
She is supremely knowledgeable about the powers a President can wield to lift fortunes in need of lifting.
She possesses the strength and the shrewdness to confront the tough politics of advancing an ambitious Democratic agenda in the White House.
Still more, she is a cauldron-tested globalist who had the spine to give Obama a thumb’s up for taking out Osama Bin Laden and who is far the wiser about the use of American power, having served as secretary of state and seen the consequences of the war in Iraq.
These truths about America’s most well-known public figure are long past debating among Democrats, above all in New York, the state Clinton represented in the U.S. Senate.
In endorsing Clinton in the coming primary, the Daily News looked to lessons learned from its “Fight for Fair Pay” campaign, including the successful push in 2014 to secure raises for 12,000 minimum-wage workers at New York-area airports.
Because the need was indisputable and because union leadership had set a goal that was both ambitious and politically achievable, The News’ focus helped salaries rise from $8 an hour to $10.10 and, unknown at the time, the movement for Gov. Cuomo’s eventual $15-an-hour target had begun.
The necessary elements were justice, political smarts and pragmatism — the qualities that shine the brighter in Clinton’s economic agenda.
Clinton’s proposals are shaped for the world in which we live, not the world in which we might wish to live. By any stretch of the imagination — except that of Sanders — they stand as the highflying progressive wish list of a results-driven candidate.
Head to head exclusively on those terms — which are the fundamental terms of their debate — the former First Lady, senator and secretary of state promises to be a true Democratic champion.
For all these reasons, the Daily News strongly endorses Hillary Clinton in the April 19 New York Democratic primary.
In advance of this endorsement, Melissa McEwan wrote for Shakesville about the level of detail found in Clinton’s answers to the NYDN editorial board:
This was the same long-ranging interview for which Bernie Sanders got so much grief, after not being able to provide details of his plans to break up the banks and admitting he hadn't studied the legal implications of a relevant case.
The contrast in Clinton's responses on the economic questions are striking. She is, as always, the biggest nerd (which naturally I intend as a compliment; I mean, "So in that tripartite prescription..." has to be some of the all-time greatest nerdery I've ever read!) and her answers are suffused with precisely the kind of detail we've come to expect from her—and which were sorely lacking in Sanders' answers.
The thing that stuck out most to me was the impressive level of sophistication in her analysis, embedded throughout the economic portion of the interview, of the changing modern economy.
It's not just that she has detailed economic plans, but also that she has a remarkable grasp on the emergent problems for working people in the current economy. And I don't mean just compared to Bernie Sanders; I mean that I've rarely seen this sort of detail from any presidential candidate, ever.
Basically, the juxtaposition of these two interviews is exactly why I am supporting Clinton. It's not that I hate Bernie Sanders. I just think that Hillary Clinton is better prepared for the job.
Here are some horse race updates.
Washington Post reports:
It is not true that Sanders is having trouble catching Clinton “because of her overwhelming lead with ‘superdelegates.’ ” He is having trouble catching her because he trails her badly with pledged delegates (as on that sign at Clinton headquarters), and the states he keeps winning are smaller states with fewer delegates given out.
In fact, by every possible democratic measure, Clinton is winning. She’s winning in states (and territories) won, which isn’t a meaningful margin of victory anyway. She's winning in the popular vote by 2.4 million votes — more than a third more than Sanders has in total. In part that’s because Sanders is winning lower-turnout caucuses, but it’s mostly because he’s winning smaller states. And she’s winning with both types of delegates.
So why is this bewildering? Because it seems like Sanders should be gaining big ground against Clinton — and so “superdelegates” get blamed. Consider two states, though: Oklahoma and North Carolina. Sanders won Oklahoma by 10 points; Clinton won North Carolina by about 13. But Clinton won 14 more delegates than Sanders in North Carolina. He won 4 more than her in Oklahoma. Because Oklahoma is a smaller state, with fewer Democrats. It’s as simple as that. Where Clinton has won big, there have often been a lot of pledged delegates at stake. Where Sanders has won big, there often haven’t.
Party nominations are not federal elections. They’re party-run and have a lot of idiosyncrasies as a result. But more voters have voted for the front-runner in each party than for the runners-up. That’s what democratic results are supposed to look like.
The question that’s worth asking is why supporters of trailing candidates think that democracy is being subverted and who benefits from their thinking that. But we’ll leave that to you to assess.
Business Insider reports:
Hillary Clinton is poised for a winning streak of her own in the Democratic primaries after Bernie Sanders finished Saturday's Wyoming caucuses having won in seven of the past eight voting states.
With the remaining April primaries returning to the Northeast, the map is suddenly becoming very favorable to Clinton, the former secretary of state and the Democratic frontrunner.
The RealClearPolitics average of recent state polls showed Clinton with a 14-point lead in New York, a 16-point lead in Pennsylvania, and a 24-point lead in Maryland. Those three contests are the most delegate-rich states remaining this month.
A combined 531 delegates are at stake in just those three states. In contrast, the number of delegates up for grabs in the seven states most recently won by Sanders was just 231; Sanders won 155 of them.
Rolling through the April states would all but clinch the Democratic nomination for Clinton, who holds a big lead in unpledged superdelegates, pledged delegates, and the popular vote.
Kanvs reports:
Is higher voter turnout really behind the Sanders victories in this primary?
As it turns out, for the most part the answer is no. The great majority of his victories to date are associated with caucuses with much lower voter turnouts than primaries.
Understanding this leads to a better perspective on the trajectory of the overall race.
My takeaways from this:
The majority of Sanders' wins to date have been in caucus states with turnouts of less than 6%. In fact, he's won 11 out of 12 states (all caucuses) which had less than 6% turnout.
When turnout exceeded ~6%, Clinton has won the great majority of those states (17 out of 22)
So, I don't find Sanders' opinion - that he is likely to win if there's higher turnout - very compelling.
CNN reports:
An aide to Hillary Clinton suggested Tuesday that Bernie Sanders is trying to "rig the system" by wooing Clinton's superdelegates.
Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon, speaking to CNN's Alisyn Camerota on "New Day," was referring to comments made earlier in the week by Donald Trump, who said he and Sanders were the victims of a "corrupt deal" in the primary process.
But, Fallon said, "If anybody is trying to rig the system right now to overturn the will of the people, it's Sen. Sanders."
Fallon noted that Clinton, who has nearly 450 more superdelegates than Sanders, also is leading the Vermont senator by more than 2 million votes. He said that the system is not rigged and that the rules have been in place for some time.
"So now that's forcing Sen. Sanders to go out and talk about the idea that he wants to try to flip superdelegates and get him to overturn the will of the people as expressed through who's won the most contests," Fallon said.
But the Clinton campaign is not worried about Sanders being successful in attracting the superdelegates, Fallon said.
"We have a wide advantage right now in terms of the superdelegates as well as the pledged delegates," he said.
Salon reports:
On the one hand, I get what’s happening. Bernie supporters are seeing their candidate’s window for victory rapidly closing, so they’re pulling out all the stops to defy the pundits and to keep their revolution afloat. On the other hand, it’s difficult to see the long-term upside in virally spreading myths about the voting process on the Democratic side — especially knowing how many legitimate issues there are with casting ballots in America, many of which are currently on display in Maricopa County, Arizona, along with other red states where the GOP has eroded the integrity of the process to third-world banana republic status.
On Sunday’s “This Week,” Bernie was asked about Hillary’s lead, to which he replied, “Well, she is getting more votes. A lot of that came from the South.”
It’s not the first time Bernie’s campaign has made this distinction, indicating that because many red southern states aren’t winnable for the Democrats in the general, Hillary’s wins there aren’t as important as Bernie’s northern victories. The fact remains that some southern states won by Hillary, North Carolina and Florida in particular, are crucial general election swing states — but that doesn’t appear relevant to Bernie and his people. Likewise, Wyoming, Utah, Alaska, Idaho and Oklahoma, each of which were Bernie victories, are red states that probably won’t go Democratic in November.
Furthermore, Hillary’s red state victories were driven in large part by African-American voters. It’s probably not a good idea for Bernie to continue discounting the support of this particular voter demographic, knowing how GOP governors in those states are actively disenfranchising African-American voters.
By the way, because of the aforementioned proportional delegate distribution, Bernie’s won more than a few delegates from those southern states. Should he forfeit them because they don’t come from traditionally blue states? Also, Hillary has either won or is leading in the largest and most important states in the general: Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, New York and the aforementioned Florida. If we’re disqualifying Hillary due to her southern victories in red states, should Bernie be disqualified because he’s failed to win many of the big blue states important in November? No, because the primaries are only partially about forecasting the general election. Bernie should know this.
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