815 Trump to AIPAC: 'My daughter, Ivanka, is about to have a beautiful Jewish baby'

Trump to AIPAC: 'My daughter, Ivanka, is about to have a beautiful
Jewish baby'

Newsletter published on 28 March 2016

(1) TRANSCRIPT Trump Speech to AIPAC: 'My daughter, Ivanka, is about to
have a beautiful Jewish baby'
(2) Trump to AIPAC: "Israel is a Jewish State and it will forever exist
as a Jewish State"
(3) Donald Trump reading the speech that AIPAC aides wrote for him
(prepare the vomit bag)
(4) Trump grovels to AIPAC (only Sanders, the Jewish Trotskyist, has not
done so)
(5) Before his speech to AIPAC, Trump suggested Israel should Repay U.S.
for Aid
(6) Sanders' Trotskyist past in the Socialist Workers’ Party

(1) TRANSCRIPT Trump Speech to AIPAC: 'My daughter, Ivanka, is about to
have a beautiful Jewish baby'

http://time.com/4267058/donald-trump-aipac-speech-transcript/

Read Donald Trump’s Speech to AIPAC

   Sarah Begley @SCBegley Updated: March 21, 2016 8:58 PM

Here's a full transcript of the candidate's remarks

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, his party’s front runner
for the nomination, addressed the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee Monday, discussing relations between the U.S. and Israel. A
complete transcript of his remarks follows.

TRUMP: Good evening. Thank you very much.

I speak to you today as a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel.
(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

I am a newcomer to politics, but not to backing the Jewish state.

(APPLAUSE)

In 2001, weeks after the attacks on New York City and on Washington and,
frankly, the attacks on all of us, attacks that perpetrated and they
were perpetrated by the Islamic fundamentalists, Mayor Rudy Giuliani
visited Israel to show solidarity with terror victims.

I sent my plane because I backed the mission for Israel 100 percent.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

In spring of 2004 at the height of the violence in the Gaza Strip, I was
the grand marshal of the 40th Salute to Israel Parade, the
largest-single gathering in support of the Jewish state.

(APPLAUSE)

It was a very dangerous time for Israel and frankly for anyone
supporting Israel. Many people turned down this honor. I did not. I took
the risk and I’m glad I did.

(APPLAUSE)

But I didn’t come here tonight to pander to you about Israel. That’s
what politicians do: all talk, no action. Believe me.

(APPLAUSE)

I came here to speak to you about where I stand on the future of
American relations with our strategic ally, our unbreakable friendship
and our cultural brother, the only democracy in the Middle East, the
state of Israel.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

Thank you.

My number-one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

Thank you. Thank you.

I have been in business a long time. I know deal-making. And let me tell
you, this deal is catastrophic for America, for Israel and for the whole
of the Middle East.

(APPLAUSE) The problem here is fundamental. We’ve rewarded the world’s
leading state sponsor of terror with $150 billion, and we received
absolutely nothing in return.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ve studied this issue in great detail, I would say actually greater by
far than anybody else.

(LAUGHTER)

Believe me. Oh, believe me. And it’s a bad deal.

The biggest concern with the deal is not necessarily that Iran is going
to violate it because already, you know, as you know, it has, the bigger
problem is that they can keep the terms and still get the bomb by simply
running out the clock. And of course, they’ll keep the billions and
billions of dollars that we so stupidly and foolishly gave them.

(APPLAUSE)

The deal doesn’t even require Iran to dismantle its military nuclear
capability. Yes, it places limits on its military nuclear program for
only a certain number of years, but when those restrictions expire, Iran
will have an industrial-sized, military nuclear capability ready to go
and with zero provision for delay, no matter how bad Iran’s behavior is.
Terrible, terrible situation that we are all placed in and especially
Israel.

(APPLAUSE)

When I’m president, I will adopt a strategy that focuses on three things
when it comes to Iran. First, we will stand up to Iran’s aggressive push
to destabilize and dominate the region.

(APPLAUSE)

Iran is a very big problem and will continue to be. But if I’m not
elected president, I know how to deal with trouble. And believe me,
that’s why I’m going to be elected president, folks.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

And we are leading in every poll. Remember that, please.

(CHEERS)

Iran is a problem in Iraq, a problem in Syria, a problem in Lebanon, a
problem in Yemen and will be a very, very major problem for Saudi
Arabia. Literally every day, Iran provides more and better weapons to
support their puppet states. Hezbollah, Lebanon received — and I’ll tell
you what, it has received sophisticated anti-ship weapons, anti-aircraft
weapons and GPS systems and rockets like very few people anywhere in the
world and certainly very few countries have. Now they’re in Syria trying
to establish another front against Israel from the Syrian side of the
Golan Heights.

In Gaza, Iran is supporting Hamas and Islamic jihad.

And in the West Bank, they’re openly offering Palestinians $7,000 per
terror attack and $30,000 for every Palestinian terrorist’s home that’s
been destroyed. A deplorable, deplorable situation.

(APPLAUSE)

Iran is financing military forces throughout the Middle East and it’s
absolutely incredible that we handed them over $150 billion to do even
more toward the many horrible acts of terror.

(APPLAUSE)

Secondly, we will totally dismantle Iran’s global terror network which
is big and powerful, but not powerful like us.

(APPLAUSE)

Iran has seeded terror groups all over the world. During the last five
years, Iran has perpetuated terror attacks in 25 different countries on
five continents. They’ve got terror cells everywhere, including in the
Western Hemisphere, very close to home.

Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism around the world. And we will
work to dismantle that reach, believe me, believe me.

(APPLAUSE)

Third, at the very least, we must enforce the terms of the previous deal
to hold Iran totally accountable. And we will enforce it like you’ve
never seen a contract enforced before, folks, believe me.

(APPLAUSE)

Iran has already, since the deal is in place, test-fired ballistic
missiles three times. Those ballistic missiles, with a range of 1,250
miles, were designed to intimidate not only Israel, which is only 600
miles away, but also intended to frighten Europe and someday maybe hit
even the United States. And we’re not going to let that happen. We’re
not letting it happen. And we’re not letting it happen to Israel,
believe me.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

Thank you. Thank you.

Do you want to hear something really shocking? As many of the great
people in this room know, painted on those missiles in both Hebrew and
Farsi were the words "Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth."
You can forget that.

(APPLAUSE)

What kind of demented minds write that in Hebrew?

And here’s another. You talk about twisted. Here’s another twisted part.
Testing these missiles does not even violate the horrible deal that
we’ve made. The deal is silent on test missiles. But those tests do
violate the United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The problem is no one has done anything about it. We will, we will. I
promise, we will.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

Thank you.

Which brings me to my next point, the utter weakness and incompetence of
the United Nations.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

The United Nations is not a friend of democracy, it’s not a friend to
freedom, it’s not a friend even to the United States of America where,
as you know, it has its home. And it surely is not a friend to Israel.

(APPLAUSE)

With President Obama in his final year — yea!

(LAUGHTER)

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

(LAUGHTER)

He may be the worst thing to ever happen to Israel, believe me, believe
me. And you know it and you know it better than anybody.

So with the president in his final year, discussions have been swirling
about an attempt to bring a Security Council resolution on terms of an
eventual agreement between Israel and Palestine.

Let me be clear: An agreement imposed by the United Nations would be a
total and complete disaster.

(APPLAUSE)

The United States must oppose this resolution and use the power of our
veto, which I will use as president 100 percent.

(APPLAUSE)

When people ask why, it’s because that’s not how you make a deal. Deals
are made when parties come together, they come to a table and they
negotiate. Each side must give up something. It’s values. I mean, we
have to do something where there’s value in exchange for something that
it requires. That’s what a deal is. A deal is really something that when
we impose it on Israel and Palestine, we bring together a group of
people that come up with something.

That’s not going to happen with the United Nations. It will only
further, very importantly, it will only further delegitimize Israel. It
will be a catastrophe and a disaster for Israel. It’s not going to
happen, folks.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

And further, it would reward Palestinian terrorism because every day
they’re stabbing Israelis and even Americans. Just last week, American
Taylor Allen Force, a West Point grad, phenomenal young person who
served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was murdered in the street by a
knife-wielding Palestinian. You don’t reward behavior like that. You
cannot do it.

(APPLAUSE)

There’s only one way you treat that kind of behavior. You have to
confront it.

(APPLAUSE)

So it’s not up to the United Nations to really go with a solution. It’s
really the parties that must negotiate a resolution themselves. They
have no choice. They have to do it themselves or it will never hold up
anyway. The United States can be useful as a facilitator of
negotiations, but no one should be telling Israel that it must be and
really that it must abide by some agreement made by others thousands of
miles away that don’t even really know what’s happening to Israel, to
anything in the area. It’s so preposterous, we’re not going to let that
happen.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

When I’m president, believe me, I will veto any attempt by the U.N. to
impose its will on the Jewish state. It will be vetoed 100 percent.

(APPLAUSE)

You see, I know about deal-making. That’s what I do. I wrote "The Art of
the Deal."

(LAUGHTER)

One of the best-selling, all-time — and I mean, seriously, I’m saying
one of because I’ll be criticized when I say "the" so I’m going to be
very diplomatic — one of…

(LAUGHTER)

I’ll be criticized. I think it is number one, but why take a chance?
(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

One of the all-time best-selling books about deals and deal- making. To
make a great deal, you need two willing participants. We know Israel is
willing to deal. Israel has been trying.

(APPLAUSE)

That’s right. Israel has been trying to sit down at the negotiating
table without preconditions for years. You had Camp David in 2000 where
Prime Minister Barak made an incredible offer, maybe even too generous;
Arafat rejected it.

In 2008, Prime Minister Olmert made an equally generous offer. The
Palestinian Authority rejected it also.

Then John Kerry tried to come up with a framework and Abbas didn’t even
respond, not even to the secretary of state of the United States of
America. They didn’t even respond.

When I become president, the days of treating Israel like a second-class
citizen will end on day one.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

Thank you.

And when I say something, I mean it, I mean it.

I will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately. I have known him
for many years and we’ll be able to work closely together to help bring
stability and peace to Israel and to the entire region.

Meanwhile, every single day you have rampant incitement and children
being taught to hate Israel and to hate the Jews. It has to stop.

(APPLAUSE)

When you live in a society where the firefighters are the heroes, little
kids want to be firefighters. When you live in a society where athletes
and movie stars are the heroes, little kids want to be athletes and
movie stars.

In Palestinian society, the heroes are those who murder Jews. We can’t
let this continue. We can’t let this happen any longer.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

You cannot achieve peace if terrorists are treated as martyrs.
Glorifying terrorists is a tremendous barrier to peace. It is a
horrible, horrible way to think. It’s a barrier that can’t be broken.
That will end and it’ll end soon, believe me.

(APPLAUSE)

In Palestinian textbooks and mosques, you’ve got a culture of hatred
that has been fomenting there for years. And if we want to achieve
peace, they’ve got to go out and they’ve got to start this educational
process. They have to end education of hatred. They have to end it and now.

(APPLAUSE)

There is no moral equivalency. Israel does not name public squares after
terrorists. Israel does not pay its children to stab random Palestinians.

You see, what President Obama gets wrong about deal-making is that he
constantly applies pressure to our friends and rewards our enemies.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

And you see that happening all the time, that pattern practiced by the
president and his administration, including former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, who is a total disaster, by the way.

(LAUGHTER)

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

She and President Obama have treated Israel very, very badly.

(APPLAUSE)

But it’s repeated itself over and over again and has done nothing (to)
embolden those who hate America. We saw that with releasing the $150
billion to Iran in the hope that they would magically join the world
community. It didn’t happen.

(APPLAUSE)

President Obama thinks that applying pressure to Israel will force the
issue. But it’s precisely the opposite that happens. Already half of the
population of Palestine has been taken over by the Palestinian ISIS and
Hamas, and the other half refuses to confront the first half, so it’s a
very difficult situation that’s never going to get solved unless you
have great leadership right here in the United States.

We’ll get it solved. One way or the other, we will get it solved.

(APPLAUSE)

But when the United States stands with Israel, the chances of peace
really rise and rises exponentially. That’s what will happen when Donald
Trump is president of the United States.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE) We will move the American embassy to the eternal
capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

And we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between
America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between
the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable.

(APPLAUSE)

They must come to the table willing and able to stop the terror being
committed on a daily basis against Israel. They must do that.

And they must come to the table willing to accept that Israel is a
Jewish state and it will forever exist as a Jewish state.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

I love the people in this room. I love Israel. I love Israel. I’ve been
with Israel so long in terms of I’ve received some of my greatest honors
from Israel, my father before me, incredible. My daughter, Ivanka, is
about to have a beautiful Jewish baby.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

In fact, it could be happening right now, which would be very nice as
far as I’m concerned.

(LAUGHTER)

So I want to thank you very much. This has been a truly great honor.
Thank you, everybody. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

(2) Trump to AIPAC: "Israel is a Jewish State and it will forever exist
as a Jewish State"

From: DAVE KERSTING <dakersting@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Trump grovels to AIPAC, abandons Neutrality on Israel
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2016 21:51:26 -0700

Only one thing matters in Trump’s speech to AIPAC. He did, in fact, get
down on his knees and say the disgusting words: "..Israel is a Jewish
State and it will forever exist as a Jewish State."

That is, of course, unacceptable. The Zionists know those are the only
words that matter: vow allegiance to openly-declared racism - sell your
soul to the devil - knowing that EVEN 99% of the "pro-Palestine" folks
and "anti-Zionist folks STILL won't know the significance of those exact
words.

So Trump has had to say it too, but of course he would have to. And he
said it more weakly than any other candidate ever has. Clinton said it
twice. And those were the very last words of Trump's speech - sure what
they were all waiting to hear - what all the sensible people were
waiting to hear or looking to find. I can almost feel him gagging on the
obligatory words. "Big finish now - here it comes "..AS A JEWISH STATE."

Those who didn't know, or had forgotten, the significance of those exact
words are not qualified to judge against Trump. They will need some time
to catch up.

And when the progressive, or peace folks, or anti-NWO folks start to get
a clue, we will start hearing them say the obligatory words on the right
side of this global debacle: we will hear "a solution based on full
human equality" and "an end of all the racism." No one who keeps talking
about "apartheid" or "a Jewish state" is qualified to be disappointed in
Donald Trump at the AIPAC convention - the scariest moment of his career
- knowing that only perhaps 2% of the population would support him or
notice if he said the right words.

So I'm playing the obvious hypothesis for now. Trump has already set so
many irreversible precedents - in violating "political correctness" -
and in saying he's "neutral" about Israel (words which can’t be unsaid)
- and in calling for a new investigation of 9/11: the smart Zionists
know he's the worst news they've had since JFK. So - it's any easy
hypothesis: that when Trump said the obligatory words - at the very end
of his speech - he was simply lying to them.

The rest was pure concentrated fluff - mostly Iran-bashing.

They were right to walk out on him.

The crucial words:
"The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between
the United States and Israel is unbreakable. They must come to the table
willing and able to stop the terror being committed on a daily basis
against Israel and they must come to the table willing to accept that
Israel is a Jewish State and it will forever exist as a Jewish State."

I think he lied to them.

(3) Donald Trump reading the speech that AIPAC aides wrote for him
(prepare the vomit bag)

Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 12:53:58 +0300
From: Mazin Qumsiyeh <mazin@qumsiyeh.org>

Today is Good Friday, a major holiday in the Western Christian
traditions. My family being mixed Christians always had two Christmas
holidays and two Easters and so on. For us children growing up in the
Bethlehem area, there was a nice rhythm and special feelings of
religious holidays even though our families were not particularly
observant. We enjoyed holidays of all sects and religions. We always
looked forward for example to Ramadan one or two months before it
arrives (this year it is in early June). We cherished the diversity of
customs and cultures and religions. Palestine has always been that:
multicultural, multireligious, multilingual, and more. All attempts to
make it monolithic in the past 12,000 years of ‘civilization’ failed.
The attempts that lasted longer using fear of the other and propaganda
also failed. The attempt t create a "clash of civilizations" (ala
Huntington) thankfully are always resisted. There is only one
civilization and that is the human civilization. False flag operations
to do that in the past have backfired (e.g. Israel’s Lavon affair to
target western interests in Egypt). Being educated and aware is today
more important than ever. We sympathize with our colleagues in Belgium
as they lost citizens to terrorism (no matter what government is
actually behind that). We remind the world that we Palestinians faced
terrorism for nearly 100 years. Please read chapter 8 on violence and
terrorism from my book "Sharing the Land of Canaan" here
http://qumsiyeh.org/chapter8/

Just yesterday, Israeli forces executed two other young Palestinians. A
videotape that has gone viral on the internet shows in one case the
"neutralized" the youth Abed al-Fatah a-Sharif who laid injured on the
ground posing no threat to security. Time passes as Israeli security
officials mill around and others evacuate a supposed injured Israeli
soldier. Then a soldier cocks his gone in front of all other approving
security personnel and medics, approaches and shoots Abed point blank in
the head. See the graphic video https://youtu.be/V5P-ifPzmGQ
https://youtu.be/Fj8rGao47Mg (Video was taken by Emad abu-Shamsiyah, a
B’Tselem member)

As in the hundreds of other cases, this case will be "investigated" by
the Israeli military because the video became public (other cases are
not investigated". But as always, Israeli military finds themselves not
guilty. But that is what we expect from occupiers/colonizers, nothing
more nothing less. What pains us more is the apathetic people (whether
they call themselves Israelis, Palestinians, Europeans, Americans, or
simply human). We would like to see people act for peace and not just
feel disgusted with the status quo. We must envision a better future and
work for it. Please read the last chapter (titled "looking forward") of
my 2004 book: http://qumsiyeh.org/chapter13/

And on this good Friday we hope that the weekly Friday demonstrations
against the illegal occupation will not end by executions (but they seem
to be a pattern of this so stay tuned).

A World War has Begun: Break the Silence by John Pilger
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/23/a-world-war-has-begun-break-the-silence/

Blind Loyalty to the Clinton Brand Needs Re-Examination
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Blind-Loyalty-to-the-Clint-by-JACK-DRESSER-160324-439.html
Critics aghast at disgusting speech Clinton just gave to AIPAC
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/21/critics-aghast-disgusting-speech-clinton-just-gave-aipac

Donald Trump reading the speech that AIPAC aides wrote for him (prepare
the vomit bag)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHmINZRwiZU
and one of his foreign policy team is none other than the crook and
criminal Zionist stooge "Walid Phares"
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2016/03/walid-phares-makes-comeback-trumps-campaign-team

But then again such people as Trump are really bad news for the country
as happened with Hitler who also came to power with hatred and fear
rhetoric. As someone who is also both a US citizen and a Palestinian
living in Palestine, I feel really sad at what the US is going to
(further decline and collapse thanks largely to the suicidal Zionist
ideology).

so as Vittorio Arrigoni implored us: Stay human. This is most relevant
on this good Friday.

Mazin Qumsiyeh
Professor and Director
Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability
Bethlehem University
Occupied Palestine

(4) Trump grovels to AIPAC (only Sanders, the Jewish Trotskyist, has not
done so)

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 23:18:03 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 03:18:03 -0300
Subject: Re: Trump grovels to AIPAC, abandons Neutrality on Israel
From: Ron Corbyn <corbynrc@gmail.com>

Of course, if you plan to run for high office you will get nowhere with
AIPAC, or any such organization created by the behind-the-scenes Zionist
Jew communist bankers running the U.S., if you don't pledge your support
for Israel and thus their plan to conquer the world and rule it, Old
Testament style, with absolute life-or-death power over each individual
on the planet.

That is a given.  It's been the case for sure since the election of
Wilson in 1912, who made promises about "reestablishing Israel" to the
Zionist Jews running the U.S for the Rothschilds--like Jacob Schiff,
Bernard Baruch, Joseph Brandeis, and Stephen Wise.

So much for the U.S. being "a Christian nation."

That could say a lot about who is real and who is stealth.  We already
know what the Democrats think.

(5) Before his speech to AIPAC, Trump suggested Israel should Repay U.S.
for Aid

Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2016 15:04:05 -0700
Subject: Re: Trump grovels to AIPAC, abandons Neutrality on Israel
From: blissentia <blissentia@gmail.com>

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.710180

Trump Ahead of AIPAC Speech: Israel Should Repay U.S. for Aid

'There are many countries that can pay, and they can pay big-league,'
Republican frontrunner tells reporters, only to later attempt to reverse
himself: 'They help us greatly.'

   Mar 21, 2016 11:52 PM Haaretz

Hours before his AIPAC address on Monday, Republican presidential
candidate Donald Trump said that as president he would require Israel to
pay back the United States for the foreign aid it received.

Talking to reporters in Washington, Trump was asked about his previously
stated stance that the U.S. should charge some of its allies for its
assistance in their defense. "I want them to pay us some money," Trump
said.

When asked specifically about Israel, the Republican frontrunner
replied: "I think Israel would do that also. There are many countries
that can pay, and they can pay big-league."

(6) Sanders' Trotskyist past in the Socialist Workers’ Party

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/sanderss-party-problem/460293/

Bernie Sanders's Problem With Democrats

Will the Democratic Party nominate a candidate who hasn’t been a member
of their party, and who has long denounced it?

PAUL STARR

FEB 8, 2016

When a party chooses its presidential candidate, it also chooses its
party leader in the election. This year the Democrats face an unusual
situation. Bernie Sanders isn’t just an outsider to the party
establishment; he’s not even been a member of the party, and has long
excoriated it in unsparing language. Although the media haven’t much
focused on this history, the early signs suggest it could become a
problem for Sanders in getting the nomination—and a problem for the
party if he does get it.

According to the entrance polls at the Iowa caucuses, there was a
30-percentage-point split between self-identified Democrats and
independents in their support for Sanders. Hillary Clinton won 56
percent of self-identified Democrats but only 26 percent of
independents, while Sanders won only 39 percent of Democrats but 69
percent of independents.

This difference will loom large in primaries and caucuses limited only
to registered Democrats. To vote in closed primaries, voters first have
to register their affiliation with the party, usually about a month
before election day. All the February caucuses and primaries are
effectively open. (Nevada is described as "closed," but participants can
pick a party on the day of the caucus.) Thereafter, according to the
nonpartisan organization FairVote, Democrats are holding closed
primaries in three of the largest states (Florida, New York, and
Pennsylvania) as well as in 13 others (Colorado, Connecticut, New
Jersey, Maine, Maryland, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, New Mexico,
Arizona, Oregon, Wyoming, and Nebraska).

California law allows the parties to limit participation in what will be
the last major primary in June. For 2016, however, the California
Democrats decided to open up their election, while the Republicans are
keeping theirs closed. That could prove to be a fateful decision if the
Democratic battle is still undecided. Some of the anti-establishment,
independent vote that might have gone into the Republican primary could
go to Sanders (also a possibility in other open-primary states now that
Rand Paul has dropped out).

Party opposition to Sanders is especially strong among Democratic
officeholders. In FiveThirtyEight’s endorsement primary, Clinton has a
lead over Sanders of 466 to 2. Although endorsements themselves may not
matter much in swaying voters, they’re an indication of the depth of
party support, which will likely translate into a substantial edge for
Clinton among the 712 superdelegates at the Democratic convention unless
she stumbles badly in the primaries.

Sanders and his supporters see the party support for Clinton as evidence
that "the establishment" is against him. But there are two other
interpretations. What party leaders necessarily care about is winning
the next election. They look at the electability of the presidential
candidate as it affects the electoral prospects of candidates at all
levels, including their own. The endorsement primary is a symptom of
deep anxiety about what Sanders would do to the entire party’s fortunes
in November.

The lack of support for Sanders among elected Democrats may also reflect
his lack of support for them. During 2015, Clinton raised $18 million
for other Democratic candidates, while Sanders did no fundraising for
them at all. Those are just last year’s numbers. The difference in party
fundraising between them going back decades would surely be even more
dramatic. After all, before this campaign began, Sanders was emphatic
that he was not a Democrat.

Sanders has left a long trail of denunciations of the Democratic Party.
He began on the revolutionary left; in 1980, he served as an elector for
the Socialist Workers’ Party, founded by Leon Trotsky and committed to
nationalizing major industries. In 1989 he said the Democrats and
Republicans were "in reality, one party—the party of the ruling class."
That year he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times describing the two
parties as "tweedle-dee" and "tweedle-dum" since both subscribed to what
he called an "ideology of greed and vulgarity." As the Republican Party
has moved to the right, Sanders has said the Democrats are better, but
he has refused to run as a Democrat and continued to insist—as late as
the 2012 election—that he is not a Democrat because the party fails to
support the interests of workers.It would be a remarkable and difficult
situation for any party to go into an election with a presidential
nominee so at odds with its other candidates.

Though he refers to "Wall Street" and "big corporations" in his current
campaign rather than to "the ruling class," his attacks on Democrats are
basically the same as before. They’re just focused on Clinton now. But
what he says about her he could just as easily say about most Democrats
running for Congress or in the states—and they surely know it.

To people on the left who have long attacked both parties, Sanders’s
disdain for Democrats may not be a problem. But it would be a remarkable
and difficult situation for any party to go into an election with a
presidential nominee so at odds with its other candidates. As the
journalist Michael Tomasky has argued, many of them would run on their
own, keeping their distance from Sanders. And if Michael Bloomberg runs
as an independent, the party could face a schism.

If Sanders had conspicuously changed his positions as well as his
rhetoric at some time in the past, his early history might not have
posed as serious a problem for the party as it does. But he’s still
talking about a revolution in the name of socialism, and, let’s give him
credit—that’s not just rhetoric.

The taxes Sanders is calling for are in a different league from any
peacetime Democratic candidate in history.  The single-payer health plan
alone, according to the estimates of the Sanders campaign, requires
raising as much revenue as the federal government collected in 2013
through the individual income and estate taxes. In other words, we’d
need to double that revenue. To do so, Sanders proposes the following: a
6.2 percent increase in payroll taxes; a 2.2 percent increase in income
taxes on everyone; higher estate taxes; taxing capital gains and
interest as ordinary income; limiting tax deductions for the rich; and
higher income-tax rates on the upper brackets.

To be sure, Sanders says that Americans would save money because they
wouldn’t be paying private insurance premiums. But his plan has no
limits on the scope of coverage and no patient cost-sharing—it transfers
all private health spending into the Treasury, without any clear means
of cost restraint. Free can be expensive. The plan would create winners
and losers: The losers will surely fight it, and many of those who might
be winners won’t trust the federal government enough to go along with it.

The taxes for Sanders’s health plan, combined with other tax increases
on wages he’s proposed, would raise the top marginal federal rate to 77
percent, as Dylan Matthews shows at Vox. In addition to those taxes on
earnings, Sanders is calling for an increase in the capital-gains tax, a
new financial-transaction tax, and a new carbon tax.

The last of these, the carbon tax, is a good idea and a hard sell in
itself. But the total package is not a platform that Democrats can run
on—it’s a platform they’re going to run from. And it is a
fantasy-come-true for Republicans. For decades, they’ve been falsely
accusing Democrats of favoring huge tax increases. In this case, it
would be the truth.

So far, many Democrats have hardly registered the full significance of
what Sanders’s candidacy would mean for their party. But I don’t think
Republican strategists have missed the possibilities. A Sanders
nomination would be their opportunity to capture decisive control of all
branches of the federal government from a divided and weakened
Democratic Party. Among other things, Republicans would be able to
consolidate a Supreme Court majority for a long time to come. As those
who supported Ralph Nader in 2000 should recognize now, the costs of
purity can be heavy indeed.