English: Ginni Rometty of IBM in 2011 during "One on One: Ginni Rometty" at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Laguna Niguel, CA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
IBM has its biggest employee base in India, estimated to be well over 1,00,000: at least a fourth of its global workforce. ........ Rometty , on a visit for the second time in six months, said India would be at the centre of the fourth technology shift that she refers to as the cognitive era. India will not be at the centre; it will be the centre of this fourth technology shift. Remember we started with cloud, big data, and mobility, and now we have cognitive. It's going to be the most disruptive and the most transformative one," she said. IBM has invested significantly in the cognitive space, most prominently in its Watson technology . ......... dialogue framing, knowledge validation, voice synthesis, language modelling and visual analysis. .....
Rometty believes that cognitive provides "the best chance to solve a lot of humanities big problems."
During a visit to Bengaluru, Rometty also spoke about the potential of IBM's critical cognitive computing system, Watson, and how it had the potential to completely disrupt and transform industries. ..... This century, the 21st century, will be the Indian century - and I really believe that ..... India would "be the centre of the cognitive shift". ..... the evolving technology landscape globally that is increasingly being shaped by artificially intelligent systems such as Watson. ..... "Today Watson has been broken up into a platform of 32 different capabilities, with 50 technologies under it that you can access." ..... "We are today mostly a software and services company. But we have to transform - in this transformation, we will emerge as a cognitive solutions and cloud platform company. And I say that because everything we do is part of that strategy," said Rometty. .... "an ability to help Watson see".
the most creative children are the least likely to become the teacher’s pet, and in response, many learn to keep their original ideas to themselves. In the language of the critic William Deresiewicz, they become the excellent sheep........ Most prodigies never make that leap. They apply their extraordinary abilities by shining in their jobs without making waves. They become doctors who heal their patients without fighting to fix the broken medical system or lawyers who defend clients on unfair charges but do not try to transform the laws themselves. ......
The parents of ordinary children had an average of six rules, like specific schedules for homework and bedtime. Parents of highly creative children had an average of fewer than one rule.
...... Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it’s easy to thwart. ...... the early roots of world-class musicians, artists, athletes and scientists, he learned that their parents didn’t dream of raising superstar kids. They weren’t drill sergeants or slave drivers. ...... Top concert pianists didn’t have elite teachers from the time they could walk; their first lessons came from instructors who happened to live nearby and made learning fun. Mozart showed interest in music before taking lessons, not the other way around. Mary Lou Williams learned to play the piano on her own; Itzhak Perlman began teaching himself the violin after being rejected from music school. ........ Even the best athletes didn’t start out any better than their peers. ...... A majority of the tennis stars remembered one thing about their first coaches: They made tennis enjoyable. ..... Expert bridge players struggled more than novices to adapt when the rules were changed; expert accountants were worse than novices at applying a new tax law. ...... In fashion, the most original collections come from directors who spend the most time working abroad. In science, winning a Nobel Prize is less about being a single-minded genius and more about being interested in many things. Relative to typical scientists, Nobel Prize winners are 22 times more likely to perform as actors, dancers or magicians; 12 times more likely to write poetry, plays or novels; seven times more likely to dabble in arts and crafts; and twice as likely to play an instrument or compose music. ........ “The theory of relativity occurred to me by intuition, and music is the driving force behind this intuition,” Albert Einstein reflected. ..... If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.
The margin is not even a full percentage point, and they might even end up snatching an equal number of delegates in the state, but it is a victory nonetheless. Suddenly things are topsy turvy. It was Donald Trump who was supposed to be the clear Republican nominee. Hillary was supposed to be in the doldrums. Now Trump looks like he might not even make it. And Hillary might end up narrowing Bernie's lead in New Hampshire.
The nomination is not Hillary's yet. The fight will go on all the way. But right now Hillary has the edge. Bernie will not stop. He will not quit. But the thing about fighting hard but clean is, they might even end up on the same ticket. Hillary and Bernie on the same ticket would give a decisive blow to Cruz. It might also considerably narrow a Bloomberg possibility. An Iowa loss for Hillary would have made clear room for Bloomberg.
Right now The Donald is probably licking his wounds. I thought I was rich and successful.
Cruz would be super easy to beat. The guy is so far out. He simply gives away all the middle ground on a platter. The Donald would be a circus. Also easy to beat, but more comical.
But this is still a close contest. Hillary can not rest. There will be drama.
No one on either side has been assured a nomination yet, but this was a rather interesting night.
Fierce competition inside both parties makes room for a Bloomberg. One way to look at Iowa is, we thought only the Democratic nomination was fiercely contested, now we know also the Republican nomination is.
Hillary Clinton, who strode out with her family in tow to claim victory over Bernie Sanders without actually uttering the words “I won.” The closest she came was saying that “I stand here tonight, breathing a big sigh of relief.” At the time, however, her razor-thin lead was shrinking to mere tenths of a percent. There it remained. ......
Clinton was finally declared the apparent winner, 49.8 percent to 49.6 percent — not exactly what anyone would call a mandate.
...... Donald Trump gave brief remarks in which he graciously congratulated Cruz, thanked the people of Iowa and
said he liked the Hawkeye State so much, he might someday buy a farm there.
I’m trying to picture Trump in a pair of overalls. ...... Trump is a numbers guy; he looked at the results, saw that Cruz had more votes and conceded. But other candidates and commentators preferred to focus instead on expectations — what “they” said would happen versus what did happen. Hence the surfeit of self-proclaimed winners. ..... three months ago polls showed her 20 points ahead. And Sanders said he had fought the powerful Clinton political machine to a draw, which of course beat expectations. ....... the Sanders rebellion is certainly not halted and perhaps not even slowed. A party in which such a familiar and experienced figure as Clinton can be fought to a tie by a self-proclaimed democratic socialist is a party divided. ...... About 180,000 Iowans participated in the Republican caucuses, an all-time record. Meanwhile, just about 170,000 caucused on the Democratic side, far fewer than the record of nearly 240,000 in 2008.
Judging the victor by differences of tenths of a percentage point is a ridiculous enterprise when what’s being measured are delegate numbers, not tens of thousands of individual votes. ......
The real winners were Marco Rubio, with his remarkably strong third-place showing, and Bernie Sanders, with his virtual tie.
..... In the short term, Donald Trump was the biggest loser — true of any front-runner but even truer of a candidate whose campaign raison d’etre is that he is a winner. ..... The elaborate network of evangelical support and intensive voter contact and analytics he constructed outdid
the swaggering hold-a-rally-and-they-will-caucus approach of Donald Trump.
..... They were torn — except when it came to Trump. He had been crossed off almost all their lists, as too big a blow-hard, too politically inexperienced, too ideologically untrustworthy. ........ That Rubio came within a percentage point of passing Trump — the candidate leading in most polls leading up to the caucuses — is the most significant number of the night. ....
New Hampshire is not obviously fertile territory for Cruz; it is better suited to Rubio.
...... I left the Rubio events I attended here with a revived sense that Clinton should be very nervous about the prospect of facing him in a general election campaign. ...... Between Sanders and Clinton, tie goes to the underdog. If you have any question about this, ask yourself: Which campaign was celebrating Monday night, and which was trying to figure out what went wrong? ..... In short, Sanders is not disappearing any time soon. Trump is not running away with the nomination. For both parties, the Iowa results reinforce the likelihood that both nomination battles will stretch well into the spring, if not beyond.
"I am so thrilled that I am coming to New Hampshire after winning Iowa,” she said, fresh off a red-eye from Iowa, at a campaign rally in Nashua. “I've won and I lost there. And it's a lot better to win." ...... her tight win in Iowa speaks to the success of Sanders. ..... Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called Clinton’s performance in Iowa an “unmitigated disaster.” ...... “Hillary Clinton once again finds herself running neck and neck with an upstart challenger in a race that never should have been this close to begin with,” Priebus said in a statement. The committee also released a video titled, “Déjà Vu,” recalling Clinton’s troubles in the 2008 Democratic race. ...... “Nine months ago we had no political organization, we had no money, we had no name recognition and we were taking on the most powerful political organization in the country,” the Vermont senator told a cheering crowd in Des Moines on Monday night. “Tonight, while the results are still not known, it looks like we are in a virtual tie.” ...... With her slim win in Iowa, and a potential loss in New Hampshire on the horizon, Clinton’s path to the nomination may have gotten a bit rockier.
64. That’s the percentage of Hawkeye State GOP caucus goers who were Evangelicals ..... That’s much higher than anticipated ...... Cruz outperformed his poll numbers and pulled off a surprising win because Evangelicals turned out in big numbers ....
Among non-evangelical voters, he lost to Trump, 22 to 29 percent. That’s close to how final polls had predicted the caucuses would end up.
...... Mr. Trump may have upended the race, but he hasn’t destroyed the effectiveness of old-style retail campaigning. ......
84. That’s the percentage of voters age 18 to 29 won by Bernie Sanders
.... 58 percent of voters age 30 to 44. ..... Look at it this way: Sanders did better with young voters than did Barack Obama in his hope-and-change campaign of 2008. Obama won 57 percent of the under-29 crowd in that year’s Iowa Democratic caucus.
Right now it is looking like Bernie will win Iowa, and win big in New Hampshire, and he has already raised so much money in January before any victory, his February haul will be bigger. This is a huge shift from where the race was only a few months ago. This is not Hillary's race no more. Two early victories will give Bernie a ton of momentum. A lot of working class Dems will give him a second look after that. Considering I was not following the race closely until only a few days back, I guess I am surprised.
winning by a whopping 31% in New Hampshire ..... Both of the recent Iowa polls are within the margin of error, illustrating that the caucus winner will depend upon turnout. If there is a big turnout, like the one that won the day for Barack Obama in 2004, then Bernie Sanders will likely win. If the turnout number is simply ordinary, the Democratic frontrunner should win the day. ...... In New Hampshire, recent polls are showing Bernie Sanders winning by bigger and bigger margins. ...... has Senator Sanders soundly defeating Hillary Clinton 61% to 30%. ..... In New Hampshire, Senator Sanders is bolstered by the fact that independents can vote in the Democratic primary, although he is now experiencing leads across virtually all demographics in the state with the motto “Live Free or Die.” ......
Senator Sanders will be in a great position to pull off one of the greatest, if not the greatest, political upsets in history if he can win both of the early states.
In the fall of 2007, Hillary Clinton held a 24-point lead over Barack Obama among black voters in a CNN national poll. By Jan. 18, 10 days after the New Hampshire primary, Obama was winning blacks by 28 points in the same poll, a 52-point swing...... This time around, Clinton again holds a commanding lead among black voters headed into Iowa. She boasts a roughly 45-point lead nationally, which her campaign refers to as a firewall. ...... The assumption fueling that fire is that Obama was able to win over the black vote because, put simply, he was black. If that's the case, the uber-white Vermonter Bernie Sanders isn't a serious threat to that firewall, and the Clinton camp can bank on a South Carolina victory no matter what happens in Iowa or New Hampshire. ...... After Obama's resounding victory in Iowa, the perception of him changed. All of a sudden, black voters saw that Obama could actually win. ..... If Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump comes out on top in Iowa, it will be the first time that millions of people waking up on Tuesday morning seriously think of those men as presidential material.
(The shock to the global audience, particularly if Trump wins, will be off the scale.)
If Obama's experience is any guide, winning Iowa could possibly unlock significant additional support. ........ For the American voter prior to 2008, the only thing harder than picturing a black man winning the White House might have been seeing a socialist occupying it. But if Sanders comes out on top in Iowa and follows it up with a win in New Hampshire, where he's well ahead, all of a sudden he becomes a viable candidate, and the firewall could be snuffed out. ......
noticed this weekend that poor and working-class white voters have been shifting toward Sanders and away from Clinton, an unusual pattern in a Democratic primary.
...... recalled in 2008 that before Iowa, Obama wasn't treated as credibly by his show's listeners, who wondered if "he would be the token black in the debate." ....... That all changed the night Obama won Iowa. "When that group said, 'We think Obama would be a good president,' that ignited something that said to everyone in our community, 'We might have something here,'" said Rev. Kyev Tatum, then senior pastor at Servant House Baptist Church in Ft. Worth, Texas. ....... Simmons, an Obama supporter, said he saw the 2008 shift in attitude in his own Detroit family, most of whom thought Obama had no shot with white America. "It is challenging the African-American community's assumptions of white people," he said. ........ "A black man won Idaho? I don't know if there's any whiter state in America than Idaho. That was the ... comical relief that sort of solidified it," Madison said. ...... "If South Carolina had come before Iowa and New Hampshire, Obama wouldn't have won," he said in 2008. "After New Hampshire and Iowa, the whole tide turned and he became credible, not because black folks changed their minds, but it was more as a result of white America validating to the black community that, 'Hey, he's OK with us.'" .........
Obama himself seemed to recognize the significance of the Iowa victory. "Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment. This was the place where America remembered what it means to hope," he said in his victory speech that night.
....... recalled what happened in 2008 to point out that Clinton's double-digit lead in South Carolina could erode. ....... in 2008, most if not all of the elected officials here were not with [Obama]. ..... It was a grassroots movement that bypassed elected officials. There was nothing she or anyone else could have done to stop it. It was sheerly the force of nature." ......
On Sunday, Sanders announced that he had raised $20 million in January alone, nearly all of it from small donors. “The numbers we’ve seen since Jan. 1 put our campaign on pace to beat Secretary Clinton’s goal of $50 million in the first quarter of 2016,” Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager, said in a statement. “Working Americans chipping in a few dollars each month are not only challenging but beating the greatest fundraising machine ever assembled.”
...... If that kind of financial strength can be coupled with a handful of victories, Sanders could very well blow right through the Clinton firewall.
Sanders amassed the largest number of new Facebook followers of any candidate in the race, the social network said on Monday, topping Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump by 15,695 to 10,704. Clinton had the third most new followers, with 6,210 liking her page in the past day. ...... Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, also dominated the conversation surrounding the caucus on Facebook through Monday morning. .....
42.2 percent of conversations about the caucuses were about Sanders, compared with 21.7 percent for Trump and 13.1 percent for Clinton, according to Facebook.
..... Google trends data also showed strong interest in Sanders...... In Iowa, Sanders was the top-searched-for Democratic candidate on the search engine, with 52 percent of queries relating to the Democratic candidates. Clinton commanded 42 percent of queries. Even so, Trump was the top most-searched for presidential candidate overall, according to the most recent Google search data available.
Donald Trump, of course, is the frontrunner in the polls, and has been for much of the last six months (to everyone's amazement) -- both in Iowa and nationwide. ...... it'll be a big night for Trump, and it very may well be the beginning of Trump's eventual nomination. ....... The only real question for O'Malley is whether he drops out of the race immediately after Iowa, or whether he hangs on to see another crushing defeat in New Hampshire before he hangs up his spurs. ...... If the crowds are big, Bernie likely wins. If they're small, Hillary will emerge victorious. .....
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Bernie Sanders takes the night.
...... Clinton and Sanders, in this scenario, will exit Iowa with an almost-equal number of delegates
The push by major tech companies like Facebook and Google to deliver universal Internet access has been praised for its potential to connect the two-thirds of the planet without access to broadband, but critics have suggested it is solely motivated by private gains.......“We shouldn’t celebrate Facebook’s efforts to ‘bring the Internet to all’ because that is not what they are doing,” transparency advocate David Sasaki said in a blogpost published shortly after the unveiling of the Internet.org foundation........“When Zuckerberg says that access to the Internet is a human right, what he means is that access to Facebook should be a human right.”
In Sarandon’s telling, the unkempt socialist senator from Vermont is the Barack Obama of 2016. To many Sanders supporters, Obama’s successes—from the Iowa caucuses to tough two national elections—render moot the argument Clinton is once again making that she’s the only one who can win. ...... Sanders is sharply ideological, beloved mostly by white liberals, and represents the party’s 1960s protest-movement past more than its techno-utopian future. .....
a field of Republican candidates that is “so weak and so weird,” he said, many Democrats believe the presidency is theirs no matter who they nominate—so why not go with their hearts?
....... It’s one thing to draw thousands of kids to a Vampire Weekend concert on a college campus, as Bernie would do a few days hence. It’s another to bring them out here. ...... The 2016 campaign’s twin unexpected phenomena—the parallel rise of Sanders and Donald Trump, who currently command an eerily similar 37 and 36 percent of their parties’ national vote in poll averages—have taken by surprise the pundits and wise men and party establishments who fundamentally underestimated partisans’ desperate desire for extremes. ......
If Sanders pulls out a win on Monday, he will have proven yet again that what seemed far-out was actually the party mainstream.
....... “I’m also a socialist,” John Dallas, a goateed Mason City housepainter, told me matter-of-factly. “I mean, how’s that capitalism working out in the United States? It’s fine for the top one-tenth of one percent, but the other 90 percent of us aren’t doing so well.” ....... And so Sanders has exposed the left-wing ideals in the hearts of a substantial portion of Democrats, just as surely as Trump has illustrated liberals’ stereotypes about Republican nativism and xenophobia. A Democratic Party that strained for decades to position itself as moderate, and to ostracize its radical voices, has instead seen its long-suppressed liberal energy burst to the fore. ....... How severe are the Democrats’ divisions? The factions seem nowhere near as tribal and mutually incomprehensible as the Republican crackup;
most Sanders supporters I met said they respected Clinton, even if they didn’t trust her, and Clinton supporters said they get where the Sanders people are coming from
......... It’s still a mystery why, exactly, Clinton lost control of this race. As of mid-December, she seemed to be sitting pretty, winning the debates, leading in Iowa, and catching up to Sanders in New Hampshire. But sometime around the new year that changed, and Sanders surged. ........
the professionals behind Team Clinton reacted to this surprise development with all the grace and equanimity of a mule that’s just been bitten by a deerfly and is thrashing wildly around.
Clinton attacked Sanders with wild implausibility, insisting he was both too left-wing to win and not liberal enough on certain issues, primarily gun control. When Sanders lashed rather mildly back, her campaign flew off the handle, accusing him in dire terms of a viciousness ill-befitting his gentle reputation......... Most D.C. Democrats still do not believe Clinton to be in much real peril. .......
Sanders, however, hopes an Iowa-New Hampshire one-two punch will set off a chain reaction, dominos falling unstoppably as Clinton relives her miserable experience of 2008.
..... This is Clinton’s challenge: to argue for an extension of the status quo at a time when few people are satisfied with the way things are. .......
Clinton’s stay-the-course appeal felt like a postcard from another era when sensible centrism was still the rule in politics.
........ Clinton, in her speech, cast herself as the candidate of dogged incrementalism and detailed, specific proposals. ...... She spoke briskly and cogently, in well-practiced paragraphs ...... She cast Sanders’s grand plans for things like single-payer health care as destabilizing. She hugged a woman who’d lost her home. ...... Clinton said, as cameras clicked away, capturing the rare moment of intimacy. ......
we live in a time of revolution, unsettled and restive.
President Bill Clinton's closing argument for Hillary: “She’s the best changemaker I’ve ever met." Watch the new video ⬇️
A few days back Donald Trump said something nice about Indians. That was the first time. Otherwise he has not said anything nice about anybody, not Mexicans, not Muslims, not the Chinese, not white women. But he is trying to play nice with Indians. That’s a breath of fresh air.
What The Donald does not seem to understand is there are more Muslims in India than anywhere else in the world. Muslims came to India because there was too much sand where they were, and this was before oil, and so they came for the green. They came, they saw, they conquered. There are more Muslims on the Indian sub-continent than anywhere else in the world. India is the number one Muslim hub in the world. Muslims rule Bollywood, for example. India has had two Muslim presidents so far compared to only one black president in America. Don’t even get me started on Akbar. Akbar Birbal stories are still sold on the footpaths of India at dirt cheap prices. Akbar’s propaganda machine is still running full throttle. Compare that to the Soviet propaganda machine. Long gone. Gone with the wind.
Conversely, there are more people from India than from anywhere else in the world in the now Arab countries. Talk about people to people contact.
So, Donald, you can’t do right by Indians, and talk shit about Muslims. Can not do. Eepikaiye!
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump thinks India is doing well, but that the country isn’t getting the attention it deserves....... “India is doing great. Nobody talks about it,” Mr. Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Monday...... Mr. Trump’s brief praise for the fast-growing South Asian economy was a reaction to comments he made in a 2007 interview with Mr. Blitzer, in which he expressed concern about the U.S. economy being overtaken by India and China. ...... “We’ve gone from a tremendous power that is respected all over the world to somewhat of a laughing stock and all of a sudden, people are talking about China and India and other places,” Mr. Trump said at the time. ........ On Monday, he asserted: “That was the beginning of China. That was the beginning of India.” ..... His praise for India followed in the same breath. “By the way, India is doing great. Nobody talks about it. I have big jobs going up in India. But India is doing great,” he said....... India’s $2-trillion gross domestic product is a fraction of China’s, at $10 trillion, and that of the U.S. at $17 trillion, according to the World Bank. GDP per capita in the U.S. is around $55,000, while in India it is about $1,500 and in China it is $7,400...... Harvard University economists have projected that India’s economy will grow at an average of 7% through 2024, the fastest of any major economy. ...... A recent World Economic Forum survey found that 17% of India’s population was undernourished. The prevalence of undernourishment in China was about 11%. ....... The 69-year-old billionaire has been trying for years to capitalize on his brand in India, teaming up with local property developers. In 2014, he announced the launch of Trump Tower Mumbai, an 800-foot skyscraper with 75 stories tobe erected in city’s upscale neighborhood of Worli by Indian developer Lodha Group. ...... “It has been my desire for many years to be involved in a great project in Mumbai, and it is my honor to bring the Trump lifestyles to the citizens of this truly global metropolis,” he said in a statement at the time. ...... Priced from $1.6 million, the three- and four-bedroom apartments in this property advertise indoor Jacuzzis, Poggenpohl kitchen cabinets and automatic toilets. ...... Before that, in August 2012, developer Panchshil Realty announced another luxury residential property with the Trump name, in Pune, a city about 90 miles from Mumbai. The Trump Towers Pune feature two towers with 23 stories each. Initially expected to be completed by the end of 2015, the project is still under construction. ..... According to the findings of a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, a third of people who said they would vote in a Republican primary said they favored Mr. Trump to be the GOP nominee, followed by Texas senator Ted Cruz at 20% support and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 13%.
या अल्लाह, ए भगवान
इस धरती पर तो कुछ नहीं
रणभुमि में मरुभुमि में
सब जगह तु ही तु
कर्म के पथ पर
मैं समा जाऊँ
मैं समाहित हो जाऊँ
ये काम जो करना है
तेरे को समर्पित
मैं उस धरती पे
जिस धरती पर तो कुछ नहीं
दे ताकत
रणभुमि पर मैं कुद परुँ
बिगुल की आवाज
सुनाइ दे रही मुझे
तेरी प्रार्थना करते वक्त
मैं रोया था
Mrs. Clinton’s main opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, has proved to be more formidable than most people, including Mrs. Clinton, anticipated. He has brought income inequality and the lingering pain of the middle class to center stage and pushed Mrs. Clinton a bit more to the left than she might have gone on economic issues. Mr. Sanders has also surfaced important foreign policy questions, including the need for greater restraint in the use of military force. ....... His boldest proposals — to break up the banks and to start all over on health care reform with a Medicare-for-all system — have earned him support among alienated middle-class voters and young people. But his plans for achieving them aren’t realistic ....... Her economic proposals for financial reform reflect a deep understanding of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act, including the ways in which it has fallen short. She supports changes that the country badly needs, like controls on high-frequency trading and stronger curbs on bank speculation in derivatives. ........ Her lifelong fight for women bolsters her credibility in this area, since so many of the problems with labor law hit women the hardest, including those involving child care, paid sick leave, unstable schedules and low wages for tipped workers. ...... Mrs. Clinton is keenly aware of the wage gap for women, especially for women of color. It’s not just that she’s done her homework — Mrs. Clinton has done her homework on pretty much any subject you’d care to name. ....... She was the secretary President Obama needed and wanted: someone who knew leaders around the world, who brought star power as well as expertise to the table. .......
Certainly, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis deepened during her tenure, but she did not cause that.
...... Mrs. Clinton has honed a steeliness that will serve her well in negotiating with a difficult Congress on critically important issues like climate change. It will also help her weather what are certain to be more attacks from Republicans and, should she win the White House, the possibility of the same ideological opposition and personal animus that President Obama has endured. Some of the campaign attacks are outrageous, like Donald Trump’s efforts to bring up Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity. Some, like those about Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server, are legitimate and deserve forthright answers. ....... Hillary Clinton is the right choice for the Democrats to present a vision for America that is radically different from the one that leading Republican candidates offer — a vision in which middle-class Americans have a real shot at prosperity, women’s rights are enhanced, undocumented immigrants are given a chance at legitimacy, international alliances are nurtured and the country is kept safe.
If you’re dreaming of Bernie Sanders beating Hillary Clinton, you know how the movie begins (he wins Iowa on Monday1), how it ends (he accepts the nomination to a Simon & Garfunkel tune), and one of the major plot lines (black, Hispanic and moderate Democrats, who for now prefer Clinton to Sanders, begin to #feelthebern). ........ Sanders is highly competitive in the first two states, Iowa (where he’s only narrowly behind Clinton) and New Hampshire (where he leads her). However, those states are favorable for Sanders demographically, with Democratic turnout dominated by Sanders’s base of white liberal voters. ......
The first challenge for Sanders is that he appears to be trailing in Iowa. Our “polls-only” forecast gives Clinton a 68 percent chance of winning the state, compared with 32 percent for Sanders, on the basis of her being about 4 percentage points ahead in our weighted polling average.
Our “polls-plus” forecast, which assigns some additional credit to Clinton because of her massive lead in endorsements, has Clinton as a 76 percent favorite........ suppose Sanders does win Iowa. The next step is relatively easy: He’ll probably also win New Hampshire ......
No candidate (Democrat or Republican) has lost the nomination after winning both Iowa and New Hampshire since Ed Muskie in 1972.
...... Sanders’s success in Iowa and New Hampshire might be a reflection of their Sanders-friendly demographics rather than a harbinger of Clinton’s doom. That seems to match the polling we’re seeing in other states, where (for instance) Sanders is doing relatively well in Wisconsin, which also has plenty of white liberals, but struggling in North Carolina, which has fewer. ...... even if Sanders gained a lot of momentum after the early states, he could have trouble closing the sale with voters who think he’s a little too far to the left. ......
The other factor is that Clinton has the Democratic machine more or less fully behind her.
....... In 1992 .. Clinton was billed as the “comeback kid” despite losing each of the first four states ........ But Sanders would have an avalanche of momentum going for him after wins in Iowa and New Hampshire. ...... One factor helping Sanders: Voters who had been attracted to his message before, but who weren’t sure he could win, would mostly have their doubts removed after he beat Clinton twice. .....
It’s also possible that Democratic party elites would panic.
....... One state that doesn’t look good for Sanders is South Carolina, where Clinton is ahead by 31 points and where the Democratic electorate is majority black and relatively conservative. If Sanders wins there, or comes within a few points of doing so, that will be an unambiguous sign that Clinton is in deep trouble. ......
What if Sanders loses Iowa? ...It’s probably over.
.... If Sanders can’t win Iowa, he probably won’t be winning other relatively favorable states like Wisconsin, much less more challenging ones like Ohio and Florida.
When I arrived to do interviews, children would be sent to fetch an older man, someone with the authority to speak to me. Someone would drag over a chair, an honor reserved for dignitaries or bureaucrats. And those I wanted to speak with, the women, would slide down onto the ground, which was the only place they could sit when older men were present, or disappear into the dark interior spaces where they did their chores.
It was like trying to interview a ball of mercury.
........ Last summer, the increase in female employment in the village had erupted into a raw power struggle, with the conservative male caste leaders demanding that the women resign from their jobs. ...... We spent so much time in the village that the people there began to regard us with sincere pity........ Then they began to ignore us. This is when the work began to bear fruit. We became professional eavesdroppers. Four months into our reporting, we were in the village for a series of tense, clamorous late-night meetings, in which the elders grudgingly decreed that the women could return to work........... That night, the headman, Roshan, pushed us out of the village with his hands pressed against our backs; later he admitted that he had done so because he did not want us to witness violence. We returned to New Delhi and almost immediately learned that a large group of villagers had assaulted Geeta and her friends, also leaving her husband badly injured. We returned to find our subjects utterly changed — unhurt for the most part, but
humiliated and shrunken
. One teenage girl never forgave us for failing to protect her.
