I have plunged into 2016 Presidential off and on and haven't decided how much to blog it. One thing I will say the night before Iowa is that Clinton and Sanders both appear to be afraid to lose tomorrow. I read somewhere that both campaigns have their resources directed at the early primaries and Hillary especially has concentrated her organization on preventing a loss in Iowa rather than developing the national organization to soften the blow of one. So a Sanders win there would be a major psychological blow for the Clinton campaign, going a long way towards leveling the organizational playing field.

I didn't begin with a preconceived notion of whom I'd support but am impressed by Bernie's organization and his ability to mobilize an electorate behind his policy positions. I intend to support this contention in more depth, but I agree strongly with those who say Bernie has the best chance in the general election, though O'Malley would also run strong there should he, with a website full of policy papers, make a longshot surge. O'Malley's so good gov that they were trying to make a big deal out of an ongoing practice of buying Maryland government furniture - Bernie's even more of a boy scout. Hillary is complaining about Sanders' "attacks" as she would do in any case disingenuously, but the Democratic challengers are doing their party a disservice by not previewing how Hillary can't bear the scrutiny of Republican attacks - as Obama had mostly done before them. Before any of that begins she starts with more than half the country knowing her and disapproving, and the elites of the majority party are running too scared to call out how that's unacceptable in their potential standardbearer.

Part of the fear is that the free trade war hawks antagonistic to financial regulation have only a small group of puppets to parade out, because in keeping with democracy, most Democratic legislators elected in the last 20 years don't support their positions, despite their timid endorsements of HRC. Obama was uniquely not antagonistic to NAFTA out of the new Senators of his freshman class, ditto Hillary. Few, if any, leading Dems are more hawkish than Hillary on war issues. A win in Iowa would lead them to say Hillary is inevitable, a loss would send them into disarray.

The polls being as close as they are in a caucus state favors the candidate with more passionate and persuasive supporters to overcome lower name recognition and brand confidence, which would seem to favor Bernie.

Today's beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero and he Pope's declaration that Romero is a martyr has brought on a historical argument as to whether the previous, conservative Pope had already 'unblocked' 'his entry into the sainthood process,' while the conservative Catholic First Things reports that Romero "stood apart from liberation theology" and "Few know that Romero received spiritual direction from an Opus Dei priest," referring to the historically conservative prelature.  The first part is patently inaccurate - for the last two years of his life he worked on his pastoral letters with liberation theologian Jon Sobrano and his homily six weeks before his murder included "Liberation will arrive only when the poor are the controllers of, and protagonists in, their own struggle and liberation."  Michael Löwy recounts "he had sympathized with Opus Dei in his youth" and "would later say to friends, he was chosen as the one most able to neutralize the 'Marxist priests.'"

What followed was a snowballing effect of radicalization in response to violence with the Archbishop in the center.  The murders of two priests in early 1977 began his "'conversion'" and he would begin to consult with Sobrano the following year.  The "liberation" sermon came a few days before he wrote an open letter to President Carter asking him "to forbid that military aid be given to the Salvadoran government." (pdf) The letter led to rumors he was in danger and he told an interviewer "if God accepts the sacrifice of my life, let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will be reality."  The UN concluded in 1993 that Romero's assassination was carried out by Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, who once praised the Holocaust and who "worked with the CIA for years.." a fellow major told Allan Nairn.  Romero's funeral saw an estimated 250,000 convene around Plaza Gerardo Barrios, only to have the military junta open fire on them.




This scene, followed by an even larger massacre on the Sumpul River six weeks later and the National Guard's rape of four nuns seven months later, all during the end of the Carter administration, turned the apolitical like Romero into activists and activists into militants, swelling the ranks of the newly formed FMLN to wage a twelve year war.

This interview given by Leo Gabriel, an Austrian member of the EU electoral observation mission, is quite revealing and courageous.  He stated "the vast majority of the members of the mission were in strong disagreement with the preliminary report" on the election, and another EU observer told Adrienne Pine "the majority of the members on the EU observation delegation were not in agreement with the official statement claiming the elections were transparent and fair, but were afraid of losing their jobs and/or future lucrative observation opportunities if they spoke out."  Baltasar Garzón alleged to AFP "electoral fraud by different mechanisms and avenues."

Gabriel told Opera Mundi (English version here) "..We arrived at conclusions that stand in diametric opposition to the EU-EOM leadership..

"During the transmission of the results there was no possibility to find out where the tallies where being sent and we received reliable information that at least 20% of the original tally sheets were being diverted to an illegal server that they kept hidden..

"To speak of transparency after everything that happened last Sunday is a joke and I believe that, first and foremost, we observers have to be honest and portray what we have really seen..

"The 2009 Coup d’État harmed the image of Honduras around the world, slowing down progress on the Association Agreement signed by the European Union and the Central American region (EU-CA AA). Presenting [an image of] a clean and transparent electoral process helps the European Union to clean up Honduras’s image around the world and set this commercial project into motion..

"In the general evaluation meeting, the majority of my colleagues who observed the elections 'on site,' on the ground, were in agreement about the irregularities I just laid out. No one defended the content of the report or the idea that there had been transparency in the process, and that brought us up against the intransigence of the EU-EOM team leaders, who did not want to cede even one millimeter. We argued for a serious discussion of the topic, taking into account what we had witnessed and suggesting changes to the text, but they firmly refused..

"I believe the TSE pulled the results out of their sleeves according to a predefined political calculus..

"Yes ('it was all a set-up'), because these results don’t have any basis and the speed with which they came out with the early data demonstrates that."

(emphasis mine)