Nothing to see here, just an Imam featured as a speaker at a Bernie Sanders rally in Michigan who has professed all sorts of insane, poisonous beliefs. Does the Sanders campaign do any vetting, or is anyone with any sort of constituency welcome to take the mic at campaign events? Between revolutionary 'crush capitalism'-style socialists and this guy, one can only hope the answer is the latter:
Detroit-Based Shiite Imam Hassan Qazwini: ISIS Run by Israel, Zionists In Order to Kill Muslims, Defame Islam; Israel Benefits from ISIS More than Anyone (Archival) pic.twitter.com/3Y2d0sIJk4
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 2, 2019
A few more twisted greatest hits from Qazwini:
The Imam from the Bernie rally once boasted of his closeness to Hezbollah’s spiritual leader and said Bernie is “an honorable man, even though he is a Jew.” Nice. https://t.co/6mKDsVeACA
— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) March 10, 2020
Sadly, this should come as no surprise. After all, here is one of Sanders' loudest Congressional supporters, Rashida Tlaib:
Note the shirt. pic.twitter.com/is5m1BMCUB
— (((kweansmom))) (@kweansmom) March 9, 2020
That would be one prominently anti-Semitic Bernie backer promoting the book of another prominently anti-Semitic Bernie backer, while wearing a t-shirt representing the elimination of Israel. Par for the course in the Corbynizing wing of the Democratic Party. As is this sort of rant:
Crowd cheers as @jeppsaddison says: “racism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin.” pic.twitter.com/Ra5DfrvOqg
— Lia Weintraub (@LiaWeintraub) March 8, 2020
Unfortunately for the bigots and the socialists, the party may be ending soon -- at least for this presidential cycle. Tonight's six Democratic primaries appear unlikely to slow 'Joementum' at all: The three biggest delegate prizes on the board (by far) are Michigan, Missouri and Washington. In the 2016 cycle, Sanders shocked Hillary Clinton in Michigan, came within a fraction of a point of edging her out in Missouri, and won a blowout victory in his Pacific Northwest stronghold. This year? Joe Biden holds commanding leads in the first two states, and has actually taken a small lead in some Washington State polls, signaling a pure tossup. Biden will dominate Mississippi, while Idaho and North Dakota (each amounting to small pools of delegates) could conceivably go either way, though the former Vice President is slightly favored in both.
What Team Sanders is hoping for is another major upset in the upper midwest, recreating the magic of overcoming Clinton's huge Michigan polling lead to eke out a win, followed by a good showing out west. But if Michigan falls early, with immediate Biden calls in the other two central time zone states (all at 8pm ET), it's going to be a rough night for Bernie -- both in terms of delegates, and in terms of the narrative moving forward. By the way, did California being the final state to close on Super Tuesday hurt Sanders' narrative, in that his biggest win arrived late in the evening after the conventional wisdom had already solidified? Not necessarily. He got his rear end kicked all over the place, of course, and the initial numbers probably looked too rosy for Bernie in California. Their counting process is slow as molasses, which may have hidden the extent of Biden's surge out there:
One of the fun things to do with California elections is check back in a week or so later to see what's actually going on and whoa Joe Biden is only losing by 7% at this point. Bernie really got wiped out on Super Tuesday in every imaginable way.
— Esoteric Jeff (@EsotericCD) March 10, 2020
Imagine if California had less early voting; Biden may have won the state.